Series: I Have Decided… To Choose Hope
Passage: Romans 5:1-5
Main Idea: Choosing Hope

Purpose: Introduce topic and get the group talking.

1. When you were a teen, what is something you hoped for most?

Purpose: Observe the passage and interact with the text

2. Read Romans 5:1-5 together. Unpack Paul’s equation of how suffering produces hope. How do verses 1-2 and verse 5 add meaning to this equation?

Purpose: Connect observations in God’s Word with observations in our world today.

3. How have you seen people experience suffering today? What responses to their suffering have you seen? Think globally and also within your network of relationships.

Purpose: Internalize God’s Word and apply the truth to your personal life.

4. Is there a situation in your life right now where you are suffering? What is your natural reaction to suffering? Have you ever seen suffering develop perseverance, character and hope in your life? If so, how?

Purpose: Spend time listening for God’s for direction and guidance as you seek to live out the truths of this passage in your everyday life.

5. As you think about your suffering that you identified in Question 5, ask God what it might look like to choose hope of becoming more like Him and some day spending eternity in Heaven with Him. Spend some time listening to the song below as you pray and consider this question.

Play Living Hope
6. Share your experience in prayer with the group. How did God meet you? What clarity, if any, did God offer you about his hope?

Purpose: Introduce topic and get the group talking.

1. When you were a teen, what is something you hoped for most?

Your license, a girlfriend/boyfriend, good grades, etc.

Purpose: Observe the passage and interact with the text

2. Read Romans 5:1-5 together. Unpack Paul’s equation of how suffering produces hope. How do verses 1-2 and verse 5 add meaning to this equation?

• Suffering –> perseverance perseverance –> character character –> hope
• The New Living Translation shines a little more light on the equation:
  “Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory. We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.”
• By faith we have the capacity to endure trouble. For those who live by faith, tribulation produces perseverance! Faith affords the faithful the strength to develop character (James 1:2-4). Jesus said, “In the world you will have tribulation; be but of good cheer, I have overcome the world,” John. 16:33.
• According to Romans 5:1-5, the life of the justified is a mix of peace, hope, suffering, and love.
• As Paul states clearly in 1 Corinthians 13:13, faith, hope, and love are at the heart of the Christian life. Your relationship with God begins with faith, which helps you realize that you are delivered from your past by Jesus’ death and resurrection. Hope grows as you learn all that God has in mind for you; it gives you the promise of the future. God’s love fills your life and gives you the ability to reach out and love others.

Purpose: Connect observations in God’s Word with observations in our world today.

3. How have you seen people experience suffering today? What responses to their suffering have you seen? Think globally and also within your network of relationships.

Various religious traditions often understand suffering as somehow a “payback” for sin. God’s people have also wrestled with this (see the book of Job and John 9:1-4). If that were true, then suffering people would have to wonder, “What did I do wrong?” Some of Job’s misguided friends suggest that he undertake a self-examination. For those made righteous by Christ’s faithfulness, however, suffering is not a sign of God’s lack of favor toward us. In fact, God has no lack of favor toward those in Christ. Rather, God has shown generosity toward us – “While we were sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). In the context of such grace, suffering only works to strengthen the resolve and character of those enduring it.

Purpose: Internalize God’s Word and apply the truth to your personal life.

4. Is there a situation in your life right now where you are suffering? What is your natural reaction to suffering? Have you ever seen suffering develop perseverance, character and hope in your life? If so, how?

• Natural reactions to suffering are stress, blame, condemnation, and mental/emotional responses to the pain.
• We will experience difficulties that help us grow. We rejoice in suffering, not because we like pain or deny its tragedy, but because we know God is using life’s difficulties and Satan’s attacks to build our character. The problems that we encounter will develop our perseverance, which, in turn, will strengthen our character, deepen our trust in God, and give us greater confidence about the future.
• To the world, glorying in tribulation is absurd and abnormal. Can anyone go through tribulation (pain, anguish, hardship, persecution) and glory in it at the same time? The idea – when stated in these terms – seems to raise immediate objection. But Paul affirms, those “justified by faith” can do this!

Purpose: Spend time listening for God’s direction and guidance as you seek to live out the truths of this passage in your everyday life.

6. As you think about your suffering that you identified in Question 5, ask God what it might look like to choose hope of becoming more like Him and some day spending eternity in Heaven with Him. Spend some time listening to the song below as you pray and consider this question.

Play Living Hope
The goal here is simply to allow God some space to reveal, uncover, guide, direct, and care for us. Do your best not to rush through this part.

7. Share your experience in prayer with the group. How did God meet you? What clarity, if any, did God offer you about his hope?

Close in prayer for each other.