Take Back Your Life | Week 5
Series Big Idea: This Series will help you recognize what’s holding you back and equip you to embrace it head-on as you become the best version of yourself.
Discussion Guide 5
Sermon Big Idea:
The opportunity of a lifetime must be seized in the lifetime of that opportunity – Leonard Ravenhill
Opening:
What is the best deal you ever passed up and regretted later?
What is the best deal you ever got on anything?
Read: Deuteronomy 1:20-21
20 I said to you, ‘You have now reached the hill country of the Amorites that the Lord our God is giving us. 21 Look! He has placed the land in front of you. Go and occupy it as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has promised you. Don’t be afraid! Don’t be discouraged!’
Discuss:
After wandering around in the wilderness, the children of Israel have made it to the land God promised them.
According to these verses, what is required of the Israelites to take the gift God had promised them?
It seems too good to be true, doesn’t it?
What seemed to be the most logical next step for the Israelites was to send a group into the land to investigate.
What they discovered is the promise land was everything God said it was except someone was already living there and they were really big and had fortified cities.
What is the logical response when an opportunity meets an obstacle?
How easy is it to start questioning how legitimate an opportunity is when obstacles arise?
Read Numbers 13:26
30 Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.” 31 But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.” 32 And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size.
Is the majority always, right?
All these men saw the same thing while investigating the land.
Why was Caleb’s response different from that of the rest of the group?
Why did the rest of the group feel the need to “spread a bad report?
Is it fair to say that a logical response is not always the right response when given an opportunity? Explain your answer.
Read Numbers 14:1-2
That night all the members of the community raised their voices and wept aloud. 2 All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole assembly said to them, “If only we had died in Egypt! Or in this wilderness!
What were the facts of the opportunity before the people? God had already given them the land they just had to go get it.
Ever notice it is easier to spread negativity than it is to spread positivity?
Why is it easier for us to believe the negative rather than the positive when facing an opportunity?
Faith doesn’t always look logical or obstacle-free.
However, faith is beyond logic and can move any obstacle before us.
Lack of faith can be costly:
Read Numbers 14:11
11 The Lord said to Moses, “How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the signs I have performed among them? 12 I will strike them down with a plague and destroy them,
None of those who believed the majority entered the promise land
Only Caleb and Joshua who by faith in God saw beyond the logical and past the obstacles entered into God’s promise.
What are some opportunities you are facing?
Are they logical or obstacle-free?
Are you trusting God or believing the negativity?