John 16:12-15
Lead in: When we’re reunited with those whom we love, we have much to say, such as a soldier coming home to his wife and kids or a college student’s first trip home from school. The night before he died, knowing his time is short, Jesus says to his disciples, “I have much more to tell you …”
Prompt: Jesus has much to say to us. Just before you die, what is it that you want to hear Jesus say to you?
Prompt: Just before you die, what is it that you want to say to Jesus?
Lead in: In John’s Last Supper discourse (John 16:12), Jesus tells his disciples that there are some things that “you cannot bear (for) now”. Experience tells us that there are certain things in life that we cannot fathom or explain. There’s the beauty of a sunset or the birth of a child. And there’s the chilling horror of school shootings where innocent children are slaughtered by lost souls who have allowed the power of evil to overtake their lives. Both are in the realm of mystery. If we are to become persons of faith, we must become comfortable with mystery.
Prompt: Where is it in your life right now where life has turned mysterious on you? That is, where is it that you’re being hit with the mystery of an unexplainable hard reality that you want to run from?
Lead in: How do we come to truly love God? A mystic of the twelfth century once suggested that wisdom without the humility of the Holy Spirit turns to arrogance, and humility without the love of the Holy Spirit turns to hypocrisy.
Prompt: Arrogance and hypocrisy, they are easy to recognize in others. Where or when do you recognize these in yourself?
Lead in: “God delights in the human race.” Proverbs 8:31 What is God like? Think of the parent who delights in their child taking its first step. Like the small child learning to walk, on our journey toward God we fall and get up many times. But all the while, God, the proud parent, looks on with delight.
Prompt: Reflect on a time this last week when, on your journey toward God, you fell and got up.
Lead in: In Romans 5:5, Paul tells us that we can “boast of our afflictions, knowing that afflictions produce endurance and endurance produces character, and character produces hope and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
Prompt: Reflect on a time when an “affliction” you endured resulted in a deepening of your character and a strengthening of the hope you never want to lose?
