The Good and Beautiful Life, Chapter 1 – How to Ruin Your Life, Discussion Questions

Kinship Group Discussion

The Good and
Beautiful Life – James Bryan Smith

Chapter 1 Discussion Questions

4/5/2019

In the section titled How to Ruin Your Life (Without Even Trying)
– The Six Steps to Ruin:

Q1:   How would you describe seeing any of the
individual definitions in yourself?

Q2:   Could we find ourselves progressing in the
‘steps’ in order, or can we begin somewhere else in the list?

Q3:   If I want to reverse the problem and grow in
the Lord, how would I do it?

Q4:   How do you describe the
topic/discipline/pursuit of Discipleship, or Spiritual Growth?

Q5:   What might it look like if we don’t pursue
Discipleship, or Spiritual Growth?

Q6:   What might we gain if we do pursue it?

Tozer, A. W..
Meditations on the Trinity: Beauty, Mystery, and Glory in the Life of God .
Moody Publishers.

COMMUNING WITH THE SPIRIT

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love
of God,

and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

2
CORINTHIANS 13:14

The Holy Spirit is a living person, and He can be
known in an increasing degree of intimacy. Since He is a personality, He can
never be fully known in a single encounter.

One of the great mistakes we make is to imagine that
by coming to God in the new birth and receiving the Spirit of adoption we know
all we can know about God! Similarly, those of us who believe in being filled
with the Holy Ghost after conversion also make a mistake in thinking that we
know all there is to know about the Holy Spirit.

Oh, my friend, we are just beginning. God’s
personality is so infinitely rich and manifold that it will take a thousand
years of close search and intimate communion to know even the outer edges of
the glorious nature of God. When we talk about communion with God and
fellowship with the Holy Spirit, we are talking about that which begins now but
will grow and increase and mature while life lasts.

Actually, I do find Christians these days who seem to
have largely wasted their lives. They were converted to Christ but they have
never sought to go on to an increasing knowledge of God. There is untold loss
and failure because they have accepted the whole level of things around them as
being normal and desirable.

The Holy Spirit is a living person, and we can know
Him and fellowship with Him! We can whisper to Him, and out of a favorite verse
of the Bible or a loved hymn, we hear His voice whispering back. Walking with
the Spirit can become a habit. It is a gracious thing to strive to know the
things of God through the Spirit of God in a friendship that passes the place
where it has to be kept up by chatter.  TS264–265

Father,
forgive me for not cultivating my relationship with the Holy Spirit as You have
wanted me to. Draw me closer to Him and give me the grace to respond to Him
when He calls. Amen.