God Loves You If You're Unlovable Small Group

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God Loves You If You’re Unlovable Small Group Teaching Tool Weekend message preached Jonathan Rue Sermon text: 1 John 4:16 Teaching tool text: 1 Timothy 1:12-17 God Loves You Now Series 10.11.09 *Leader: Please see “how to use” note at end

SUNDAY NIGHT SYNOPSIS Leader: this section is here to remind you of the message and direction of the weekend sermon. This is the opening week of a new series in Joshua House called “God Loves You Now”. This series is about how God loves you right now—whoever you are now, wherever you are now, whatever you’re into now. God loves you. He doesn’t love the person you should be or the person you used to be, he loves the person you are right now. This weekend, Jonathan spoke from 1 John 4:16 which says, “God is love”, meaning that the foundational character of God is love. So our love is based off of the worth of the thing that we love, but God’s love is not. He loves us not because we are worth loving, but simply because of who he is—and that creates worth in us.

Leader Note This is a discussion guide that is based on the same topic of the Sunday night sermon at Joshua House. It has been created to be a tool to help you teach and facilitate discussion in your group, not a rule to constrict you. So feel free to adapt is to fit your personality and discussion style as you see fit. You may want to add verses or skip questions as you adapt it to fit what your needs are. Make it your own.

TONIGHT’S BIG IDEA God loves us not because we are worth loving, but because of who he is—because “God is love.” Tonight we will look at how God’s love transformed the very unlovable person of Saul, who became the Apostle Paul.

GETTING STARTED Q1. Q2. Q3.

What’s your favorite thing about yourself? OPTIONAL: If you’re willing to share, what’s your least favorite thing about yourself? Why is so much easier to come up with things that we don’t like about ourselves, rather than things we do like? (insecurity, low-self esteem, perfectionism, pessimism, etc.) KEY: We are often hyper-aware of our faults and shortcomings and so feel that God must focus on them too—and love us less as a result. It can be difficult to receive God’s love when we expect that his love is based on how worthy we are to be loved. But God’s love is NOT based off of our worth, He loves us because he is love, and his love creates worth in us.

VS: Q4:

Psalm 145:8-9 “The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. 9 The LORD is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made.” OPTIONAL: In this text, who is God good to and who does he has compassion on? (all he has made)

GETTING INTO THE TEXT Tonight, we are going to look at a passage of Scripture where the Apostle Paul tells us about how terrible of a person he was before Jesus, and how excited he is to have received God’s mercy. In these verses Paul describes his former life: VS: OPTIONAL: Galatians 1:13 “For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it.” VS: Read Acts 26:9-11, when Paul is speaking to King Agrippa VS: Read Main Study Text: 1 Timothy 1:12-17 Q1. How does Paul describe his former way of life, before meeting Jesus? (v. 13— blasphemer, persecutor, violent man) Q2. OPTIONAL: What were you like before you met Jesus, or when you were at your worst in life? Q3. What is the most significant change that has occurred in your life as a result of following Jesus? Q4. Why does Paul say that he was shown mercy in v. 13? (ignorance and unbelief) Q4. Why would these reasons matter to God? (These are not the only reasons for God‘s mercy, of course. God is sovereign and says “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion” [Exod. 33:9]. However, ignorance and unbelief do make it easier for God to show mercy because the more we know and believe about God, the more accountable we are for our knowledge and belief. Jesus tells us: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded” [Luke 12:48]. Q5. What three things did Christ pour out onto Paul? (v. 14—Grace, faith, and love) Q6. Do you normally think of grace, faith, and love as things that are poured into you from God or as things that God expects you to have when you come to him? Explain. Q8. Why does Paul say that Jesus came into the world? (v. 15—to save sinners) Q7. What outrageous claim does Paul make in v. 15? (That he is the worst of all sinners. In the Greek language, the verb is in the present tense & indicative mood, which suggests that Paul is meaning more than just that he used to be a sinner. He had a profound recognition that he was a sinner saved by grace.) Q10. Why would Christ save Paul, the worst of sinners? (v. 16—To put the gospel on display and set an example that God has enough patience for the worst sinner). Q11. Verse 16 is the gospel: describe it. (Here is the gospel: not that we trivialize our sins, but with Paul recognize the terrible things we’ve done and the epic sinners that we’ve become—but we then affirm with Paul that we’ve received God’s mercy, grace, faith, and love (see v. 5) which are greater than our sins.

Q12. If Jesus has the patience to rescue as notorious a sinner as Paul from his former life, how does that make you feel about God’s patience and love for you? Q13. Paul boasts about his sin because it displays the gospel all the more clearly for others to see. Why do we hide rather than display our sinful past and current struggles? (because we don’t fully understand the gospel, we think that if God and others knew, we would be rejected rather than welcomed) Q14. OPTIONAL: What is one area that Jesus is patiently working on in you right now? Q15. What does Paul do after describing how Jesus saved him? (v. 17— Salvation is so marvelous that Paul breaks into praise, calling for honor and glory to be bestowed upon God for what he has done.)

LEADER NOTE: HOW TO USE THIS TEACHING TOOL This is a discussion guide that is based on the same topic of the Sunday night sermon at Joshua House. It has been created to be a tool to help you teach and facilitate discussion in your group, not a rule to constrict you. It is based on the dominant idea of the sermon, but uses parallel or closely related scripture verses in order to deepen that same idea. The benefits of this are:

1. It lightens the prep work that you have to do to teach your group 2. It allows people in your group to deepen and process together what they heard on Sunday night. So information can move from their head into their life. 3. It brings greater unity to Joshua House as we “move together” through these Discover Community 8-10 week sessions Since this study guide is a tool and not a rule, feel free to adapt is to fit your personality and discussion style as you see fit. You may want to add verses or skip questions as you adapt it to fit what your needs are. If your group is mature and wants to dig deeper, add more scripture and ask deeper questions. Remember that this is only a guide. We recognize that this is a new and different concept than what you are used to, so thanks for being willing to try it! Have fun with this, and make it your own. I pray that your group flourishes in spiritual growth and welcomes the Spirit of God to have his way among you this year.

-Jonathan Rue Joshua House Pastor