Read an Excerpt
More to Your Story
Study Guide | Six Sessions
By Max Lucado, KEVIN HARNEY, SHERRY HARNEY Thomas Nelson
Copyright © 2011 Max Lucado
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-310-08315-3
CHAPTER 1
SESSION 1
WHEN YOU DISCOVER YOUR PLACE IN GOD'S PLAN
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God's story is glorious, surprising, victorious, and beautiful. His story, when we really listen closely, is our story.
INTRODUCTION
Do you remember a time you got lost? Perhaps it was a crowded day at the mall, and you wandered away from Dad and Mom for just a moment, and they were gone. You felt the paralyzing fear of looking around and failing to see the north star of your parents' strong presence. You were lost.
Maybe it was a school trip to the zoo and you inadvertently lingered at the monkey cage while the rest of the class moved on. Before you knew it, you were alone. People were everywhere, but not a face in the crowd was familiar. Lost!
It might have been a drive late at night, and a wrong turn spun you around, and, truth be known, you had no idea where to go next.
These moments of lostness can leave a pit in your stomach and bring fear to your soul ... until the store clerk finds your parents, your teacher taps you on the shoulder and says, "Keep up with the class," or a gas station attendant pulls out a map and shows you how to get back on the interstate.
What is even worse is coming to a point in life when we realize that we have lost our way as a human being. We might know our mailing address and how to get to school, work, or church, but we are not sure why we are on this planet. We have no sense of our purpose.
It is in these moments that we look to God, the Master Storyteller, and discover that the best way to understand our story is to listen to his. As we understand God's story and where we fit within it, the haze begins to clear and our story begins to make sense.
TALK ABOUT IT
Tell about a time in your childhood when you got lost and how you felt when you were finally found.
VIDEO TEACHING NOTES
As you watch the video teaching segment for session 1, featuring Max Lucado, use the following outline to record anything that stands out to you.
Life in Munchkinland can be a scary thing ... unless you've read the screenplay
When everything changes
Getting lost in Grandma's story
What knowing does to us
Knowing God's story
The central message of God's story
Your story indwells God's story
VIDEO DISCUSSION
1. Share about a time when someone told you about your family history and certain things about you and your family members began to make sense.
2. Tell about a time you were reading the Bible (God's story) and a light went on in your heart as you realized that this was really your story.
3. If the story of the Bible is going to make sense, it is important to know how it begins and how it ends. In your own words, how does the Bible begin? What are the epic themes that launch us into the story of the Bible (Genesis)?
In your own words, how does the Bible end? What are the epic themes that conclude the story of the Bible (Revelation)?
4. How does your family history help you have a sense of who you are and where your life is going? How does knowing the story of God's family in the Bible help you know who you are and where you are going?
5. Max talked about being dropped into Munchkin Land and being very confused because he did not actually know the storyline of The Wizard of Oz. How can reading the Bible without any context or background become a frustrating or dangerous enterprise?
6. What is one of your favorite stories in the Bible and how do you see yourself and your personal story informed by this portion of God's Word?
7. Read: John 3:16 – 17. In the video, Max said that this portion of God's story contains one of the central messages of the Bible. What core messages do you find in this passage?
How can these messages help us understand who we are and how we are to live in this journey through life?
8. Read: Ephesians 1:11 – 14. How do you see God's story and our story woven together in this passage of the Bible?
9. What approach to learning God's Word has most helped you dig in and grow in your love for the Bible?
10. How can your group members pray for you, encourage you, and keep you accountable in reading the Bible and seeking to know God's story in greater depth?
CLOSING PRAYER
Take time as a group to pray in some of the following directions:
• Thank God for his Word, the Bible. Ask him to help you know and love his Word so that you may grow to see your story woven into his story.
• Pray for people you care about who are wandering and lost because they do not know God's story.
• Confess where you have avoided or neglected digging into God's story in the Bible. Pray for a renewed commitment to read and study the Scriptures with fresh passion.
• Lift up group members who have shared a desire to grow in their knowledge of and love for God's Word. Pray that they will take the steps needed, and exercise the discipline required, to go deep into the truth of the Bible.
BETWEEN SESSIONS
Personal Reflection
Take time to think through three or four of your favorite stories in the Bible. Why are you drawn to these stories? How do you see your story connected to these stories? How did God work in these accounts and what are ways you have seen God work in similar ways in your life?
Personal Action
Contact a patriarch or matriarch in your family and ask if you can spend time with them, face to face or over the phone. Ask questions about your family, their life, and those who have gone before you. Listen with an open heart and seek to discover more about what has formed you and those you love.
Group Engagement
Consider inviting each group member to make a personal commitment to read and reflect on the Bible in the weeks your group meets. Don't have a required reading plan, but have each person set a personal goal. Then, when you meet, ask every person to tell about how they are doing in meeting their own goal and, if possible, to share one lesson they learned in their reading and how it impacts and informs their personal story.
Name:
Personal Goal:
_______________ ________________________________
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RECOMMENDED READING
Take time to read chapter 1 of the book More to Your Story by Max Lucado.
REFLECTIONS AND NOTES
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CHAPTER 2
SESSION 2
ORDINARY MATTERS
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Our world praises and exalts the "extraordinary"; God meets normal people in the ordinary places of life.
INTRODUCTION
Have you ever seen the motivational posters that grace the walls of so many office buildings? One poster features a crew in a rowboat straining together, the word "TEAMWORK" emblazoned under the photo. Another boasts a stunning ocean shoreline with an enormous rock formation thrusting heavenward from the water. Beneath the picture is the word "INTEGRITY" and the caption, "Do what you know is right ... always. With commitment to your deepest convictions you stand tall against time and tide."
In response to such highly optimistic and cheerful messages, another company, Despair.com, has begun to make its own line of posters. One poster, titled "CONFORMITY," shows a large herd of zebras and the caption, "When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other." Another poster, titled "INDIVIDUALITY," shows beautiful snowflakes floating in the air and text that reads, "Always remember that you are unique. Just like everybody else."
The irony of these two competing companies is that one makes a lot of money selling posters designed to make people feel special. The other makes a lot of money helping people laugh at that fact that most of us are really quite ordinary and common.
When we read the story of God's people in the Bible we discover that most of them are more like us than we would have guessed. The vast majority of stories in the Bible introduce us to folks that are more ordinary than extraordinary.
TALK ABOUT IT
Who is a person in the Bible (Jesus excluded) whom you find very interesting? What is one way this person seems a lot like you ... normal?
VIDEO TEACHING NOTES
As you watch the video teaching segment for session 2, featuring Max Lucado, use the following outline to record anything that stands out to you.
A children's Christmas play
God inside a girl
Jesus' birth drips with normalcy
Our everyday life: Norm and Norma
Jesus' connection to the dawn of time
The Word become flesh
Jesus "dwelt" among us
VIDEO DISCUSSION
1. In our culture we tend to ignore the normal and ordinary and lift up the unique and extraordinary. Why do you think we do this and why might it be a dangerous way to live?
2. Read: Luke 2:1 – 7. God chose Joseph, an ordinary carpenter, to be the stepfather of Jesus, and Mary, a common peasant girl, to be the mother of God incarnate. As this Jewish couple came to Bethlehem for the census, what would people have seen by looking at them? How might people have responded if Joseph tried to tell them who Mary was and the true identity of the baby in her womb?
3. In the video Max said, "The Christmas hope is that God indwells the everydayness of our world." What is one way you experience the presence and hope of God as you walk through a normal day?
4. God uses normal people such as Mary and Joseph to accomplish his will in this world. What is one way God has worked through your normal life in a way that is surprising and exciting for you?
5. If we are not careful, even in the church we can make people feel ordinary and unimportant. How can we make the people in our church feel loved and welcomed? What can we do to reach out to those who are visiting our church for the first time to ensure that they feel embraced and wanted?
6. Read: John 1:1 – 3; Genesis 1:1 – 2; and Colossians 1:15 – 16. What do you learn about Jesus in these passages? In light of who Jesus really is, why is his humble birth so surprising and shocking?
7. In the video, Max made this provocative statement, "The splendor of the first Christmas is the lack thereof." What do you think he is getting at?
8. Jesus came as one of us; he pitched his tent in an ordinary neighborhood. How can we be the presence of Jesus right where God has placed us?
9. Tell about an ordinary person that God used to write his story in your life. How is your life richer because of this person?
10. Consider someone God has placed in your life whom you might influence for him. How does God want to use you to help write his story in their life? How can your group members encourage you and cheer you on in your effort?
CLOSING PRAYER
Take time as a group to pray in some of the following directions:
• Thank God that he came among us not as royalty, but as a normal person.
• Ask God to help you enter your neighborhood, workplace, social settings, wherever, as an ordinary person carrying the extraordinary love of Jesus.
• Pray for your church to have a welcoming heart that embraces common people. Pray against any spirit of elitism that might creep into your church.
• Pray for the presence of God's Holy Spirit to be so welcome in your heart and home that other people actually notice something different about you.
BETWEEN SESSIONS
Personal Reflection
Think about how you can notice the presence of God in the flow of your normal day. Also, reflect on ways you can bring the presence of God in organic and natural ways into every part of your day. Invite Jesus to shine in and through you so that others will see his presence and want to know him.
Personal Action
Examine your heart. If you are guilty of adopting attitudes or actions that set you above and apart from others with a spirit of elitism, confess this to God and pray for a new attitude of humility and love for others.
Group Engagement
Consider having your group members commit to make a point of greeting one new person every Sunday for the coming month. If you don't see anyone new, be sure to welcome a person you don't know very well. Seek to make people feel welcomed and embraced.
RECOMMENDED READING
Take time to read chapter 4 of More to Your Story by Max Lucado.
REFLECTIONS AND NOTES
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CHAPTER 3
SESSION 3
YOU HEAR A VOICE YOU CAN TRUST
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In a world of voices crying for our attention, there is one that we must learn to hear with crystal clarity.
INTRODUCTION
In 1971 the Canadian rock group, Five Man Electrical Band, wrote a song that hit number three on the U.S. Billboard "Hot 100" and sold over a million copies. You might remember "Signs" — especially the catchy refrain:
Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blocking out the scenery, breaking my mind
Do this, don't do that, cant you read the sign?
Throughout the song, a man expresses his frustration with all the signs (voices) telling him what to do or not to do. One voice says that he can't get a job at a local business if he is one of those "long-haired freaky people." Another lets him know he will be shot if he trespasses on private property. Still another informs him that the way he dresses and the fact that he does not have a membership card prohibits his inclusion in a private club.
In the final verse, he sees a sign on a church that says, "Everybody welcome, come in, kneel down, and pray," and he goes inside. When the offering plate comes by, he has no money so he writes his own little sign, his personal message to God: "Thank you, Lord, for thinking about me; I'm alive and doing fine."
All through time human beings have faced the challenge of learning to hear and recognize the voice of the one true God through the clutter of culture, societal messages, competing religious traditions, and the general noise of life's traffic. Many signs, messages, and voices seem to battle for our attention. If we are not careful, we can listen to the wrong voice, follow the wrong sign, and end up headed down a wrong road or even driving off a cliff.
TALK ABOUT IT
What are some of the big messages being declared in culture today and what are some possible consequences if we embrace and follow them?
VIDEO TEACHING NOTES
As you watch the video teaching segment for session 3, featuring Max Lucado, use the following outline to record anything that stands out to you.
Flying blind
Many voices
Jesus' important question
Peter's reply
Jesus' claims about himself
Jesus' impact on others
Wonderful truth about Jesus
VIDEO DISCUSSION
1. What are some ways Jesus comes alongside of us during our dark times to give direction and hope when we can't see what lies ahead?
2. Describe a person who has functioned as a wise, godly voice speaking into your life in both good and hard times. How has God used this person to give direction and provide safety on your journey?
3. When Jim O'Neill realized he was flying blind, he sent out a Mayday distress call. Tell about a time you cried out to God with a Mayday prayer and how he answered and came to your side.
4. What is an area of your life, right now, where you feel like you are flying blind? How can your group members pray for you and fly at your side during this challenging time?
5. What competing voices in your life are calling for your attention and distracting you from hearing the voice of Jesus? What can you do to minimize the volume of these voices to better hear the voice of Jesus?
6. Read: Mark 8:27 – 30. People in Jesus' day had all kinds of theories about who Jesus was. What were some of these theories and how would the people have been impacted if they believed these inaccurate voices?
(Continues...)
Excerpted from More to Your Story by Max Lucado, KEVIN HARNEY, SHERRY HARNEY. Copyright © 2011 Max Lucado. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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