21 Oct At the Movies 2018 | Week 1 “The Greatest Showman & Distorted Pursuits”
Leaders: A great way to be updated on important info is our Waters Church Small Group Leader Facebook page. If you are on FB and are not getting notifications from this page, please let me know so I can add you.
Operation Christmas Child Boxes – Due back no later than November 4th! Please remind you members and to make them aware that they can pay for the shipping online so they can track their boxes! The cost to donate shipping is $9. They can make a check payable to Waters Church with a note in the memo if they decide not to pay online.
Night To Shine: You can register as a volunteer, caregivers and guest can also register here as well (ALL volunteers are required to go through the Background check, the cost is $12, there is a link on the Volunteer registration for you to follow):
waterschurch.nighttoshine.com
Trunk or Treat – There is still time to pick a theme and register your trunk! PLEASE NOTE: Only one person (leader or apprentice) per group needs to register.
Register Here For:
Register Here For:
Continue to pray for the Diamond Hill Property for Woonsocket so they can have a permanent home.
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Key Verse: Genesis 29
The story, the Greatest Showman, opens and closes with the same line:
“It’s everything you ever want, it’s everything you ever need and it’s standing right in front of you, this is where you want to be”
He was a poor boy from the ”wrong side of the tracks” and aims his life in one high pursuit of fame, fortune and applause and the cheers of people but finds out in the end that it is not all he ever wanted and not all he ever needed and it can be standing right in front of you and it is not where you want to be. It is part of the human condition. We set these things up as if they are going to give our lives meaning and in God’s grace he sometimes gives them to us and then we get them and we are like, ‘nah’ and instead of stopping them, we turn to something else and think, ‘that’s got to be it now’.
Q. What can you identify as everything you ever wanted and everything you ever needed?
P.T.’s story is a lot like Leah of the Bible. What happened in her past set her up for an eternal chase for the love of a man.
Leah was hated, she is in a loveless marriage and she wants love. We all want love. Whether it is romantic love, or attention and affection of a mother or father or child or affection of adoring crowds as in the case of P.T. Barnum. In America, we have taken the idea of romantic love and deified it. It is not enough to be married, we need that marriage to be everything we ever wanted. Maybe it is not romantic love but just someone to do life with. We don’t want to be alone. We want to know we are worth something.
Leah had done nothing to be hated by her husband, it was what others had done to her. Prior to this, the story goes back to when Jacob stole his bother Esau’s birthright by deceiving their father. Then Jacob found a woman he wanted to marry, Rachel and her father had deceived Jacob into marrying Leah. Eventually he had both of them as wives but he loved Rachel and hated Leah.
Leah’s pain sows seeds in her heart to undo what others have done to her. Just as P.T Barnum sets out to undo the rejection of the father of the woman he married. He is chasing the acceptance of those who reject him.
1. The Pain of Our Past Can Distort the Pursuits of Our Present.
If we are not careful, we will let what someone said about us, shape what we do. Before we know it we are living the life of someone else’s rejection instead of living the life of our Father’s affection. Pains of our past can sour us from something that could be good for us.
Q. How have you let what someone said or thought about you change how you pursued something? What is something from your past that gets in the way of what God has for you?
IDOL: A GOOD THING TURNED INTO THE ULTIMATE THING.
Something we think that if we don’t have it then we are worthless.
Jacob feels he is not getting what he deserves and turns the affection for this woman (Rachel) into an unhealthy affection in his heart. This is idolatry.
Q. What are some things in your life that you could be a danger of becoming things that makes you feel worthy?
2. Distorted Pursuits Can Never Satisfy Our Deepest Needs.
Leah decides she is going to have a son and God gives her four sons. She thinks she is going to win her husbands approval.
It does not work and Leah’s work and performance will not undo her past.
Q. What have you pursued in your life that you realized was not really satisfying and why?
3. The Answer to Distorted Pursuits is to Find Ourselves Pursued by God.
Then Leah realizes that what she does will never be enough and lays down her idol and praises God.
“THIS TIME I WILL PRAISE THE LORD”
There is a love that is made for you for all eternity and it is only found in Jesus.
Q. What, if anything, is stopping you from allowing God to pursue you and letting his love be enough?
IN JESUS, GOD OFFERS ALL THE WE EVER WANTED AND ALL THE LOVE WE WILL EVER NEED. HE IS STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF US.
PRAY FOR EACH OTHER, THE LOST, WOONSOCKET AND OTHER UPCOMING CAMPUSES, THE CHURCH, THE NATION AND LEADERS AND 15 WISHES AND GUATEMALA MISSION. ALSA PRAY FOR NIGHT TO SHINE, AND THOSE IN THE COMMUNITY THAT COME TO TRUNK OR TREAT .
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