On December 11-14th, we’ll gather together at Lakewood for our end-of-year Connect Open Weekend. This year, we’ll have Samuel Green, author of “Where to start with Islam” as our guest speaker. If you haven’t already, please “Save The Date”.
As the Connect Open Weekend get’s closer, from time to time we’ll post articles here to help us engage with how we can be equipped to communicate Truth to our muslim friends.
The book of Acts in many ways is a story of identity. It starts out with a small group of people, mostly from a Jewish background, who lived in Galilee. But this small group saw themselves as followers of a Teacher, who they were sure was the long-awaited Messiah, the Son of God.
After His return to Heaven, this small band stayed on in Jerusalem, as He’d instructed. Galilean, together with Judean followers, these followers did have some sense of common identity, but it wasn’t until after the Holy Spirit arrived on the day of the Pentecost that they really began to have a presence in the community as a distinct group.... read more
They are immediately forced to deal with the reality of being a minority group within a larger unbelieving and increasingly hostile community. As they continued to think about their new identity, God continued to reveal Truth and unfold His Story for them. As Jesus promised, the Holy Spirit was with each of them, and with them as a Group, a Church.
Just as the writings of Moses and the prophets defined God’s people under the Old Covenant, access to the Apostles teaching, defined the Church at its beginning. God, through the Apostles teaching, made very specific declarations to these believers about who they are.
We’ll discuss this more during our upcoming workshop, but Identity is strongly linked to Purpose. The purpose of living and working in partnership with His Son, Jesus Christ. To the Ephesians, the Apostle writes that they are members of the Body of Christ with the goal of reaching maturity (Ephesians 4:13-16).
As we saw yesterday, the early churches are told they are God’s temple, a place for His Spirit to live on earth. The Church is a living letter from God through which He communicates to the community. They are witnesses, light, salt, living sacrifices. There’s also a future part to their identity and purpose as well. They are the Bride of God’s Son, made to be His perfect companion, to give glory to their Redeemer and Lord for all eternity.
If you have had the opportunity to be part of a friends journey of faith, you would recognise that it takes some wisdom to help anyone to do this well. In the Bible, wisdom is strongly correlated with order, and an orderly approach to how we use God’s Word is crucial to effective Church Planting & Discipleship.
Think about your own experience, either discipling others or being discipled yourself. Think how well prepared you or a fellow disciple would be if there had already been exposure and some understanding to God’s Word as His complete Narrative, or Story.... read more
What if we had a clear understanding of how and why God created the universe, the world and man and woman? Imagine if you had been able to stand alongside your friend and observe together how God related, from the beginning, to his created human beings that He had made.
If together, or as a group, you’d learned together how Adam and Eve listened to Satan and then saw God’s interaction with them and His response. And what if you’d been able to teach or learn together how through history, you saw the highlights of God’s record of the way he has relationship with human beings.
And then, if your friend or friends hadn’t yet decided to follow Jesus, you’d been able to introduce them to the promised Messiah, the Rescuer. And most importantly, if you’d taught and learned together how all the threads of who God is, what He’s shown us about Himself, how that comes together in His Son, and how we understand that most clearly in His death, burial, and resurrection.
Even if you have not been able to guide an individual, or a group, through God’s Story, I’m sure you can appreciate what a great foundation of Truth you would be working with as you try to help and encourage others.
If the path to faith for anyone we are sharing Truth with involves getting to know God, themselves, their enemy Satan and eventually Jesus the Saviour, through God’s Narrative, then there will be many important areas of Truth we will be able to help them with.
It’s going to be great to discuss these ideas further during our upcoming webinar and workshop.
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