Thriving: Commit to Community

We need each other. God created us to relate well. Community is necessary for growth, encouragement, community, and opportunities. You get out of the community what you put in. You need people and other people need you. Come to give your personality, gifts, perspectives, and talents. You receive most when you give most.

Here’s the key to establishing a great community: You have to be there.
Regularly. Consistently. You need to commit to being there for yourself and for other people.
It’s going to cost you something but it will be worth it. Maybe more valuable than your education.
The more you do this, the more you will not want to miss being with your friends.

Pray

Prayer is talking to God. God hears those who believe Him; especially about Jesus. He is the center of every worthwhile endeavor. It’s His world. It’s His community. He is the main actor. He is the one who brings about spiritual growth and changes lives, bringing people into loving communities, leading toward an eternity of good things. If you have placed your faith in what Jesus did for you through His death, burial, and resurrection, God hears you. While He is not your puppet to accomplish your whims, He delights to hear your prayers. If you don’t know how to pray, we will teach you. There are many different kinds of prayer, but it’s all still just telling God what you think and letting Him reshape your thinking. We will pray with you and for you. You can pray alone. We will pray together in large or small groups. How to pray

Discipline

Discipline is self-control. It’s one of the evidences of God’s Spirit at work in you. You are the key factor in your spiritual growth and ability to lead. As you respond to God’s word and Spirit, you choose the things that are valuable to you in how you use your time. We will show you what you can do,  provide opportunities, and gather a community where you may thrive, but you are in control of your personal development. We can help you learn disciplines. We can give you resources. We can connect you with accountability for habit development. However, you have to want it to get it. Change starts at the heart and is implemented by the will. We can encourage you, give you resources, provide community, and help you with opportunities, but the will to engage is all yours. Community is about letting us all help you with your “want to”. We’re not talking about pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, but about learning to depend on the power of God’s Spirit within you to make the changes necessary to consistently walk in obedience to His written word.

Growth

Just like school, in spiritual growth, there are some things you must learn and do before other things can be learned and practiced. There is a framework of knowledge and obedience. If you are willing, we will walk together with you toward spiritual maturity. The ultimate goal is to know, follow, and act more like Jesus. We want to be equipped to be effective ambassadors who are guided by God’s written word and His Holy Spirit. Jesus is the triune God and therefore is our perfect example of goodness. Path He did not leave you alone. He placed His Holy Spirit inside each believer to guide us, saying, “this is the way, walk in it”. The Spirit of God uses the written Word of God to remind us of God’s truth. We then have the opportunity to believe it and submit to the truth in obedience. The main difference between a new believer and a maturing believer is the time between recognizing what God wants us to do and the time when we begin to obey God. 

Because what God has already written is the key influence, probably the most effective way to grow is to begin memorizing Bible verses. The verses you memorize with be with you all of your life. When you memorize Bible passages, you invest toward a lifetime of rewards from a few minutes of work.  Wherever you are, the word of God will be in you for the Holy Spirit to use in guiding you in each moment of every day. Memorize. (To get started, here is a good list verses to memorize. Start with one. When you know it well, move on to another.) See also Meditation.

Outreach

All Christians have this in common: Someone told us.
They told us that God loves us. Because God loved them, they told us.
The only reason we were able to believe God about Jesus is because someone made the effort to tell each of us about Him.
There is a chain of people like that leading all the way back to Jerusalem. 

Some people were murdered for making the Bible available in our language. They knew their enemies, yet gave their lives because they believed that we needed to hear God’s word in our language. 

Some were killed for telling other people the message of the Bible. If you heard God’s message, it came at great cost to someone, starting with Jesus Christ. They loved us. Now it is our privilege to share the message of eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. It’s that valuable.

Do you know His value? Is His message valuable enough to you to share with other people? 

Can you clearly communicate God’s message to someone else? If not, we’ll show you how. If so, let’s share Him with other people together!