Discussion Questions for MARKED Book 3
Spoiler Alert! (If you have not already read this book, these questions will reveal crucial events in the story)
- Have you ever been in a situation where you had to trust your safety to someone you barely knew? In Rhonalyn’s position, would you question the motives of strangers offering to help you? Why or why not?
- Rhonalyn believes that loyalty is a commitment to carrying out certain actions for someone because of what that person has promise to do for you. What do you think? What is loyalty? Is it transactional? Or is it relational? Additionally, can someone be trustworthy without being loyal, and vice-versa?
- Gage decided to go after Rhonalyn and Aisley, and he told himself it was to help them, but then he realizes later that that wasn’t his only motivation. While making a decision have you ever told yourself and perhaps even convinced yourself that your reasons were selfless when in reality they were not?
- How does Haaken’s question about whether or not Gage can trust himself to do what’s right challenged Gage when he realizes he deceived himself about his own motives? The Bible talks about this reality in Jeremiah 17:5-15 and gives the solution in Proverbs 3:5-7. How does this exhortation challenge you when it comes to your own decision making?
- Have you ever felt like God has given you too much to handle? In the midsts of his own problems, Gage is handed Rhonalyn and Aisley to help too, and he’s angry at God for piling more on him. As the situation unfolds though, how does Gage actually begin to see God’s provision and plan in what initially felt like God disregarding him?
- Has there ever been a time when you asked God for help and were answered by what felt like silence? Gage wants to get to know God better and asks God for help to do so. Gage is answered by what feels like silence, but in what way had God actually already answered Gage’s request?
- Have you ever had in your life someone who felt like everything to you and when they were gone, their absence left a gaping hole? What did you do? Where did you turn? Both Gage and Haaken lost the people they had been turning to for support, how were their responses the same and how were they different?
- Manton and Rhonalyn can’t both be right about who they think Strephon is, and yet they are both convinced of what they believe. Proverbs 18:17 talks about this kind of situation. Have you ever thought you understood what was happening, then heard another side to the story, and suddenly were no longer sure what was true? How did you navigate this?
- How do you determine what is true? Are you willing to change your mind when you are presented with a reality that counters what you thought was true?
- 10. Why do you think Gage got so angry at Rhonalyn for going through his saddlebags? Has a past experience ever altered and or intensified the way you responded to something? Were you able to slow down to sort out why and then apologize to the person for your reaction?
- 11. Gage has a hard time being kind to Rhonalyn, why do you think he struggles so much in his interactions with her? What changes could he have made that might have helped their relationship be less antagonistic?
- 12. Have you ever had to make a decision that would impact other people’s lives? Did you wish you didn’t have to be the one to bear that responsibility? When Wick puts it on Gage to decide if they go to Ithera, what change happens that allows Gage to make that decision despite his fears?
- 13. At the potters and brickmakers, Manton offers their help around the place, and Rhonalyn is angry when Gage volunteers her to help too. Why do you think she feels this way? Gage and Aisley both enjoy their experience helping, why do you think this is? How might your own mindset about yourself and your position impact your attitude about helping others?
- 14. Have you ever paused like Haaken to really consider the reality of what it means that God created everything?
- 15. When Gage reads Haaken’s thoughts about the way that God deals with Adam and Eve, he wonders why God didn’t just make humans compliant slaves. Have you ever considered what God wants from humanity? How might what you believe about God’s goal in creating you change how you see God?
- 16. Why does Wick dislike Manton so much? How did Manton’s and Gage’s lies to each other while traveling together contribute to creating this situation? In what ways does the two of them finally telling the truth actually start to unravel the conflict between them and with those around them who have been drawn into their conflict?
- 17. Manton, Rhonalyn, and Gage are all afraid of helping the infant found on the refuse pile. What are the different reasons for their fears? Has fear ever kept you from trying to help someone? In what ways do Wick’s actions change what could have unfolded had he not done what he did?
- 18. Have you ever wondered like Gage if God really wants you or cares about you? Have you ever thought about the fact that anyone else in Noah’s time could have gotten on the ark had they wanted to? God left the door open until the very last moment. 2 Peter 3:9 says, “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is [patient] toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” Check out 2 Corinthians 5:14-21, Romans 5:8-21, Romans 6:5-11, and 1 Timothy 2:3-7 to hear more about God’s heart toward you and all those He has created.
- 19. How do you evaluate whether or not someone is trustworthy? Manton makes the comment that he evaluates a person not by what they do or say when they think people are watching, but what they do when they believe they are unobserved.
- 20. How did what Gage heard and saw of Lord Braxton and his sons while in Verfeld, first convince Gage to risk trusting them, and second convince him to risk helping them? Have you ever figured out someone might make a good friend when you heard what their enemy had to say about them? Or vice versa, have you heard what a person’s friend had to say about them and learned that you may not want to be connected to them?
- 21. When you learned who was behind the Unavowed, were you surprised? Have you ever been deceived by someone so thoroughly that you believed they were something they were not? Were there telltale signs of their deception that when you look back you can now see? How might the situation have unfolded differently had those signs been noted earlier?
- 22. Have you ever been afraid that something God was asking you to do might cost you everything? Gage almost flees the encampment rather than risking the possible consequences of seeking out and trying to help the others. In the end, Gage chooses to obey the One who knows the future, who holds his future, and who has dominion over all things. Are you choosing your own path or are you obeying the One who knows the best way forward?
- 23. Have you ever, like Baron Hewitt, chosen to not stand against someone because you felt like it was a safer choice for you and others? Did you consider other options? What did Hewitt’s decision cost him and his men? What if Hewitt had gone to Edelmar to seek help? How many lives might have been saved?
- 24. Are there ways you have compromised on what you know is right because of something in your own life that you are afraid to deal with or because of someone you are afraid to stand against? Have you prayed for God’s help? Have you in faith taken the first steps to do what is right? God tends to reveal His provision once we’re on the path He has asked us to walk.
- 25. What would you say are some of Gage’s biggest heroic moments? Often we think of a heroic person as someone who rises up in some big moment and saves people, but sometimes the most heroic acts we do and the most significant decisions we make happen in moments inside us that no one else besides God will ever see.
“God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” 2 Timothy 1:7