PARTNERing Together 40 Days of Community, Part 2 Philippians 1:3-5, 9-10a The 40 Days of Community: Better Together program is designed to deepen our sense of community our love for one another, and help us reach out, in that love, to our community. We are better together. Last week we looked at, why do we need each other? This week we re going to start with the end. The last purpose of your life is, You were made for a mission. God wants you to share His love with other people. Why? Because God wants everybody in His family. God has never made a person He didn t love. In Philippians (1:5) Paul says You ve been my partners in spreading the Good News about Christ. Notice the word partners. We re going to look at seven ways to partner with other believers, with other people in the family of God, to help reach your friends, your relatives, the people you care about most with the good news, using the letters in the word PARTNER as an acrostic. P Pray together The first thing you do is you ask your small group to pray for your friends, who are still considering the claims of Christ, who don t really know God in a personal way yet. You can t force anybody to love God, but you can pray for them, and prayer can do what God can do. Prayer can melt hard hearts, thaw frozen ones, soften a stubborn heart, and active an apathetic one. People can reject your arguments. They may refuse to listen to your logic. But they are powerless against your prayers. What are we supposed to pray? Colossians 3:4. Pray for us that God will give us the opportunity to tell people His message. So we pray for God s opportunity to share with our friends and our loved ones and people we care about the great news about God. ACTION: Make a group prayer list. Name one person that you would really like to know the Lord. Every group praying for the spiritual condition of 5-10 people! There s power in that. A Appeal. Appeal to common interests. Before you can share the good news with anybody you have to establish a relationship with them. Before you can reach them you must relate to them. What do we have in common? Common experiences, common interests, common needs, common hurts. Do we like to fish, to golf, to cook, to shop, to sleep. Do we have kids? Are we interested in soccer or baseball or basketball or whatever? I know these as Affinity groups, or Life groups. Maybe the common interest is movies, football, soccer, politics, exercise, hunting or fishing, eating lunch or shopping. That s finding common interests of people they d like to do. So you pray together, you appeal to common interests
R Reach out in love. You have to have the right motive in reaching out to your neighbors and friends. Jesus said, Love your neighbor as yourself. You know the old cliché. People don't care how much we know until they know how much we care. So everything we do is out of love. We certainly don t do it out of guilt, or pressure. Not duty. Not to make God like us because He already loves us. THREE REASONS: We do it because it IS good news! If I had the cure for cancer I d be shouting it in the streets. If I had the cure for AIDS I d be telling everybody I could. But I ve got something better than that. The key to purpose in life and eternal life. We do it out of gratitude. Someone did it for us. Because what God has done for us. We do it because the Bible says, God is love. When God comes into your life you start loving other people. In fact, I ll be real honest with you. If you don t love anybody else, you don't have God in your life. You don t! You may think you do but you don t. The Bible says in 1 John 4, God is love. And you can t have somebody as big as God come into your life and not change you. The one that doesn t love, doesn t know God. The Bible says this, Because we loved you [that s the motive in reaching out in love] we were happy to share not only God s Good News but even our own lives. God says when you share with people who don t know Me yet, I don t want you to just share the good news; I want you to share your life with them. If you don't do both it s not really love. You know what the problem is? Sadly today most people who don t know the Lord who are unbelievers experience Christians as extremely judgmental. They think they re better than everybody else, got all the answers, look down their noses at everyone else. That s the common conception. Not the idea that we love people because Christ is in our lives. ACTION: Ask God to give you a deeper love for other people. One of the best ways to show love to a friend, family member, co-worker, neighbor is to simply ask, How can I pray for you? That s not offensive. T Tell your stories. 1 Peter 2:9 You are God s instruments to do His work and to speak out for Him and to tell others of the night-and-day difference He has made for you. Just tell your story. The great thing about telling stories is, you are the expert on your story. Nobody knows your story like you! No one can argue. Jesus said, You re to be My witnesses. Think of a courtroom. You re not the judge, judging other people. You re not the attorney, arguing the case. You are a witness Here s what I ve seen and heard. 2-2
Now sharing our story is scary. How do we do this? What do we say? Well, we start by listening for an opening. You don t need all the theological answers, just be willing to share YOUR story, plant a seed, open a conversation. What do we say? Not too much! People like to hear stories. What they don't want to hear is your stooooory. Two hours and 15 cups of coffee later you re still talking and they re ready to chew their foot off to get away from you. Not that kind of story. People just want to hear the short story. One to three minutes. Get it down to where you could tell is riding the elevator from one floor to another, or waiting in the checkout line at the store. ACTION: Write out your story and share it with your group. The Bible says in Psalm 66:16 Listen and I ll tell you what God has done for me. Make it your goal, before the 40 Days of Community is over, to share it with someone else. The fifth way to help other people experience God s love is... 5. To nurture friendships. Earlier you learned to look for common interests that gave you a connection. Now you take it a little deeper. It takes a little more energy to build a friendship. Very few people have a true friend in life, but everybody s looking for one. Not acquaintances. Best way to build a friendship is a biblical method have a party! Did you know that much of Jesus ministry was done at parties? Read the gospels; Jesus was a party animal! He was so often doing ministry at parties that the religious leaders of that day, the Pharisees, called Him a glutton and a drunk. He went where people were, where they were willing to talk because of the casual atmosphere, where they could have a conversation and not a lecture. There s a story about a man named Levi. In his home Levi, also called Matthew, gave a big dinner party for Jesus and many fellow tax collectors and other guests were also here. He had an office party for Jesus! Hey, I ve met this really great guy; come over and let me introduce you to him. Have a Matthew Party. No agenda but fun. You just bring some people over who don t know the Lord and who you want to get acquainted with and build friendship and show love to. BBQ, hamburgers, swim party, block party, Monday night football party. TWO REASONS WE DO NOT: Imitation or Isolation. Two reasons we don t associate with those outside the church. Isolation: I don t want to get polluted by the world. I don t want people to think I m like THOSE people. We become absorbed in our church culture, and forget that those people are the people that Jesus Christ died for. Imitation: Let s just be just like the world. Dress like em. Talk like em. Act like em. We become indistinguishable. That s not what God wants you to be either where you just give in to the lowest common denominators of society. 2-3
ANSWER: Insultation and Infiltation. The answer to both of these concerns is the same. The Bible says you re to be salt and light in the world. You CAN be IN the world, but not OF the world. ILLUSTRATION: Lunch at a seafood restaurant. The sea bass lives its whole life in salt water, yet you ll have to add salt before you eat it because it is insulated against the salt in the sea. Your faith can insulate you from being pulled into their lifestyle, and help you move them toward Jesus. Just invite some friends from your Better Together group, and you ll help each other not be worried about imitation or isolation. ACTION: Here s your action step. Throw a party! Maybe your Better Together Group could sponsor a party, or support one another in hosting parties in your homes/neighborhoods. But nurture friendships. Plan a party. Have a good time. Build relationships. 6. Expect God to act. Charles Spurgeon, was a great pastor of the 19 th century, pastor of, perhaps, the first mega church, at least at that time. He was pastor of the largest church in the world at that time in London, England. He often preached to 10,000 people in revival services. How that worked without a sound system, I have no idea, but it did. One day a young man came and said, Mr. Spurgeon, I don t understand it. When you talk to people about the Lord they open up their lives. When I talk to people about the Lord nobody s interested. What s wrong? Spurgeon said, Young man, you don t expect people to come to Jesus Christ every time you talk about Him, do you? He said, Of course not. Spurgeon said, That s your problem. We don t do this. We don t save people. We don t change lives. God does it. God just chooses to use us, to invite us into the process, to give us the remarkable pleasure of seeing lives change! ROGER S Prayer before sermon He expects GOD to show up and change things. Very few people come to Jesus Christ the first time they hear the good news. They ve got to mull it over, think about it. We don t pressure or push. But we also never give up on anybody. Nobody s hopeless. You trust God. You expect God to be active in their life. God, I don t see them warming up to You at all, in any area of their life. But I'm going to pray and expect that You re working in their life even when I can t see it. FOUR GUYS AND PARALYZED FRIEND. They believed Jesus could heal him. They put him on a mat and they take him to Jesus. When they get there they set him down and Jesus says this in the next verse. When Jesus saw their faith, He said Friend, your sins are forgiven. And He healed the guy. Notice: He healed the guy on the basis of the friends faith not the guy who was sick. The guy who was sick didn t necessarily have any faith. But it was his friends. Jesus looked at these four guys and said, You believed I would do it so I'm going to do it. Sometimes you have to believe in faith for other people. And you expect God to act. Let me let you in on a little secret. It doesn t take a lot of faith. Mustard seed. 2-4
R Represent Christ with your life. The Bible says, Whatever you do or say let it be as a representative of the Lord Jesus. We need audiovisual Christians who walk the walk and talk the talk. I love that term, audiovisual Christians. They say it and they do it. They live it and they share it. They communicate it and they demonstrate it. They are show and tell Christians. Have you considered that God might have put people in your life so that you could love on them, for God relatives, loved ones, friends, co-workers. ROOFTOP RESCUE STORY: A man was stranded on the top of his house in a flood, so he prayed for God to rescue him. A boat came, and he couldn t go because God was going to rescue him. A helicopter flies over and he refuses to get in. Of course, he drowns and in heaven wants to know why God did not save him. God says, I sent you a boat and a helicopter. My point is that SOMEONE has to be rowing the boat and flying the helicopter. God intended to use PEOPLE to rescue him. Will you row the boat and fly the helicopter? So here s my challenge to you. If you re in small group if you re not you need to get in one this week. Find someone to pray for. Practice telling your story. Share it with someone over the next 40 days. Throw a party. Live a life worthy. We have 28 groups. If each group is praying for 5 people, that s 140 people! If 1 of those responds to God s love, that s 28 new members of the family of God. If only ½ the groups have success, that s 14. If only 10% are successful, that s 3! That s more than many of our churches have in YEARS. ILLUSTRATION: Star fish on beach. One afternoon a man encountered a boy on the beach, picking up starfish and throwing them back as the tide went out. If he did not, the starfish would die. Son, there are miles upon miles of beach. You ll never get it all done. What difference are you making? How will your effort matter? The boy simply picked up another starfish and chunked it into the surf, and said, It mattered to that one. Will you matter to just one? Will you PARTNER together with God, with us, to share God s love? 2-5