Bible, Healthy habits

Outwardly Focused

You would probably agree that most of your closest friends, family, and even acquaintances are pretty similar to you. We tend to create and maintain relationships with people who hold to similar values as us, who believe like us, live like us, and yes…even vote like us. There seems to be a part of our nature that searches for comfortability in the people that we rub shoulders with. And this tendency is still true for many Christians. The problem is that Jesus intentionally did not live this way. Jesus gives what the end result should look like for those who follow Him, but many Christians don’t look anything like that. In the last week of our series DNA, we look at the people and relationships that Jesus was focused on the most and how as a church, we are striving to focus on the same thing.

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MESSAGE NOTES

My Godly parents raised me to love God, His church, and my family. For the most part, I kept my nose clean.

Problem: Everyone I knew believed what I believed, lived like I lived and voted like I voted. Problem is that Jesus didn’t live like this.

 

We’re in a series about the filters through which we make decisions.

Matthew 4:19 – Jesus said the end result of people following Him would be …..

  • He could have said anything
  • From your experience, what would you guess the end result of following Jesus would be?
  • Doesn’t it seem the longer someone is religious the less “normal” they are, the less they hang out with the people who aren’t religious?
  • Maybe we aren’t doing it right.
  • NOT saying we shouldn’t meet as Christians.
  • What is the church isn’t FOR Christians? Church IS Christians and we’re here for everyone else.

Bible opens with everyone on the same team with God.

  • Gen 3 mankind became outsiders. The rest of the Bible is the story of God going after those who are far from Him.
  • Gen 12 Abram will be blessed for the blessing of OTHERS
  • Moses/Prophets, “What will the nations say?”
  • 1 Corinthians 9:19-22 I do WHATEVER I can to live in such a way that those who are apart from faith have a chance to find it.
  • 1 Corinthians 14,  be careful what you do in church in consideration of those who are untaught, those who don’t share your faith.

No passage better summarizes this than Luke 15. 

  • Luke 15:1-2 – “even EATING with them”. Socialized with people far from God and it was scandalous to the religious.
  • Luke 15:3-7 – more joy over one who finds than those who’ve found.
  • Coin & Son

We aggressively and purposefully look for ways to reach out to others and meet their needs. 

  • When you become outwardly focused, you view your involvement in soccer, band, apartment complex, dorm life, work differently.
  • You see people with different politics, backgrounds, lifestyles, skin color, not as opponents, but as the OBJECTS of your love, attention, and service.
  • THAT’S why we have youth events, camps, kids ministry, movie nights, Easter Egg drops.
  • We want to provide a great place for you to invite your friends to hear about Jesus.

We recognize that the growth we have seen at Grace Church is because we are focused on who God is focused on the most – those on the outside. We believe that is why God is blessing us.

APPLICATION:

Can you imagine if each out of our locations started another church in the next 3 years? We would have 6 churches. And what if each of those churches did it. Then six years from now, we would have 12!

God has given us the vision, but you control how long it takes for us to get there. How will you choose to be involved?

You would probably agree that most of your closest friends, family, and even acquaintances are pretty similar to you. We tend to create and maintain relationships with people who hold to similar values as us, who believe like us, live like us, and yes…even vote like us. There seems to be a part of our nature that searches for comfortability in the people that we rub shoulders with. And this tendency is still true for many Christians. The problem is that Jesus intentionally did not live this way. Jesus gives what the end result should look like for those who follow Him, but many Christians don’t look anything like that. In the last week of our series DNA, we look at the people and relationships that Jesus was focused on the most and how as a church, we are striving to focus on the same thing.

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