Discussion Questions for Arise & Go: God's Mission in Jonah Week 4 Sinclair Ferguson writes, "How little we feel the burden of the Word of the Lord, so that its weight is concentrated on fundamental matters. Our God-given task is simply and directly to teach God's Word and truth to our contemporaries." Describe ways that you can live your life doing ordinary things with Gospel intentionality. Reflect on the last evangelistic conversation you've had. When was it? How did it go? Do you sometimes find your actions expressing a belief that someone else is not worthy to receive mercy from God? Kevin Youngblood writes, "At times God's mercy appears to allow injustice, perhaps even encourages
Discussion Questions for Arise & Go: God's Mission in Jonah Week 3 Jonah references the Psalms in his prayer to God. A book is recently written, "Praying the Bible" by Donald Whitney, identifies a common struggle among believers as feeling like a "second-class Christian" when it comes to prayer. Whitney believes it is a discipline that must be practiced and describes a method of praying through the Psalms as a way to help improve your prayer life. How comfortable are you with praying? Do you have someone in your life that you can look to as a mentor in your prayer life? We see Jonah getting into a lot of trouble so far in the book of Jonah. One glaring omission in Jonah's life is a grou
Discussion Questions for Arise & Go: God's Mission in Jonah Week 2 What do you think the missionary Jim Elliot mean by, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose"? Sinclair Ferguson wrote, "God was deliberately shining the spotlight of His Word into an area of Jonah's life." Discuss a time when God exposed an area of weakness in your life to help you grow. Notice the number of times fear is referenced in Jonah 1. What is a benefit of having a fear of the LORD? Reflect on your moment of salvation. Share your testimony with the group and discuss your initial reaction to living a new life.
The book of Jonah begins with the word of the LORD going to Jonah calling: "Arise! Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it." From the first verses of the book of Jonah, we learn a theme that will continue throughout the rest of the book and Scripture - missions. God is telling Jonah to share the Good News with gentiles and proclaim His mercy and grace to those that repent of their evil ways. We see that Jonah initially ran from this commission, allowing him the chance to proclaim God to the sailors on the ship carrying him away from Nineveh and see them learn of the Lord and sacrifice sacrifices to the Lord and vow vows to him (Jonah 1:16). Later Jonah is faithful to his cal
Is the story of Jonah real? Christian, do you really believe the elements of this story, that we profess to the world is real? Let's stop and think about this for a minute: There was a man, eaten by a great fish, that lived to tell about it. That man stayed in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights....and lived to tell about it! In the modern world today, is this really believable? Can we really believe that people will take us seriously about Christianity when we describe to them the book of Jonah? Maybe more context will help... We are professing that there was a prophet of the LORD named Jonah. This prophet heard from God and was told to go to a great city where peopl
While preparing for a five week study through the book of Jonah on Sunday nights at EQUiP, I began to think about some of the arguments that have been given to me about why Christianity cannot be real. 99.9% of the time, I encounter someone that believes Christianity can't be real because of the stuff the God of the Old Testament does, the laws of the Old Testament, etc. In other words, most atheist or agnostic people I encounter have a problem with the Old Testament. The God of the Old Testament is often disassociated with the God of the New Testament and considered to be: primitive; crude; ethnocentric; and an angry cruel God. As Christians, we know that Jesus came to fulfill the law of
Discussion Questions for Arise & Go: God's Mission in Jonah Week 1 Both Jesus and the apostle Paul affirm the Old Testament as good for teaching (Luke 24 and 2 Timothy 3:16-17). Discuss attributes of God in Jonah that align with the New Testament. Just like Jonah received a call to go tell Nineveh to repent, we have also received a call from God to go and teach people about Him. What is an area in your life where God has positioned you to fulfill this command? As Jonah ran from God, we too can run from God. Is there an area of your life where you are running from God? What can you do to turn around and follow Him?
