Discussion Questions

• As you think about the different evaluation question about what you actually value and what is actually your purpose in life, what are your answers?

  • Where did you experience loss in 2020?  What does that tell you?

  • What priorities stayed priorities in 2020?  What does that tell you?

• When you catch yourself daydreaming about 2021, what are your daydreams?  What does that tell you?

• Does it feel too dramatic to paint a picture of the world that is cosmic in scale and dire in consequence?  To say (and believe) that Satan and the world are trying to woo us into throwing our lives away and abandoning our faith?

  • What would change for you if you truly believed that?

  • How would you interact with the four items Peter lays out (prayer, love, hospitality, and serving)?

• Share a time when you experienced the joyful worship of having been saved.

• Share a time when you experienced the struggle of being in the process of being saved.

• In looking ahead to 2021, where do you think God’s purpose of his glorying through the saving death of Jesus is leading you to be giving help in the “holding on” of being saved, and where do you think he’s leading you to be getting help in staying the course of faith?

Look at the Bible

• 4:11b is the end of a number of Peter’s sections in 1 Peter.  In those sections, we see themes of judgement, suffering for good (which, I think, is Peter’s way of saying, “hold on”), evangelism, and rejoicing in salvation.  Discuss how you see those themes happening today.

• You can’t be in 1 Peter and not look at 2:19-25.  How do you see that happening for yourself today as you say, “no” to creating your own purpose, and say, “yes” to God’s purpose of glorifying himself through saving you?