25 Ways to Win with People, Lesson #23 by John Maxwell and Les Parrott, PH.D. Good Questions by Josh Hunt

These kind of questions (except with more Bible verses!) are available every week for you to use during your Bible study time. Lessons correspond with three of Lifeway's series. I have been doing this for years and more than 2000 lesson are available with new ones added each week. See www.joshhunt.com/sunday-school.htm for details.

Review

• What have you learned so far? What have you been able to apply so far?

Point out people's strengths

1. Let's each make a list of five things you are good at-five things that come naturally and easily, and five things you struggle to do well. Let's share our list with the group.
2. Do you think you greatest success is in shoring up your weaknesses or accentuating your strengths? ⁽¹⁾
3. Think about an average day. Do you spend more time on your strengths, or more time on your weaknesses?
4. What about your ministry opportunities-are you ministering near the sweet spot of your gifting?
5. Let me read a familiar passage from a modern paraphrase. ⁽²⁾ What is the difference between a strength and a spiritual gift? ⁽³⁾
6. How did you come to understand your spiritual gifts?
7. Why is the concept of the spiritual gifts important to the healthy functioning of a church?
8. How is the concept of spiritual gifts important to the healthy functioning of a group?
9. How many of the members of your group know their spiritual gifts?
10. How many of the members of your group do you know their spiritual gifts?
11. How could you help all of your members know their spiritual gifts?
12. How could you organize your group according to strengths? ⁽⁴⁾
13. How could you apply today's lesson to your group?
14. How can we pray for one another this week?
15. Let's put this lesson into practice in this group-how could you affirm the strengths of someone in this room?

1. The research is in on this. You do better to lean into your strengths. You might read Now, Discover your Strengths! if you would like more information. Good read.

2. 14 I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn't just a single part blown up into something huge. It's all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. 15 If Foot said, "I'm not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don't belong to this body," would that make it so? 16 If Ear said, "I'm not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don't deserve a place on the head," would you want to remove it from the body? 17 If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? 18 As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.

19 But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn't be a body, but a monster. 20 What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. 21 Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, "Get lost; I don't need you"? Or, Head telling Foot, "You're fired; your job has been phased out"? 22 As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way--the "lower" the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. 23 When it's a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. 24 If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn't you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?

1 Cor 12:14-24 (MSG)

3. I operate under the assumption that they are similar concepts.

4. Talk a little about inreach and outreach and fellowship leaders and so forth.