About This Guide

The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.

Join a weekly group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.

pdf download

Download this PDF to help you make a plan to follow Jesus in your everyday life, including diagnostic questions to help get you started.

Pickup a print version at our weekly in-person Sunday gatherings.

more Resources

Explore a curated online collection of recommended practices and resources to pursue presence, formation, and love in your life.

Questions about the series or looking for a way to get involved? Contact us.

Love

Teaching Text: Song of Songs 2: 14-15

My dove in the clefts of the rock,
    in the hiding places on the mountainside,
show me your face,
    let me hear your voice;
for your voice is sweet,
    and your face is lovely.
Catch for us the foxes,
    the little foxes
that ruin the vineyards,
    our vineyards that are in bloom.

Themes

Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:

Little foxes that ruin your prayer life

Formation

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

On the scale of discipline to delight where would you plot your prayer life right now?

Discipline –----------------------------------------------------– Delight

Song of Solomon 2: 14-15 – My dove in the clefts of the rock,
in the hiding places on the mountainside,
show me your face,
let me hear your voice;
for your voice is sweet,
and your face is lovely.

Catch for us the foxes,
the little foxes
that ruin the vineyards,
our vineyards that are in bloom.

Prayer is about relationship with God.
- When Jesus teaches we should pray for His kingdom to come, He is not just trying to keep us busy, and out of trouble.
- He invites us to cultivate and share His heart for putting the world right.
It is intended to cultivate a communion between us and God.
- There are ways we can approach prayer that harm the relationship it was intended to cultivate
In our text, we see that the lover acknowleges the threat of disruptors of intimacy.
- They are called little foxes.
Disruptors of intimacy can take on many shapes … little things that you don't think have meaning, or big, looming, glaring, violent things.
Foxes chew at the vines and break off the ability for the life-giving nutrients to make their way to the branches.
There are little foxes, intimacy disruptors, that are right now at work in breaking down your vital connection to the Jesus.
Before prayer changes our circumstances, its intent is to change us.
- “Whether prayer changes our situation or not, one thing is certain: Prayer will change us!”
  – Billy graham
- It changes us because it has us encountering the living God.
Then it does change our world…
- “It would be of course a low voltage spiritual life in which prayer was chiefly undertaken as a discipline, rather than as a way of co-labouring with God to accomplish good things and advancing his Kingdom purposes.”
  – Willard
The goal is to restore relational connection and, through that, affect all of life.
- “The goal of prayer is to live all of my life and speak all of my words in the joyful awareness of the presence of God. Prayer becomes real when we grasp the reality and goodness of God's constant presence with 'the real me. ' Jesus lived his everyday life in conscious awareness of his Father.”
  – Ortberg