Click here for the sermon discussion questions or see them listed below. We highly encourage you to listen, think, and talk about the sermon. These are questions you can reflect on by yourself, with your family, or with your small group.

Discussion Questions

1. What are your thoughts/opinions on spiritual battle as described in Ephesians 6:12?  How seriously do you take it, and what do you do about it in your own life?  

2. Have you ever been “sifted like wheat”?  Explain. What impact does suffering have on a person’s faith?  In other words, how has suffering shaped you as a believer?  What are your thoughts on God allowing suffering to come into your life?

3. Romans 8:34 tells us that Jesus “...is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.”1 John 2:1 says in part, “...if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”  Heb 7:12 tells us that Jesus “...always lives to make intercession for them.”  Explain how knowing Jesus is praying for you helps you through your trials.  What do you think Jesus prays for you, and how does this impact the way you pray?

4. Jesus claimed to be the fulfillment of Isaiah 53, which is a prophecy about the Messiah that describes Him as a suffering servant.  Why do you think Jesus had to suffer?  Wasn’t His death sufficient for the substitutionary payment of our sins?  Was Jesus’ suffering limited to the physical suffering of torture and death?  

5. Jesus knows the folly, self-centeredness, ignorance, hard-heartedness, and sin of us all, yet He still chose to suffer and die for us, just as He still chooses to pray for us. What does this tell you about how Jesus really sees us and in what manner should this encourage us to live?