This week's Small Group Guide is composed of questions from this week's GPS Guide. The questions relate to the Scripture for that particular day. You can download the full week's GPS as a printable document for the context of each question below (in the printable version, the recommended small group questions are marked with a special bullet point.)

From Monday's Reading: Luke 1:51-53; 2:6-11, 20

A recent Christmas song said, “This is such a strange way to save the world.”* If you were God, would you have trusted a poor family to parent and protect the Messiah? Would you first call shepherds, among the lowliest outcasts in their society, to worship the newborn child? In what ways do God’s values challenge your society’s values? Do your personal priorities more closely match God’s values or those of the culture around you?

From Tuesday's Reading: Luke 4:16-28

Remember the Vision 2030 goals Resurrection adopted last year? They are our effort to say, in practical terms, how we will live out Jesus' mission. We’re still ten years from the target date, and we can’t count on someone else to live out these goals. Click here to review the goals, and ask what God is calling you to do in making these goals a reality. How are you making yourself available now for God to work through you to make the world look more like God’s kingdom?

From Wednesday's Reading: Luke 8:1-3, 41-48

Scholar William Barclay noted of Galatians 3:28, “In the Jewish morning prayer, which Paul must all his pre-Christian life have used, the Jew thanks God that ‘Thou hast not made me a Gentile, a slave or a woman.’ Paul takes that prayer and reverses it.”** The apostle simply put into words the way Jesus lived in cultures based on male supremacy. How did Jesus' example make gender justice a basic (if too often overlooked) part of Christian ethics?

From Friday's Reading: Luke 7:1-10

The centurion sensed, more clearly than many people, that space or time did not limit God’s power the way they limit ours. How did he apply his own experience as a military authority to help him realize ways Jesus' power might work? Which of your life and work experiences help you better understand and trust God’s power?

* “Strange Way To Save The World” lyrics by songwriters: Koch, Donald A. / Clark, David Allen / Harris, Mark R. Publisher: Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, found at lyricsmania.com.

** William Barclay, Daily Study Bible Series: The Letters to the Galatians and Ephesians (Revised Edition). Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1976, pp. 32-33.