September 28, 2009 – Organic Church 4

This week we again look internally at the organic church – church the way God intended it to be. Last week we talked about the House of God and how God’s eyes are on His House and His heart is in His House but what is a house without a family? God relates to us in family terms – we are His children, He is our Father, etc. We are to view our church family in the House of God as our spiritual family and Gal. 6:10 talks specifically about that relationship.

Whether or not you have a positive view of family from your upbringing being a part of a healthy spiritual family is an important piece to your spiritual walk with God. Your church family is something to be valued and an organic churches understand this. So, here are 7 things that you gain personally/spiritually by being planted in the house of God and connected to your spiritual family (Ps. 92:13).

1. Families support each other – in good times and bad, victories and in valleys you want family around. It makes the good times that much sweeter but you know sometimes only family can comfort the best in the hard times.
2. Families grow up together – When you grow up with family it shapes and molds you into who you are going to become. It is so wonderful to be in the family of God where those relationships can do just that in Christ.
3. Families have fun together – church should be fun and we should have a great time with our family in the House of God. There is a lot to celebrate!
4. Families eat together – this is straight out of what the early church did but everyone knows something very special (sacred even) is exchanged when people “break bread” together.
5. Families don’t leave each other – when you have bought into this idea that those you go to church with are your spiritual family this truth is so powerful. You know that when things got stressful in you home growing up it didn’t work for you to go next door and have them adopt you. You had to stick it out and work it out. When things get tough family doesn’t cut and run.
6. Families work together – you know the most powerful businessman, the most educated woman, when they come home and are with family – they wash dishes, scrub toilets, change diapers. Everyone knows in order for there to be order in the home everybody has got to chip in and do their part. Being a part of a family forces you to think outside of yourself and contribute to something greater than yourself. The same is true in you spiritual family.
7. Together families reach farther – this point really dove tails with number six. Your reach is so much farther and your impact is so much greater when you are a part of a family then if you are by yourself.

So much blessing comes into your life being connected to, by being a part of, by being planted in, the house of God – being a part of the family of God. That kind of blessing an organic church knows and understands.

Have a great week family,

Jonathan

Tags: Jonathan Spuler

August 31, 2009 – Family Matters, Part 4

You can have a great family – you can have a strong marriage – you can raise great kids! Families matter to God. He has instituted them, ordained them, He has blessed them and so He is very interested in them.

Since He is interested, He has promised to do His part in helping us in the area of family matters. He has given us His Word, His Spirit and His promises for help. Now it is our turn. We have got to step up into our place in the home. As Fathers and Husbands, as Mothers and Wives!

This week we talked about a great place to start in stepping up into our proper place in our families and that is the area of Expectation AND Declaration! As followers of Christ we are all to live with expectation. Expectation is a positive vision for the future according to the Word of God or in other words, Faith. If Faith is something hoped for and not yet seen we can have Faith for a great family even if currently we aren’t where we are supposed to be – yet. Declaration is just speaking the truth in faith. Declaring what that preferable future is. Declare by faith the direction your family is going, your marriage is going, your kids are going and watch as your actions begin to line up with your words.

Have a great expectation for your family and declare it by faith this week!

Jonathan

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August 24, 2009 – Family Matters, Part 3

This week we moved onto the next phase of family – our kids. Strong families start on the foundation of strong marriages. And in parenting we all have philosophies on how best to raise our kids.

Sometimes, those philosophies are by default – what popular culture influences us to think is right or wrong about parenting. Sometimes it is shaped by what we liked or didn’t like from our upbringing. But we all have our philosophies and it is important that in parenting both the mom and the dad are on the same page in regards to what that single philosophy is in raising their children. Hopefully, our philosophy is based on what God’s vision is for our families.

God wants to partner with us in raising our kids. If they are gifts from Him we have to be good stewards of what He has given to us – and He wants to help. This idea of partnering with God is found all throughout scripture but specifically in partnering with parenting Psalms 127 shows us that.

What is God’s part in helping parents? First, He gives us His Word as the standard for what is right and wrong and we as parents are to instruct our kids in the way they should go accordingly. Second, He gives us His Holy Spirit to give us strength, discernment, direction and guidance. If our kids our gifts from God, and they are, and He has knitted them together in their mother’s womb, and He did, than He knows something about our kids and wants to show us through His Holy Spirit. It is our job as parents to pull out of our kids what God has put in them. Finally, God promises His protection over our kids – what a wonderful promise it is too.

What is our part as parents? Well, what was already mentioned in raising our kids to fear and love the Lord – to draw out of them all the potential that God has placed in them to make a difference for His Kingdom and to discipline them in that. It is our part as parents to train.

Training isn’t fun – its hard. Training isn’t done to someone it is done for someone. Just ask our armed forces if basic training is really done to them or for them. We are to train up our children in the way they should go. Psalms 127:4 shows us that in a beautiful picture of an arrow in a warrior’s hand.

Our kids are like arrows in our hands and arrows need to be aimed to be effective. Lets be good stewards of the gifts God has given us and send out our children aimed in the direction they should go and they will not depart from it.

Happy parenting everybody – with God’s help,

Jonathan

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August 17, 2009 – Family Matters, Part 2

The Bible is clear that our family’s are gifts from God. We have already talked in previous weeks of this series that marriage (the foundation of the family) is a union instituted by God – therefore it is ordained by God, sacred and holy. With that understanding, this week we focused on a major pitfall that if not addressed can devastate our marriages, the relationship with our kids and can be applied to every relationship that we have in our lives. That is the pitfall of familiarity.

The definition that I give for familiarity is treating what is holy or sacred as common. Something that is special yet over time we begin to take for granted and treat as plain or ordinary.

The Bible says in Proverbs 27:7 A satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb, but to a hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet. What this verse is saying is if you become satisfied with the intimacy in relationships you will begin to hate even the sweetness of it. But when you stay hungry even something bitter tastes sweet. That is how at 6 AM hair everywhere, drool on the pillow, bad breath and all you can still look at your spouse and love them!

The take away here is – you cant stop the pursuit. You can’t be satisfied with the level of intimacy in your relationships. You can’t get familiar with what is a holy gift and treat it as common.

People who have grown familiar in their relationships have stopped desiring to grow in intimacy. They have gotten lazy in the pursuit. The thing is, in order to keep the hunger you must continue the pursuit. Once the pursuit dies, the hunger dies and you grow familiar in your relationships and they die.

This principle of familiarity is also so important with your relationship with God (see Revelation 3). If your relationship with God is stale, if you feel that God is distant in your life, if your desire to grow deeper in Him has begun to wane…start pursuing Him again. My promise to you is that He will show up (that is God’s promise to you as well) and when you do your hunger will return and it will grow as long as you continue to pursue!

We closed our weekend with a interesting discussion about the famous marriage verses found in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians found in chapter 5. In its controversy of wives submitting and husbands loving I feel the best marriage advice ever given in the Bible has been lost. Check out our podcast for this Sunday found on our website if you want the rest of this thought. Its a good one – until then…

Stay hungry my friends,

Jonathan

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August 10, 2009 – Family Matters, Part 1

There is no real debate that the family is under attack in our culture. You can see it in many areas – from the divorce rate, to domestic violence, to the questioning of what the definition of marriage really means. When you look at the fact that God, when He created the world, did not create a church but a family first and how the enemy immediately went after the family from the get go shows the importance of family. Strong marriages are the backbone for every family and strong families are the backbone to healthy societies, healthy communities, and healthy churches. That is why this series on Family Matters.

If great marriages make strong families we start there. Like what was already mentioned, God created/ordained marriage from the beginning. When God created man and woman and put them together He infused that ordained union with power (see Matt. 18:19, Duet. 32:30, Eccl. 4:12). There are 4 things that suck the life out of this powerful union called marriage. These things we must be vigilant in to have strong marriages.

1. Keep an understanding for the reverence in marriage – that it is made before God, two people committing to each other for life. The reverence in marriage is never talked about or celebrated in our culture and it needs to be. If marriage is ordained by God then it is holy/sacred and must be treated with reverence.

2. Stay away from selfish ambition and selfish desire – (II Tim. 3) selfish people make horrible friends and they make worse life partners. Marriage isn’t a 50/50 relationship it is 2 people giving 100% of themselves to each other 100% of the time.

3. Keep out unforgiveness and bitterness – (Heb. 12:14) The root of bitterness is destructive to anyone’s life and it effects everyone around you when you have it. Bitterness is especially devastating to a strong marriage. Hurts from past relationships, previous marriages or what was on display in the relationship of your parents carried over in bitterness will suck the life right out of your marriage and you will pass that bitterness onto your mate and your children so you must deal with it.

And then finally, 4. Wrong associations and relationships – bad company corrupts. If we tell that to our teenagers why wouldn’t it apply to us as married adults. There is so much to say here but be aware that the Bible says to leave your mother and father and cleave to your wife. A marriage relationship is between 2 people and God – there is not room for anyone else (buddies, girlfriends, in-laws or parents). Keep them out of the intimacy of your marriage or it will undermine its potency and what God created it to be.

Family Matters and it starts with strong marriages.

Can’t wait for next week,

Jonathan

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June 22, 2009 – A Promise is a Promise

Jenni did such a great job on Sunday. On her behalf, thank you for all of the positive feedback. The things Jenni had on her heart about what it means to be a dad and how that relates to our heavenly Father seem to have struck a chord. I know in our discussions leading up to the weekend and even in our men’s connect group we have been “chewing” on those thoughts. What it really means to be a dad and what we have in our relationship with our heavenly Dad.

As fathers there is so much we can learn from our heavenly Father, the acceptance we see in the parable of the prodigal son, the love He showed by giving us His Son, the sacrifice of Jesus laying down his life, that He is all powerful yet invites us to call Him daddy, the promise that He would never leave us. He is not an absentee Father and a promise is a promise.

My prayer for our church community is that we would have the courage to be the dads and husbands that we are supposed to be. But also for all of us that we would experience our heavenly Father for who He really is.

Happy Father’s Day,

Jonathan

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