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The Upside Down World, Week 3, Day 1

by David Joynt on September 24, 2017


WEEK 3

“THE UNEXPECTED GOD”

LUKE 15:1-10

 

If God wanted to hide, no one could ever find him! Yet Jesus portrays God as the seeker and human beings as the ones who need to be found. There is an objectivity about the sheep detaching from the flock and wandering into danger and isolation, as well as a definite clarity in a coin going missing. But the family story in this chapter is a reminder that God allows us to wander away, and we must “come to our senses” and recognize that we are lost. When humans wander away from truth and spiritual family, they often do not recognize their own lostness and alienation. They don’t understand their own need.

 

 

Have you ever felt “lost?”

 

How does God seek us?

 

 

FAMILY TIME—

Play “Sardines” in which one person hides and everyone looks for them. When anyone finds the hidden individual, they join them in their hiding place. The game ends when the last person finds everyone else.

Discuss the way it feels to wait to be found and the ways in which God seeks us.

 

Tags: lost, sheep, shepard

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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