Week Three. 
GOD WITH US
God is with us in our decisions.
This week as we learn more about what it means that God Is with Us, Immanuel, we are a circling around the question of what it looks like to incorporate God into our decisions. Studying through Psalm 23, Pastor Josh teaches there is a peace and a rest that come from being in the presence of the Lord, even in our decisions.
–Dive In!
Do you have an example of when you knew God’s presence was involved in a bigger life decision and when it wasn’t?
How did you know?
Pastor Josh seemed to focus on being in the presence of the Lord as the key to operating from a position of confidence in making decisions that are good and righteous.
Leader-
Psalm 23 has many declaration statements. These declaration statements are statements about God’s character that David believes to be completely true, but he starts out by declaring God’s position in his life. David is believing that God provides all these good things over his life, but it starts with David humbly saying that he is a sheep and looks to only Yahweh as his shepherd.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he refreshes my soul.”
Pastor Josh said God can still redeem a decision, but it doesn’t mean that God guided that decision.
- Share a time when God may have redeemed a decision you have made or prayerfully consider if there is a decision, He wants you to allow Him to make right.
-Leader
As Pastor Josh said, the right choice is rarely easy, not obvious, and usually not culturally acceptable. The same is true for the process of redeeming a decision that was made without God’s name on it.
Beginning to seek after the presence of the Lord, even in all our decisions, begins with the same heart posture David had at the begging of Psalm 23. “The Lord is my shepherd”.
He started with a declaration, which was then led by action.
David gives us more insight on how to be in the presence of the Lord, even during a dark valley later in Psalm 27:4
“One thing I ask from the LORD, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.”
David was anywhere but a green pasture when he wrote this as it is believed he was in exile on the run from King Saul. However, he seems to know exactly how to find peace and rest and make decisions that Jesus would put His name on by desiring, above all else, to be in the presence of the Lord. David’s desire was just to be in the presence of the Lord and to behold his beauty. There was nothing that held greater weight for David than God Himself, but David also put into action seeking after God.
- What are ways that you seek after God and His Kingdom?
-Leader
If we want to seek out God ways, His peace, His guidance, and His Kingdom, how do we get there? Most of Jesus’s teachings were very contrary to the ways of culture, and the same is true for us today.
Jesus said that His Kingdom is not of this world, but often would use parables, approximately thirteen of them in the New Testament, to describe what the Kingdom of God was like.
Jesus used multiple word pictures to describe His Kingdom, but each one referred to something growing or “coming to life.” He also spoke in Matthew about the “worries of this world that we sometimes allow to persuade us to make decisions that do not foster the goodness of God.
Matthew 6:31-33
31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
From the begging pages of the Bible in Eden and throughout Jesus’s ministry, humans are given an opportunity to create life alongside God.
- What’s something you’ve been seeking after that Jesus would say is “a worry of this world” and how instead can that worry, or need be looked at from a Kingdom perspective? *Think- “if I put my time and effort into this, will it bring forth life or does it bring forth fear and separation”?
“Lord, let it be said of us today, that one thing that we desire above all else, is to seek after making decisions that foster your presence for your great names sake.”
Amen
Bonus questions
What represented the Lord’s presence in the Old Testament?
What or who houses the presence of the Lord today?
*Fast track tips*
- Partner with David and say” I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.” (Psalm 27:13). Look for the goodness of God around you and specifically in others.
- 2. Seek after a Kingdom perspective with humility.
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. (Philippians 2:5-7)
- Consider ways to “breathe life” into something (bringing forth the goodness of God) in your life that seems to be dying or seek to find out if there is something God wants you to put to death (spiritually) in order to bring forth life?