Are you meeting regularly with a discussion group? If you meet just once a week, you can find all of this week’s discussion questions in one place right here.

Question: Have you ever been in the right place at the right time, to make a real difference?

Question: What would convince you to take such a risk for others?  Self-preservation?  Or something more?

And they told Mordecai what Esther had said. Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think to yourself that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish.” Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him.  (Esther 4:12-17 ESV)

Question: Esther foiled Haman’s plan to destroy the Jews.  How do you think Satan planned to destroy the human race, and how did Jesus foil the plan?  What does that mean for us?

So the king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther. And on the second day, as they were drinking wine after the feast, the king again said to Esther, “What is your wish, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled.” Then Queen Esther answered, “If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be granted me for my wish, and my people for my request. For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold merely as slaves, men and women, I would have been silent, for our affliction is not to be compared with the loss to the king.” Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, “Who is he, and where is he, who has dared to do this?” And Esther said, “A foe and enemy! This wicked Haman!” Then Haman was terrified before the king and the queen.  (Esther 7:1-6 ESV)

Challenge: Where has God put you in life, and why do you think he put you there for “such a time as this?”  What difference can you make, that no one else can?  What’s holding you back?