Replace

Connection

As you get started, catch up on how y’all are doing since you last met. Celebrate how God has been at work in your lives. Using the Galatians 5 passage from last week, How has it gone partnering with God to uproot the sins you confessed?

Vision

God doesn’t just want to pull the weeds of sin out of your life. He wants to plant something good in their place. As you put off your old self, He clothes you with compassion, kindness, humility and love. The Christian life isn’t only about what you avoid. It’s about who you’re becoming.

Biblical Foundations

Romans 6.11-14 In the same way, count yourselves but in Christ Jesus. Therefore in your mortal body so that you its evil desires. Do not as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who ; and offer every part of yourself to him . For sin shall no longer because you are not under the law, but under .

Titus 2.11-14 For the has appeared that offers salvation to all people. 12 It teaches us to say “No” to , and to live lives in this present age, 13 while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to from all and for himself a people that are his very own, what is good.

Ephesians 4:22-24 "You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to the new self, created to be like God in true and ."

Colossians 3:12-14 "Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues , which binds them all together in perfect unity."

Questions for Discussion:

1. What stands out to you from these verses?
2. How would you contrast confession and repentance with replacement?

Modeling

For the Leader: Share your own experience with the principle of replacement. Describe how you've learned to not just avoid sin but to actively cultivate godly virtues and habits in its place.

Practice

One of the main ways God replaces a lifestyle of sin with a lifestyle of holiness and love is through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Underneath our sin patterns are often places where we are brokenhearted by the pain done to us or those we love, fears, lies or other anxieties. When we confess and repent of our sin, Jesus wants to replace it with healing for our broken hearts (Luke 4.18).

Use this guided prayer to help you identify the pain, fear, lie or anxiety that is driving you to the sin.

“Jesus, thank you that you see my pain, fears, lies I have believed and my anxieties. You want to heal me. As I confess and repent of my sin, I open up my heart and life to you in a fresh way and ask for you to heal my heart. Would you show me the pain, fears, lies and anxieties that I am walking in and would you minister to those places with your healing presence and truth.”

Take time to sit in silence for 1-2 minutes and listen to the Lord. Pay attention to what you sense the Holy Spirit doing in you and speaking to you during this time. After a minute or two have each person in the group share what they sense the Spirit speaking or doing in them.