The Grove branches out into the community!

One of our Life Commitments is service. We want to Live Out. Here are some events that are coming up that we are going to be involved in. We need to value what the community values. Let Julie know if you are interested in any or all!

August 26th. Bike-In Movie @ New Belgium 7pm-11pm. We will be volunteering collecting money as people arrive. All of the proceeds go to The Matter Bookstore which raises money for literacy in children.

September 4th. Tour De Fat 9am - Noon. The parade starts at 11am. We will meet downtown at 9am (location TBA) to deck our bikes with leaves and twigs and Grove decorations. Start collecting for your bike now! We will all be wearing green. We are going to walking advertisements for The Grove! If you need a bike, you can rent one for FREE at The Fort Collins Bike Library. Go online, fill out an application, and then head to either location listed on the website to get your bike. You can keep them for up to a week. http://www.fcbikelibrary.org/

September 18th or 19th. We will be volunteering at the Sustainable Living Fair. We will probably take a morning shift around 9-1.

Love and Light

Jesus said, "if any of you is without sin - let him throw the first stone." Shockingly enough, everyone walked away. The standards that we judge by are human and are incomplete. We need to love people, not condemn them. Jesus also said that He is the light of the world. Light illuminates the path before us and shows us the way we should go. It takes away the darkness and keeps us from running into bad situations that we can't see.

We want to be less judging and condemning of those around us. We want to have the mind of Christ and the heart of Christ when viewing other people. We want to take a flash light into those dark places in our soul that we keep hidden and allow ourselves to be changed by Christ.

How have you been better at not judging people this week? How have you loved others through your actions and words? How are you letting Christ light your way?

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?