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Difficult Questions – Week 1 Study Guide

Theme for 2019, Answers: What God has said about important life questions

STUDY GUIDE, WEEK 1, 1.6.19

Part 1. What the Bible is about and why I should trust it?
1. The Bible: Source Document for Reality

Opener: Have your small group imagine walking into a room with nothing but the individual pieces of a 5,000-piece puzzle laid out on a card table, and then you’re told to put the puzzle together!

You’d probably have questions like: Where do you start? What’s the puzzle picture look like?
Ask your group, how would having the box top help in putting the puzzle together?

A puzzle is a good analogy for life. We all know the pieces of our lives should fit together. Life should make sense, but without the box it is impossible to know what thh picture is suppose to look like and which pieces go where. The Bible is our source document for reality! It tells us how the pieces of our lives should fit together.

Summary Statement: The Universe and everything in it was made by God and for God. The way to make sense of the world and everything in it (pain, politics, marriage, sexuality, parenting, finances, purpose) is to live in line with the reality revealed in scripture. The story of the Bible brings together the pieces of the puzzle in a way that makes sense.

Christianity is the story of reality. If we take it, understand it and apply it, it works. It is the picture on the puzzle box.

Ask your group to think about “reality.” What is reality? Ask them to describe it.

Answer: Reality is the way things actually are, not as you want them to be, but as they are.
This reality has implication for all of our lives.

Question: How do you look at that reality? How do you fit in?

What are the implications for living outside of reality?
Can you think of a time when you lived outside of reality?
How’d that work out for you?

The good news for us is that God has given us the scriptures to teach us what reality looks like and we can live in line with that reality.
We can trust the scriptures because they have proven to be accurate in prediction, accurate in description, and accurate prescription.

Question: Can you give an example of how you’ve seen the scriptures be accurate in prescription?

Note: Rodney talked about his marriage/relationship with Tiffany.

Two roadblocks to trusting the scriptures and living in line with reality are: Trusting your feelings/“follow your heart,” and trusting cultural consensus.

Question: How would you define these two roadblocks? Why are they troublesome for us? How do we avoid them?

Application: Train to trust

Question: How do we train to trust?

Answer: we acknowledge ownership; give thanks; and faithfully steward.

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