Sabbath. Study. Serve.

 Sabbath, Study, Serve 

Taking the Sermon Into Our Week 

Scripture of the Week: John 18: 28-40

From the Sermon:

As _________________ they had no right to put anyone to death, and the _____________________ surely wouldn’t consider a religious offense worthy of a capitol punishment.

Rome would kill someone claiming to be __________________.

Pilate saw right through the schemes and plans of the __________________.

Pilate, like the crowd, was swept up in ________________ by that point in time.

What have you done because the _______ has persuaded you to?

My hope for us is that we let go of our ____________ dispositions to betray God in order to please others.

Reflection Questions:

When have you been too scared to do the right thing?

What makes you be swept up in the ways of the crowd? What have you done because the crowd has persuaded you to?

Are you willing to risk doing the unpopular, this Lenten season and beyond, if God asks you to?

Prayer:

Lord, we come before you and confess that we have not always followed your voice first and foremost. There have been more times than we would like to admit when we followed the crowd, even at the cost of denying you. Forgive us, O Lord, we pray. Amen. 

Sabbath. Study. Serve.

 Sabbath, Study, Serve 

Taking the Sermon Into Our Week 

Scripture of the Week: John 18: 12-27

From the Sermon:

________ -  that feeling in the pit of your stomach when you did something you knew you shouldn’t have done.

If anyone understood guilt it would be the apostle, _________.

It was almost as if Peter’s zeal was replaced by ______ - fear of the unknown, fear of what was going to happen to Jesus, fear of what was going to happen to him.

What makes this passage particularly challenging, isn’t just that Peter denied Christ. What makes it even more challenging is that Jesus ____________ for that denial! 

There aren’t limits to Christ’s ________________.

Reflection Questions:

How many times have we let our own fear of the unknown hold us back from following the prompting of the Holy Spirit?

How is forgiveness related to this passage in the Gospel of John?

Do you think Peter could have went on to be the rock on which the church was built if he would have been weighed down by the guilt of denying Jesus?

Prayer:

Lord, help us to lay aside our guilt and shame and pick up the freedom and forgiveness that you offer to us. Amen. 

Sabbath. Study. Serve.

 Sabbath, Study, Serve 

Taking the Sermon Into Our Week 

Scripture of the Week: John 13: 1-17

From the Sermon:

There is something about this story of Jesus washing the disciples ______ that makes us uneasy.

The only people who washed feet were _______ - and not even Jewish slaves at that, but gentile slaves, a mark of their lowly class.

Jesus didn’t chastise his disciples for not being willing to wash one another’s feet, he simply _______.

 Service frees us to look into the _______ of those we are serving.

__________________ isn’t based on whether we feel like it that day.

Reflection Questions:

Why do you serve - for your glory of for Christ’s?

Who is your neighbor?

Who are you meant to be serving at this time that you are not?

How are you being called to have a servants heart?

Prayer:

Lord, free us to love beyond our comfort zones. Free us to serve beyond our heart’s limits. Allow us to be people who reflect you and your Kingdom in the world. Amen. 

Sabbath. Study. Serve.

 Sabbath, Study, Serve 

Taking the Sermon Into Our Week 

Scripture of the Week: John 11: 1-44

From the Sermon:

Jesus told the disciples, “Our friend, _____________,  is asleep”. 

__________ is a hard thing to talk about.

The sisters of Lazarus, ___________________________, are sitting smack dab in the middle of the ugliness of grief.

They cry out to Jesus a statement that perhaps you have made at one time or another “__________ you would have been here, Jesus.”

We live into the tension of knowing that ____________ to be with us in Entirety and that _________________ to be with us right now, here today, on Earth.

We are all _______________________ that we do not even recognize and they are suffocating us.

Reflection Questions:

Tell of a time when you asked God where he was. How did you receive assurance?

Where does our hope lie?

Prayer:

Lord, as we begin this Lenten journey let us remember that we are dust and to dust that we will return, but that we are also yours and yours alone. Amen.