Application Questions:

1. What well have you been going to?

2. How does the Samaritan woman's story parallel your story?

3. Jesus shows up in our lives when we're trying to avoid issues. Has there been a time when Jesus showed up when you were avoiding your issues? What happened?

4. Why is it important that we tell our story? What's in it for us? What's in it for others?

Read the passage

bible.com/111/mat.25.31-46.niv

Application Questions:

1. What is the point of this passage, what’s the reason for this harsh judgment - and how are we supposed to respond to its warning?

Keith Green's "Sheep and Goats" video

vimeo.com/25138009

2. What do you know about people? About others? What do we know about ourselves and our tendencies?

3. Do you know the least: people who are hungry and homeless, folks who are refugees and prisons, folks who at home or in the hospital sick? Do you do know some who would be considered the least?

4. What are you doing for others? Where do you feel concern for people?What will you seek now to do?

5. How is God changing you to do more for people without knowing their story and what qualifies them for help, to operate from an overflow of the love of God fills your heart? Is He?

Consider reading the passage from The Message.

bible.com/97/mat.25.31-46.niv

Application Questions:

1. How many of us, especially if we’re in some kind of helping profession, can be the most disconnected and isolated when it comes to relationships where we’re on the receiving end?

2. How often do you ask if you need anything from another? How much do you make cultivating those kind of relationships a priority where you invite others into your life and tell them your need and welcome their input and help?

3. verse 9: Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor.

What is your labor? What are you working on?

4. Are you partnered with someone who has been through what you are going through? Have you considered mentoring another who is going through something you've experienced?

5. verse 10: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.

Have you seen someone fall emotionally and not have anyone to help them up? Who is there for you? Who is there that has the freedom to ask you how you are doing and who won’t take “fine” as an answer?

6. Are you willing to let anyone in? Will you take this idea of each other to the next level where you start experiencing the better and not the worse? Will you do better working on things together, marriage, parenting, and your walk with Christ?

Questions from the Message:

1. How EMOTIONALLY INVESTED are you in your relationships?

Openness requires vulnerability.

2. How SPIRITUALLY COMMITTED are you to your relationships?

3. How ETERNALLY FOCUSED are you with your relationships?

Application Questions:

1. What have mobility, marital breakdown, and the emergence of social media meant in your life and how have they impacted your faith?

2. How are you currently being attentive to others? What could you take on or give up to be more attentive to others?

vs 5: "when I could stand it no longer..."

3. Why do we default to feel concerned and worried when we don't know what's going on with those we love and care about?

4. Have you had stuff in your life which has made you waver or walk away from the faith? Have you seen this happen to others?

5. What steps will you take this week to move to be eternally focused with the others you're learning to be attentive to?

Jim referenced the following series of questions:

John Wesley's SELF-EXAMINATION QUIZ

Here is one set of questions similar to what John Wesley gave to members of his groups more than 200 years ago. The questions have their origin in the spiritual accountability group started by Wesley when he was a student at Oxford — a group that detractors called "The Holy Club."

Am I creating the impression that I am better than I really am? In other words, am I a hypocrite?

Do I confidentially pass on to others what has been said to me in confidence?

Can I be trusted?

Am I a slave to dress, friends, work or habits?

Am I self-conscious, self-pitying, or self-justifying?

Did the Bible live in me today?

Do I give the Bible time to speak to me every day?

Am I enjoying prayer?

When did I last speak to someone else of my faith?

Do I pray about the money I spend?

Do I get to bed on time and get up on time?

Do I disobey God in anything?

Do I insist upon doing something about which my conscience is uneasy?

Am I defeated in any part of my life?

Am I jealous, impure, critical, irritable, touchy or distrustful?

How do I spend my spare time?

Am I proud?

Do I thank God that I am not as other people, especially as the Pharisees who despised the tax collector?

Is there anyone whom I fear, dislike, disown, criticize, hold resentment toward or disregard? What am I doing about it?

Do I grumble or complain constantly?

Is Christ real to me?

Application Questions:

1. Have you ever missed something because you didn't know what to look for?

2. Have you ever thought about your sins as a symptom of your unbelief in God? What symptoms make you lean into Jesus?

verse 9: "about sin, because people do not believe in me;"

3. What have you done in an effort to feel accepted/righteous? "Being right before God isn't something we achieve, it's something we receive."

Verse 10: "about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer;"

4. Are there emotions and questions that the RISEN trailer evoke in you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-R9JY4le7k

5. How have you experienced direction from the Holy Spirit? Have you actively been "paying attention" to the Holy Spirit?

Application questions:

1. Have you ever done a cleanse/detox, extreme exercise routine or diet? What put you in that position to make a change to your routine? What does it or would it take to change your routine for Lent?

2. What are you doing to be more attentive? What did you think of Jim's Lenten attentive life prompts?

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Attentive to God:

- Daily devotional (print or email/online) http://theattentive.life

- Weekly fast on Wednesday.

Attentive to each other:

- Daily prayers

- Weekly gathering - C Group or Life Group

Attentive to the world:

- Daily witness

- Weekly Alms (green envelopes)

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3. What are the places you go to restore your soul? (For Pastor Jim, it was Sky, Scripture, & Soul.)

4. What is God saying to you this Lent?

Consider daily/routinely saying the prayer, "Lord, show me what I’m missing."

SERMON NOTES (click arrow to the right to open)

Main Idea:

What might life look like if our attention were focused on the things that God is focused on?

Sermon Notes:

1. Jesus invited the people, as He’s inviting us, to set aside anxieties that fill our hearts and set our hearts on what God has for us.

2. There is sometimes a gap about what God is speaking to us and things that consume our hearts.

3. Simon heard the words that Jesus was saying but didn’t really hear Jesus.

4. We want Jesus to fill our nets; that gives us security. But we can’t just “catch fish” whenever we want to; life isn’t like that.

5. That isn’t what life is really about. If it is, our relationship with God becomes about us and bargaining with Him to keep our nets full.

6. Jesus said that He can fix Simon’s problem, but Simon didn’t understand Who He really was and what He was inviting Him to.

7. Sometimes we respond to God’s blessings by co-operating Him into our plans.

8. Jesus wants our hearts, not just our time or money.

9. We sometimes ask ourselves what we must do for God to bless us.

10. Simon’s eyes were opened to Jesus; he really saw Him, not just the boats or the people. That is why Simon was able to drop everything and follow Him.

11. The totality of life is to be around Jesus. Everything else ends in disappointment.

12. God is fully engaged and speaks to us in every aspect of our lives, good and bad.

13. Jesus is our role model. He devoted time and energy to focus on what consumed God’s heart.

1 – He was attentive to God His Father. Where Jesus saw God lead, He followed.

2 – He was attentive to His friends and loved them.

3 – He was attentive to the world around Him.

14. Begin to be attentive to God by paying attention to Him. Set aside noise and distractions. Discover the one thing He says to us: He loves us.

15. Jesus gave up His life to protect us from the consequences of rejecting Him.

16. If we just surrender to His love we’ll find that we love Him and the people around us. Then we will be attentive to God, each other, and the world around us. We’ll find a deep longing for all the world to know Jesus.

17. Jesus is life; that is beyond our capacity to understand.

18. This Lenten season Heritage will focus on being attentive through:

1 -- Community – We can’t follow Jesus on our own. We can find others for this journey.

2 – Messages about paying attention to God, others and the world.

3 – Devotional guide at theattentive.life

Application Questions:

1. What are some anxieties that fill your heart and distract you from God? How do you deal with these?

2. In what situations does your mind often wander? What do you often think about when it does wander?

3. What do you try to “fill your net” with?

4. Do you pay attention when God speaks to you? Describe a time and situation when you sensed God speaking to you. Did you do what He said?

5. Do you always seek God’s will and try to follow it, or do you make plans on your own without considering Him?

6. What would your life look like if your attention were focused on the things that God is focused on?

7. What are some ways you are attentive to God? To your friends and acquaintances? To the world?

SERMON NOTES (click arrow to the right to open)

Main Idea:

When Jesus was resurrected he still had his scars, scars become our testimony.

Sermon Notes:

We have a dilemma because the death,burial,and resurrection of Jesus is the only thing that makes me good enough for God, but what makes us acceptable to others?

As we deal with reality vs image, we may look like we have it all together, but the battle within our heads keep us wondering if we will be judged.

We must expand our definition of beautiful. The passion of the song #24601 is a telling example of having the courage it takes to tell the whole story!

God can use our scars to help us go forward with a different kind of power. 2 Corinthians 12:7-10

Setbacks are common, though they feel like a real blow, creating doubt, discouragement.

Looking at the big picture in this scripture, conceit is more painful!

What is pride? Well what makes you feel weak? Or exposed? That may be the answer.

In our weakness, we may ask "why did he allow this?"

In abiding humility the saying "There's no humility without humiliation" was relevant to Jim. Perhaps also with Paul. He writes " therefore I will boast in weakness, for when I am weak, then I am strong." Christ's power comes at the end of our own.

2 Corinthians 4:7 We have treasure in our jars of clay. This time when we share our story, believe Christ's promise and tell the whole story.

Let's follow the journey of the wounded Savior. There is commonality in the fact that we are all jars of clay.

Application Questions:

1. How would pride and conceit be more painful than accepting an answer to prayer that was personally disappointing?

2. What makes you feel weak? Is it frightening to share this?

3. When have you experienced God's power being made perfect in your weakness?

4. How long does it take you to accept the answer you don't want? What causes the delay if there is one? And what helps you to accept God's response?