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God Hates the Sin and the Sinner |
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LIFE GROUP DISCUSSION GUIDE
Wednesday Night, September 6, 2006
“God Hates the Sin and the Sinner”
5 Minutes - Welcome / Prayer
5 Minutes - OPEN
Reflect on the assurance you felt as a child knowing that no matter what you did, your parents’ love for you was unconditional. As best you can, describe the freedom this provided you as a child.
For Those Who Are Parents:
* What is it that enables you to love your children unconditionally?
* In disciplining your children, what lessons have you learned as to how to distinguish between their wrong behavior and the child?
15 Minutes - DIG
As you look around the room tonight, there is no reason to wonder who we’re talking about. We are all sinners (Rom.3:10-12, 23). We share this in common!
However, there is no sin that God will not forgive! We are all sinners saved by God’s grace! And beyond that, God wants to take each of us and use us for His noble purposes (2 Tim. 2:2-22).
The Christian life is like a marathon. But not everyone makes it to the finish line. Some runners allow sin to pile up on their backs, slowing their strides until they eventually collapse. The course is difficult enough without having to carry around the heavy burden of un-confessed sin.
Read 1 John 1:7-2:2. Confession is the only way to unload the weight of sin. Admitting failure is one of the things that keeps us prisoners to pride and keeps us in bondage to sin.
Justification. Rationalization. Comparison. These too are tools of Satan and they are hollow.
What’s holding you back from confessing the sin in your life?
Read Hebrews 12:1-4. It seems that most of us have one (or a few) sin(s) that entangles us. Though we share in common that we are all sinners, our personal struggle with sin(s) are different.
One of our goals for LIFE Groups is to get to the place that we can openly share and confess our sins to one another. When you are able to admit to the sin in your life that needs forgiveness, then you’ll begin to be released. Then your closest Christian friends can come alongside of you and support, encourage, and help hold you accountable as you throw off this weight of sin.
Read Psalm 32:1-5.
To live in a private world of guilt and self-hatred is fatal to our spiritual life. Satan wins when we allow this to happen.
How do you minister to someone who has chosen this route?
15 Minutes - REFLECT
We Christians know that:
* Sin is living against God;
* Christ came to take away sin from our life;
* A Christian doesn’t continue in his/her sinful ways (Jn. 8:11 – “go and sin no more”);
* To live a life of sin runs counter to our relationship with Christ and is spiritually dishonest.
How can we allow these truths to help us overcome our struggle with sin?
A key ingredient in this discussion is the subject of forgiveness. It is God’s nature to forgive anything and everything! Grace enables forgiveness to happen.
Accepting God’s forgiveness is a critical dimension to your Christian walk. It is only when you are bathed in God’s forgiveness that you can extend the same, rich, ungrudging forgiveness to others (Eph. 4:32; Luke 6:37; Mt. 6:14-15).
Allow the group members to reflect on times in their lives when they have experienced the freedom that comes following confession and feeling the release of forgiveness.
At this point in your Christian walk, how are you at forgiving (yourself and others)?
5 Minutes - CLOSING PRAYER
How will your reflection and study of this subject tonight change your thinking and behavior in the future?
Submit these matters to prayer.
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