PERSONAL JOURNEY Use the reflection questions and exercises below to continue the grace-drive inside-out renovation of your life, after the pattern of Jesus, with and for the sake of others. TOOLS FOR THE JOB As our lives are renovated after the pattern of Jesus, we can use a variety of special or supplemental tools in addition to the five common tools of prayer, worship, Scripture, time, and resources. These tools or spiritual disciplines help us to cooperate with the ongoing work of God’s Spirit to shape and empower us. 1. Recall that our renovation often begins in places where we are least like Christ, our Blueprint. What is one area of your life you sense that God is working to transform? 2. Review the list below and prayerfully choose a tool which corresponds to God’s renovating work within you. For example, if I have a problem with pride and boasting, I may use the tools of silence and submission. If I struggle with joylessness, I may use the tool of celebration. Celebration – Follow Jesus’ example of gathering with loved ones to eat, drink, sing, and dance while reflecting on the wonderful God who has given us pleasures and the gifts of goodness, care, and beauty. Confession – Receive the tangible affirmation and freeing power of God’s grace from a brother or sister in Christ as we honestly confess our sins to him or her. Solitude – Abstain from interactions with others so we might be free to be with only Jesus. Silence – Abstain from talking and other noise if possible in order to listen to God’s voice. Fasting – Abstain from food, or possibly something else upon which we’ve become dependent, in order to feast on God’s sustaining presence and power. Guidance – Partnering with a spiritual guide or director who has traveled the journey of spiritual formation and can both point out pitfalls, detours, and trials, as well as assist us in discerning God’s will and hearing the Spirit’s voice. Hospitality – Receiving and providing for another with openness, respect, tenderness, and joy. Submission – Practice self-denial by respectfully and lovingly seeking the good of another rather than having to have our own way. Journaling – Recording our thoughts, feelings, prayers and their answers, etc. to both clarify and gain insight into our spiritual journey. Other? - Choose an activity which helps you gain power to live life as Jesus taught and modeled it. 3. When and how will you specifically use this tool? 4. With whom will you share this part of your renovation plan? How will you ask them to encourage and support you? Custom Renovations Week 10 June 12, 2016 Neil Trainer NOTES This study guide is intended to help you go deeper with our Sunday series. While designed for use in your small group or family devotions, it may also be used for individual study. Feel free to adapt the material as needed. 5. Reflect on your current use of the five common tools for renovation. Note briefly what you can commit to continue doing or begin doing for each as part of your personal or custom plan for renovating your life after the pattern of Jesus. Prayer PRAY Worship Ask God to guide you during your study time. Invite the Holy Spirit to be your teacher. Scripture SHARE If you could make a home improvement and change any one thing about the place in which you live, what would you do? What resources would you need to do it? STUDY 1. Read Ephesians 2:4-10. For what and from what has God through Christ saved us? What does it mean that you are God’s “handiwork” or “masterpiece” (v. 10)? 2. Reflect on the following: God has a plan for the me he wants me to be. It will not look exactly like his plan for anyone else, which means it will take freedom and exploration for me to learn how God wants to grow me. Spiritual growth is hand-crafted, not massproduced. God does not do “one-size-fits-all.”1 How do you find freedom in knowing that you do not have to be like everyone else, but that God has a custom plan for your spiritual growth? How aware are you of God’s specific plan to grow you in Christ’s likeness? 3. Read 1 Timothy 4:6-9. What is the difference between just trying to do or be something and actually training for it? For what are we to train ourselves (v. 7)? What might this look like in day-to-day life? 4. Reflect on the following: We understand the need for wise, flexible planning in other important matters such as finances. The need is just as great in pursuing spiritual life. Spiritual transformation cannot be orchestrated or controlled, but neither is it a random venture. We need some kind of support or structure, much as a young vine needs a trellis. We need sails to help us catch the wind of the Spirit. All of us know the frustration of random, haphazard efforts that lead nowhere in the spiritual life. We need a plan for transformation.2 How have you experienced the results of “haphazard efforts” in your spiritual life? What are some elements of your current plan for transformation or for the renovation of your life? Time Resources 6. Where have you experienced God working to renovate your life during this 10-week series? Where in the renovation process do you believe God is leading you next? 7. How can your small group specifically pray for you as you continue the grace-driven, inside-out renovation of your whole life, after the pattern of Jesus, with and for the sake of others? PRAY Grant, Almighty God, that as Thou hast appeared in the person of Thine only begotten Son and hast rendered in Him Thy glory visible to us, and as Thou dost set forth to us the same Christ in the glass of Thy gospel—O Grant that we, fixing our eyes on Him, may not go astray nor be led here and there after wicked inventions, the fallacies of Satan, and the allurements of this world: but may we continue firm in the obedience of faith and persevere in it through the whole course of our life, until we be at length transformed into the image of Thine eternal glory, which now in part shines in us, through the same Christ our Lord. Amen. - John Calvin3 MEMORIZE But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen. - 2 Peter 3:18 (TNIV) 1 John Ortberg, The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God’s Best Version of You (Grand Rapids: Zondervan) 20. Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People (Grand Rapids: Zondervan) 200. 3 Dustin W. Benge, ed., Lifting Up Our Hearts: 150 Selected Prayers from John Calvin (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books) 161. 2 John
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