TEACHING

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2021
10:30 AM (one gathering, In-person + livestream, kids!, final at the IBC campus)
Regaining Spiritual Sight 2 Kings 6:8-23
Prophetic Imagination There is a theme in scripture that we live in a creation full of God's Spirit with other powers at work. By only believing what our physical senses can experience, aided by technology, we have dulled our spiritual senses to what is real. But the imagination of God calls us to an overlapping physical and spiritual world. Awakening to the Spirit changes how we understand and live in the creation.
1 Corinthians 2:14–16, Matthew 11:15, Revelation 3:22, 2 Corinthians 5:7
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TAKE OFF Story “Halloween and Hallelujah”
BIG IDEA Spiritual senses are awakened and cultivated
FLIGHT Elisha, Chariots of Fire, 2 Kings 6:8-23

• Spiritual sight happens mostly interiorly
• ​Sight plays a key role in the story
  
• Sight/Blindness and reversals. At its most prophetic phase, the church speaks to power and distributes it
  
• War to peace
  
• Getting out of the reductionist frame
  
• “for we walk by faith, not by sight—”
  
• He who has ears
  
• Who is guarding the boundaries?
  
• The true defender of God’s people is not those with the official power, but the prophet.
  
• Overwhelm them with the hospitality of God
  

LANDING Summary
This is a gospel passage....
Prayer helps us learn how....
Our God performs great reversals....
Our God even reverses

APPLICATION

• A posture of fear towards enemies, culture, vs. a posture of “greater things” are at work.
  
  • legit emotion of fear but not living out of it, not centering ourselves in it
    
• We need our eyes opened to see God’s work in the world
  
  • Solitude, silence, and writing/reflecting on our surroundings and what we are feeling, thinking, imagining
    
• To move into God’s future requires we see and hear—not simply reading the Bible as a rule book, but through the New Testament and Jesus—a relationship book. Then ask, what does the Lord require of us and our relationships in this context.
  
• Trusting in the goodness and blessing
  

FINAL WORD

​For Reflection and Discussion

1. It was Halloween on Sunday. What did your family do on Halloween? What do you think about it?
2. Read 2 Kings 6:8-23. What jumps out at you when you read this story?
3. Our Western/Enlightenment worldview tends to reduce our thinking to what we can immediately observe physically. The New Testament and many of our Eastern, African, and other cultures make space for the spiritual. What do you think about this?
4. In the passage, we see a prophet and his servant being confronted by a military force but the force does not win the confrontation. When you think of our world, are there modern stories that come to mind where the powerful (on the surface) is set against the weak but there’s a power reversal? Share!
5. What practices help you cultivate awareness of the spiritual realm/aspect of life?
6. What happens if we ignore the spiritual realm and privilege the physical realm?
7. If reality is physical/material and spiritual realms together, how does that change our way of living, making decisions, and dealing with problems?
8. Can we over-spiritualize our lives? What would that look like?
9. This story confronts violence and “power-over” others as ways to resolve disputes. What do you think about Elisha ordering the king of Israel to feed the enemy’s army? What would that have done?