Restoration Road Session 1 Study Guide: Doing Life Differently Through the Power of Jesus Christ

This study guide is designed for a small group study. Sometimes past hurts and current obstacles cause us to live a life that is unfulfilling and unproductive. We can end up occupying ourselves with destructive behaviors while striving to find happiness. God has always intended for us to be in the process of restoration. Restoration Road is a ministry that helps people overcome by tapping into the supernatural power that God provides. Through this 13 week Study Guide you will learn the following: WEEK 1 - INTRODUCTION TO THE PROGRAM Programs can't heal people but Jesus can. Everyone's journey is going to be different and will take a different amount of time. WEEK 2 - GOD'S PLAN IS RESTORATION We start in Genesis to show God's plan of restoration. Through this we see what man was like before sin entered the world, after the fall and how God plans to restore us. WEEK 3 - OVERCOMING DENIAL WITH GOD'S HELP We like to think we can handle things on our own. When we can't, we begin to place the blame on others. This lesson teaches us how to own our behavior and take responsibility for it. We can't live in denial and Jesus has the power to help us learn to live with responsibility WEEK 4 - LEARNING TO TRUST GOD The picture of God we each have will often look like our most dominant parental figure. That picture of God is almost always incorrect. This week we examine who God really is by looking at His character. We will then determine if it makes Him trustworthy enough to place our faith in. WEEK 5 - MAKING A COMMITMENT TO CHANGE Change most often happens when we hurt too much to stay the way we are. Change takes a strong commitment. We will explore what a commitment to God and ourselves looks like. WEEK 6 - THE TRUTH ABOUT DEPENDENCY Dependency is usually looked at as negative. We will look at dependency in a more constructive light because it's not always a bad thing. Dependency on God is a good thing. WEEK 7 - COMPULSIVE BEHAVIOR Dependency on the wrong things happens when we decide not to depend on God. The wrong kind of dependency often turns into compulsive behaviors. Looking at the characteristics of compulsive behavior helps us identify compulsion in our own life and seek to overcome it. WEEK 8 - THE CHEMISTRY OF COMPULSIVE BEHAVIOR This week is all about the chemistry in our body that helps to cause us to become compulsive with a behavior. WEEK 9 - OBSTACLES AND BOUNDARIES We all have obstacles to overcome in life. Learning how to put boundaries in our life is important. Boundaries give us respect for ourselves and communicate our worth to others. WEEK 10 - SHAME, GOOD OR BAD? We each have a standard in our mind of what we believe to be normal behavior. When we don't feel we are at that standard we consider ourselves "not normal." That feeling of being unacceptable communicates a message that we should feel ashamed. Although, everyone experiences shame, we will look at what living a shame based life can do to a person. WEEK 11 - LOOKING FOR A SCAPEGOAT Shame teaches us to feel bad about ourselves and to look for someone else to blame. We transfer our shame to others in many different ways. God knew we would struggle with shame and gave us a way to deal with it. WEEK 12 - REPLACING SHAME WITH HONOR This week is all about riding ourselves of shame the way God does ....by replacing it with great honor. WEEK 13 - FINDING THE BLESSING A blessing is the message that you are somebody. That you are special, needed and wanted. It's the message that you have great value. We each look to our parents to tell us that we are okay; we are important and have worth. When the blessing isn't given to us by our parents, we will look for it elsewhere. We will look for approval from a boyfriend/girlfriend, spouse, employer, teacher, friend, etc. This week we will learn to look to God for the blessing we missed.

About the Author :
My name is Sherri Watt and I am the co-founder and Ministry Leader at Restoration Road. Thanks to Jesus Christ, I am a completely new creation. The old me is gone and I am in the process of restoration. God calls me one of His children. Yes, I still sin, but it is not who I am. The old things I used to do are not what I identify myself as. I didn't use to identify myself the way God sees me. Instead, I viewed myself the way others did and I felt worthless. I didn't grow up in a Christian family and I wasn't told how much I was valued. I grew up in a single parent home where by the time I was twelve, I felt abandoned, unwanted and abused. At the age of ten my step father decided to use my body for his own sexual pleasure. His sins against me changed what I believed about myself. By the time I reached my teenage years; alcohol, drugs and promiscuity had become my way of life and I was on a collision course. At the age of eighteen, my boyfriend decided to share Jesus with me. He shared that Jesus was someone who loved me and had died for me so I could go to heaven. Those words stayed with me and that evening, I talked to Jesus for the first time. I said, "If you really are there and you do love me, I believe that you died for my sins. Please help me!" Those words changed my entire life and brought me into an amazing relationship with a God that can do big things. He has changed everything in my life and made me a new person. My own life changes led me to create Restoration Road. God called me to share His restoring power through the lessons that changed me. I accepted His call and consider it an honor to be used by God to help others. I am only an empty vessel; a tool on the tool bench. My prayer is; that God will pick me up and use me in the life of others to bring freedom and joy.