This Week’s Training Notes

[Due to a period of time being short-staffed on our team, we have been unable to produce our weekly leader training podcasts for The Gospel Project for Adults for Spring 2022. We plan to begin making these podcasts available again for Summer 2022. We are sorry for the inconvenience but look forward to providing this assistance again soon. In the meantime, we hope the content below helps for your weekly preparation. We also provide weekly devotional blog posts that reflect on the message of each session. And please take advantage of the Additional Resources for each session, which include links to sermons, articles, and various other items to aid in your planning. Thank you for your patience!]

Continuing in the Spring curriculum of The Gospel Project for Adults, From Conquest to Kingdom, we have been reading through the book of Joshua, seeing how God led His people into the promised land with His power and His presence.

This week, your group will be studying Unit 8, Session 4, Renewed by God’s Power, a session focused on miracles, and how God’s miraculous signs and wonders, of which the resurrection of Jesus is the greatest, demonstrate His glory and draw people to Himself through Christ.

So this week, here are your three things to know, listen to, and do as you prepare for this week’s session:

Something to know

Since this session is focused on the doctrine of miracles, help members understand the historical and spiritual significance of miracles in the Bible, usually done to reveal God’s power and authority over all things, thus in the case of the New Testament, they reveal Jesus’s power and authority over all things. Note that the difficulty with miracles stem from our tendency as humans to either underemphasize or overemphasize miracles. Since this topic can have various viewpoints, don’t hesitate to consult with your church pastor on his thoughts and teaching on the subject.

Something to listen to

For something to listen to, we’ve included a link to a podcast episode with Aaron Armstrong and Brian Dembowczyk in the Additional Resources entitled, Why did Jesus perform miracles? Here is an excerpt from their conversation:

“Two main reasons: the first one… He was performing His miracles to reveal His identity. The idea was, people would see the miracle itself, a healing for example, then look at the one who performed the miracle, Jesus, and recognize there’s something unique about this. Normal people can’t do what this man just did. Ergo, He must be more than human; He must be the Son of God as He’s claiming to be. He’s the Messiah; I can trust in Him. So one of the main reasons was so that it could point to His identity so they might find salvation in Him… and… He performed miracles because He had compassion for people.”

Something to do

The greatest miracle is Jesus’s resurrection that overcomes death and sin and gives us new life in Christ. Nothing compares and if we truly believe it, we would share it with the world. As believers, we all have a miracle story of being transformed from sinner to saint by the blood of Jesus or from His intervention in our life to provide for us in various ways. Help your group be able to write and share a 3-5 minute testimony about how God worked a miracle in their life, whether it be a salvation story or a story of provision. One tip would be to use the 3-part story: 1) describe what my life was like before or what my situation was, 2) how Jesus worked in that situation, 3) how my life or situation was after. As a leader, take time to write your own testimony to be able to share with your group as an example.