Notes: Be Part Of Something Great

By Chris G: Notes from JP's message at The Porch (April 26, 2011)

In all of us, there's something that wants to create something big & to belong to something big.

The Bible is the all time best-seller. Christianity is growing and will never end or stop.

What it looks like to be part of the greatest movement in history, Acts 16:6-34

• writing from Rome to Philippi, a place without a large population of Jews, to whom he normally appealed and with whom he began ministry

• Lydia: fashionista, first believer in Europe, first member of the church in Philippi

• fortune-telling slave girl likely was the second believer in Europe

• the girl's masters throw Paul & company in jail

• earthquake opens the jail doors

• jailer starts to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped

• jailer treats their wounds and believes with his house

• these are the first three believers of Europe

1. We all desire to do something great with our lives, Philippians 1:1-2
   

But how?

• "servants" = slaves (of Jesus)

• The first reason God used Paul: Paul was fully available & submitted to God

• Are you ready & available to God?

• 2 Chronicles 16:9a

• "in Christ": people with Christ in common

• "grace and peace": there is never peace without grace

  • before there is peace, there must be grace

• sin robs us of our creativity

• we are stuck in this mundane routine and then our life is gone

1. God desires to do something great through you, v3-6
   

• God is up to something

• it's bigger than you

• He is going to finish what He started; it's a process

• rely on Him, lean into Him

• The second reason God used Paul: Paul loved people with deep affection

• it's impossible to love God without loving His people

• this isn't the "prosperity gospel", because it isn't about you; it's about God

• when leverage everything for Him, you will experience life like you've never felt it

• JP's testimony about the first two years of his marriage

  • they agreed to worship God together and let the Spirit conform them both
  • the number of marriages submitted to the Spirit that have failed is zero

• trust the Spirit of God

• find someone who loves Jesus and marry them

1. We have the opportunity to be a part of something bigger than us, v7-11
   

• we worship our commonalities in interests, schools, etc more than we find it in Christ

• God wants us to see past our differences and be friends in Christ

• let's carry this torch together; this is who we are

• JP met a woman in Africa who was so excited to meet another follower of Christ

Practical application: be part of a church

• Paul wrote the "church" in Philippi, Colossae, Galatia, etc

Closing story of a missionary to Cambodia

• every village shut him out until the last

• the last was so glad he came

• they had been waiting for him for 20 years (1979-1999)

• after being forced to dig their own mass graves in 1979, they began to pray to the God who hung on the cross

• when they turned around, their captors were gone

• they had been waiting to hear more about that God ever since...