WEEK 8 : Ready for Action
Icebreaker: Play 2 or 3 rounds of Reverse Charades. Hint: select the category of “animals” or “emotions.” One person acts while the rest of the group has two minutes to guess as many of the words as they can.
Pray: Holy Spirit, would you speak to us and teach us today, helping us to surrender our will and forming us to be like Jesus.
In charades, you have to be ready for action. As soon as you see a word, you need to put movement to it so others can guess it. In today’s passage, Peter calls all believers to be ready for action.
Read 1 Peter 3:13-22.
1 Peter 3:15 is a great verse to memorize. Post it somewhere that you will see it often this week, perhaps on a mirror, kitchen counter, or the dashboard of your car.
1. What is the reason for the hope in you?
2. How hard is it for you to tell others about your hope in Jesus? Is it hard to retain gentleness and respect when you do so?
3. We are often so afraid to tell others about Jesus. Go back and reread 1 Peter 3:13-16 with the perspective of entering a situation where you want to tell someone about Jesus. What new insight do you gain?
It’s easy to get bogged down in the rest of this passage. This is a difficult piece of Scripture and even scholars aren’t completely sure what Peter means in v.19-21. It’s important when we get to something in the Bible that we don’t understand, that we remember the big picture of Scripture and the larger meaning of the passage. We know through the Bible that God is on mission to redeem all people back to himself. Therefore, we can see here that Jesus died for all, no matter how righteous or ungodly. We are saved through the death and resurrection of Jesus, who has power over Heaven and earth. We see the importance of baptism as a step of being grafted into the family of God.
Throughout Acts, we read of the immediate correlation between faith in Jesus and baptism. It is clear that once one believes, he/she should be baptized.
Read Acts 2:38-41, Acts 8:12, 36-38, Acts 10:47-48, and Acts 22:16.
4. Share your baptism story in a minute or less. What drove you to make that decision? What was significant about the experience? (If you haven’t been baptized since placing your faith in Jesus, visit mcc.church/beliefs and read our baptism statement and pray for wisdom on if God is calling you to take that step.) Baptism is also a great witness toward unbelievers. If you choose to get baptized, who could you invite to come support you at your baptism who might not yet know Jesus?
Read Acts 9:1-19 about the conversion of Saul (Paul).
5. Picture the role of Annanias. Describe the faith he must have had to approach Saul and lay hands on him. What do you think it would have been like to witness Saul’s conversion first-hand like that?
6. What do you think Saul’s 1-minute testimony would have sounded like?
Read Acts 9:20-22.
7. How long did Saul wait from his belief in Jesus before going on to tell others about him? There is no spiritual “holding period” that says we are unqualified to share the gospel until we’ve walked with Jesus for a certain amount of time. Whether you are new to KNOWing Jesus, or have been a believer for decades, we all should be declaring what he has done for us!
Read Acts 9:23-31.
8. What do you notice about the progression of fear in this passage? Who or what should we fear?
9. What would it take for our church to look like the church described in v. 31?
Holy Spirit, prepare us for action! Jesus, you are on the throne as Lord of our lives. Prepare us to give an answer for the hope we have in you with gentleness and respect. Rid us of the fear of people or our own inadequacy, and help us to only fear you. Grow our church by adding believers to your family. Use us to help bring others to KNOW you. Strengthen and encourage us, Holy Spirit!