Celebrate Easter with Communion

This week please consider sharing communion as a Connection Group to “proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes” (1 Cor. 11:26).  Here is some help for you:

 

Connection Group Communion (first week of April – between Palm Sunday and Easter)

Between Palm Sunday (April 1) and Easter (April 8) we ask each Connection Group to consider sharing communion together.  How?  Plan for a pot luck meal (this is what the first-century believers called a “love feast.”).  Go around the table and invite every person to reflect on what Christ has done for them by His death on the cross.  Was there bondage to a specific sin that has been broken?  Has the promise of heaven transformed their life on earth?  Has cold religion been transformed into the warm embrace of our heavenly Father?

 

Find a passage that you want to share to conclude the sharing.  You could read the account of the crucifixion (such as Luke 23:26ff).  You could use Day 13 of the Prayer Guide.  Or use a passage you have found that uniquely points you to the cross.

 

Having read the passage, take a single, unbroken loaf (you may want to buy a matzo “cracker” from the grocery store or just use an unsliced loaf of bread) and pass it around the table, allowing each person to break off their portion of the one loaf (each of us receiving our gift of life from the single sacrifice of Christ).  Then take a goblet of grape juice (or wine) and pass it around the table allowing each to receive from the single cup.^[1]   You can refer to 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 (and 10:14-17) as well as Luke 22:7-20.

 

Consider closing with a song of praise.  

 

If you would like to do a much more elaborate Passover “seder” meal, see…

http://www.cresourcei.org/haggadah.html

 

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^[1] If fear of the flu bug makes this unappealing, consider having a single pitcher from which you pour a portion into each individual cup to drink from.

James 4:13-17

The opening line in this passage has James calling us to attention, “No listen!”  Just in case we had “checked out” from his earlier topics, he wants all ears wide open for this one.  Why this topic particularly?

 

What makes businessmen and women especially appropriate as an illustration for this teaching?

 

How have you experienced the brevity of life (that our days on earth are as a “mist” quickly vanishing)?

 

James is not encouraging us to simply parrot back the words, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and so this or that” (:15).  So, what does this mean?  What should this look like in our every day life?

 

In what ways does this passage fit with the topic of pride that has been running through chapter 4?

 

In what ways is making plans without submitting them to God akin to “boasting and bragging?”

 

If this is an issue in your life, confess this to God (and to your group), calling it what God calls it…”evil” and “sin.”

 

James 4:11-12

Is it shocking that when James gives the imperative command to ”not slander” it is primarily directed to “brothers” against “one another?”  Slander of all kinds and against any person is wrong.  But why does James direct his command to the kind of slander that occurs from one Christ-follower to another Christ-follower? 

 

How can we slander even when our words are true?

 

What motivates us to slander?  What is going on in our hearts? 

 

James earlier told us that we often find a secure place in our hearts for bitter envy and selfish ambition (see 3:14-16).  How might these things in our hearts flow out in slander from our mouths?

 

The “royal law” James gives is “love your neighbor as yourself” (James 2:8).  If that is “the law” that James refers to in 4:11-12, how does that help us understand what he is saying here?

 

We need to think about what this passage condemns (slander).  But think about how we can proactively do the right thing?  In other words, how do the Scriptures guide us to speak the truth about people in an appropriate way?  What if we see a brother do something wrong – how can we talk about that person without slipping into slander?

 

 

 

Leadership Training

Remember to attend the community Connection Group Leader Training on Sunday, March 25 from 8:30-9:50 am in the Equipping Room.

§ Frazee, Part 2 (chs. 7-10)

§ Grudem, chs. 5-6

James 4:1-10

1) What does cause fights and quarrels among you? In other words, in what areas of your life are you most likely to experience conflict?

2) Can you identify instances where pride and self-centeredness is at the root of these conflicts?

3) What are instances where pride and self-focus causes us to fail even ask God for help? What are instances were, when we do pray to God, our prayers reflect pride and self-focus?

4) Why do you think James uses such strong language in verse 4? In both the Old Testament and the New Testament, God uses the language of marriage to describe his relationship with the church. What type of friendships in a human marriage would “friendship with the world” be similar to in the church’s marriage to God? How does “envy” function in a healthy way in marriages?

5) What are ways that we have damaged or are damaging our relationship with God through friendship with the world?

6) What does the passage teach us about the path to restoration? What does it mean to truly humble oneself before God? “Grieve, morn, and wail” is not the sort of phrase that one hears in American Christianity very much. Why not? How can a spirit of genuinely humble repentance better characterize our relationship with God?

7) This passage encourages us to draw near to the cross of Christ, and draw away from the world and the devil. What are practical steps we could take this week to do that? How could we hold each other accountable?

James 3:13-18

Have you found yourself desperate for wisdom and then listening to the wrong advice (counterfeit wisdom)?  What happened and what did you learn?

 

Our culture often thinks of “humility” as a weakness – not as the foremost quality of true wisdom.  Yet men like Moses and Jesus Christ are described as “humble” in the Bible.  How do these men help us think rightly about what James describes as “humility?”

 

What do “bitter envy” and “selfish ambition” look like?  What do they look like in you?

 

When James speaks of counterfeit wisdom as “of the devil,” what does that mean?

 

Now look at the list of qualities that are found in God’s true wisdom (3:17-18).  List each one and define it (use a Bible dictionary or concordance for some help).

 

What changes need to be made in your life so that true wisdom is what you seek and what you speak?

 

Pray for your Connection Group and for our church that God would give us a hunger for true wisdom and the discernment to detect and rid ourselves of counterfeit wisdom.