Outlive Your Life_ You Were Made to Make a Difference - Max Lucado [54]
• There are many ways to partner with a team that is already in tune with and actively responding to people’s needs. Consider your own area of giftedness, and select a ministry that could use your talents to help others.
• Gather your neighbors to brainstorm needs in your area. Develop a plan of action that you can accomplish as a group.
CHAPTER 6: OPEN YOUR DOOR; OPEN YOUR HEART
Questions for Discussion
1. Do you know someone who is a great example of hospitality? What makes that person seem hospitable?
2. How are you currently using your home as a tool in helping others? How could you make your kitchen, your backyard, your living room, or even your dorm room into a place of intentional hospitality?
3. What keeps you from inviting others into your home? How could you remove those barriers? In what ways do you too often listen to the “Martha Stewart voice” and miss the point of hospitality?
4. Read each of the following passages about hospitality: Acts 16:15, 34; Acts 21:8; Acts 28:2, 7; Romans 12:13; 1 Timothy 5:10; Titus 1:8; Hebrews 13:2; 1 Peter 4:9–10; and 3 John 1:8. How should we view hospitality in light of these verses?
5. Name some people you would like to invite into your home soon. Set a time in the next two weeks to open your door to one or more of these people.
Ideas for Action
• Start a routine of hospitality in your life so it is always happening. Designate one meal a week as your “hospitality meal,” and always plan to have people over. For example, you could invite friends every week to watch a ball game—an open invitation to enjoy your hospitality and your television. Or prepare a pot of soup every Saturday night. Set up a hospitality station on your front porch or in your driveway, and serve bowls of friendship to your neighbors.
• Intentionally include others at your special family events. Invite a single person over for Christmas Eve dinner. Have a family in need join you for Thanksgiving, or take the turkey and have the meal in their home. On Mother’s Day celebrate some of the older women in church who never had children or whose children are far away. Keep an eye on individuals who sit alone or have yet to make friends in your church, and invite them over for a meal (even if you get take-out food on the way home).
CHAPTER 7: SEE THE NEED; TOUCH THE HURT
Questions for Discussion
1. “Human hurt is not easy on the eye.” Tell of a time you encountered suffering that was painful to observe. Describe a time you were hurting and someone made you think he or she really saw you.
2. What does it communicate to people in need, especially those who are not beautiful, when you look directly at them, into their eyes?
3. Take note of each meaningful touch you find in the following miracles of Jesus: Matthew 9:20–22; Mark 1:40–45; Mark 7:32–35; Luke 8:51–55; Luke 13:11–13; John 9:1–7. Did Jesus need to touch people to heal them? Why do you think some form of touch was part of each healing?
4. Peter and John gave more than the money the crippled beggar asked for in Acts 3. What resources do you have—beyond money—that you could give to people in need?
5. For Peter and John the strategy of kind eyes meeting desperate ones and strong hands helping weak ones unleashed a miracle of God. How could you live out this strategy?
Ideas for Action
• Take time this week to look people in their eyes. When you talk to someone you know is needy, maintain eye contact with him or her much longer than you normally would. Reflect on how this helps you really see people’s needs in a new way. It will have greater impact if you keep a journal or write a summary at the end of the week, describing how this experiment affected your perspective.
• This week, go out of your way to visit a person in need. When someone you know is in the hospital, visit that person to show you care.