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Book Title: Heavenly Places by Kimberly Cash Tate Reading Group Questions The following list of questions is designed to enhance a group or individual's thinking about or discussing some of the issues we hope you will consider after reading this book. This is designed as a starting point only and is not meant to limit the discussion. 1. "I'd prefer privacy to cookies," Treva says. When do you prefer space and solitude to companions and fellowship? What are the pros and cons of privacy? When is a desire to be alone healthy—and when is it not? 2. "That's what they all are for the moment. Colors. Whenever I see Patsy I receive the same gift: her magnified lens." Treva's mother's lens perceived value in skin tone and hair texture. With what lens do you perceive people? How have you been perceived and valued? What does 1 Samuel 16:7 mean to you? What does it say about God's lens? 3. What makes you feel good about yourself? What is "as good as you can feel"? How does your faith help you overcome the negative messages people, culture, and past experience have sent you—about your looks, your intelligence, your personality? 4. "With me, the disconnect comes in the doing," Treva admits. She hears what her loved ones and even her own conscience say, but the challenge is doing (see Romans 7:14-25). What's your disconnect? Hearing, understanding, doing, following through? How might you overcome it? 5. Treva describes her interactions with God as cathartic, not victorious. How would you describe your relationship with the Lord? When have you experienced a sense of enjoying God? 6. If you were in a Bible study group such as the one Jillian has formed, which book of the Bible would you vote for? Why? 7. Read Ephesians 1, and then read it again. What does it say to you—about God, about you, and about who you are in the Lord? How do you respond to Psalm 139's assertion that you are fearfully and wonderfully created by God? 8. Treva recalls wrestling with the question of children and how having a young family would impact her career. When have you wrestled with similar issues? What choices did you make? What were the consequences—for better and worse? 9. Read the Scriptures Darlene suggests to Treva: Proverbs 14:1, Deuteronomy 6:5-7, and Titus 2:3-5. What would it look like for you to apply those biblical principles in your life as wife and mother? 10. How do you answer the question, not of "whether" to work but "how"? 11. When have you experienced the kind of prejudice that Treva and Monique describe—whether because of how dark you are or how light you are? How did you respond then? How do you respond now? 12. What's your dream—big or small? At home, in ministry, in a career? Are you willing to surrender that dream to God and subject your plans to the Lord's will? Why or why not? 13. "I'm not brave enough for that kind of prayer. I can't even truthfully say that all I want is God's will," Treva confesses. When have you wrestled with that kind of resistance—to prayer or studying the Word in pursuit of God's will? Why do you resist? 14. "Ask God if he wants to use you in Patsy's life." What is God asking you to do? 15. Describe yourself. Where do you start—with your appearance (height, eyes, hair, build), your job, your family, your talent? What does that starting place say about how you answer Treva's question, "Who am I?" 16. Jillian's Bible study group looks at Ephesians 5, focusing on verse 21. Be sure to read the entire chapter, particularly reading verse 21 in the fuller context of verses 20-33 and even Ephesians 6:1-9, which continues the "household code" begun in verse 20. What do you have a problem with—and why? 17. How would you respond to Treva's question: "What if God allows the devil and his host to come against me like that?" 18. When you enjoy a dance with God, what music do (or will) you hear? 19. When have you been forced to confront a deep wound such as Treva's? Who inflicted it? Have you been able to forgive that person? Why or why not? What would it take for you to shoulder their burden, as Treva shouldered Patsy's? 20. What does your "heavenly place" on earth look like? Feel like? Sound like? Who is there to share it with you?
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