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.

1. Has there been a time when God did abundantly more than you asked or imagined? Encourage each person to share here, even if it takes some time.

2. In Ephesians 3:16, Paul says his prayer is for the believers to have spiritual strength in their inner being. What is one area of your life where you long for more spiritual strength: encouragement, faith, discipline, etc.?

3. Do you see yourself focusing on physical strength and healing in your daily thoughts and prayers as much as spiritual strength? Does it matter?

4. According to Ephesians 3:20-21, when God does a mighty work in us, what is his desired result?
Follow up - is this type of glory any different than how you see glory portrayed in our culture?

PRAYER PROMPT:
Remember the stories people shared of God doing more than we had ever imagined and give him praise for what he has done in the past, and expectation to see him work for his glory in the future.

Title: Grounded in Love
Scripture: Ephesians 3:14-21
Speaker: Gabe Coyle, GabeC@cckc.church

> Does God actually love me?

“Love cannot exist so long as it remains an object to be possessed. It is born only in the letting go of all grasping and being grasped.” - Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes

> We cannot grasp Christ’s inexhaustible love alone.

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I’d lack’d any thing.
A guest I answer’d, worthy to be here:
Love said, you shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
- George Herbert

> We will only experience Christ’s love in areas of life we’ve surrendered.

“...their grasping this cannot be simply a mental exercise. Clearly, it is personal knowledge, and, although it undoubtedly includes insight into the significance of God’s love in the plan of redemption, it cannot be reduced simply to intellectual reflection. Paul wants them to be empowered so as to grasp the dimensions of that love in their own experience.” – O’Brien, Pillar Commentary

Love, after all, is the only way God can be known. In the stillness of prayer, the heart and the will can accomplish what human reason never could attain…“Love,” says Merton, “enters the darkness and lays hands upon what is its own! Love astounds the intellect with vivid reports of a transcendent Actuality which minds can only know, on earth, by a confession of ignorance. And so, when the mind admits that God is too great for our knowledge, love replies: ‘know Him.’” - Lane, Solace of Fierce Landscapes