so the way we typically start is we just come into a moment of prayer and we try to quiet our hearts and get really still before the Lord so that we can hear the Holy Spirit even better then we'll go into a level question so that's a nice breaker at your table after that we're going to watch a short video then you'll do a group exercise you don't have to remember any of this you're just familiar when we get there then I'm going to do a little bit of teaching and show you all how to
do something then you're going to do it then we're going to come back and talk about all the things sound good okay I promise you don't worry about I'll get you there but first I'm sure everybody came from somewhere and the day might have been long so let's bow our heads and ask for the presence of God to come Jesus lover of our soul we come to you tonight and we ask for you to put us together on the inside we want to humbly acknowledge Lord that at different moments in the day or in the
week we've cling we've clung to other loves there's things that we've given our whole Hearts to our whole minds too there's things that you've asked us not to do and yet somehow we've found ourselves in the middle of it and we just want to repent we want to start with saying God as you know our ways are not always in line with yours again there's no excuse for it it's because on this side of heaven we still find ourselves slipping into stuff or loving foolish things God we need you tonight we need you in ways
we don't even know we need you we ask Spirit of Jesus that you would come and that you would heal that you'd reconstruct our hearts and pray that you'd open our eyes God we want to see we don't want to be distracted by other thoughts that would mess up the work you want to do in our spirit so Jesus would you come thank you that your arms are wide open thank you that you pay the ultimate price and that you fill in our failures and you make up for our missteps thank you that you have
a smile on your face tonight God we recognize that without the power of the Holy Spirit nothing really happens the kingdom doesn't come and so we ask for more of your Holy Spirit we back away from the flesh and we say God in your mercy you you who love to give good gifts to your children fill us with your spirit God would you meet each and every person in a special way tonight in Christ's name amen all right friends let me just give you a couple of ideas before we get going um first all these
Knights build on one another so tonight we're going to talk about kind of some basic stuff about studying God's word but then the next week we're going to go a little bit deeper and you're going to add skills and add understanding as you go so it's okay if you miss something but if tonight seems a little basic some of y'all know you've been to Bible school and you're like I feel like this is basic it's going to get less basic as we go but it'll never get over your head I promise okay one of the
things that we do is we include this Covenant extra table if you could grab that it looks like this this is the group Covenant and the reason we do this is because honestly we want to do more than just impart knowledge to our heads the churches of people and the church is a family and so I'm I want to ask you tonight to commit to one another for these seven weeks it is only seven weeks we're gonna be done with this thing by Thanksgiving before that so it's really not a lot of time but I
want to encourage you and challenge you I'm not going to collect this okay this is actually just for you to have but put it on your fridge or somewhere report on you know step a picture of it put on your computer desktop but the reason is I'm asking you to make a commitment we need commitments we need to be people of Integrity we need to say I'm committed and it's not it's not as much to the night it's to it's the people around your table I know some of them you don't even know very well
yet but what you're saying is I respect you and I know that it's different if I'm here and it's better if I'm here and it's better if you're here and I want to hear from God through you and so I want to show up so that I can so what we're asking you here is hey make the group a priority every week I know stuff is gonna come up so to be sure stuff will come up but you know just have some some wisdom about honey if you're tired everybody's tired you'll say don't let tiredness
take you away if you got a vacation or you got you got sick obviously um let that keep you away but resist the devil the devil is going to oppose the work of the spirit in your life also and I'm a challenges right now I want to challenge you to be really like from night one and your leaders are going to model this be really vulnerable like think about how comfortable you are sharing and then go a level deeper because you're going to enjoy the group more if you strap on your backbone and let people
actually know you now you don't have to sell them all the stuff and you don't have to tell them all the secrets but just a little bit more than you're comfortable with and then you'll feel like well I really I felt like I was legit and real with that group and they were legit and real with me so that's that's that's the other request is will you be just honest with everybody and then before the Lord just asking God would you do a fresh work I don't wanna I've been to a bunch of Bible studies
and I've been to classes or whatever but I'm asking God to do something new grow Something In My Heart that maybe he wouldn't have done if you wouldn't have done this sound like a deal okay before you go into your group time with your first Icebreaker question there at the top of your other page all right guys we're going to take eight to ten minutes with that first question so leaders lead away with that Icebreaker question
