Group Fellowship

Summer 2003

God’s Questions No. 1 – Where Are You?

This week we begin a series of Fellowship Group notes looking at the first five questions that God asks. And perhaps also the first questions that God would want to ask us? But it is also the first of five weeks written by a different author to normal!!!

Welcome

• Play the question game! The aim of the game is only to speak in questions. Two people ‘go first’ and start conversing in questions – as soon as one makes a statement or pauses for too long – they are replaced by the person sitting next to them – so there is always two people conversing in questions. See if you can find your champion!

Worship

• Read Exodus 33:7-11
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• Be amazed for the relationship we can have with God.

Word

• What can be the purpose of asking questions?
• (As asked by a policeman, an examiner, a teacher, a parent, a child)
• We are very good at asking questions of God, or about God.
• What ones do you ask? (What about the ‘what if…’ questions? Why?) Charlie Brown once went to bed in a reflective mood: Sometimes I lie awake at night and ask: ‘Is life a multiple choice test or is it a true or false test?’ Then a voice comes to me out of the dark: ‘We hate to tell you this but life is a thousand word essay!’
• Why do we ask these questions? (e.g. Fear) What questions have you had where you want a ‘quick fix’? Remember the old Gideon Bible’s introductory notes… where to look when you need…
• As a church what questions do we try and answer? (Looking to be relevant – as asked by the ‘culture’)
• Asking questions is one thing: answering God’s questions is another.
• Why does God ask questions?
• He is not the great answerer, because He Himself is the Answer. And he asks us questions, not as the accusing interrogations of the prosecuting lawyer but the entreaties of a loving Father.

Where are you?

• So we come to the first question as discovered in Genesis 3. Read verses 1-10
• Why were Adam and Eve hiding?
• What had changed? What were they now missing out on? v8
• Adam & Eve now felt shameful…
• What is the difference between healthy and unhealthy shame?
• Where do you go when you feel shame?
• They also hid because they were afraid
• Take a look at a Bible hero who also ran away when he was afraid – 1 Kings 19:1-10
• How do you react in situations you fear?

  It is also easy to hide within our religion.

• Is that what Jonah did when he couldn’t believe God would forgive the people from Ninevah, was Gideon just hiding from the Midianites or was it also a symbolic hiding place from God himself (Judges 6)
• Has God given you a hatful of talents? He has – every one of us is multi–multi-talented.
• But have we dug a hole, buried our talents and then chosen to climb in the hole ourselves? Or at least hid behind a tree?
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• How do we climb out of the hole? How can we help others come back out into the cool light of day?

  And the question that God asks us today is still the same…

   Where are you?

• Is this the question that the ‘Prodigal’ Father kept asking – not because he wanted to accuse or punish or test – but because he wanted to restore the relationship?
• To be told you are lost is to be paid a strange compliment. It implies that you are valuable; it assumes you belong somewhere and it strongly suggests that someone is missing you and may well be looking for you! God is calling out ‘Where are you’ – will we hear the voice…more to the point do we want to be found and to follow that voice wherever it may take us?

Witness

• As well as your normal prayer – pray for each other that we will all ‘live in the light’ that we will not be hiding any part of ourselves from God
• Give thanks to Jesus who chose to endure the utmost shame
• Give thanks to God the Father who asks the question not because he doesn’t know where we are – but because he wants to run to us, to throw a party, clothe us and restore us to full amazing relationship!