Also written as a small group lesson:
Last week we learned that God wants to be with us on Earth – that we’re advancing the Kingdom. For Michael, we’re Israel and desperately in need of some help, and today we’re going to be talking about how to get weapons from the US (God) to us. For Hannah, Shoes R Us is giving away all their shoes and today we’ll be talking about how to get them from the store to our house. For everyone else, we serve a God who loves us – we want to be loved. We serve a God who wants to bring the people around us into a relationship with Him – we want our friends to know Him too. We serve a God who wants to radically change us – we want to be radically changed! If you both want the same things, why’s it not happening? Today we’ll be talking about linking the two up.
What’s the number 1 mistake we make in reading the Bible? Not believing it, not acting on it, saying that it was only applicable 2000 years ago. We sweep all the fun stuff into the past or the far future. Honestly, it’s more comfortable this way. If God doesn’t do much in us or around us today, then we have no reason to expect that He would be intricately involved in our lives. Read Revelation 1:8 – the normal way for God to introduce Himself would be in order; who was, who is, and who is to come. He chooses to introduce Himself first and primarily as the God who is. God is mainly a God of today!
If you’ve never been to church a day in your life, how would the Christian life look according to these scriptures?
1 Cor 4:20 – Christians have the ability to do things about their situation. Christianity isn’t just a way to make you feel better about a situation – it’s got power to change the situation.
John 10:10 – The Christian life should be far more fun and more exciting and more fulfilling than its non-Christian counterpart. We usually see Christianity as full of misery and sacrifice; “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints – the sinners are much more fun” – Billy Joel. If you just took the Bible for its word, we should be having a blast!
Isaiah 61:1-3 (knowing it’s about Jesus) – People who follow Jesus will have their mourning turned to happiness and their sadness turned to joy.
If you’ve never been to church a day in your life, what would these verses mean?
Matthew 19:26 – With God, all things are possible
Luke 1:37 – Nothing is impossible with God
Do you see these things in your life right now? Do you see them in their fullness? No! So what choices do we have? We can either overlay our own experiences on the Bible and let our experiences dictate what the Bible says, or we can choose to believe the Bible over our own experiences. The first is safer and means we can keep on living life as we always have. If we choose to believe the Bible over our experiences, we have to grapple with the frustration that, honestly, we don’t see everything in the Bible. However, that’s what the Christian life is about! It’s about bringing God’s rule and reign down on Earth. Abraham, Mary, Joshua, Gideon, and Peter, among others, chose to live by what God had told them instead of what they knew to be true from their experiences.
Prayer: connecting God’s will and our life.
Most of the time, we pray prayers like “God, if it’s your will, ….” While those prayers sound good and everything, there are a couple things wrong with that. First of all, that’s not how Jesus taught us how to pray and that’s not how the apostles prayed. Their prayers scare us – they commanded things to leave or be healed in the name of Jesus. Those prayers leave an exit for us – if the prayer didn’t get answered, then we can go on with life without loosing any of our faith. But our faith isn’t grown when prayers are answered, either. Also, we’ve left out the step of listening to God, which is the most important part. Without asking God, we’re no doubt praying our will and hoping God wants it too instead of praying God’s will. From last time, God doesn’t want servants, He wants friends and friendship requires two-way communication. The apostles were confident of God’s will in the situation and confident of His power to move, because they were listening to God! See Ecclesiastes 5:2, John 16:13&14, and John 15:15.
So what does that look like? Prayer time shouldn’t be entirely spent talking to God. Effective prayer is finding out God’s will in a situation then praying expecting that to happen (expectation is a good synonym for faith). I remember the first time I prayed like this – I was in the Philippines with a Southern Baptist group who stressed the absolute importance of memorizing scripture. We had to memorize a scripture every two days, and I couldn’t do it at all. When I told my team leader, he said, “Pray about it. What could be more in God’s will than memorizing His word?” That second part was the key – I began praying for an ability to memorize scripture and totally expecting God to do it because I knew it was in His will. And it happened! To this day, I know a ton of scripture but can’t memorize anything else.
When asking God’s will, be prepared to do things if He asks. Sometimes His response will be to tell you to do something and you don’t just get to sit in your little prayer closet. Also, be prepared to believe His word over your circumstances. Yes, you may know that spitting on blind people does not heal them, but that’s what God said to do. It may look like God doesn’t want to do something because He didn’t answer your prayer the first time, but then again, what did He tell you? If you know it’s His will and He hasn’t given you other instructions, keep praying – you know He’s going to answer it (Luke 11:9-11)! This isn’t about bothering God until He gives you something, it is about accepting His word more than your circumstances. “Wait, are you sure you didn’t get healed? That can’t be right - let’s try that again”
Promises in the Bible:
Biblical promises are an awesome place to begin – they always reveal God’s heart in a situation. We need to stop ignoring them or believing God’s saying something else than what is written. However, the promises don’t always reveal God’s execution. For instance, the great commission reveals God’s heart to spread the gospel. However, in Acts 16:6-7, Paul and company were prevented by the Holy Spirit from going into Asia. God’s heart was to spread the gospel to all people, but He had a different plan to execute it. Listening to Christ is absolutely crucial.
What does applying this look like? When you find a promise in the Bible, ask God to show you how this will apply to your life, then pray about it / do it! By praying to get God’s will done instead of our own, our prayers become much more powerful. George Mueller, 19th century missionary, said not one of his prayers went unanswered. For additional reading on this topic, I’d highly recommend “Like a Mighty Wind” by Mel Tari.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Worship and Relating to God
Hey all,
This was the Lifegroup message from Saturday. It's of course in a little different format without all the questions etc. I've embellished on it a little and added a number of insights others in the group had. For those of you who were there, I've attached all the verses I used and a couple others in case you wanted to look them all up. So without further ado:
4 Kinds of people approaching Christ:
Mark 9:20-27 – “if you can”
Mark 1:40-42 – “you can – if you are willing” – most Christians
Mark 5:25-29 – “if I can only ____, He will”
Mark 10:46-52 – “I can’t – He can”
Each of them showed completely different levels of faith. Normally, we’d say that the last two got healed because of their faith. What about the first two examples? The first guy didn’t even know if Jesus could heal his son. It was Jesus and His presence that resulted in the healings – that is the only constant in each story. So, what does that mean if you’re getting prayer for healing? Don’t worry about how much faith you have! What about if you’re praying for others? Don’t worry – it’s not about you; it’s about bringing the person you’re praying for into the presence of Jesus.
We’ll come back to that: Jesus healed far more people than actually followed him. In fact, he healed everyone who asked, but tried to drive away people who were trying to follow. Why do you think that is? Today, far more people follow Christ than have actually seen His power - why? Jesus never left a shadow of a doubt to whether or not He was the Messiah to anyone actually looking for Him. The question was always “how important is the kingdom of God to you?” It should be the same now.
What kind of people was/is Jesus looking for? Exodus 20:18-20 – Israel chooses safety instead of intimacy with God. Israel was willing to obey God – they just didn’t want to get close to Him. God wanted them to go up the mountain, but they didn’t want God – they wanted someone who would protect them and guide them without actually getting to know Him. We do this in our own lives – a lot of times we go to God just wanting direction or comfort when He wants to spend time with us and actually have a relationship. God’s looking for people like Moses and Joshua who went up the mountain.
Exodus 32:1 – God is still in a cloud on top of the mountain in view of the Israelites, but the Israelites decide to make another god. What’s the reason they give? They want someone to lead them. That’s the same thing God wanted to do! Before then, He had been leading His people by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. He told the Israelites that He was going to lead them into the Promise Land. The only problem is the people didn’t want to wait for God’s timing. We often know what God wants to do and try to do it without Him. God’s looking for people who will wait on His timing. See also Acts 1:12-26 when the apostles tried to choose their own replacement vs Acts 9:1-6 when God chose his own. See also the story of Hagar and Sarah (Genesis 15:4-5, Genesis 16:1-3, Genesis 21:1-7).
Exodus 33:7-11 – Israel worshipped God, but from a distance. God doesn’t desire many many followers, but a few who are like Joshua. What is the difference in our own lives? The Israelites (which almost always represent us – we’re God’s people, grafted in. See Romans 11) worshipped God only when He was doing something and from a distance. We often only worship and praise God when He’s doing something cool in our lives. Do we want a relationship with Him or do we just want occasional direction? A relationship isn’t just 1-sided and isn’t completely focused on doing things. Also, how much are we willing to pay for that relationship? To get any closer to God, the Israelites would have had to sanctify themselves, going through the cleansing rituals and offering sacrifices, etc. To them it wasn’t worth it. It’s the same way now – if we approach God and honestly seek him, He will definitely pull stuff out of our lives and ask us to give other things up. Is it worth it to us?
"Give me one hundred men who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not whether they be clergyman or laymen, they alone will shake the gates of Hell and set up the kingdom of Heaven upon the earth.” – John Wesley
God desires several things from us, and none of them involve miracles or bringing people to Christ (Matt 7:22). John 4:23-24 – He desires worshippers in Spirit and in Truth. Worship that’s not in truth is telling God things we don’t mean or promising things we have no intention of keeping, especially in worship songs. Worship not in spirit is doing things grudgingly and without the right heart. The Lifegroup came up with a ton of really awesome things about worshipping in spirit and / or in truth, but I forgot them…
So what’s so important about worship? Psalms 22:3 – God inhabits the praises of His people. If God’s spirit comes, what happens? God’s kingdom comes, His will is done. Anything not from God starts to get pushed out – worship can be a little uncomfortable because of this. But it’s really good and the only thing that really changes you (Isaiah 6:1-7 is one instance of this). But there’s another really cool thing! In Jesus’ time, the view of the world was that humans lived on the ground, the air (Ephesians 2:2) and essentially the kingdoms of this world (Luke 4:6) were ruled by Satan who was more powerful than any human, and God was in heaven and far more powerful than Satan, but pretty inaccessible because of the cushion of Satan’s kingdom. God inhabits the praise of his people – basically we become a point of contact between God and the people around us. Christ in us (Col 1:27, and all over the NT) isn’t just a theological point! The more of God inhabits us, the more love and the more of Christ we can spread to others.
For example – mission trips. In Mexico (two years in a row) and in Brazil, we worshipped God a lot, then we saw a couple healings. Of course, that made us want to worship more, and we saw even more healings! This happened for the entire mission trip, getting even closer to God and getting to see even more stuff happen because of the amount of Christ in us. After Lifegroup when we worshipped for a long time, a couple of us were so pumped that we walked around the UMR campus looking for things to pray for. We actually did get to pray for a guy for quite a long time, but ask me or David or Lance for that story :P.
This was the Lifegroup message from Saturday. It's of course in a little different format without all the questions etc. I've embellished on it a little and added a number of insights others in the group had. For those of you who were there, I've attached all the verses I used and a couple others in case you wanted to look them all up. So without further ado:
4 Kinds of people approaching Christ:
Mark 9:20-27 – “if you can”
Mark 1:40-42 – “you can – if you are willing” – most Christians
Mark 5:25-29 – “if I can only ____, He will”
Mark 10:46-52 – “I can’t – He can”
Each of them showed completely different levels of faith. Normally, we’d say that the last two got healed because of their faith. What about the first two examples? The first guy didn’t even know if Jesus could heal his son. It was Jesus and His presence that resulted in the healings – that is the only constant in each story. So, what does that mean if you’re getting prayer for healing? Don’t worry about how much faith you have! What about if you’re praying for others? Don’t worry – it’s not about you; it’s about bringing the person you’re praying for into the presence of Jesus.
We’ll come back to that: Jesus healed far more people than actually followed him. In fact, he healed everyone who asked, but tried to drive away people who were trying to follow. Why do you think that is? Today, far more people follow Christ than have actually seen His power - why? Jesus never left a shadow of a doubt to whether or not He was the Messiah to anyone actually looking for Him. The question was always “how important is the kingdom of God to you?” It should be the same now.
What kind of people was/is Jesus looking for? Exodus 20:18-20 – Israel chooses safety instead of intimacy with God. Israel was willing to obey God – they just didn’t want to get close to Him. God wanted them to go up the mountain, but they didn’t want God – they wanted someone who would protect them and guide them without actually getting to know Him. We do this in our own lives – a lot of times we go to God just wanting direction or comfort when He wants to spend time with us and actually have a relationship. God’s looking for people like Moses and Joshua who went up the mountain.
Exodus 32:1 – God is still in a cloud on top of the mountain in view of the Israelites, but the Israelites decide to make another god. What’s the reason they give? They want someone to lead them. That’s the same thing God wanted to do! Before then, He had been leading His people by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. He told the Israelites that He was going to lead them into the Promise Land. The only problem is the people didn’t want to wait for God’s timing. We often know what God wants to do and try to do it without Him. God’s looking for people who will wait on His timing. See also Acts 1:12-26 when the apostles tried to choose their own replacement vs Acts 9:1-6 when God chose his own. See also the story of Hagar and Sarah (Genesis 15:4-5, Genesis 16:1-3, Genesis 21:1-7).
Exodus 33:7-11 – Israel worshipped God, but from a distance. God doesn’t desire many many followers, but a few who are like Joshua. What is the difference in our own lives? The Israelites (which almost always represent us – we’re God’s people, grafted in. See Romans 11) worshipped God only when He was doing something and from a distance. We often only worship and praise God when He’s doing something cool in our lives. Do we want a relationship with Him or do we just want occasional direction? A relationship isn’t just 1-sided and isn’t completely focused on doing things. Also, how much are we willing to pay for that relationship? To get any closer to God, the Israelites would have had to sanctify themselves, going through the cleansing rituals and offering sacrifices, etc. To them it wasn’t worth it. It’s the same way now – if we approach God and honestly seek him, He will definitely pull stuff out of our lives and ask us to give other things up. Is it worth it to us?
"Give me one hundred men who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not whether they be clergyman or laymen, they alone will shake the gates of Hell and set up the kingdom of Heaven upon the earth.” – John Wesley
God desires several things from us, and none of them involve miracles or bringing people to Christ (Matt 7:22). John 4:23-24 – He desires worshippers in Spirit and in Truth. Worship that’s not in truth is telling God things we don’t mean or promising things we have no intention of keeping, especially in worship songs. Worship not in spirit is doing things grudgingly and without the right heart. The Lifegroup came up with a ton of really awesome things about worshipping in spirit and / or in truth, but I forgot them…
So what’s so important about worship? Psalms 22:3 – God inhabits the praises of His people. If God’s spirit comes, what happens? God’s kingdom comes, His will is done. Anything not from God starts to get pushed out – worship can be a little uncomfortable because of this. But it’s really good and the only thing that really changes you (Isaiah 6:1-7 is one instance of this). But there’s another really cool thing! In Jesus’ time, the view of the world was that humans lived on the ground, the air (Ephesians 2:2) and essentially the kingdoms of this world (Luke 4:6) were ruled by Satan who was more powerful than any human, and God was in heaven and far more powerful than Satan, but pretty inaccessible because of the cushion of Satan’s kingdom. God inhabits the praise of his people – basically we become a point of contact between God and the people around us. Christ in us (Col 1:27, and all over the NT) isn’t just a theological point! The more of God inhabits us, the more love and the more of Christ we can spread to others.
For example – mission trips. In Mexico (two years in a row) and in Brazil, we worshipped God a lot, then we saw a couple healings. Of course, that made us want to worship more, and we saw even more healings! This happened for the entire mission trip, getting even closer to God and getting to see even more stuff happen because of the amount of Christ in us. After Lifegroup when we worshipped for a long time, a couple of us were so pumped that we walked around the UMR campus looking for things to pray for. We actually did get to pray for a guy for quite a long time, but ask me or David or Lance for that story :P.
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