Before the Session
Facilitator: In advance of the session
- Have the Bible Background Video ready to view.
- Review today’s scripture text and the session activities to help better facilitate the discussion.
- Encourage your group to listen to the Faithelement podcast ahead of the next session (Share the link via email or social media)
Context (From the Current Session Page)
Share this video from the Holderness Family and ask:
- How easy is it for you to relate to this video and why?
- Aside from the things in this video, what are some things that drive you crazy about the people you love and why?
- In what ways do such things affect the way you feel about those people?
- What do you think helps us continue to love people, even when they do things that disgust, disappoint, or alarm us?
Content (From the Mind Session Page)
Read Hosea 11:1-11, then watch the Bible Background Video
And then ask questions like these:
- As we work through the first part of the passage, review your own knowledge of the history of God’s people in the Old Testament – what parts of their story come to mind?
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“When Israel was a child…” (v.1)
- “Out of Egypt I called my son” (v.1)
- “The more they were called, the more they went away” (v.2)
- “I taught Ephraim to walk” (v.3)
- “They did not know that I healed them” (v.3)
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“I led them with cords of kindness” (v.4)
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What are some times in your own life when God has been this kind of parent to you?
- In what ways do you see the gentleness and the love of God for God’s people in these verses?
- What emotions most come through to you in verses 5-7; 8-9; and 10-11 and why?
- When have you experienced waves of conflicting emotions like this?
- Why is it significant to note that, despite what God felt emotionally, God made a different decision in the end of the passage?
Closure (from the Media Session page)
Play the Mercy video and ask:
- Why can it sometimes be hard to accept, or even believe in, mercy?
- In what ways might God’s mercy be different form our mercy?
- What small step can you take to show mercy to a difficult person in your life?
- By what means can someone develop the strength to be vulnerable, working one day at a time, with a person who they have hurt or who has hurt them?
- Given this context, what makes you feel at home with God, who has shown us so much mercy?
- What kinds of things enable is to remember God’s mercy toward us and why?
- In what ways does our acknowledgement of God’s mercy affect the way we relate to others who are have not yet accepted it?
Close in prayer.