- Talk about your experience on Sunday morning. What did you hear God saying to you throughout the service?
- Read James 2:14-26.
- What stood out to you as you read through this passage?
- What questions come to mind for you?
- What practical applications emerge for you as you reflect on this passage?
- What makes a faith that does express itself through good deeds dead and useless?
- How do you reconcile the teaching in James that “faith without works is dead” with the teaching of Paul in Ephesians 2:8-9 (and elsewhere) that “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith”?
- Do they contradict each other or work together in your mind? How?
- What makes this important to figure out?
- James also talked about our words and how it’s not enough to wish someone well who is in need. Or to just ‘feel compassion’ for someone but to not act.
- Are there ways that you have been guilty of this in your life? How?
- How do you think you can figure out if God is calling you to act on something?
- What practical things can you do to further discern God’s will for your life and how He may be calling you to serve (particularly with the poor)?
- Jeff talked about being the kind of people and the kind of church that expresses it faith through love.
- As a Home Church, brainstorm and dream of some ways that the groups can do this together:
- How can we serve the poor together?
- Is there a particular cause we are passionate about?
- Is there a place we can go a volunteer at regularly together (perhaps starting in the fall)?
- What specific action step(s) can we take as a group in order to express our faith in love to those in the world who need it the most?
- Spend some time covering all of this in prayer as a group.
- As a Home Church, brainstorm and dream of some ways that the groups can do this together:
