The Secrets of our Success
Intro: You don’t have to look very hard to find all kinds of books and seminars on success. How to be successful in business. How to earn a 6 figure income while staying at home. 6 Easy steps to Success. No doubt you can probably find some good principles in some of these seminars or books. You can learn how to set goals and plot out steps to see them achieved. You can sharpen your focus and get rid of negativity. You might even learn how to win friends and manipulate people!
-Some people become successful in leadership or in politics. Others become skilled and successful at a trade. Many people develop skills and accumulate knowledge that will help them be successful and get ahead in life. But there is one element that is often overlooked as people strive for excellence and jockey for the best positions in life. That one element can be summed up in one question: What does God want me to do? Some people ask that question but never wait around for an answer. Waiting can be hard, but waiting is important. A story in the book of Acts gives us some guidelines for finding out what God wants us to do for Him. Let me read it.
Acts 9:1-20 ... 19 Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. 20 At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God.
Prop: Successful Christians are those who know God and are willing to do what He wants them to do.
T.S.: So, what are the secrets of our success as followers of Christ? Let’s look at 4 of them today.
1. Get to know God
-The first question Saul asks when Jesus stopped him was, “Who are You, Lord?” That is a good starting place for us as well. Getting to know Jesus is a lifetime endeavor, as Paul shows us in Philippians 3:10, “I want to know Christ….” If we do not know God, how can we expect to know what He wants us to do? I’d like to cover 2 basic thoughts on how we get to know God.
A. Communicate with God through praise, prayer, and worship (Interaction)
-We want CLC to be a place of mutual love, acceptance and friendship. But we also want CLC to be a place where we pray fervently, praise joyfully, and worship sincerely. Both in our homes and when we are together we want to interact frequently with the God who created us and is changing us to become all He wants us to be. Worship really encompasses our entire lives. Your giving is part of your worship. That communicates the fact that you trust God with your finances and that His generosity is rubbing off on you. How can we worship? A person can worship while working or driving down the road. However, a person can also fail to worship – even while singing a song in the middle of a church service. That’s because worship comes from the heart. So getting to know God happens as we communicate with Him through worship. Prayer, praise and other ways of connecting with God will bring us closer to Him so we can know Him.
B. Discover God in your Bible (His Word to us)
The main point here is getting to know God better through His word. We call this discipleship. It is much more than receiving information – it is receiving transformation as God’s truth becomes reality to us.
Matthew 28:19-20 says, “…go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” We are recipients of the disciples’ teaching efforts. God used several of them to write down the things Jesus had taught them. Wed. night we learned that Matthew had been a tax collector and likely knew a form of shorthand, which would have allowed him to write nearly word for word accounts of the sermons Jesus gave.
-We want to help people experience God and get to know Him here at CLC. If you want to know Jesus more and more, one way that happens is by knowing the Bible more and more. If you don’t know where to start, please ask. But start somewhere so you can get to know the God who has revealed Himself to us.
-Let me add that obedience is part of this process of getting to know God. After Saul asked, “Who are You, Lord?” Jesus told Him His name, then told him to get up and go into Damascus where He would tell him what He wanted Him to do. How did Saul respond? He obeyed. He did what the Lord asked, and was rewarded for it.
2. Get to know people - Build Friendships
Connect with one another relationally
-Jesus used a man named Ananias to welcome Saul into the family of believers. But not only Ananias. V.19 says Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus.
-One cannot overstate the importance of developing a sense of community within the Church. See, people help people find God. When we develop genuine friendships with one another that go deeper than an introductory level, the life of God finds expression and greater meaning. God shows up in Christian friendships. Check it out in Matthew 18:20 “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” There is something special and powerful when Christian friendship is combined with prayer and teaching. This verse speaks of Christian friends praying together, but that doesn’t leave out the power of being together and getting to know each other.
-So we value times when we can come together as friends and laugh and joke and talk about what’s going on in our lives. We can cry together and pray together. Romans 12:15 says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” We can also learn together and grow together. One of the 5 main purposes we exist as a church is to promote healthy Christian friendships. Sometimes we fail to realize how spiritual our friendships can be. Some people need to see what God looks like in us before they can to connect with Him themselves. What else will lead to our success in our lives?
3. Serve
Discover, Develop, and Use our gifts for God
-When Jesus showed Saul the things he would have to suffer, He was calling Saul to a life of service for Him. He wasn’t calling him to be a big shot. But He was calling Him to use the gifts He had placed in Him long before.
-Jesus said that if you wanted to be great, you must learn to serve. This may be one of the best kept secrets of success – humility and servanthood. But if we want to please God, then we must be willing to lower ourselves and grab the towel and serve others, just as if you were serving Jesus. And there are a lot of ways to do that.
-One of the things I long to see at CLC is people finding out how they are wired and what their gifts are. Then start practicing and developing those gifts until you can serve God in a natural uninhibited way. There is a reason we use the word flow in relation to gifts. We want to be able to stay in sync with what the Holy Spirit is doing as we stay in His flow. Do you want to be great for God? Learn to serve.
4. Share
Share God’s love & truth with relevance & clarity
-V.20 says “At once he [Saul] began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God.” Saul used the gifts God gave Him to share the good news about Jesus.
-Sharing our faith was never intended to be an isolated part of our lives. Our faith should be lived out as a natural expression of who we have become in Christ. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be intentional. Evangelism (sharing our faith) does not happen by itself. However, the closer we are to Jesus the more we will sense His burden that all people would hear the good news that He loves them and wants to forgive them and transform their lives.
Conclusion: So those are some of the secrets of success for you and me as part of the body of Christ. We have a huge job in front of us. In fact the task is so monumental that we can get overwhelmed by it. In one sense it seems rather simple: Make friends with God, Make friends with people, Learn more about life through the Bible, Use our abilities for God, and tell others about Him. However, in our daily struggle we sometimes find that we can barely even pray, let alone help anybody else get closer to God.
-That is why Jesus promised to be with his followers, when He gave them the huge task of making disciples all over the world. He said, “…surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matthew 28:20) We can’t do it without Him! I’m so glad He is always with us, giving us strength and encouragement and perspective to keep us moving forward.
-As I think about these keys to success, I am encouraged by what I see the Lord doing here at CLC. I do see people building friendships with one another. You are deepening your longtime friendships while still leaving room to connect with newcomers who need the grace of God that flows through you. I see people interacting with God through prayer, praise, giving, and worship. I see people growing in their faith, reading their Bibles and getting to know who God really is. People are using their gifts, serving wherever they can. And people are sharing life with others. We’ve had a number of relational outreaches over the past few years and we are getting to know people and giving them a snapshot of what Jesus is like.
-I am excited because I see all the good things that are happening, but also because of a sense that we are learning to do life with God in a way that will impact this community for Jesus! It’s His Church! He’s building it, and He knows what it takes. Is everything perfect at CLC? Are there some things we could be doing better? Yes. Always! I know we need to strengthen some areas. God wants us to dream big dreams for our community. We must not settle for good enough when God is calling us to something beyond ourselves. But in the midst of our ambition, let us not forget how simple God intended it to be: Love Him and love others. Get to know Him and share Him with others.
-Our best days are ahead of us! Jesus will keep building His church right here at CLC. As long as we will hear Him and stay close to Him, He will be with us at every turn because we will be following Him.
