Thrive Week Two - Discussion Questions
Thriving with the Community • 1 Thessalonians 2:1-16
Pray Together
Pray that Holy Spirit would come and take control of yourself and your group time.
Pray that everyone in your group experiences the deep of love of Jesus during your group and time and throughout their lives.
Read Together
Read 1 Thessalonians 2:1-16.
1 You yourselves know, dear brothers and sisters, that our visit to you was not a failure. 2 You know how badly we had been treated at Philippi just before we came to you and how much we suffered there. Yet our God gave us the courage to declare his Good News to you boldly, in spite of great opposition. 3 So you can see we were not preaching with any deceit or impure motives or trickery.
4 For we speak as messengers approved by God to be entrusted with the Good News. Our purpose is to please God, not people. He alone examines the motives of our hearts. 5 Never once did we try to win you with flattery, as you well know. And God is our witness that we were not pretending to be your friends just to get your money! 6 As for human praise, we have never sought it from you or anyone else.
7 As apostles of Christ we certainly had a right to make some demands of you, but instead we were like children among you. Or we were like a mother feeding and caring for her own children. 8 We loved you so much that we shared with you not only God’s Good News but our own lives, too.
9 Don’t you remember, dear brothers and sisters, how hard we worked among you? Night and day we toiled to earn a living so that we would not be a burden to any of you as we preached God’s Good News to you. 10 You yourselves are our witnesses—and so is God—that we were devout and honest and faultless toward all of you believers. 11 And you know that we treated each of you as a father treats his own children. 12 We pleaded with you, encouraged you, and urged you to live your lives in a way that God would consider worthy. For he called you to share in his Kingdom and glory.
13 Therefore, we never stop thanking God that when you received his message from us, you didn’t think of our words as mere human ideas. You accepted what we said as the very word of God—which, of course, it is. And this word continues to work in you who believe.
14 And then, dear brothers and sisters, you suffered persecution from your own countrymen. In this way, you imitated the believers in God’s churches in Judea who, because of their belief in Christ Jesus, suffered from their own people, the Jews. 15 For some of the Jews killed the prophets, and some even killed the Lord Jesus. Now they have persecuted us, too. They fail to please God and work against all humanity 16 as they try to keep us from preaching the Good News of salvation to the Gentiles. By doing this, they continue to pile up their sins. But the anger of God has caught up with them at last.
Discuss Together
How are different views of God, salvation, and eternity expressed in our culture?
How do these different views lead to conflict?
How can our Christian community demonstrate a better way by living out the active love of Jesus?
How does the gospel impact our love for others? How is sharing the gospel a demonstration of the love of God? How is the gospel shared to those who are not Christ followers? How is the gospel shared with those who are Christ followers?
How does the gospel impact our daily lives?
Why is empathy important to build a loving community?
How can our church demonstrate the love of Jesus in a broken world? How can our church operate more as a loving family?
Pray Together
Pray for the prayer needs of your group.
Pray that our church would grow in demonstrating active love.
