MEETING AGENDA
- OPENING PRAYER – Ask one person to open the meeting in prayer.
- GROWTH QUESTIONS – Ask everyone the Growth Questions.
- ATTENDANCE – Take attendance through the DG Attendance System.
- TODAY’S LESSON – Go over this week’s DG lesson.
- GIVING – Encourage everyone to give on the App.
- CLOSING PRAYER – Ask for prayer requests and pray.
AN INTRODUCTION TO GOD
TODAY’S PASSAGE:
Acts 17:24-31 (NLT) – 24 “He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples, 25 and human hands can’t serve his needs—for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need. 26 From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries. 27 “His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. 28 For in him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ 29 And since this is true, we shouldn’t think of God as an idol designed by craftsmen from gold or silver or stone. 30 “God overlooked people’s ignorance about these things in earlier times, but now he commands everyone everywhere to repent of their sins and turn to him. 31 For he has set a day for judging the world with justice by the man he has appointed, and he proved to everyone who this is by raising him from the dead.”
- God is the creator of the universe. Everything began with Him!
- The foundation for believing in God is the first sentence of the Bible!
Genesis 1:1 (NLT) – In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
- Just as the evidence of an artist is art and the evidence of a builder is a building, the evidence of the Creator is creation.
Romans 1:20 (NLT) – For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.
- We don’t have to figure out where the earth and everything in it came from, the answer is simple! God created it all!
- God has no needs, but can satisfy every need.
- Life itself is found in Him! Jesus told us that He Himself is life!
John 14:6 (NLT) – Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.
- DEFINITION – Life (zoe) – the absolute fullness of life which belongs to God through faith in Christ alone; the blessed life that begins in this world and continues for eternity after the resurrection; a life that is dedicated and devoted to God; a happy life.
- Jesus came to give us an abundant, rich, and satisfying life that we cannot find apart from Him.
John 10:10 (NLT) – The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.
- God promises that any person who seeks after him with all their heart will find Him.
Jeremiah 29:13 (AMP) – Then with a deep longing you will seek Me and require Me as a vital necessity and you will find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.
- The time to seek Him is now, while we still have breath in our lungs.
Isaiah 55:6 (AMP) – Seek the Lord while He may be found; call on Him for salvation while He is near
- There is a time when God cannot be found. If you die without Christ, God and His salvation will be so far away that it will be unreachable.
- But God is not far away from us now. He is just one prayer away, one decision away, one call away.
Psalm 145:18 (NLT) – The Lord is close to all who call on him, yes, to all who call on him in truth.
- God is accessible to all who will search and call for Him
- God commands us to repent because a day of judgment is coming.
- The judge that God has appointed for all mankind is Jesus Christ, the only man to have ever resurrected from the dead.
- Our faith that Jesus lived, died, and resurrected is a necessity for us to be saved.
Romans 10:9 (NLT) – If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
- Every person must make a choice between life and death.
Deuteronomy 30:19 (NLT) – “Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live!
- The same choice is ours to make today. We can choose to repent, turn to God, put our faith in Jesus, and be saved, or we can choose to reject Jesus and be condemned.