ADVENT | Wonderful Counselor

1. As we’re moving toward the third Sunday of Advent, how are you doing slowing down and preparing your heart for Jesus? What’s working well? Where are your challenges…and opportunities?

 

2. Read Isaiah 9:2; 6-7. These verses might be so familiar that you speed right past them. Read verse 2 again, slowly. Imagine living in ancient Israel and hearing these words, passed down for 800 years among your family and ancestors. Who are the people? What darkness are they walking in? Why did they see the light? Why is there a repetition and a contrast of darkness and light in the second part of the verse?

 

3. Now, return to the here and now. How do these verses speak to our world today? How do they speak to you personally? Who are today’s people? What is our darkness? 

 

4. “And he will be called Wonderful Counselor...” (Is 9:6) Pastor Todd said that “counselor” (yāʿaṣ) means giver of wisdom, leader, friend, companion. “Wonderful” (pele) means beyond one’s power, something miraculous, divine, contrary to human explanation. What picture of Jesus does this paint for you? How have you experienced Jesus as a Wonderful Counselor?

 

5. Jesus came for two kinds of people—the sick and the lost (Mt 9:12; Lk 19:10). Where are you sick? Where are you lost? If you don’t consider yourself sick or lost, how might this be blocking you from receiving Jesus as wonderful counselor?

 

6. Todd said that, to make room for God’s Wonderful Counsel, one must become humble and honest (Mt. 9:12); listen to the wonderful counselor (Jn 10:3-4; Jn 8:12); and then surrender and do what He says (Jn 14:21).

—Being humble and honest means admitting you need a counselor. As Todd said, “It’s hard to find healing when you’re hiding.” Why is hiding easier than humility? When you have been humble and honest with Jesus, what happened?

—God is always speaking to us, but so is the world. What other “voices” distract you from hearing God’s? Are you not listening because you don’t want to hear? Are you in a place right now where you can’t hear?

—In a culture that promotes and celebrates “self” (self-help, self-made futures, self-identification, self-sufficiency, self-expression, etc.), what does it look like to surrender our whole self to God?