Living Together Series

Over the next four weeks, we are going to be spending our time going through our mission statement: Living to grow, serve, worship and share. Each week we are going to look at a different piece of it and the have a small lesson about worship as we sing and participate in the experiential stations around the room.

Before we jump into the first part of our mission statement this evening, I want to quickly talk about what it actually is. Every week, you guys come into this building and see this statement on the shirts that the leaders are wearing and on the wall as you come up to the sanctuary. Even outside of Breakaway you see this phrase if you get an e-mail from me or if you or your peers wear one of the Breakaway shirts.

We do this on purpose because this is the heart behind everything that we do here for Breakaway, or at least it should be anyways. This statement goes a lot deep though than just guiding us as we make decisions about programs and other stuff. This statement is based in the way we believe the Bible calls all Christians to live their lives. These are the basics and the foundation of what it means to have a relationship with Jesus Christ and to be living that out as a disciple. Anyone who claims to have a relationship with God should be working to have these five purposes evident in their lives on a daily basis. I challenge you guys to keep that in mind over the next few weeks as we explore each part of this statement.

For tonight, we are going to start with the word Living and explore the importance of living together for Jesus. To start off I would like to play a movie clip about a Father and his Son named Dick and Rick Hoyt who are actually from the Boston area. Together, they have influenced millions of people and accomplished some pretty amazing things.

***Movie clip “Together (Team Hoyt)”***

For background to this amazing Father and Son team check out http://www.teamhoyt.com/history.shtml.

I love that line at the end of the video clip, “together has power.” I think in general, this is a statement that the majority of people would all agree about. We hear people express this all the time with statements like “power in numbers” and “there is no I in team.” For some reason though, when it comes to a relationship with Jesus and living that out, we all too often try to go it alone.

We exclaim all sorts of reasons for this, everywhere from our location and environment to excuses that there are issues too deep and sensitive that we can’t tell anyone else about. As those things hold a glimpse of truth at different times and as it definitely can be difficult to trust others with deeps things in your life, unfortunately this is the way God has made us. Let’s open our Bibles to Genesis 2:1-22 to explore this issue deeper.

***Read Genesis 2:1-22***

In Genesis 2 after God has created Adam, He expresses, that “It is not good for the man to be alone.” So God creates the animals and brings them all to the man to name and find one suitable to be a helper and companion. After all of them go by Adam and a helper is not found, God causes him to fall asleep and creates a woman who is called Eve.

This passage is most often used when talking about dating or marriage but I want to make the argument that marriage was not what God had in mind when he stated that it was not good for man to be alone. If God were talking about marriage, Paul would have been wrong to encourage men and women in 1 Corinthians that if they could handle the single life, to stay single so they could minister to God more.

Instead, I think God was talking about basic human relationships between men and men, women and women, and men and women for a few reasons.

First off, Genesis tells us we were created in the image of God. God, in his core, is a relational being. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all God but yet they are all individuals as well, part of a family who do things to love and honor each other. That same core and desire was created in us when God breathed life into us. We too are relational beings and work best when together with others.

Second, I think part of the reason God created Eve, a woman, after expressing that it was not good for man to be alone, was so they could create more people. In fact this was the first command God gave Adam and Eve, telling them to “be fruitful and multiply.” God, in his amazing wisdom created a way for man to never, ever have to be alone again and, in fact, made it possible for us to create more and more opportunities for relationship with others.