One of the things we do as a church is meet with our men once a month to challenge them to live and act as godly men. Over the years, we have developed this list of questions to aid our authentic pursuit of each other. We just began using them again last month and it was a great time of encouraging each other.
In light of recent news items, as well as a remarkable discussion in my class at TBS last week, I thought I would post these here. Feel free to use, adapt, adopt, or ignore. But, by all means, do not feel free to grow lax in your mortification of sin!
I will post part II of this list tomorrow, Lord willing.
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We agree to give one another free reign to ask any or all of these questions to one another for the purpose of aiding our efforts to "live holy in this present generation." We do not expect to gain salvation or favor from God by keeping these outward standards, but prayerfully anticipate that they will be another tool used of the Holy Spirit to put sin to death in us. We also agree to add, change, and / or delete this list of questions as we think necessary.
1. Is the Bible living to you? Are you being faithful to read it with understanding every day?
2. Have you confessed all known sin to the Lord?
3. Have you been jealous, critical, irritable, touchy, impatient, or distrustful?
4. Have you been grumbling or complaining often?
5. Is there anyone you currently fear, resent, easily criticize, dislike or disregard? What are you doing about it?
6. Whom have you offended? Does anyone need you to say to them, “Please forgive me?” Is there someone you need to speak to about their sin?
7. Have you prayed about all the money you've spent? Are your resources controlling you or are you, by God¹s grace, controlling them?
8. Are you consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that you are better than you really are?
9. Have you been brutally honest in all your words and actions? Have you been exaggerating?
10. Have you been preaching justification by grace through faith alone to your heart? Have you been presuming on that justification, “sinning in order that grace might abound?”
11. Have you gossiped? Have you misused your tongue?
This is very useful. Thanks, Paul.
ReplyDeleteThanks for letting me sit in on that remarkable class!
ReplyDeleteCG: It would have been a much better class had you done the talking! You are very gracious.
ReplyDeleteDarryl: Thanks for the encouragement!
Thanks for posting this brother - great resource. How do you get guys together to do this? Do you just encourage them to pair up, or group up in three's, etc? How often do groups meet and go through these questions?
ReplyDeleteJason -
ReplyDeleteHey brother!
Well, our church meets every Wednesday night to pray and have kids/youth ministries. One Wednesday night each month we cancel all that and the men meet with the men, ladies with the ladies.
We use these questions in that group time with the men.
They come in and out of circulation over the years, but we are back to using them again lately.
PWM
We've been meeting regularly and going over this lis--its been great. Thanks for publishing this resource.
ReplyDelete