Breaking Up With the Past

Turn Your Life Over to God

PART 1 — THE KICKOFF


“How will my life change?”

Did you ever get grossed out by the mere mention of a specific food? Brussels sprouts, beets, or maybe lima beans? Maybe your loved ones encouraged you to try them again and again, possibly even relaying the old wives’ tale that your taste buds change every seven years. But then, one day, you tried them roasted with some amazing sauce or a little bacon, and — BAM! — suddenly, they're your new favorite food. They say people don’t change, but in small ways and big ways, even our tastes evolve over the years. And the same goes for our old habits and ways of thinking — when we decide to follow Christ, we begin a total transformation!

Have you ever grown to love a food you once hated?

ICE BREAKER QUESTION

PART 2 — LET’S GET INTO IT


Let’s get into it and see the need to turn your life over to God. As we’ve seen, Jesus cared about us so much that he suffered a horrible death on the cross, but he rose from the grave. As we let that love sink in, his call to follow him becomes more and more compelling. But what does following him look like? Simply put, he wants us to die to our old life of sin and begin a new life of faith and obedience. Paul described his changed life this way: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). That’s a lot to digest, but let’s think about what it means to die to our old life.

Paul taught the believers in Ephesus to stop callously walking in mindless sin like the rest of the world (Eph. 4:17-19). He argued that when you’ve “learned Christ,” (Eph. 4:20) you know to “put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:21-23). When we hear about Jesus and believe in his authority, our life choices change. He talks about “putting off” and “putting on” —  like we’re wearing Jesus after having taken off our filthy, old clothes. We “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Rom. 13:14).

What life changes do you think you need to make? What change concerns you most?

REACH OUT QUESTION

Breaking up with the past is a lifelong journey to leave behind a broken life with its unhealthy patterns. Things don’t all change overnight. But as Paul asked, “How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Rom. 6:2). Every day we try to grow and learn new ways to think and act like him. But the decision isn’t progressive, slow, or easy. It’s an all-in, count-the-cost, and rip off the band-aid kind of commitment.

The life change God wants for you begins with your decision to follow Christ.

THE BIG IDEA

PART 3 — INTO THE BOOK


Once, when people complained about Jesus eating with sinners (Luke 15:2), he told a trio of stories about the tragedy of losing something. Of course, it was about much more than misplacing the remote. He knew that some of us were lost in our sins and missing from where we belong, with God. A shepherd leaves his flock to rescue one wandering sheep. A woman rejoices when she finds a lost coin. And in his last story, a son leaves his father, and eventually hits rock bottom. So read Luke 15:1-32 together to see how God wants us to return from the shadows and darkness of sin to the warm embrace and celebration of safety.

After reading, take some time to discuss it.

What do you notice about the lost son’s decision to finally come home? And what do you learn about God from the father’s reaction?

TALK ABOUT THE READING

PART 4 — GOING DEEPER


Ready to go deeper? As we’ve previously seen, the Bible describes our broken condition before Christ with some heavy words like iniquity, transgression, and sin. But it also explains our response to God graciously sending Jesus to die on the cross with another power-packed word that you might not be used to, when God urges people to “repent.”

So what does repentance mean? It’s about turning — a total about-face in the opposite direction. Peter called his listeners to, “repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3:19). You may have heard the story about Jonah and the big fish, but imagine how you’d feel if God told you to preach salvation to one of your enemy nations. After Jonah ran away, got swallowed by a giant fish, and then spit out onto a beach, he decided to listen to God’s instructions. His message to Nineveh? “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” Hearing his message, that whole wicked city “turned from their evil way!” (Jonah 3:8-10). And when God saw how they repented, he turned and “relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it” (Jonah 3:10).

What do we need to do? It’s the same question a bunch of Jewish people asked John the Baptist — Jesus’ cousin — in the wilderness of Judea. He told them to “bear fruits in keeping with repentance” (Luke 3:8). In other words, “talk is cheap — show that you’ve changed!” So, they asked him multiple times, “What shall we do?” His answer covered a broad range of everyday changes like, “whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.” He told them to “collect no more than you are authorized to do.” And he said, “do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.” (Luke 3:10-14). 

But why should we make a break from our old life? Paul describes “godly grief” as that which “produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret …” (2 Cor. 7:10). God uses sorrow, alongside his grace, to motivate us to turn from sin. True repentance involves both this inner sorrow and a tangible change in behavior away from sin like impurity and sensuality. Knowing that it was our sins that sent Jesus to die, it should develop within us an earnest desire to follow God (2 Cor. 7:11). 

So, repenting isn’t the sadness of our sin — but it’s motivated by that sadness. And it isn’t our behavior change — but that’s what comes from it. In between the sorrow and the changed life comes this decision to turn to God. That act of our heart and will is the hinge of a Christian’s life! That is repentance.

Are you ready to make a break with your past and start to become who God wants you to be?

THE BIG QUESTION

PART 5 — WRAPUP


THE CHALLENGE

As we consider the brokenness of life, it’s not hard to see things we’d like to change and put behind us. Which leads to our challenge: draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper. On the left side, make a list of all the hard, hurtful, and wrong things you're ready to break with and let go. Leave the right side blank for now. As you start the next conversation, take a moment to talk about what you noticed.

NEXT TIME

We started the discussion asking the question, “What does following Jesus look like?” We’ve talked about imitating his death by dying to our old life of sin. But then, as Jesus was buried, we’re called to follow him there, too! How does that work and what does it look like? That’s a lot like the questions a religious teacher named Nicodemus asked Jesus when he told him the same thing (John 3:5)! Hint: we’re talking about burial in water, a.k.a. baptism.

CLOSING BLESSING

But until then, may you have the courage from the Lord to see your old life of sin clearly and turn away from it!