The Grove's 2nd Service!

Love

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us - 1 John 4:11-12. Loving others is one of the main things a church should be about. The church needs to become known for what it is for, not what it is against. The second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. Love is not only a feeling, it is an action. It is a choice. We want to become known in the community for our love. We want people to say, “The Grove – those people really love others.”

How can we show love to others? How can we go out of our way to bless people? How can we show the love of God through our love? We love because He first loved us. Let’s live this out!

The Grove - The Church

A church is so much more than a building. A church is the body of believers gathering together, growing together, and serving each other. Last night we were a church in so many ways, not just because we had our first service (which is very exciting!). Church is making pizza and eating a meal together. Church is Chris G. making gluten free pizza so Chris S. could eat. We talked about Acts 2:42-47. The believers in that time had everything in common. We thought that a big part of that was the fact that they were all living for the same thing. They were completely committed to the Great Commission – “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations…” All of the other little differences didn’t matter because the main thing did. Acts 2:47 says, “And the Lord added daily to their numbers those who were being saved.” What would it look like for that to happen in our context. The believers were meeting daily in public and at each other’s houses. People saw them out and about and I’m going to guess that their hearts were in the right place and they were great witnesses for Christ. We want to be like this. We want our actions to match who Christ has asked us to be. We want to be out there in the community living life on purpose.

Would someone look at you and think you are totally sold out for Christ? How can you build up others and have “everything in common” with people from The Grove?

Ninjas

This week we covered John 7:1-24. A few of the key points we talked about were 1) God’s timing versus our timing. We want to be patient and wait on God’s timing. One of the ways we can know God’s timing is by being in relationship with Him. As we get to know Him and recognize His voice, He will clue us into His timing for our lives and for the people around us. 2) Doing things in secret – Jesus didn’t make a big fuss about Himself. He was humble. He was all about the heart. We want to make sure that our actions are done with the right heart attitude. We don’t want to be showy. This also ties together with verse 18 that talks about speaking to gain your own honor versus speaking to gain honor for Christ. We want to be a group of people that strives to honor Christ in our actions and words. I believe the phrase was used, “go in like a Ninja.” This means you enter into relationships and situations quietly, not beating people over the head with your spirituality or beliefs. 3) Verse 24 says, “stop judging by mere appearances and make a right judgment.” We talked about not being judgmental and being kinder to those around us. 4) Forgiveness and apologizing – this was more of a tangent than actually coming out of the passage, but we dove into God’s will for forgiving people and apologizing. God says to pray for your enemies and ask Him to bless them, tough to follow…

We also had some really cool stories of people that have made some major steps towards giving up addictions. It has been cool to see God working even in the past week in people’s lives. Let’s continue to lift each other up in prayer for all of the action points that we shared. Let us walk forward in obedience! And as always – let us be a group of people who live life on purpose. Striving to love God, love people, and make disciples!

So, if you want – respond to the post with your thoughts. Here are some questions for discussion to help you along!

1) How have you tried to live more by God’s timing and not your own?

2) How have you checked yourself when you find yourself saying or doing things to gain your own glory? What have you done instead?

3) How have you “gone in like a Ninja?”

4) How are you doing with not being so judgmental?

5) How are you doing with forgiving people?

Jesus, the Bread of Life

The more I read the Bible the more impressed I become with how clever Jesus is. In the beginning of Chapter 6, when Jesus feeds the 5000 with five loaves of bread and two fish, do you think He was already planning to bring up the idea of the bread of life? It appears to me that He set the stage to be able to say – you want me to do more miracles and give you more bread. BUT, I have some better bread for you. Spiritual bread. When Moses and the Israelites were in the desert God sent them bread everyday to nourish them. Jesus says, just as the Israelites needed this physical bread daily, you need my spiritual bread daily to grow in your faith.

Another concept we talked about was the idea of testing God and asking for signs. For instance, asking God for a sign as to whether you should work for Qdoba or Dairy Queen. Later in the day, someone talks about a burrito they just had from Qdoba and you think that’s it! That’s my sign. The problem with this is it could just be a coincidence. Asking for a sign is easy – it doesn’t require any time spent with God. Throughout the Bible, God fights for us to have a relationship with Him. He wants us to be so close to Him that we recognize His voice and learn to follow Him by the Holy Spirit’s guidance rather than a “sign.”

So, some thoughts for the week:

How are you doing at getting your “daily” bread?

Why is it so hard to make the time to read the Bible and talk to God every day?

Are you asking for signs or are you making the time to listen to God’s voice?

What is the Spirit guiding you to do this week?

When is He telling you to speak or when to wait?

Who is God in the process of drawing to Him that He might want you to help along?

God's Voice

Church is so much more than a building. It’s a community of people living life together, working out their faith together, and striving to impact the world for Christ. We ate together, prayed together, studied the scriptures together, and then we had fun. Last night we WERE the church.

We read through John 6:1-24. We talked about hearing God’s voice, knowing when He was speaking to you, or discerning when He was asking you to get in an intentional conversation with someone. In the passage Jesus tests Philip to prompt him to move towards faith and trust. We also see the people wanting to make Jesus king by force, even though His role was to be a servant and die for our sins. Out of this we asked two main questions:

How has God been testing you and for what purpose?

What are you trying to make Jesus that He isn’t?

So what have you felt God testing you in this week? Have you noticed that the more you draw near to Him, the more you are able to recognize His voice? Carly shared a good illustration. When you hardly ever talk to someone and they call you on the phone, you have to ask them who it is. If you talk to someone a lot, you know them immediately. This is the same way with God. The more we talk to Him, the more we hear His voice and know what He wants from us. Thoughts?

Last night we read through John 5:16-47. A couple key points we talked about were:

1) John was called a light that burned. How are you being a light to the people around you?

2) There is a difference between studying the scripture and letting it dwell in you. Today Nikole found this quote:

Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

Author Unknown

We have all heard the expression, "you are what you eat", but is also true to say "you are (and are becoming) what you think." What are you spending your time thinking about? Are you letting God's word dwell in you, changing you to be more like Christ?

3) Jesus can do nothing by himself, He relies on the Father. How are you doing with relying on God this week?

Feel free to comment and get a thread of discussion going on as we all continue to work out our faith in community!