CONVERSATION STARTERS
Conversation Starters help us dig deeper, connecting Sunday’s sermons with our Monday lives. Please know that these questions are meant to be a resource. You do not have to follow them verbatim or get through them all. We trust you to know your group and to ask the questions based on your group needs.

1. Take a moment and think about a time when you felt lonely or alone. Take a few minutes for group members to share - as the leader, kick off the sharing!

2. Read John 14:15-31 silently or aloud.

3. What are some of the descriptions/purposes of the Holy Spirit (the King’s Counselor) in this passage?

4. When have you felt that Jesus is near and real? When have you struggled to feel or believe his nearness?

5. What do we learn about Jesus in this passage?

6. What does this passage say about what it means for believers to follow Jesus as king?

7. How does this passage encourage and/or challenge you?

PRAYER PROMPT
Pray for the Holy Spirit to be present in the room and to fill each of you. Pray for belief that Jesus is near even when we may not feel it.

Title: The King’s Counselor
Scripture: John 14:15-31
Speaker: Paul Brandes, PaulB@cckc.church

> We are God’s home.

> We are not in charge.

“​​The idea is not that the believer initiates this relation of love by demonstrating obedience, and that Jesus and his Father simply respond. After all, the [Gospel of John] repeatedly makes it clear that the initiative in the relationship between Jesus and his followers finally lies with Jesus or with his Father. The idea, rather, is that the ongoing relationship between Jesus and his disciples is characterized by obedience on their part, and thus is logically conditioned by it. They love and obey Jesus, and he loves them, in exactly the same way that he loves and obeys his Father, and the Father loves him.” - D.A. Carson

> I am not in charge?

> We need lots of help.

“The world promises peace and waves the flag of peace as a greeting; it cannot give it. But Jesus displays transcendent peace, his own peace, ‘my peace,’ throughout his perilous hour of suffering and death. And by that death he absorbs in himself the malice of others, the sin of the world, and introduces the promised messianic peace in a way none of his contemporaries had envisaged. The pax Romana (‘Roman peace’) was won and maintained by a brutal sword; not a few Jews thought the messianic peace would have to be secured by a still mightier sword. Instead, it was secured by an innocent man who suffered and died at the hands of the Romans, of the Jews, and of all of us. And by his death he effected for his own followers peace with God, and therefore ‘the peace of God, which transcends all understanding’ (Phil. 4:7).” - D.A. Carson

> We are a peaceful home.

> We are God’s home.

“If I had understood as I do now that in this little palace of my soul dwelt so great a King, I would not have left Him alone so often. But what a marvelous thing, that He who would fill a thousand worlds and many more with His grandeur would enclose Himself in something so small! Since He is Lord He is free to do what He wants, and since He loves us He adapts Himself to our size. So we ought to simply close our eyes and go within. Slip into the center of our souls. For this is where the Beloved is. This is where the Beloved has been all along. The only place in the universe the Beloved wants to be. Inside us.” - Teresa of Avila