Thursday, March 4, 2010

Make Room.....

Just want to recap what the first 5 weeks of our small group study "No Other Gods" has covered. The overall theme has been "Make Room"....meaning to make room for God. In the first session we discussed our own personal pharaohs. We discussed the definition of a professed God versus a functioning God. A professed God is what we say we believe about God and a functioning god is what is really operating as our God. Basically, talking out of two sides of our mouth. In the second week we looked at why we have idols....our identity, need, pain, when God is silent, and fear. Then in the third week we talked about lies, primarily the lies that Satan tells us. We talked about the character of Satan (a liar and the father of lies) and the character of God (He cannot lie). As we stepped into our fourth week we discussed why idols are even a problem....they are desires gone crazy, jealousy and competition abound where there are idols, and also...they can never satisfy us. Then this past week (week 5) we talked about good goodbyes! Goodbye usually has a negative connotation. I especially enjoyed as we shared times in our life we had to say goodbye to someone or something. BUT, my very favorite part in this study is when we talked about the false memories that the Israelites had (see Numbers 11:1-17), they whined and complained because they were sick of eating manna and were craving meat. They talked about all the wonderful foods that they had when they were in Egypt and mentioned that these foods were free. (If you know the story, you know the foods weren't free because the Israelites were captives in Egypt for 470 years. The Egyptians killed their baby boys and made them work hard labor!) After God heard their whining and complaining for some time, He gave them meat until they vomited it out of their nostrils! YUCK! I remember thinking, "Boy, they were stupid"....but how often have I been like the Israelites....begged, whined, complained, and pleaded for God to give me what I desire only for Him to do so and me to be sick of it shortly after! Anyway....looking forward to next week when we'll talk about the God of Gods!
I will try to post more about the content of this study next week and how God has used this study in our small group time to draw us closer to Him!

2 comments:

Barbara said...

So wish I could be part of this study with you....it sounds wonderful!

"Virtuous Wannabe" said...

Barbara, I so wish you could be at the study with me....I can hear your laughter now!