- Hey, it's great to have you guys
gather together for life group
and I just wanna say thank you to you
for making an investment in your spiritual life.
Those of you that host life groups or lead life groups,
what you're doing is so important
and makes such a big difference.
And for those of you that are doing this
for the first time, thank you for taking that step of faith.
We're gonna spend four weeks
talking about relationship goals.
What are we?
Well, week number one,
we talked about being Christ centered.
Next week is really important.
I think it might be my favorite of all four.
We're gonna talk about being mission driven.
Then, week three, we're gonna talk
about being Devil kicking.
In other words, we have a real enemy that does attack
and we need to stand strong together.
That's what you're doing in life groups,
that'll make all of our relationships better.
And then week four we're gonna talk about
being covenant keeping.
What I wanna do in this first question
is just keep it light.
We have some new people,
maybe you're getting to know each other.
I talked on the weekend a little bit
about some of the stuff that Amy and I have been through,
some of the challenges that we have.
It's funny to me that it shocks people.
Yes, we fight over the temperature
just like a lot of people, we fight over
how to load the dishwasher,
we fight about how I walk, talk, chew, think, breath,
and the list goes on and on.
What I'd like to do as we start off today,
just to keep it fun,
what's the funniest fight that you've had?
If you're married, you've probably gotten into some
big blowout about something really, really
small or insignificant.
If you're not married, certainly you've got siblings
and you about killed each other on a trip
or you've got friends, a roommate,
something that you do or they did that's really irritating.
Let's talk about one of the funniest fights
that you've ever had.
Well I hope that there weren't any fights
that broke out when you were talking about
some of your funny fights
because somehow that happens
when we're just telling stories.
You didn't tell that right, so,
let's move on to a little more serious question.
And in the message we talked about
that all of our lives are centered around something.
What we center our lives around
really impacts, if you remember the circles
we talked about it impacts what we believe,
it impacts how we behave,
then it impacts the influence that we have
and the impact that we have on others.
What you center your life around
ends up influencing every area of your life.
Here's what I want you to do.
I want you to think about the last seven days
and think about how you lived.
Based on how you lived, what would you say
was the center of your week?
Think about it.
Maybe you spent a lot of time with your kids.
Maybe you were focused on your career.
I want you to be really, really honest.
Maybe it was your self image,
maybe your mind was consumed with money or whatever.
Think about where you went, what you did,
how you interacted with people, what you thought about,
what consumed you.
And I want you to be really, really honest.
Not based on what you wanna say,
but what was on actual, what you actually did.
In the last week, what would you say
was the center driving force of your life?
Let's talk about it and then let's see
what God does as he conforms us
to the image of his son, Jesus.
Okay, as we dealt honestly with question number two,
what you center your life around,
if you answered anything besides Jesus,
and I think that a lot of us would
by practically how we lived,
what we wanna do is we wanna ask how can we put him first
in all that we do today, every single day.
We wanna be Christ centered.
We wanna love the Lord our God
with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength
and we wanna love our neighbor as ourself.
How can you be more Christ centered today?
Well, we know one of the ways we can do this
is by seeking him daily in prayer.
Let me give you three verses.
You may wanna jot these down
or they'll be in your notes
that you'll want to look at about prayer.
First Thessalonians 5:17,
that will tell you how often you should pray.
How often should you pray?
First Thessalonians 5:17.
Do your prayers matter?
James 5:16, I hope you'll read that
and let God's word answer just how much your prayers matter.
What should you pray about?
How stressed should you be?
What do you do when you are stressed?
Philippians 4:6 will help answer that.
I want you to go and just read those verses,
let them speak to you.
And then we wanna talk about prayer.
I gave you one assignment for those that are married.
And that is to pray together every single day.
If you're not married, we're still praying
every single day, it's important to us.
This is gonna be a foundation for us.
I wanna talk about the idea of prayer
and I'm gonna give you a question.
On a scale of one to 10, 10 being the highest,
where would you rate your prayer life today?
You might answer it as a couple,
you might answer it individually.
But on a scale of one to 10, where would you rate
your prayer life today?
I'll be honest, I'd probably put mine
kinda more more like a six or a seven.
This week, to just tell you what I've done,
is we had our whole staff in and I did pray.
I prayed for a lot of other people,
I prayed for some staff members that were hurting,
but my prayers were more of a God help these people
than they were an intimate time with God.
And my excuse was that I was busy.
But the reality is that I needed more intimate time
with God this week.
But I'd say probably six.
And now that I'm telling you,
I feel more compelled to get that number up
because I need his presence every single day.
How often do you pray?
First Thessalonians five tells you.
Are prayers powerful?
James five tells you.
What do you pray about?
Philippians four will tell you.
Let's take a moment, be really honest.
Scale of one to 10, how passionate
and intimate was your prayer life this last week?
And then maybe God will take it to another level.
Once you're through with this,
you're gonna wanna spend some time praying
for one another.
If you're not normally a prayer,
maybe take a step of faith and pray.
You'll experience the presence of God
and we grow so much closer together
because life is better together
when we serve Jesus with each other.