Assigned Scripture
Lamentations 3:22-24
22 The faithful love of the Lord never ends![a]
His mercies never cease.
23 Great is his faithfulness;
his mercies begin afresh each morning.
24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance;
therefore, I will hope in him!”
Ezra 1:1-5
In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia,[a] the Lord fulfilled the prophecy he had given through Jeremiah.[b] He stirred the heart of Cyrus to put this proclamation in writing and to send it throughout his kingdom:
2 “This is what King Cyrus of Persia says:
“The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth. He has appointed me to build him a Temple at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. 3 Any of you who are his people may go to Jerusalem in Judah to rebuild this Temple of the Lord, the God of Israel, who lives in Jerusalem. And may your God be with you! 4 Wherever this Jewish remnant is found, let their neighbors contribute toward their expenses by giving them silver and gold, supplies for the journey, and livestock, as well as a voluntary offering for the Temple of God in Jerusalem.”
5 Then God stirred the hearts of the priests and Levites and the leaders of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin to go to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple of the Lord.
New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Group Response
Following the weekly gathering, you’re invited to respond to the service by engaging in group discussion.
The story of Ezra-Nehemiah: A nation once devastated by the exile is given permission from an unlikely source to rebuild. But sometimes the hardest work is that which is done in the people themselves before the building begins.
Discussion Questions
1. When you look around the place where you work or live, what evidence do you see that God is doing “a new thing?”
2. What promise of God for the future most excites you? What about it is still hard to believe? What would it take for you to truly believe it?
3. If you leaned into that promise, as though it were already true, what would you do differently? What habits, what boundaries would you practice to lean into that promise of God?