Living with Purpose at CLC
Intro: Have you ever wondered why you are here on planet Earth? Why did God make you you instead of somebody else? Granted, we may see a lot of things we would like to and perhaps need to change about ourselves, but it is helpful to remember that God made us who we are on purpose for a purpose.
-One psychology blog identifies 10 emotional needs that are common to all humans to one degree or another. We are all born with essential physical and emotional needs and the innate resources to help us fulfill them – known as human ‘givens’ – which need to be met in order to facilitate good mental health.
The 10 Essential Emotional Needs:
1) Security — safe territory and an environment which allows us to develop fully
2) Attention (to give and receive it) — a form of nutrition
3) Sense of autonomy and control — having volition (opportunity & strength of will) to make responsible choices
4) Being emotionally connected to others
5) Feeling part of a wider community
6) Friendship, intimacy — to know that at least one other person accepts us totally for who we are, “warts ‘n’ all”
7) Privacy — opportunity to reflect and consolidate experience
8) Sense of status within social groupings
9) Sense of competence and achievement
10) Having meaning and purpose — which comes from being stretched in what we do and think.
http://mindsalot.wordpress.com/10-emotional-needs-that-must-be-met-for-good-mental-health/
-Many of you are aware that we have identified 5 main purposes that we believe God wants us to focus on here at CLC. We try to keep them in the bulletin each week, but after you see them a time or two, it becomes easy to overlook them as something you already read. Well, one of my our own state leaders in our church network has said, “God only promises to bless what He has called you to do.” So, if we misappropriate our energies and resources doing things that are not central to the purposes God has us here for, then we cannot expect God’s blessing. That should tell us how important these things are.
-Our leadership team has spent hours in meetings and in prayer, trying to work out things like this to keep us on track and to help us be more intentional about doing what God is asking us to do. These things aren’t gimmicks, nor are they passing fads. We truly believe that these 5 purposes in some form represent God’s plan for us. By the way, we didn’t get them from psychology or textbooks. We found them right in our Bibles, where answers to the most important questions in life can be found.
-We have identified these purposes with various labels or titles. Here is one way to list them: God has called us 1) To worship Him, 2) To Fellowship together, 3) To Disciple One another, 4) To Evangelize or spread the Good News about Jesus, and 5) To use our gifts to serve God (Worship, Fellowship, Discipleship, Evangelism, and Service). If you look in your bulletin you can see them listed with a few different words: To Connect with one another relationally (fellowship/friendship), To Commune with God through prayer & praise (worship), To Grow in spiritual knowledge and grace (discipleship), To Discover, Develop, and Use our gifts for God (service), and To Share God’s love & truth with relevance & clarity (evangelism).
-I’d like to talk about these 5 important purposes briefly today. I will attempt to give a concise, but meaningful overview of each of the 5. As we think about these together, I would ask you to do a mental evaluation about each one. As we cover each one, I want you to ask yourself how we as a church are doing in each area. Secondly, I want you to ask yourself, “What am I doing to help us fulfill this purpose?” How engaged are you with God’s purposes for His church? Remember, You are the church! But not just when you are in this building. You are the church on Monday through Saturday, and we need to be about our Father’s business the rest of the week, as well as when we come together for worship.
-So let’s begin, and you can just use the outline from your bulletin. I believe we can find each of these purposes in action in the early Jewish church, and following as more and more Gentiles received the good news about Jesus. Acts 2:42-47 gives us a great snapshot of the early church. Let’s take a look at it.
Acts 2:42-47 42 They joined with the other believers and devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, sharing in the Lord's Supper and in prayer. 43 A deep sense of awe came over them all, and the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders. 44 And all the believers met together constantly and shared everything they had. 45 They sold their possessions and shared the proceeds with those in need. 46 They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord's Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity-- 47 all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their group those who were being saved. (NLT)
Purpose #1: We are here To Connect with one another relationally
-Human interaction is a basic human need. It doesn’t require 10,000 case studies to come to this conclusion. There are some people who are wired for more alone time than others, but they still need to connect with other people and have friendships.
-Just think back to beginning of creation. God created Adam to communicate with Him, as we’ll talk about in a moment, but He also created him to interact with other humans. He said it is not good for man to be alone. And so the first human relationship He created was a marriage, between a man and a woman. I imagine that as Adam and Eve got to know each other that among other things, they greatly appreciated the companionship, friendship, and partnership that developed between them. We are created to connect!
-Look at some of the actions in the verses we read: They joined, met together constantly, shared everything, worshiped together, met in homes, and so on. They were a community! They were friends! They were doing life together, sticking together!
-We live in a culture that has morphed from everybody being outside and interacting to many people just staying inside their homes and interacting with their TV or video games, computers, or whatever. If we have a job we might feel that we get all the interaction we want at work. Consequently, we may not take the time to develop friendships after work hours. And we’ve all got our own projects and pursuits, so that makes it even harder to find time to invest in friendships.
-So, this can be a huge challenge for us to do life together with our church family when we may only see one another once or twice a week. But I think it is important enough for us to rethink some priorities. What if we all made it our goal to connect with someone else in our church family once a week outside of church? Or at least twice a month? It could be breakfast, lunch, or dinner, or it could be over coffee or tea, or popcorn, or a glass of water. It doesn’t have to be a big burdensome production. Just get together!
-I’ve preached that love covers a multitude of sins. 1 Peter 4:8-9 “8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.” It takes relationship and interaction to get to know one another enough to know their hearts. Sometimes, if we just knew where the other person was coming from, we might cut them some slack and be more understanding.
-Well, I could easily camp on this one all day, but let’s move on to #2.
Purpose #2: We are here To Commune with God through prayer & praise
-This is an amazing truth: God wants us to connect with Him and have 2-way conversations with Him! He wants us to know Him closely as a friend, yet recognize how big He really is. He invites us to draw near to Him, to sing to Him, to shout to Him, to be still before Him and listen, to worship Him by giving the first tenth of what He has blessed us with. God wants us to communicate with Him by praying for other people who have needs in their lives. God wants us to show gratitude to Him, but also to let our own needs and requests be made known to Him.
-God communicates with us through His word, the Bible. He also speaks to our hearts and minds by His Holy Spirit. Sometimes God gives gifts of the Holy Spirit to other believers who can speak God’s truth to us.
-Different occasions call for different approaches, but the main point here is that God desires interaction and relationship with us. One of our main purposes at CLC is to connect with God. It changes us and it will impact those around us!
Purpose #3: We are here To Grow in spiritual knowledge and grace
-We often call this discipleship, which really means teaching and training. Someone said that discipleship involves 3 main functions: knowing, doing, and being. We teach people to know God’s word, we train them to do God’s work, and we help transform them to be the people God has called them to be.
-This really is most effective when each of us takes responsibility for ourselves and our families to grow spiritually. This growth should happen in our relationships and our ability to love God, others, and ourselves. We should grow in our ability to trust God and others. We grow in our sense of identity in Christ, our devotion to Christ, our commitment to Christ. We grow in our understanding of God, ourselves, and others. Growth must happen in all the graces of Christ – love, mercy, compassion, patience, gentleness, goodness, etc. We need to grow in being filled with the Holy Spirit and being used in the gifts of the Spirit. We can grow in learning to share our faith in evangelism, and in our ability to lead and disciple others. We can also grow in our ability to function within a community as one member among many members, recognizing that Christ is the head and that it takes all of us to make up the body.
-So, even though this touches about every area of life, it is to be one of our main purposes. We must grow as individuals, grow as a family both in grace and in numbers – just as the early church did. As a church we try to help facilitate growth with classes and Bible studies, but nothing will produce growth in you better than when you go all in and take responsibility for your own growth.
Purpose #4: We are here To Discover, Develop, and Use our gifts for God
-Along with growing in all these areas, we also need to realize that God has given us gifts that are unique to us – at least in the way we express them. No two people are exactly alike, but are a blend of different gifts and abilities. God wants us to use the gifts He has given us to help other people find Him and come to know Him. Sometimes, we aren’t sure what our gifts are.
-The Bible speaks of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12, leadership gifts to the church in Ephesians 4:11, and what we might call motivational gifts in Romans 12. The more we can identify and learn to appreciate each of the gifts, the better the body will function in love and unity.
Romans 12:4-8 “4 Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. 7 If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; 8 if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.”
-Once you discover what your gifts are, start practicing them! Don’t wait until you have them down perfect to use them. Everybody has to start somewhere!
Purpose #5: We are here To Share God’s love & truth with relevance & clarity
-Too often Christians have ventured out to share their faith and made absolutely no meaningful connection with the people they were trying to reach. Sometimes we try too hard, or sometimes we adopt a method that may have worked for someone else, but certainly not for us. That is why we added the words, relevance and clarity. We could add a few other words, such as, be real, be relational, and be wise. Don’t burn bridges. Others will need to use them.
-One thing we need to understand is that it takes a village to bring a person to Christ. No, Hillary didn’t make that up. There is some truth to it. Christian researchers say that it takes 84 meaningful contacts from believers to bring one person to faith in Christ. If we can be just one link in that chain when we share our faith, then we are doing evangelism. We might call this planting seeds or watering what was already planted. Whatever part of the process we get in on, we must remember that it is God who gives the increase, drawing people to Himself.
-So, God wants us to share the good news about Jesus with others. That is one of our main purposes. St. Francis of Assisi said, "Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary." It’s not just what we say, but it’s how we live and how we build relationships with other people that will make the difference.
Conclusion: So, how are we doing? Are we living up to these 5 purposes as a church family? Are we sharing the good news of Jesus and what He did on the cross by how we live and what we say? Are we using the gifts God has given us to help others catch a glimpse of who God is? Are we growing in our faith and maturity in Christ? Are we communing with God through worship, prayer, praise, and other means? Finally, are we connecting with one another, and building close relationships that will provide mutual strength and support? Are we making an effort to connect with newcomers who do not have a network of friends in the church yet? Perhaps they feel like outsiders and need to be welcomed into a circle of friendships.
-How are we doing as a church? If you see some things we are doing well, I’d love to hear about them so we can give God the credit and be encouraged to move forward. If you sense that we have some areas that need some help, I’d appreciate hearing about those as well.
-The last thing I want to address is how you are doing in these areas. Remember, you are the church. Are you connecting, communing, growing, serving, and sharing? Think about the counterparts to these: Disconnection or isolation, silent treatment or lack of communication, stagnation or regression, inactive with the gifts God has given, or misappropriating those gifts so they never help God’s kingdom, tight-lipped and tight-fisted with the good news about Jesus.
-Hopefully, none of these apply to us because we are growing and God is helping us. But if the Holy Spirit reveals areas where you are lacking, don’t waste time in denial or excuse making. Agree with Him and ask what He wants you to do. Ask Him where you should start. Also, don’t try to tackle it all at once. Start with the one thing you sense the Lord is speaking the most strongly to you about, and ask Him to give you specific direction in that area.
-God does things on purpose! And He has given us purpose as part of His Church! We have a lot of work to do and have a long ways to go and grow. But if we will invite God to lead us and help us, then together we can better fulfill the purposes He has for us right here in Elgin and beyond. Let’s pray.
