We are in the second week of our 40 Days of Community and during the remainder of our 40 days, we are doing two things: deepening the sense of community within our church family, and reaching out to the community around our church family. We’re learning to build stronger relationships in our church and reach out in relationships of love to those around our church because God says our primary purpose here is to love him and one another, that’s it. And we can’t do this from a distance. We only learn how to love, by being in relationship with each other. In fact, God’s goal is that we practice here what we will be doing forever (assuming we are going to heaven), loving one another.
God has given us five basic ways or purposes by which we love God and one another: 1) Worship God (we will discover that worship is more than just being here on Sunday mornings, it is a lifestyle), 2) fellowship together (connect with each other developing deeper relationships with other Christians, 3) we grow spiritually (that is to say we grow closer to God and become more like him), 4) we serve one another, 5) we share God’s love with those who are not connected with God and his family (the church) by reaching out in tangible ways. These five purposes are the way in which we put our feet to God’s plan of loving Him and each other. What we are learning through this series is that these five purposes God has for our life cannot be fulfilled on our own. God has designed it so we need each other to succeed. Just like our favorite sports team, it takes teamwork to win. God want us to work as a team. Why? Because God’s goal is about people, that we would love each other, and he wants his children to be together, by working together we are practicing being in community with each other.
Now today, we are actually going to talk about the last purpose first. It’s like Jesus said, the last shall be first and the first shall be last, so we’re going to start with the end. The last purpose for your life is God made you to share his love with people who don’t know Christ yet, who are not in his family. Now why does he want us to do that? Because God loves those outside his family as much as he does those inside, and he wants every person to be in his family, to walk with them now, and to be with them forever. God has never made a person that he hasn’t loved, nor is there a person whom his Son, Jesus Christ, didn’t die for. The most loving thing we can ever do for another person on this side of heaven is to share with other people an eternal gift, eternal life, as well as abundant life now by living in relationship with God.
So God wants us to share that good news. Just like in our memory verse, God expects us to make the most out of the opportunities he creates for us. Unfortunately, we rarely if ever make use of opportunities probably because we are afraid of what other people will think of us. If I had the cure for cancer, would I keep it to myself because I was afraid of what other people would think of me? I certainly hope not. Yet we are talking about eternity with God here.
Today we’re not just talking about reaching out, but working together with other Christians. We reach out together.
Paul was one of the first great Christian missionaries, and even Paul did not work alone when he was sharing Christ, he had partners; Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, Mark, Luke, Pricilla, Apollos, just to name a few. But it wasn’t just those along on his missionary journeys either. Look at what he wrote to the Christians in a city called Philippi (Phil. 1:5), "You’ve been my partners in spreading the good news about Christ." How did they partner with him? They financially supported Paul’s mission work, and we do that today by supporting missionary work around the world. That’s one of the ways we work together, by joining in the support of missionaries. But the people of Philippi also partnered with Paul by living and sharing the good news right where they were.
We’re going to look at how we can partner with other believers, to work together to help reach our friends, our relatives, the people we care about most with the good news.
1. PRAY TOGETHER
The first thing we can do is to prayer together. There is power when we pray together. We pray at our church about a lot of things, many times we pray for persons with physical needs, because we realize there is power in praying together. We believe the more we have praying and seeking God’s face the more God responds, and we believe in faith God will meet that need. But how often are we praying together for friends or family members who haven’t taking the step of faith and believed in Jesus, who don’t really know God in a personal way yet. Are we enlisting the help of other Christians to pray with us for their salvation?
We know we can’t force anybody to love God, but we can pray for them. We can ask God together to soften their hard heart, or that he would warm up a cold heart, arouse an apathetic heart, and change a stubborn heart. The beautiful thing about prayer is that they can’t stop you from doing it. People can reject your arguments. They may refuse to listen to your logic, or be apathetic to your loving-kindness toward them, but they are powerless against your prayers. And it’s like a direct hit going straight to their heart. And the cool thing about prayer is you can do it long distance.
And so, here’s the first action step in sharing the good news: Make a prayer list of people you are praying for who haven’t received Christ. I want you to share at least one or two of these persons with your small group, and we’ll make a list of all these names. And then, we’ll start praying at our group and during the week for each other’s friends or family members, and we will see what opportunities God gives us, now you’ve increased the number of people praying and we’ll see what God does, what opportunities God presents.
"Well what are we supposed to pray about as a group?" We pray God softens their heart so they are open to God, but the Bible mentions another thing we should pray for, in Colossians 3:4 it says this, "Pray for us that God will give us the opportunity to tell people His message." So we pray for God to give us the opportunity to share with our friends and our loved ones and people we care about, the great news about Jesus. And as we pray for opportunity, you know what happens? You start seeing them everywhere. Two things happen, 1) I become more concerned about the person(s) I am praying for. It’s hard not to care for people when you are praying for them. When I start praying for my coworkers, I start getting concerned about my coworkers. 2) I start seeing the needs of my friends. When I start praying for my family member, then I start seeing the needs of that family member. When I start praying for my friends, I see how I can demonstrate love to them opening doors of opportunity to share with them. When we pray it begins to change our heart for one thing.
2. BUILD FRIENDSHIPS & FIND COMMON INTERESTS
The second thing we can do to reach out together is to Build Friendships & Find Common Interests. Before you can share the good news with anybody, you have to establish a relationship, a friendship with them. Before you can reach them, you must relate to them. You’ve heard the old adage, ’people don’t care what you know until they know that you care.’ They could really care less about what you believe, unless they see that you are genuine, you really do care about them, and your faith has made a difference in your life. Well we can’t do that without rubbing shoulders with them.
God has put these people in your life specifically so you can share the good news with them. They are the people you work with, you go to school with, that you are related to, people who live down the street. They are all around you. You might be the only Bible they will ever read. You represent Jesus Christ to them. But you can’t do it from a distance. Jesus told us to be salt. Salt penetrates, it works into. How are we salt, working our way into the lives of people around us?
We can build friendships. How? 1) Find common interests. Paul wrote in 1 Cor. 9:21-23, "Whatever a person is like, I try to find common ground with him so that he will let me tell him about Christ and let Christ save him. I do this to get the Gospel to them and also for the blessing I myself receive when I see them come to Christ." So the way you do that is by finding out what things we have in common with others. What interests do we share? What do we like to talk about? What common experiences do we have? Common needs? Common hurts? Do we like to fish? Do we like to golf? Do we like to cook? Do we like to shop? Do we both have kids? Do we like to sleep? Are we interested in football, soccer, baseball or basketball or whatever?’ Use that as an opportunity to get to know them.
Or better yet, get other Christians involved by discovering the common interests in your group. You’ve got to talk to the people in your small groups and say, "What do we like to do?" and you just make a list of all the things that you find. "Oh, you like to do that? Well, I like to do that to." And you share it with each other, and then you ask, "Who do we know who’d also like to do that who isn’t yet a believer? Who do we know who is not in the family of God who probably would enjoy going to a Friday night football game with us? Or which of my coworkers or neighbors would like to do that?" I know at our home church in Grand Rapids we had lots of guys who liked to play softball, so we had three men’s softball teams and we invited guys who were not yet a part of the church to join our team as a way of building relationships, having fun together, getting to know each other. What if they like fishing or hunting. Maybe they have kids too and would like to do family activities. How can we use what we already like to do as a connecting point to build relationships with other people? Then we get the opportunity to invite them to church or a small group at our house. "Well, you know this same group meets on Thursday night over at Bob’s house. Would you like to join us?" "Well yeah, you guys are normal people. That’d be fun."
As we build friendships with them, so we can build a bridge between our heart and theirs that Jesus Christ can walk across. Now this step takes a little bit more time and effort. It takes a little more energy to build a friendship. You just don’t do it overnight.
Another way we can work together is to use a very Biblical method...have a party. Did you know that much of Jesus’ ministry was done at parties? If you go read the Gospels, go read his life, you’ll read that he often did ministry at parties. In fact, he was such a party animal that the religious leaders of that day, the Pharisees, called him a glutton and a drunk. They called Jesus a glutton and a drunk because he was always at parties. Why? Because that’s where the people were that he wanted to share the love of God with.
One particular occasion, a guy named Levi, not the jean guy but his disciple. His name was also Matthew. He decided to follow Jesus, and become his disciple. Look at what it says he did in Luke 5:29, "In his home, Levi gave a big dinner party for Jesus and many fellow tax collectors and other guests were also there." Now why does it say ’many fellow tax collectors’? Because that’s what Matthew was. He was a tax collector. So he calls up the office, all his buddies, and says, "Come on over for a BBQ." He had an office party for Jesus. And at this party not yet believers were able to rub shoulders with Jesus and some of his followers.
I would encourage you or your group to have a Matthew party. Plan a party and invite others. Just invite some people over, who don’t know the Lord and who you want to get acquainted with and just build friendship and show love to. Watch a football game together. NASCAR, whatever the common interest is. As you develop relationships and realized your Christian friends aren’t all kooky, you can invite them to church, or join your small group, open up for spiritual conversations.
3. TELL YOUR STORY
There is a third way that you and I can partner together to let other people know how great God’s love is and that is to TELL YOUR STORY. The Bible tells us, 1 Peter 3:15 "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect." In fact, the most effective way to let other people know about the great things that God can do in their lives is to tell the story of what God has done in our life. How he has made a difference. And the great thing about your story is that you are the expert on it. It doesn’t take much effort, just courage. Jesus said to his followers, "You’re to be my witnesses." What does a witness do in a court room? A witness just says, "Here’s what I’ve seen. Here’s what I’ve heard. Here’s what I’ve experienced." A witness just tells the story of what God has done in their life to other people. I think if we start thinking we can come up with a lot of different stories of our life where God has been at work.
What’s the best way to get into telling your story? One way is to listen to some of the problems that others are going through, and when you discover a problem that Jesus has helped you with, you just share that story to help them. So you can say, "Look, God helped me with that. Maybe he can help you too."
How does this involve other Christians? We can write out our story, and share it with our group or with a Christian friend. It helps if we can practice with other believers first. It encourages them and gives us the courage to share with others. Some of you have never even shared the stories of what God’s done in your life with other people, which is a shame because God gave you your experiences not just for yourself, but to help others. Perhaps you’ve gone through a difficult time, and God got you through. Your story can give people hope, encouragement, and most importantly connect them with the power of God in their difficult time. And the more we practice it in a loving environment the more we will be likely to share with those who don’t know Christ.
4. REACH OUT IN LOVE TOGETHER
The last thing is for us to REACH OUT IN LOVE TOGETHER. Why? Because God’s wants us to love others. You have to have the right motive in reaching out to your neighbors and friends. If people sense that we are not genuine, but have ulterior motives in sharing faith or inviting them to church they won’t believe us. We have to build credibility. If people see us with an agenda of "getting more people in the church to increase our number of young people, or to help the church pay its bills, or to help get more people to support our programs" rather than out of a true love and concern for them, forget it.
In this day and age there is already a great skepticism about Christian faith and the church. Some have had bad experiences with Christians who have been judgmental, looking down on them, they have been hypocritical, saying one thing on Sunday morning and doing another during the week. They see this and think, if that is what a Christian is like, I don’t want any part of it. I believe we break down walls of distrust and skepticism in our community by demonstrating love to others in unconditional non-judgmental ways. Like Paul says, 2 make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one heart and purpose. 3 Don’t be selfish; don’t live to make a good impression on others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourself. 4 Don’t think only about your own affairs, but be interested in others, too, and what they are doing. (Phil. 2:2).
I call this pre-evangelism. Before we can share the good news of Jesus, people need to see us living Good News, that we are different, we have been changed by God. They need to see us loving each other, and see that we really love them in unselfish ways by what we do for them.
The Bible says this, there on your outline, "Because we loved you," that’s the motive for reaching out in love, "Because we loved you, we were happy to share not only God’s good news but even our own lives."
Today we are going to more than talk about reaching out together, and loving others, we are going to do it. We are going to demonstrate love to our community. Steve Sjogren, pastor and author of Conspiracy of Kindness says, "Small things done with great love will change the world."
[New Hope] Barb’s Rumenapps prayer boxes, demonstrating love by praying for people’s needs in our community.
One of the best ways that you can show love to a friend or to a family member or to a coworker who is not a believer yet is to simply ask them, "How can I pray for you?" See, that’s not offensive. Even people who are atheist don’t mind you praying for them, they say, "Sure. If you believe it, I’ll use all the help I can get." Everybody wants to be prayed for. Everybody does. In fact, they’re grateful for it. You know I’ve asked this question of tens of thousands of people, "How can I pray for you?" I’ve never had a single person in my entire life say, "Oh please don’t. No, don’t pray for me. I don’t need it. I don’t want it." I’ve never had one person. Why? Everybody wants to be prayed for.
[New Hope] ["Mission Impossible" theme music playing in background] On your way into the sanctuary this morning you noticed one of these bags [show bag] and you wondered what it was for. Now I’m going to tell you. These bags were put together by our Monday night Bible study (special thanks to Barb and Pat for their work in shopping), they contain some goodies like a mug, cookies, which some of you were kind enough to bake for this, and candy and other things. We want to make our love for others in the community tangible. So this morning on your way out the door, I want everyone to take a bag with you and your job (if you choose to accept it) is to take the bag and drop it off to someone who may not go to church, and tell them, ’God loves you’ and leave the bag with them, that’s it. On the bag is stapled a card that says, [read card]. That’s it, no strings attached, because we want people to see that God loves them, and so does our church. Pray about where you will go, but here are some ideas: stop at one of the gas stations, retail stores, restaurants, or any of the businesses around the area which is open and deliver a bag to the employees working there (not the customers) (I thought of dropping it off at the airport or the police station but then thought twice about that since they might think it is a bomb or something, so if you do that, please do it with caution). You could drop it off to a neighbor you don’t know well or haven’t met yet. Since we have a limited number of places to deliver these you might be saying, how do I know if someone else from the church hasn’t already been there? Just ask the person if they have gotten a bag like this? If they say yes, go somewhere else. If they say no, give them the bag.
[Epsilon] In order to put the message into practice we are going to demonstrate God’s love to our community by having everyone participate in a community service project hopefully somewhere in Springvale township. Those who are in small groups will be praying about and choosing which project you would like to do with your group. Some groups might choose to rake an elderly persons lawn one Saturday afternoon, might choose to work at the Manna Food Project (they are moving locations and need people to help), clean up local parks or roadsides, watch a single parents child one night so they can have a night off, have a free car wash at the church, the opportunities are unlimited. The focus is on doing it together and doing it with love.
