Memory Verse for the Week: Matthew 7:11 (ESV)

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

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INTRO: When do you first recall being taught the Golden Rule?

THE FATHER’S CHILD
What was so radical about Jesus’ description of the Father?

1 COIN, 2 SIDES
How do we doubt God’s goodness and deny our neighbors?

HARDSHIP, LOVE & GENEROSITY
Why, then, does Jesus say that this is hard?

YOU CAN PRAY WITH US …

1. Worship the LORD for His stunning generosity, and the even boundless ways in which He provides and blesses us. Praise Him, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for giving us drastically better (and different) than we deserve.

2. How you have lived demanding things of the Father rather than humbly asking Him for His love and Presence? Confess your pride and self-interest to Jesus, asking Him to forgive you and to change your heart.

3. Give thanks to Jesus for His willingness to choose the hard path to save us from all of our sins. Thank Him for bearing the destruction that we earned so that we could freely receive the life that only He deserves.

4. Who do you know that doubts God’s graciousness and, correspondingly, is self-protective in how they interact with others? Pray for them, and that the Lord would show them His amazing mercy and open their heart to be redeemed.

5. Ask the Holy Spirit to bear in you His fruit of love and joy. Pray for such a sense of the Father’s unending care — as you ask, seek and knock before Him — that you would be freed from self-interest to love others freely.