Are You Carrying Excess Baggage · Group Guide

Discussion Questions

1. 1

   Read Matthew 5:43-48 out loud. Kent said Jesus sets the bar impossibly high on purpose — "so high that only those who are compelled by grace can get over it." What reason does verse 45 actually give for loving your enemies?

2. 2

   Verse 46 asks what reward there is in loving people who already love you back — even the tax collectors manage that. Without meaning to, where do you draw your own line between the people you owe kindness and the people you don't?

3. 3

   Kent's seminary professor Richard Pratt told him "rootedness determines your flexibility." After Hurricane Andrew the Australian pines ended up in Naples, while the palms and gumbo limbos, stripped bare, were still standing. What has a storm in your life shown you about your own roots?

4. 4

   Kent admitted he used to walk the neighborhood at night with his German Shepherd running through a mental hit list of people who had wronged him, rehearsing what he wished he could say. What kind of thing puts someone on a list like that for you?

5. 5

   Kent said that when he asked God to show him his own sins, it was the most horrifying and the most liberating day at once — and the anger toward those people simply went. He set that beside Erica Kirk forgiving her husband's assassin eleven days after the murder. What makes forgiving feel like losing?

6. 6

   The runners at Olympia in 776 BC swore three things: I have trained at least ten months, I will compete by the rules, I will not quit. Kent said the second mile is where you find out whether you trained, and pointed to the one-chapter-a-day reading plan. What is one piece of training you will actually do this week, and on what day?