In the Hear & Obey Relationship, sometimes we just don’t Hear & Obey.

What were the realities of the Israelites when they wandered away from God?
Is there any hope in our wandering?
What will God do and how will he relate to us?

Look forward to you being with us tomorrow at 10 AM!

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

God wants to write the very essence of who he is on our hearts. He wants his laws to permeate our lives. As his righteousness oozes out of us, he wants it to get onto our kids.

Andy Stanley, pastor of North Point Church in Atlanta, GA has 3 kids between 16-20 years old. All three of them lead a small group. All three of them think Christians are supposed to lead a small group. Why? Because they think Christians disciple people (I wonder where they get that crazy idea!).

How did this happen? Because the Stanley’s and North Point were intentional in developing disciples of their children. Because the Stanley’s and North Point were intentional in creating environments where Christians of all ages make disciples.

I’ve heard of stories from other countries where teenagers are planting churches that reach “mega” status (by American standards, internationally, they really don’t track that kind of stuff). And this was their second church plant. Yes, two large church plants before they reach 20.

I look forward to a day when students are making disciples of other people. I look forward to the day when we train students, no matter what field of study they’re studying, to church plant.

It will require us to be intentional and that’s a process.

But it starts with us as adults and parents having a relationship with God that permeates our lives.

We’re reading the Bible with our kids and talking about what it means.
We’re praying with, for and over our kids.
We’re blessing them with our words.
We’re taking them to serve.
We’re leading them to give.
We’re teaching them to Hear & Obey God and release them to all over the world to flesh that out.

What can you do today with your child or teen to disciple them?

I never know what I’m going to get if I include the boys:)

We’re collecting change for the Republic Pregnancy Resource Center. They exist to give young women the resources they need to have a healthy pregnancy and get started on the right foot as a parent.

Your change will go towards basic expenses for the care of the young women who go there for help.

Get a bottle this Sunday if you haven’t already gotten one. We’ll collect them on June 10!

Something changed my outlook on rules in the few months between being single and married, however.

In the four months Jessica and I were engaged, we spent part of that time going through marriage counseling.  I highly recommend it for anyone who’s about to plunge into everything that marriage is – for several reasons – but here’s one of the major ones.  Marriage Counseling gives you the chance to set up some ground rules, some “commandments”, if you will, upon which your new relationship is going to be founded.  If you’re married, it may sound silly to you now but, at one point, you had to sit down and decide who’s going to manage the finances and who’s going to take out the trash (or mow the lawn, take care of laundry, etc).  You also probably established some rules around going to bed angry, what to do when you don’t agree on something, how much money is too much to spend without talking about it, and more.  You probably don’t think about these “rules” now but, at one time (perhaps doing your own marriage counseling), you had to lay them out on the table and figure them out.

That’s how I see the 10 commandments.  God was establishing a relationship, a marriage of sorts, with His people and He takes them through some counseling before slipping the ring on their finger.  These are the “rules” by which He wants to establish His relationship with us.  Now is there GRACE in that same relationship?  Absolutely.  But grace comes when we know the rules and intentionally break them.  You can’t have grace without lawbreaking and you can’t have lawbreaking without laws.  In that way, the “Law” IS God’s grace to us – it’s how we know that we need Him.

At my small group this week, we’re going to be talking about “why the 10 commandments”, how God stepped down in relationship through them and how they positively impact the ways in which we relate to Him.  I hope you’re able to come to a small group this week and discuss this important topic further.  See you there!

- Phil Sousa

1. Have no other gods before me.
2. Don’t make a graven image. Really these are more like 1a and 1b. They’re related. It’s almost as if God’s saying, “Really?! A god of stone can’t have a relationship. There is no other god who can have a relationship.”
3. Don’t take My Name in vein. God is saying, “In this relationship, I give you my name (kinda like a marriage), so please don’t trash it.” Name really represents everything a person is. Character, image, persona, everything. When we’re in relationship with God, everyone else knows. It is about letting them know who God is because we carry his name through our relationship.
4. Take a Sabbath. God is saying, “This is my gift to you. My gift of provision. My gift of rest. My gift of My presence.” God gives us rest to stay connected to him and his rhythm of life.
5. Honor your parents. God is saying, “The primary way you learn about a relationship with me is through a relationship with your parents. Honor them like you’d honor Me.”
6. Don’t murder. God is saying, “People are created in My image. When you are mean and murder (whether murder is physical or not), you’re killing my image. You’re destroying the relationship you have with My image.”
7. Don’t commit adultery. God is saying, “The marriage relationship is a picture of the relationship I have with My people. Having a great marriage is showing off the relationship I’m supposed to have with my people. Adultery (physically or mentally) also takes from people made in My image.”
8. Don’t steal. God is saying, “Our relationship is about My provision. Stealing is saying you don’t trust My provision…My relationship. Stealing also takes from people who are made in My image.”
9. Don’t bear false witness. God is saying, “You lie about ourselves to protect your image. A relationship with me means that you have a) My image and b) My recreated image. Trust me enough to provide you the image I want you to have. Plus, to lie about your image usually means we’re degrading someone else’s image. Again, people made in My image.”
10. Don’t covet. God is saying, “Coveting is a lust that covers all the previous commands. Our relationship runs deeper than things. Trust me for everything.”

God wants a relationship. We can have a relationship with all kinds of things. But a relationship with him will only fill our lives and give us life. The commands aren’t about following rules. They are about what the relationship looks like.

Can we live up to this? Never. But he made the provision to give us righteousness. The righteousness described in the 10 Commandments. He writes it on our hearts. He completely transforms us into a new person. It is his ultimate gift to us.

No matter what we’ve done, God is ready to heal, forgive and give. Now, we just live in a Hear & Obey relationship.

This Sunday we start a new series called The Relationship.

God doesn’t just want us to have faith, but he wants us to have a relationship with him. A father to child relationship. Join us this Sunday and the next 5 weeks to take a peek into this extraordinary relationship with the Creator of the Universe!

I had a random encounter with a college professor last Friday night.  Jessica and I were leaving a concert venue downtown and I just happened to run into Mr. Monroe, my old programming teacher from OTC.  I took his class several years ago and he is the sole reason I enjoy what little I know about programming today.  I did pretty good in the class but there were other students who were better.  Sure, I enjoyed the Intro to Programming course, but I didn’t feel up to snuff with some of the guys around me.  For a final project, I created a hangman game.  It wasn’t bad, I thought, but it wasn’t great either.

When I saw Mr. Monroe downtown, he not only remembered me but remembered me as the “hangman guy”.  He then went on to mention that he now uses my hangman project as an example to his students who are in his classes now.  I was floored.  I couldn’t believe that a) he thought the project was good and b) that he would remember me as a “good programmer” at all.

This is a Perspective 101 – unless you are a very prideful person, you will never see yourself nearly as effective as someone else sees you because it’s nearly impossible to see potential in one’s self.  This is multiplied exponentially when it comes to God, who foresees potential unlike anyone on earth.

What Moses saw as a weakness, God saw as a chance to show Himself – His power – through a weak vessel.  God saw potential in a man like Moses – he saw what he could be, not what he was.  It’s like when Paul boasts about his weaknesses in the New Testament – because when he is weak, God is strong in Him.  God gets to “show off” when he can use someone who’s not good at something on his/her own but will be excellent at it with His help.

Take a few moments before small group this week to think about how God sees you vs. how you see yourself.  Though it’s impossible to see yourself exactly the way Holy God sees you, do your best.  Pray and ask God to reveal some of His thoughts about you.  And then remember CrossPoint’s definition of faith: “Seeing things the way God sees them …

And then acting upon it.”

I’ve failed to mention this every week, but the Bible isn’t primarily about us. It is about God. Ultimately it is about Jesus.

So, after we blew it in the Garden, God wants us to realize that nothing else will work to bring salvation besides Jesus.

• The world was wiped out by a flood. God essentially hit the ‘reset’ button. But that didn’t work. Noah was found drunk and naked in his tent after coming back to land. Nope, not the savior.
• Abraham received righteousness from God, but he wasn’t perfect on his own. Not a savior.
• Joseph was pretty good, but the people ended up in slavery after he died. Not the savior.
• Moses was the leader out of slavery, but he wasn’t even able to get them into the Promised Land. Again, not the savior.
• This week, we’ll be looking into the 10 commands. No one can follow them perfectly. The law absolutely isn’t the savior.

By time we get to Jesus in The Story, we should be crying out for a Savior because we realize that nothing else will rid of us our sins and bring us back into a perfect relationship.

Then after we understand that thread, we can see how the lessons from each person can draw us closer to the Savior.

A church never got started.

While we didn’t do things perfectly (no one does), we did nothing that would kill the church. Aka…we stayed off the 6 o’clock news.

We believe we followed God in doing what we did. But it didn’t go as expected.

What happens when we do what God says and things end up worse?

Moses experienced this. We see his life as the burning bush, 10 Plagues, Red Sea and 10 commandments. We see his life through the lens of the big things.

But when he started out, he did exactly what God wanted and everything got worse.

So what happens then?

This Sunday is By Faith: Moses. We’re going to see what Moses did when he hit that crisis point. Moses walked into powerful faith. So how can we do the same?

First, I’m excited to see our students serving people. The Kingdom of God is about serving people. Thanks Michael and the youth for leading us in that direction!

Second, they’d like as many people as possible to go. Saturday’s are busy, I’m already tied up and can’t go. But if you’re able to serve, it is a great opportunity. The single greatest thing you can do in the life of a student is serve next to them. Amazing things will happen in their life because of that simple gesture!

They’re meeting at the church at 8:30 AM on Saturday morning. They’re anticipating lunch to be provided by a local restaurant. I’d bring some water or Gatorade to sip on.