1) Deepening our relationships within our church family and..

2) Reaching out in love to the community around our church family

Let’s head down yet another path where we expleor our purpose on this earth and our relationship with others. Romans 8 says:

(Romans 8:29) For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. (NIV)

While you’re here on earth, God wants to get you ready for heaven and he wants you to grow in character. He wants you to grow spiritually. Until we begin to look more and more like his Son and Savior Jesus Christ. (I’ve preached many sermons on how this is supposed to happen….that’s not the point of today’s sermon)

Spiritual growth was never designed to happen in isolation.

God’s Word teaches that you cannot grow spiritually on your own. You have to have other Christian people in your life. You have to have other believers to help you in the process of being conformed to the likeness of Jesus. I’ve been a Pastor a long time and my experience has been, without exception:

To the degree people cut themselves off, intentionally or unintentionally, from other believers, to that degree their spiritual growth will be stunted.

The entire “didactic” teaching section of the New Testament, (not the history, not the prophetic…the letters.. epistles), the whole thing without exception is God teaching us how one Christian’s life is to grow in conjunction with other Christians lives. We could spend the next year discussing the “one another” passages but I’ll just pick one and we go from there:

(1 Thessalonians 5:11) Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. (NIV)

This command, and scores of others like it in the New Testament, is impossible to carry out unless you spend considerable time around other believers

You have to make a conscious decision that you are going to allow other Christians to take part in your spiritual growth and:

This is of the most powerful choices you and I can make. This choice lines you up with God’s reason for creating you and bringing you into this world in the first place. This doesn’t mean that everyone has to go to Seminary and become a pastor. You don’t even have to become a Sunday School teaches.

You just have to treat people the way Jesus would have. If he were wearing your shoes and living in your circumstances.

How do we do that? How do we help other people grow? How do I respond to other believers and unbelievers in a way that will point them to my Jesus?

Here’s a little secret….everybody is looking for affirmation……….. and people will do almost anything to get it. If you don’t believe that, just watch the reality shows. Look at what people do to get on TV, to get affirmed, eat worms, just so people will applaud you.

When you and I affirm other people…We’re ministering like Jesus did. We’re doing God’s work in the world. We’re representing God.

How do I do this? How do I make the choice to affirm people in everyday life?

1) You Affirm others with ACCEPTANCE.

Instead of choosing to snub people and belittle people and demean people. It’s easy to look down on people. It’s easy to act like you’re better than people. When you make the choice instead to lift people up, you will make an incredible impact in their lives.

1) We live in a sort of a put-down world. When I feel bad about myself, I try to drag other people down to my level. We tend to take our strengths and project them on other people, and notice how other people don’t quite meet up to our standards.

Every one in this room has some areas in life you are strong in…and every one of us have areas we are weak in. It’s amazing how we will pinpoint our strong areas and demean others who don’t measure up while we are conveniently overlooking our weaknesses.

I actually had a guy in this church, years ago take me out to lunch and start down a list of everything that was wrong with all the rest of you. I finally stopped him and pointed out that his glaring faults were far worse than the people he was complaining about. Some of the people he was demeaning were miles ahead of him in spiritual growth. (He never did send me a thank you note)

Let me tell you a better way to feel better about yourself. Instead of putting other people down, one of the greatest ways to feel better about who you are is to lift other people up.

Who am I? Who are you to look down on other believers? God made us. He is our father. He is our creator, and we are all going to stand before him and we need to lift each other up rather than putting each other down.

We need to remember our theology… It’s not God who accuses us. You know who the Bible says the accuser of the brethren is? The accuser is Satan. So when I spend any of my time putting other people down? I’m doing Satan’s work for him. I’m sure he thanks us for our help.

“Who is it that you have a hard time accepting?” God wants to use you in their lives to help them to grow. The fact that you have a hard time accepting them means you’re different. And the fact that you’re different means that you were planted beside each other by God to help each other grow. They probably have a hard time accepting you too.

You cannot help somebody grow and reject them at the same time.

You have to accept them like Jesus accepted you. In order to do that, you and I have to value the God-given differences and uniqueness that we all have.

Now how do you tell when you’ve accepted someone? Here’s one of the tests:

You stop insisting that they be just like you. You realize and rejoice in the fact that they’re different.

And the goal of you place in a church family is not to mold people into your image. God wants us to all be different, but were all to help people discover who God created them to be. To help people to recognize, to affirm their uniqueness.

When was the last time you put energy and effort into a relationship where you could look at somebody and say, “You know, you are really good at that.” You don’t know the difference that will make in that person’s life. Someone said that people are not like clay to be molded by us, but they are like gifts to be unfolded by us……

Not only do you affirm others with acceptance but:

2) You Affirm others with ATTENTION

Now that takes more time than acceptance. You know you can accept somebody but still ignore them. “I accept you, just stay out of my life,”

(Galatians 6:10) Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith. (NKJV)

That’s one of the benefits of being in the family of God. You get special attention.

And here’s a principle, whatever you pay attention to is going to grow. If you pay attention to my garden, it’s going to grow. If I pay attention to my kids, they’re going to grow. If I pay attention to my marriage, it’s going to grow. If you pay attention to your hair…… well maybe not.

What is the greatest gift of love? Diamonds? Flowers? Chocolate?

The greatest gift of love you can give is focused attention.

You can affirm people just by looking them in the eye. “I value you. What you have to say is important to me because you matter to me.”

And what people want more than anything else is focused attention. They want to know that their thoughts matter, that their lives matter, that they are valuable.

God pays attention to you. He says, “Even the hairs on your head are numbered”

Jesus said that the essence of relationships is not what we do for each other. And the essence of relationships is not even what we give to each other, provide for each other. The essence of relationships is how much of ourselves we give to each other, focused attention.

I would say that most of us who sitting here are experiencing time-starved relationships.

Who do you tend to overlook? It’s often the people closest to you. Who do you tend to overlook? Who is the person who is in your life all the time, but you just don’t see them because you’re too busy doing something else?

3) You Affirm others with AFFECTION. I’m talking about physical touch.

Now we’ve all read about babies, and the “failure to thrive” syndrome. That means that little infants, if they are not stroked, if they’re not caressed, if they’re not touched as they grow up, they don’t develop. They don’t grow the way that God intended for them to grow. Babies have to be touched. You want to hold them close, and they need that stimulation of skin in order to grow and development. What many people don’t know is that adults need touch to.

UCLA did a study a while back and discovered that to be a healthy, fulfilled, satisfied adult; you need 8-10 meaningful touches a day. We all have to be careful that we don’t include more in our touches than brotherly love but we must appropriately show affection to others in the family of God.

Love expresses not only through touch but words, cards, letters, acts of caring,….

(Romans 12:10) Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another; (NKJV)

4) You Affirm others with APPRECIATION.

We affirm each other’s worth with appreciation. Now appreciation means to raise in value.

If you own a home in this area you know the meaning of the word appreciation.’ It has gone up sharply in value.

If you own a car, you know the meaning of ‘depreciation,’ they lose value. The moment you drive a new car off the lot, it’s worth far less than what you paid for it.

Everything you “appreciate” increases in value.

Every time you appreciate somebody, you raise their value to you and to others.

(Colossians 4:12) Epaphras, who is one of you, a bondservant of Christ, greets you, always laboring fervently for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. (NKJV)

We know very little about Epaphras but what a great example, he is, for us. He had the discipline to always take time to pray for other people. Note what he prayed for….he prayed for people’s spiritual growth. We usually pray for people’s needs, health needs, financial needs, and we should pray for these things. But we don’t spend nearly enough time praying for people’s spiritual growth…. that their character will change to reflect the character of Jesus.

How would I pray for somebody’s spiritual growth? I found a couple of Paul’s prayer that give us insight:

(Ephesians 3:14-19) For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height-- to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (NKJV)

What a prayer