Prepare your heart for Sunday by looking through these suggestions that will assist you in making the most of our time together.
You will find suggestions for thinking more critically through the passage, meditating more intently on the text, and tangibly putting scripture to action in your personal life and in our corporate body.
Carefully Think
- Read 1 Thessalonians chapters 1 and 2 paying close attention to 2:13-16. In chapter 2 Paul recounts his ministry among the Thessalonians. In the first section of the chapter, Paul focuses his attention on his motivations in coming to them, his care for them, and his labor among them. In verses 13-16 he shifts his focus onto the Thessalonians and how they responded to his preaching.
- In these three verses what do you notice about the response of the Thessalonians to the preaching of God’s Word? What does their response say about the message that was proclaimed to them?
- How did their response shape who they were as a church? What were the effects of their high view of God’s Word? What was it that was effectually working in them to make them who they were?
- What was the response of the Jews (verses 15-16)? How does this demonstrate their view of the Word of God? What is the end result of their heinous actions?
- The Sermon Study equipping class notes are available online for anyone wanting to dig deeper. Please review this week's notes to help study this passage. Click here for the notes.
Prayerfully Meditate
- What is your regular response to the preaching of God’s Word? Do you typically treat the Sunday morning sermon like it’s advice that can be taken or rejected? What does this say about your view of God’s Word?
- How does your response to the proclamation of God’s Word shape who you are? Do you allow God’s Word to change you, to transform your mind, to conform your life to his will? Or are you typically bitter and resistant to the teaching of God’s Word? What does this reveal about your heart?
Intentionally Act
- Seek the Lord’s forgiveness for faulty or shallow views and responses to the preaching of His Word.
- Pray that the Lord would grant you a heart that is receptive to the teaching of His Word, and that he would mold you into an imitator of Jesus through the preaching of His Word.
- Pray that the members of Summit Woods Baptist Church would each individually and collectively have a high view of God’s Word.
- Pray that the Lord would change us through the preaching of His Word and that we would be a congregation that responds with humble repentance and submissive obedience to the Word of God.
- Click the links below to find the lyrics and recordings of the songs planned for our gathering this Sunday; practice the songs, study the lyrics and sing together.
- Pray for those leading our corporate gathering this week and for the Holy Spirit’s work as the Word of God is further explained and applied: Dawson Bryant: music; Adam Naler: Elders' prayer and Scripture reading; Bret Capranica: teaching.
Songs for Sunday
Morning Gathering
- Yours Is the Kingdom
- Praise to the Lord, the Almighty
- Stricken, Smitten and Afflicted
- Your Words of Life
- Show Us Christ
Evening Gathering
Lyrics
Lyrics Morning Gathering - January 8, 2017 by Summit Woods Baptist Church on Scribd