Big Idea Series – How to BLESS Your Neighbor
Week 2 – Begin with Prayer
Aug 11 – 17, 2019
Message Big Idea
In order to BLESS our neighbor, Jesus invites us to begin with prayer.
Scripture
Icebreaker & Opening Thought
- What is one particular routine that you especially enjoy in your daily life?
- hrough the years we’ve discovered that the best way to live the mission of “helping people find their way back to God” is to be a BLESSing to the people and places God puts in our lives. The acronym, BLESS, stands for five missional practices we can do to carry out the Jesus mission every day: Begin with prayer, Listen, Eat together, Serve, and Share your story. How comfortable are you with prayer?
Bible Discussion
- Read Luke 6:12-16. What do you notice about this passage?
- Jesus often withdrew alone to pray to discern his next steps. (see Luke 3:21, 5:16, 9:16a, 22:32, & 22:41). Does Jesus’ example encourage or discourage you? Explain.
- Jesus did not choose as followers those who everyone liked the most or even the obvious choices. For some reason, he chose fishermen, tax collectors, a religious zealot, and a man who would later betray him. Why might this important?
Life Application
- What is your expectation and experience of prayer?
- In what ways does prayer change us?
The message gave us a three-step guide for prayer this week:
- Prepare: As you pray, ask God to prepare your heart for the adventure. Ask God to give you eyes to see people with compassion. Can you share a time when you’ve prayed, and God has directed you towards someone
- Places/People: As you pray, make a mental map of the places you will visit for the day. Who are some of the people that you will encounter? Maybe God has already put in your heart a place or people that you are supposed to BLESS. Pray for those places, pray for those people, and ask God for an opportunity to BLESS
- Plan: If we want to be intentional about setting time apart to pray, we need to put it on our calendar and set a time to pray. How do you feel about being that intentional about prayer
- There will be days that nothing will happen, so don’t give up. There were will other days when something will happen. What are some places you want to pray for God to provide opportunities?
Challenge
The challenge is to set apart some time to pray every day. We don’t have to start by praying all night as Jesus did, or even a whole hour as he asked his disciples to do, but we can all begin by praying at least 5 minutes in the morning and 1 or 2 minutes at night.