Real Change for Students: Becoming More Like Jesus in Everyday Life (Study Guide with Leader’s Notes)
Digital Verbum Edition
Overview
Every honest Christian knows the need for change. But how to get there? How do young Christians move forward from struggles both big and small? And how does our faith in God affect our everyday thoughts, feelings, and actions?
In this six-session small group resource for students, participants have the opportunity to reflect on one particular area in their lives and then to learn more about how God changes us to become more like Jesus. All of us struggle to love God and those around us, but God has promised to keep working on us. And God always keeps his promises. The change his gospel produces will make your life and your relationships truly beautiful.
This self-contained resource with leader’s notes will encourage small group participants to understand and apply a biblical view of change to their lives and relationships.
Real Change for Students is based on the CCEF model of change from David Powlison’s course, Dynamics of Biblical Change. The easy-to-use six lesson format and included leader’s guide encourages students toward an honest discussion of their own struggles while providing an understanding of how a relationship with Jesus Christ brings change through their faith.
Topics addressed include understanding how we typically respond to trouble and pressure; how the cross of Christ brings comfort, help, and change; and how we can grow to be like Jesus in the hardest circumstances.
Within this small group resource are biblical insights, discussion questions, and a personal change project to help young adults seeking to change negative patterns and live by faith in all circumstances. While the study material is designed for young adults within small groups, it can also be used for one-to-one Christian discipleship study, too.
Rooted in biblical Scripture, Real Change for Students draws on the established CCEF “Three Threes” model of change in simplified form to help young adults better understand biblical change and grow to be more like Jesus in everyday life.
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- Includes six sessions for small groups of students.
- Encourages small group participants to understand and apply a biblical view of change to their lives.
- Addresses how we can grow to be like Jesus in the hardest circumstances.
- Introduction
- Session 1: Change
- God Is Changing Each of Us
- God Is Changing Us through Our Relationship with Jesus
- God Is Changing Us through Our Relationships with Other
- Christians
- A Model for Understanding Change from Jeremiah 17:5–8
- Session 2: Heat
- God Understands My Situation
- God Enables Me to Grow in Response to My Situation
- Session 3: Thorns
- I Produce Thorns
- My Thorns Come from My Heart
- Session 4: Cross
- Christ Wins Over My Heart
- I Live by Repentance and Faith in Jesus
- Session 5: Fruit
- Fruit Comes from a Changed Heart
- By Grace I Can Bear the Fruit of Christlikeness
- Session 6: Real Change
- What Does Real Change Look Like?
- How Do We Keep Going?
- This Is Real Church!
- Leader’s Guide
- Introduction for Leaders
- Session Notes for Leaders
Having taken CCEF’s Dynamics of Biblical Change course as a student and having it taught several times as a recitation instructor for CCEF and for our church, I’ve long known that the material is tremendously beneficial for helping people know the God of the Bible better and understand how biblical change works. However, answering the question, ‘how do we get this information more widely disseminated among the people at our church especially through our small groups?’ has been elusive to me. Real Change is just the resource I’ve been looking for! Andrew Nicholls and Helen Thorne have created an effective tool for introducing more people to the basics of how the process of being changed more and more into the image of Christ over time works in the life of a Christian. It’s short in duration (six sessions), making it ideal for a Sunday school or small group curriculum. And yet it is faithful to communicate the essence of David Powlison’s Dynamics course. I am eager to commend and utilize this new tool for creating more discipleship opportunities in our church.
—Bryan Pickering, Pastor for Care & Counseling, Bethlehem Baptist Church Downtown Campus
God intends every believer to grow into the likeness of Christ and because we all have such a long way to go it’s never too soon to get going. This edition of Real Change is a resource specifically designed to help students apply the power of the gospel to the details of life. It is an engaging, manageable, and thoroughly biblical exploration of spiritual growth. Buy it and use it with your friends.
—Steve Midgley, Executive Director, Biblical Counselling UK; senior minister, Christ Church, Cambridge
Finally! This book is long overdue! Real Change gives light to unlit paths of guiding students to a lifestyle of cross-centered faith and repentance. As a student walks across the stage on graduation, you can be confident that no matter what trials or failures they encounter they’ll know how to examine their own hearts and turn to Christ. I look forward to giving a copy to every one of our youth leaders!
—Pavel N. Bugriyev, Youth Pastor, Hilltown Baptist Church