Summary: <p>Revelation 2:4 4 “But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first! 5 Look how far you have fallen! Turn back to me and do the works you did at first. If you don’t repent, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place among the churches.<br><br>This is going to be a cultural message. What is culture? Culture is the values and the expression of those values in a people group. So if you are new here u get to hear about the culture we are trying to create here at GL and we invite u to be a part of creating our culture. <br><br>1 Corinthians 8 (NLT)<br>Now regarding your question about food that has been offered to idols. Yes, we know that “we all have knowledge” about this issue. But while knowledge makes us feel important, it is love that strengthens the church. 2 Anyone who claims to know all the answers doesn’t really know very much. 3 But the person who loves God is the one whom God recognizes. <br><br>1 Corinthians 8 The Message (MSG)<br>1-3 The question keeps coming up regarding meat that has been offered up to an idol: Should you attend meals where such meat is served, or not? We sometimes tend to think we know all we need to know to answer these kinds of questions—but sometimes our humble hearts can help us more than our proud minds. We never really know enough until we recognize that God alone knows it all.<br><br>1 Corinthians 8 English Standard Version (ESV)<br>Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. 2 If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. 3 But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.<br><br>Should you eat food offered to idols? How should you treat those who do or don’t?<br>There is a kind of Knowledge-Pride-Lovelessness-destruction (hurts people)<br>There is an imaginary knowledge that leads to pride.<br>There is a true knowledge that leads to building people up.<br>Loving God is interchangeable with a true knowledge.<br>So true knowledge leads to two things-loving God and loving people.<br><br>James 3:13–18 13 If you are wise and understand God’s ways, prove it by living an honorable life, doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom. 14 But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don’t cover up the truth with boasting and lying. 15 For jealousy and selfishness are not God’s kind of wisdom. Such things are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. 16 For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind. <br>17 But the wisdom from above is first of all pure. It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and the fruit of good deeds. It shows no favoritism and is always sincere. 18 And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness. <br><br>Romans 14:19 19 So then, let us aim for harmony in the church and try to build each other up. <br><br>Romans 15:1b–3a We must not just please ourselves. 2 We should help others do what is right and build them up in the Lord. 3 For even Christ didn’t live to please himself.<br><br>2 Corinthians 10:1 Now I, Paul, appeal to you with the gentleness and kindness of Christ<br><br>Knowledge makes us prideful, but love builds people up.<br>We demonstrate we love God by loving people.<br>We can love people we disagree with.<br><br>The Servant Leader has priorities in order:<br>Divine Perspective<br>Church Perspective<br>Individual Perspective<br>Personal Perspective<br><br>We are not going to do away with conflict in our lives or in the church, so what’s important is how we manage it.<br><br>In order to build each other much we must value at least 3 things:<br>Acceptance<br>Confidentiality<br>Honesty<br><br>Acceptance, but is acceptance of people, especially sinners, biblical?<br>First, we are ALL sinners. <br>Second: Romans 5:8 8 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.<br>If people are going to be honest with us, the 3rd thing, they must experience acceptance, the 1st thing.<br>Acceptance means we can love people we don’t agree with.<br>If you can’t love and accept people that you have things against or that you don't agree with how will you ever be able to love your neighbor, or your enemies?<br>Acceptance of people can be demonstrated by:<br>Remembering their name<br>Remembering the details they share with you<br>Making eye contact.<br>What does it mean when someone won’t make eye contact with you? It means they so associate you with your actions that they disagree with that they cannot look at you. Failure to make eye contact can be an expression of rejection.<br>Being positive with the person and celebrating them and their accomplishments.<br>People’s accomplishments are really the image of God being worked out in them, so in celebrating their accomplishments we are really celebrating God, and in this way our love of God flows out into a love of people.<br>What is the opposite of Acceptance? Rejection. <br>Without Acceptance of those we disagree with community cannot happen. <br>“Us 4 and no more, bar the door.” Its only us 4 because I could only find 3 other people who agree with me on all points, but I even have my doubts with them. <br>This is sometimes why a small church is small. <br>Creating an environment of acceptance is how we create a safe environment, an environment where discipleship can happen. Creating an environment of acceptance is how we leave conditional love behind. Its says, “I will love you, even though I don't agree with you.”<br>If you can only love and accept people who are just like you, you are not going to have anyone to build up or disciple, and you eventually will end up alone.<br>Acceptance is a fragile thing.<br>We protect people from feeling rejected by celebrating everyone equally.<br>When we only hang out with our friends at church, yes we are accepting those people but this requires us to reject everyone else, and the result is that we have cliches in the church. <br>Our God is a pursuing God. He leaves His cliche to pursue people who are more unlike Him than like Him. <br>When we form cliches, we deny Romans 5:8.<br>When we understand what Romans 5:8 says about God, do you know what we do when we come to church? We look around for the persons who are new, or who are by themselves, or who are walking out the door because no one is talking to them. Why? Because the love of God seeks to bring people in to community, the love of God pursues people. This is why we give up the idea that we can’t talk to people because we have nothing in common with them. No, its not easy to talk with people you don’t have a lot in common with but neither was it easy for Jesus to get up on that cross and die for people that He didn’t have a lot in common with. <br>Do you realize that when we create exclusive cliques we are actually passively abusing people? How so? The essential property to any relationship of abuse is that one of the parties has a privileged status, that is to say, one person is superior and the other is inferior.<br>You say, “Yes, but this person does evil things.” We all do evil things but guess what, one of the gracious things God has done for us is that He has established that HE is the righteous judge. We don’t have to be the ones that exercise judgement or vengeance, because He promises that He will do it. The result is that we are left with a dependency on the Holy Spirit. Sometimes I think the Holy Spirit doesn’t work because He sees that we have taken things into our own hands, and in doing so we actually deny the power of the Holy Spirit, and God’s timing. <br>Acceptance means we are going to be patient with people because God is patient with people. Sometimes the judgement He brings takes generations.<br>We protect people from feeling rejected by shutting down gossip.<br>Gossip- idle talk or rumors especially about the private affairs of others, tattling. casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details which are not confirmed as true.<br>Is there a conflict? Yes. Is this something we need to bring the other person in here to talk about? No. Then we don’t need to talk about it at all. End of story.<br>You are either seeking to obey the Matthew 18 process or you are involved in being divisive.<br>We only talk to people who are either part of the problem or part of the solution. Either way, we are seeking reconciliation, not division. <br>We protect people from feeling rejected by privately addressing individual issues as they arise.<br>Confidentiality (This is what we’ve been talking about on the last two points)<br>When we love people by demonstrating that we accept them regardless of their behavior or beliefs the result is that they feel safe with us, and they begin to share things with us.<br>Maintaining confidentiality is how we get to the 3rd thing, honesty.<br>People will share things with us that are above our pay grade and we won't know all the answers, but here we need to remember that we are not the Savior but we are here to point them to the Savior, Jesus. When they see us not know all the answers they see us exercising faith and this encourages them to exercise their own faith and to trust ultimately not in us but in Jesus. <br>We must maintain the balance between maintaining confidentiality and knowing when to seek help. This is centered around 3 things. <br>Being hurt<br>Hurting others<br>Hurting themselves<br>Honesty<br>We we give people acceptance and they know we can maintain confidentiality, the result is we have created an environment where honesty can take place.<br>People will not be honest with us, until we are honest with them.<br>Maintaining our testimony with people doesn’t mean we have to make them think we are perfect people. Rather, they should be able to see our struggles but know that we bring our struggles to Jesus.<br>Parents, create this culture and environment in your home when your children are young, and they will be honest with you when they are teenagers.<br>Honesty means people can be themselves, share their doubts, ask you hard questions, and admit to you their struggles.<br>Getting to the place where people can be honest with us is how we create a culture of discipleship. <br>If people can’t be honest with us, because they will feel rejected or that we can’t keep their confidences, then we will never see where they need the Gospel applied to their hearts. <br>If they can’t share their doubts about their faith with us, and their struggles with sin with us, then they are forced to do the Christian life alone.<br>If people can’t ask us the hard questions, they are going to ask someone else.<br>If they cannot share their struggles, then the struggles stay in the darkness where they can thrive.<br>Church should be a place where you can ask hard questions, not just a place where you have to be very confident in your faith in order to be accepted.<br>Loving people doesn’t mean we have to set them straight on every issue right away, even if we feel strongly about the things they are involved in.<br>Honesty also means we are free to admit when we don’t know the answer to their questions. We can say “I don’t know.” Remember that our dependency is on the Holy Spirit, not to be the Holy Spirit.<br>It’s a Process<br>Building up people in love is a process. There is no finish line, or trophy that says “congratulations, you are now finished with growing to be like Jesus. <br>Building up people in love is a process that happens over time by shaping, crafting, and molding people by applying the Gospel to their life experiences.<br><br><br>So we are seeking to create a church community that is not just for the few and the committed.<br><br>What if a farmer only planted seeds randomly.<br>What if an athlete only exercised when he felt like it.</p>
