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Christlife Posture: Submitting to God's Love and Leading

Topic: Identity--My Relational Design

 

Suggested Approach: Choose 1 thing from each of the three boxes

OR Choose 1 from Media or Reflection + 1 from Scripture 

Media Excursions (Watch/read/listen and be ready to discuss Q's)

Images/Short Film based on a Painting

  • Room in New York (John Kaiser) How do the characters in this film based on Edward Hopper’s painting exhibit both the desire for relationship and a resistance to relationship?  How do you see them evidencing God’s relational design in us?

Video Clips

  • Short Movie: Standby (Charlotte Regan) How do these characters exhibit both the desire for relationship and a resistance to relationship?  How do you see them evidencing God’s relational design in us?

  • Skit: The Skinny on Identity (Skit Guys)  We can identify some things about ourselves by thinking about our relational connections, but they don’t define us or completely clear up what our relational design is. If our relational connections and actions don’t define us, what reasons did God have for creating us as relational beings.

  • People React to Being Called Beautiful (SHEA) Why do you think people reacted the way they did? What it about how they looked or about having someone connect to them in that way? How would you have responded? Why?

  • Testimony: Sean Little (I Am Second) This story points out some of the ways we can look for identity in relationships that are important to us.  What are the consequences of that?  If God made us relational beings who desire intimacy with others, what is the right place of relationships in understanding our identity?

  • Testimony: Moriah Peters (I Am Second) In this story, note both positive and negative connections between identity and relationships. How does having her identity anchored in God seem to affect her relational identity?

Song

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Articles ​

Reflection Options  

Journal  (reflect on one or more of these questions)

  • When you think of being created in God’s image, what have you thought that meant?  What are you learning that it means in regard to being a relational being?

  • A. W. Tozer said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” How would you describe God to someone else? Where does the relational aspect of God come in to your description (if it does at all)?

  • How does Jesus reflect the image of God relationally? What does that mean for you?

Quote Interaction (Interact by agreeing, disagreeing or otherwise engaging with the quote/quotes)

  • What if our loneliness is the result not simply of needing a partner but of needing people? We are made in the image of a relational God; it makes sense that we possess the desire to be together. ( Debra Fileta)

  • The divine being is constituted by the communion of the three Trinitarian persons. (Stanley Grenz)

  • I believe that one major reason that the church of Jesus Christ in the United States is very close to being in sheer chaos today is because so many people think themselves as individuals rather than as part of the body of Christ.  Christianity is not “every man for himself;” it’s every man together for Christ.  (Wayne Mack)

  • A happy family is but an earlier heaven. (George Bernard Shaw)

  • We were made for fellowship. There are about 100 “one another’s” in the New Testament, showing that the church is all about community and fellowship and having all things in common. That’s how the first century church grew so rapidly (Acts 2:42-47). (Jack Wellman)

  • Socially, humanity was created for fellowship. This reflects God's triune nature and His love...Every time someone marries, makes a friend, hugs a child, or attends church, he or she is demonstrating the fact that we are made in the likeness of God. (Anthony Hoekema)

  • Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. (C. S. Lewis)

Reading & Reflectionfrom the book, Shaping The Journey of Emerging Adults: 

  • Read “The Christlife in Relationships” (pp. 150-152).  What stands out to you about the section that talks about the communal aspect of living the Christlife? How invested are you in the communal contexts of church, school or neighborhood?

  • MENTOR: Read through the options in chapter 9 for “More Discernment, Intentionality and Reflection Ideas” (pp. 154-162). Which ones would be helpful ideas for you, relationally? Pray and discern if there are any ideas you want to talk over with the person you are mentoring.

  • MENTOR: Look up page “Trusting His Design” (pp. 227-228).  What can you identify about your “design” as a mentor?

Explore Scripture

Meditate on one or more of the following passages. Always look them up in context.  Take some time to really explore the verse in relation to this topic.  Look for insights into what it means to be created in God's image relationally.  Make a note of what you discover to share later.  See "Learn More About Ways to Study Scripture" below for help in getting the most out of the verse.

  • Genesis 1:26-27, Genesis 2:18

  • Matthew 25:31-45

  • John 13:35

  • Romans 12:9-10

  • Ephesians 4:11-16, 25

  • Ephesians 5:21

  • Philippians 2:4

  • 1 Thessalonians 4:9

  • Hebrews 10:24-25

  • 1 Peter 4:8

  • 1 John 1:7

  • I John 4:16-20

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