Group Guide

February 25th, 2024

This Week's City 7:

1. Who is Jesus? I believe Jesus is God because Jesus said He is God and proved it by rising from the dead and appearing to His disciples, His brother James, 500 others at one time and Paul.
(Mark 3:21; John 8:58, 10:30-33, 14:9-11; Acts 9:1-6; 1 Corinthians 15:3-8; Colossians 1:15-20; Hebrews 1:2-3; James 1:1)

Ice-Breaker:

How often do you have dreams? What are they typically about?

Discussion Questions:

Have someone read Acts 2:16-18 aloud.

Peter quotes Joel, the Old Testament prophet, saying that in the last days God will pour out his Spirit on ALL people. The word used for "pour" is the image of a torrential downpour of rain on a parched earth. "All people" means every kind of person from every kind of place. It means male and female, young and old, rich and poor. This prophecy challenges every socio-economic barrier. This all means that with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, all believers, without distinction of gender, age, and social status, receive the wisdom and ability to know God. The Spirit that hovered over the waters of the new creation, that raised Christ from the dead, is IN YOU as a believer! What are you doing with this power and wisdom that is within you? If you were constantly aware that the God of the universe is WITH you and IN you, would it change your behaviors at all? What would be different if you lived in this reality?
Prophecy can be simply defined as God giving someone a message to give to someone else. There's nothing spooky or weird about it… God knows everything and he promises to speak to us through his Holy Spirit who has promised to lead us into all truth. 1 Corinthians 14 tells us that prophecy is for the purpose of strengthening, encouraging and comforting others in the church. In discussing Joel's prophecy on Sunday, we talked not just about prophecy, but also dreams and visions. When we talk about dreams we are talking about a God-given dream, one that stands out as being from him. A vision is similar to a dream but something you experience when you are awake. What is your experience like when it comes to these gifts? Have you ever had someone give you a prophetic word, something someone felt God wanted to say to you? Has anyone ever had a prophetic vision or dream?
When it comes to prophecy, Scripture clearly tells us that it must be tested. It has to be submitted to God's Word, to Jesus and to the church community of believers. Scripture is the final authority, and it trumps any prophetic word. When there is disagreement between the two, Scripture must win. If we want to accurately interpret anything we feel God may be saying to us, we must have a firm grasp on what the Bible says. When our lives are built on God's Word, we would begin to become more and more filled with biblical wisdom. This will allow us the ability to discern the whisper of the Holy Spirit in our lives and to experience even more of him. Is this true of your life? Is it built upon and subject to the Word of God? How do you know?
The takeaway from Sunday was that God wants to speak TO you and THROUGH you. This is true for every believer, as we said before, no matter your gender, age or financial status. You're never too young and never too old. This is the life of the new testament Jesus follower - to hear from God, through the Holy Spirit and his Word, and to share that with a lost and dying world. But we must be in a position to hear him speak. There are keys to stillness of your heart, the quieting of your mind, to your own prayer life, to being in Scripture. Do you feel you can tell when the Holy Spirit is speaking to you? Can you discern HIS voice over others? Are you getting alone with God on a regular basis, in a quiet place, and giving him room to speak?
Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 14 that we should ALL earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, ESPECIALLY prophecy! That means we should ask God to speak to us, to give us words for others, to give us visions, to give us dreams. We all have different spiritual gifts, but we are to desire more. Do you know what your spiritual gifts are? If not, take a free test online. In the meantime, let's pray and ask God to give us visions and dreams, that we might learn to prophesy! Here is the quote Brandon left us with on Sunday, may it be true of us! "Joel is not trying to get us excited that we will all one day be able to know the future before it happens (there is nothing especially holy about that). He is looking to a day when men and women everywhere will be so filled with God that they catch visions of him in the daytime, dream about him at night, and speak of him continually with their mouths." - John Piper

Prayer Topics:

That we would earnestly seek the gifts, especially prophecy.
That would would learn to hear the Spirit speak.
That we would test everything against God's Word, Jesus and our Gospel community.

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