Sabbath School teaching tip: Try to avoid setting up a Sabbath School space like a lecture hall with the leader in front and the group facing the leader. Find a way to put your chairs in a circle. It will have a dramatic effect on participation.

1.  Why do you think it didn’t “last” when God just gave his human children a perfect world from the get-go? Why do you think He did it anyway, knowing it would not last?

2.  How would you describe the “givens” or the “ground rules” of our current situation in comparison to the Garden of Eden? Address issues such as our communication with God, the purpose of our life here and now, and what we can or can’t control.

3.  Why do you think God has chosen NOT to simply start over with a rebooted Garden of Eden after the Fall, but rather to send us a Redeemer to draw us to Him within this fallen world?

4. A theological principle explains how we can understand “God’s will” as having multiple levels. By human analogy, a parent wants their teen to do their homework (“their will” is completed homework), but that same parent decides not to stand over the teen and force them to do it, because they want the teen to learn the connection between their actions and the consequences, and to freely choose it.  In this sense, the incomplete homework is also the parent’s will, at another level, because their decision to hold back has enabled the homework to go unfinished. How does this apply to God’s will? What does it tell us about what God most values? What does it tell us about how we should present the gospel to those entrusted to our care?

5. Adam and Eve were the first family of “blamers.” Give an example you have seen of how over-focusing on blaming others for your circumstances (even if that blame has some truth) always holds back spiritual growth. Why do you think that we see an increase in such a “blame others” mentality in society, across all political and demographic lines, today? What did Jesus say about focusing on the sins of others more than our own?

6. Do you think most people want to see God face to face at this point in their life? Why or why not? How about you?

7. Ellen White’s testimony powerfully illustrates the difference between our “God-concept” (knowing about God, an intellectual description) and our “God-image” (knowing God, an emotionally powerful relationship). As a young person, she could recite that “God is love” but didn’t believe it deeply until she experienced God loving her. Can you relate to the difference between knowing about God, and knowing God in your spiritual walk?

8. A Methodist minister named Levi Stockman was used by God to help young Ellen experience knowing God. What people or experiences have helped you to know God personally? 

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