Leaders, I pray that today finds you rejoicing in the Lord while taking your anxiety to him in prayer. What an amazing time we had yesterday in God’s Word. I am hoping the corporate worship we shared will directly transfer into your groups this week. This week I am giving you two specific ideas to incorporate into your group.

• Take some extended time to pray together. Specifically take time to pray over areas of anxiety among your people. Follow the instruction Paul gave us. Take the anxiety to God in prayer, in thanksgiving, and let God hear your requests. It may be of value to divide into smaller groups so more people can share and more people can be prayed for by their brothers and sisters. As you hear of people’s anxieties ask God to give members of your group specific passages of Scripture that would encourage others. Remember Peter’s instruction to walk through how God is thinking about the anxiety (he is not caught off guard, distant, apathetic, etc.).
• In Peter’s closing application he made several statements that I have reproduced below. Ask your group members for their reactions to these statements as well as how they believe these statements challenge how they are presently living.
  “If we don’t have relationships with people who don’t know Jesus then we have a discipleship problem.”
  “When I have a friendship with someone who doesn’t know Jesus my first thought is not ‘I need to get them to church’ it is ‘I need to invite them into my life.’”
  “If we never live among the lost they never ask us questions about being different.”