Sermon Study Guide | Series: Repentance for the Rest of Us |
Sermon: Kinds of Kindness |
Scripture: Romans 2:1–5; John 18:15–27; John 21:1–19 | Date: September 20, 2026

For this series we’ve developed a Repentance for the Rest of Us — Resource Guide

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CONNECT - “A Personal Reflection”

This section is designed to help you relate personally to the theme of the sermon. It encourages you to reflect on your own life experiences and how they connect to the message.

Most of us know what it feels like to delay a hard conversation. We know something went wrong, we know we contributed to it, and yet we let the clock keep running. Sometimes we hope the tension will fade. Sometimes we are afraid of the consequences. Sometimes we are waiting for the other person to go first. This message asks a revealing question:

What is the gap between where you mess up and where you fess up? Think about one relationship in your life right now. Is that gap measured in minutes, hours, days, or years? And what usually closes it for you—fear, pressure, shame, or the experience of kindness? Share with your group.

ENGAGE - “Exploring the Scripture”

This section invites you to dive into the biblical passage, discuss its meaning, and apply it to your life through thoughtful questions.

• Read Romans 2:1–5. Paul is speaking to people who are quick to identify sin in others while overlooking it in themselves. Where are you most tempted to believe that repentance is something other people need more than you do?
  
  
• Romans 2:4 describes the kindness, forbearance, and patience of God as what leads us toward repentance. How is that different from the way you may have imagined God responding when you fail?
  
  
• The message describes God as being “slow with us on purpose.” What does it mean to see the time between your failure and your repentance not as God ignoring what happened, but as space his kindness is holding open for you?
  
  
• The message says, “Fear works until it doesn’t.” Where have you experienced fear, shame, or pressure producing temporary compliance without producing lasting change?
  
  
• Think about the contrast between Adam in Genesis 3 and Peter in John 21. Adam heard God coming and hid. Peter realized Jesus was on the shore and jumped into the water. What do those opposite responses reveal about what each person expected to find when approaching God?
  
  
• Read John 18:15–27 and John 21:1–19. John specifically mentions a charcoal fire in both scenes. What stands out to you about Jesus intentionally bringing Peter back to a setting that would have reminded him of his failure?
  
  
• Jesus has breakfast waiting before he asks Peter the difficult questions. The message says, “Kindness did not skip the hard part of their conversation. Kindness never avoids the reckoning that’s necessary for reconciliation. It simply hosts it.” How does this challenge the idea that kindness means avoiding discomfort or disagreement?
  
  
• Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?”, but he does not leave Peter stuck in shame. He gives him something to do: “Feed my sheep.” What does this show us about the relationship between repentance, restoration, and renewed purpose?
  
  
• The message distinguishes between God’s wrath and human anger, describing God’s wrath as his settled opposition to everything that destroys what he loves. How does that definition help you understand how God’s love, kindness, and justice belong together?
  
  
• Paul warns against keeping God’s wrath while relocating it onto other people. Where are you tempted to become the “enforcer”—in conversations, online, in a group text, or in your private judgments?
  
  
• The message observes that we are often most severe about sins we do not struggle with and most patient with the ones we do. Where might that be true of you?
  
  
• Paul describes the opposite of repentance as a hard heart. Looking honestly at your life, does your heart seem softer or harder than it was a year ago? What evidence would support your answer?

APPLY - “Putting the Scriptures into Action”

This section challenges us to take what we’ve learned and implement it in practical ways in our daily lives.

• Find the gap. Identify one situation where you already know you need to take responsibility and have been letting time pass. Take one concrete step toward the actual person this week—a phone call, conversation, meal, or honest check-in. Avoid vague statements or public gestures that bypass the person who was actually affected.
  
  
• Close the time between sin and repentance. Pay attention this week to how quickly you recognize and respond when you have hurt someone. Rather than aiming for perfection, notice whether the gap is getting shorter.
  
  
• Lead with kindness. Identify one person whose behavior you genuinely wish would change. Instead of contempt, passive aggression, or pressure, ask what it could look like to extend kindness without pretending that what happened was okay.
  
  
• Remember the breakfast. When shame makes you want to hide from God, return to John 21. Picture Jesus already on the shore. The difficult conversation still matters, but so does the fact that he has moved toward Peter before Peter has fixed anything.
  
  
• Ask the daily question: What did I lead with today, and what did it produce? Notice where fear, shame, contempt, patience, or kindness shaped your interactions.

PRAY - “Seeking God’s Guidance”

This section offers a short prayer to help us center our hearts and invite God to work in our lives through his scripture.

Jesus, thank you that your kindness does not wait for us on the other side of getting our lives together. Thank you for being patient with us, for holding space open when we have failed, and for continuing to lead us toward repentance instead of driving us there with fear.

Show us where we have mistaken your patience for permission, where we have allowed the gap between our sin and repentance to grow, and where our hearts have become hard. Give us courage to move toward the conversations we have been avoiding.

Teach us to receive your kindness deeply enough that we can extend kindness to people who have not earned it from us. Keep us from carrying judgment that belongs to you, and make us softer, humbler, and quicker to turn back to you. When we are tempted to hide, remind us that the fire is already lit, breakfast is waiting, and you are still calling us to follow you. Amen.

If you have feedback on this guide or ideas that would help your group engage more deeply, we’d love to hear from you. 

Your insight helps us continue growing as a church that wrestles honestly and walks faithfully together. Contact msummers@menlo.church

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FIVE DAY DEVOTIONAL

Repentance For The Rest Of Us // Week 2

Read the scripture first. Sit with it before you read anything else. Then take the reflection question into the day rather than answering it quickly.

DAY ONE // THE ROOM WHERE NOBODY NEEDS THIS

Read: Romans 2:1-3

Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.

Read it once for the argument. Then read it again and ask who Paul has in mind.

This is not written to the person who has hit bottom. It is written to the person who is sure the letter is about somebody else. That is a harder audience, because there is no crisis making them listen.

Notice that Paul does not accuse this person of different sins. He accuses them of the same ones. The distance they feel from the people they judge is not real. It is maintained.

Reflect: Who have you been quietly measuring yourself against? What would change if you were doing the same things?

Pray: God, show me the place I have been sure this does not apply to me. Amen.

DAY TWO // SLOW WITH ME

Read: Romans 2:4

Or do you presume on the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

Stop on forbearance and patience. Most of us were handed the sequence backwards. Get right, then get close. Paul puts kindness first and the turning second, and he treats the kindness as something still in motion.

That means the gap you have been using as a loophole is the gap He has been holding open on purpose. Time is passing either way. It is either closing the distance or compounding it.

Reflect: Where has God been kind to you in a season you assumed He was disappointed in you? What did you miss at the time?

Pray: God, thank You for not waiting on the other side of my cleanup. Amen.

DAY THREE // THE FIRST FIRE

Read: John 18:15-18, 25-27

Now the servants and officers had made a charcoal fire, because it was cold, and they were standing and warming themselves. Peter also was with them, standing and warming himself.

John slows down to tell you what kind of fire it was. That detail is not decoration. It is a marker he plans to use again.

Notice how ordinary the failure is. Peter is not tortured into it. He is cold, he is tired, he is standing near people who might recognize him, and it comes out of his mouth three times.

Most of what we end up repenting for happens this way. Not in a dramatic moment. In a cold courtyard, late, when we are tired.

Reflect: Where does your worst self show up, and what are the conditions that make it likely?

Pray: God, meet me in the cold hours, not just the clear ones. Amen.

DAY FOUR // TOWARD

Read: John 21:1-14

When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and threw himself into the sea.

Peter has not had the conversation yet. Nothing has been settled about the courtyard. Everyone in that boat knows what he did. And when he finds out Jesus is on the shore, he goes in the water.

Compare it with the garden. Adam heard God coming and hid in the trees. Same situation, opposite motion. What decides the direction is entirely what you expect to find when you arrive.

Then look at what is waiting. A charcoal fire, the second one in the gospel, with bread and fish already on it. Jesus rebuilt the scene of the denial and made it a place where breakfast happens.

Reflect: When you imagine God waiting for you, what is on His face? Where did you learn that?

Pray: God, You built the fire anyway. Help me swim. Amen.

DAY FIVE // SOFT OR HARD

Read: Romans 2:5

But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

The opposite of repentant here is not wicked. It is hard. That is a more honest question than good or bad, because everybody already has an answer for good or bad.

And notice the direction. Wrath stored up for yourself, not for them. The word is the same one Jesus uses for storing up treasure. Everybody is making a deposit. You choose the account.

The reason any of this is good news is that God did not delegate His wrath. He absorbed it. Which means the gap in your life is still open at His expense, not yours.

Reflect: Softer or harder than a year ago? What is the evidence?

Pray: God, soften what I have let go hard. Amen.

The practice continues. Find one gap and close it. Lead with kindness toward one person who has not earned it. Then one line at 

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