Good News for the Sinners in This Room

In one paragraph

This message was the tenth installment in a series walking through the 12 steps, applied broadly to whatever a person struggles with, not only addiction. The pastor led the congregation through a review of steps one through nine before turning to step 10, which calls for continuing personal inventory and promptly admitting when you are wrong. The service closed with communion, framing that honest...

Read together

1. 1 Peter 1:3-4 read aloud after worship, praising God for new birth into a living hope through the resurrection, and an inheritance kept in heaven
2. Matthew 7:24-25 quoted before the offering song, about the wise man who built his house on the rock
3. Galatians 2:20 cited as where Paul describes being co-crucified with Christ, no longer living for self but by faith in the Son of God
4. John 16 upper room discourse quoted, Jesus promising the Holy Spirit will guide disciples into all truth and disclose the mind of God
5. Colossians 1 quoted about being previously alienated and hostile, yet reconciled through Christ's death, to be presented holy and blameless if continuing steadfast in the faith
6. James 1:12-25 referenced, not read aloud, as being about looking in a mirror, being doers of the word and not hearers only, and every good and perfect gift being from above
7. Philippians 1 Paul's confidence that he who began a good work among them will complete it by the day of Christ Jesus

Talk about it

1. Monique shared that God showed her she wasn't walking in love as freely as He wanted her to, and that she had to choose the way of love even when her own wants and needs came second. Where in your own life right now is choosing love costing you something?
2. The pastor read from Galatians about being co-crucified with Christ, saying that Christ has freed us not just from the guilt of sin but from the power sin had over us. What does it look like practically, day to day, to reckon that to be true in your own life?
3. Step 10 calls us to continue taking personal inventory and to promptly admit when we are wrong. The pastor said we are usually much quicker to take inventory of what other people are doing than of ourselves. Why do you think that is, and what makes promptly admitting fault so difficult?
4. The pastor described a morning, full day, and evening rhythm for daily corrective action, starting with breathing in and saying 'Lord, I long to do your will.' What does your current daily rhythm actually look like, and what would it take to make that kind of orientation toward God more consistent?
5. The sermon closed with the reminder from Philippians that God who began a good work in you will complete it, and connected that to the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant. How does it change the way you approach your own failures to remember that God is doing the completing, not you?