Irresistible | Week 3

Irresistible

Week 3 Vertical vs. Horizontal

Life Group Discussion Guide

Note to the Leaders: 

This discussion guide is a help for you to engage and steer the conversation within your group.  

You do not have to read every question; this is just resources for you to move the main idea forward. 

Do your best to make the story come to life by asking questions that will spur your group conversations that make this story play come alive and become applicable to their lives.   

Getting Started:

1.     Have you ever been part of a difficult relationship, maybe it was family or just a friend, where you always had to tiptoe around not to offend the other person?

2.     Have you ever been part of a relationship where you felt like the other person befriended you to get something from you?

·      Tonight, we’re going to discuss not just our relationship with God, but others as well.

Digging In:

Read Matthew 22:37-38

Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.

1.     How can the vertical relationship with God be lived selfishly?

·      It can become as though we are tiptoeing in our relationship with God trying not to do something that will make him angry.

·      When we ask the question of …

o   How can I get closer to God?

o   How can I know God more intimately?

o   How can I receive all God has for me?

Too often we seek God’s hand and not his heart!

·      While seeking greater intimacy with God is a noble pursuit, we’d be less than honest that the intimacy sought is for the benefit of the seeker and not God.

·      My primary concern was not how my sin affected God but, how offending God might come back to haunt me.

Read Matthew 22:39

And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.

1.     How much is the second part of this command like the first?

o   Equally important according to Jesus

·      Vertical morality leads to the idea that if I sinned against you and asked God to forgive me, everything would be good between me and God, and I could have a clean conscience, even though I would have to avoid you in the grocery store.

·      Vertical morality that doesn’t concern itself with loving others.

Read Matthew 5:23-24,

Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

2.     According to this scripture can you love God but not love your neighbor?

Read James 2:15-18,

If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus, also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works. Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”

3.     How did Jesus live out this verse and show God’s love to us?

·      Jesus’ death on the cross meant that he would meet our greatest need. The forgiveness of sin.

4.     If Jesus met our greatest need, what does he expect us to do for others?

5.     How can we strive to meet the needs of others in a way similar to the way God has met our greatest need?

o   Forgiveness.

o   Love gives sacrificially and unconditionally, expecting nothing in return.

6.     Does the way you give reflect a sacrificial and unconditional heart or do you give expecting something in return (consciously or subconsciously)?

7.     What does it look like PRACTICALLY to give sacrificially in the following areas of life.

a.     Work

b.     Marriage/Relationship

c.     Friendships

d.     Those who look like you

e.     Those who don’t look like you

·      This sacrificial love in relationships with God and Others is what made Jesus so irresistible.

8.     How does this now define or redefine how we live in our relationship with God? 

Next Step:

·      How would you describe your relationship with God?

·      What needs to change in the way you love God and others to truly experience the true joy of a relationship with God?