People Connecting to People
“24”
People connecting to People
Jeff Jones, Senior Pastor
January 26/28, 2007
Last week on 24 we began to talk about this life that God puts in front of us to live, with the limited amount of time we have, we can choose. Today we are talking about who we are living life with, who we are running with…because you will never fulfill your mission, you will never build a significant relationship with God, you will never experience lasting, significant life change on your own, without others who are running the race with you. The Bible could not be more clear about that. Isolated Christians are shallow Christians.
To help us illustrate that, we have this basketball goal up here today, and I need a couple of volunteers…someone who doesn’t mind shooting a basketball in front of a bunch of people. (get them on stage and introduce names…earplugs? Earphones?). Here’s what we are going to do, and it is going to involve every single person in here today. They are going to shoot some baskets, but the first couple of shots I want everybody in the crowd, as loud and obnoxious as you can, to boo and shout out discouraging words “you’ll never make it,” that kind of thing. Do that as long as the background screen is red. When the background screen turns green, then start cheering for them, shout out encouraging remarks, and we’ll see what happens. (do it).
Slide:)_________________”Booing”
Slide:)_________________”Cheering”
People around us do influence us, they do matter. As various voices shout into our lives, they do influence our direction and how successful we will be at living the life God has called us to live. John Mason says this about the power of our friendships:
Slide:)__________________”Your best friends are those that bring out the best in you…I have found that it is better to be alone than in the wrong company.”
John Mason
Do you believe that?” Parents of teenagers believe it. If you have kids, especially teenage kids, you really do care about the crowd your teenager hangs with. If you see them hanging around with the wrong crowd, you are pretty quick to get concerned, pretty quick to intervene. We all know that for teenagers, the peer group they are in is hugely influential, and therefore we want to do all we can as parents to help them choose that group wisely.
Yet, the same is true for us as adults. We just get very relaxed about it as adults, but we are the same as teenagers. If teenagers were looking at your life and they wanted you to be godly, would they be concerned about your life? Your closest friends in a huge degree determine the direction of your life. The people you spend the most time with influence your convictions, your goals, your commitments, your life focus. Think about it. Probably every significant turn we have taken in life, both good and bad, has been in large part influenced by a friend or group of friends.
If those closest to you are going the same direction, they will cheer you on. They will rub off. If they are not, their influence is shouting discouragement and you’ll never live the life God has called out for you. We have to have a close circle around us who are going the same direction if we are going to make it.
Turn with me to Psalm 1 in the Old Testament. Psalm 1 is characterized as a wisdom psalm, a worship song that gives wisdom for life. In it, David lays out two ways to go, the way of wisdom leading to life and the way of foolishness leading to death. Let’s read from Psalm 1,
Slide:)__________________________ (Psalm 1:1-3) Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers..
The way of wisdom, the way that leads to being “blessed,” which means happy or satisfied, is one that is lived not by the influence of the wrong crowd but is lived according to God’s will, his law, referring to the Bible, to God’s revelation. The blessed person lives life according to God’s wisdom, and refuses to be influenced by the wrong voices who contradict.
He says that the blessed man does not “walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.” Do you see the progression in the verse? First, you are walking, living your life and you are exposed to the counsel of the ungodly. You walk on. After a while though, you stop and stand, that counterfit truth begins to influence you, doesn’t sound so bad…and then you sit…get out the Lazy Boy and make yourself comfy. Starting out, you would not have been comfortable thinking or living that way, but over time, those around you influence you to the point that you take a seat…it feels pretty good.
That’s the way peer pressure works, the way the influence of others works, in a negative sense. David calls negative peer pressure the “counsel of the ungodly,” and the counsel of the ungodly is everywhere and influences us often. I’ve seen that since I started to play golf a couple of years ago. The counsel of the ungodly is everywhere. Well-meaning but not so great players start sharing their golf insights or swing tips while playing with me, trying to help shape my own golf game. Advice on the golf course often comes very freely and from lots of different directions, mostly contradictory to each other and often bad advice. Yet, when I get up to swing a club, all those voices, all those words of advice, start crowding my brain. Where is my grip? Am I standing right? Is the ball in the front of my stance? Teed up high enough? My backswing, on plane or not? My tempo, my weight shift, and on and on. The counsel of the ungodly. If you play golf, you know what I mean.
In life, the counsel of the ungodly is also everywhere. I just heard about someone in our church that was encouraged to divorce her husband because she doesn’t like him anymore, she doesn’t think he will ever change, and she was encouraged to give up. That’s what she wanted to hear, the people around her were happy to provide the so-called helpful advice, and she is going for it…the counsel of the ungodly. Another more godly group of people around her would have said, “What? Are you crazy? Do you really think that is the answer?” But she didn’t have the right people around her.
That’s the way influence works. Peer pressure is not just a teenage thing. We are all influenced, good bad and ugly by peer pressure. It is just human nature. We are all influenced by the people closest to us. One time I talked with this girl back in my youth ministry days who was among the first goth kids, the so-called non-conformists who resisted the cliquish kids in school. She was telling me how much of a non-conformist she was, and then two of her friends showed up. Guess what they looked like? They were all non-conformists who looked just like each other. They were a clique of people who hated cliques.
There is no way around this principle:
Slide:)______________________Over time, you and I will start to think, act, and live like those we spend the most time with, our “inner circle.”
The influencing pressure of friends is impossible to deny. We all know it. And it is actually a very positive thing. If we really do want to think, act, and live in a godly way, the quickest way to do so is to get ourselves around people who are already doing so. You I’m sure know people that when you are around them, you are motivated to live better. When you are around them, you watch your life, your words, your attitudes…which brings me to the choice you and I have to make:
Slide:)______________________The Choice: Choose to walk with the wise.
That is the big idea of this message. If you really are serious about living well, about living God’s way, then you have to make the choice to walk with the wise. Proverbs 13:20 says,
Slide:)____________________ (Proverbs 13:20)“He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm.”
That’s the choice, to be a companion of fools or someone who walks with the wise. A fool is not somebody who is drr..stupid, but anyone who is walking outside of God’s will, down the road of foolishness and away from God’s wisdom. God is telling us, if you want to be wise, then you have to walk with, be around, people who are wise themselves.
Slide:)____________________ “The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.” C.S. Lewis
Very true. To make that choice though is a radical step, because it means stepping away from some people in your life and stepping toward a new group of people in your life that you may not even know yet. That is a huge and difficult and yet vital thing to do.
And hear me. I’m not suggesting the extreme of Christian isolation, where you only have people in your life that are Christians. If you have been around here long, you know how important the value of bridge-building is to us, of investing in relationships with people that may not know Christ and inviting them to consider him. Many Christians do make that mistake, do fall into that extreme.
What I am talking about is this, “Who is your inner circle? Who are the people closest to you?” I’m talking about your posse, your crew, your homies, your peeps…just to be clear.
Jesus modeled a way of living life where he walked with the wise without getting isolated from those who didn’t know God. He made time in his life to relate to people that the religious people didn’t like. But they weren’t in his closest, inner circle. They weren’t his posse, his crew, his homies, his peeps. Jesus’ homeboys were those who were going the same direction as him.
For many of you, you really do need to make that choice as you think about the people in your life right now, a choice to walk with the wise, which may mean taking a step back from some people in order to take a step toward a new group that will influence you a godly direction. That’s not easy to do.
I was a freshman in high school when I realized that I had to make that choice. Increasingly, the people who were closest to me at school were going a direction I just couldn’t go down. I knew if I stayed in the group, they would influence me, not the other way around. It was hard, but I had to step back. I talked to some of them about, letting them know why…that I just couldn’t go down the road they were going down, and yet I also said, “I still see you as a friend, and I’d be really excited about doing stuff together that is kind of neutral, that we can both do, but I just can’t go down this trail you are on.” That wasn’t easy, but I knew I had to make that break. I had to surround myself with a new inner circle, which I did with people in my youth group.
Many of you are right there, probably some of you in high school. Most of you are out of high school, but the situation is the same. You know that if you want to live a godly life then you are going to have to take a step back from one inner circle to built a new one. And I can already hear the objections to something that drastic (screeching sound):
Slide:)____________________ “But what if I am the only Christian they know?”
First of all, you aren’t going to another planet. Explain to them what you are committing to. Invite them to come along. Let them know you’d love to do common ground things from time to time (go see a movie vs. go to a bar), but you are really committed to your pursuit of God. And think about it: if you don’t do that, then all you are doing is sending a mixed message to them. They might know you are a Christian now or that you are getting more serious about your faith, and if you continue to run with them the same old way, then you just seem like a hypocrite. Explain to them, that you still want to be friends and do things together, just maybe not some of the same things or going to some of the same places. I’m not advocating that you totally step away, unless the friendship or relationship is one that is so unhealthy or so influencing negatively that you have to. Sometimes you do.
Slide:)____________________ “But they may not understand!”
They may not. Some of my friends understood and some didn’t. Some were open to continuing a friendship and others weren’t. I explained it the best way I knew how, and I continued to be friendly to all of them. Yet some especially at first did not understand. But you know what? Over time, they did. What I found was that a lot of those people who at first seemed to not understand, they are the ones who sought me out later to talk about their life, about God. When they started to realize that partying is not everything, or they experienced a family or personal crisis, they sought me out.
Slide:)____________________ “But I’m in love with him or her!”
Oops! (screeching sound). That’s a problem. Throw it in reverse. Missionary dating is a really bad idea. You don’t need to be dating someone who is not committed to the same direction in life. You might be really something, but you aren’t something enough to change them. Only God can do that.
Walking with the wise involves stepping away from some relationships as your inner circle. It involves making sure you have a crew, a posse, around you who are encouraging you the right direction, who will rub off on you and you on them in a positive way. We’ve talked about stepping back, but now let’s talk about stepping forward into the new. When we talk about walking with the wise, who are the wise? As you and I form groups, like Life Groups, of people who are committed to pursue God together, what kind of people do you choose as your inner circle?
Slide:)____________________People who are going the same direction
We’ve said that, but I don’t want to take it for granted. What we are talking about is velcroing yourself to people who really do want to follow God fully, who are committed to you, who are building their lives around the wisdom of God’s Word and want to be effective in the mission he has given us.
Slide:)____________________ People who are both accepting and honest
A small group of spiritual friends, your godly homies, has to be a group of people who create an atmosphere of mutual acceptance, where you are accepted as you are, where you can be honest without reprisals. I was counseling with someone the other day who grew up in a home with a parent who was domineering whom you did not want to disappoint. He learned early that telling the truth was not a good idea if it was something she didn’t want to hear. The environment in the home made it hard to tell the truth, to be honest. Good small groups make it easy to tell the truth; they are grace-oriented friendships and environments where common strugglers can be honest about what is really going on in their lives, their souls, their relationships. The group creates an atmosphere that says, “Come as you are. Be honest about where you are at. And let’s help each other grow beyond where we are.”
That’s the other side of honesty. If you and I are going to grow spiritually, we do need to be around other people who are growing as well—but they also need to love us enough to tell us the truth. We are told to speak truth to each other, to admonish and correct one another (verse: ). We cannot live the Christian life on our own.
Slide:)____________________Hebrews 10:24-25
Hebrews 10:24-25 says, Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. 25 Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching We need people who will both encourage great choices and attitudes and challenge those areas in our life where we may be blind to our own sin. We need people who love enough to correct…to spur us on to love and good deeds.
Whenever I think about this principle of caring enough to confront, I think back to an experience I had at a restaurant some time ago. I saw a man get up from the table about 5 or 6 tables deeper into the restaurant than me. His body shape you might call top-heavy. A lot of us guys struggle with the battle of the bulge, and this particular homey was losing the battle…he was carrying around this basketball around his midsection. What that meant for him is that he couldn’t see anything south of his belly button, which was unfortunate. When I got up from the table, his napkin that had been on his lap had gotten stuck between his belly and his waste, so the napkin was wedged in there and hanging out…kind of like quarterbacks sometimes having that towel hanging down from their waste. So, he gets up and you can tell his friends at the table noticed, but no one said anything. They just walked out in front of him, kind of fast. And then every time he came up to a table on the way out, people stared and then waited for him to pass to laugh. They were pointing back, telling their friends. Now, he passed me, too. I could have told the poor guy, but I was curious. I wanted to see how far he could go. He passed his waitperson, the hostess, and went all the way out to the parking lot. About 30 people saw him, some of whom were his friends, and nobody said anything.
That is not a good way to go through life. We need people around us who are willing to tell us when we have a problem. And we need to create an atmosphere that makes it easy to do so. I am so thankful for people in my life who are willing to correct or at least ask hard questions when they observe something in my life. If they don’t, I won’t know. If all they do is say nice things, then they aren’t really helping me if they are looking past issues in my life I really need to look at.
We have a great team of people who work hard at producing this environment, this worship service, to help connect people to God. They are awesome. One of the guys on the team in particular, the leader of our worship arts area, is a great example of this. I’m talking about John Maikowski. Every time we do a service, we evaluate it. After Friday night, we do an evaluation to see if we need to change anything for Sunday. And on Monday we do an evaluation of the whole weekend to see what we need to learn, what could have been better. Everyone is honest and contributes, but when it comes to the sermon, it is hard to tell a speaker, your pastor, “Dude, that kind of stunk. You really need to change something.”
John has never said it that way, but I am so thankful to him being on the team. He’ll talk to me about what went well from his perspective, and I know he is on my team. He’s not just a critic who tears me down. But at the same time, he is willing to say, “What were you trying to do on this point? Maybe you could sharpen that.” Sometimes he has a suggestion of how it could be better. I really value that. And when he is just positive after a message with no change to consider, I really trust that, too…because I know he would tell me if there was something.
This past week, when I did the message on a formulaic approach to spirituality vs. a relationship, after the first service, I just didn’t like the way it flowed. I felt like it wasn’t clear enough, wasn’t engaging enough. I was sitting there during Tyrone’s worship leading in the 10:30 service, about to go up and speak, and I prayed and then thought, “What might John say?” Just that thought helped me, and I think God helped me, and I reworked the message in those minutes. And it worked. I was so glad I did. I don’t think the 9:00 was a disaster or anything, but it just went a lot better at 10:30 and 12:00. I’m thankful for people in my life who are caring enough to confront.
Make sure you have people who are really wise, who are going the direction you want to go. I’m not talking about surrounding yourself with critics, but people who are wise and love you and when they give a word of correction you know it is from a wise person who loves you.
Slide:)____________________ Consistent
Another quality that makes for a good posse, for good homeys or peeps, or a crew, an inner circle, is consistency…talking about people that you are with regularly enough to get to know and who are there for you regardless of what is going on in your life. The Bible says that with our crew we are to rejoice with those who rejoice and cry with those who are crying. Life is so much better shared. It is just no fun to have something to celebrate and nobody to celebrate with. And it is really hard to need someone to cry with, to be there for you in difficulty, and realize that you are alone.
The problem is that our suburban life does not make it easy to find and form these kind of friendships. If you are going to fulfill your mission, live a godly life, develop a great relationship with God, you cannot do it alone. Yet, our culture keeps us so fragmented and so busy it is really hard to develop those kinds of relationships with other Christians who are committed to help each other walk wisely.
That’s why our church has decided that one of our main goals and purposes is to help us all find that kind of community, to form a posse, to form a group. Our goal is for every single person in our church to find a band of brothers and sisters who are committed to each other, who enjoy life together, and who help each other pursue God. At Fellowship, the primary way we foster those kinds of relationships is through Life Groups, which are simply small groups of people like you and me who want to follow God and grow in our relationship with him. Those groups are based in geographic regions, which makes it easier to do life together, to relate outside the times in the month when the group officially meets. Most of our lifegroups meet every other week, some on Saturday nights and some on Sunday nights. A few meet other times in the week. The goal is to connect with others who are going the same direction, are committed to each other through thick and thin, and who also enjoy life together…have fun together.
If you are not in a Life Group, let me encourage you to get in one. Our staff has worked very hard to make it as easy as possible to connect. Coming up Feb. 18th is Grouplink,
Slide:)____________________Grouplink Slide
[Pick up basketball]. Christianity is a team sport. You can try it solo, but you’ll never win. You cannot live the Christian life on your own. Are you on a team? A team of people who are committed to helping each other win. Right now, think about that. Who is your inner circle? Do you have people around you who are wise and who are committed to helping you be wise as well?
Do you need to step back a little from some relationships to step toward a group of spiritual friends? If you are in such a group, do you need to take a few steps deeper? Is your group really the kind of group it could be? If so, don’t see that as someone else’s problem. You work on it. You help make it all it could be.
Prayer.
Slide:)____________________Replant Slide