Trent Heaton // Rockford Campus // Aug 4, 2024

 

A Cross Shaped Life: The Good Life

SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION GUIDE

 

REMINDERS

Unashamed: Beach Baptisms are coming up on Sunday, August 25, from 3:30 pm – 6:00 pm at the Maranatha Conference Grounds (4759 Lake Harbor Road, Norton Shores). If you’d like to be baptized, or have questions about what that means for us here at Magnify Church, please follow the link and register to have a conversation with one of our team members.

This event is one of the biggest on our church calendar and we’d love to have as many people come to be baptized and to celebrate others’ baptism together as one big family of God! Hope to see you there!

 

Fall Events are right around the corner. With the turn of the page of the calendar into August comes Fall planning in full swing. As you and your family begin to carve out time in your schedules, please be sure to keep an eye on what’s going on across the church.

We want to do our very best as a congregation to help everyone become a disciple of Jesus through the ways we Worship, Learn, Relate, Give, Serve and Reach.

Please connect with us if you have any questions or ideas for this Fall!

 

TOGETHER IN LIFE

In this week’s sermon, Trent asked: What is the Good Life to you and how do you go about getting it?

Reflect on this question for yourself. What are the various ways that you’d define “The Good Life”. And once you have an idea of it, how do you go about getting it? In what ways are you enjoying the good gifts of God in this life? In what ways do those point to God for you?

If your Group is meeting through the summer, discuss this with the group.

 

TOGETHER IN THE WORD

THIS WEEK’S KEY PASSAGE: Philippians 3:1-4:1 | The Good Life

Note: We encourage you to read the entire text together out loud.

 

Safeguards

Paul writes to the church at Philippi because of his affection and joy for them, as well as to protect them from false beliefs about God. He offered them a 3-part summary to help them know truth from lies (verse 3): (1) that it Worships in (or by) the Spirit of God, (2) glories in Christ Jesus and (3) has no confidence in the flesh for the achievement of salvation.

QUESTIONS

• Read Acts 13 for some background on the kinds of challenges Paul and the other Apostles faced in light of the Good News.
• What false beliefs have you come across about following Jesus? How do you know that they are true or false? Where in Scripture do you go to get these answers?
• (v3) In what ways can we know that something (a) Worships in the Spirit of God, (b) Glories in Christ Jesus and (c) has no confidence in the flesh?

 

Confidence in the Flesh

Paul condemns the Judaizers in their false teaching that in order to first follow Jesus, you must become a Jew and follow Old Testament law. But more than that, he explains that if anyone on the earth had a reason to have confidence in it – if the flesh and self-righteous achievement – were the true pathways to Peace, Hope and Love (the Good Life), he would have the most!

QUESTIONS

• What do you know about the 7 “flesh confidences” that Paul lists in v5-6?
• Why would Paul have once claimed those as reasons for confidence in the flesh?
• How do you think these things achieved “the Good Life” for Paul? In what ways do you think he received Peace, Hope, and Love from these confidences?
• What does this tell us about our own “lists” we make before God?

Christ is Worth it ALL

In v7-8, Paul then communicates that his whole way of understanding the Good Life and how he went about getting it were worth losing it all, for the sake of Christ. Not only was it at once in his past worth it (he “counted” it as loss in the past), he keeps being reminded and focused that it is all loss for the SURPASSING WORTH of gaining Christ.

QUESTIONS

• In what other parts of Philippians does Paul repeat this idea (gaining Christ is worth losing everything else)?
• What do these all have in common?
• What does it look like practically in your life to count everything as loss for the sake of knowing Christ?

 

Striving and Straining

From the understanding that we receive righteousness from God through faith in Jesus, and not earning it through our flesh (v5-6 ancestry, ethnic devotion, schools of thought, passion and sincerity or moral excellence), we then strive toward Christ in order that we may gain Him, know Him, know the Power of His resurrection, share in His sufferings and be like Him in His death (v10-11). This requires a totally different view on what constitutes “The Good Life”. In order to view suffering from Christ and dying for Him as a good thing, we cannot have a view in which:

(a) the material world is all that exists and

(b) that achieving maximum success, happiness, or satisfaction in this world is what matters most.

Only in Jesus – through His power over death for salvation and for eternal life – are we able to bear up under the weight of suffering and death. It is only in Him we can find true peace, hope, and love.

QUESTIONS

• In what ways does our world tell us that suffering is bad?
• How does this world tell us to resolve suffering, decay, and death?
• If we only understood the world in these ways, what would that lead us to believe about God? In other words, if you lacked material wealth, health, happiness and/or success, and you did not believe in Jesus as your Savior and Lord, what would you feel about God?
• How does Knowing Christ confront these things in our lives?
• In what ways do you need to “press on” toward gaining Christ and work out your salvation in fear and trembling?

TOGETHER IN ACTION

The ways in which we strive toward the upward call of God in Christ Jesus in our church are in the ways we WORSHIP, LEARN, RELATE, GIVE, SERVE, and REACH.

Reflect on and share one way you enjoy KNOWING CHRIST in each of these areas.

Consider one area to be able to work on growing intentionally in GAINING CHRIST. Why do you struggle with it? What holds you back? What do you need to help you?

TOGETHER IN PRAYER

In Christ, we not only receive the righteousness (justice and right-ness) of God, we also become satisfied immensely in HIS view of the Good Life. Pray that God would help you (and your group) see what you look to in this life in place of Him for Peace, Hope, and Love. Confess that and look to Him to replace that with Himself. Ask Him to show you what that means – in very tangible and practical ways – to know the surpassing worth you have in Christ Jesus our Lord!