Prayer
Because the primary goal of our time together is to establish relationships and learn how to walk with one another in all that God has called us to be and do, we’d like to begin by praying for one another. So, does anyone have anything you’d like us to pray for or anything to share regarding how you’ve seen God moving in your life that we can celebrate together?
Introduction Video
Opening Question
What do you love most about the city you live in?
What Our Love Does to Us
When people love someone or something, like a family member, a friend, a team, a dream to create meaningful art, or the possibility to impact the world in a significant way, they often seem to have a drive or an increased capacity to sacrifice, change, or achieve more for the sake of that love. Consider this idea as you look at your own life through the lens of these questions:
Who or what have you loved in a sacrificial way?
What changes have you made so you could help that person or thing flourish?
How has your love helped lighten or soften the burden of the sacrifices you’ve made for that love?
What God’s Love Has Done for Us
Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart. If we are “out of our mind,” as some say, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
– 2 Corinthians 5:11-15
When did you first knowingly encounter or understand God’s love for you?
Paul writes “…we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.” How does our faith in Christ require us to die, spiritually speaking?
Paul then writes that Christ “died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.” Can you describe the attributes or characteristics you expect to see in someone who lives for Christ?
What We Imagine Love Could Do
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
– 2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Mosaic Church is believing for 100 new community group leaders. If you are not a community group leader, what questions do you have about becoming one?
Think of the people you work with, who live in your neighborhood, those you interact with in your daily life. How could adding 100 new community group leaders to our current missional ministry potentially reach those people? What do you imagine God could do through that?
Closing Thought
We want to invite you to join your faith with ours for God to increase our missional capacity at Mosaic by adding 100 new community group leaders. As a group, pray for this increase, and that God would use it to reach people with his great love. Be praying this week, with an open and compliant heart, for God to direct you toward either supporting our community group leaders in a new way or to become one yourself.