Week 7 - FROM SELF TO CHRIST
CONNECT
What are you thankful for?
What challenge are you facing?
Have there been any answers to prayer?
Pray for each other.
Did anything stand out to you from last week’s follow-up Bible readings?
How did your “I will …” statement from last week go?
How did your sharing goal from last week go?
How’s your memory work coming along?
2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV-1984)
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he (she) is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come!
DISCOVER
Let’s start with a review.
FROM ADAM TO CHRIST - Union with Christ
We were born into Adam. This means that whatever was true of Adam was true of us. But by grace through faith, we have been born again into Christ. This means that whatever is true of Jesus is now true of us. Therefore, we are no longer characterized by Adam’s sin and death but by Christ’s righteousness and life.
FROM DEATH TO LIFE - Regeneration
We were dead in Adam, but now we are alive in Christ. Because we share in Jesus’ resurrected life, we already have eternal life here and now. From our new birth, new heart and the presence of the Holy Spirit, we can stop living for ourselves and start living for Jesus.
FROM GUILTY TO INNOCENT - Justification
On our own, we are guilty sinners, who have rebelled against God’s authority and broken God’s law. We stand condemned and deserve death. Jesus, however, took personal responsibility for both our obedience to God’s law and our disobedience of God’s law. He did this by living the life we should have and dying the death we would have. Now through faith in Jesus' death and resurrection, when God looks at us He sees His Son. And because Jesus is righteous, God sees us as righteous. God has acquitted us of our guilt and declared us innocent in Christ.
FROM ENEMY TO FAMILY - Reconciliation and Adoption
Though we were God’s enemies because of our sinful rebellion, God has reconciled us to Himself as His friends and has adopted us as His very own children through the death and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ. He has also given us the Holy Spirit to assure us of His Fatherly love, especially when life is difficult.
FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM - Redemption or Ransoming
We were in bondage to sin, Satan and the fear of dying. Jesus, however, purchased our freedom with His own blood. He personally paid our ransom and we have been redeemed. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed (John 8:36).
FROM IMMATURITY TO MATURITY - Sanctification
When we come to Jesus Christ, we are just infants in the faith. From this beginning of knowing God as our Father and His forgiveness, we grow strong in the Word and so overcome Satan and eventually become parents of other believers. God uses His Word and His Spirit, along with our commitment to grow, to help us become more and more like Christ.
And now …
FROM SELF TO CHRIST - Remaining in Christ
Ask God to speak to you as you read His Word.
John 15:1-8 (NIV)
1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5 I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
Have someone retell the passage in their own words.
What stands out to you in this passage?
What does this passage say about God (The Father, His Son Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit)?
What does this passage say about people, including ourselves?
What does this passage say about the life God invites us to live?
Digging Deeper
What happens when we try to live the Christian life in our own strength?
Who gets the credit?
Who gets burnt out?
Where might you be experiencing stress and struggles in your life? Could this indicate that you are trying to live the Christian life in your own strength?
How can we live the Christian life in the strength of God?
What does it mean to remain in Christ and His Word?
Are you?
What might need to be pruned from your life so that you can better remain in Jesus and His Word and so bear fruit for the Father’s glory?
How does God prune our lives? How can we prune our own lives?
Learning to Rely
2 Corinthians 1:8-10 (NIV)
8 We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. 10 He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us.
What taught the Apostle Paul to stop relying on himself and to start relying on God?
How does hardship teach us to rely on God and not ourselves?
FOUNDATIONS started with From Adam to Christ. This is a change in our spiritual IDENTITY. By grace through faith, God breaks our union with Adam and unites us with Christ.
The change From Self to Christ is a change in our spiritual MATURITY. We learn to rely on God and not ourselves. Through difficult circumstances, God teaches us that apart from Christ, we can do nothing. As Billy Graham has said, “When we come to the end of ourselves, we come to the beginning of God.”
Hopefully, you have prayed the sinner’s prayer, asking God to forgive your sin. However, have you prayed the “selfer’s” prayer, asking God to teach you to rely only on Him and not on yourself? Why not pray it right now?
Not Able but Enabled
Philippians 2:12-13 (ESV)
12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Philippians 4:13 (ESV)
I can do all things through [Christ] who strengthens me.
How would your attitude toward God’s callings and commands change if you knew that though you weren’t able to pursue and keep them in your own strength, He would enable you to pursue and keep them in His strength?
React to this saying:
God's gift to us is His ability.
Our gift to God is our availability.
How does an unpruned life affect our availability to God?
Not I but Christ
God’s power at work in us is personal. So personal that it’s the very Person of Jesus Christ.
Galatians 2:20 (NIV)
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Colossians 1:27-29 (NIV)
27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
28 He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. 29 To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.
If we have died with Christ and He now lives in us, does that mean Jesus takes possession of our lives (our thoughts, our wills, our choices), making us passive in life?
Or does Jesus call us to actively and expectantly depend on His presence within us to empower us for His Kingdom and glory?
How is an “active and expectant dependence” a good description of living by faith?
What do you need to actively and expectantly depend on Jesus for right now?
How will you practically live a life of faith in this area?
How can your group pray for you?
Foundational Truth
Here’s the FOUNDATIONAL TRUTH we discovered today:
God never intended for us to live the Christian life in our own strength. Instead, He calls us to stay connected with Jesus so we do everything through His strength. Then what we could never do on our own, we do through our relationship with Jesus.
Theologically, this is called Remaining in Christ. Remaining in Christ is far from a passive life. It’s an active and expectant life of dependence (faith) on the presence and power of Jesus within us.
LIVE
What truth have you discovered from today’s Bible passage(s) and conversation?
What would stop you from believing and obeying this truth?
How will you live out this truth this coming week? Finish this statement: “I will ….”
Who else needs to hear this truth? How could you share it with them?
FOLLOW-UP BIBLE READINGS
Here are the Bible passages you are encouraged to read this coming week:
BUDDY SYSTEM
Connect with your buddy this week and ask each other these questions:
How are your readings going?
How’s your “I will …” statement coming along?
How’s your sharing goal coming along?
How can I pray for you?
PRINTABLE PDF
FOUNDATIONS - Week 7 printable PDF
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