Storms are a guarantee in life. We lose jobs. Relationships end. Money gets tight. All of this can leave us feeling anxious and fearful. Therefore, the reason we feel those things is because storms expose what we really trust. We may say we trust God, but a crisis here and a pandemic there, and we’re confronted with the hard truth that our trust lies elsewhere. Which is why Jesus addresses this with a brilliant metaphor in the Sermon on the Mount that will help you diagnose what you really trust in and how to start building on a firmer, more trustworthy foundation.

• What was your biggest takeaway from the teaching?
• What has been 1 or 2 of the biggest storms you’ve faced in your life?
• What did those storms expose about who or what you actually trusted in?
• What are the storms of the COVID-19 pandemic, the racial tensions in our country right now, or the contentious election season we’re in revealing about our foundation as a country?
• Storms don’t just reveal our foundations. They also have a way of shifting our perspective about what’s actually valuable (think sailors tossing cargo into the sea in order to lighten a ship to survive a storm). How have the storms in your life changed your perspective about what’s valuable?
• How will you begin living out the truths of this teaching this week?