Overview
Hybels on What God Wants - Study 1
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Featuring: Bill Hybels
Bill Hybels, founding and senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, is well known for his relevant and insightful Bible-based teaching. He is the author of 17 books, including Rediscovering Church and Fit to Be Tied (both co-authored with his wife Lynne), Just Walk Across the Room: Simple Steps Pointing People to Faith, Becoming a Contagious Christian (with Mark Mittelberg), and The God You're Looking For.
Hybels on the God You’re SeekingTable of Contents
Click on the study title or section you’d like to see:
Study 1: A God to Protect You
Leader’s Guide — Participant’s Guide
Study 2: A God to Talk To
Leader’s Guide — Participant’s Guide
Study 3: A God to Know
Leader’s Guide — Participant’s Guide
Study 4: A God to Keep You from Hell
Leader’s Guide — Participant’s Guide
Study 5: A God to Live with in Heaven
Leader’s Guide — Participant’s Guide
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Leader’s Guide
Hybels on the God You’re Seeking - Study 1
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Hybels on the God You’re Seeking - Study 1
Leader’s GuideA God to Protect You
God is a refuge for his children in times of danger and distress.
Physical refuge relieves the frightened and spiritual refuge relieves the burdened. Hurting people need a refuge from their distress—they need the refuge of God.
Scripture:
Psalm 91:1
Based on:
The sermon “Under His Wings,” by Bill Hybels, PreachingToday.com
PART 1
Identify the Current Issue
Note to leader: Provide each person with the Participant’s Guide, included at the end of this study.
In certain parts of the ancient Middle East where populations were spread out, societies weren’t well organized and judicial systems were few and far between. People kept law and order by a rather aggressive form of tribal vengeance and punishment.
For example, if someone in your family lost his or her life at the hands of another person, your family would call a meeting. You’d discuss the situation, then appoint someone who became known as “the blood avenger.” This person would track down and kill the person who killed your family member. Then a celebration would ensue. Justice had been done.
A problem arose in that culture, however. There was no provision for accidental homicides, for unintentional deaths.
In the Old Testament books of Deuteronomy, Numbers, and Joshua, God stepped into this situation. He addressed the problem by establishing cities of refuge. Joshua 20:2–3 says, “designate the cities of refuge, as I instructed you through Moses, so that anyone who kills a person accidentally and unintentionally may flee there and find protection from the avenger of blood.”
God established six cities of refuge. They were spread out for easy access. They all had paths marked by signposts pointing to the city gates. If a person committed an unintentional homicide, he or she would take off running. If the offender reached the city of refuge before the blood avenger tracked them down, they would be safe inside the gates. After a time, a fair trial would be held. If the person was found innocent, he or she would be set free. If the person was found guilty, the blood avenger would do his thing.
But look at what God provided in the middle of this situation. He provided a place to run to, a shelter, a hiding place until a fair trial could take place.
The idea for these hiding places, these shelters, flows out of the very heart of God. It is bound up in the nature and character of God to provide safety and refuge to people who are feeling oppressed or hunted down. It is in the heart of God to provide safety and refuge to people who are running fast but wearing down. It is in the heart of God to provide safety and refuge for people who are hearing footsteps and who desperately need a hiding place.
Discussion starters:
[Q] Have you heard some unfriendly footsteps in your life recently? Are you under enormous stress right now? Tell us about it.
[Q] What do you think it means that God wants to be your refuge? Do you find that comforting? Why or why not?
PART 2
Discover the Eternal Principles
Teaching point one: Physical refuge relieves the frightened.
The news service carried a story about an American soldier and his son who were on a skiing vacation in Italy. During a blizzard, they lost their way and went down the wrong side of the mountain. They were lost for 11 days. People gave up hope that they would be found alive.
But by the end of the first day, the father and his son had found a little crevice, a couple of feet high, tucked way back in under a rock. If you asked that man and his son, after they survived that 11-day ordeal, what a physical refuge felt like, they’d say it felt like that cave.
There was shelter from harsh elements. There was a protected environment where they could regroup, recuperate, and reorganize. There was safety and security in that place, from which they could eventually plan their best approach to getting rescued.
Sailors know what a physical refuge feels like. The open sea in a violent storm is as hostile an environment as exists on this planet. When a sailor steers his boat into a small harbor, he has found shelter from the harsh elements, an opportunity to recuperate and reorganize in a safe place so he can plan the next leg of the voyage. You can’t stay in the harbor forever; you must continue your journey sooner or later. But every sailor knows the full weight of the words of the old hymn that talks about “a shelter in the time of storm.”
Read Psalm 91.
[Q] Which part of this psalm do you find most comforting?
[Q] Have you ever experienced a place of physical refuge? If so, tell us about it.
[Q] How can we make the Most High our dwelling (v. 9) in practical terms?
Teaching point two: Spiritual refuge relieves the burdened.
Read Psalm 46:1.
God is a shelter from the harsh forces or realities that are pressing in upon you and wearing you down. He provides a protected environment in which you can rest and recuperate temporarily, a secure place from which you can plan your next move.
One of the most beautiful pictures of this is Psalm 91:4: “He will shelter you under his wings.” Have you ever seen little chicks hopping around chirping, pecking, doing chick stuff? When the chicks become aware that there’s a predator in the vicinity, the mother hen lifts both wings and within a few seconds all the baby chicks disappear under them. They are hidden and sheltered there. They regroup there. The chicks say to each other in the darkness, “My heart, my heart. Did you see the size of that hawk?” But they’re okay under the wings for a time. Eventually they have to crawl out to face the real world, but for a time there’s nothing quite like being sheltered under their mother’s wings.
This is the heart of God. It is the character and essence of God to provide a hiding place for his children under his wings. Just as God provided cities of refuge for those who were running from blood avengers, today God delights in spreading his protective wings and enfolding his frightened, weary children under them. He says, “Hide here for a time and get out of danger. Regroup. Rest. Renew your strength.”
Then when the time is right – when strength has been renewed, when souls have been restored – he lifts his wings, and we venture back out a little calmer, a little stronger, a little more secure.
[Q] How can we find spiritual refuge under God’s wings? What might that look like in practical terms? What activities might help us do that?
Leader’s Note: Possible answers to the last question: prayer, reading Scripture, listening to worship music, listening to a sermon, reading a Christian book, meeting with your Bible study group, sitting in silence before God, talking to a friend who counsels wisely, a Christian retreat.
[Q] What do you think Psalm 91:11–13 means? Does it mean nothing bad will ever happen to you? What makes you say that?
Leader’s Note: Obviously this is not true. Scripture is full of people who loved God but had bad things happen to them. But although trouble and affliction come, we have the assurance that it will ultimately be used for our good because of his love for us.
[Q] How do you most need God as a refuge?
a. To handle emotional difficulties.
b. To handle spiritual difficulties.
c. To handle physical difficulties.
How can God be a refuge in the area you chose?
Teaching point three: To find God’s refuge we must learn dependence on him.
Cities of refuge didn’t mean much to the average person on Old Testament–era streets. But to the person who had a blood avenger hot on her heels, cities of refuge were the most important places on the planet.
She runs for her life, bursting through the gates of the city of refuge just ahead of her pursuer. She falls down on the street inside the city and says, “God, I would have been dead were it not for this safe place.”
Some of us have said similar words when we have come into God’s refuge. “God, I couldn’t have gone another day if you hadn’t hid me under your wings.”
Read Psalm 9:9. Throughout the Psalms, there is an invitation by God to come under his wings. Who needs a refuge? Oppressed, troubled, weary, grieving, worried, lonely, and disappointed people do.
God says to oppressed people: “Let me shelter you for a time. Let me shelter you from those angry spouses, devious business partners, frightening medical reports, overwhelming financial needs, parents who don’t understand, or children who are saying and doing hurtful things.”
Some of you don’t know what it’s like to camp a while in God’s refuge, and you just keep running. There is a city of refuge nearby, and the gates will swing open to you. We have a refuge in God. His irrational love for us makes it a joy for him to hide us for a time.
To seek the refuge of God, the first move is ours. It can be a hard one. It goes against the grain of many of us who like to consider ourselves independent. It is a move from independence to dependence on God.
Reread Psalm 91:15. The first practical step toward accessing God’s refuge is to call out and admit that something or someone is chasing you down and wearing you out. It’s admitting you need a city of refuge, a hiding place, wings to crawl under. You have to say, “I can’t outrun this one. My only hope is a city of refuge.”
These days, you don’t have to run to a city or a monastery to access God’s refuge. You don’t have to drive to the church to do it. You don’t have to call a minister to do it. You can access the refuge of God any time, anywhere. But the first step is for you to move from independence to dependence on God. You’ve got to call out.
[Q] How does our need make us dependent on God?
[Q] How do we show God that we are willing to be dependent on him? What might you have to give up control of to do this?
Teaching point four: To know the peace of refuge we must pour out our hearts to God.
The second practical step is to move from silence to spilling it all out to God. Read Psalm 62:8. In this verse, God invites us to explain to him what it is that’s vexing us so. The passwords that open the gates into the refuge of God are the words that flow out of our hearts when we finally decide to trust God. When we tell him how bad it is, how weary we are, how hopeless we’ve become, how discouraging our situation really is, it’s as if the password hits the heart of God and the gates open and the wings extend. There is nothing like feeling the gates open and taking refuge under his extended wings.
The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah was called as a young man. God said, “Be my spokesperson to the nations.” Jeremiah was a little tentative about it, but God said, “I’ll be with you. I’ll give you words; I’ll give you protection.”
So Jeremiah spoke the words of God, but everywhere he turned he found resistance from the rulers, the priests, and the people. There came a point when people got sick of him speaking God’s words, and they beat him mercilessly. They put him in stocks by the city gate so people could laugh at him all day long. When he was finally released from those stocks, Jeremiah desperately needed a refuge.
Jeremiah poured his heart out to God, and it was messy. Read Jeremiah 20:7–18. You have to be pretty blue to say, “I hate my birthday. I hate my mother. I hate the guy who passed out cigars saying, ‘It’s a boy.’”
He poured his hear out to God. When he did that, his words were the password. The gates of the city of refuge opened, the wings extended, and God brought him underneath his protective care. In the midst of this passage, Jeremiah said, “The Lord is with me. My persecutors will not prevail. I will not be forgotten. Sing to the Lord. Praise his name. He has delivered the soul of a needy one from the hand of evildoers.”
What changed? The next day he would speak the same words to the same resistant crowd. But he did it with the renewed strength, perspective, and hope that come from being sheltered for a time.
[Q] Why is honesty with God so essential to finding refuge in him?
Leader’s Note: God cannot deal with emotions that we don’t acknowledge. Until we get everything on the table, we don’t even know what we need to give to God or how to rely on him as our refuge.