Demonstrating The Gospel: Part 9
Naming the Terrain
by Gavin Bennett & Bethany Allen
Begin with prayer (5 minutes)
Gather together as a Community in a comfortable setting. Have somebody lead a prayer asking the Holy Spirit to lead and guide your time together.
Read this overview (5 minutes)
In the early story of Israel, we see two historical moments defining their community. The first involved deliverance. After more than 400 years of slavery in Egypt, God raised up Moses to deliver Israel out of oppression. In the culminating miracle of their deliverance, Moses led Israel right up to the banks of the Red Sea. With nowhere to go but through, God told Moses to lift up his staff and he would part the waters. Through one man, God made a way for his people to cross on dry land, delivering them from Egypt’s grasp. But what got them out of Egypt wouldn’t get them into the promised land.
The second movement involved inheritance. After wandering for 40 years in the wilderness, God raised up another leader among the people, Joshua. Through Joshua God, who had already delivered Israel, would now bring them into the land that he had promised, the land of their inheritance. Only this time, instead of working through one man, it would require the sacrifice and presence of the whole community. Once again, Israel found themselves on the banks of a river that they needed to cross, but they would now do so by wading waist deep into the river, waiting for God to make a way. In his miraculous provision, God stopped the waters far upstream, eventually creating a path for them into the promised land. Where God brought deliverance to Israel through one man, he now gives their inheritance through and to the whole community.
As we (at Bridgetown Church) survey our current landscape, it is becoming clear that we are moving out of a season of deliverance and into a season of inheritance. We want to be bold in naming the terrain in which we find ourselves and believe that in order to receive this inheritance we will have to do it together. Inheritance always involves spiritual gifts and relational gifts, which will look like dreaming new dreams about who we might be when our relationships to one another are redeemed and we are filled with the Holy Spirit’s power. As we are filled with his power, our church will become a house of prayer, a refuge and family for those on the margins, and a community beaming with resurrection life.
So this week, we want to spend some time reflecting back on this series and looking forward with expectation to the land of our inheritance.
Work through this practice tonight as a Community (30 minutes)
Tonight we want to return to where we started this Practice by talking about hunger and healing. Spend the next few minutes working through the following questions together:
In what ways do you feel like God satisfied your hunger for the Holy Spirit over these last 9 weeks?
If you came in wanting healing, did God answer in any way?
As you consider your answers to the above questions, we want to now have a conversation about the land of our inheritance. In Scriptures, when Israel came into the promised land, God said to Joshua, “I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses.” (Joshua 1v3) The next season of Israel’s story was about exploring this new land that God had given them and all that that land had to offer. As we are entering into this new “land” as a church, we want to do the same. We want to spend the remainder of our night “naming the terrain” of the current season in the life of our community and exploring prophetically where we think God is taking us.
Whether this terrain involves some of what God has already done in us throughout this series – the first fruits – or whether it’s something born of a holy imagination, we want to name it so that, as an act of faith, we hold them before us into this next season. We want to describe the land of our inheritance as a way of actively watching for God’s coming good.
There are so many things that this entails. It might be restored relationships with one another; more people healed, restored, and delivered; people on the margins of our city becoming a part of our family; our Communities multiplying; the infertile having children; those with mental illness being restored; those struggling with addiction finding sobriety in community. The list can go on and on, which is where you come in.
As you consider where God is taking Bridgetown in this next season, what do you have faith for God to do? Or what do you hope that God would do in the life of our church?
As your Community comes up with answers to these questions, please write them down and send an email with “Land of Our Inheritance” in the title to us at community@bridgetown.church.
Discuss the coming week’s Practice (2 minutes)
This week, continue to name and pray with expectation for the land of our inheritance. As you think and pray about where it is that God is taking us, consider sending us an email with “Land of Our Inheritance” in the title. We are wanting to compile these to share them with the church and be praying into them in the coming year.
Close in prayer (5 minutes)
To end, spend a few minutes in prayer, thanking God for what he’s already done, for what he’s doing, and for what he’s about to do in this next season.