Trinity, by Jason Byassee

Introduction

The God We Don’t Talk About

1. What are the worst analogies for the Trinity you have heard?

- What are the best? 

2. How can we speak of a God who is beyond our words? 

3. When has God felt unbearably distant to you? 

- Unbearably close? 

4. How can these claims hold together: “If you understand it, it is not God,” and “the answer is always Jesus”? 

- Can these both be true?

Creation, by Justo Gonzalez

Chapter 7

Creation and Hope

1.What does it mean to be your parents’ child? 

2.  What advantages and disadvantages did you receive by virtue of them being your parents? 

3.  How are you like and unlike your parents? 

4.  How are your children like and unlike you? 

5.  What is the difference between being God’s child and God’s servant? 

6.  What are our responsibilities as God’s children to God? 

7.  Who is the apple of your eye? 

8.  What does it mean to you that you are the apple of God’s eye? 

9.  What gives you joy?  How do you share it? 

10. As God’s people, we are children of the light. What does that play out in your everyday life?

Creation, by Justo Gonzalez

Chapter 6

God’s Absence from Creation

1. What does it mean that God rests? 

2. Do you get adequate rest, vacation time, time off from your responsibilities? 

3. How could you help give someone else the opportunity to find peace and rest? 

4. If creation is an expression of God’s love as a parent, what signs of love do you see in creation? 

5. Giving children supervision is a parent’s responsibility, but how much is too much or too little? 

6. Do you do better when you are closely supervised or when you are not? 

7. Who is supervising you? 

8. What makes for a good supervisor? 

9. When God is perceived as absent, we in the church must step forward. What are ways that your church can be God’s hands and feet in the world and your neighborhood? 

10. How do you teach a child to be obedient? 

11. What does it mean to be “[freed] for joyful obedience?” 

      (see 1 John 5)

Creation, by Justo Gonzalez

Chapter 5
God’s Presence in Creation

1. Where do you see new things happening around you? 

2. How are younger generations different from older generations? 

3. Share the last new big-ticket item that you bought and/or describe the newest member of your family. 

4. Who are persons in the Bible that God chose? 

5. Often God chooses the small and the apparently insignificant in order to achieve great things. Where do we see this in the O.T. stories of Abraham and Sarah, Joseph, Rachel, and David?

6. God’s actions in history follow a pattern of love and redemption. Share a time when someone you know was lost, but now is found. 

7. What are some ways that God reaches out to people today? 

8. How does your church reach out in love to new members, visitors, and strangers? 

9. We participate in God’s gift of love when we reach out to those in need. How do you share your time, talents, gifts, service, and witness with others at home, at church, at work, in your community?