ANDY STANLEY COLLECTION GROW UP (2): BIG LIFE

Transcription

1 ANDY STANLEY COLLECTION BOTTOM LINE: WHEN IT COMES TO GROWING OUR FAITH, DOING, NOT KNOWING, IS WHAT MAKES THE DIFFERENCE. INTRODUCTION You can know a lot. Maybe you know the stats of every football player in the NFL. Maybe you know the cheat codes to hundreds of games. Maybe you know every Scripture in the New Testament. But unless you do something with what you know, then what you know isn t enough. Especially when it comes to our faith. God s truth was meant to be put into action. It was meant to affect our lives, our relationships. And when we begin to live out the truths we know, something happens to our faith. It begins to grow. WONDER. DISCOVERY. PASSION. XP3STUDENTS CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jared Herd WRITER Andy Stanley XP3 TEAM Tim Walker Sarah Anderson Sarah Bragg CONTRIBUTORS Mark Brown Laura Whelan Wyndi Lebrecque USER AGREEMENT The rethink Group, Inc. gladly grants permission to churches, schools and other licensees to tailor XP3 TM materials to fit their unique leadership requirements, locale and format preferences. However, if you wish to edit the content substantively, including teaching scripts, small group dialog and any other content in which biblical principles and concepts are presented, you are obligated to do so within the doctrinal guidelines we ve expressed in our Statement of Faith (see page 2). These resources are intended to be downloaded and printed for use by the subscribing entity only and may not be electronically transferred to or duplicated by other non-subscribing entities. Any unauthorized reproduction of this material or incorporation into a new work including podcasts or video of this content is a direct violation of U.S. copyright laws The rethink Group, Inc. All rights reserved. XP3 and the XP3 logo are trademarks of The rethink Group, Inc. GRAPHICS Scott Bragg ORANGE SPECIALISTS Kristie McCollister Jeremy Zach TECHNICAL & WEB SUPPORT Hadley Brandt Alex VanRossum CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Reggie Joiner CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Reggie Goodin

2 STATEMENT OF FAITH ABOUT GOD God is the one and only true God, yet He exists in three persons: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. God is the Creator, so everything belongs to Him and is under His control. God is holy, so He is righteous, majestic and loving. God is all knowing and purposeful, so He s at work to bring about His will. No person, thing or idea compares to God. ABOUT THE SCRIPTURES God reveals Himself to us through the Bible, and it is 100% accurate, reliable and authoritative. ABOUT PEOPLE People are made in God s image and for His pleasure. But everybody falls short of God s intention, or ideal, for people. In other words, everyone has sinned. As a result, we are all separated from Him, even though He wants an intimate relationship with each of us. ABOUT SALVATION That s why Jesus, God s Son, came and lived on this earth, died and rose again. God offers His free gift of salvation to all who believe in Jesus and accept Him as Savior, the only way to be forgiven and reconciled to God. Anyone who accepts this gift is adopted as a son or daughter into God s family and will live with Him forever in heaven. Scripture marked NIV is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

3 CREATING THE ENVIRONMENT We believe that the set, stage, music and everything in your room communicates a message without you saying a word. That s why we put together a list of production ideas to help you set the stage for the session and the series. From the music you play when students come into the room to the worship set your band plays, we want to make sure that your room conveys Grow Up in a multi-sensory way. There is a downloadable checklist available in your series downloads that will give you all the elements for this session (and the entire series). BACKGROUND PLAYLIST FOR THE GROW UP SERIES Beautiful Mistake by Eddy (from Start An Uproar!) Gotta Serve Somebody by Nichole Nordeman (from Brave) You re Not Shaken by Phil Stacey (from Into the Light) Jump Then Fall by Taylor Swift (from Fearless) Walk On by U2 (from All That You Can t Leave Behind) Mamas Don t Let Your Babies Grow up to Be Cowboys by Willie Nelson (from Willie Nelson s Greatest Hits) Held by Natalie Grant (from Awaken) This Is Your Life by Switchfoot (from The Beautiful Letdown) Move Forward by Bethany Dillon (from Bethany Dillon) Calling All Angels by Train (from My Private Nation) We Never Change by Coldplay (from Parachutes) WORSHIP PLAYLIST FOR GROW UP SESSION 2 Awesome Is The Lord Most High by Chris Tomlin (from See the Morning) While I m Waiting by John Waller (from The Blessing) You re Worthy Of My Praise by Jeremy Camp (from Carried Me-The Worship Project) The Solid Rock by Charlie Hall (from Hymns: Ancient & Modern) THE SET For the Grow Up Series, the set will be dynamic, meaning that it will change over the course of this six-week series. For the first couple of weeks, create a set that looks like a kid s room. Decorate with things that were popular during your students childhood. Think along the lines of old toys, curtains with Power Rangers, Barbies, etc. (You may want to enlist the help of parents for some of this stuff.) You may even want to put a single bed on stage with a comforter that has a kid-friendly print. Then slowly, over the remaining four weeks, begin to replace the toys and items in the room with older, more sophisticated items like computers, stereos, pillows, and a cleaner, more modern design (Ikea-ish). SERIES ART Art for PowerPoint backgrounds and for series promotional ads is available as a free download with every series. Visit the XP3 web site, log on to your account and download the images to use in your presentation, newsletters and web site. VIDEO Both a video bumper and a video communicator are available for the Grow Up series as a video download from the rethink store. You can purchase the videos by logging into your XP3 account and clicking on the XP3 videos link. The Grow Up video communicator was created to be used in Session 1 of this series in place of a live communicator. The bumper video was created to be used as an intro for all six sessions of Grow Up series.

4 MIDDLE SCHOOL ADAPTATION The following activities and illustrations will help middle school students connect with the subject matter in ways that engage them physically, mentally, socially and sometimes emotionally. You can also adapt the Grow Up series for middle school students by using the teaching outline found in this document to edit the teaching script to a 20-minute presentation. In addition, by using the separate middle school small group dialog questions (found in the series downloads) that are geared specifically for 6th-8th graders, you can make each section more middle school friendly. SESSION 2 GAME: FREEZE TAG (Play this game as an icebreaker to Session 2.) For this version of Freeze Tag, you will need a number of zip-loc bags filled with ice, a cooler to keep them in, 10 players, a person to be It, and some designated runners to take the ice to people who are tagged. The game works like a regular game of tag, with a person who is it, players and a designated area to play in. However, the twist comes when someone is tagged by it. When a person is tagged, he or she must stand on a zip-loc bag of ice barefoot because he or she is frozen. The runners should bring the bag of ice to people who are tagged. If someone can t endure the bag of ice, they are out. However, if a player can stand on the bag of ice, and he or she is tagged by another player, then that person step off the bag and resume play. The game is played until one person is left unfrozen to win the game. SESSION 2 ILLUSTRATION: THE GUARDIAN (Use this illustration at the end of the TRUTH section of the teaching script.) In the movie The Guardian, Kevin Costner s character trains rescue officers from the Coast Guard. Early in the movie, Costner says, There is a gap between training ad what happens out there... it s my intention to narrow that gap. It s the driving force behind everything Costner s character does. In one scene in the movie, he provides an experience for his students to help them narrow the gap by having them stand in an pool of ice water to understand hypothermia. Show the clip, starting at Chapter 5 on the DVD, from 0:11 to 2:20; or you can use the time stamps of 43:52-46:01. (NOTE: If you choose to show this clip, make sure you have the appropriate CCLI license to do so. For more information, visit

5 TEACHING SCRIPT The teaching script is divided into five sections. INTRODUCTION This introduction is intended to connect you, the communicator, to the audience usually through a personal story or observation. We ve included our stories, but you may want to substitute your own story in this section. TENSION The tension moves the message from the me mentality of the introduction to a we mentality. For example, a transition statement might be, At some point in our lives, we have all been jealous of someone over something. TRUTH Once the tension builds, the next logical step is to uncover the truth of what the Bible says about the topic. APPLICATION At this point, the message moves to a you mentality in order to teach the application. The you is the student. Take God s truth and unpack how it relates to each student so that he or she can apply it to everyday life. LANDING Here it is important to land the message on what each student needs to know and do with what they ve heard. Just as the message began with a personal story or observation, the message also ends with a me mentality. For example, one possible landing statement might be, I have a greater sense of purpose knowing that God created me in His image. Leave the students with a clear sense of what all of you should do with what you ve heard. Unless otherwise noted, the landing will always set up the small group dialog and give students an opportunity to process and internalize what they ve heard.

6 ANDY STANLEY COLLECTION TEACHING OUTLINE PG.1 BOTTOM LINE: WHEN IT COMES TO GROWING OUR FAITH, DOING, NOT KNOWING, IS WHAT MAKES THE DIFFERENCE. INTRODUCTION I needed to know that I was growing. TENSION Growing is a big deal to Christians. Lots of people have ideas about how this happens. So what exactly does it take to ignite your faith to take it from where you are to where you want it to be? TRUTH The Sermon on the Mount was Jesus saying, if you really had a big, perfect faith in God, here s what you would do and how you would act not necessarily what you would think or what you would know, but this is how you would live. Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock (Matthew 7:24 NIV). The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock (Matthew 7:25 NIV). Jesus says that the reason this house made it through the storm had nothing to do with its knowledge. The reason the house stood firm was because the residents did the right thing. They actually built their house upon a rock. APPLICATION If you want your life, your dating relationships, your morality, your future to look and feel like they are built upon a good foundation, you have to do stuff and not just anything the right thing. Here s the flip side of this. Matthew 7:26 says: But everyone who hears, that is, shows up for youth group or Bible study or small group, But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand (NIV). The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law (Matthew 27:27-29 NIV). One of the things that will grow your faith is to consistently take messages you hear from Scripture and learn to implement those messages into your life. LANDING Unapplied truth is like unapplied paint. It doesn t do anybody any good. The value of paint is in the application. Lane Jones

7 GROW UP: SESSION 2 COMMUNICATOR NOTES This week moves into the first of the five things God uses to grow our faith. It s about living out the truths we know. It s about doing something, instead of just knowing something. By the end of the talk we want students to feel empowered to determine one area where they can start to put feet to their faith where they may have been reluctant to do so before. MAKING IT PERSONAL (Points in the teaching script you can make more personal) Do you remember as a child or a teen wanting to be grown up? What was it about being a grown up that appealed to you? Use that desire to help you set up Session 2 s message in the INTRODUCTION section. What are some areas where you know you should do something, and yet you don t? Maybe it s the area of diet or exercise. Maybe it s how you spend your time. Maybe it has to do with relationships. Identify some areas in your life where you are reluctant to live out the things you know you should do. The biggest disconnect for followers of Jesus happens when we know how we should live, but we don t actually live like we believe. Then information doesn t do us any good. What are some truths that you wrestle with putting into action? Have you ever experienced a time of spiritual growth when you lived out what the Bible says? What prompted it and what happened? How did that affect your relationship with God?

8 ANDY STANLEY COLLECTION TEACHING SCRIPT PG.1 BOTTOM LINE: WHEN IT COMES TO GROWING OUR FAITH, DOING, NOT KNOWING, IS WHAT MAKES THE DIFFERENCE. INTRODUCTION A. In the closet of a home in Atlanta are markings from decades past. These markings are not some great archaeological find. They aren t an ancient language that is waiting to be translated or carvings from a lost tribe. These markings are simply pencil marks of names, dates and measurements. B. Let me explain. When I was a kid, I would visit my aunt and uncle s home in Atlanta. And every time we visited, my uncle would grab a book and a pencil, have me stand as straight as possible against the door frame and use the pencil to mark a straight line where the top of my head met the door frame. And while that may sound kind of odd to you, to me it was a huge deal. C. See, I was always the smallest kid in my class. When we took class photos, I would always be on the front row. So the reason this ritual was so important to me was that it meant that I was growing. There was progress being made. I could look at the lines drawn by the pencil on the door frame and see how much I had grown since my last visit to my aunt and uncle s home. D. Every increment was exciting. Every little development was encouraging. Some years, the new line would barely be drawn above the previous one. Other times, the line would show a huge difference. I m sure the growth was not a surprise to my parents, who had to buy me new clothes and new shoes. But for me, it was something tangible that I could see, something I could point to as proof that I was growing and I needed to know that I was growing. TENSION A. It doesn t take much effort to see that I ve grown physically. I m 5 11 now, and no longer the smallest guy in the class. There are some obvious markers in place to measure that. But what about in other areas of my life? How can I tell if I m growing spiritually? I can t exactly mark a door frame to track my spiritual growth. So how do I know if I am making any progress? B. I don t know if you ve noticed, but saying you need to grow spiritually isn t a guarantee that it will happen. Churches tell people they want them to grow. Growing is a big deal to Christians. Everyone can relate to the idea of wanting to be somewhere different than where they started. They want to know more. They want to do more. They want to love more. They want to be more than they are right now. Which is why the big question is, how do you grow spiritually? How do you make this happen? C. Lots of people have ideas about how this happens. Some people think you can grow by learning a lot of stuff. They memorize lots of Bible verses and crush everyone else when it comes to Bible trivia. But, let s be honest, you can know a lot about God and the Bible and still not really know Him. Others think you can grow simply by going to church a lot. They think perfect attendance is a surefire way to secure growth. That sounds good, but can you really grow just by walking into a place? I don t think so. So what exactly does it take to ignite your faith to take it from where you are to where you want to be?

9 ANDY STANLEY COLLECTION TEACHING SCRIPT PG.2 D. What if it s not as complicated as some people make it out to be? What if it isn t the perfect combination of church attendance, Bible memorization and Christian-music listening that makes spiritual growth a reality? What if it s much simpler than that? Over the next few weeks, we re going to look at how people grow spiritually how God builds our faith. It s not a formula. In fact, it happens more naturally than you would think. Because here s the reality, a truth that is foundational: God wants you to grow in your relationship with Him more than you do. And He will use encounters, events and things you may not have considered before to help you along. Today we re going to look at one of the ways we grow. TRUTH A. We are going to take a look at a message Jesus gave found in the book of Matthew. Now, the whole point of this sermon was about what you would do if you have a big, vibrant and alive faith. And this is so important, because the truth that Jesus is communicating is that doing these things He is talking about isn t going to gain or earn God s favor it isn t done in order to gain a relationship with God, it is about what should be done now that people who listen already know God. B. And this was so important for the people, us included, to hear because oftentimes we miss the point. Too frequently Christians seem to be okay with just simply learning information. You know: Here s some stuff the Bible says; have a nice day. But when Jesus opened the Old Testament to teach the crowds gathered to listen to Him, it was different. And in the book of Acts, when Paul began to teach and expound upon the Old Testament, it was different. What they did, what Jesus did in particular, was teach for application and not simply for knowledge. C. There s a great example of this from the Bible in Matthew 7:24. Jesus had just finished giving the Sermon on the Mount, an entire message about what to do, not simply what to believe. And the reason Jesus was teaching a to-do list in an applicable way was that Jesus knew that what we know is not nearly as important as what we do. The Sermon on the Mount was Jesus saying, if you really had a big, perfect faith in God, here s what you would do and how you would act not necessarily what you would think or what you would know, but this is how you would live. So Jesus said things like this: If someone asks you to go one mile, you go two. If someone is in need, you give as much as you can. If somebody really offends you, then you just go ahead and forgive them. The point was that Jesus was concerned about getting people to put feet to their faith to stretch their faith, ignite it, grow it, take it to a place it had never been before. D. Picking up at the end of this message, Jesus says: Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock (Matthew 7:24 NIV). He s saying if you want God to show up in your life, if you want to experience God on a larger, grander scale, here s what you do. You need to do these things. You can t just walk away and say, Oh, I heard all of Jesus speeches. I never missed a single sermon. That s not enough. E. That s part of our problem in our little Christian worlds. We think if we attend church or youth group or FCA or whatever, that it s enough that we know the right things and do the things that good Christians should do. And when something bad happens we say, God! How could You? I went to church every Sunday! I believe all of the right things! Or maybe it s, God, I promise if You do this or that, I ll get back

10 ANDY STANLEY COLLECTION TEACHING SCRIPT PG.3 in church and I ll never miss a service! Consistency in attendance does not make a difference. Believing in the right list of things doesn t make a difference. Jesus never said if you attend church every Sunday, you are good. The key to growth is doing things doing the right things. And if you don t do any of the stuff Jesus preached about, your faith will never change. It s not just about hearing it, but doing something with it. F. This is why when people talk about their faith growing, they say, I heard the Bible in a new way for the first time, and I began to apply the Scripture to my life. I applied what the Bible said to my future, my family, my relationships, my decisions. And when I began to do this, God came alive in my life in a new way. I realized that it was about more than just reading the Bible it was about figuring out how to take what I have read and actually live it out applying it to my everyday life. A lot of these people will say they believed in God their whole lives, but until they learned how to apply that sermon or that message or that talk, they never knew how to do it. And it is when they understood how to do it that they started to see God at work in their lives in ways they had never noticed before. G. When God s faithfulness to you intersects with your actions of putting into practice what Scripture says, God honors your obedience, because your obedience is an act of faith. When you begin to do some of the things that the Bible says, God recognizes that. And even though it doesn t always make perfect sense, you do it anyway, simply because God says to do it. That s an expression of I trust You. It s an expression of big faith. And suddenly, it s as if you ve unleashed God s power into your life. But that doesn t happen until you understand how to apply and live out the words of Scripture. H. Take nutrition for example. You can believe in good nutrition with all your mind, body and spirit. You can read every nutritional book on the market and attend every seminar. But it doesn t matter if you just read the right stuff and think the right stuff. It doesn t make one bit of difference unless you practice good nutrition by eating right. The same goes for exercise. Believing in or reading about exercise, joining a gym or even hiring a trainer won t make a difference. You can fill your bookshelves and CD and DVD library, get out your Wii Fit equipment, and people could look at you and your home and think you re an exercise expert. And if people wanted to KNOW about exercise, you d be the person to ask. But if you don t actually exercise, you haven t applied all you know about exercise to your life. So in the end, it all really amounts to nothing. I. Similarly, Jesus is saying that if you want your relationship with God to grow, then you have got to do things the right things, the things that matter, the things He talks about in His Word. Why? Because one of the things that pumps up your faith is listening to God s Word, hearing His message and then being able to activate it, practice it and make it happen in your life. When you do this, your faith has the room and the sustenance to grow. Because Jesus says, Thanks for listening to the sermon, but it doesn t do you any good if you don t do something with what I ve just taught you. Being a consistent attendee is of almost no value. Jesus isn t in heaven taking roll. He s not giving out stickers because you haven t missed a day of church this year. No, it s obedience to what He asks you to do that makes the difference. That s why the best thing you can do is challenge yourself and motivate yourself to live out a vibrant faith, not just believe the right things.

11 ANDY STANLEY COLLECTION TEACHING SCRIPT PG.4 J. Let s go back to the story. Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock (Matthew 7:24 NIV). Now the next verse says: The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock (Matthew 7:25 NIV). Jesus says that the reason this house made it through the storm had nothing to do with its knowledge. It wasn t saved because the residents knew about the storm and knew about construction. The reason the house stood firm was because the residents did the right thing. They actually built their house upon a rock. Their action resulted in a house that withstood the storm. APPLICATION A. You listen and you do. You acquire information and you do something with it. If you want your life, your dating relationships, your morality, your future to look and feel like they are built upon a good foundation, you have to do stuff and not just anything the right thing. Not to earn your favor with God and get into heaven, but in order for God to show up in real ways, you have to express faith and faithfulness. When you do this, God shows up. B. Here s the flip side of this. Here is what happens when we don t put feet to our faith. Matthew 7:26 says: But everyone who hears, that is, shows up for youth group or Bible study or small group, But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand (NIV). C. Which means you can have 100-percent attendance and you can still most certainly be a fool. You can have perfect church attendance and build a home a relational home, a dating home, a school home and it can be an absolute disaster. And when you say, How could You let this happen to me, God? I never miss church!, God says that attendance, knowledge, categorizing, teaching, acquiring knowledge makes no difference. It s when you apply what He s taught and do what He s taught that you establish who you are on a firm foundation. D. The story continues: The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law (Matthew 27:27-29 NIV). Their teachers of the law taught in terms of knowledge. But Jesus was different. Jesus said, Here s what you can believe, but here s what that belief actually looks like when you play it out in real life: You give generously; you look in the opposite direction; you forgive again; you wait until you can afford it. That is what biblical truth looks like in the real world. And if you want there to be a difference, you can t just attend, you can t just listen, you have to do. Even if it doesn t make sense. That shows confidence in God. When you have that kind of faith, it intersects with God s faithfulness and He comes alive in your life in an entirely new way. E. I am so fortunate that I was taught early on that applying biblical truth is more important than just knowing about it. Because even though I sometimes attended church and sometimes didn t, I knew that above all else, it wasn t about knowing stuff, it was about doing the right stuff. It was applying the truths from Scrip-

12 ANDY STANLEY COLLECTION TEACHING SCRIPT PG.5 ture to life at school, dating and making decisions in my everyday life. And when you do this stuff consistently, when you regularly live out the truths the Bible talks about, it s like building your house on a rock. F. One of the things that will grow your faith is to consistently take messages you hear from Scripture and learn to implement those messages into your life. There may be some changes in your relationships, friendships, job, at school changes that need to be made in order for you to best live out these principles, but it s worth it. It s necessary. Because doing that makes the difference. LANDING A. You don t get growth in your relationship with God by just showing up and attending. Lane Jones, a writer and speaker, said, Unapplied truth is like unapplied paint. It doesn t do anybody any good. The value of paint is in the application. You need to apply it. You must. B. Don t just listen. Ask how you can live this out. Figure out how this works in your life. Because everyone who hears God s Word and puts it into practice is like a wise man or woman who builds their house on a rock. At the end of the day, it s obedience that makes all the difference. [TRANSITION INTO SMALL GROUPS]