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 Week of 1/14/17

Sunday (1/14)
This week, Pastor Brian opened his message series about “Home,” our eternal home in heaven.  My application of these scriptures will clearly be about our life in the here and now but, for a Christian, life and death are tightly related.  We need look no further than Christ’s life, ministry, and ultimate sacrifice to understand that.  Let’s focus in on a small piece of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians.
 
Thursday (1/19) 6:30-7:30
(2 Corinthians 5:6-8)
 Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.
 
I want to draw your attention to the the sentence, “For we live by faith, not by sight.”  This will be our primary focus for this discussion.  What is it like to “live by sight?”  I think our answer to one question clarifies this for each of us:
  • Triggers to Drink: What drives us to escape through drink or drugs? At the time, what made sense about it and what didn’t make sense about it. These triggers don’t go away but they can lose their power.
Drawing upon our own vision and power is what drops each of us to our “bottom.”  If we are rigorously honest about our abuse of alcohol or drugs, we can see that we need help in a very serious way.  Enter Step 2 … 
  • Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
    • What evidence do you have that God can, and will, enable a better life? This is living Step 2.
    • When I began my sobriety, I believed in God and the life, ministry, and sacrifice of Christ Jesus. What took some time was understanding how God could, and would, restore sanity to my life. This was personal. This required that I surrender to God’s will through Step 3.
  • Step 3 – Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
    • Is more than a decision really needed?  Why or why not?  
    • What is your experience with surrendering to God’s will? What happened? (Think specific life examples.)
This should be more than enough to fuel our thoughts and discussion this Thursday evening.  I look forward to seeing you and sharing our thoughts.

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