I Can Only Imagine Discussion Guide
A New Heart
THE MESSAGE
Bart Millard grew up in a house with a violent father, and the song that came out of that house has been sung in more churches than almost any other in the last thirty years. God brings the best out of the worst, which sounds like a slogan until you watch what it cost. A football injury ended the one thing his dad valued and pushed Bart toward a choir room, where a teacher heard something nobody else had bothered to listen for. When he finally goes home, his father is a different man. The hard part is not believing God made the world or raised Jesus from the dead. It is believing that someone who hurt you could actually change, and then forgiving the ones who never do.
ice breaker
Bart signed up for choir because he needed an easy credit to graduate, and it turned into the rest of his life. What is something you fell into by accident that ended up mattering more than you expected?
Keep this to five minutes. It is a warm-up.
Discussion Questions
These build toward forgiveness rather than opening with it. Question four is the heaviest, and question five is the one most groups want to skip.
1 The message made the case that what looks like a closed door is often God redirecting. The examples given were ordinary ones: the job you did not get, the school that turned you down, the promotion that went to somebody else, the person who ended it. Which closed door are you still standing in front of, and what would it take for you to read it as a redirect?
Some of these doors closed twenty years ago and some closed last month. The recent ones are harder to talk about, so give them room.
2 Hurt people hurt people. The message was careful to say that is a warning rather than an excuse, and then pointed it back at the room. Where does your own disappointment, your bad day, or a dream that did not work out end up landing on the people closest to you?
This question asks people to look at themselves before they look at whoever hurt them, which is why it comes early. Take the first turn.
3 Bart goes home expecting the same father and finds a different one. The message named what most of us actually struggle to believe. Not that God made the heavens and the earth, not that Jesus rose, but that a person who hurt us could genuinely change. Who have you quietly written off, and what makes their change the thing you cannot picture?
Nobody needs to say a name out loud. “Someone in my family” is a complete answer and it keeps the room safe for the person who is not ready.
4 The message was honest that forgiveness usually does not happen the way it happens in the movie, with the other person repentant and the music swelling. People who hurt us are often never sorry. The reason given for forgiving anyway was not that they deserve it, but that you need it. What makes that hard to accept, and where are you feeling the cost of still holding on?
Slow down here. Before anyone answers, say plainly that forgiving someone does not mean trusting them again, letting them back in, or calling what they did acceptable. Those are different decisions and some of them should stay no.
5 One line this weekend was aimed at the person who did the damage: you cannot change the beginning of your story, but you can change the ending. Where are you the one who owes the repair, and what has kept you from making it?
Expect a slow start. Groups find it far easier to talk about being hurt than about having hurt somebody, so be willing to sit through the silence or answer it yourself.
Go Deeper
The first is for the people who love the text, the second opens a question worth arguing about, and the third asks for a step.
GD1 Read Ezekiel 36:22-32 together, not just the one verse. The promise of a new heart is given to a people in exile, and God states twice why he is doing it. Look closely at verses 22 and 32. What reason does he give, and what does that do to the way you hear the promise about the heart of stone?
Context worth having: Ezekiel is writing to Israelites deported to Babylon, and God says he is acting for the sake of his own name rather than because the people have earned it. Verse 32 is blunt about it. The promise is also made to a nation, which is why it shows up in the plural, though Christians have long read it personally as well, and the New Testament picks the language up again in 2 Corinthians 3:3. Both readings are fair. The verse simply is not a private promise in its original setting.
GD2 The line quoted this weekend sits inside a long stretch about enemies, lending, judging, and the measure you use coming back to you. Read Luke 6:27-38 as one piece. Is “forgive and you will be forgiven” a condition, a consequence, or a description of how the whole thing works? What hangs on the answer?
Expect a real disagreement here, and let it happen. Matthew 6:14-15 puts it even more sharply. Christians have read these lines as a condition for being forgiven, as evidence that someone has already received grace, and as a warning about a heart that refuses to pass on what it was given. The text does not hand you a tidy answer, and a group that wrestles with it honestly gets more out of the night than one that settles it in four minutes.
GD3 Name one person you are going to take a step toward this week. It might be a conversation you have put off, a letter you write and never send, or sitting down with a pastor about something you have carried by yourself for years. Say what the step is and what day you are doing it.
If the step involves contacting someone who is unsafe, that is not the step. Letting go does not require contact, and nobody should leave your living room with a plan that puts them back in reach of the person who hurt them. Help them find something that moves them forward without that risk.
WRAP UP & PRAYER
“Release what others have done to you so that you can receive what God wants to do in you.”
Run the moment from the weekend in your living room. Ask everyone to cup their hands in their lap and bring to mind the names and faces that have cost them something. Nobody says anything out loud. Pray over your people, and somewhere in the prayer invite them to open their hands and leave it with God. Then stop talking for a few seconds before you say amen.
Some hands will stay closed, and that is not failure. Do not comment on it, and do not go around the circle afterward asking how it went. If someone stays after or texts you later, that is the real conversation. Email smallgroups@eastside.com if you need help connecting them with a pastor or a Care Group.
LEADER GUIDE // Before You Start....
The scenes of family violence in this movie are hard to watch, and for part of your group they are not hypothetical. Somebody is coming to your living room having watched a version of their own childhood on a screen two days ago. Say at the start that nobody has to share anything tonight, and then mean it. A person who only listens for two hours has still been in the room with their people.
Forgiveness is not reconciliation, and it is never a reason to return to someone who is still dangerous.
Say that out loud before question four, because somebody at your table needs to hear it from you before they can answer honestly. The message also said that the only person hurt by your unforgiveness is you. That is true enough, and in a living room it can land as pressure to hurry. If someone tells you they are not ready, treat that as an honest answer and move on. Pushing harder does not produce forgiveness, it produces silence.
If someone discloses abuse, past or current, do not try to carry it alone and do not advise them about contact or confrontation. Thank them, stay with them, and email smallgroups@eastside.com this week so the team can connect them with a pastor and the right Care Group. If anyone is in danger now, that is a call you make that night, not a prayer request for later.
You will not get through all eight questions, and you are not meant to. Choose the ones your group needs and take them in whatever order serves the conversation.