Series:  HE GETS US

Topic: Jesus Gets Exhaustion

Passage:  Matthew 11:28-30

SCRIPTURE:

• What does this passage reveal about Jesus?
• Read out loud Genesis 2:1-3. If God needed to rest, why do we think we do not?

ACCOUNTABILITY:

• On a scale of 1 to 10, how busy or stretched do you feel right now? Another way to look at this question, is what level of margin are you experiencing?
• Talk about a time when you carried a heavy burden.
• What describes a “weary soul?”
• What does “rest” look like for you?
• Who do you know who appears to be living a balanced life and you might consider being a “rested soul?”

TRANSFORMATION:

• Is there something you can remove for the sake of simplicity and spiritual health for the duration of the He Gets Us study?
• Think back on the last seven days. When did you feel rested? What made that time restful? When were you most weary? Why?
• Spend some time talking about the Judy Brown poem below. How does it relate to your life?

What makes a fire burn is space between the logs, a breathing space.

Too much of a good thing, too many logs packed in too tight can douse the flames almost as surely as a pail of water would. So building fires requires attention to the spaces in between, as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build open spaces in the same way we have learned to pile on the logs, then we can come to see how it is fuel, and the absence of the fuel together, that make the fire possible.

We only need to lay a log lightly from time to time. A fire grows simply because the space is there, with openings in which the flame that knows just how it wants to burn can find its way.

Judy Brown from The Sea Accepts all Rivers

“It is our best work that God wants, not the dregs of our exhaustion. I think He must prefer quality to quantity.” George MacDonald (1824-1905)