Intentional Relationships

Note: I cannot take credit for coming up with all of this on my own. Much of it comes from Catalyst 2008 notes and from reading what others have already written. It is a lesson I put together for the Home Group leaders at my church, but thought those who read this blog might also be interested in the material.

George Gallup said: “Americans are among the loneliest people in the world.”
We have busy, overcommitted lives and schedules. We live and work around lots of people, but somehow most Americans miss out on MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIPS.

God didn’t intend for us to be alone. In the Garden of Eden, God made Eve for Adam because he was lonely. Each of us is wired differently as to our need to be around other people, but all of us as humans need some form of meaningful connection with others.


John 17:11 I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name—the name you gave me—so that they may be one as we are one.

Jesus is praying here his last prayer before being arrested. He has come to the end of His ministry as a human here on earth and like many he is focused in on what is most important as he faces the end of His human life. Note that he prays, “So that they may be one as we are one.” He is talking about his disciples! The guys he has been hanging out with for the previous three years. He is talking about the guys who couldn’t stay up praying with him. He is talking about the guys who never seemed to get it. Yet his prayer for them is that they will be one. He wants our relationship with each other to be close like the relationship Jesus shares with God and the Holy Spirit! That is pretty close!

John Ortberg said: “In community – the divine community especially—a heart comes alive.” Jesus was praying that his disciples would experience this kind of life giving divine community that makes our hearts come alive. This kind of community can only come from God himself!

You might be thinking, ((Yeah, of course Jesus prayed for his disciples. They lived with him for three years.)) But notice that he wasn’t just praying for them. Look down to verses 20-21 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father just as you are in me and I am in you.”

We are those people he was praying for! We are believing in Jesus because one of the disciples told someone about Him, and then that person told someone else….
I want to share a bit of questionable history, but it makes a point. How many of you have heard of Edward Kimball? What about Billy Graham?
• Sunday School teacher Edward Kimball helped lead Dwight L. Moody to Christ;
• J. Wilbur Chapman was converted at a Dwight L. Moody evangelistic meeting;
• Billy Sunday was converted at a Chapman meeting;
• Mordecai Ham was converted at Billy Sunday meeting;
• and Billy Graham was converted at a Ham meeting.

Why in a lesson on Intentional Relationships am I talking about the history of people who got saved? Each of these people was a link in a chain in the world of ministry. Each of us, through our Home TEAMs and other relationships has a chance to affect people’s lives. We may or may not see the end results of the affect our relationships have on those people. Edward Kimball was long dead before the first Billy Graham crusade was held.
When Jesus continues in verse 21 “May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” Our relationships with God and with each other show a watching world about Jesus’ ministry. “He is saying that the credibility of His life and message in the eyes of unbelievers is dependent on the way we as His followers relate to one another.” (Andy Stanley) Loving one another is Jesus’ command to us. He also says in John 13:35 “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
We have an awesome opportunity through our Home TEAMs to share that love and relationship with the people in our groups. We also as a group of leaders have the opportunity to share meaningful relationships with each other. However, it is a weighty issue! Do you see how high the stakes are? Do you see why we can not settle for anything less than Jesus’ dream for community? The integrity and credibility of His Gospel is at stake!
Our job as Home TEAM leaders is to create communities that are “so satisfying, so unique, and so compelling that they create a thirst in a watching world!”(Andy Stanley)
Get into groups of 4-6 people.
Questions for small groups:
1. What roles have meaningful relationships played in your faith journey?
2. Identify a time when you felt isolated from others. What kept you in isolation?
3. What distracts you from connecting well now?
4. How can you begin to create opportunities in your current context for people to connect meaningfully?

A Day in Spanish Class

If you have followed my blog, you know that I teach Spanish at North Greenville University. Today, as I took attendance, my question of the day, translated back into English for the reading audience,was "What has God been doing in your church?" I was amazed to hear all the testimonies from the students! God has been busy, and so have God's people! Sometimes it is easy to get focused on our own ministry, our own church, our own community. It was refreshing to hear what God was doing in all sizes of churches and communities represented by the 100+ students that answered the question. HE is helping poor hispanics, people hit by hurricanes, planting new churches, growing youth groups, growing college groups, healing hurts, helping the homeless, starting house churches, adding home groups,sending out mission teams, adding prayer teams, bringing in new pastors, reaching out to communities and much much more! I must say that today's question of the day was quite a blessing to me, and I think to the other students in the classes as well! It was a great reminder that we serve an AWESOME GOD!!!

True Revival!

I just want to share a quick story today about an event that God inspired. A young man in the next town over from mine was waiting at a house for a drug deal to commence. While waiting, the Holy Spirit convicted him so strongly that he told his friend he didn't want to do it, and he went home. On the way home, he began to weep and ask God to forgive him. When he arrived at home, he confessed to his father what he had been doing recently. Now he is involved in a thriving youth group and growing in the Lord. Notice the obvious here. No one was asking him where he would go if he died tonight. No one was leading him down the Romans road. While those things are great! It was God who decided that this lost sheep needed to come home! True revival is breaking out among the young people of today. I just pray us "older and wiser" folk don't miss it!

Responsibility

Erwin McManus, once quoted an unnamed source, "Is it possible that Christianity has rejected this gospel because it demands too much of us?" Jesus changed the world with his life. He didn't call us to be comfortable or even successful by the world's standards. He called each of us who know Him to share that testimony of His grace with others. That quote is stuck in my head. Are we causing sinners to reject the gospel because we make it look to easy? There isn't a club in America that doesn't ask its members to do something, yet we so often try to get people to come to church and believe in our God with an promise that Salvation is free. We know that true faith in Jesus Christ costs us everything! He freely gives us salvation, but are we doing our job sharing with new believers the cost of the decision they have made? And do we really think that unsaved or un-churched people don't have a clue that if they commit to this Jesus following stuff that they are going to have to do more than pray once and it is all over? Please do not misinterpret what I am saying, I know that we are saved by the grace of Jesus Christ, and not by anything we do. I am however saying that once we are saved by grace, that there are things that we are called to do. Are we adequately sharing that with the people that we share the gospel with? I would love to hear comments on this one!

Catalyst Conference

Got back from the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta yesterday, but this is the first chance I have had to sit down and write. It was an awesome time! If you are a pastor or business leader who would like to get new ideas on how to be a better leader from a Godly perspective, then I encourage you to register for next year's conference! There were great speakers like Craig Groeschel and Andy Stanley but even better was that I was surrounded by 12,500 church and business leaders in the seats. I enjoyed the breaks getting to talk to people about their own ministries and what God was doing in their church or business. At one point while talking with two men, one from a church of thousands and another getting ready to plant a church, just as the break was about over, we had an incredible time of prayer together praying for the guy who was planting a church. We were from different states, but we were all in one accord in our prayer. God is doing amazing things in our world! It was neat to hear many of the stories of what he is doing!