Sermon Study Guide | Series: Beyond the Ballot | Sermon: Week 4 — Identity in Christ, Identity in Crisis | Scripture: Ecclesiastes 3:1-11; Jeremiah 29:5-7; 1 Timothy 2:1-2; Philippians 4:6-8 | Date: November 8, 2026

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.

Sometimes a season ends before we know how to stop living inside it. The deadline passes, the decision is made, or the results arrive, but we keep checking, rehearsing conversations, and bracing for whatever might happen next. After an election, that can happen whether we feel relieved, disappointed, worried, exhausted, or some combination of all four.

This message asks a question that will remain long after the campaign signs come down: How much of my life should politics get?

Think about what political attention has received from you in this season—your time, energy, money, concern, or emotional availability. What has that attention made room for, and what might it have crowded out? What would you hope to recover as this season ends? 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 Ecclesiastes 3:1–3. The passage describes a world with seasons, beginnings, and endings. Why can it be difficult to let a season end when something important still feels unfinished? How might recognizing limits become an expression of trust in God?
  
  
• Read Ecclesiastes 3:4 and 7. There is a time to mourn, a time to dance, a time to keep silence, and a time to speak. Which of those feels closest to where you are after the election? What would it look like to acknowledge that honestly while making room for someone experiencing a different season?
  
  
• The message uses three sports settings to describe political engagement: rec league, school team, and club. Which best describes your current relationship with politics? How can you recognize the difference between sustained, faithful engagement and living inside a permanent campaign?
  
  
• Read Jeremiah 29:5–7. God places seeking the city’s welfare alongside building homes, planting gardens, and raising families. What does that combination teach us about where civic faithfulness belongs in an ordinary life?
  
  
• The message explains that shalom describes the wholeness and flourishing of a community. Where can you see your own well-being connected to the well-being of neighbors who think or vote differently? Whose needs are easiest for you to overlook?
  
  
• The people Jeremiah addressed were living somewhere they had not chosen. God still called them to seek its good. Where do you feel limited by circumstances or decisions you did not choose? What meaningful responsibility remains available to you there?
  
  
• The message reminds us that the people underneath political issues remain our neighbors after the votes are counted. Think about an issue you care deeply about. Who experiences its consequences in everyday life? What would it take to know their concerns more personally?
  
  
• Read 1 Timothy 2:1–2. Paul calls the church to pray for people in authority. What makes that difficult when a leader’s decisions concern or anger you? What could an honest prayer for their wisdom, integrity, and the welfare of those they serve include?
  
  
• The message asks us to consider our political “overuse injuries”: strained relationships, constant vigilance, exhaustion, or difficulty being present. What would appear on your own injury report? What might healing require you to acknowledge or change?
  
  
• Think about a friendship with someone who sees politics differently. What has helped that relationship remain a friendship? Where might you need to listen more carefully, speak more honestly, or stop treating every conversation as an opportunity to persuade?
  
  
• Read Ecclesiastes 3:11. The message says politics can become an attempt to make a season carry eternity. What are some things we ask political outcomes to provide that they cannot finally secure—belonging, worth, lasting peace, or certainty about the future?
  
  
• Ecclesiastes 3:11 also acknowledges that we cannot see everything God is doing from beginning to end. How do you usually respond to that lack of control? What would faithful action look like if you could take responsibility for your part while entrusting the whole story to God?
  
  
• Read Philippians 4:6–8. Paul invites us to bring our concerns to God with thanksgiving and to give attention to what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and commendable. How might those practices change what you consume, share, and carry into your relationships? How can they help you face difficult realities faithfully?
  
  
• As this series ends, where have you noticed Jesus challenging your identity, your conduct, or your expectations of politics? What is one practice you want to carry forward so that the series becomes part of how you live?

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.

• Let the campaign season end. Unsubscribe from political messages you no longer need. Choose when you will check the news rather than responding to every notification. Set aside one day this week without political news, and give that attention to worship, rest, relationships, or something good in your community.
  
  
• Choose one way to seek your city’s good. The message names six approaches: local, Daniel, prophetic, scuba, monastic, and reform. Consider which fits your gifts, responsibilities, and capacity in this season. Choose one concern, one place, and one concrete next step. A school, neighborhood organization, or community partnership such as For The Bay may be a place to begin.
  
  
• Pray for a leader by name. Choose one person elected to office whom you did not support. Ask God to give them wisdom, honesty, humility, and concern for the people affected by their decisions. Bring your objections honestly into that prayer, and ask God to show you where you also need to grow.
  
  
• Protect a real relationship. Make time for someone who sees the world differently. Ask about something important in their life and stay long enough to hear the answer. Before Thanksgiving, consider what you want the people around the table to experience from you. Decide which familiar remark or argument you can leave unspoken.
  
  
• Continue the Headline Practice. Before reacting, give it sixty seconds. Pause. Notice what is happening in your body. Name what you are feeling. Ask: “What is this story trying to form in me?” Pray for the people involved. Then decide how to engage. Bring Philippians 4:8 into that decision: Is what I am sharing true? Does the way I am sharing it honor the people involved?
  
  
• Give an injury some attention. Name one way this season has left you worn down or relationally distant. Bring it to God and, where helpful, to a trusted friend. Choose one step toward healing: an apology, a more sustainable habit, an honest conversation, or time together without a political agenda.

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.

God, you know what each of us is carrying after this election. You know our relief, disappointment, anger, gratitude, and fear. Help us bring those feelings honestly into your presence. Give us room to grieve what hurts and gratitude for what is good, while keeping our deepest hope rooted in you.

Teach us to recognize the season we are in. Show us what needs to end, what needs healing, and what faithful work remains. Where we have neglected the people closest to us, help us become present again. Where we have withdrawn from our neighbors, give us courage to seek their good.

We pray for the people entrusted with public responsibility. Give them wisdom, integrity, and compassion. Protect those who are vulnerable to careless or unjust decisions. Help us serve the places where you have put us with patience and love, including alongside people whose convictions differ from ours.

We bring you the concerns we cannot resolve and the future we cannot see. Let your peace guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Direct our attention toward what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and worthy of praise. Remind us that we belong to you, and teach us to live faithfully from that belonging. 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

FIVE-DAY DEVOTIONAL

Beyond the Ballot // Week 4

Don’t let politics become a club sport.

Read the Scripture first. Sit with it before moving on. Throughout the week, keep asking: What does faithful engagement look like in the season I am actually in?

DAY ONE // LET THE SEASON END

Read: Ecclesiastes 3:1–8

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”

A season can be over while your body is still waiting for the next alert.

You reach for the phone. You check again. You rehearse a conversation that already happened or prepare for one that might never happen.

Ecclesiastes gives us a world with different times for different things. Planting and gathering. Weeping and laughing. Silence and speech.

We do not get to remain in only the seasons we prefer. We also do not have to keep one season running forever.

Perhaps you need time to grieve. Perhaps you feel grateful. Perhaps you are tired enough that you have not yet recognized what you feel.

Bring that actual response to God.

Then consider what this season is asking of you now. There may be something to say. There may also be someone to listen to, a meal to enjoy, or a quiet evening you have been postponing.

Today, let one campaign habit come to an end.

Reflect: What are you continuing to do because the season trained you to do it? What might become possible if you stopped?

Pray: God, help me recognize the season I am in. Give me permission to grieve, receive joy, and be quiet without feeling that I am abandoning what matters. Show me which habits have outlived their purpose. Help me trust you enough to put them down and become available to the life in front of me. Amen.

DAY TWO // PLANT SOMETHING

Read: Jeremiah 29:5–7

“Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce.”

The people receiving Jeremiah’s letter had lost a great deal.

They were far from home, living under a power they had not chosen. They had reasons to be angry and reasons to wish their lives could begin again somewhere else.

Into that situation, God speaks about houses, gardens, families, and the welfare of a city.

These are commitments that take time.

A garden asks you to care for something before it can feed you. A home becomes a place where ordinary days accumulate. Seeking a city’s good requires learning who lives there and what they need.

God gives his people meaningful work in the place where they actually are.

We can spend so much attention on decisions made far away that we lose sight of the people within reach. Their needs remain after the campaign ends.

Today, notice one place where you could help something grow: a relationship, a local partnership, a classroom, or a neighbor’s ability to get through the week.

Reflect: Where are you waiting for circumstances to change before becoming invested? What could you begin tending now?

Pray: God, show me the people and places I have been passing by. I can become so occupied with what I cannot control that I overlook the good I could do. Help me seek the flourishing of this community, including people whose views differ from mine. Give me patience to plant, tend, and remain faithful over time. Amen.

DAY THREE // PRAY FOR THEM

Read: 1 Timothy 2:1–2

“That we may lead a peaceful and quiet life.”

Bring one name into this reading.

Someone with public responsibility whose judgment you question. Someone whose election disappointed you. Someone you find easier to criticize than to pray for.

Paul asks the church to include people in authority in its prayers.

You can begin honestly.

God, I am worried about what this person may do. I am angry about what they have said. I do not know how to pray for them without feeling that I am excusing something.

That is a place to start.

Then ask for what their responsibility requires: wisdom, integrity, restraint, courage, and attention to people who are easily overlooked. Pray for those who will live with the consequences of their decisions.

Stay with the person’s name long enough to remember that they, too, need God’s mercy.

Notice what happens in you as you pray. Let God have access to that as well.

Reflect: What resistance comes up when you pray for this person? What does that resistance reveal about your fears or expectations?

Pray: God, I bring you this person by name. Give them wisdom to govern well, humility to receive correction, and courage to pursue what is just. Care for those affected by their decisions. You know my concerns and my anger. Help me bring both to you, and keep resentment from taking over the way I see another human being. Amen.

DAY FOUR // A SEASON CANNOT CARRY ETERNITY

Read: Ecclesiastes 3:9–11

“He has made everything beautiful in its time.”

The passage holds two realities together.

God has put eternity into the human heart.

We cannot see everything God is doing from beginning to end.

We long for something lasting while living with incomplete knowledge. That can make promises of certainty especially powerful.

One more victory. One more defeat of the right opponent. One more outcome that will finally make the future safe.

Political decisions have real consequences. We should care about them. But even a deeply welcome result cannot give us everything our hearts are asking for.

The next concern will arrive. Another season will begin.

Ecclesiastes invites us to remember the limits of what we can see. We are living inside a story whose whole shape is known to God.

You can take today’s responsibility seriously while admitting that you cannot secure the entire future.

Ask God what belongs to your faithfulness today. Give him room to answer with something smaller and more concrete than carrying everything.

Reflect: What have you been asking an outcome to secure for you? What would it mean to entrust that deeper need to God?

Pray: God, I want to know how the story ends. When I cannot see it, I reach for certainty wherever I can find it. Help me recognize the limits of what any outcome can give me. Anchor my hope in your mercy, and give me courage to do today’s work without pretending I can control tomorrow. Amen.

DAY FIVE // WHAT GETS YOUR ATTENTION?

Read: Philippians 4:6–8

“The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Paul gives anxious people something to do with what they are carrying.

Bring it to God.

Name the request. Include thanksgiving. Allow the concern to become part of a relationship with the God who hears.

Take a moment to do that before reading further.

What are you worried about? What are you asking God for? What can you thank him for today?

Then notice where Paul directs attention: toward what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise.

That list gives us questions to carry into the day.

Is this story true? Am I treating the people in it with dignity? What good needs my attention? What have I stopped noticing because urgency has occupied so much of my mind?

Try the Headline Practice with the next story that unsettles you. Then give deliberate attention to something good that is already present.

A person. An act of courage. A meal. An opportunity to help.

Let those things become part of what forms you too.

Reflect: What has been receiving most of your attention? What might Philippians 4:8 lead you to notice, welcome, or change today?

Pray: God, here are the concerns I have been carrying. Hear my requests, and help me remember what I have received with gratitude. Let your peace stand watch over my heart and mind. Guide my attention toward truth, justice, beauty, and goodness. Make me available to the people you have given me to love today. Amen.

The practice continues. Before you react to a political headline, give it sixty seconds. Pause. Notice. Name. Ask. Pray. Engage. At the end of the day, look back: What did my reactions reveal about what is forming me?

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