Opening prayer
Read the italicized passages of Scripture in Chapter 15.
Questions
- How was the way that Jesus faced death different that the way that others, even early Christians, faced death?
- What was different about the death that Jesus was facing?
- Timothy Keller writes about Jesus’ Gethsemane experience: “But now he is beginning to taste what he will experience on the cross, and it goes far beyond physical torture and death” (176). What is Jesus beginning to taste?
- How is God’s anger “…a function of his love and goodness” (177)?
- How is God’s wrath a measure of how much he loves you?
- On p. 178 and following, Timothy Keller talks about humans respond to suffering. Assuming that suffering is a gap between the desires of our heart and our circumstances, many of us will do anything to avoid such suffering. The Stoics and Buddhism deal with suffering avoidance by teaching that suffering is an illusion and we ought to suppress our desires. But to suppress all desire results in the elimination of love. What role did Jesus’ desires play in his willingness to endure great suffering?
- Keller describes Jesus as “…wrestling but obeying in love” (180). What does that look like for us?
- What is the difference between our deepest desires and our loudest desires?
- How does Jesus’ love help us to trust the Father in our suffering?
- Keller writes, “…your deepest desires and your actual circumstances are going to keep converging until they unite forever on the day of the eternal feast” (181). How does Jesus make this a promised future reality for us?
In closing, read aloud from the last paragraph on p. 181 to the end of Chapter 15.
Closing Prayer
Farewell to Shadowlands 