Before the Session
Facilitator: In advance of the session
- Review today’s scripture text and the session activities to help better facilitate the discussion.
- Have the Bible Background Video ready to view.
- Encourage your group to listen to the Faithelement podcast ahead of the next session (Share the link via email or social media)
Context
Share this trending video of a parrot and ask:
- When have you have felt exactly like this parrot?
- Fill in the blank: “If I had the freedom to do it, I would ____.”
- How do you feel about the comments that go with this video and why?
- What do you think is the difference between being free and having the ability to indulge yourself?
- What does this kind of refusal to leave what is comfortable look like when it comes to someone’s spiritual life?
Content
Read Galatians 5:1, 13-25, then watch the Bible Background Video.
Ask questions like these:
- In what ways does the idea of being “called” to liberty sound like being awakened?
- Nikki suggests that self-indulgence is not the point of freedom in this scripture. In what ways does Paul express this thought?
- If all you had to go on was this passage, what do you think happens in the process of becoming awakened to the Spirit?
- In what ways does love set the parameters of the freedom we are talking about here?
Closure
Share this video of people making eye contact and remind the group that
This video “evolves around a simple but poignant theory, developed by psychologist Arthur Aron in 1997: that four minutes of uninterrupted eye contact brings people closer to each other better than everything else.”
Ask:
- What did you see happening in this video?
- Why do you think people were so emotional in this video?
- How did you see people becoming awake and knowing another person in these images?
- What would it be like for a Church to take on an experiment like this?
- Where or how might we start with such a project?
Share this quote from C.S. Lewis
We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with God. God walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labor is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake.
Pray together to end the session, praying for vision to see the experiences of all those we are called to love.
Writer: Erin Robinson Hall