Small Group Discussion Guide

"Unlocking Hope, Inheritance, and Power in Ephesians"

Pastor Ryan Jooste | Ephesians 1:15–20

1. SERMON RECAP

Pastor Ryan Jooste preached from Ephesians 1:15–20, focusing on the apostle Paul's four-part prayer that believers would receive the spirit of wisdom and revelation in knowing God, understanding the hope of His calling, grasping their inheritance as children of God, and experiencing His exceeding greatness of power. He emphasized that hope is not a passive wish but an active, joy-filled vision of what God has already provided, and that it must come alive before faith can fully operate. Pastor Ryan challenged the congregation to stop allowing the enemy to keep them from sitting in the seat of what God has already purchased for them through Jesus Christ.

2. KEY SCRIPTURE

Ephesians 1:18

"The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints."

3. ICE BREAKER

What is one thing you have genuinely looked forward to in your life, something you could picture so clearly that just thinking about it made you smile before it ever arrived?

4. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Question 1 Pastor Ryan described hope as "to anticipate with pleasure" and said it is the sight of your spirit. He pointed out that a person can be doing all the right faith actions, confessing scripture and standing in faith, yet feel no life behind it because their hope has quietly died. Have you ever experienced a season where your faith actions felt empty or mechanical? What do you think had happened to your hope during that time, and what, if anything, began to restore it?

Question 2 Pastor Ryan used the names of God, Jehovah Jireh and Jehovah Rapha, to illustrate that knowing who God is changes how we carry the weight of daily life. He shared that anxiety over money can follow a person from poverty into abundance if the underlying fear is never addressed. In your own experience, how has a deeper understanding of one of God's names or characteristics actually shifted the way you responded to a difficult situation, rather than just giving you a mental fact to hold?

Question 3 He referenced 1 Corinthians 1:21, which says it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe, and explained that God deliberately chose the preaching of the word as the vehicle through which His power is released. Why do you think God designed it that way? What does that tell us about the importance of gathering together, remaining under sound teaching, and taking the word seriously in our personal lives?

Question 4 Pastor Ryan described healing, peace, and restoration as part of the believer's present inheritance, not something reserved for heaven. He used the image of an unused ticket, someone who could have attended a historic event but never went, their seat left empty. Where in your own spiritual life might you be holding an unused ticket, something God has already provided that you have not yet pressed in to receive? What has kept you from taking that seat?

Question 5 Romans 15:13 says, "Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." Pastor Ryan connected joy and peace to the evidence that a person is moving into genuine hope. Using this verse as a measuring stick, how would you honestly describe the level of hope in your life right now in the area where you need God most? What practical step could you take this week to position yourself to receive more of what this verse describes?

Question 6 Pastor Ryan shared several testimonies, including a woman healed of HIV and a man delivered from what doctors called a COVID-related stroke, and he made the point that the enemy has a name for things and God has a different name for the same things entirely. How does that perspective challenge the way your group talks about problems, illness, or ongoing struggles? What would it look like to begin naming your situation the way God names it rather than the way the world or medicine names it, while still acting wisely?

5. APPLICATION CHALLENGE

This week, each group member should identify one specific area of life where hope has grown dim, whether related to health, finances, relationships, or freedom from a particular burden. On a notecard or in a journal, write out what that miracle, breakthrough, or restoration would actually look like in concrete, detailed terms, as though describing a picture you can see clearly. Read Romans 15:13 aloud over that written description each morning for seven days, asking the Holy Spirit to restore joy and peace as the foundation for genuine faith in that area.

6. PRAYER POINTS

Pray that the spirit of wisdom and revelation described in Ephesians 1:17 would become a lived reality for every group member, not just a theological concept, so that knowing God personally would replace anxiety with rest in every area of daily life.

Pray specifically for anyone in the group or in their circle of family and friends who is facing a medical diagnosis, a long-standing health struggle, or a situation where hope has been nearly extinguished, asking God to move as Jehovah Rapha and to let faith rise where hope is restored.

Pray that God would raise up bold, expectant believers in this congregation who understand and walk in their inheritance, who refuse to leave their healing, peace, and freedom unclaimed, and who carry the good news into the lives of people who have never heard that God is for them and not against them.

7. MEMORY VERSE

Romans 15:13

"Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."

Leader note: Give group members permission to be honest about where hope is struggling. The goal of this discussion is not to produce the right answers but to create space where real faith can grow from a real encounter with the word.