Session 2: Ironman Week 1 Notes

Intro: Checking in with the returners, meeting the new guys, asking the question, “Why are we coming to this?” God has given us gifts, talents, things we don’t even know we have and He wants us to discover those things and pour that out to one another.

Video – Bruce Almighty scene: Bruce (Jim Carrey) drives to a warehouse and encounters God (Morgan Freeman) for the first time.

What we think about when we think about God is interesting. It is clear that each and everyone us is becoming a certain type of person. Each day we are growing and becoming someone.

Last session we talked about the heart, which is the place that all of our thoughts, words and actions flow. Proverbs 4:23 “Above all else guard your heart for it is the well-spring of life.”

If we don’t guard our heart we cannot be sure of what will come out of it. And one of the most shaping actions of our heart is our view of God. What’s our view of God? Because God knows us.

A.W. Tozer – What comes to mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.”

When you hear “God” what image of God comes into your mind?

• Judge
• Referee
• Light
• Nature
• Warrior
• Equalizer

We all have a God box…meaning we all have an idea or image or word about God and we try to fit into a box. And we are comfortable with whatever it is as long as it fits in the box. Who created the box? We did. When we create a God box we are limiting Him. What life helps us realizes is that God in a box is really a manageable deity. What happens when take God out of the box?

Agnostic – “Without knowledge” or “I don’t know” There will be some level of God that we will never know.

God is a verb and we often treat Him like a noun.

Take a half hour this week and think of your life in different stages and think about the impressionable encounters that have seared an image of God in your mind.

Passages to go deeper: Isaiah 40:13-15, 18-26, 28-31; 54:10. What stirs in your heart when you hear these words/images.