Progress and Perserverance in Christ: Seeing Real Growth and Change (Leader's Guide)

This is the Leader's Guide for Unit 4, Progress and Perseverance in Christ: Seeing Real Growth and Change of the four-unit series, Discovery: A Biblical Support Group Curriculum for Men Pursuing Sexual Integrity.

Harvest USA’s Discovery series brings the power of the gospel into men’s struggles with sexuality. Drawing on more than 35 years of discipleship through biblical support groups, Discovery makes Harvest USA’s discipleship model accessible to the local church. Participants dive deeply into Scripture, learning to apply the promises and comforts of the gospel beyond their behaviors to the deepest issues of their hearts. Their personal encounters with God’s Word are strengthened and expressed in the context of small group discussion, where they learn to live the gospel, giving and receiving truth and mercy together.

The entire series consists of four units with 13 lessons each. Designed to be used in order, these units guide participants through a course of Bible study that systematically draws out personal discovery of how the gospel transforms shaping life experiences, controlling heart desires, functional beliefs, and resultant behaviors. A corresponding Leaders Guide is available for each unit, with additional notes to help group leaders facilitate with skill and grace.

Unit 4, Progress and Perseverance in Christ: Seeing Real Growth and Change shows how our hearts, circumstantial influences, desires, and beliefs all bear out in either good or bad fruit in our lives. This unit focuses on the good fruit men should expect and work towards through their union with Christ.

Other units in this series include:

Unit 1, New Hope in Christ: Bringing Gospel Identity to Bear on Your Story starts with our gospel model for change that forms the structure of the entire curriculum. We then take a few lessons to establish a biblical understanding of the human heart. The second half of Unit 1 will help men bring new gospel clarity to a variety of past and present experiences and situations that have exerted strong, shaping influence over our hearts.

Unit 2, Treasuring Christ: Transforming Your Heart’s Desires focuses primarily on the deeper desires of our fallen hearts that, apart from the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, will lead to idolatrous pursuits of sin. This unit not only shows men how Jesus transforms and redirects our desires but also illuminates the profound reality that, at our core, we are all much more alike than we are different.

Unit 3, Seeking the Mind of Christ: Renewing Your Functional Worldview addresses a fundamental struggle for every believer: What we profess to believe about God and life often does not line up with what we functionally believe in our hearts. This unit challenges men to look deeply into what they truly believe, because transformed living will only come from a mind renewed in Christ.