Recap: Often at Christmas there’s a lot of talk about getting and giving. Sometimes the focus is all on getting, materialism and selfishness; but often there’s just as big a focus on giving (maybe even more). Sometimes, even in our giving, it can be about what we’re “getting”. Getting approval, worth, identity, love. Misplaced meaning often leads to missing meaningful moments. We need to flip Christmas upside down and we do that when we move our focus off getting and giving and onto grace and gratitude. When we experience God’s grace it leads to gratitude and gratitude will lead to giving with right motives. We give from approval, from our identity, from our position as God’s beloved child. When we live with gratitude and that kind of generosity, we’ll “get” every good thing that God has for us & we’ll “get” Him, which is the best Christmas gift you could ask for.

Questions:
(1) What’s one thing you remember really wanting for Christmas as a kid? What’s one thing you’d really like to get this year?
(2) What do you enjoy most about giving gifts to others?
(3) How do you think you could give with wrong motives? How does giving gifts to others sometimes do stuff for us that is about our “getting” (approval, love, worth, identity)?
(4) Read Luke 19:1-10. What had Zacchaeus’ focus been on before this encounter with Jesus? When Jesus engages Zacchaeus in conversation, what’s the responses of everyone involved & why (Jesus, the crowd, Zacchaeus)?
(5) Jesus doesn’t ask Zacchaeus to give his money away, but he does. Why? In the message on Sunday we said that “radical grace should lead to radical gratitude”. How do you see that here & have you ever seen that in your world?
(6) From not For. When we understand God’s grace & love it allows us to live from our identity as His child, from approval by Him, from our position. There’s a big difference in living from not for approval, identity, position. What kind of freedom should that bring you in how you live day to day?
(7) When we’re trying to get more, or prove ourselves, or give for what it gets us we live with misplaced meaning. When we live in light of God’s grace & with gratitude for it we can live freely and enjoy the moments. What’s one tangible way you could strive to do that this Christmas?
(8) This week, take some time to reflect on God’s grace and then focus on gratitude. Write a gratitude list. In gratitude, give freely to someone else and make sure you don’t “get” anything from it.
(9) Remember, you do “get” something. You actually “get” everything. You “get” God. And with that relationship with God, you get everything, because everything is at His disposal.