Read: Genesis 29:30-30:24

1. What about the sermon most impacted you or left you with questions?

2. Do you agree that one of the most important things about people is that we all share a common longing for worth? How do the main characters in this passage all display a common longing for worth?

3. How important are the following questions to you:

Do I matter to someone?
Does what I do with my life matter to others?

4. Where did Leah look for her worth? How did it turn out for her? Can you relate to her? Where did Rachel look for her worth? How did it turn out for her? Can you relate to her?

5. How do Rachel’s words in 30:1 provide us with a test to find out where we are really looking for our worth?

6. Discuss this except from the sermon:

“When we are looking to our spouse (or someone) to give us our sense of worth or to our children (their behavior, achievement) to give us our sense of worth, it will never be enough. We will put too much pressure on the relationship, on our kids, on the person and instead of building our worth and the worth of our spouse/kids/the other person) we will become “transmitters of shame”. This is what happens in Jacob’s family (from Isaac > to Jacob > to his wives > to his sons).

Do you see this dynamic playing out in your story? How might this passage disrupt this pattern and chart you on a new course?

7. How does not having a solid sense of self-worth lead to living lives caught up in envy and comparison?

8. How does the gospel provide us with a solid and secure sense of self-worth? How can we know how much we are worth to God? That we matter to him that what we do with our life matters?

9. What might it look like for you to move away from the world’s pattern of transmitting shame to being a transmitter of worth? What might it look like for a church to be known as a place of restoring the worth of all people made in God’s image?