Connect
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What are you thankful for today?
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How have you seen God working in your life this past week?
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What difficulties are you experiencing in life? How may we help?
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How did you apply last session's discovery? What happened?
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With whom did you share last session's discovery? What was their response?
Instructions:
Please use the following steps to guide your discovery of God's truth in the passages below. Need to review the Group Guidelines?
Discover
Step 1- Participants take turns reading sections of the passage (clarify new words/terms)
Step 2- One person reads the entire passage out loud while the rest listen
Step 3- A participant retells the passage in his/her own words (others add their thoughts)
A Man Seeking for God (John 3:1-21)
1There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee. 2After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.” 3Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.” 4“What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?” 5Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. 6Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. 7So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ 8The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.” 9“How are these things possible?” Nicodemus asked. 10Jesus replied, “You are a respected Jewish teacher, and yet you don’t understand these things? 11I assure you, we tell you what we know and have seen, and yet you won’t believe our testimony. 12But if you don’t believe me when I tell you about earthly things, how can you possibly believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13No one has ever gone to heaven and returned. But the Son of Man has come down from heaven. 14And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. 16“For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him. 18“There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son. 19And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. 20All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. 21But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.”
Holy Bible, New Living Translation copyright 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois, 60188. All rights reserved.
Ask/Answer:
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What do you see in this passage?
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What does it mean to you?
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What do you like/not like about this passage?
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How does this passage change the way you see God/People?
Respond: If this is true...
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How should it change the way you live?
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With whom will you share today's discovery?