Melissa Kruger and Courtney Doctor talk about how to seek out the counsel of wise friends and how to respond well when friends seek your counsel. They discuss how to ask good questions, how to deliver a gentle rebuke when necessary, how to follow up on requests for accountability, and how to point someone to Scripture without treating it like a Bible Band-Aid. Listen prayerfully to prepare yourself for opportunities that arise to bear one another’s burdens.

Recommended Resources:

• I’m Praying for You by Nancy Guthrie
• Count It All Joy by Helen Roseveare

Related Content:

• 7 Things to Say to a Hurting Loved One
• Why Mentoring Is Better Than Asking Alexa
• The Neglected Ministry of Asking Questions

Discussion Questions:

1. Considering examples of people who have supported you in difficult seasons, what qualities do you appreciate most in them?

2. In what ways have you struggled to balance extending both grace and truth in your own “kitchen-table counseling”?

3. How can we ensure any necessary rebukes we deliver are given with gentleness?

4. What helps you determine whether someone is “safe” to confess a burden or sin to?

5. In what ways could you make yourself a more approachable and available source of counsel for those who need your support?

6. How can your discussion partners pray for you as you point others to God in difficult situations?

Melissa Kruger and Courtney Doctor talk with Trillia Newbell about the depth and richness of Romans 8. They explain how to understand Romans 8 in the context of the previous chapters, why there’s no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, how to let that truth make a difference in your life, and how to respond to the question “If there’s no condemnation for me, why am I suffering?” We hope you will open your Bibles and dive in!

Recommended Resources:

• If God Is For Us by Trillia Newbell
• In View of God’s Mercies by Courtney Doctor
• Celebrating Around the Table by Trillia Newbell

Related Content:

• Living in the Hope of Liberation from Bondage
• The Good News of Romans 8
• If God Is for Us: Standing Accused with Romans 8

Discussion Questions:

1. Romans 8:1 says there is no condemnation for those in Christ. How does this verse reshape your thinking about areas of guilt or shame in your life?
2. What’s one area of your life where you need to intentionally walk in the Spirit rather than the flesh? What’s one step you can take this week to move in that direction?
3. How does the truth of Romans 8:18 (“the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us”) bring hope to seasons of waiting or hardship? How have you personally experienced this hope?
4. How did this conversation help you understand what “good” means in the context of Romans 8:28 ("all things work together for good")? How can this shift our expectations when life doesn’t go as planned?
5. Reflecting on Romans 8:35–39, which truths are most meaningful to you in combating the lie that God doesn’t love you? 
6. How would you encourage another woman who is struggling to believe she is more than a conqueror through Christ (Romans 8:37)?

Melissa Kruger and Courtney Doctor talk with Vanessa Hawkins about the vital and beautiful role church should have in the life of every Christian. They discuss what keeps people from regular church attendance and how to move beyond church hurt. They talk about why your church attendance and involvement is not only necessary for your own spiritual growth, but for the other members of the body of Christ.

Recommended Resources:

• Deep Discipleship by J. T. English
• Sighing on Sunday by Megan Hill
• A Place to Belong by Megan Hill
• Westminster Confession of Faith
• “Father, I Stretch My Hands to Thee”

Related Content:

• The Church Is Essential for Discipleship
• Want to Reach the Next Generation? Love the Church.
• 5 Reasons to Keep Going to Church with Baby Brain
• Let’s Talk: Overcoming Church Hurt

Discussion Questions:

1. In what ways are you currently “showing up” (or not showing up) in your church community?
2. What is most likely to keep you from showing up at church, either literally or figuratively?
3. How have you experienced being known, loved, and cared for by the church?
4. What has your participation in your church community taught you about God and what he values? What liturgies or traditions in your church are most meaningful to you?
5. What encouragement would you offer someone who has been hurt by people within the church? If this is you, what has helped you persevere in seeing the church's beauty?
6. What change or next step would you like to take regarding your engagement in your church? How can your discussion partners pray for you?

Courtney Doctor and Melissa Kruger discuss how to make decisions about using your time. They they talk about how to think of yourself with sober judgment, the wrong reasons to say “yes” and “no,” and how to recognize which callings in your life must be prioritized. Although there is no formula for determining when to say yes or no, there is always wisdom available from God when we ask for it!

Recommended Resources:

• 2 Timothy 4:6–18
• The Envy of Eve by Melissa Kruger
• Work Well with All Types of People (The Deep Dish - Episode 7)

Related Content:

• Let’s Talk: Decision-Making
• How to Know When to Say No
• Make It Your Ambition: Seven Godly Pursuits for the Next Generation by Jeremy Writebol
• Help! I’m Afraid I Made the Wrong Decision

Discussion Questions:

1. What’s a situation in which you struggled to give a yes or no? What made that decision difficult?
2. Do you tend to say yes or no more often? What usually motivates your yes or no?
3. What might pursuing time with the Lord in order to have a “transformed mind” look like in your life right now? What might need to change in order for you to prioritize this?
4. What situations has God used in your life to reveal your unique giftings?
5. In what ways do you experience tension between pursuing self-care/rest and sacrificial service? How can self-care and comfort become idols that influence our decision-making?
6. How has God provided rest for you during seasons of sacrificial yeses? What sabbath practices help you find rest in the Lord?

Courtney Doctor, Melissa Kruger, Vanessa Hawkins, and Jen Wilkin have each been married for more than 25 years.

In this conversation, they talk about how marriage was different from what they expected, what practices have strengthened their marriage through life's ebbs and flows, and they debunk some of the worst marriage advice they’ve heard. 

 Recommended Resources:

• Single, Dating, Engaged, Married by Ben Stuart
• Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas

Related Content:

• Growing Your Marriage While Having Young Kids
• Sustaining the Covenant of Marital Love
• Marriage in Gospel Focus
• A Biblical View of Marriage

Discussion Questions:

1. What does spending quality time together look like in this season of your lives? 
2. What is the best (or worst) piece of relationship advice you have received? What made it helpful or harmful?
3. What strengths do you see in yourself and your spouse? How have those strengths balanced out areas of weakness in different seasons of your lives?
4. Can you think of a way you would like to rearrange your priorities in order to strengthen your marriage (or your future marriage)?
5. What “one another” commands come the easiest to you? Which are most difficult, and how might you seek to live those out increasingly?
6. In what ways has God used your marriage to sanctify you?
7. What do you want to pray for your spouse, marriage, or yourself based on what you have heard and discussed?

Melissa Kruger and Courtney Doctor talk with their colleague Ann Westrate about how understanding each others’ gifts has enhanced their work as a team. They talk about how much the Working Genius assessment helped them understand why what might be easy for one of them is hard for someone else. Understanding what different gifts are represented in a team can enhance morale and strengthen relationships. We all have gifts, but none of us have all the gifts.

Recommended Resources:

• Growing Together by Melissa Kruger
• Working Genius assessment 
• Ann’s Recipe for Steak Soup 

Related Content:

• Let’s Talk: Spiritual Gifts
• Flourish in How God Has (and Has Not) Gifted You
• The Spiritual Gift You Don’t Notice Until It’s Gone

Discussion Questions:

1. What gifts or abilities have others recognized or affirmed in you? How has God given you opportunities to use and develop those?
2. While this episode focused on the Working Genius, there are many assessments available to help you understand the way you work and interact with others. If you have taken any, how have your results been helpful to you?
3. In what ways have you struggled with envy of other peoples’ giftedness? 
4. How do you see your own strengths as an essential part of the body’s functioning? Where do you feel called to invest your talents in new ways (or to continue using them)?
5. If you are a parent, how do you see your giftedness impact the way you serve your family in this season of life?
6. Who in your work, church, or family needs to have their giftedness recognized and affirmed? How is God calling you to encourage that person or those people?

Courtney Doctor talks with Melissa Kruger, and Elizabeth Woodson about the true meaning of contentment and how to find it. They discuss how discontentment springs from the attitude of our hearts rather than our circumstances and will only be overcome by trusting God’s goodness. They talk about the enemies of contentment as well as how the psalms of lament show us that grieving is compatible with contentment. We can confess that God has withheld no good thing while also asking, “How long, O Lord?”

Recommended Resources:

• Embrace Your Life by Elizabeth Woodson
• The Envy of Eve by Melissa Kruger

Related Content:

• Looking for Contentment? It’s Not What You Think
• Will God Provide for Your Needs?
• Your Church Needs Your Contentment
• Discover the Grace of Lament

Discussion Questions:

1. In what areas of life do you struggle with comparison? How have you experienced comparison feeding feelings of discontentment?
2. What regular practices help you continually remind yourself to find contentment in the “past certainty and future hope” God provides instead of your current circumstances? In what ways is this challenging for you as well?
3. Can you think of an example in your life where God has made the “boundary lines” fall in pleasant places (Psalm 16:6 even if you didn’t immediately recognize it)? What past circumstance has taught you that what he has given (or withheld) is enough?
4. What would it look like to “delight yourself in the Lord” in your current season of life?
5. In what ways have you experienced God transforming your desires into what he desires?
6. What current circumstance is God using as a “schoolroom” to teach you how to trust him more deeply?

Melissa Kruger talks with Sandi Taylor and Ruth Chou Simon about parenting teenagers. They reflect on the principles of their parenting that have stayed the same even though their practices have changed as their children age. They discuss how to pick the right battles, why you shouldn’t look shocked when your teen tells you something shocking, and why teens need both firmness and warmth from their parents.

Mentioned Resources:

• Parenting with Hope by Melissa Kruger

Related Resources:

• Parent, Meet Your Teen
• Breaking Social Media’s Grip on Teens
• You Can Parent Teens with Hope in a Secular Age
• Your Teenager Needs Discipleship

Discussion Questions:

• In what ways do you want to “go first” in modeling for your kids what a life following Jesus looks like?
• How and why does rule-making give us a false sense of security as parents? What areas do you feel most prone to create rules for your kids that go past what God has said?
• What idols has God revealed to you in your parenting? How will you combat the influence of those idols?
• How can you prioritize creating space and opportunities for conversations with your teen (or how will you plan to prioritize this in the future)?
• How does reflecting on the ways that God parents you help inform the way you want to parent your children?
• How can your discussion partners pray for you and your family in this season?

Melissa Kruger and Courtney Doctor talk with Jen Wilkin about how to embrace a more beautiful and biblical view on bodies, aging, beauty, and youth. They discuss why we should see aging as a gift rather than a disease, and how we can prepare our spirits for the decline of our bodies. This conversation will not tell you where to “draw the line” when it comes to pursuing a more youthful appearance through beauty treatments, but it will renew your perspective so that that question will seem less important.

Mentioned Resource:

• On Getting Out of Bed by Alan Noble

Related Resources:

• 5 Lies About Your Body
• How to Grow Newer When You’re Not Growing Younger
• Not the You You Remember
• Wrinkle Cream Can’t Redeem You

Discussion Questions:

• What is your favorite thing about being in the decade of life you are currently in?
• In what ways have you experienced cultural pressure to value and preserve youthfulness? How has this impacted you?
• What role does social media play in shaping your perceptions of aging?
• Can you think of examples of people in your life who are aging gracefully? What have you learned through their example?
• What wisdom have you gained as you have grown older? How does this help you see aging as a gift, rather than a disease?
• What does pursuing “imperishable beauty” in your life look like right now? How would you like to do this increasingly?

Melissa Kruger and Courtney Doctor talk about the mysterious tension between the doctrine of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. They discuss what implications God’s sovereignty has for our prayer lives and why it shouldn’t cool our passion for evangelism. Although it may be hard to understand how God could be sovereign when we are suffering, what is initially a troubling doctrine can become our deepest comfort.

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• None Like Him by Jen Wilkin
• In His Image by Jen Wilkin
• Chosen by God by R. C. Sproul
• Count It All Joy by Helen Roseveare
• Knowing God by J. I. Packer
• Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God by J. I. Packer
• Piercing Heaven: The Prayers of the Puritans

RELATED RESOURCES

• The Unlikely Friendship between God’s Sovereignty and Man’s Responsibility
• Why God’s Election Is Good News
• How Romans 8 Made Me a Calvinist
• 3 Objections to the Doctrine of Election

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• Have you ever experienced an interruption or inconvenience that turned into a “divine appointment?” How did God use that situation?
• How has learning about God’s sovereignty challenged or comforted you personally?
• How does remembering God’s sovereignty affect your prayer life? 
• In what ways have you struggled to hold the truths of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility in tension? What questions has this tension raised for you?
• How have seasons of suffering or hardship grown your trust in God and helped you experience his presence in distinct ways?
• In what current situation do you most need to “lay your head on the pillow of God’s sovereignty”? How can your discussion partner(s) pray for you?