Sharing the Story of God Through Relationships
We Are Called: Adventures Into The Unknown • Sermon • Submitted
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Introduction
Introduction
Week 3 of We Are Called: Adventures Into The Unknown
To catch up: Facebook or Youtube
Last week we learned:
That the story of God is not wrapped together with the story of any country
That every generation has its own unique questions and that the Gospel of God’s Kingdom needs to be told in fresh ways with different language - think of it as forwarding the gospel to a new address.
The story is told with more than words - our lives will either tell one of individualism and self-reliance or restoration and redemption. We choose.
Today: Sharing The Story of God Through Relationships
Friendship With Jesus
Friendship With Jesus
Mark Simone on becoming friends with YG kids when they become adults
Believed many of Jesus’ disciples were young enough to be teenagers. After 3 years with them, he sat them down to tell them this:
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
Imagine what is would be like for your mentor, teacher to sit you down and tell you you are my friend
One of my people; family
We’ve traveled together
Lived together and haven’t had too many fights
I know you so well I can tell what you’re thinking
Close like brothers
Your well being is my first priority
And you are someone (foreshadowing) I will give my life for
My personal preferences
My physical life
It’s what friends do
Why you are my friends -
Because you do what I have taught you.
Jesus could have said: I am Lord, you are my servant, go do this.
He said, as your Lord, I'm offering a relationship with you. I'm going to let you in on things I don't have to. He changed their understanding of the nature of the relationship between God and humanity.
The Shift
The Shift
Up until now, you were my servant - you knew my work, did what I told you, but you didn’t know why.
Along the way, I showed you the why and now you know.
Jesus treated his disciples as intimate/close friends before they understood that’s what he was doing
Intimate/close friends share what’s most important about themselves
Over time, Jesus showed and taught them everything he had learned from God - all that God had commanded him to say.
Chosen
Chosen
They were his friends because he chose them, not the other way around.
Choosing people - None of these guys were like Jesus. Didn't pick the highly religious experts.
He asks us/calls us to move we do that. I will make you to become...
Appointed to Bear Fruit
Appointed to Bear Fruit
I appointed you to go and bear fruit - to share with other friends what I've shared with you, my friends.
Two aspects to calling - Rx with Jesus and calls us to our life calling (who he wants us to become - our true selves that is tied into obedience - bearing fruit.
Appointed to bear fruits: share with others what I've shared with you.
TELL THE STORY OF GOD - share it so it is experienced
SO THAT OTHERS WILL FOLLOW
I’ll give you what you ask for in order to do it
Love/Friendship
Love/Friendship
One Another
One Another
14-15 - Love others as I love you (Lay down your life).
Be friend to others (the human other) as I've been a friend to you.
Prefer one another over yourselves
Mutually - NOT I'm going to try to get you to like me because I want something from you or be associated with you.
This is counter cultural
In a world where people use one another in a number of ways
No Love, No Mission
No Love, No Mission
Bound together in such a way that affects every aspect of their involvement in society.
Love for other is the foundation for our kingdom mission
17 - The command: love each other.
John 21:15 Jesus knows we can’t love like he loves. Accepted the fact that Peter loves him like a brother but not yet in the way he will know Jesus’ love (sacrificially).
Yet, Jesus gave him the responsibility to love as brothers and sisters, those he loves sacrificially. This is obedience.
In 13:35 Jesus made it clear that their love for one another was related to their mission in the world: ‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’
No Love, No Mission
Jesus called friend of sinners
Jesus called friend of sinners
Christians in the way/pattern of Christ therefore work to apply and extend Jesus’ mission through our lives and actions.
Repairing, healing, and restoring the world in Jesus’ name and cause forces us to take ownership of the story we are living, as well as the story we tell—a story that can either contribute to or repair the brokenness of the world.
Love illustrated in 3 ways:
Love illustrated in 3 ways:
Not condemning or blaming others
Not condemning or blaming others
We need to be able to see the other clearly before we know how to truly help him or her. Cannot do that until we become people who don’t condemn.
Not forcing wonderful things upon them
Not forcing wonderful things upon them
How to make strangers into friends: Hospitality
The vulnerability and intimacy of welcoming others into space that society is increasingly telling us to guard, tells them that we value both them as human beings and the opportunity to be in relationship with them.
Disciple (apprentice) - someone who has decided to be with another person in order to become capable of doing what that person does or become what that person is.
I am learning from Jesus to live my life as he would live my life if he were I. Not learning to do everything he did, but learning how to do everything I do in the manner that he did all that he did.
If we restrict our discipleship to special times (Sunday mornings, etc), the majority of our time will be isolated from the presence of the kingdom in our lives