Sermon Discussion Guide

Sermon Preached On: May 20, 2012

Reminder for CareGroups: Sign up to serve at PowerCamp in June. This is a great way to reach out to our neighbors with love and the gospel.

Also, we are looking for scholarships for our youth who want to attend Creed Summer Camp and go on a mission trip to Boston. Please consider helping them by giving a love offering to them.

Passage: Esther 3-4.

Questions:

1. Historically, both the Jews and Christians have been a persecuted people. Still today, many Christians are imprisoned and put to death for the faith. How should this change the way we view our faith and how we live?

2. Read Esther 4:4-14, The queen was given a very difficult choice to make. Why is obedience so difficult at times? Can anyone share a time when obedience to Christ put them in jeopardy of losing something important?

3. Read Esther 4:14 again. Pastor Dwayne said that “God does not need us to fulfill his plan, but he invites us to participate, like Esther who was given the opportunity to deliver her people ‘for such a time as this.’” How should we see God’s providence in our everyday lives? What does it mean to be invited to do great things for God?

4. Read Esther 4:15-17. Esther asks for prayer and fasting to be made on her behalf. How important is it that we ask others to pray for us when we have difficult decisions to make? What does prayer accomplish?

5. In the 1950s, Jim Elliott was a young man who believed God was calling him to bring the gospel to one of the most savage and deadliest of people groups, the Auca Indians of Ecuador. He along with four other missionaries moved their families to the jungles of Ecuador and began to reach out to the people. Just as they were beginning to make contact and show the love and grace of God, the Auca turned against the men and killed them. Jim Elliott knew the potential of dying for his faith before he left. In his personal journal was found a quote that he claimed for himself written several years before he left for the jungle, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”

One of Jesus’ favorite statements, found repeatedly in all four gospels says it even clearer, Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. John 12:25

Discuss the significance of Jim Elliott’s quote and Jesus’ words in John 12:25