Leader Guide

Objective
Students will discover the God in whom we can trust, the God whose love for us is unconditional and eternal.

Warm Up
Direct your group to take a blank piece of paper, a pen and go find a place to themselves where they can complete the first section of the Student Guide, Precious People and Things. Give them five to ten minutes, and then bring everybody back together. Have each person share a few of their people and things.

• What are some reasons each of the people and things landed on your list?
• What are some of your options when some of these people and things are no longer around?
• What is the difference between people/things and God?

Transition
In this broken world, it is easy to default to our trust in people and things more than our trust in God. We can experience people and things with our senses, yet God remains unseen.

People disappoint us, leave us and die. Things break, get lost, or are stolen. We enter a vicious cycle of losing hope. In today’s lesson, we will discover the God in whom we can trust all the time, the God whose love for us is unconditional and eternal.

The Video
Welcome your group to turn in their Student Guide to the section Some Problems/An Answer. Use the website to give a little background on Andy Mineo. Play the music video for “Nobody’s Coming” by Andy Mineo.

Ask them to share their list of problems and what they see as the songwriter’s answer from the Student Guide.

• What words from this video saddened you the most?
• What gave you the most hope?
• The writer says, “I might just have to be what I never had for me.” What did he mean by this?
• How do we “take charge” in life yet trust God more than ourselves?

Transition
God’s love is everywhere we are, and there is nothing that can separate us from His love: no person, no thing. In life’s insecurities stands our God, who holds steady.

Our circumstances may change, but God’s presence, power, and love do not. We want to take a few moments and study a passage, written by the Apostle Paul, to describe, in more absolute terms, the unconditional and everlasting love of God.

Bible Study
Read Romans 8:35-39
Have the students turn to the Potential Problems/God’s Response section in their Student Guides. Have each person find one or two others and take up to 10 minutes to work on the exercise before coming back together. Ask students to share their discoveries.

• Are there any words that need defining for you? What are they?
• What, in this list of things that cannot separate us, impresses you most?
• What are some examples of these?
• Why or when is it easy to sometimes feel separated from God’s love?
• Why is it important to know we are not separated from God’s love?
• How do these words assure you in your faith and help you trust in the God who can never be taken away as you journey forward in life?

Wrap Up
As you end this lesson, ask each group member to privately identify one part of their life where they have been disappointed by a person or are now facing disappointment through conflict, abandonment, betrayal, or some other hurtful action.

Ask them to identify a character trait or action of another they find hard to forgive. In a time of silent prayer, challenge each person to accept God’s unconditional love, have the assurance of faith in God, and be reminded that God will never leave them.

Close with a prayer for each person. Pray for them to receive God’s unconditional love and be ready to receive God’s healing for them despite what they have experienced.

Playlist
This song is featured on “The Linc: God’s Love” Spotify playlist – which is the perfect way to remind your students what you’ve taught them in this session. To share it with them, click the live link on the web version of this study.