What you will need: A Bible or your Bible app, a notebook, pen, and highlighter. The verses highlighted below are linked so that you can easily access them during your study time.
Jump Start
1. Share one situation that you were unhappy about the circumstance, but which worked out for the best.
2. Read Psalms 118:1 and 100:4. What is the “admission cost” to be happy, blessed, and in God’s presence? Why should we be thankful and offer praises to God? List one attribute of God, or one of His promises, that makes you especially thankful.
3. Read Psalms 118:4 and 71:23. What command do you see? If you don’t want to praise out loud, what does Psalm 51:15 encourage us to do?
4. When we read the Psalm for grateful praise (Psalm 100), we are reminded to come before God joyfully, worshipfully, aware of Him as our Creator, and full of thanksgiving and praise because He has been so faithful to us. When we approach God, the Bible tells us to do it with thanksgiving and gratitude. He has been so good to us in ways both seen and unseen. Read this Psalm together in your group as an offering of praise. Consider reading this Psalm daily with your family through the Thanksgiving holiday. Make genuine thankfulness an ongoing part of your relationship with Him.
Deeper
5. Read the following verses. Briefly list what promise or rescue is mentioned in each “surrounded” situation. Note your favorite or the most impactful one for your life:
- Hebrews 13:5-6 (loneliness, fear)
- 2 Peter 2:9 (all kinds of trials: marriage, financial, illness)
- 1 Corinthians 10:13 (temptation)
- 2 Corinthians 12:9 (failure)
- Psalm 118:5 (distressed, depressed, anxious)
- Psalm 82:3 (weak, fatherless, oppressed)
- Psalms 127:2 (Sleep)
- Philippians 4:19 (need)
- 1 John 1:9 (guilt and sin)
- James 1:5 (confusion, need direction)