Fellowship With God: Glory

Title of the Series: Righting the “ship” in Relationships

Introduction:

The thing that seems to be eroding in our world today is “relationship.”

: With God

Church attendance/membership is the lowest we have ever seen.

Not saying that attendance or membership is the relationship barometer but it is an indicator.

: With People

It seems to me we see more fights, arguments, separations from friends more than ever.

: In Marriages

The divorce rate is the highest we have seen

I believe it would be higher but we also are not seeing people getting married as much as they did in the past.

: With Children

If you want to know how bad it is with kids, go ask a teacher at school.

The erosion between parents and kids manifest itself out in other ways.

The meanness, bullying, cutting, drug use.

What we are seeing in our world today is nothing more than “UNHEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS.”

To turn this all around is to learn how to have a healthy relationship.

: To recognize the unhealthiness of a relationship and remove it and to seek, promote, nurture, and endorse the healthiness of relationships.

: You might be asking, what should we be doing or endorsing when it comes to relationships?

Over the next four weeks this is what we are going to talk about.

PAUSE:

When you peer into a healthy, vibrant, successful, satisfying relationship …… when you slice that relationship open ….. when you put it under the microscope you will find God!

: God is the Key in the relationship with Him.

: God is the Key in the relationship with People.

: God is the Key to a healthy relationship with our spouse.

: God is the Key to a healthy relationship with our kids.

The DNA to all relationships is God!

PAUSE

There is a reason for having each of these relationships ….

Each relationship has a purpose.

But the reason for each one of these relationships is different!

Each of these relationship play different role in our lives.

: With God it is Fellowship

- With God (Almighty God of the universe)

: With People it is Friendship

: With Marriage it is Spousal Relationship (Becoming one, as help mates)

: With Our Children it is Parent Relationship: to reveal Fellowship with God, Friendship with others and what a Godly Marriage should look like.

Week One: Righting the “Ship” in Relationships!

ME:

Pledge:

Passage: &

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he

created him; male and female he created them.

28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and

multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over

the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every

living thing that moves on the earth.”

“Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and

honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they

existed and were created.”

Title: Fellowship with God!

Remember what we have talked about …..

When you peer into a healthy, vibrant, successful, satisfying relationship …… when you slice that relationship open ….. when you put it under the microscope you will find God!

: God is the Key in the relationship with Him

But the reason for each one of these relationships is different!

Each of these relationship play different role in our lives.

: With God it is Fellowship

- With God (Almighty God of the universe)

Let’s start off by stating that if you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior you have entered into a relationship with God!

: You are in fellowship with God!

But if you have not accepted Jesus as your Lord and savior then you are not in a relationship with God!

: BUT YOU ARE IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH SOMEONE!

It’s like this, if you don’t choose Jesus then you have chosen the Enemy!

: You are in a RELATIONSHIP WITH SATAN!

I have this question ask to me many of time, “Why did God create Man.”

Many of you would answer this question by saying, “To have fellowship with us.”

This would be incorrect.

When it comes to God and his creation, He created everything for his GLORY!

: God didn’t need to create anything.

: When it comes to God, there was nothing needed within this universe .

: But in love and grace, he chose to create everything so that his glory might be the joy and delight of others.

- As declares, “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”

Now it’s easy to read that verse and think, “God created things for his glory. That makes sense. We go to church every Sunday and sing songs of praise.”

“God is all about worship. Fine.”

: But if we stop there, we’ve really missed what this doctrine is saying to us.

Go back and look at the entire story again.

: In , we’re told that the creation of human beings was different than the rest of creation.

: Unlike the animals, people—that is, you and me—were created to reflect the very character and glory of God.

: Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion …” ()

Our lives have been created and purposed to image, or reflect, the glory of God.

: That’s why we exist.

: In fact, the fall..... , the giving of the law..... , David’s kingdom..... , the exile of Israel..... , and Christ’s coming .... are all about this particular storyline, which is summarized in .

: All of life and history is about glorifying God.

: My very reason for drawing breath today is to glorify God.

I am created by the creator to worship the creator.

: It’s a mindset ...

: A humorous example of this is …. understanding the difference between how Dog’s and Cats view life.

Illustration:

The difference between cats and dogs:

The dog looks at you and thinks to himself,

"You feed me, you shelter me, you love me. YOU must be GOD!"

The cat looks at you and thinks to himself,

"You feed me, you shelter me, you love me. *I* must be GOD!”

God doesn’t exist for us, ..... we exist for God

: We worship God, he doesn’t worship us!

I discover that is about much more than what I sing on Sunday morning or what I’ll be singing in eternity.

Let me ask you a question ......

Does it offend you that we and all the rest of creation exist for God’s glory?

: It certainly runs counter to everything inside us.

But when we understand that God freely created us for his glory, we finally realize that the story of creation is fundamentally a love story.

: God didn’t have to create us, but he did.

: He didn’t have to create us as bearers of his image, but he did.

And in doing so, he gave us a unique ability—the ability to take joy in the highest, most beautiful, most desirable thing imaginable, the glory of God.

God himself loves nothing more than his own glory.

: There is nothing better or higher to love.

: There is nothing more beautiful to fall in love with.

What’s amazing is that, out of that same love, he created you and me to participate in his glory as image-bearers.

:Our own stories are swept up into the greatest love story that will ever be known, the story of the unending and unsurpassed glory of God.

So God didn’t create us so that he would have someone to fellowship with.

He created us for His Glory!

God is there for us to have fellowship with.

He desires to feed us, give us shelter, and love us.

All this said, this doesn’t make us God!

THIS MAKES HIM GOD!

So let me ask a probing question ..... “How do you view God?”

Does your life bring Glory to Him?

The Word “Glory” (Greek word - Doxa)

Meaning praise as an act of positive acknowledgement of a person’s character or nature; especially recognizing the infinite and majestic nature of God.