REALLIFE STUDY GROUP

“Love Does Not Envy!”

ICEBREAKER: What’s your favorite romance chick flick? (Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, Titanic, Maid In Manhattan, Sweet Home Alabama, Dirty Harry, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Devil Wears Prada, The Notebook, Pride and Prejudice, Rambo, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Golden Eye, What Women Want, The Wedding Planner, Two Weeks Notice, When Harry Met Sally, The Terminator, Pretty Woman, While You Were Sleeping, Never Been Kissed, Monster-In-Law…)

DEFINITIONS: Envy: The painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage.

OUTLINE: Envy Facts

1. Envy will not be grateful for what it has.

2. Envy will not celebrate the success of another.

3. Envy is never secure in itself.

4. Envy cannot stop competing with those who have more and do more.

5. Envy will never stop comparing itself what others have and do.

6. Envy will never be content because of its internal issues.

7. Envy stops the flow of worship in people.

8. Envy causes bitterness and un-forgiveness.

9. Envy often begins with a mindset of grieving the loss of what you never had but thought you had the right to possess or knew you didn’t but took it anyway.

10. Envy also begins with an attitude of self pity what when mixed with anger steals even the smallest joys of life.

11. Envy starts with a deep desire to possess that which belongs to another and the deception that God doesn’t have something better for you.

12. Envy is a vehicle with an accelerator sticks until it is almost too late to stop.

13. Envy changes a positive atmosphere into negative one

14. Envy often deceives and distracts us into pursuing what we already have.

15. Envy exhibits a willingness to trade what it already has or what it will have for what will never satisfy.

TEXT: I Corinthians 13:1-8; 1 Kings 21:1-19

STUDY GROUP QUESTIONS:

1. Identify somebody in the scripture that operated in envy.

2. Name something that people are often envious or jealous of.

3. Why do you think Jezebel thought she could get away with having Naboth killed?

4. Why or how is envy linked with being ungrateful or complaining?

5. We said that envy will not be content because of its internal issues. What are some of those issues?

6. Why do you think envy stops the flow of worship in a person’s life?

7. Envy often causes spiritual blindness keeping us from being able to see what we already have and pursuing what God never intended us to have. The Bible says from strife and envy come every evil work. What are some of those works?