June 7 , 2007

Session 6 “Band of Brothers: Serving Each Other” John 13:12-17

What do you think of when you think of serving another person?  When I think of serving in a church setting I think of opening doors for ladies or carrying a food dish in for my wife.  While these are 2 good ways to serve others they don’t capture the essence of the service Jesus talked about.  In the clip from “Miracle” we see a group of individual guys trying to play hockey together.  Their coach knows that they can’t win as a bunch of individuals.  Much like our own Olympic basketball teams who must overcome the challenge to become a team, this team must come together and work as one unit for one purpose.

In the passage from John, what Jesus is telling us here isn’t necessarily just about caring for one another’s feet, but the act of giving yourself for your brother.  In our society today, everyone is so concerned with his own needs and desires as the hockey players were before this point in the movie that they are unable or unwilling to truly serve others.  This service isn’t just about opening doors or carrying food dishes.  It’s about having someone or being someone that is counted on for anything.  That’s what Christ intended for His church.  That’s what He intended for the disciples.  He wanted them to be there for each other.  He knew that very difficult times were approaching and wanted them to have each other’s backs.

Each week we sort of uncover another piece of this puzzle called Christianity.  Tonight we see that we need to be that person who can be counted on by others.  Instead of others being a nuisance or an interruption in our day to day routines, they need to be our day to day routines.  This is something that the Christian church in general needs to do better at.  In the “Miracle” clip, it wasn’t until this group of individuals were willing to set aside their own agendas to play for the USA team that they really became a team.  Likewise, we won’t realize the true power of God in our lives until we set aside our own individual agendas to begin to serve others…

So what team do you play for??

Are you willing to play on the Lord’s team?

May 31, 2007

Session 5 “What He calls us to do” (John 12:25-26)

Remembering the “Remember the Titans” clip, do you think that the guys really knew what they were getting into when they signed up for football that year?  Do you think that they had calculated the real cost of being a Titan?  What did it cost to be a Titan?  Well, being a Titan obviously meant that each player had to go through some extreme physical endurance testing which was evident in their training camp.  Each player had to sacrifice his own desires to better the team and also had to depend on the other men on the team.  Finally, in order to truly be part of the team, they had to see past each other’s differences and cling to the one thing, the team, which bound them all up under one common similarity.

While reading our verses from John 12:25-26, we usually ask one very simple question:  Have you ever wondered just what it is that we are signing up for when we call Jesus our own Lord?  What is the cost of becoming a Christian?  In these verses we come to find out the way Christianity was meant to be…the cost of becoming a believer.  Jesus tells us we must be willing to lose our own life if we wish to gain the life that He wishes to give us in eternity.  While He definitely means that we must be willing to die for our faith in Jesus He also means so much more. When we become a believer we are called to change all aspects of our own life to be what Jesus wants us to be. While this doesn’t mean that we will be perfect, it does mean that we are committed to the process of becoming more like Jesus each day.

Just like the players for the Titans, we are called to quit focusing on ourselves and begin to focus on one common similarity that binds believers together no matter what their differences, we are called to focus on Jesus Christ.  Because the Titans were bound up together as a team, they stood out in the crowd, people knew that they were Titans.  Just like them, believers should be recognizable in the world of people.  Believers should be readily identifiable as such by the way that they live their lives.  Just like the varsity football players are on game day when they wear their football jerseys to school.  So because we are followers of Jesus, others should know we are Christians by the way we live our life.

What does this mean for us?  This means that becoming a believer is not some safe, unimportant decision but a life changing point from which you will never want to return.So the question is not only do you desire to begin to follow Jesus, but also, are you ready to follow Jesus?  Are you ready and do you completely understand what kind of life is waiting for you?

May 24, 2007

Session 4 “He wants to free us”  (John 8:31-32,36)

In our video clip we find the great fighter for Scotland’s freedom, William Wallace, rousing his troops before a battle against their English enemies.  In this clip, Wallace is trying to help his fighters understand the importance of fighting for their freedom.  He poses a pretty important question to them about their freedom saying: “What would you do without freedom.”  We can’t imagine what life would be like without living as free men, but I bet we wouldn’t like it.  Can you imagine letting someone else dictate your life?  In a free world the sky is the limit to what you can accomplish while in a slave world you can only achieve what you are allowed to achieve.  You answer to your master.  If we were a part of this same situation, what would you do?  Would you be willing to sacrifice our own life in order for your children to experience the freedom that we have now?  Would that be worth it to you?

In our Scripture passage, verse 32 is a pretty popular and often quoted verse in the Bible.  Here we learn that if we know the truth we will be set free.  First things first, what is “the truth?”  Well any truth is some unchanging fact about our existence.  The truth that we have been discussing over these past weeks is that at one point in history God sent His Son Jesus here to earth to be a light for mankind and to make it possible for man to have a relationship with God through Jesus.  Second, what will we be set free from?  Remember last week and the analogy that all of us are sort of lost in a dark room, trying to feel out our future and purpose in our lives?  Remember how alone we are leaderless, because of our own mistakes we are unable to reach out and relate with our perfect and wonderful God?  Jesus has promised that if you would embrace Him as your Lord and Savior He would be the light of your life, to show you your purpose and to guide you in your life’s decisions and events.  He also makes you perfect in God’s eyes so you can once again have a relationship with God.  So when we believe in Jesus and follow Him, He sets us free from our own sins, helps us find our purpose, and brings us into a true relationship with God.  Essentially, He frees us from our own hopeless situation.  The last promise we find in verse 36 is that Jesus does have the power to free us from our sin, so if you embrace Jesus you will be freed.

Let me ask you the same question William Wallace asked his men before battle.  Many years from now as you are lying in your bed and you look back at your life…Would you be willing to trade all the years from right now until then to experience what Jesus is offering you right now?  Do you truly want to live as free men?   “If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

May 17, 2007

Session 3 “He Wants to Lead Us” (John 8:12)

A sports team can be a truly great thing to be a part of.  Many of us know the old sayings that the team is only as strong as it’s weakest player or can only be strong if everyone will come together as one unified team.  Another aspect of the team which is equally important is it’s leadership.  In the movie “Facing the Giants” the featured football team is having another bad year and the coach is on the verge of being fired.  After one practice the coach has made his team leader do something called the death crawl which is a crawl down the football field with a teammate on his back.  The twist is that he makes him do it blindfolded to show him that he has the potential to do much more then his effort has showed in the past.  Following this exercise the player steps up to lead the team on the field and they go on to win the state championship.

Those of us who have played on a team before know the value of a team leader; someone to lead the team onto the field for competition; someone to hold everyone together in tough times and to give the team strength in the fourth quarter.  Every team needs a leader.

In John 8:12 we see that Jesus has come to earth to live and die in order to be the light for humanity.  He has come to be our leader.  All of us here and mankind in general are moving in a direction towards the future.  We all have our own goals, our own measures for success and happiness.  The problem is that left alone we are sort of feeling out a path for our future.  Like a blind person would feel around in an unfamiliar room.  We don’t know what is coming up next and sometimes we even fear the unknown future.

We search out and want to know God…to be connected to God but we are sort of lost inside of a dark room.  We live our lives, constantly feeling around for some answers, not knowing where to turn or what really is the truth.  It’s almost like with each passing day we slip further and further into this darkness when in reality with each wrong turn, with each mistake, we are traveling further away from God.
In the midst of our helplessness and hopelessness, just as Payton Manning led the Colts to win the Super Bowl this year, Jesus has come into the world to lead us to victory.  While we were in our darkness, feeling around for a place to go, Jesus came into the world as our light, to lead us down a path.  He wants to lead us down a path that offers true life here and now and also an eternal life with Him in a place called Heaven.

Once we accept His leadership and follow Him:  1) We will have a real, life changing relationship with our creator, 2) We will not be lost in our desperate search for purpose and meaning, 3) We will be pure in God’s eyes, find peace in our lives, and know our place in eternity.

So this leaves us with two questions left to challenge us to change our lives.  First, if Jesus isn’t leading your life, are you ready to follow His light?  Second, If Jesus is already leading your life, are you willing to lead others here and now not worrying about the circumstances or the results but just being willing to do your best, to answer the call for a leader to bring light into the life of a person who is searching in a dark room?

Every team needs a leader.

May 10, 2007

Session 2 “Living Water” (John 4:3-15)

Sometimes in life do we ever wish that we could get a hold of this special glacial water that the water boy had?  In every sport there is a possibility of getting inured.  How many times have we seen our favorite team go down because the best player went down with an injury?  Do you think that that team would have given anything for that special potion the water boy had in order to come back and play?

How many times in our lives do we wish we had some type of special potion that would just fix all of our problems?  In our response to our reading of the Samaritan woman at the well who Jesus offered the water to live we begin to understand that all of us have a metaphorical well in our lives.  We are constantly coming back to this well to quench some thirst that we have in our lives.  We work hard to make money to have nice things.  The only thing is that we never have enough things.  We want to be known by others, to be promoted at work and to be loved by our family.  While all of these things can be very good, blessings from God in fact, the problem is that if these are the things that define our life we will be like this woman constantly coming back to our well in order to feel satisfied.  The problem is that water from a well only offers temporary satisfaction.  You see all of these good things in our lives will not satisfy our innate thirst for something more in life.

Last week we talked about our need for something more being satisfied by relating with our creator who is God and how this is done through a relationship with Jesus Christ.  This week we see just what Jesus has to offer us.  In verse 10, our key verse for this study, we find two important phrases that teach us just what is being offered to us by God.  First we see that what is offered to us is a Gift of God.  God has given us this gift, this offer to know Him and be accepted by Him despite the fact that we have sinned and made mistakes in our lives.  This gift He has given us is of infinite worth.  This gift is wrapped up in the life and death of His Son Jesus Christ.  Second,  Jesus has come to offer us living water; more correctly translated as water to live.  This is a metaphor which is basically explained as follows.  We drink water to replenish water that our body has processed in order to continue living.  So we drink water to continue living.  Because we sin which is anything that we do that is against the will of God, we are dead in the eyes of God.  This means that we cannot be accepted by God because of our sin.  Because God loves us so much, he sent Jesus to come and pay the price for our sins.  If we would believe in who Jesus is (the Son of God who came to take away the sins of the world) and admit that we do sin (do things that God doesn’t want us to) and if we would confess Him as our Lord and Savior (or realize that we cannot make things right on our own, that we need Jesus and His death on the cross and resurrection in order to be right with God and to decide to live our lives as He wants us to not as we have before) then He would come into our life and give us this water to live.
So you see, that desire inside of us that we try to fill with so many things in life can only be filled by Jesus.  So what He has to offer us is not only for after we die, but for right now…so right now we can begin to truly live!

Do you desire to keep coming back to that well in your life?  Do you want to keep trying to quench a desire for purpose and substance in your life with things that will only offer temporary satisfaction?  Or would you like to come to that well for the last time…and drink the water to live which is offered from Jesus?

It is a gift and it is offered to you…What will you decide?

May 3, 2007

Session1: Created to be Something More

In our Bible verses (John 1:1-4) we are introduced to one of the most difficult concepts in the realm of theology. John writes about this entity called the Word. Since forever this entity has existed with God or alongside of God and was God at the same time. While our concept of this relationship is in fact very much impossible to understand what we can understand and what is incredibly important in our existence is what the Word had in Him. The Scripture says that “He had life and that life was the light of man.” You see the Word existed to become something very special for mankind. He existed to become Jesus Christ.

Do you ever feel like maybe there is more for you then what you have now? That maybe there exists for you some greater purpose, some greater meaning in your life? We often times feel this way because we were created to be more then we are alone. In our video clip which was from “The Rookie”, Coach Jimmy talks to his players about wanting something more in life. He pointed out that if they continue to just live life as usual they will never realize their own potential to be great men. In this movie, Jimmy fights his own battle over whether to go after his dream of playing baseball or to continue on in his teaching and coaching career in the small town in which he lived. He and those around him knew that he was created to be something more than he was. He was in the middle of a battle, a quest to become the man he was created to be.

In our lives this desire to find our place or to realize our potential can only be fulfilled when we become what God has created us to be. So the next logical question is, what has God created us to be? The Word existed and became Jesus Christ to make it possible for us to become what God created us to be. Very simply stated, we were created to have a relationship with our creator. The Bible says that this is only possible through believing in and serving Jesus Christ (John 3:16). He came as a sacrifice for our sins and bridged the gap between us and our creator. So it is through a relationship with Jesus who is the Word from eternity that we begin to relate to our creator and then become the men that God created us to be. No accomplishment, big or small, no possession, no matter what it’s worth, no other relationship no matter how intimate it is will ever fill that void or allow us to become who we were created to be.

That leaves each of us with only one question to answer… Do you want to become the man you were created to be?