Resources
Below are reading reccomendations along with a link for a Genogram Workbook. The goal of the workbook is to review key events in your family history and identify generational sins, brokenness, relational patterns, and inherited values.
Genogram Workbook
Useful resource to map out your past and work through it.
Recommended Reading
Recommended Reading
Group Questions
Goal of the conversation:
Understand the importance and power of dealing with our past so that we can experience everything God wants for us in life.
“In emotionally healthy churches, people understand how their past affects their present ability to love Christ and others. They’ve realized from Scripture and life that an intricate, complex relationship exists between the kinds of persons they are today and their past. Numerous external forces may shape us, but the family we have grown up in is the primary and, except in rare instances, the most powerful system that will shape and influence who we are.” —Pete Scazerro
“Because so few people do the hard work of going back in order to go forward, the symptoms of a disconnected spirituality are everywhere. The compartmentalization of our spirituality from the rest of our lives becomes necessary because there is so little integration. I know. I lived that way for years.” —Pete Scazerro, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality
1. Have you seen patterns, whether positive or negative in families around you that get passes from one generation to the next? (Attitudes, perspectives, habits, mannerisms, etc.)
2. How would you describe your family of origin? (Family you grew up in in addition to the generations before you)
3. How does the idea of dealing with your past make you feel? Scared? Terrified? Sad? Guilty? Annoyed? Not interested? Excited?
4. Think about the implications of adoption for the child being adopted. Now put yourself in that experience in light of the fact that God has adopted us into his family. What sort of implications are there? Read Ephesians 1:3-14.
Close in Prayer