Good morning and Happy New Year! It’s been a few weeks since we last met together on a Sunday morning and I’m really excited to be back here with you all at R4J. Who else is glad to be back? Did you all have a great time at the Youth Christmas Ball? *Hands up* if you’re scarred for life after seeing me dance? It’s not a pretty site, I know. It’s the start of a new year, 2011 and I’m feeling really excited about the year ahead. But why? Aren’t I supposed to be feeling a bit down? I mean, Christmas is over, the holidays are over, it’s back to work, back to school, early mornings, it’s Winter, it’s cold. Well yeah, BUT, I’m at the start of a whole new year of knowing and continuing my walk with God. Me, a little human on this big planet, have the chance to share my life with the God that created it all. If in 6 days God created the whole world, imagine all the cool stuff that we might see God do in a whole year! I believe God has great plans for each and every one of us this year. I believe that He desires for every one of us to get to know him better, so that He can reveal to us even more about Himself and show us the things He wants to partner with us to do. So now is a good time to look ahead to the year and think about some of the things we would like to see happen. As we’ve talked about before, God has chosen each one of us to carry out the plans that He has for this world. Not because He needs us, but because he wants us. You know, it’s quite common for people, Christians and non-Christians, to make New Years Resolutions, about things they want to achieve or change, or maybe things they want to give up. Has anyone here made any New Years Resolutions and would like to share them with everyone? Now is a good time to think about our relationship with God and think about how we would like it to grow this year. For me personally, this year I want to experience God in more powerful ways. I really want to hear from God more, and so want to make time to learn to listen to God and recognise when He is speaking to me. I believe there’s more. Much more that God wants to do with us and with this town. Much more than we have seen before or can even imagine. I believe there are really good things God wants to do in peoples lives, including all of us here and really amazing things God wants to show us. I mean, there’s a God who created the entire universe, the solar system, the galaxies, He created each of us. He came up with a plan to send His son to the earth as a man and asked him to die a horrific death for us. God is a great big God, that does great things. But first he wants to teach us to be close to him.
So, lets all just take a minute to cast our minds back over the last year and think about how our relationship and understanding of God has grown or changed throughout 2010. As Christians, we don’t want to stay the same through our whole lives, but we always want to be moving forward, growing closer to God, getting to know him better, making ourselves open for him to use us, spending more time with him and ultimately being changed to become more like Jesus. Looking back at 2010 can we say that we did that? I know for myself, that over the last year I have grown loads in my relationship with God, but strangely the more I grow, the more I realise how much more I need to grow. I think it’s because, the more we discover about God and the more we get to know God, the more we understand how big and great He is, and that there is so much more to find out. There’s a great verse in Psalm 145 that talks about this: “ Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable.” Psalm 145:4 What this is saying is that God’s greatness is more than the capacity of the human mind to comprehend. God is SO awesome that it will literally take all of eternity for us to even scratch the service of how great He is! How exciting is that!? So I hope that we can all take that as an encouragement to really put our focus onto God this year. Romans 1:25 talks about people worshiping creation rather than the Creator. Are we guilty of the same thing? We know that worship is not just when we sing songs to God. But worship is how we live our lives, and glorifying God with our time and energy. But what are the things that we put our time and energy into? Are they the things of this world, the things for our own entertainment, or are they the things of God, which are bringing God’s Kingdom to earth. We talked about the Lord’s prayer at Attitude and TNT this week. One of the lines in that prayer is “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven”. When we pray that, we are not simply asking God to bring his Kingdom down to earth through the sky, but it is commitment from us to serve God in our lives, that God’s kingdom may come down through us. That God’s glory and life would shine out through us everyday, so that the people around us would notice it and ask us about it. This then gives us natural opportunities to be witnesses of God. So when we are looking ahead to what we want to do this year, lets put living for God right at the top. Maybe you have a vague idea of what you want to do this year, or maybe you just haven’t thought about it at all. If that’s the case, I’d really encourage you to take some time out one day this week and think about the year ahead and the ideas – and the hopes and dreams – that you have for it. I don’t know if you ever heard it, but there’s a saying that goes; “If you aim for nothing, you will definitely hit it”. It is so true. Whatever it is we want to do this year, whether we are thinking about the things we want to do for and with God or if we are thinking about other things, if we don’t think them through, write them down and make a plan for them, the chances are that they just won’t happen. So I also really encourage you to write these things down. It’ll help you keep a track through the year of how you are doing on them as well. We’re going to give some time now for you to start thinking about these things in your groups. You don’t need to finish it today, but to start thinking and talking them through will help you when you make some time at home this week. Questions Think of 3 things that you would like to achieve this year - In which ways would you like to grow in your relationship with God?
Questions Think of 3 things that you would like to achieve this year - In which ways would you like to grow in your relationship with God?
Ok, so hopefully you’ve come up with a few ideas of things that you’d like to achieve and grow in this year. A few things which are on my heart for us all to be doing this year are up on the screen… For us to be hungry for intimacy with God If we’re going to spend more time with God, reading our Bibles and praying, it can’t be a chore, because if it is we just won’t do it. If we’re no more excited about doing these things than we are putting the hoover round for Mum, then it’ll just get boring. The Holy Spirit is what we need to help us with this. It stirs our hearts to love God and to worship Him. We need to be full of the Holy Spirit to live a Christian life. A really good thing to do to start each day is to ask the Holy Spirit to fill you up and guide you in the things that God wants you to do. Like I said earlier, my experience is that the more time I spend with God, the more time I want to spend with Him. The same will be true for you as you get to know him more and more. 2. Desire to grow in relationship with others A big part of being a Christian is our relationship with other people. God has called his church to be a united body of people and that includes us in the Youth. What are some of the ways that you think we can do to grow in relationship with each other in the Youth?
What are some of the ways that you think we can do to grow in relationship with each other in the Youth?
3. Eager to be effective witnesses in everything we do 1 Corinthians 1:31 says “Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” Everyday we have opportunities to show and tell the world of God’s goodness and love. They will come in different ways, sometimes with our words and sometimes with our actions. Lets be a people who pray for these opportunities and are excited to take them. 4. Our personal relationship with Jesus is essential for the church Andy said in his sermon last week how important it is for us all to be growing in our personal relationship with God. As a church we are growing, but it is important that we all grow together, one by one as well as collectively. It is exciting to think about taking on our own building one day, but God has made clear that he will provide “A house of prayer for a people of prayer” In order to receive all that God has for us as a church, it is really important that we each have our own relationships with God.
So I thought it would be helpful for us to think about a few practical things that we can get into this year to help us grow in God. We’re going to look at a few suggestions which we can take away and think about.
Bible Study Groups Meeting up with friends outside of organised Youth meetings and church is a really good way of encouraging each other and being encouraged to spend time reading our Bibles and praying. Often doing these things together is easier and more fun than doing them on our own. It can help to read the Bible in a group, for example, because sometimes there’ll be parts you don’t understand, that maybe one of your friends do understand and can help you with. You can do the same for them with other parts. One idea is to pick one of the books of the Bible, one that you’d really like to read and get a group of friends who will commit to reading it. You each read a few chapters of the book, then meet together to talk about it, what you found interesting, helpful or what you need help understanding. Why not chat about it over pizza or combine it with a games night afterwards? What we want to do is bring reading the Bible into our everyday lives, so one good way is to share it with friends. We can also use these times to pray for each other. We really need to get hold of how important it is to pray about the everyday issues that we face and to break the formality and awkwardness that often we associate with prayer. We can talk to God as freely as we talk to each other, so as we share our lives with each other, lets also share them with God. A number of the Youth leaders meet or in the past have met with a few of their friends on a regular basis like this, so if you’re thinking about starting one, come to talk to one of us! 2. Bible Reading Plan These are a great way of helping us read our Bibles, because it gives us a little bit to read everyday. The Bible is MASSIVE and you look at it and think, I can’t possible read all that! But reading plans break it down into just a few chapters a day – which is easy to do! There are some really cool Reading Plans as well, and they don’t all just go step by step through chapters, but some of them explore different themes and topics which you can choose from. I’d really encourage all of you to be working through a plan, so to make it easy for you, we have some that we’ve brought along today for you to take home. Nicola has got them all, so see her at the end and you’ll be able to choose which one you’d like. 3. Prayer Journal Writing a journal is a good way of recording the cool things that you have learnt from reading the Bible, things you feel God has spoken to you or things you have learnt at Youth meetings or church. Sometimes it’s good to look back through your journal and be encouraged by the things you’ve written and the promises that God has given you. It’s an easy thing to get started. All you need is a notepad and pen that you keep by your Bible, which will remind you to do it. Or if you’re like me and like more techy things, then try out Penzu which is an online journal.
4. Accountability Having someone that you trust, respect and look up to is really important as a Christian. It’s not just something that young people have either. People of all ages all through the church have certain people that they get on with well, who they meet up with regularly to talk about how they are getting on with their walk with God. It’s not at all about making sure you’re being good enough and not doing anything wrong, but much more about having someone that you know really cares about you and wants to help you get to know God better. It should be someone that is further ahead in their Christian walk than you, so that they can give you good guidance and use their experience to help. So grab one of us Youth leaders or another adult in the church that you know well and trust and ask if they’d be happy to meet up with you to help you in your walk with God. I personally, love getting to meet up with people to help them like that and also, I have someone that I meet up with to help me too.
Questions Which of the ‘Start Something’ ideas would you like to go for? (You’re allowed to do them all if you want!) Share any other ideas that you have with the group, that will help you grow in your relationship with God this year
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