All right, well, let me get started. So we're in the book of Titus, and it's 46 verses, and there's a lot of fun stuff in here. And before we begin, let me just open us up in a word of prayer, and then I'll give you some helpful informational little tidbits before you guys have a discussion, okay?

Father, would you bless our study over the next few months, and would you teach us how to appropriately respond to your truth? Help us to just grow, not just in knowledge, but in greater love for you and for one another, and that as we adorn ourselves with good deeds, and as we work hard to give you the glory that you do, I pray that you would bear fruit, and would you magnify yourself through the teaching of your word just this season?

We entrust tonight into your hands, and there's going to be a lot of different awkward, clumsy moments where we're trying to learn how to study your word. Would you give us insight? More than anything, would you cause our hearts to hunger for more of you? Would you guide the discussions, and would you instruct not just our heads, but our hearts as well?

In Jesus' name we pray. All right, just there are two things that I want to just introduce before you guys get broken up into your small groups. I'm going to be looking at Titus the man, the person, because we don't know too much, okay? And also, he's on the island of Crete, and so just some helpful background that some of you guys might have already done, but some helpful background so that when we're reading the book of Titus, contextually, certain things make better sense, okay?

So for Titus, Paul likely met Titus on a second missionary journey of three, but Titus is not mentioned at all in the book of Acts, so that's a little bit – so it's a little difficult to discern exactly when Titus came into Paul's life, but he's an important figure.

And he's such an important figure that in 2 Corinthians alone, he's mentioned nine times, okay? And he's called like a partner and fellow worker. There aren't many people who have as much praise heaped on them as Titus and Timothy by Paul, okay? So Titus is a very important figure in the early church, even though he's not even mentioned in the book of Acts.

So he was born a Gentile convert, and if you guys look at Galatians chapter 2, Paul doesn't circumcise him, but he does circumcise somebody else, right? Anybody know who that is? Timothy. He circumcises Timothy, who is a half Jew, half Gentile, but Titus, he leaves him be, okay? And I'm sure Titus was grateful for that.

So he's a born-again Gentile convert, left uncircumcised, and he's also very trustworthy most likely because you don't give the funds and a large amount of funds to someone who's not trustworthy, hopefully. And so just in 2 Corinthians, the whole chapter on generosity and God loving the cheerful giver and how we're not supposed to give begrudgingly, but just from gratitude and from a cheerful heart, Titus is mentioned in that chapter on two different occasions, and he's the one being put in charge for the collection.

So he is an important figure. His origins, when Paul meets him and all of these things, we don't really know. In 2 Timothy, he's mentioned, and the only note there is he's gone to Dalmatia, okay? But so Titus is a very important person to Paul, and he writes what we would call the pastoral epistles, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus to this man.

So the book of Titus takes place in Crete. Can you guys see this okay? So here's Philippi. We studied that a couple years ago up here. And then you have Thessalonica. We studied that during the quarantine in the Macedonian area. Galatia, Colossae, Ephesus, and Corinth are kind of all over here, but if you guys see where Crete is, Crete's right here.

It's kind of like the Australia of the Mediterranean Sea, all right? Just like at the bottom, okay? And there's a reason why I call it the Australia of the Mediterranean. It's this little stretch of land, okay? So hopefully, just geographically, you're thinking here's the Mediterranean, here's the boot of Italy, and Crete is just kind of in the middle, okay?

So Paul actually travels through there, and you'll read about that account in Acts chapter 27. I'm not going to go into it, but Crete was a very interesting area, okay? So here's a couple things that I found on Crete through various commentary sources. And I'll tell you, for the preparation for our study, I didn't consult anything, like commentary-wise or online.

The only thing I consulted online or for commentary work was just for the background of the place, okay? So you'll see that you don't need to consult the commentary, and we actually discourage you from going into that right away. But anyway, for Crete, you guys might have done your own research.

Under Tiberius, it was used for exiles from Rome. If you guys know any British history, Australia was like where they sent the not-so-high-quality characters away. I'm not sure if you guys already knew that. Yeah, Australia was where they sent them. So Crete, during Tiberius' reign, was where they sent all Roman citizens who were a little bit like not-exemplary citizens, okay?

So it kind of was an exile, prison-like area. So when you have a bunch of colorful characters, you know that that area develops a culture that's not necessarily the most wholesome, okay? So there's a strong Jewish community also in Crete. You see them in Acts 2 at Pentecost. They're there, okay?

So these guys from Crete are seeing what the apostles are doing, and they marvel. And so there's a Jewish community on Crete. In the Old Testament, oftentimes it's referred to as Kaphtor. I don't know how to pronounce that, but I think I'm hopefully a little close. And one interesting tidbit is that a lot of them have been archers since birth.

It's a mountainous area full of forests and trees. And so one interesting note is that they know how to fight, and they're very excellent archers, and they develop a culture of very vile soldierdom, okay? So that's kind of the culture that Crete has. There's a lot of Greek mythology influence.

Zeus is an important deity on the island of Crete, and they're not a very good people generally. So here's a Greek historian writing about Crete, and I highlighted some important words in red. "Greed and avarice are so native. Private seditions, murders, civil wars, steeped in treachery, no policy more inequitable than Crete." So Crete is not a good place.

And there's a lot of work that Titus has to do on this island. There's religious people, there's pagan people, and Titus is given a task, okay? So those are just kind of some of the basic information tidbits that I'm hoping that you guys find somewhat helpful. I'm going to break you off into -- well, you're broken off.

I'm going to just hand you over to your small group leader in a minute, but when you get together, this is what you're going to share, all right? Online and your small group leaders probably emailed you some of the homework questions. You're going to share your outline of the book of Titus, okay?

What did you learn? How did you break it up? What did you notice? Second, what are some major or repeated themes and exhortations that you notice in your reading? Three, you're going to share your one-sentence summary of the epistle, all right? Doesn't have to be like super eye-catching, but just your one sentence that'll help you remember, and also that'll help the people in your group just see where you've launched off of.

And then with the latter part of your time, what I want you guys to do is share the inductive questions. And for those of you guys who are kind of newer to our church and you're not quite sure how to do an inductive Bible study, we do have a Bible lab running throughout various parts of the year.

And so we're not in that right now, but hopefully just during our time together, if you're not quite sure, grab an older member of the church in your small group and maybe spend some time just to get a private tutoring session from said brother or sister, okay? But you're going to share inductive questions and observations that you made from these three verses.

And then at the end, if you have enough time, you're going to share one tangible application that you can make from just the first three verses, okay? Something that's measurable, something that's doable. You don't want to share an application like, "No God more," okay? Because that's not really measurable, all right?

So what is one tangible application you can make just from the verses one through three? How many... Raise your hand if you've noticed that just the first three verses are super dense. It's super dense. And that's why in preparation for this, I preached out of this two weeks ago just so that a lot of the dense material we cover in the sermon, okay?

And then this study is more for you to just go into the outline. And then when you have time, you yourself to go into just those first three verses, okay? So right now it's 7:37. I'm going to give you until 8... 20-ish, and then I'm going to come up and I'm going to walk you through my outline, all right?

So if you guys don't know each other, take a couple minutes, don't share your life story, get to know each other a little bit, and then just jump right in. And if you need just blank text only, Titus chapters one through three, I think there are still some in the back.

All right, enjoy. All right, we're going to start the discussion time at 8.20, so finish up your... Okay, you guys just finished up all your thoughts. It got quite all really fast. All group leaders, if you guys can pass this worksheet to everybody in your group. And basically, I'm going to be sharing with you my homework, all the work that I did in mostly the last three, four days, just putting this together.

And so that hopefully this will kind of give you insight as to how the pastor studies the Bible, okay? So normally on a Wednesday night, what we're going to be doing is we're going to be doing a discussion like this, but I'm only going to come up and do the teaching at the end for about 20 minutes.

And it's not going to be so much a teaching as it is going to be like a reflection and kind of like a little wrap up. Most of the study is going to be all on you guys, okay? So we don't want your understanding of the Bible to be pastor-centered or pastor-focused.

You don't want to say, "Well, Pastor Mark says this, Pastor Nate, Pastor Peter says that, that pastor at that church says this." Everyone has a different interpretation. We want you guys to dive into the Word and extract your own... I mean, there is a proper way to do it, but really feed off of the source itself, okay?

So this is how I did it. And the whole process of this for me, I actually started memorizing this thing as soon as I knew we were going to do Titus. And my encouragement for memorizing a book, it's actually not that hard. We have 17 of our teachers memorizing this so that when they teach it, starting next month to the kindergartners and up, they know the context.

So I just go one verse a day, and I'm not done yet. I'm at verse 6 today, chapter 3, verse 6. But I just start memorizing this. And I memorized this in the NIV about 15 years ago. But as I'm going through the memorization process, I'm meditating on it, I'm chewing on it, and I'm starting to notice very similar words, very similar phrases, very similar patterns.

And so it forces me to just kind of slow down. All right? So I came into this having memorized up to chapter 3, verse 6. And then what I did was I took this, okay? Just the text. I took out the chapters. I kept the verses in there. I take out the chapters.

And I just start making observations and start writing stuff up on a Word document, okay? And so I copied and pasted onto a Word doc. And then I started just kind of indenting things and moving things around just as I chart through the letter. And so you have that here.

So the first thing I did was I indented just everything so that... I mean, the first three verses, we did it today, so I just kind of organized it so I visually can kind of see the thought flow. But I made everything else like little sections, okay? So I broke it down, and then I labeled it.

As you can see, the first part I put "Introduction to Elders and Overseers," and then "Why the Church Needs Godly Leaders," and then "Expectations of Those Who Are Redeemed Under These Godly Leaders," and then "Expectations of the Redeemed, Part Two," and in the middle of that is a little "Why We Should Be Zealous," okay?

"Why We Should Be Zealous." And so I broke it down like that. And then if you notice, like the little teal-colored highlight, I just started highlighting Paul's direct commands to Titus. Set in order. Appoint. Speak. Show yourself. Speak, exhort, reprove. Let no one disregard. Remind. Speak, avoid, reject. Help.

So if Titus is a leader at the church, and whenever he's commanded to do certain things, then I'm like, "Okay, these are important things that I need to pay attention to," okay? This is a leader who's supposed to appoint other leaders, so whatever is being directly told to him are very important things for Titus to keep in mind and for all church leaders to keep in mind, so I kind of highlighted that.

And then I made a chart, okay? If you guys, I don't make charts for like, if we're going through Philippians, you don't have those charts, but in Titus, if you guys notice, you have a lot of good qualities that people are supposed to have and a lot of bad qualities people are supposed to have.

Nod your heads if you guys already knew that. Yeah, so I make a chart, all right? And as I'm doing this, I'm making the chart, I'm copying and pasting and adding, copying and pasting and adding as I'm just going through this. And this was when I was like at verse 9 of chapter 1, so I just wanted to show you, I put it into a category of godliness and then I put it into a category of ungodliness.

And that just came from just feeling the mood of the letter and the categorizations, not just by reading it, but by just digesting on it for a few months. Now obviously, you're not going to have a few months to study a letter at all times, but the more you slow down, the more you catch very important themes on any book.

Because when you just read through stuff, you can miss a lot of things, right? So I categorized it godliness and ungodliness. And if you look at the final chart on the third page, I have a list of who's godly, what qualifies as godly traits, why they need to be godly, and how they become godly.

Do you guys see that? And then on the other side, I made an ungodly category. Who are these ungodly folks? They're men of circumcision, cretins, pre-Christ selves, factious pretenders, and then all of the characterizations of ungodly people. So I made a chart, okay? And then I made a note of frequently repeated or emphasized traits or words.

So I noticed that sensible comes out five times. Not just if you actually also notice that, okay? ESV says self-control, but sensible. I also noticed that good deeds actually wins this competition. Came out eight times. Do you guys notice that? Raise your hands if you saw that, okay? Good deeds, good deeds, good deeds, good deeds.

That comes out. How about on the other side? The thing that comes out negative the most is actually heterodoxy, bad teaching. Interesting. So just from making this list, on the godly side, there's an emphasis on appropriately responding in faith and doing good. On this side, these dudes, the thing that's emphasized the most is they teach bad theology.

Interesting. What is emphasized? I made this chart, okay? So I noticed that sensible comes out a lot. Good deeds comes out a lot. Contradict sound doctrine comes out the most when it comes to the ungodly people. And if you guys also noticed, our Savior shows up on every chapter sometimes twice.

Not just if you notice that. After every incarnation, there's our Savior, okay? So why is that? So if I was asking an inductive study, it's like, there's this theme of our Savior repeating through this book. Is this significant for the people of Crete? That would be something I would ask.

What kind of teachings are going around so that Paul's having to speak against the teaching so much? Then I would have to look into that. What is this relationship between our faith and good deeds? James says faith without deeds is dead, but this is Titus. So what is this relationship?

How do I make good deeds? Because in chapter 3 verse 5, it says good deeds doesn't lead to salvation, but there's an emphasis there. What do I do with this? So I made this chart. And then I just went through and highlighted all the reasons that will tell me why something is supposed to be done.

So that, one of our brothers at the table is like, so that's mentioned a lot. Is so that, is that an important phrase in English? Yeah, okay? Eat lunch on time so that there's a why question that's naturally being asked, okay? So every important word that I kind of came across, I just started highlighting in yellow so that my eye would go to these little breaks.

And then I looked at anything that's future focused, the already but not yet tension. There's hope, there's eternal life, right? We're looking forward to the appearing. So that comes out in every chapter. So I marked those in red. So I'm hoping that, I mean, it's just the first three chapters.

The latter two are the verses 1 through 3. But I started with this. And then I ended up just marking stuff up. And if I was doing this for myself and not to present, I would print it at this stage. And then I would take a pen and I would start drawing lines everywhere.

And I'll start X-ing stuff out. I would start underlining stuff. And the more I just mark this up, and you don't want to do this on your Bible because, you know, if you make a mistake, you're done, right? But I just want to mark it up so that I could digest, chew, and like just get every morsel of spiritual nutrient that is supposed to be in there.

You will get what you put in, right? And then at the end, I made some, a note of fun stuff. These are things that I'm going to have to stress out a little bit when I teach. All right? These are controversial possibly. Chapter 1 verse 13, "Reprove them severely, the false prophets, false teachers, so that they may be sound in the faith." Huh.

Can a false prophet be saved and restored? Huh. When you're going against a factious person or a person who's living a compromised life and they're teaching bad stuff and you reprove them severely, can you turn them? And how am I supposed to do this? Some of you like to rebuke.

Some of you hate it. But if someone's teaching bad stuff, the word severely is a strong word. Okay, there's a lot of stuff I'm going to have to glean from this. Another one, chapter 2 verse 5. I'm going to look at this side of the room, okay, while I talk about this.

Young women, be workers at home. Woo-hoo. That's not going to be fun, or is it? So I'm going to have to be very careful in our cultural context, and most of you guys know I'm pretty sure my worldview is bigger than most everybody because I've traveled a lot. Most of the world, this isn't an issue.

But in First World America, Orange County, I'm going to have to deal with this. In China, when I was there as a missionary between 2009 and 2012, one thing that kept coming up as an issue, which is never an issue here, is can Christians eat blood? Have you guys ever wrestled with that?

I didn't until I got to China. But they were debating about this. Some churches actually were on the verge of splitting about this because the pagan Chinese person in their hot pot, in whatever it is, will they eat blood? They will eat blood. But for a church Christian person, is that okay?

Those are fun passages that I would have to tackle in China. But here, you're like, "Hey, blood, shmud, whatever," right? But this one, I'm going to make a note because this is going to be something that I might have to counsel my daughter in as she gets older. "Hey, Karis, what does it mean for you to honor the Lord in every way?" This is what it says in the Bible.

What does this mean for you? In First Timothy, it actually says, "Women will be saved through childbearing." Have you guys ever read that passage? What does that mean? So there are going to be passages that I have to tackle because they're culturally sensitive buttons. Chapter 3, "Remind them to be subject to rulers, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work." When you get to a democracy and you have Christians blasting our national leaders, you have a lot of Christians going at it.

Do you guys know this? So that's going to be something that I need to carefully examine to speak into our times. So those are some fun things. Chapter 3, verse 9, "Avoid foolish controversies, genealogy, strifes, disputes." What is that today? We don't worry about genealogies today. But we talk about other stuff, things that churched people, Christians, argue over that might end up proving to be unprofitable.

What are those things? So I'll make a note. Could it be some of the political agenda-related kind of stuff now that we're constantly engaging in? Is that something that can be categorized in here? I'll put that in there because it can affect my understanding of Christian good deeds, right?

Hot button items. Warn a factious person once, warn them a second time, after that have nothing to do with them. You know how hard that is to do? There are churches that love to discipline people. Nod your heads if you knew that there are churches out there that love to make examples of people.

Yeah, we're not like that. We don't want to do that. We want to make sure everyone is loved on and truth is spoken to them in love. The last thing we want for them is to be made a public spectacle to be kicked out of the church. What kind of a person do you have to kick out of the church?

A factious one. So that's another hot button item that I'm going to have to address when we get there, right? What does it mean to be factious? Some of you guys have strong opinions. Are you factious? Did I hear something like a yes? So these are, when I'm going through this and as I'm just meditating through all of these things, I'm tripping over things that I'm going, "Does this apply to my life?

Does this apply to Irvine? Does this apply to our church? And if so, how do I teach this in a way that's both sensitive, faithful to the truth, and yet looking to build up and if need be, reprove sharply?" So these are things that I go through as I look through the passage.

And in my sermon on two Sundays ago, I mentioned like, "Hard work doesn't make me godly." You guys remember that? I was like, "Hard work doesn't make me godly. It just corrupts me even more." First service, I actually tied it very beautifully together saying like, "So we work hard in response." But second service, I forgot, so I left people hanging.

So does that mean just leave, I could be lazy? No, okay? Work hard, because that's what Titus is pointing at, right? But this is what something that comes up, good deeds, there's an importance placed on good deeds. Godliness doesn't come through man's effort, but redeemed man gives every effort to reflect the glory of his Redeemer.

That's a theme in the book of Titus. You guys notice this? Okay? First Corinthians 9.24 and 9.27 talking about buffeting his body. Buffeting as to win, right? Taking off whatever is hindering, I'm taking off to win. Philippians 2.12.13, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you to work out all things." So like, there's a juxtaposition of my hard work, but God doing the work to sanctify me and to produce good deeds in me.

So there's a theological like emotional, or sorry, not emotional, but like a theological constipation in my head. Like, I don't know what to do with this. I'm supposed to work hard, but my hard work doesn't make me Godlier, but I need to work hard in response. Okay? But what does that mean?

So I'm looking at like 1 Peter 1.16, "Be holy for I am holy." 2 Timothy 2.15, "Be diligent to present yourself as a worker approved by God, unashamed." 4.7, "I have fought the good fight." So hard work is absolutely essential to the Christian. "Laying aside every encumbrance, you're running full speed ahead to bear good fruit for the Lord, but the irony is it's not you." Titus has a lot to say of the connection between faith and deeds.

And hopefully just as you guys are looking through this, you'll notice that. Okay? Is correct doctrine important? Yes or no? Absolutely. Hard work, yes. Important or not? Absolutely important. And what's more important? What leads to the other? So these are the things you're going to have to wrestle through in the text.

So how I do the inductive study, I usually have five translations. NIV is my like most dynamic one where you get a lot of interpretation in the NIV. Okay? And then I have the NAS and the ESV. I have a newer translation called the Legacy Standard, and then I have the King James.

And I just kind of do an eyeball scan through all of them. And if there are translations that all look a little bit different, I ask a question. Why are these so differently translated? Is there something in the original language that makes it very tricky to translate properly? So I'm asking these questions.

What does "for the faith" mean? Can the non-elect have faith? Can the non-elect have knowledge of the truth? What is the knowledge of the truth? What is truth referring to here? What is the relationship of knowledge of the truth and godliness? And as I'm doing these things as a pastor, they come out in the sermon.

So as a pastor going through a text, the better the questions that I ask, the clearer a lot of times my presentation will be. Okay? And so the more you ask very important questions and you slow down enough, you can gain more insight into this passage. And I already went through chapters 1 through 3 on the sermon, so I'm not going to cover it.

It's pretty meaty. Okay? So that's hopefully something that you were wrestling through in your small group. Verse 2, so God who never lies, God who cannot lie, God who does not lie, they all have a little bit of a different nuance, right? So these are the kinds of questions that I ask.

What is verse 1's connection with the hope that is mentioned in verse 2? What does Paul mean when he says eternal life? The NASB says God cannot lie, whereas the other translations differ. What is the original word and its meaning? Is this promise recorded somewhere in Genesis? Before the beginning of time, when did God create time?

Chapter 1, verse 1. There was a promise made before that? So these are questions that my mind will naturally go to, okay? And many of my questions are not answerable, I find, okay? But they're good to ask so that you slow down enough to just process through. And then, so what I would do is if I have a good Bible resource and the translations all kind of point to a slightly different understanding or meaning, then I'll look at a Bible dictionary and I'll do a little bit of a bigger comparison.

So that's my process as I look through the whole thing and then I go verse by verse. And what I want to leave you with is, as I was doing this, I noticed three things that were very similar in pattern, okay? Chapter 1, verses 1 and 2, there's a future discussion and there's something that happens and that's been given to the believer, and there's God our Savior.

And then chapter 2, verse 11 to 15, very similar theme. Chapter 3, verses 4 through 8, a very similar theme. So I just copied and pasted and I put it in like one little file so that I could look at it and stare at it, and I noticed that there's a pattern here.

Paul is talking about the hope of eternal life, okay? In chapter 2, he talks about blessed hope. Chapter 3, heirs to the hope of eternal life. And all of that has come across through the incarnation of Jesus, manifested, appeared, appeared. And an attribute of God, a characteristic of God has showed itself to man, truthfulness of God, grace of God, kindness and love of God.

And there's an expected response in the life of the believer, faith and godliness, sensible, righteous, godly lives, regenerated, renewed, justified. And with each section, there's a discussion on God being our Savior. So when you spend time just going through just the whole of the book, slowed down, and you just start making notes, you start seeing what you're going to be looking for in the next three months.

You start already making little like ticks as to like, "Okay, when I get to chapter 2 verse 5, I'm going to slow down and I'm going to really dive into that passage." Especially since maybe the moms around me are either their stay-at-home moms or moms around me are working moms.

What is God's desire? That can be a very sensitive thing. How do I process through this? When I'm looking at chapter 3 verse 1 and we're talking about authorities and rulers, how am I supposed to, as a Christian in the face of a very wicked national leadership, am I supposed to voice my opinion or am I supposed to quietly in a docile way just keep my mouth shut?

What is the Bible saying about how I am to live out my godly life and what kind of good deeds I'm supposed to be producing in my life? So these are all things that come about as you're diving in. Okay? So hopefully the next three, four months, now we're going to slow down and we're going to take it like three verses at a time, prove to be very beneficial for you.

The more you dive in, the more you'll get out. And every week when you come, you're not coming to learn, you're coming to share what you've learned. Does that make sense? You're not coming to just, "Here, feed me." That will happen, but your primary reason for coming is, "Let me share with you the things that I've gleaned as I've poured into this passage, as I've combed through the words, and hey, what you're sharing really is benefiting me.

And hopefully what I'm sharing is stimulating you too toward loving good deeds." And so that's why we're getting together, not to hear a sermon, but to just come and fellowship through the study of His living and active in that word. Amen? So next week, so starting next week, you're not going to have me talking too much.

We're going to do praise, and then you're going to go into about an hour of small group time. And here's the thing, human nature, if you didn't do the work, if you didn't prepare, that hour is going to be torture. You're not going to want to come and be the only like, "I didn't do my lesson this week." And you're going to have nothing to share.

Come anyway, but I guarantee you, you put in the time, you will be excited to talk. You'll be excited to share. Where an hour goes by and you're like, "Wait, PPC, give us another 15 minutes." That's what we're hoping happens. Okay? But you will get in what you...you will get out what you put in.

So next week, it's an awkward division. Four through six is a little bit kind of like it breaks the elder and overseer little category, but I did that on like...I had no choice because it was either overview and then verse one through three and like four through nine, or just kind of bite-sized pieces.

So know that. I already know that the division is kind of funky for chapter one. All right? So four through six is what you're going to be looking at. And take time to just ask as many inductive questions of these verses, and then come up with observations. Now that you've actually looked at the whole book, how do these verses fit into the context of the rest of the section, the rest of the chapter, and the rest of the letter?

And then number four, write down some practical and measurable applications you can draw from these verses. And then come ready to share. And that's what we're going to be doing. And I'm just going to come up for 15 minutes and do a little wrap-up or address something that is a little bit tricky.

And that's going to be every week. Okay? So I'm going to just wrap us up in prayer, and then you're going to spend time in your small group just praying for each other, praying for our time of study together, even organizing like, "Hey, it looks like you're new and you're not quite sure exactly how to go about preparing this thing.

Hey, let's grab dinner. Let's do this together." If you see somebody in your group who's newer, who's learning how to do this, hey, meet before and prepare. We're here all day on Wednesday. So you guys can come and grab dinner and then prepare it, finalize it together if you want.

But whatever it is that you can do to help each other, by all means do it. And don't rely on your small group leader to do it. Like everybody in the small group, help each other prepare and pray for each other. And then we'll see you next week. So let me pray, and then for the rest of the time, for the next 15, 20 minutes, pray in your small group, and then we'll call it an evening.

All right? Let's pray together. Father, we are very thankful that you provide for us this evening just to study, to learn, to discuss, to share. And I pray, Father, that more than anything else, that you would grow in us a greater hunger to know you, just a greater appetite to know your heart, just a greater longing to be good stewards of your word.

And I pray that you would empower each and every individual in this room really to discipline ourselves with our time to put in to cooking ourselves a great meal so that when we get together for this spiritual potluck, we'll really have a lot to share so that it would be just a joyful experience for all of us who are involved.

I pray that you would give us insight, help us to draw near to you as we study. And Lord, would you reveal your heart to your people so that we can respond appropriately and give you the glory that you do. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen.