CONVERSATION STARTERS
Conversation Starters help us dig deeper, connecting Sunday’s sermons with our Monday lives. These prompts have been designed to help Community Groups grow in their relationship with God, with one another, and with their neighbors. Please know that these questions are meant to be a resource to you. You do not have to follow them verbatim or get through them all. We trust you to know your group and to ask the questions based on your group needs.

In Ecclesiastes 12:9-14, a single summary is given for all that has been shared in the book: though the world offers many attempts at wise living, one can only find it in fearing God and keeping His commandments.

1. What stood out to you from Sunday’s sermon?

2. Read Ecclesiastes 12:9-14 aloud and then read the same passage in The Message version. Does The Message version illuminate any part of the text in a new way to you?

3. Since there are so many excellent books, podcasts, blogs etc. around living the Christian life available, to what extent do you lean on these resources vs. the Bible (vs. 11, 12)? How do we find balance here?

4. Share about a time when life events brought disappointment or pain, but you felt God’s care in the midst of the ‘smoke’, even when you couldn’t see or understand why it was happening.

PRAYER PROMPT
Ask the Lord to help us cherish the gift of wisdom He has provided in Ecclesiastes and write it on our hearts and minds. Ask the Lord to help us through His Holy Spirit to fear Him and keep His commandments in all our activity and affections.

Title: Fear God
Scripture: Ecclesiastes12:9-14
Speaker: Brent Nelsen, BrentN@cckc.church

> Wrestle with life’s mystery.

> Fear God despite the mystery.

“Qohelet is wise, to be sure. As he says, pleasure and death are real and are the portion of everyone. But there is a deeper, more fundamental obligation on this earth, which is to fear God and keep his commandments. This is truly everyone’s portion.”
- Peter Enns, Ecclesiastes, The Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary

“There is no answer given to Qohelet as we see given to Job, from God’s mouth, stunning the complainer to silence. Rather the complaints are affirmed as wise, but the reader is challenged to move beyond this state, even against all reason, to one of fear of God and obedience to his commands…. Rather than ‘How dare you question me?’ as we see in Job, here we read, ‘Yes, it is tough, but follow God anyway.’”
- Peter Enns, Ecclesiastes, The Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary

“For the nature of the living God means that the fear which pleases him is not a groveling, shrinking fear. He is no tyrant. It is an ecstasy of love and joy that senses how overwhelmingly kind and magnificent, good and true God is, and that therefore leans on him in staggered praise and faith.” - Michael Reeves, Rejoice and Tremble