Doing Life Together

Intro

We’re in a series called Survival Skills. Our survival skills are our spiritual disciplines that allow us to face the enemy head-on. We just finished the Scary Stuff series and our Survival Skills will continually equip us and strengthen us to face things that may scare, worry, or cause anxiety in us. Some of the spiritual disciplines are praying, solitude, reading God’s word, and asking questions to name a few. Today we’re going to focus on the spiritual discipline of Doing Life Together. God made us in a way that we need relationships to survive. First and foremost a relationship with God, relationships with our families, and relationships with our friends.

How do you start a relationship with someone? (Get answers from the crowd)

The bible has quite a few examples of relationships in the Bible: David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, Jesus and John to name a few. None of these relationships would have prospered had there not been any kind of communication. God’s way of speaking to us is through His Word (ask the crowd if they’d be able to have a relationship with God without The Bible). You could even get one person to pick someone they don’t know and get them to try and form a friendship without talking…it’ll be awkward.) The point here is that it’s impossible to form any kind of friendship or relationship without two-way communication. We talk to God, he answers us through his word or through another person. Ask the crowd what type of communication helps us build a relationship with God.

Prayer. Prayer helps us build a relationship with God. As mentioned before, we pray to God and he answers us through His Word or through another person. The Bible has plenty of examples of close and personal relationships with God built around prayer: Moses, David, Jesus, Paul, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to name a few. We’re going to look at some scriptures that will help us build relationships with God, our family, and our friends so that we can fulfill the spiritual disciple of Doing Life Together.

Romans 10:17 says consequently faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ. The entire Bible is about Christ from OT prophecies to NT fulfillment. God talks to us through The Bible every day. Fact is, God talked to us before we ever talked to Him. Since we’ve established that God started the communication with us, how do we answer him and maintain that closeness with Him? Through prayer.

1.) Prayer helps me build and maintain my relationship with God (Prayer is the foundation of my relationship with God.)

(Ask the crowd how their relationships with their closest friend would flourish without talking to them). Imagine you had a friend, a best friend even. This is your best friend in the entire world. You show them off to everyone, you tell everyone about them and your Facebook and Instagram and every form of social media known to man is full of pictures of you and this person. But they don’t really talk to you and if they do talk to you it’s just enough to keep you believing that they are your best friend. Do any of you have “friends” like that? You communicate with them, but they don’t communicate with you? Thank God, he isn’t like that. Ask the crowd how long do they think God would take to reply to a text or friend request? Fact is, He wouldn’t wait. He didn’t wait to talk to us through The Bible nor did He wait to make a plan for us to have a close and personal relationship with him through Jesus.

If God had Facebook or Instagram, I’d bet he’d go all out in bragging about how good friends you all are and how often you all talk together. Every time you open his word, God is delighted and probably says something like there goes ________ reading my word or says “________ is calling me, I need to get this.” The closest relationship you should have is the one you have with God. Proverbs 18:24 says Jesus sticks closer than a brother and we all know how close brothers are. Imagine how close you are to both God and Jesus. Jesus even calls us his friends in John 15:15. Who better a friend to have?

1 Thessalonians 5:17 says pray without ceasing which is the response to God communicating with us without ceasing. Like we tell our family and friends our hopes and dreams and they want the same for us is an edifying feeling. The Bible says in 1 Peter 5:7 to cast all your cares on Him, for He cares for you. Casting all your cares on the Lord, having a conversation with God about how things are going, what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling is an edifying feeling that gets you closer and closer to God. The more you communicate with Him, the closer you feel. The less you communicate with him, the farther away you feel. Keeping consistent communication with God through prayer ensures you won’t be doing life without Him.

Now that we’ve laid the foundation for doing life together with God, how do we do life together with our family?

2.) I do life together with my family by showing them the love of God (The love of God for me allows me to give love to my family strengthen my bond with them).

(Ask the crowd how do they show love to their family?) John 15:9-14 says that Jesus is the true vine and we are the branches. The relationship between the vine and the branch is wholesome and life-giving. Our relationship with our parents is the same. Jesus goes on to say that apart from him we can do nothing. Apart from Jesus we can’t even love well. Your parents love you because someone loved them first and they stayed under that love. For you all, as children, the most important thing about your relationship with your parents is the spiritual covering they provide. They sometimes say yes and sometimes say no, but the no’s are sometimes better than yes because no is protection. Your parents have learned and they have lived and they want you to learn first and then live.

The bible says in Ephesians 6:1-3 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother”- which is the first commandment with a promise- “so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.”

Honor is a form of love and honor of our parents acknowledges that they are leaders of the home and that they are honoring Proverbs 22:6, training you up in the way you should go so that even when you are old you will not turn from it.

Another way we honor our parents and our families is by our last name, which identifies who we are and whose we are. Yes, we are sons and daughters of God, but on earth we are sons and daughters of our parents. My last name is ________ (say your last name). This is the family I belong to, like I belong to the Life Church. Everywhere I go, I am a ________ (say your last name). My last name is “us” or “we,” but my first name _______ (say your first name), and that’s me. I honor and do life together with my family by honoring my family name and remembering that I represent them at all times, just like I represent God at all times.

How many of you have ever been in trouble? sent to the principals office? had a teacher call your mom or dad? Me too. The first thing they did was ask me what I did or what happened and then they proceed to call my mom and dad. How do they know who I belong to? Your last name. Your last name identifies you with a family and more importantly a set of parents who are responsible for you whom you represent.

Ask: what are some of the ways you honor your parents and your family? How about your extended family? Aren’t you honored to be a part of a family? of God’s family?

Eventually, some of you will have families of your own and would want your child(ren) to honor you and your spiritual covering in a way that not only honors you, but honors God. Even if you may not agree with the decisions your parents make regarding you, you can go to God and pray to Him and ask him to help you understand why they said no or why they won’t let you do something everyone else is doing. Just like you are invaluable to your parents, you are invaluable to God and he will give you the wisdom to appreciate the nos just as much as the yeses.

Abiding by your parents and honoring your family increases the familial bond and brings you favor from the Lord. Remember the promise from Ephesians 6:1-3? (Ask if they remember). Repeat the promise: “so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy a long life on the earth.” Remember, obedience is honor and you show your parents and family the love of God by being obedient to their leadership and authority.

Now that we’ve talked about how we Do Life Together with God, we’re going to switch to how we Do Life Together with our friends.

3.) Doing Life Together with good friends makes life more enjoyable and fun (Godly friends help build me up and stay close by my side).

There’s countless scriptures in the Bible regarding friendship and friends. How to make and keep good friends and avoid bad friends. God made humanity in a way that we need life-giving relationships so much so that a life of isolation is hazardous to your health! There have been studies on how purposely isolating yourself to avoid personal human interaction and relationships can impact the quality and longevity of life.

Ask the crowd: Do you have good, godly friendships and how they make them feel.

I remember when I was in school, I tried pretty hard to form relationships with people who would give me some perceived benefit like popularity or attention. Admittedly, that’s a pretty bad way to make friends because at the end of all of that trying I had no good friends. I was in an endless popularity contest. We all want to fit in where we get the most visibility, but this completely ignores making good friends and building healthy, life-giving relationships.

Ask the crowd: What are some good ways to make friends? Have you ever found it awkward or does it happen naturally?

One of the best ways to make friends and build life-giving relationships with people is found in Jesus command to the disciples in John 15:12-14 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.

Part of making good friends to do life with in nourishing relationships is simply to love people. Love people even if you don’t know them. Loving people helps you overcome barriers like unfamiliarity and little things that stop us from forming the friendships Jesus wants us to have. Jesus is our greatest friend because he laid his life down for us, his friends. Doing life together with good and godly friends enables us to sacrifice for them freely. Every friendship or relationship we enter into requires some self-denial.

Ask the crowd: How many of you do things that your friends like that you don’t necessarily like, but it makes you happy to see them happy?

One of the most notable scriptures regarding doing life together is found in Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”

Your friendships should model this example, lifting each other up, protecting each other when things are tough, and clinging to God always. The Word goes on to say in 1 Thessalonians 5:11 “Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.” Avoiding gossip and in Romans 12:10 “Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.”

You will hear many times over, “show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.” You want friends that love you, love God, love their parents and their families. This enables you to always keep the love of God on display to those you know, those you don’t know- but will soon come to know.

Conclusion

Now we’ve discussed how we Do Life Together with God, our family, and our friends in a biblically sound way that honors God. It’s important that this survival skill, of doing life together, is so important because it has heavy influence on who we are and who we become. Don’t think that you don’t need God, friends, or family because Jesus life on earth confirmed this through his constant prayer to God, his earthly family, and his friends the disciples. Jesus could have done it alone, but what’s the fun in that? Living life, fulfilling God’s purpose for your life, but with no one to share it with?

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