With the Current

A six-week small group series. Each week walks through one section of the Expanded teaching in order, pairing an Old Testament passage with a New Testament passage so the group reads more deeply into the same ground the teaching covers. Plan for about an hour: read both passages aloud together, then work through the questions as a group. Want to go deeper on your own between weeks? Read the Teaching or Expanded version alongside this study.

Week 1 — The Creator and His Truth

This week establishes the foundation everything else in this study rests on: God made everything, and His word is not a suggestion but instruction from the One who built it all. We will read the opening of Genesis first, and then the opening of John's Gospel, which deliberately echoes it.

Read together: Genesis 1:1-10, Psalm 33:6-9

Discuss

• What difference does it make to approach the Bible as instructions from the Maker, rather than as one opinion among many?
• Where in your life have you treated Scripture as a suggestion rather than something rooted in how you were actually made to function?
• Psalm 33 says the heavens were made "by the word of the Lord" — spoken into existence. What does it change to think of God's instructions to you as carrying that same creative authority, not just advice?

Read together: John 1:1-5

Discuss

• John deliberately opens his Gospel with the same words as Genesis. Why do you think he ties Jesus so directly to the act of creation itself?
• If everything, including you, was made with a built-in direction and purpose, what would it look like this week to move with that instead of against it?
• John says "through him all things were made" and "without him nothing was made." How does tying Jesus this directly to creation change how you read the rest of His teaching?

Week 2 — Freedom of Choice, God's Gift

God has never removed a person's freedom to choose — not in the garden, not at Sinai, not today. We will read Moses laying that choice plainly in front of Israel, and then Paul describing the same two directions in New Testament terms.

Read together: Deuteronomy 30:15-20

Discuss

• Why is a choice that could not be otherwise not really a choice at all?
• Moses adds "so that you and your children may live." What does one generation's choices pass down to the next?
• God calls heaven and earth as witnesses to this choice, as if the stakes were a legal matter, not just a private preference. Why do you think God makes this choice so public and so formal?

Read together: Romans 8:5-11

Discuss

• What does it look like practically to let "the Spirit of that truth" lean your choices in the right direction before you consciously decide?
• Paul describes this as a settled orientation, not a fresh coin-flip every morning. Which direction does your mind tend to settle toward most days?
• Paul says the mind governed by the flesh is "death" — not merely unwise, but death. Why do you think Scripture uses such a severe word for what can feel like an ordinary, everyday drift?

Week 3 — With the Current, Not Against It

This week sits with the picture at the heart of this teaching: a swimmer exhausted fighting the water, versus a swimmer carried by it. We will read a psalm about a tree planted by a current before returning to Paul's contrast between flesh and Spirit.

Read together: Psalm 1:1-3

Discuss

• A tree planted by a stream does not have to strain for water — it simply stays planted where the current already flows. What would it look like for you to stay "planted" rather than constantly relocating in search of relief?
• Psalm 1 contrasts this tree with chaff blown away by wind — one rooted and stable, the other scattered with no say in where it lands. Which picture more honestly describes your life right now?

Read together: Romans 8:5-11

Discuss

• Where in your life right now do you feel like you are swimming upstream, exhausted, against something God may already be inviting you to move with?
• What would it cost you to turn around and let the current carry you instead?
• Fighting the current rarely looks dramatic — it looks like ordinary exhaustion explained away as normal. Has that been true for you in a season recently?

Week 4 — Living Water, Rivers Within

Jesus offers water that becomes a spring, and then a river — never meant to stay still. We will read Isaiah's promise of water poured on dry ground first, then Jesus' own public declaration at the festival.

Read together: Isaiah 44:1-4

Discuss

• Isaiah ties poured-out water directly to the Spirit being poured out. What dry ground in your own life could use that kind of pouring right now?
• This promise in Isaiah is given to "your offspring" — it reaches beyond the person praying to the next generation. Who in your life might be blessed by the pouring out you experience?

Read together: John 4:10-14, John 7:37-39

Discuss

• Why do you think Jesus says rivers, plural and moving, rather than a still pool?
• Who is "downstream" of you right now — someone who might be reached by water that has stopped staying contained in you?
• Jesus makes this offer on the festival's "last and greatest day," publicly and loudly. What would it look like for you to make a bold, public declaration of what God has given you, rather than keeping it private?

Week 5 — From a Drop to an Ocean

Every great river started as a single, unremarkable drop. So does every believer's growth. We will read Zechariah's warning against despising small beginnings, then Peter's instruction to keep growing.

Read together: Zechariah 4:1-10

Discuss

• What is a small, easily-overlooked step of faith you have taken that you can now see, looking back, was part of something bigger?
• Is there a small step you have been putting off because it feels too small to matter?
• Zechariah's vision shows the temple being rebuilt "not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit." Where have you been relying on your own might and power instead of trusting the slower, Spirit-led pace of small beginnings?

Read together: 2 Peter 3:14-18

Discuss

• Peter frames growth as ongoing, ordinary, ordinary faithfulness rather than a single dramatic leap. What does that ordinary faithfulness look like for you this season?
• Peter ties growing in grace to growing "in the knowledge" of Christ — the two together, not one without the other. Which of the two, grace or knowledge, do you tend to neglect in your own walk?

Week 6 — Every Drop Feeds the Whole — All Glory to Him

No single drop, and no single believer, exists for its own glory. Every tributary feeds a river that exists to glorify the One who set it all in motion. We will close by reading a psalm about creation declaring God's glory, and then Paul's doxology at the end of Romans 11.

Read together: Psalm 19:1-4

Discuss

• If the heavens themselves exist to declare God's glory without saying a word, what does that suggest about how your own ordinary, unspoken faithfulness might be doing the same thing?
• Psalm 19 says this declaration goes out "day after day" and "night after night" without interruption. What would it look like for your own life to declare God's glory that consistently, without needing a dramatic moment to do it?

Read together: Romans 12:4-5, Romans 11:33-36

Discuss

• How does seeing yourself as one tributary among many, rather than the whole river, change the pressure you put on yourself?
• As this study ends: what is one way you sense God inviting you to move with His current this season, rather than against it?
• Looking back over all six weeks, which picture has stayed with you most: direction built into creation, choosing life, the tree planted by streams, rivers within, small beginnings, or every drop feeding the whole?

Closing prayer, together

Lord, thank You for the freedom to choose You, and for the current of Your Spirit that carries rather than restrains. Let the living water You give become in us a river flowing outward. Whatever small beginning we feel like today, let it join with countless others and become, in Your time, an ocean — for Your glory alone. Amen.