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Bible Story/Passage Discussion - Sarah-Kate Oliver

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Bible Story/Passage Discussion - Sarah-Kate Oliver

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Caleb brings up a very interesting point about the author using worship as a bargaining tool against God. If God needs us to worship Him, is it cruel/wrong to try to use that as leverage against God? I think it is wrong, but perhaps others feel different?

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Chelsea, I think the class activity about the 10 commandments is interesting, but I don't quite see how it fits with the lesson?

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Chapter 5 describes the authors of the Old Testament as "the greatest heroes that live to tell the tales." Upon this quote, reflect on the people that you consider heroes in your life, and imagine prophets in that same exact image.

-Discussion Question/Reflection, Chelsea Johnson

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In Chapter 5, the title of the chapter itself is 'God Needs Us.' This is a very strong comment. As an overview question of chapter 5, list some reasons why God needs us. On the contrary, the people of God are also in need of their Lord! List those reasons mentioned in the chapter.

-Overview Questions, Chelsea Johnson

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In Exodus, the 10 commandment are stated. As a class activity, I think it would be interesting to see the top three commandments that they think are the most relevant and the most important to today's day and time. And we can compare answers

-Class Activity, Chelsea Johnson

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Caleb's question about "Does this prayer just contribute to the idea that man is selfish and will do whatever is takes to save himself?" is very thought provoking. It also ties in to the theme of the purpose of worship by making you reflect on the true reason for your worship; is it to connect with God, to simply glorify Him, or because you get something out of it? Can our purpose for worship be a combination of these?

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Many of the Psalms state how the author would praise God if God would deliver them. One such verse is Psalms 142:7 where it says, "Bring my life out of prison so that I might praise your name." This verse directly ties to the theme of how God needs us. God needs our praise. Now whether God depends upon our praise to sustain His sovreignity is one question. However, the writer of Psalms 142 clearly conveys that he believes God desperartely desires and needs our praise. If this were not the case, then the author would not promise to praise God in trade for his deliverance.

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Psalms 9:13-14 says, "Be merciful to me, O Lord; see my suffering caused by my haters, O one who raises up from the gates of Death; so that I might recite all your praise songs in the gates of Daughter Zion, [and] jubilate in your deliverance." This verse brings up some very interesting questions. Does God save us just so we can praise Him? Does this reflect a real faith and desire to praise God from man? Or does this prayer just contribute to the idea that man is selfish and will do whatever it takes to save himself?

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As the book questions, is worship just meant to glorify God or does it also help to connect both God and man in a deeper relationship that would be absent with the absense of worship?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uHCvURUQg4 This video is a clip of a sermon by Pastor Robert Morris titled God Needs You. He says these words are so very important and that they sum up everything. He makes many points about this issue, and it is perfect because that is the theme of Chapter 5. He even tells personal stories on how Morris, himself, got this message from God himself. He says that God is self-sufficient, and self- sustaining. He uses a specific verse and story about this, where God actually says I need you. This video is so good. A quote this clip uses is "God doesn't need us to exist, he needs us to coexist." That's deep. This clip was initially suppose to be an Easter sermon, but Morris thought his message about how God needs us, was so much more important to discuss to his huge audience that day. He even uses members of the audience to demonstrate his point. He has many theories that actually make sense. I can't get over how perfect this video is for this lesson. He makes a genius point: What if the Devil knows that God needs us? and is it possible that he uses that against us? Wow. This clip is a must use for this lesson on Chapter 5.

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The theme of Chapter 5 is the God Needs Us. Literally this theme reminds me of so many stories in the bible (that are all rushing in my head right now), and I think of such major points in the Bible that has affected our world today. God used Moses to end the harsh rule of pharaoh and the slavery there. Moses also let the people know about God, and that He is the one true ruler and was so incredibly powerful. He proved his power by using Moses to lead the people across the sea. Moses stuck out his staff and the sea then part in half (as God caused this action). God used Noah and his family to save two of each animal, and build an ark, to save themselves, so that God could flood the Earth and have the world start all over free of sin. Of course, we know this did not end sin. God uses Mary to hold the Holy child, and give birth to the man who eventually died on the cross for us. The best example of all, I say, would be that God used and needed Jesus Christ to finally serve God's ultimate plan for saving us sinners. Jesus was born a baby, and grew up as a normal boy. God knew what was going to happen since the beginning, but He needed someone to fulfill his purpose. Let's talk about the people in the world today! If God needs us, then we should be great recipients as Moses, Noah, and Mary all were. They did not question God. God needs us to spread his word and goodness. We are the disciples of God now. Without us, there would be no point in God doing anything. Think about it. There is a reason we are all here today, and that reason is to love one another, love God, spread his name and word, and look forward to the day we get to be united with the all powerful and loving God in Heaven.

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The theme of chapter 5 is that God Needs Us. How can this be? How can God need us, when He was fine before he even created humans? There are so many examples and stories in the Bible that show that God needs us. For example, in Matthew 21:1-3 it says, "as they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, "Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away." In this story of Christ’s victorious entry into Jerusalem, we discover that our Almighty God needed something from an individual; He needed a donkey to ride in on and he needed some public transport. So God does need us, as much as we need him! The Creator of the universe needs us and desires to fit us into His eternal design! Though all-powerful and not dependent on any creature, He has chosen to carry out His plans through low in status, imperfect human beings. If this were not so, He would have taken us to heaven as soon as He saved us by His grace. In the Chapter 5 of The Return of the Chaos Monsters, Mobley uses the Psalms, which both critique and reflect the idea that God depends on us for praise and sacrifice. If God needs us as warriors to carry out his tasks, shouldn't we do our best to be the most worthy servants to the Lord. Whether it is passing on his word, like the disciples and prophet's jobs were, or helping another person in need, like our own Jesus Christ did, we should glorify God in all we do. Since he needs us, we do not want to let him down.
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Our audience is college students. We chose college students, because we know how we listen and learn. A lot of us, have been through our first year or more, and have taken many classes that teach different us in different ways. Like Core 210 for example, we had to plan a lesson in there, and we based it on what the professors did which was like introducing clips and making it fun, because that is what really got our attention. Spreading everything out, and in different orders, is also good.

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As a class activity for Chapter 5, we could pass out a short little quiz with the question, "If you were a King, which would you prefer?"

and then have the answer choices as:

A) Abundant praise and love

B) Silence from your followers

C) Denial from your people

Then we would take up the quizzes (assuming everyone chose answer choice A), and tally up the answers to prove a point of how God needs us just as much as we need him.

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A possible idea to help emphasize the theme of chapter 5 would be using a song. Since chapter 5 is ultimately about how God needs us, I thought the song "I Want You To Want Me" by Cheap Trick would be a humorous and creative way to get the message across. I attached a link to they lyrics below.

http://www.metrolyrics.com/i-want-you-to-want-me-lyrics-cheap-trick.html

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As a discussion question for chapter 5, we could ask...

"Do you think praising God is for our benefit, God's benefit, or both? Briefly explain why."

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For a class activity we can ask our class to name 5 things that that they like to eat that satisfy them. Once everyone has answered, we then notify them that they are not allowed to eat those items for an entire week. Given that we won't actually starve them they will understand how it feels to have something vital taken away from them, Like if we were to stop praising God.

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A good question to ask our audience would be: "Why do you think that praise feeds God's soul?"

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Exodus 20 is where God gives Moses the ten commandments. We can notice that the first 2-6 verses of this chapter God starts up reminding them that He is the one who brought them out of Egypt and that He is a jealous God. This passage can be used to explain how God wants praise for Himself. This would introduce the idea of worship to God. Than we could explain why is it that God is jealous God and if He truly needs us. Since He does spare His people so much.

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What is it God truly hungers for? Though it may seem as though a nice steak or a juicy cheese burger would fill his stomach, he is really searching to fill his heart, with love from you. Mobley writes on page 106, "Praise releases something inside of us that belongs to God" (Mobley 106), which is saying that God needs our love for him more than anything. A little later on he answers the question "Why does God need us?" simply, "When we 'bless' the Lord, we release our vital powers back to their source, an act of restoration that contributes to the mending , tikkun, of creation". What this means is that God needs our love and praise to help fuel his light, to me it sounds like the relationship between God and Humans is strong and we need each other. (Mobley 107)

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choose two or three volunteers from the students and allow them to each act as king/queen one at a time. Now the rest of the class will act as the "worshipers" of this persona for a minute. Then the next minute they will stop and be silent, no worship. The king/queen will not exactly know what is going because we will instruct the class once that person is out of it. Then both of these people will let us know how they felt when they were worshiped and when they weren't.

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So this chapter is about how God needs us. This is something that we usually never think of, so here are a couple of questions we could ask in our lesson.

1. Why do you think that "God needs us"?

2. Does us saying that "God needs us" overthrow the image of an Almighty God? How and why?