CELL NOTES 17/11/08

ICE BREAKER

What is your favourite passage in the Bible, and why?

THEME

The Generosity of God

READING; Rom 8 ; 31 – 39

SERMON OUTLINE

1) The  huge variety of hopes, fears, feelings and personal secrets that we bring on a Sunday, behind the faces that we may have put on.

2) Steve Chalke “I don’t know anybody who is not struggling with life.”

3) The Bible passage describes a God who is extravagantly generous in His love for us, in the face of the reality of who we are – warts and all.

4) He demonstrated it in the unfathomable gift of His Son – who both lived a sacrificial life and then died a sacrificial death.

5) Story of the Turkish consul-general in Marseilles in the war, who risked his life for the sake of Nazi captives.

6) Is God  a stern judge? - Not so – he sent Jesus to rescue us from ourselves and much else, not to condemn us.

7) What can stop Him loving us? Nothing – least of all our own sense of failure etc.

8) It does not mean that life will be rosy – but we know His love and presence in the storm – as Jesus demonstrated on Lake Galilee.

9) We have a destination as Peter describes in 1Peter 1 : 3 – 4.

10) What can neutralise His love? Nothing within or beyond imagination. Look at vv 38 – 39.

QUESTIONS OF APPLICATION

1)  Read the passage. What did God say to you on Sunday? What is he saying to you now as you read these words again?

2) What is most likely to make you feel, or even believe, that you have been separated from His love? ( See vv 35 – 39)

3) Of what value is it to believe that God loves you, if your life is falling apart? Does the 1 Peter passage make any difference?

4) What is the closest you have come to feeling the despair and loneliness that Paul refers to in the passage?

5) Who is a member of “The school hard knocks” at the moment? How may the group pray for, or practically support you?