Dave Ferguson - Finding Your Way Back to God Participants Guide: Five Awakenings to Your New Life

F INDING Y OUR W AY B ACK TO G OD P ARTICIPANTS G UIDE
P UBLISHED BY M ULTNOMAH B OOKS
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Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica Inc.TM Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com.

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Copyright 2015 by Dave Ferguson

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So many people today feel distant from God. Earlier in their lives they may have felt like they knew him. But then time passed, maybe something bad or disillusioning happened, and it was like they forgot him. Or he forgot them. Now theyd like to get back to God but arent sure how.

IDaveknow what that is like. So does my brother, Jon. We have both made and continue to make our own journeys back to God. We wrote the book Finding Your Way Back to God for spiritual searchers like ourselves.

How about you? Do you want to find your way back to God for the first time? Or maybe find your way back to him again?

If you are part of a Finding Your Way Back to God group, then you are on the right path. Your group will explore the key ideas from Finding Your Way Back to God as well as watch videos from the Finding Your Way Back to God DVD to discover the pathway God has laid out to lead people back to him.

This Participants Guide is the tool to keep in your hands while youre searching for God alongside the other members of your group. Here youll find all you need to participate fully in the five sessions.

Each session looks at one of the five awakenings that people typically have on their way back to God:

1. An Awakening to Longing: Theres got to be more.

2. An Awakening to Regret: I wish I could start over.

3. An Awakening to Help: I cant do this on my own.

4. An Awakening to Love: God loves me deeply after all.

5. An Awakening to Life: Now this is living!

If youre not immediately sure of what all that means, no problem. Thats what youll discover in your group sessions. Youll see all five of these awakenings modeled in Jesuss story of the lost son (see Luke 15), giving you a map for how to find your way back to God.

I am certain that by the time you are done with the five sessions, you will be feeling connected to God once again. How can I be so confident? Because God wants to be found even more than we want to find him! Check out this promise from Jeremiah 29:1214:

You will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the L ORD .

Now that gives us hope and reassurance, doesnt it? If we are sincerely searching for God, we can have confidence because he is a findable God.

So even if youre not sure God cares about you, even if youre not clear on how to find your way back to him, even if youre not totally convinced he really exists, what Im asking you to do is simply this: take a chance on him. Start by praying, God, if you are real, make yourself real to me. He will do it. And he will use your Finding Your Way Back to God group as a means of revealing himself to you.

Youre on your way!

AWAKENING TO LONGING

Theres got to be more.

We all have a longing to love and be loved in return, to find purpose for our days, and to make sense out of life when life doesnt seem to make any sense. That longing is from God, and when you allow that strong desire for more to draw you nearer to him, he will fulfill your longings. God knows your needs and desires even better than you do, and he has a life of meaning and purpose in mind for you. The more you need most can only be found as you continually bring your life back to your heavenly Father. Let your longings for moreno matter how intensedraw you closer to him instead of pushing you away from him.

If possible, please read chapters 16 of Finding Your Way Back to God before participating in session 1.

Answer this question: What is one wild or rebellious act you committed as a teen or young adult that you now realize was foolish? (It doesnt have to be anything too embarrassing!)

1. Have you ever felt like you lost God somewhere along the course of your life (or perhaps never found him in the first place)? If so, describe the sense of separation you have felt and why you continue to want to find him.