My Church Journey, Part Five.
And I think this is probably the final episode.
Hey, welcome to today's little lesson.
I'm so happy that you've joined me here once again on this beautiful morning on a gulf
coast beach in Florida as the sun is rising and shell-seekers are walking by me here.
And you and I are talking about my church journey, and I hope you've watched the first
four, because if you have, you know what everything's leading up to this episode of little lessons,
because I want to tell you about the happy ending.
And the happy ending has brought me to a place where, once again, I'm involved in a house
church that meets in my home with about eight or so people.
And what makes it so different than anything that I've ever done before is that it is a
very, very intentional ... And if you've listened to my journey here over the last four episodes,
you know that that's been part of the journey.
Because when you don't know what you're gathering for or what the purpose of it is, well then,
it's hard to reach a goal that you don't know what the goal is.
And as I described to you in my journey before, there was times when the goal was just to
... When I was a pastor of a box church ... just to get as many people as I could inside that
box on Sunday mornings, and I went home happy if we had more people this Sunday than we
had last Sunday.
But I woke up to the fact that what we're supposed to be doing is making disciples,
people who follow and obey the commandments of Jesus Christ.
So gradually found myself getting closer and closer to that, and now it has me in a house
church, stripped away of anything that's ... I don't consider and I don't think the Bible
considers essential to have a healthy, fruitful, God-pleasing church.
And I'm actually, in my house church, I'm more typical than Christians who meet in official
church buildings.
Because if you take all the churches around the world and add them up, there's probably
a lot more ... Well, there's no doubt.
There's millions more house churches out there where Christians are meeting at homes and
apartments than there are church buildings because of the explosion of the Gospel in
the non-Western world.
Okay, so don't think ... Don't look at me like I'm some weirdo.
I'm now weirdo.
I'm more typical.
Okay?
And when we get together, our meetings are divided into three components.
And the first component is looking back, and the next component is looking up, and the
next component is looking forward, and it's all centered around getting closer to Jesus
and obeying his commandments.
So I'm going to start with looking up, and you'll understand then looking back and looking
forward after I talk about looking up.
That's the middle part of our meeting.
And we look up.
We look up to God.
He's the one we love and adore and worship and want to obey and please, because we're
going to stand before him one day.
We're actually going to see His face, so we better be looking up.
And we're self-feeders.
We don't have any person giving the sermon.
Of course, I've been studying the Bible for 40-some odd years now.
But others within our group have been Christians for quite some time, and they have the Holy
Spirit, and the Bible does say when you come together, each one has a teaching or a Psalm
or a prophecy or tongue or interpretation.
So apparently, according to the Bible, it's not supposed to be a one-man show.
And so we look at a passage of scripture and we talk about it, and we ask four questions:
what do you like about this passage of scripture?
Number two: what do you find challenging about this passage of scripture?
Number three: what does this passage of scripture teach us about God?
Number four: what does this passage teach us about people?
And so everyone gets to give their thoughts, and we get different insights from different
people.
Weird insights get challenged.
See, so we're ... People say, "Oh, you don't have a professional there.
You could have heresy."
Well, come on, now.
Think about that.
We have heresy being taught by professionals.
Right?
You know, whole denominations.
So don't worry about that heresy thing.
When everybody gets to give their thoughts, you mitigate the heresy risk, and you're not
studying difficult-to-understand passages.
You're looking at the ones that make some sense to all of us.
And then at the end of it, you say, "Well, let's pray and ask God to speak to us by His
Holy Spirit.
God, we've just studied this.
We've just discussed it.
How do you want me to adjust my life accordingly?
How do you want this to impact me?
What do you want me to do this coming week differently than what I was doing before today?"
And we all pray, maybe 5, 10 minutes, and then we all share, "Here's what I think the
Lord's telling me."
So if the lesson was ... We studied the parable of the unforgiving servant.
Maybe someone's saying, "I think God wants me to go to my brother, with whom I've been
estranged for many years, and try to reconcile with my brother.
That's what I feel the Holy Spirit's telling me to do in reaction to this message."
See, unlike so many church services ... And I've been guilty of this on both ends of the
spectrum, leading them and sitting in them ... you hear a sermon, and it might melt you
into your chair in conviction, and then after the last hymn, you walk out and do your best
to forget it, and you succeed while you're eating the donut or watching the football
game.
That's not happening in my house church, because we're verbally, publicly saying, "Here's what
the Lord's telling me to do this coming week."
And so then we make a commitment, we're going to obey it, and we pray for each other, that
the Lord will help us.
So that's that looking forward.
So when we come together next week, then we start off by looking backwards, and we say,
"Okay, how's your week been?
Hey Joe, remember you said you were going to go talk to your estranged brother and try
to reconcile with him?
How did that go?"
Whew, oh my goodness, accountability.
Oh my goodness, actual expectation that we're actually intentional in trying to grow and
follow Christ.
Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, oh my goodness.
What a amazing, simple concept that's missing in most churches where you just hear sermons
and walk out and no one ever asks you, "How did that impact you and what are you going
to do?"
And they never ask you once you said what you were going to do what you did do.
And so we have loving accountability.
We are admonishing one another, encouraging one another.
If Joe says, "You know, I never did talk to my brother, because I was afraid to."
"Well, okay, but do you still think it was the Holy Spirit that told you?"
"Well, yeah."
"Well, let's pray for you, that God will help you, give you the boldness.
And maybe we can talk about some pointers as to how you could broach the subject, because
we love you and we want to see you reconcile to your brother, and that's what you said
the Holy Spirit's telling you to do.
So I want to help you obey God."
Hallelujah.
That's church, buddy.
And I'm not trying to present a negative thought about any kind of church out there, but I
am sharing a principle that ought to be included.
It's totally biblical.
And many churches have instituted accountability groups and small groups, and sometimes they're
just like Bible studies.
You hear a sermon, and then you forget it.
We think we're growing because we're just adding more knowledge to our brains.
I'm talking about loving accountability where we really love each other and we're really
intentional, trying to obey Jesus.
Okay.
So that's it.
That's my church journey, and it's ongoing, and there's more I could tell you, and I think
I probably will tell you more in future little lessons.
Okay.
Thank you so much for joining me.
God bless you.