What would be non-negotiable in your version of a "lazy day"?

There are different levels of comfortable and different levels of "unguarded." It can be one level when you're in a meeting, another when your with a close team, another with a neighbor, another with family, and another at home and alone. As we conclude this conversation about letting your guard down, let's think about the place of one's relationship with God on this spectrum, and the reasons people might benefit from having such a relationship.

Now that you've answered the Icebreaker, here's another question - this one, about a loving God.

Hi, I'm Kent, and I have a question: Why might a person be interested in being loved by "God"? I'll acknowledge that a lot of people, the majority, in fact, don't believe in a higher, god-ish being at all. There are many reasons people have for this, and we're not going to try to adderss them here. The question we are asking is more of a thought experiment that comes from the idea of there being a God: Why? Even if the idea of a personal God is made up, what benefits might exist in making such a being up? Here's one possible answer: We - that is, each person who exists - we need an other. A someone who is not ourself. And while the world is full of those, they all have the same flaw that we do: they tend to judge, putting rules or parameters on their love. We do this to each other, creating a whole world of insecurity and fear and hiding. Imagine, then, how nice it would be if there another other, one whose love is total and perfect and never gives up! If such a pure and total lover could exist, and if that one were interested in loving you...sounds kind of nice. And safe. Like a place you could really let down your guard and still be OK.

Hopefully that makes enough sense to get you started. As you continue into the Worship portion of the Spotlight, pray this prayer together:

Lord,
Teach us to lean into the idea
that we can be seen fully and still be accepted,
loved, and finding belonging in you. 
Even when those around us and their reactions 
make us doubt that this is possible,
bring us back to your love. 
Amen.

The Song of Songs is a love poem. It has always been read, whether by Jewish rabbis, by Christian mystics, by ordinary people across centuries, as more than a poem about two humans. It is a picture of the way God pursues, delights in, and desires to be close to his people.

You are about to read just "the lover's" words, which are words that make some folks blush because they are intimate, earnest, and from a smitten heart.

After you've read, let everyone share their response to this:
What's one thing the lover said that landed for you, and why did you appreciate it?
You don't have to explain why necessarily.

These are intimate words, and Solomon wrote them to reflect the intimate relationship he perceived God to have with his people. Using the metaphor of a lover is an intentional way of inviting the reader into a relationship in which nothing is held back or hidden, because it doesn't need to be. God delights in you. 

She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: "You are the God who sees me," for she said, "I have now seen the One who sees me." | Genesis 16:13

Imagine that there is a princess in a tower.
She has been there long enough that she has stopped counting the days. The window faces a direction she doesn't recognize. She is not sure anyone knows she is there (but someone does, and that someone is going to rescue her.)

Behind the name of this series, "On Letting Down Your Guard" are two ideas. The first is the more natural - you are guarding yourself, you are invited to lower your defenses. The second is this: You are being guarded by someone or something else. You want to escape. You want them to be disappointed that the guarding didn't work. 

To explore the idea of escaping and doing so with the help of someone who sees you the way we've suggested God sees you in this Spotlight so far, your group is going to build the rest of this story together. You will not write it to completion, but fill in its world. 

Now, read the story of Hagar from Genesis 16:

Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.”
Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.
When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.”
6 “Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.
7 The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”
“I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.
9 Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” 10 The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”
11 The angel of the Lord also said to her:
“You are now pregnant
    and you will give birth to a son.
You shall name him Ishmael,
    for the Lord has heard of your misery.
12 He will be a wild donkey of a man;
    his hand will be against everyone
    and everyone’s hand against him,
and he will live in hostility
    toward all his brothers.”
13 She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” 14 That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered.
15 So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.
--
Hagar had been enslaved, used, and cruelly dismissed. She and her baby were alone in the wilderness. She had no plan and no thought of rescue. God showed up, saw her, spoke to her, and she gave him a name: "the God who sees me." She and her son did return to Abraham's household - interestingly, he son Ishmael was the second person ever to be circumcised into the covenant God made with Abraham.

2 Samuel 6:12-22
12 Now King David was told, “The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-Edom and everything he has, because of the ark of God.” So David went to bring up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the City of David with rejoicing. 13 When those who were carrying the ark of the Lord had taken six steps, he sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf. 14 Wearing a linen ephod, David was dancing before the Lord with all his might, 15 while he and all Israel were bringing up the ark of the Lord with shouts and the sound of trumpets.
16 As the ark of the Lord was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she despised him in her heart.
17 They brought the ark of the Lord and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it, and David sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings before the Lord. 18 After he had finished sacrificing the burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord Almighty. 19 Then he gave a loaf of bread, a cake of dates and a cake of raisins to each person in the whole crowd of Israelites, both men and women. And all the people went to their homes.
20 When David returned home to bless his household, Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said, “How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, going around half-naked in full view of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!”
21 David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the Lord’s people Israel—I will celebrate before the Lord. 22 I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor.”