Every Monday night, I willingly set the DVR to record One Tree Hill, so I can meet with the amazing women that make up my lifegroup (led not by me but the other Kori... haha). Actually, its not a sacrifice at all. The dramas of the cast of Tree Hill can wait. (Aren't you glad I have my priorities set straight?)
Some small groups need a pre-packaged DVD or a fancy bible study-- not us. We just need some colorful pens, butcher paper, and our leader's open heart to listen to the Holy Spirit and bring us through a 4-week journey of intentional prayer, personal reflection, transperancy, and ultimately surrender to God's Will for our lives as we learn what it means for us... who we were and who we are now.
God is the center of everything, so that's where we started. With our colorful pens, we wrote God, big and bold, in the center of our papers. We brainstormed characteristics of God, places and times where we felt closest to God (the beach was a popular location...), and other thoughts about our relationship with God. We shared our multi-colored lists outloud with each other before we exchanged our papers with another. Yes, we didn't even get to keep our own lists! We each took home someone else's God-papers to be prayed for them intentionally over the next week... The focus was not on ourselves but on each other.
The next week, we met again. More blank paper. More fun pens. My kind of study! This time we wrote our own names in the center of the paper. And we brainstormed traits about who we are... beyond the superficial... the good, the bad and the ugly. We listed the people in our lives who helped shaped us. Again: the good and the bad. We listed our priorities... how we spend our time... and we were honest. We read the Pslams together, including my personal favorite Psalms 139. Songs of the heart to God. We wrote our own Psalm to God. We shared outloud our lists, and read our Psalms to each other, revealing so much more about ourselves and our hearts than we've ever done before. We felt bare and vulnerable. We exchanged our papers to a new person, this time it was little harder to let go of... and we committed ourselves to pray intentionally over them for the next week...
The third week, the papers and pens came out again. This time, we wrote a timeline of our lives. We all started when we were born and ended to the current moment. We made different lines to indicate times where things were shakier or more confusing. We indicated landmarks in our lives: accepting Christ, baptisms, graduations, boyfriends, depressions, jobs, friends... We wrote our lives-- our personal histories-- on the papers. We then shared our timelines with each other... it was like hearing how God shaped each one of us to who we are... the passions, the quirks, the fears, the joys.
Tonight, we concluded our "butcher paper study" by writing in the center of our big, blank white papers: "God's Will for *insert name* is to be sanctified." That's it. That's God's will for us. To be sanctified.
To be sanctified means to be set apart for God for a special use or purpose. Its a process. A process doesn't happen overnight. It means to be made holy.
Holy is the Lord, and we strive to be like Christ.
We talked about how do we do this... how do we apply the "Sancification Test" to our lives... recognizing we aren't perfect and we ALL will fall short. We talked about how there is grace when you are living God's Will. We talked about forgiveness and being sensitive to the Holy Spirit. We talked about our dreams. We shared with each other things in our lives that were creating fear and anxiety... agreeing wholeheartedly that fear is not from God and we prayed for each other. This time we got to bring our own paper home.
And, I sit here now, my bedroom walls covered with the very colorful thoughts, prayers, lives of my dear sisters in Christ. And I love them. And I love God for bringing them into my life.
And tonight we concluded our study just as One Tree Hill aired its season finale... and both were amazing. (Okay, I am totally kidding here. Small group trumps tv a million-billion-trillion times over.)
Recent Comments