Quiet Times Search

• Lost a position
• Lost his wife
• Lost a wise counselor
• Lost a friend
• Lost self-respect

• Lost hope in your relationships - God may want you to rediscover how He can meet all your needs
• Lost hope in financial stability - God may want you to rediscover how to totally depend on him
• Lost hope in someone changing - God may want you to rediscover his expectations for you
  

This life is preparation for the next - realizing this will help you live differently

• Place a higher premium on relationships
• Use your time and money more wisely
• Your priorities will become reordered

God has planted eternity in the human heart - Ecclesiastes 3:11

The closer you live to God, the smaller everything else appears

The most damging aspect of contemporary living is short-term thinking
Only time most people think about eternity is at a funeral

This world is not our home - Hebrews 13:14
Every moment in this body is time spent away from our eternal home - 2 Corinthians 5:6

The ultimate goal is to give glory to God

God's glory = the expression of his goodness and all his other eternal qualities
Through history, God has revealed his glory
God's glory is best seen in Jesus Christ

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God - Romans 3:23
I have created them to bring me glory - Isaiah 43:7
Jesus brought glory to God by doing everthing he was told to do by God - John 17:4

1. We bring God glory by worshiping him - Use your body to the glory of God - Romans 6:13
2. We bring God glory by loving other believers - Accept others as Christ accepted you - Romans 15:7
3. We bring God glory by becoming like Christ - We become more and more like him, reflect his glory even more - 2 Corthinians 3:18
4. We bring God glory by serving others our gifts - Do it all with all that God has given you - 1 Peter 4:10-11
5. We bring God glory by telling others about him - Bringing people to Christ through his grace, God receives more and more glory - 2 Corinthians 4:14

Giving glory to God will require us to change our priorities, schedule, relationships, and everything else

• 4 commandments  - deal with your relationships with people
• 6 commandments - deal with your relationships with God
• All 10 commandments deal with relationships!

Unless the Lord builds, its builder labor in vain - Psalms 127:1-2
Solomon probably knew the truth of this passage as much as anyone
He saw incrediable tragedy in his own family from the result of his father's unspiritual leadership
His family stands as a warning to all married disciples of how Satan can destroy the most precious of all human relationships

Powerful benefits of daily prayer with one another:

1. Prayer keeps your relationship spiritual focused
2. Prayer keeps us going to bed united - Ephesians 4:26-27
3. Prayer makes us more grateful
4. Prayer gives us focus and direction

Prayer in family life:

1. Nightly prayer with children from infancy
2. Daily devotionals with younger school children - 15min in the morning
3. Taking pray walks with teenage children
4. Quiet Times with one another
5. Praying as a family about major decisions and challenges
6. Praying with children after they are disciplined adds powerfullly to the impact of such training

• Brings into our experience not only love and grace of God but transforming power
• Provides us with the guidance, motivation, enabling power to reconcile our relationships with God and others
• Enables us to live with the experience of inner cleaning and the peace of God

In his torment, he sees the need of his mother and he entrusts her to John's care - John 19:25-27

Jesus let John know that he trust him and needs him to take care of his mother
God in the flesh yet her express his need to John's help

John was transformed from "son of thunder" to "Apostle of Love"
John later teaches us that if we say we love God but no our brother that we are a liar - 1 John 4:19-20

The problem with not feeling close, real, or trust is our issue

How close, real, and trusting are your relationships?

What do your relationships with people tell you about your relationship with God?

Upon hearing about the death of his close friend Lazarus, Jesus wept...

Jesus really felt the emotions that we feel
He fully divine and fully human at the same time
He knows what it is like to experience loss, pain, hurt, and fatigue

Why did he cry? Scripture does not say. Could be because:

• He felt the hurt of Mary and Martha
• He was expressing the hurt of the loss of his friend
• He was antipating his own death

Who are your deepest relationships in the church?

When we accept God's forgiveness, we are compelled to forgive others including ourselves
Not forgiving ourselves is one of the most arrogant acts we can perform

Some people spend years trying to figure out how to forgive themselves
Until God forgives us, it is fruitless exercise 
We are not God - once God forgives, forgiving ourselves is a natural step

God has promised to forgive - let us experience forgiveness, rejoice in his forgiveness and express his forgiveness in all our relationships

Jesus overcame temptation by using scripture, prayer, and he called others for encouragement from others

He deliberately sought out support and encouragement from his 3 closest friends
He also expressed his disappointment at their failure to help

We desperately need relationships for encouragement EVERY day - Hebrews 3:12-13
Tempatation comes every day

There is no excuse in an age of modern technology for getting in touch

• Relationship with is at the center of the target
• The second is like it - not far behind
• Jesus connected relationship with God to relationship with each other
• All the law and prophets hang on these two commands
• For the Jews, Law and Prophets encompassed all of God's will

• NT letter deal with relationships more than any other subject
• Carry each other's burden - burdens produced by sin
• Christians are to be involved to know what sin's others are struggling to overcome
• Helping your brother to overcome a sin is a fulfillment of the principle of Christ
• Jesus carried our burden - Isaiah 53:4-6; 1 Peter 2:24

1. Coupled with loving God
2. How we show we are disciples
3. Something to devoted to as we come into Christ
4. How we fulfill the principle of Christ
5. How we live a life worthy of the gospel and the Lord
6. Where walking in the light leads

Discipliner

Mark 3:31-35

• Jesus cared about their souls more than their feelings
• God is willing that people suffer in order to learn something for their own greater good.
• Do you allow sentimentality to rule in our relationships?

Discernment

• Jesus saw people either for him or against him.
• They were either movers for God or still needed to be moved by God.

Retreats

Mark 9:30-32

• Sometimes the only way we can truly give ourselves to the few is by making ourselves unavailable to the many.
• Retreats are a change in routine to ponder perspective to help in our personal growth.

Openness

• Jesus was very open with his disciples about difficult challenges and troubles that lay ahead for him.
• Through his openness, Jesus led the way for his disciples to be open with each other.
• Hiding produces shallow relationships and weak bonding – leads to dissolution of the group
• Few are open with troubles to someone who has never been open to them.

Unconditional Love

Mark 14:17-26

• Jesus knew yet did not treat Judas any different than he treated the other eleven.
• Conditional love puts an unbearable strain on relationships
• Unconditional gives security, wipes away fear, builds confidence, adds hope, teaches perseverance, and erases discouragement and doubt.
• The key is not to love if or because of, but to love in spite of. In-spite-of love cannot fail to make a lasting impact.

The Memorial

• Jesus died for us as individuals
• It is the forgiveness of sins, my sins.
• People need frequent reminders
• We soon forget what is important.
• The activities of life so easily distract us and we so quickly lose our convictions.

Openness

• Most are either:
  • Stoics – feelings and burdens are locked away deep inside of them.
  • Cathartics – those who dump their feelings on anybody who will listen
• Jesus practiced complete openness without making others responsible for his feelings.
• Jesus leaned on his friends, but he did not dump on them.
• Premeditated openness is a key to fostering deep, meaningful relationships

Deliberation

• Too many of us would be unwilling to persevere through a long and difficult decision-making process.
• We must be willing to put in whatever effort is required to reach the best decision.

• Swords, camouflage, six-shooters, uniforms
• Boys want to be powerful and dangerous
• Aggression is part of man’s design – God’s image (Exodus 15:3)
• They do not want to call and talk about relationships
• Boys play is a rehearsal for a bigger drama
• Life needs man to be fierce and fiercely devoted
• Every man needs to know he is powerful – be the hero

• Fights the grizzly, wins the beauty
• Recipe for fun with boys – add an element of danger
• We may fear the test, yet we yearn to be tested and discover what it takes
• If a man has lost this desire (says he doesn’t want it) does not know he has what it takes – believe he will fail the test.

• Nothing more inspiring to a man as a beautiful women
• Make you want to charge the castle, slay the giant
• Men going to war carry a photo of their sweetheart in their wallet
• Paintings on side of airplanes
• Lonely men fight lonely battles
• Where would James Bond, Robin Hood, King Arthur, Indiana Jones be without their women
• Man needs a battle to fight, he needs someone to fight for (someone in particular – women he loves)

• She wants control of the adventure
• Her relationships
• Her God
• No longer vulnerable
• Fear that no one will speak on our behalf or protect us or fight for us
• Manipulate our surroundings so we don’t feel so defenseless.

• One on who be independent choose not to / he emptied himself and became a slave - Philippians 2
• We are do be devoted to one another - philostorgos = like family - Romans 12:10

• who brings into his circle of friends - John 15:13-15
• who adopts us into his family - Hebrews 2:11
• who vows he will never leave or forsake us - Hebrews 13:5

1. Ignore the problem
2. Gossip about it to other
3. Blast a person with the truth

• 27x as a command
• 68x greetings of different forms in the NT

1. Greet one another with a holy kiss - Romans 16:16
   
2. I send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss - 1 Corinthians 16:20
3. Greet one another with a holy kiss - 2 Corinthians 13:12
   
4. Greet one another with a kiss of love - 1 Peter 5:14

1. Mind your own business - can gravitate to this view because of our own conform

• Can become busybodies instead - 2 Thessalonians 3:11
• Can become lazy - 1 Timothy 5:13
• Offering guidance, instructions, cautions, warnings, or sometimes stronger - all part of being faithful in our relationships

2. Judge not and you will not be judged

• Jesus is condemning self-righteous judging
• For those unwilling to examine the issue in their own lives
• Must care enough about each other to help each other to grow

• How to study the Bible
• How to pray
• How to be more effective with sharing our faith
• Principles for overcoming temptation
• How to conduct godly relationships

• Not just or opinion - but from the Word
• Not just our experience - must be based on the teachings of Christ