Sunday Wrap Up – 5/3/09 from Life Connection Church on Vimeo.
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Pstr. Aaaron, love your notes! Really help to make the teaching e-z by breaking it down! I totally & emphatically agree with your last point5.1 IT IS BY THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, that we can continue to work these characteristics out in our lives! being in other denominations where the Holy Spirit is not emphasizied as our help & direction in our walk, people then start leaning on traditions& works and always feel we can never quite "get there". I am so thank-ful you& Dana are my pastors and feel so blessed for how true to the WORDyou preach.& it was great to spend my lunch with you today online!!!
Thanks Rosanne! You are awesome! I think this is your first comment on my blog I am soooo excited.
Well, I have actually blogged quite a while ago whaen you 1st asked us to comment on our groups sooo…last night in group, I really taught on the importance of the Holy Spirit keeping us empowered to live as Paul directed to the Ephesians. It is thru living IN A COMMUNITY of believers accountable to one another, that will keep us going & strong. We were also convicted of being more deligent in praying for you Pastor & Dana as we know how important that is… SO KNOW THAT YOU ARE IN OUR PRAYERS!
Rosanne I stand corrected you are right! Thank you so much for the support and prayers! I need them!
Yes, our "group" was really great and I was very glad to be reminded to pray for my church leaders not just "most of the time" – but to pray for them daily – as Roseanne said, we need to pray for the Dailey's daily LOL and I've been making sure to do just that.
Great sermon today, as I was telling you in the car I felt like this series kind of settled into it's groove today. Congregation was engaged and tracking well with what you were teaching. Now that we're in a groove I'm really looking forward to these next few weeks.
Lets keep our groove on.
Pastor Aaron D-
First of all, let it be known that I was not making fun of you, I was simply making an observation and I think if you took a small survey, others might agree with me. Okay, beyond that, I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your message on Sunday and I am excited to discuss it at group tonight. I was a little bummed that you did not preach on the end of Eph. 3 because it is such a good section of scripture and you can preach the crap out of scripture…i like it when you do that because I get all riled up, maybe it's the yeller (like my Daddy Bill Adams)> any ways, I like you preacher, bishop, reverend. I like your style. Thank you for encouraging and teaching this body of believers.
Suzee
first of all suzee yes you where making fun of me. but It's cool! for the sake of unity I will forgive you. Thanks the encouragement. You have a gift to build up and then tear down and then build up again. I may take a small survey. See what the people say!
I love this series and what God has been revealing to me through it. Too often I find myself focused on my personal relationship and forget that I am an intricate part of a growing body. Eph 3:2 makes note of Paul's stewardship of God's grace. That struck me like a bee sting! I had to ask myself what kind of steward I was of that gift! Was I the servant that just burried it until my Master returned? Or was I the kind of servant that multiplied that gift by exercising it in the body? I always thought I had a heart for unity, but when I read that, I realized how much smaller my own thoughts about unity actually were. I love our community at LCC and how that body strives to be connected to each other through accountability, fellowship, and encouragement. Can't wait to learn more!!
Deb, Thanks Girl! What a blessing that testimony is…. We sure are needing for more to use the gifts that our in us. We can not just sit on it and have only a few using it. We need all to be equipped for the work of the ministry.
Aaron
Group just keeps getting better and better. We had 10 people this wends. It's great to see people open up. I love the guys in the group. We are all on a process of growing and have areas that we need to improve to have better community unity. Pride & patience seems to be the biggest thing on the list.
Group was soooo amazing last night! I absolutely love digging into the importance of unity! Last night was equipped with tears, laughs and revelations as we went through Ephesians and what was preached on Sunday. We grew closer as ladies, we dug into the root of why us women tend to close ourselves off when there are issues within groups or relationships and we talked about how unresolved issues turns to bitterness and anger.
With all of that we all realized how much we need to understand God's grace more, because if we did, showing grace to others would come a lot easier, not saying that it is always easy, but it would definitely help out boat loads. And when we choose to not confront someone with an issue, that causes separation between us and we can eventually feel the effects of keeping someone hidden, keeping a secret, a lie. Later on in Ephesians 5 it talks about how we were once in darkness but are now in light, we must be in the light in ALL areas of our lives, including relationships.
Great discussion of what it means to be truly unified as God's family and how we are to walk in continual maturity, stewarding the gifts God has given us for the benefit of all. Something that was really cool-one of the ladies in our group who is older than us by 10-15 years had felt like she could never fit in to a church of such young people but after Sunday and our group she really feels like she has a place in our church family because we are unified around Jesus, not age. cont….
Also, at the end of the teaching we did a special prayer time for the moms in our group in honor of Mother's Day and out of that the Spirit really led me to pray for a restoration of mother/daughter relationships and one of ladies went straight from group to make amends with her mom. They had a strained relationship and God showed her that she was holding bitterness and unforgiveness towards her and totally softened her heart to go apologize and ask forgiveness from her mom. I love how God is teaching us about unity and then asks us to practically take action, like showing grace towards our natural & spiritual family members for the sake of oneness. I love our church and all the people that make up this incredible family of believers!
Group was great last night. Being relational is very costly and like Pastor said “it may come at your expense most of the time.” Building relationships because they are necessary becomes very testing and hard, as a connection group leader there are a few guys that come to church on Sundays and Wednesday night group, and most of the time they share what they are going through and because I’m their “leader” I think it’s my responsibility to give them a biblical motivated speech of what they need to do. Then I turn around and leave them to themselves. When group comes they share again what they are going through, they didn’t do what I encouraged them to do the first time so now I’m thinking “ok what else can I tell them to do according to the Bible.”
Here are my thoughts of what God is doing in my heart. Just because I’m their “leader” and they come to share what they are going through expecting me to give them the answer to solve the issues, but I never call them during the week just for conversation and to see how things are going, and I’m only calling them to remind them about group and to make sure they come, and if I don’t attempt to build relationship with them like (hanging out, dinner, anything outside the 4 walls of LCC) then is it relationship that I really have? I don’t think so. It’s just influence, Jesus just didn’t influence by what He talked about. He lived it relationally with the disciples and the people who sought for Him. How many people have you turned away in relationship because they didn’t fit you bill? Yet they are the ones seeking relationship. It’s easy to tell people what to do and even show them in the Bible where it is, but if you never call them to see how the Bible and what they were encouraged to do, is affecting their life then how will people know you are really interested in them for the glory of the Gospel? I want more than a Sunday and whatever night group is kind of relationship.
If people are going to follow me then I want it to be because I’m relational with them and I live the Gospel everyday, not because I have good encouraging words to say to them. My influence in their life should look like Paul when he said “Be a follower of me as I am of Christ.” So looking at Ephesians 4 and all of the characteristics needed in relationships I’ve had to evaluate relationships in my life and repent praying that the Holy Spirit will change my heart and help me see the men and other relationships in my life the way Christ views it.
I’m excited about this challenge of being relational with the body of believers. Let’s stop listening to other people’s perception of one another and start listening to what God says about each other, I like hisview way better anyways. It’s nice to know I don’t have it all together and I’m in this race with other brothers and sisters striving to be perfected by sanctification through the Holy Spirit. We all have one thing in common that’s why we need the Gospel.
Here’s a thought, ask yourself “am I just an influence or am I relational?” The Gospel wasn’t just an influence it was relational to a lost and dying people. People’s lives are changed because of relationship with the Savior Jesus Christ.
The "Melbers" Group was so amazing. I really like this study that we are doing right now and I can really see us ladies grabbing it. It really challenges us all to evaluate how we are behaving as a body of believers, If we are abiding and being lead, Changed by Him, or if we are walking in our own religious minds sets, prideful and judgmental attitudes. I think the thing that stuck out the most is the fruit… what is the fruit in our lives. Are we showing fruit of change in our lives because of the power of the living God moving in us or showing the world we are the same as them or even worse then them because now we think we have a prideful leg to stand on. If we are true ambassadors for Christ what is the fruit of our life showing about Him…yicks, if we TRULY let our selves answer that question, how can we be prideful. The other thing that really came out at group was how obsessed people in general are with "I" and what I need, what I want, what I think should happen, what I can't deal with, instead of what does God want, what’s HE telling me to do. And the doing it. When we are concentrating on "I" how can we possible see past that to focused on HIM.