A few weeks ago I joked to the missional church group I lead that we were going to start with a really creative question this time. Then I went on to ask the same question we open the group with every week: “How did you experience God this week?” Every single week we ask this same question, but it never gets boring because God is creative in the responses. He brings the creativity in the way he’s working in people’s lives.
I used to spend a lot of time as a group leader trying to come up with creative sharing questions, but I’ve since realized we don’t have to do that. God is at work. If people start looking for where God is working– and our repeated question trains them to do just that– it’s not boring in the least. It’s refreshing, energizing, and encouraging.
The way we read the Bible can perform a similar function. We’ve just been reading through one of the gospels and now the book of Acts without doing much teaching. Even for those who’ve never read these books before, what they are seeing is a God who works. They then connect the dots with how God is working today. Now that they’re watching for it, they begin to see it. They notice God working in ways that could only be God.