Recalculating...

The following is a rough draft of a small group discussion guide I wrote for my local church for a series entitled "Recalculating." Original messages can be found at vineyardchristian.org/media/2015-messages

The 1997 comedy film, Waiting for Guffman, tells the story of a fictional town called Blaine, Missouri, preparing for its 150^th anniversary celebration. At one point, they tell the story of how the town is founded, and mention that the early settlers had hired a guide to lead them to California. Late one night, while sitting around the campfire, their guide announces to them, “Smell that air. Smell the salt in the air? That’s the ocean. We’ve made it. I’ve brought you to California.” It’s only later that the settlers realize they’re actually in Missouri, and decide that’s still good enough for them. (they later name the town after the guide, so obviously there’s no hard feelings.)
Icebreaker discussion: When was a time when you got really lost? What happened? Where were you going? How did you get back on course?(or did you?)
Sometimes, we can feel a little lost in life like that. And it can be very easy to settle down where we’re at, far away from our true goal, tired of the barriers we’ve faced, and say “well, this is good enough.” But God doesn’t want us to settle for what’s “good enough,” He has a much more powerful, and sometimes much more difficult, but always worthwhile, road ahead for us. This is a great time of year for us to refocus, find our “inner GPS” and “recalculate” our possibly off route course!
Let’s start with prayer:

God, we thank you for the chance to get together and learn from you. We ask that you open our minds and hearts to what plans you may have for us, help us to find the route you have laid out, and to conquer the barriers that will get in the way. Let us listen to what you may be saying to us tonight, and leave us open to your Word. –Amen

For the last two weeks, Scott and Barry have talked about the story of Joshua taking over from Moses. Imagine what that experience was like! Moses is still one of the most famous people in history, so how must it have felt like to be his successor as the leader of the Israelites? Joshua doesn’t seem to have shrunk away from the responsibility though. We have the story of how Moses resisted being made the leader of the Israelites, but no such story with Joshua. Instead, we seem to see he was a gung ho warrior leader who was ready to run forward and trust God at any point, even when the odds seemed stacked against him. A great illustration of this is another story from actually much later in Joshua’s life.

Let’s set the scene. This is after the invasion of the Promised Land by the Israelites, capping off 30 years of warfare. The Israelite army has defeated almost all of the armies they’ve faced off against, and they’ve cleared most of the land for them to settle in. However, there are still some enemies left, and they’re separating out into their individual clans to settle down and finish the job. Joshua stands before the people and offers them a choice. After decades of following God in the wilderness, followed by long years of war, the Israelites are being given the option to choose whether or not they will continue to follow God. Joshua starts by giving the whole history of everything God has done for them, and then he puts the decision to them in Joshua 24:14-15a

“Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. “

This is a big moment. Joshua is standing in front of all of the people of Israel. He’s standing in front of the nation he’s lead through war. Almost all of them were children or grandchildren of the people he’d grown up with. Of all the people who originally left Egypt, only Joshua and his friend Caleb were left, everyone else had died off before entering the Promised Land. Joshua looks at them. I like to imagine at this point, he looks something like Clint Eastwood in an old western, facing off against some bad guy gunman, his eyes are squinting, he mouth is barely smirking, and then he says this (Joshua 15b)

“But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Boom.

Joshua is basically saying, “look, after all of this stuff that God has done for you, if you want, you can leave. You can go back to being comfortable worshipping the pagan gods of your neighbors, or worshipping the gods of Egypt. But even if you all choose to leave, my family and I are going to stick this out, because God’s all I need.

Pretty awesome, huh?

But what does it mean to choose to serve the Lord? How does our life change, how is our course recalculated because we are serving God?

Discussion Question: What is one thing in your past life that you’ve had to change to more closely match what you felt God wanted for you? What was it like to “recalculate?” What were the struggles you had? Did you succeed right away, or did it take a few tries? What was something you did that made it easier?(or even possible at all?)

So we’ve all had some opportunities to recalculate with God, and it’s usually because of something or someone (the “someone” so often being ourselves) that gets in the way. These barriers that come up may be the result of our own poor decisions, the actions of others in our lives – sometimes well meaning, or due to a spiritual attack, either directly against us or as a consequence of living in a broken world.

Think through some of the barriers we’ve just shared with each other. Do these kinds of barriers seem to go away at any point? Is there a place in life where the challenges we face suddenly fall away and everything becomes easy? Definitely not! But after we face a challenge, does that sometimes help prepare you for the next one? Think about the first challenge you ever faced in life that you can remember. Now compare it to the most recent challenge. Chances are, your more recent challenge was more difficult than your first, but if you hadn’t faced that first challenge, and all the other ones between, you probably wouldn’t have been as prepared for the most difficult ones.

There’s a great verse for this in the book of Jeremiah in the Old Testament . In Jeremiah 12:5 it says.

“If you have raced with men on foot

and they have worn you out,

how can you compete with horses?

If you stumble in safe country,

how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?”

Now, there’s a lot going on in the original context of this verse that’s definitely worth studying when you have time, but we’re going to look at the verse by itself for a second.

[Leaders, the following story is meant as an example, please feel free to replace it with a personal example from your own life] Personal story, when I was in junior high, I decided to try out for the track and field team. This was odd to my family and what friends I had at school because I was by no means an athletic person. I was, to put it lightly, a heavy set nerd who was reading on average 2 or 3 Star Trek novels a week, and was in the process of trying to teach myself Klingon. I was NOT your stereotypical jock! As might have been expected, I didn’t do terribly well, but I showed up for every practice and tried hard. I had the absolute lowest time for running a 100 yards for anyone on the team, and when I threw a shotput it was a major accomplishment to even get it into the pit, let alone throwing it far enough to be even close to the rest of the team.

Now imagine if after a few weeks, I trotted over to the high school field, walked up to a member of the varsity team, and challenged them to a race? Imagine I’d danced around and sang a tune trying to rhyme their name with some embarrassing word, like banana. What would have happened? If the varsity runner had even deigned to race me instead of beating me and shoving me into a locker, I certainly wouldn’t have faired well in the race, and chances were I’d have been thoroughly embarrassed. However, if I’d stuck with running in track and field all through high school, I might have one day become pretty good at it, certainly better than I was in the seventh grade.(I quit in high school to join the public speaking team instead)

Moving “straight ahead” through earlier barriers in life helps us deal with barriers later on. We learn techniques for striving through, and we learn the importance of leaning on God for our strength. That’s why in James 1:2-4 the author says

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

Discussion question: What are some barriers that you’ve faced in your life that you think help prepared you for later on? What are the main lessons you’ve learned from past barriers that you have remembered for facing future ones?

One way to recalculate and learn lessons to move through barriers is to spend time in God’s word. New Year’s is a GREAT time to start this habit if you haven’t already.

Discussion Question: What are some ways that you’ve studied the Bible in the past? How has Bible reading helped you with some “barriers” you’ve faced in life? What are some struggles you’ve had with getting in regular Bible reading? How can we help each other in this goal?

There’s a lot of great reading plans out there, most of them available for free. One great resource is www.youversion.com They have plans designed for reading the entire Bible in a year, or just taking a week or two to dig into a particular book of the Bible. The reading plans can be shared with friends or small group members for accountability, and are completely available for free! Don’t feel like you have to jump into a full year long study, if you haven’t read the Bible consistently in a while, feel free to start by just reading the Psalms, Proverbs, or the Gospels! Any time with God is great, just make sure you’re setting aside time to pray, both before and after reading if possible. Remember, quality over quantity, it doesn’t have to be an hour, even fifteen minutes with God everyday can have a HUGE impact on your life!

For closing prayer, let’s take some time and break into smaller groups and pray together about the areas Scott highlighted in last week’s message. Pray for each other on each area, and feel free to share with each other what you might be hearing from God about how you might need to “recalculate” for each area as well as what barriers you might be facing.  How will you go “straight ahead”?

·        Spirituality

·        Emotionally

·        Physically

·        Family and Friends

·        Job

Feel free to close with the same prayer Barry used, a rewording of 2 Chronicles 32: 7,8

"May I be strong and courageous; may I not be afraid or discouraged because of my adversaries; there is a greater power with me than with them, for you, the Lord my God are with me to help"