​LIFE GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS |October 8/12

 

The following questions can be used for life group meetings, further personal study, or home devotions with your family.  Use them as you wish, but please don’t feel the need to answer every one of them in order.  God bless your study/discussion!

 

1. At this moment in your life, do you identify more with the Jewish lepers or the Samaritan leper? Why?

 

2. The sermon listed several reasons why gratitude is sometimes hard to come by. What were they? Can you list any other reasons that weren’t mentioned in the sermon?

 

3. Which blessings from the hand of God (either physical or spiritual) do you find yourself giving thanks for the most? Which do you find yourself struggling to notice and appreciate? Why?

 

4. The sermon didn’t really talk much about this aspect of generosity, but in the second lesson (2 Corinthians 9:10-15) Paul describes some of the extraordinary “downstream effects” when God’s mercy prompts our grateful generosity toward others. Recall what they were. Can you think of any instances in which you have seen or personally experienced such “downstream effects” of God’s generosity prompting grateful responses in his people?

 

5. In the sermon, Pastor Odell explained one of the reasons why God often refrains from answering our prayers as we wish. What was it?

 

6. Describe a time when God’s mercy or generosity overwhelmed you. What in particular made that occasion so overwhelming?

 

7. It might seem counterintuitive, but why is a proper understanding and persistent meditation on the law of God—and our sins against it—necessary in order to live a life of thanksgiving to God? (For help, think of likely reasons that the Samaritan leper came back to give God thanks while the other lepers did not.)

 

 - In that same vein, why is a proper understanding and persistent meditation upon the Gospel also necessary in order to live a life of thanksgiving to God?

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Scripture, unless otherwise noted, is from Holy Bible: Evangelical Heritage Version (Milwaukee, WI: Northwestern Publishing House, 2019).