What To Pray If You Want To Change The World (And Yourself) (Part 1): Help Me To Love You

TO START

This week in the midst of pain and frustration over the senseless killing of George Floyd, many of us have been confronted with the reminder of the fact that the evils of sin are present in the form of individual racism and systematic injustice in our country. In light of this, we want to encourage your group to spend time in a posture of prayer as we consider the pain and grief of those who have experienced and continue to experience injustice and racism by asking God to intervene.

So, we would love for you to start group tonight by praying this together:

“Heavenly Father,

Help us not to lose you in the anger and rage; in the dissenting opinions and in the clamoring of picking sides. You are our King; You alone reign over our hearts. Help us, Lord.

Help us to remain in You as we remain in difficult, possibly uncomfortable discussions. Help us to stave off the temptation to turn this into a political fray and to be reminded that our faith transcends political ideologies. It rises above everything. Our faith demands we answer a higher calling. Help us, Lord.

Help us to be the catalyst of real, lasting change. With so many powers actively sowing discord and hatred and delighting in evil, help us to be brave enough to boldly respond with acts of righteousness and with preemptive strikes of holiness in this battle versus evil. Help us to truly share the burdens of our brothers and sisters and hear the cry of the hurting in this hour of need. Raise up your people to stand against racism.

Help us, Lord.

In your name. Amen.”

TO DISCUSS

This week, we began part 1 of a new series called What to Pray if You Want to Change the World (And Yourself). Justin invited us to consider a few questions that have no doubt entered our minds this week: “How do we change things?” and even more specifically, “How do we change us?”. In particular, Justin pointed us to the reality that 5 short prayers could be the answer we are looking for.

  • One of our core behaviors is to be changed and changing: How do you believe you need to be changed and changing?

  • The prayer for this week is “Help me to love you”; Justin mentioned that the heart of the problem for everyone of us is that “we don’t love God hardly as much as we should”

    • Is it discouraging to think that you don’t love God as well as you should?

    • What for you personally gets in the way of you loving God as much as you’d like?

TO READ

Justin points us to a passage in Mark 12 in which the teachers of law came to Jesus asking him questions in hopes of tripping him up and in hopes of making Jesus out to be a fool. Instead, Jesus just happens to reveal the end all be all of commandments. The one thing we must not forget. Read Mark 12:28-34

  • Jesus reveals that there are two commandments that are superior to all others: 1) to love God with every part of your being & 2) to love others as you love yourself. In light of this:

    • Is it possible to love your neighbor if you don’t love God? Is it possible to love God and to not love your neighbor?

    • What does it mean for these two commands to be inextricably tied together?

  • Invite your group to consider this question on their own, “How many times have you tried to convince yourself that you love God even while you are actively choosing not to love our neighbor?”

  • Does it give you hope that this one prayer, “Help me to love you”, can change the world?

    • How do you think this prayer might change you personally?

TO PRAY

Pray together to close:

“Father in Heaven, Help me to love you”

Matt DeLano