Week 6 – Soul Reset – Discipleship Guide
Psalm 119:105 “Your Word is a lamp before my feet and a light for my journey.”
God didn’t come to condemn us but to save us. God didn’t come to shame us into relationship. God didn’t send Jesus to condemn us and make us run and hide. No, Jesus came to free us from shame and fear and sin and darkness.
1. What are some of your thoughts or reflections from the video and chapter 6 of the Soul Reset book?
2. Pastor Dotson writes, “I’ve discovered that the antidote to fear and shame is vulnerability. We need to talk more about our failures. It seems ironic, but people learn more from our failures than our successes” (page 92). How might vulnerability be the antidote to fear and shame? What are some examples from your own life where you have learned more from a failure than a success?
3. “Secrets have power only because they’re secrets. The only way to take away the power of a secret is to speak it into community, so we’ve got to find creative ways to invite people into vulnerability” (page 95). What are some creative ways to invite people into vulnerability?
4. Pastor Dotson suggests that even in the church we struggle to be authentic because we have become success- and image-driven. Do you find that to be true in your community? Are you able to freely name your struggles in community and be extended grace and kindness in return?
5. Would you say that we do a good job of walking through grief individually and as a community? What would you say is the “right” way to walk through grief individually? in community?
6. Read Matt. 26:33-34. What does Peter promise Jesus? How does Jesus respond? Later, Peter does the very thing Jesus said he would do, and then Peter hides away in shame. Now look at John 21. What is the exchange between Peter and Jesus there? What does that exchange tell us about Jesus’ mercy and forgiveness in the face of our shame and regret?
7. “The number one cause of stress is living inconsistently with your own self-values” (page 97). What do you think this statement means?
8. Pastor Dotson writes that there are two ways we can respond to shame: to isolate or to move toward community. What is your typical response to feelings of shame? Why do you think you respond that way?
9. What can your small group, Sunday school class, or book club do to create a space in which vulnerability and authenticity are celebrated and nurtured? What can your group do to be the sort of group that is a first phone call with good or bad news?
10. How can your group lead an effort in your local church to make vulnerability and authenticity the norm—where no one is expected to have it or keep it all together?
11. “We defeat ourselves. In order to stop defeating ourselves, we have to stop deceiving ourselves. Then we stop the cycle of deceiving others. We perpetuate a shiny version of ourselves, but we need to be open about our worry, bitterness, guilt, anxiety, fear, and insecurity. We’re defeated by these things. We have to speak truth to ourselves and to God. The more we do that, the more we are able to speak truth to others—because we’ve known and experienced the forgiveness of God” (page 101). How can your group live out the sentiment in this excerpt? When have you perpetuated a “shiny version” of yourself? How did it feel to lay that down?
12. Read John 3:17. What does this promise mean to you? How does it connect to the idea of living lightly and freely with Jesus?
Spiritual Practice
This week, we look at the spiritual prac- tice of confession. Confession isn’t always a regular ritual in the Protestant church, but through confession we are given an opportunity to bring our shame, our sin, our private struggles out into the open. Even if we’re not speaking a confession to another person, just to name it before God gets it out of our heads and hearts and creates space for God to pour out God’s mercy and forgiveness.
Right now, on a sheet of paper, write a prayer of confession. What is hiding in your soul that is keeping you from light and free living with Jesus? Confess your struggle to Jesus, who promises to forgive, to heal, and to walk alongside you each and every day.
Commenti