14 Sep
2025

Your Labor Is Not in Vain

Passage: 1 Corinthians 15:51-58

“I still can hardly believe it. I, with shriveled, bent fingers, atrophied muscles, gnarled knees, and no feeling from the shoulders down, will one day have a new body, light, bright, and clothed in righteousness—powerful and dazzling. Can you imagine the hope this gives someone spinal-cord injured like me? Or someone who is cerebral palsied, brain-injured, or who has multiple sclerosis? Imagine the hope this gives someone who is manic-depressive. No other religion, no other philosophy promises new bodies, hearts, and minds. Only in the Gospel of Christ do hurting people find such incredible hope.”   —Joni Erickson Tada, Heaven

SERMON OUTLINE
1. What does God promise us?
2. What does God ask of us?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: 

In what ways have you invested or seen others invest in pursuing longevity or meaning? What does this pursuit reveal of humanity’s desire for more?

Read 1 Corinthians 15:51-58. What does this passage show you about God’s character and about being his follower? What challenges, encourages, or sparks questions for you in this passage?

Christian hope is the confident expectation that God will fulfill and keep his promises. What promises of God do we receive in this passage?
How does confidence in God keeping these specific promises equip you to live faithfully and hope-filled today?
In response to his faithfulness, God calls us to live according to his ways. This includes believing in Jesus’s victory for you and trusting that our labor in the Lord is not in vain as we…
– love our neighbor
– do good work well
– practice generosity
– impact the next generation
– show the gospel in action with our lives
In this season of your life, how are you participating in this Christian vocation well and what areas could you give more attention to?
Theologian N.T Wright writes, “How God will take our prayer, our art, our love, our writing, our political action, our music, our honesty, our daily work, our pastoral care, our teaching, our whole selves – how God will take this and weave its varied strands into the glorious tapestry of his new creation, we can at present have no idea. That he will do so is part of the truth of the resurrection, and perhaps one of the most comforting parts of all.” We are all called to use our time, resources, and energy to point people to Jesus. Where in your life is this currently difficult to do and where is it come easier to do? Spend time praying for one another in these various areas of life.
What from this passage and this discussion is something you want to put into practice or be more aware of this week or praise God for?

 

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?

Acts 2:24: “But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him”