Living In Wisdom
Life Group Leader Guide
National City
📌 LEADER'S BULLETIN
Leader Heart Check
You carry something rare — a willingness to show up, prepare, and create space for others to encounter God. This week's message is a call to wisdom, and that call lands on you first. As you lead your group through this parable, remember that your own intimacy with Jesus is the oil that keeps your lamp burning — and it cannot be borrowed. Let this guide be a moment for your own heart before it becomes a tool for theirs.
Attendance Reminder
Please log your group's attendance in the Church App by Sunday. Your faithfulness in tracking helps us stay connected as a church family.
🔑 CONNECTION KEY (Leader Briefing)
Core Theme: Wisdom is not just intelligence or good decision-making — it is a posture of the heart that prioritizes intimacy with Jesus, lives with eternity in view, and chooses intentionality over distraction.
Key Discussion Goals:
Help group members distinguish between external religious activity and genuine internal readiness
Invite honest reflection on what is currently fueling each person's spiritual life
Explore what it looks like practically to live for eternity rather than for immediate comfort
Encourage intentional, Christ-centered living as a daily, ongoing choice
Leader Tip: This parable has an urgency to it that can feel heavy if the room leans toward guilt rather than invitation. Your job is to hold both — the seriousness of readiness and the grace of a God who gives us time to prepare now. If your group includes newer believers or people who are spiritually dry right now, be sensitive to shame. Frame every question as an opportunity, not an indictment. The wise virgins were not perfect — they were prepared. That is a posture anyone can choose today.
Key Phrase: "Some people have the lamp of confession but not the oil of annointing."
📖 Sermon Points
Living In Wisdom.
Pastor Haddon Aranza
Wisdom Prioritizes Intimacy.
Scripture:
The parable of the ten virgins is not primarily about moral failure — it is about preparation rooted in relationship. All ten virgins were waiting for the same bridegroom. All ten fell asleep. The difference was not effort or intention in the moment, but what they had cultivated before the moment arrived. The oil represents the kind of intimacy with Jesus that cannot be borrowed, transferred, or faked when the stakes are high. Mary understood this — she chose the one thing that could not be taken from her, sitting at the feet of Jesus rather than being consumed by the urgent at the expense of the essential.
Reflection Questions:
When your life gets busy, what is usually the first thing that gets cut from your rhythm — and what does that reveal about your priorities?
The foolish virgins had lamps but no oil. In what ways can someone look spiritually ready on the outside while running empty on the inside?
What does intimacy with Jesus actually look like in your daily life right now — not what you wish it looked like, but what it actually looks like?
How does the story of Mary and Martha speak to a tension you are currently navigating between doing and being?
Wisdom Lives For Eternity.
Scripture:
Jesus defines eternal life not as a destination we arrive at after death, but as a quality of knowing — knowing the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He sent. This reframes everything. Wisdom, then, is not just about making good choices in the moment — it is about orienting every decision around what lasts. When eternity becomes our reference point, the things that once felt urgent begin to lose their grip, and the things that once felt optional — prayer, scripture, community, worship — begin to feel like the most essential investments a person can make.
Reflection Questions:
If eternal life is defined as knowing God, how would you describe where you are in that knowing right now?
What is one area of your life where you have been making decisions based on what is comfortable or convenient rather than what is eternal?
How does keeping eternity in view change the way you approach ordinary, everyday moments?
Wisdom Lives Intentionally.
Scripture:
Paul's instruction in Colossians is not passive — it is a command to actively seek and set the mind. Wisdom does not drift upward; it is directed there on purpose. The contrast Paul draws is not between sinners and saints, but between two ways of living — one shaped by the patterns of this world, and one consciously reoriented around the reality of a risen Christ. To live intentionally is to make daily, sometimes countercultural choices to fix your attention and affection on what Christ calls important rather than what culture insists is urgent.
Reflection Questions:
What does it look like for you personally to "set your mind on things above" — is that something you do naturally, or does it require deliberate effort?
What is one habit, pattern, or distraction in your life right now that is pulling your mind away from Christ rather than toward Him?
What would living more intentionally look like for you this week — what is one specific thing you could do differently?
How does your community — this Life Group — help you stay intentional, and how could you lean into that more?
🛠 Practical Application
The Challenge
This week, identify one thing in your daily routine that you can reclaim as a moment of intentional connection with Jesus. It does not have to be long — five minutes of silence, a scripture read before your phone, a prayer on your commute. Choose it, name it, and protect it as an appointment with the Bridegroom.
Audit | Reflection
Be honest with yourself: If Jesus came back today, would your spiritual life reflect someone who has been tending their lamp — or someone who assumed there would be more time? What does your current rhythm of intimacy, eternity-focus, and intentionality actually say about what you believe?
Prayer Focus
Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal any area where you have been running on fumes — going through spiritual motions without genuine connection. Pray for a fresh hunger for intimacy with Jesus, and for the wisdom to structure your life around what lasts. Leaders, close your group time by praying this over your members: that they would be men and women whose lamps are full — not out of fear, but out of love for the One who is coming.
📣 Weekly Declaration
I am a person of wisdom, and wisdom begins with intimacy with Jesus. I choose to sit at His feet before I rush to serve, and I choose to fill my lamp before the moment demands it. I live with eternity in view, and I set my mind on things above — not by accident, but by intention. I am not running on empty. I am rooted in the Vine, and I will produce fruit that lasts. Amen.
