Outlive Your Life_ You Were Made to Make a Difference - Max Lucado [52]
3. Which needs break your heart the most? Share any statistics you have heard about that specific need, or return to pages 5–6 to review those offered. What words describe how you feel when you hear these numbers?
4. Max listed three questions that rocked his world. How might future generations be disappointed with the way we are responding to today’s needs?
Ideas for Action
• Schedule time with someone you admire who’s making a difference (perhaps the person you mentioned above). Ask these questions: Why did you choose to live this way? What motivates you? What did you have to learn? How did you begin?
• Intentionally expose yourself to a variety of needs. Create a list of ways to get out of your comfort zone and listen to people in need. Reorder your calendar to include projects that meet both local and global needs. Make sure your schedule includes something nearby (such as a neighborhood or community-action project) as well as something with international impact (perhaps a short-term missions trip).
CHAPTER 2: CALLING MR. POT ROAST
Questions for Discussion
1. Think about someone who did something ordinary for you, but it made an extraordinary difference. What small thing could you do that would have a big impact?
2. In what ways were the early disciples ordinary people? How would you have felt if you had been part of the 120 people who heard the words of Jesus just before he ascended (Acts 1:1–11)?
3. What lessons did you learn from the story of Nicholas Winton, who saved so many from the Holocaust? In what ways was he ordinary? What did you think of the fact that he didn’t share the story with anyone until his wife discovered the scrapbook?
4. Review the idea of strengths and weaknesses presented in 2 Corinthians 12:9–10. Remember a time when you felt weak yet God gave you the strength to do something for him. Explain.
5. If Jesus told you to recruit eleven of your ordinary friends and relatives to change the world, whose names would you put on the list? How could your group make a difference right now?
Ideas for Action
• Engage in routine acts of kindness. Apply measurements of time to your service for others. Are you doing something daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly to show compassion and meet needs?
• Take part in random acts of kindness. Don’t forget to work outside your routine as well. When God gives you an unplanned opportunity, react with compassion, and experience the joy of these divine appointments.
• Get involved in radical acts of kindness. Plan an intense, sacrificial, and strategic response to the needs of the world. Think big, get prepared, and enlist others to join you (start with the list of eleven people you created earlier).
CHAPTER 3: LET GOD UNSHELL YOU
Questions for Discussion
1. What habits, attitudes, possessions, and technologies create a clamshell of sorts to seal you off from the needs around you? How can you work around or remove these barriers?
2. Have you experienced what the chapter calls a “compassion attack”? Did you respond by ignoring the need or becoming distracted? Have you responded by trying to meet the need?
3. Describe a time when you saw God work in a sudden and unexpected way. To what extent are you open to the unexpected leadings of God? How could you prepare yourself for those times?
4. Respond to the following questions posed in the chapter:
a. “With whom do you feel most fluent?” To what kinds of people or needs can you most easily relate?
b. “For whom do you feel most compassion?” What kinds of needs touch your heart most deeply?
Ideas for Action
• Respond creatively to the needs around you. Here are a few ideas to get you started. Some people carry around fuel vouchers from the local gas station or free meal coupons from a nearby restaurant to give to people in need. Others have a special fund they are always prepared to use. Some individuals regularly give to a church benevolent fund and refer people to