Joshua House Small Group Discussion Guide

---

Joshua House Small Group Discussion Guide Adulting Series: Parents Mark 3:20-22, 31-35

Teaching Summary This past Sunday at Joshua House, Jessica continued in the Adulting series with the issue of Parents and how to start acting like a grown up in how we relate to parents while pursuing God’s plan/way for our lives.

Introduction We all have parents or someone that we’ve looked to for guidance, advice, support, and direction. There is often a great benefit from following good advice and taking good direction from our parents. Often their counsel can be helpful and may indeed line up with God’s best for us. The tension young adults readily feel and struggle with how to hear and obey God’s voice when it is contradictory to our parents wishes. Tonight we’re going to discuss when Jesus was faced with the same situation.

Getting into the Text As a bit of background to this text, Jesus has been performing miracles and teaching throughout the countryside. Crowds are beginning to gather wherever he happens to be. Some come for his healing. Some come for his teaching. Some come for both. What makes the situation so tense is the nature of Jesus’ teaching. He is challenging the way his people have been pursuing God. He is challenging some core values of the Jewish religion. This makes for quite a stir as the Jewish faith was a cultural, economic, and political institution for the Jewish people. It is causing a raucous and lots of attention is on Jesus. Could someone please read Mark 3:20-22? • • •

Who comes to rebuke Jesus in these verses? (Jesus’ family, Pharisees-religious elite, teachers of the law) What things has Jesus been doing that make his family and the leaders of the Jewish people so upset? (healing people, teaching controversial things, doing radical new things) Why do you think his family has rebuked him and called him crazy? (maybe they think he is crazy, maybe they are nervous about the popularity, nervous about the leaders/religious crowd, freaked out about the miracles and what it could lead to) Connection to today: • Would anyone like to share about a time where a parent or boss or someone above you confronted you about something you were doing? How did the conversation go? • Has anyone ever been trying to do something good and it been seen as wrong or questionable? What was that experience like?

Finding Ourselves in the Text •

•

How do you think Jesus’ followers/disciples felt after Jesus’ parents and the religious elite rebuked your leader? (maybe felt embarrassed, maybe worried you were following the wrong person, nervous) What kind of reaction do you think the disciples expected out of Jesus? (maybe a rebuke in turn, maybe a long explanation of why he is doing thing, maybe obedience to his mother and family, maybe submission to the traditionalists in the crowd) Could someone please read verses 31-35?

•

•

How do you think Jesus’ mother and family felt when they heard what Jesus said? How do you think the crowd felt? The religious people? How do you think other parents in the crowd felt hearing this? (rejected, confused, indignant, angry, worried that Jesus is a revolutionary who doesn’t care about family) Jesus poses the scenario that we all enviably face regarding listening to God or listening to voices we trust or normally trust. What was Jesus saying is the “will of God” in this passage? (teaching about this new way of living, doing miracles, healing people, etc.) Connection to today: • Would anyone like to share about a time when you were embarrassed because of what someone said about you? It could be a true thing or a false thing they said about you. What feelings went through your heart? What did you want to do? • Has there ever been a time when it would have been easier to “go with the flow” and you decided not to?

The Challenge from the text • •

What is Jesus challenging the crowd and the disciples to do? (reconsider what it means to follow God/do God’s will, follow him above anyone else) How will this be a difficult challenge for people to follow? (figuring out what it means to do God’s will is not always easy, family/parents may feel rejected, the traditions you could easily settle into are always a challenge to resist)

Connection to today: • What are things that God might be calling you to, that might cause your parents to say, “you are out of your mind”? Do you feel like it is the will of the Father in Heaven? • How can we help each other hear what the Father might be saying to us? • What is the most difficult part in following God over and above what you parents might be asking/advising you to do? • Is there any “parental advice” or “parental vision for your life” that you believe may not be right for you? Is there any chance that the dream your parents have for you is in conflict with what God wants for you? Have you taken the time to see whether what God is saying lines up or contradicts what they’ve envisioned?