Saturday nights and Sunday mornings, a couple groups I’m part of discuss the previous week’s sermon. It’s not to criticize, it’s to explore.
I decided to let you sit in on our questions from last week. Pastor Bill was talking to our high school graduates. I wanted our adults to think through some of the same issues. (Here’s the actual study guide with a bit more explanation.)
Here were his sermon points.
Here are my study questions:
1. What do you want to set your heart to learn about God in the next three months? What would you love to know better at the end of the summer? What will you read? What conversations will you have? What do people keep asking you about God? What question keeps coming up?
God helping me, I want to learn as much as I can about:
2. What will you have to give up doing in order to accomplish that learning? What ‘addictions’ have to stop? What accountability do you want to put in place?
God’s been reminding me that my attention is being spent on:
So here’s how I will learn to refocus my attention (specific actions):
1.
2.
3.
3. What are the names of the people whose voices you know you need to stop paying attention to? What critics are you allowing to run your feelings? (Read through Psalm 1:1-2. It talks about who to avoid.)
Who it is What they tell me Why it’s killing me
1.
2.
3.
4. What do you actually want to live for?
Try this exercise: I’ll be content if at the end of my life I can say “I don’t have much ________ but at least God allowed me to ______________.”
300 words a day 
Rich Dixon
I’m struck by how counterintuitive or countercultural the sermon points are. Schools and churches tell us what to learn, who to listen to, and what’s important. And they train us to seek the easy path.
Maybe that’s one reason Jesus is hard to understand–He tells us stuff that contradicts what we’re taught from birth. Maybe following is more about unlearning than about learning.
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