Own programme: Gospel Partnership Event

Our next meeting is an Own Programme and is the Gospel Partnership event at Enderby. It is a talk by Mike Reeves who is supposed to be a very engaging speaker. See below for the flyer. I think you can just rock up.

Bible Study: Matt 1-5

We are starting a series on the beatitudes from Matthew 5. This week is an overview of the first few chapters in Matthew to set the scene.

Read Matthew 1:1 and look over Jesus’ family tree.
1. Why do you think Matthew begins his gospel with this family tree? What is he trying
to tell us about Jesus? (See also Matt 1:22-23, 2:5-6, 2:13-15, 2:16-18)

2. How should this affect the way we think about the Old Testament – and the way we
read the Old Testament?

3. Look over the following passages:

• Matt 1:21-23
• Matt 3:16-17
• Matt 4:1-11

What do we learn about Jesus from these passages? Who is Jesus?

Read Matthew 4:17-25.

4. What did Jesus preach?
5. What did he call his disciples to do?
6. What do the miracles Jesus performs in vv.23-25 tell us about the character of ‘the
kingdom of heaven’ that Jesus has come to establish?

Read over the Beatitudes themselves – Matthew 5:1-12.

7. Not that we will answer them now, but take a note of:

• Things that stand out for you
• Questions you have about these verses

8. What do we learn about the people who belong to the kingdom of heaven from these
verses?

9. Pray for one another, that over the next few weeks you’d grow in your understanding
of what it means to belong to the kingdom of heaven.

Bible Study: James 1

Here are the questions from our last Homegroup. I meant to post them before the study but forgot, so thought I'd reproduce it here as we had such a good time - in case you ever want to review what we discussed.


1. How do you usually respond to difficult times in your life or in the lives of people you
know?
2. What difference does prayer make / has prayer made to those difficult times?

The letter of James is written to a group of Jewish Christians scattered across the 1st century AD world, who seem to be struggling in a number of ways.

3. Look up these passages in James and work out what some of the trials James’
readers were facing were.
• 1:9-11
• 2:1-7
• 2:15-16
• 4:1-8
• 5:1-6
• 5:8-11

Read James 1:1-18.
4. According to James, what is the right response to trials? What will be the result of
responding in this way? (see v.2-3, 12)
5. According to James, what is the wrong way to respond to trials? (e.g. 1:13)
6. What does James tell his readers to ask God to give them in v.5? Why do you think
they need God to give them this when they are going through trials?

[Leader’s note: the ‘wisdom’ James urges his readers to pray for is the ability to trust in
God’s good purposes for them, even in the midst of trials. It does not come naturally to us
to ‘consider it pure joy’ when we face ‘trials of many kind’ – so we need both to learn from
God’s word that God is good and loving and to pray that we would trust in him, even when
we don’t know what he is doing in our lives.]

7. In this passage, what is God like? (see vv.5, 13, 17, 18)
8. How does this passage encourage us to pray? What does this passage encourage
us to pray for in our lives?
9. What difficulties have you recently faced or are you facing? How might God be using
them to bring you to a more mature trust in him (v.3-4)?

10. Pray for one another – that God would give you the wisdom to meet trials with joy.

Optional activity:

Review what we’ve learnt about prayer across the past three weeks, and share with one
another which of these three truths you most need to hear / you most want to remember.

We pray
• Because thanks to Jesus, God is now our loving heavenly Father and he loves
to hear our prayers (John 17)
• Because we cannot live as God’s people without his grace and power to help
us (Ephesians 3)
• Because we need God’s wisdom to trust his good purposes for our lives
(James 1)

Bible Study: John 17

We are starting a new short series following the sermons on Prayer. Here are the questions based on John 17.

For starters:

• What do you find most difficult about prayer?
• Think of a time in your life when prayer has felt a bit more natural to you (that could be right now!). What factors in your life led/lead you to pray more?

Read over the whole of John 17 together.

• Make a note of:

• any words and phrases that are repeated
• any confusing verses or phrases

• What do we learn from this prayer about Jesus’ commitment to:

• His Father (vv.1-5)?
• His first disciples (vv.6-19)?
• All believers – including us (vv.20-26)?

• From your knowledge of what happened at the cross and in the history of the early church – how has God answered Jesus’ prayers here?

• What can we learn from Jesus’ priorities in prayer, as we pray for ourselves and for one another?

• Just as Jesus prayed for his disciples here, so other parts of the New Testament assure us that the risen and ascended Jesus is committed to praying for all believers today.

• Read over the following passages:

• Romans 8:34
• 1 John 2:1
• Hebrews 7:25

• What encouragement can we take from these descriptions of Jesus as our great high priest, who intercedes for us from heaven?

Time of prayer

Give time to pray as a group, basing your time round what Jesus prays for in John 17.

• vv.1-5 – for God to be glorified as people come to know him
• vv.6-19 – for God to be glorified as his people remain faithful to him in a hostile world
• vv.20-26 – for God to be glorified by the unity and love of his people

Pray for:

• your homegroup
• the church family at Avenue
• Christians you know of around the country and the world