first john

‘getting into your Bible more’, ‘eating your Bible’, ‘diving into your Bible’, these are all phrases surrounding the Connecting Groups mission for this year. What could be more important than learning about the heights and depths of God’s love for us in the only book he sent to us, written by Him!!

It is so great t just open His word and dive in, choc full of meaning and messages. Speaking of His book, and His love I just happened to have the book of 1 John ‘pop-up’ in my weekly readings, daily devotionals, etc. And what an amazing little book that is. Only 5 chapters, but it is a power house of verses that have timeless meaning and wise instruction beyond our knowledge.

Chapter 1 has a familiar refrain (for us Lutherans) v. 8-10:

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.

A familiar confession, that makes us look at ourselves and humbles ourselves before the Creator of the Universe. Chapter one also confers or confirms that Jesus IS the Word made flesh and that God IS light. Classic images of the Son and Father, but important and fundamental in understanding the fullness of scripture.

Chapter 2 continues on about Jesus’ Righteousness, and a reminder of one of the two great commandments the Jesus gave us ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ in v.10-11:

10Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. 11But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.

Chapter 2 continues with warnings not to love the world, and beware of ‘anti-Christ’-types. I have recently heard that ‘anti’ can mean ‘against’, as we usually know, but it can also mean ‘in place of’, which expands our scope of people that ‘supplant’ Christ in their seeming importance.

Chapter 3 talks about the Father’s love for us, and how he lavishes it on His children (v.1). And verse 10 gives us instruction to know who is a ‘child of God’ or a ‘child of the devil’. Another 3:16 (1 John 3:16) has an amazing parallel with John 3:16, summarizing the Gospel, that Jesus laid his life down for us. And what a gem v. 17-18 is:

17If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 18Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

Verses 20 and 22 go on to encourage us that God ‘is greater’ than our hearts and to ask for anything in His will and we can be confident to receive it.

Chapter 4 continues the theme of testing spirits and how to tell fakes and impostors from the real deal. Twice in chapter four we are told ‘God is love’ (v. 8 and 16), and might be one of the best depictions of what love is.

Finally Chapter 5 expounds on faith. I love verses 3 and 4:

‘And his commands are not burdensome, 4for everyone born of God overcomes the world.’

That, subsequently this is what hope is…overcoming the world via God through Jesus…so here in this chapter we have ‘faith, hope and love’ being mentioned, shades of 1 Corinthians 13 (the love chapter).

And what a way to conclude this chapter with verses 14 and 15:

14This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.

If you want to read more amazing things about the book of 1 John please check out this web page:

http://biblewheel.com/Wheel/Spokes/Tzaddi_Comma_Johanneum.asp

Oh, what treasure and depths you reveal to us in your word, God our Father in heaven!! You are the Alpha and the Omega, and we praise you for your love story you have sent us, the Living Bible!

infused

is your life ‘infused’ with God? Is God the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning? Is He the last thing you think about before drifting off to Z-land at night? What about everything in the middle? I know recently, that reading the Bible more has opened passages and gateways of communication that I had never before realized, and it allowed God to pass ideas and thoughts about topics and scripture I hadn’t much thought about before. But it didn’t all come from my daily prayer, or reading the Word. Some came from Pastors I had heard on a reputable Christian radio station. More ideas and thoughts came from a mailer I received from a true Christian organization that is standing up for the persecuted church around the world. Not long ago I was feeling down about a particular situation, and God had played the perfect song on a Christian contemporary music station. and it turned my thoughts from ‘woe is me’, to ‘Great is our God!’ Are you getting the picture? I feel that the closer God has drawn me with prayer and the Bible, the more he communicates to me through many other means. He is even sending messages through the secular world…look at Haiti. Sure, there have been countless Christian organizations pouring in help, but in that time between tragedy and rescue, the secular media brought horrific images or hurt and suffering, and God spoke to us through that medium as well. So, while I keep prayer and time in the Word at the top of my list, I try to keep God ‘infused’ in my daily activities. Is God ‘infused’ in your life?

as promised…the conclusion to ‘no more mr. nice group’

John Ortberg is the author and he has some good things to say…here is the rest…

Guidance: follow the map

When people need directions to a place they have never been, they use a map. Too often when people have major life-forming decisions to make, they make them alone.

In every church there are people facing decisions about vocations, ministry involvement, finances, relocation, and relationships. How sad if they make these decisions without the benefit of community. Their decisions may be impulsive, emotional, based on too little information. The result is too many broken lives.

The small group is to be where we find guidance, where we help each other learn how to listen to God. Small groups who rely upon God’s Spirit serve as a map for us when making important decisions. In his book Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster talks about guidance as a corporate discipline—something that groups should be doing together.

In the early church, the Spirit guided believers as a community. In Acts 13, for example, the church fasted, prayed, and listened to God. Then, in response to the Spirit’s guidance, they sent out Saul and Barnabas to minister.

In Acts 15 the church faced a major decision about the behavior of Gentiles, and they listened to the Spirit’s guidance so carefully that in the letter explaining their decision they were able to say, “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us … “

Small groups should be places where people gather to hear God through prayer and listening. Every small group meeting should include the question, “Is anybody facing a significant decision this week?” And in community the group should seek the Spirit’s voice for the person facing the decision.

Church of the Savior in Washington, D.C., practices this discipline by what they term “sounding the call.” When someone has a significant decision to make, the community enters a time of prayer and listening to God. They speak openly with each other about their sense of what God is saying. They take seriously the leading of the Spirit while avoiding any sense of superiority or control.

Encouragement: embrace each other

A hug is a gesture of love and encouragement. An embrace represents what we all need from a community of transformation. We need to know that someone is committed to us and loves us. That cannot happen when we are alone, and it cannot happen in a large gathering. It’s going to happen through smaller communities.

Today small groups have the privilege of loving and accepting human beings for whom Christ gave his life. In these groups we can supply the love, encouragement, and embrace people need to continue their journey of transformation.

A long time ago I decided I wanted to talk to someone honestly about my temptations, where I had messed up. I wanted to practice the discipline of confession. So I asked my friend Rick if we could meet. By that time, I had known him for about ten years.

When we sat down together, I told him everything there was to tell about me—all of the darkest stuff and everything I felt the most embarrassed about.

When I got to the end my confession, I could barely look up at him. When I finally did, Rick looked me in the eyes and said, “John, I have never loved you more than I love you right now.”

Those words were so powerful; they felt so good that I wanted to make up more bad stuff to tell him. To have someone know everything about me and still love me was truly life giving.

That kind of love is what we ultimately need in small groups to transform lives. We can make small groups so complex and difficult, we can build the perfect small group strategy, but if we do not have the love of Christ present, we are not really engaged in transforming people into his likeness.

Spiritual formation in community is mostly about loving people, and that is something we can do.

Comparmentalization

Do you compartmentalize your life? Do you put on your ‘work attitude’ for your work friends? Then do you act differently in front of your family? Do you put on yet another attitude when you run into your neighbor or when running into a past acquaintance at the mall? Unfortunately, I think too often we tend to have different faces and different attitudes with different crowds we associate with. However I think God is calling each one of us to pretty much act the same way with all of the people we run into everyday of our lives. And while we each have our own unique personality, and unique look and unique qualities, the dominating attitude we show on our outside is the beaming happiness, gratefulness, and humbleness of a person that follows our Messiah, Jesus the Christ.

He has erased a debt so big with his own blood, that we can not fathom, except when we look back at the shambles  our lives were in from sin. But now after the Good  News we have received that Jesus was the atoning sacrifice for our sins we should read God’s word, live out God’s word, pray to God regularly (not just at the dinner table) and outwardly show everyone we meet that this has registered in our brain and on our heart, that what Jesus has done for us.

Go that extra mile, and hold a door open, give a compliment, share a story, send a call, live outside of what society does. So that when people look back and think about you they will say “What is different about them? Oh, they are devoted Christians.” Amen, for the witness your life can show others and HONOR God at the same time.

Turn that corner, and get into God’s word daily, and your ‘compartmentalization’ will go away, and beaming love shared from the Spirit will come and knock down those compartment walls and you will see the difference…and prayerfully so will others.

…more from ‘No more Mr. Nice Group’ by John Ortberg

Confession: remove the masks

We all wear masks. We hide from each other. It’s part of our fallenness. That is why one of the most formative practices in a small group is confession. Confession is the appropriate disclosure of my brokenness, temptations, sin, and victories for the purpose of healing, forgiveness, and spiritual growth. Without confession we are a community hiding from the truth.

I know what it’s like to do church with people who wear masks. I’ve attended very nice churches where people smiled, talked about their jobs or the weather, but never really removed their masks and revealed themselves.

I recall one couple, pillars of the church, whose marriage fell apart when the wife ran away with another man. The church was shocked; the couple had hid the reality of their troubled marriage for years. Another woman in the church was well liked by everyone, but one day she landed in the hospital to have her stomach pumped of the poison she had taken. She was so miserable she felt unable to face another day. And no one in the church knew.

I will not invest my life in a community that doesn’t value truth and confession, and neither should you. Without confession we cannot accomplish our God-given calling to transform people.

Throughout church history, whenever God has done great things, confession has always been present. In the church, confession must be freely offered—never manipulated. A small group serious about transformation should be moving into ever deeper confession—removing masks to reveal our core feelings and fears, sins we still struggle with, and areas where we’re not growing.

We need to avoid “confession killers” in our groups. These include the inappropriate use of humor. Some people are embarrassed by deep honesty, so they may mock the person confessing or diffuse the atmosphere with a joke. It sends a signal that this is not a safe place to confess, and the masks go back on.

Judgmental statements also shut down confession. Don’t use a statement to shut down an opportunity for new openness in the group.

To see real transformation, small groups must begin with reality. By removing our masks through the discipline of confession, we acknowledge the reality of who we are and open ourselves to God’s transforming work.

Application: look in the mirror

James 1:23 says, “Those who listen to the word, but do not do what it says, are like people who look at their faces in the mirror, and after looking at themselves, go away and immediately forget what they look like.” A small group is a place for people to look into the mirror, discover who they are, and then ask, “How do I apply God’s word to my life as it really is?”

As a teacher I am regularly astonished by people’s ability to hear a sermon, nod at it, be moved by it, write it down, and then do precisely the opposite of what they heard. This frequent occurrence shows the extent to which people need painstaking, patient, and careful application of Scripture to their daily lives.

We may hear biblical instructions like be gentle, be loving, be faithful—but how do I actually apply that to my boss, spouse, or kids?

What would Jesus do if someone cut him off in traffic? Would he say, “I don’t condemn you; go and sin no more”? Or, would he roll down the window and shout, “Woe to you, you whitewashed sepulcher, it will be better for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for you”? What would Jesus do? A lot of people have heard about Jesus, but many have not been taught how to apply Jesus’ teachings to their real lives. Small groups can address this gap.

What we desperately need are small groups to be schools of life. Imagine someone has a problem with anger—a small group leader should ask them: “What kinds of situations tend to get you angry, and how do you respond?” Give them some alternatives to sinful patterns of anger. Roleplay these situations in the small group. Then next week ask, “How did it go?” If they got it right, celebrate it. If they didn’t, investigate what happened, and encourage them to do it differently next time.

If this kind of application doesn’t happen in small groups, it may not happen anywhere, and people will not be transformed.

Accountability: stand on the scale

I have made certain commitments about food and exercise in my life, but how serious I am about those commitments is difficult to determine without measuring my progress. A scale serves as a tool of accountability for me. Am I achieving my goal, or am I missing it? Ultimately the scale reveals how effective I have been in living up to my commitment.

Small groups are the place for people to get on the scale and reveal how intentional they have been to pursue transformation into the image of Christ. William Paulson writes, “It is unlikely that we will deepen our relationship with God in a casual or haphazard manner.” I think he understates it. People do not drift into full devotion to Christ. People do not drift into becoming loving, joy-filled, patient, winsome, world changers. It requires intention and effort.

But the default mode of the human heart is to drift. If a person has experienced real transformation, it’s typically because someone else has cared enough to say, “I want you to live God’s way, and I want to help you know if you are serious about it.”

We need to make some key decisions on our journey of transformation: what are my commitments about prayer, about Scripture, about my use of money, about evangelism, about servanthood, about truth? Keeping these commitments requires a community of accountability to serve as a scale revealing how we’re achieving our goals or missing them.

During the spiritual revolutions of 18th century England, the Wesleyan movement thrived on small groups. When those groups originally formed, they existed to hold people accountable to their commitments as followers of Christ. They gathered in little bands to ask one another how their obedience to Christ was going. History notes, however, that over the decades the focus of the groups shifted from accountability to vague “sharing,” in the process the power of the revival was lost, and eventually the groups died out.

…more to come…

By any means necessary…

This was a phrase that was popularized by Malcolm X, a militant leader of a counter cultural movement against racism. However, the height of emotion on both sides of the issue elevated to actions that included physical violence and even death, and the phrase ‘By any means necessary..’ meant that if violence is what it takes, then so be it.

I would like to take this phrase back for God and Jesus and the Spirit and their glory. ‘By any means necessary’ should be the Christian’s call to action to get the Word of God and Gospel out to the hurting world. Of course, in the Christian’s way with love and a desire to see many people saved (no implication of violence in any way shape or form).

This idea of ‘Any means necessary’ also comes to mind for what Christians should think about getting INTO God’s word themselves, besides the Holy sacrament of communion, there is no other way to feed your soul than to get into God’s word. ‘Any means necessary’ is especially important these days with the availability of so many forms of media. We have the written Word, we have electronic forms of the Word (online, etc), we have audio forms of the Word (Bible on CD), there are probably some versions of the Bible on DVD I would imagine. It doesn’t matter how just do it!!

Personally, I asked for the Bible on CD for a Christmas present and right now it is the best present I have ever asked for and received! It is such a blessing, to listen to God’s word almost anywhere at any time. I burned the CDs onto my computer and then uploaded them onto my iPod. Now, God is with me while I wait for the bus, while I work, when I travel in my car, when I travel by plane…where ever, when ever! (Of course He is there at all times, but now I can audibly hear His voice…ha ha).

I urge you, if you haven’t thought about getting the Bible on CD, to get it! It is awesome to have God so close, and I can guarantee you will draw closer to Him than you ever have before…it is God’s promise and we all know that God can not lie. -James 4:8 Come near to God and he will come near to you.
My prayer is that you find a way to get into God’s word more and more! Blessings will flow!

=v=

It Starts with the Heart.

Here is a message that goes with what Mike Zimmer had to say from the Pot Luck. It hit home with me:

It Starts with the Heart. By: Pastor Greg Laurie

Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols. Therefore he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the Gentile worshipers, and in the marketplace daily with those who happened to be there. —Acts 17:16-17

Far too often we are isolating ourselves from our culture rather than infiltrating it. We would prefer to remain in our Christian subculture when, in reality, we should want to invade our world with the message of Jesus Christ.

In Mark’s Gospel, we find the story of a man who brought Jesus to his friends. Matthew became a believer, and then he invited all of his buddies over to his house. But he also invited Jesus to the party. We read that “as He was dining in Levi’s [Matthew's] house, that many tax collectors and sinners also sat together with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many, and they followed Him” (Mark 2:15). Matthew brought Jesus to his friends.

Mark also tells us about four men who brought their friend to Jesus—they were working together on behalf of their companion, who was a paralytic. They wanted Jesus to heal him, but Jesus was teaching in a home that was so crowded, they couldn’t get inside. So these men climbed up on the roof, broke through it, and lowered their friend down to where Jesus was. Seeing their persistence and faith, Jesus rewarded them by healing their friend.

I think one of the reasons we don’t share the message of Jesus Christ more often is because—if we were really honest—we don’t care. So we need to start by praying, “Lord, give me a heart for people who don’t know You.” When the apostle Paul was in Athens, “his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols” (Acts 17:16). He cared. And then he acted.

May we care enough to bring our friends to Jesus—and bring Jesus to our friends.

‘Tis the Season.

A nice feature of blogs or weblogs is that they can capture a moment in time when the author is writing from a different perspective than the reader. Presently I am writing this blog as inches and inches of white snow quietly fall on our busy city. Branches are coated, roof tops are lined, leaves are weighed down, and the air is swirling white with softly floating snowflakes. It’s the kind of day that makes you think of warm, cozy things and places, like a warm bowl of chili, a soft comfortable seat near a warm fireplace, the warm secure feeling of hosting a friend for a pleasant conversation and hot cocoa or tea. Although, it does seems a bit early this year. In any case, these images are exactly what we intend to have happen at the All Saints Day Pot Luck sponsored by the Connecting Groups coming up on Sunday, November 1^st.  The Fireside room has hosted a great many get-togethers at St. Stephanus over the last century, and hopefully everyone who reads this can relate to the warm, cozy feeling of fellowship with their Christian brothers and sisters in this place. The Connecting Group Pot Luck will be no different. Everyone in the church is invited to come and eat, and talk and give praise to God to the blessings he has brought in our lives. The idea of the food laid out on the tables, in the form of salads, and beans, and hot dishes and desserts is making my mouth water as I write this. And let’s not forget the conversation! That warm cheerful feeling you get when you can sit down over food or a hot drink and talk to, pray for, encourage, confide, or get to know your fellow Christian is what our God-designed social beings crave and desire. Connection! Connecting, with Jesus Christ in prayer and worship and praise, and connecting with each other in fellowship and Bible study, sometimes over food, is what the Connecting Groups are all about. We will have some guest speakers talk about the Connecting Group ministry, and the blessings God has poured out over the last year. So, as you look outside and see the cold, think about the warm, cozy times ahead and please join us on November 1^st in the Fireside room and get to know the Connecting Groups better!

God Bless.

The Connecting Groups at St. Stephanus