Soul Revolution

 

You’ve heard it all before… The promises out there for a better life get tiresome after awhile, because you know they don’t deliver. However, they do touch on a profound and inescapable truth: you were created to live out a rewarding, richly-textured relationship with God and others. Deep down, you long to experience that kind of life. But how? Based upon the teachings Jesus gave the last night before he went to crucifixion, SOUL REVOLUTION is about learning to do life with God moment by moment in community with others. It’s about developing a habit of continuous conversation with God, willing to do his will, becoming all God intended you to be.

Inside / Outside

Inside / Outside Series

it would take miracle …to heal this hurt

Four steps to healing our wounds.

1.  Reveal them
2.  Don’t stop living.
3.  Release those who hurt you.
4.  Consider God’s purpose for your pain.

it would take a miracle …to heal this family.

4 Healthy Family Essentials

1.  Practice forgiveness on a regular basis.
2.  Become aware of your own weaknesses.
3.  Pay attention to the little things.
4.  Put critcal things on project status.

What could I change about me to make our family a better family?

Vending Machine: How Am I Interacting With God? Week 4: Healthy

How do we treat God for who He really is–instead of an object?

How we avoid giving God our “leftovers”–instead of our best?

How have you been learning to be “satisfied” in God and with God? 

Vending Machine: How Am I Interacting With God? Week 3: Manipulative

What does it mean to “manipulate” God?  

Think in terms of working on a vending machine to get something out of it that you didn’t pay for.  Reaching up the dispenser to grab a product that isn’t fairly yours.  Ever tempted to rip off the machine?

 How do we treat God like a vending machine by trying to manipulate him?

 How does the topic “the fear of the Lord” hit you?  What’s your respect level for God?  Where do you experience disrespect for him–where does it show up for you? 

 

Vending Machine: How Am I Interacting With God? Week 2: Frustrated

Let’s interact on any of the following questions–or others your may have:

• How do we deal with our frustration or anger with God?
• What is the danger of staying angry with God?
• How does one step close to God after being frustrated–what’s involved?
• How does a person analyze his or her expectations to make sure they align with what’s real about God and how God operates?
• How do I figure out whether or not I am going about a particular thing in “God’s way”? 
• Where are you perhaps not making the most of the days you have with the people that you care about?

Vending Machine: How Am I Interacting With God? Week 1: Non-Commital

It’s easy to be overly casual, even lazy, about interacting with God and having a spiritual life that is actually “a life”–one that is alive, active, vibrant, fulfilling! 

• In what ways do we avoid commitment?  Why do we do this?
• Why is it easy when faced with choices to never actually make a choice, to never get around to taking the next step?
• What is it about us that makes it easy to get stuck in the same place?
• How does having a “compartmentalized” life play into being non-commital?
• What is the difference between “going to church” and “being the church”?

Week 6: Today is our live Q & A Session: Submit your questions here!

Feel free to discuss throughout this next week.  It’s been a great series–thanks for interacting!

Visit rlcblog.wordpress.com for next week’s series, “vending machine: how do I interact with God?”  and ongoing rlc blogging!

Week 5: The Blindfolded Elephant – The Bible

In John 20, Thomas revealed his struggle with a big hurdle to faith–and Jesus reached out to him, meeting him where he was, but challenging him upon receiving answers, to believe.  (It seems to me that in the church, Thomas has been used as a negative example of doubt instead of an example of Jesus reaching out and communicating with someone who had barriers to belief.) 

 

Today church people forget or simply don’t realize that a large portion of those in our society, and those coming into our churches, don’t automatically accept the reliability, authority, and truth of the Bible.  People have struggles and questions on the issue.  How can we reach out to this like Jesus did to Thomas?  How does this challenge those of us who are Christ-Followers to value and use the scriptures we hold so dearly?  Do we read them and study them and live by them–apply them to our daily lives?

 

In this message we addressed the following serious questions that people have:

 

1. How can we know that this bible is truly of God and not a human invention?
2. Hasn’t the Bible been distorted by human writing methods over hundreds of years?
3. Aren’t there errors in the thousands of copies and translations?
4. How did we get this compilation of the books that we call the Bible?
5. Can we trust the men who wrote the various parts of the Bible?

   

 

What do you think?