2024
Another in the Fire
Passage: Daniel 3:1-8, 16-27
SERMON OUTLINE:
1. Their Fire (Daniel 3)
2. Raging Fires (hard persecution around the world)
3. Our Fires (soft persecution)
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
Describe and discuss what it means to live as an exile.
Read Daniel 3:1-8, 16-27. What challenges, encourages, or sparks questions for you in these passages? What phrases stand out to you that help shape your understanding of God’s character and your identity as a child of God?
In verse 17, we hear how these three men remained obedient and faithful to the first commandment in Exodus 20:3. They were given an ultimatum, assimilate or remain loyal to God. How might we be confronted with this same question today? How did they answer? What was required of them in their answer?
In the sermon, Patrick suggested learning and leaning in to an awareness of persecution happening around the world. What hinders you from an awareness of persecution and what practices have helped you learn and lean into caring for the global church facing hard persecution?
In consideration of the types of persecution we often face in Western cultures, discuss these two questions: 1) Where do we get our worth? 2) Are we okey with weakness? How do your answers to these questions prepare you in facing persecution in its varied forms (stereotyping, vilifying, marginalizing, criminalizing, hard persecuting)?
PRAYER
Share with your group how they can be praying for you: what is weighing on you from this past week? What are you praising God for from this past week?
Zephaniah 3:17 / “The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”
Romans 12:2 / “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”