5 things God uses to Grow your Faith

This week we started using the resource by this blog titles name by Andy Stanley in our Young Adults small group.

The reason I chose it is because it has a powerful message and great teaching.

Great Teaching: Andy Stanley is one of my favourite speakers. He hits home about a lot of things and is engaging to watch and listen to.

Powerful Message: Its simple there are 5 things that God uses in our lives to grow our faith. If we are aware of them and glean from them we have a good chance to grow deeper in our intimacy with God.

The 5 Things are (All starting with 'P' so its fun and easy to remember):

1.Practical Teaching
-Listening to teaching that points us in the right direction. Not only is it God honouring but practical advice for us to follow

2. Providential Relationship
-People who direct us towards God. Maybe your parents, a colleague or that little old grandma figure who inspires your faith

3. Private Disciplines
- Yep, you guessed it. Bible reading, prayer, fasting, tithing, listening to God's voice, praising him

4.Personal Ministry
-We often like to ignore this one in the church, but we are all called to have a personal ministry. I think it is important to have a ministry you pour into in your church and outside the Church.

5. Pivotal Circumstances
-Some events in life just point us towards Christ more than others. Some of these things are good, but often they seem bad at the moment. Just remember God uses all things for his good. It might not be a good thing, but if we follow His guidance there can be some light at the end of the tunnel.

Cool things to think about. Looking back at your life seeing how God has shaped or begun to shape you.

-Kyle

Three things I learned @ Catalyst One Day

Andy Stanley, Craig Groeschel and the North Point Worship Band; the perfect set up for a one day conference.

If you have ever attended a conference and been bored, or found yourself fading in a session this conference will change your view. I sat engaged and excited for ever minute while attending the conference.

If you aren't familiar with Catalyst you should check out their conferences here.  But basically it is a conference teaching practical leadership to leaders in the church (but people in industry could learn a lot here as well).

Yesterday, some of the staff of my church attended the ONE DAY in Seattle. It was 4 great sessions hosted by Andy and Craig, with some Q&A's, conversation between the two of them and an amazing interview of Judah Smith. If you don't know Judah Smith he leads City Church in Kirkland, WA; where the conference was held.

I thought after going through this amazing experience I would share some of what I learned. I won't give it all away because you really should go to a catalyst conference yourself and soak it all in.

3 Things I learned:

1. Do for one what you wish you could do for everyone
Andy Stanley was leading a session on healthy organisational culture when he made this statement. It is counter cultural because we often hear " If I do it for you, I need to do it for everyone" Well, the truth is we don't. Jesus didn't do it, he picked a few disciples and had 3 closest to him. He only healed some people not everyone he encountered.
By helping one person we encourage them to go help someone else with something. If we try to help everyone we will stretch ourselves thin and be ineffective, but if we reach out and effectively help one we have a great impact.

2. Give life-giving feedback
I know for myself I struggle with this; both giving and receiving. When we give life-giving feedback we really really encourage a healthy culture which will crave helpful feedback. But as I also know first had when someone gives life-taking feedback it causes us to stall and really slows progress.

3. Presentation, Presentation, Presentation
This conference had excellent worship, great media and tons of great information. But one thing I am drawn to is the fact that the delivery was so good. Craig and Andy are amazing speakers! They are funny, thought provoking and engaging. When watching them I started to think about what I could glean from them. And it is this- I need to work on my craft. Everything from comedic timing, to learning to reference back to earlier parts of your talk can be learned. If I take the time to look at myself and improve on the gifts God has given me, but I am sure I can reach excellence.

What things have you been learning recently?

-Kyle

Walking on a tightwire

I used to be into slack-lining. If you haven't seen it before, it is where you take a piece of webbing or rope tension it between to points and walk along it. It is a lot harder than it looks. The slack-line wobbles, and goes up and down. If you fall sometimes it can really hurt.

Today I have been learning from an online preaching seminar thanks to preachbettersermons.com. It has been an amazing experience. The point that really has stuck with me, was given from Andy Stanley. It is this: People love tension.  I love slack-lining, why? For the same reason I love a good book, or a great movie. You want to see how the tension effects you or the person you care about.

This tension needs to play into our ministry. So often we focus on videos, and games to keep our youth engaged in ministry. While these things are fun and good, what would it look like if sometimes we held our Youth in tension through our teaching. What if we kept them on the edge of the seat.

I think about this time I was teaching about Jesus cleansing the temple. It was a lesson that wasn't going very far. Even though I had a great game before hand and brought snacks for the students to eat while I was talking, I could have stopped talking and I'm sure some of them wouldn't have even have noticed. So I decided to up the ante. I flipped a table onto the tile floor, then kicked a chair across the front of the room. A few kids screamed, the girl sitting right in front of me jumped out of her seat, almost on to the girl behind her. It was amazing, every student in the room from that moment on was sitting, listening to figure out what I was going to tell them about Jesus.

The thing was, by showing them there was some tension to resolve. Jesus wasn't happy He was serious, Jesus was becoming more lifelike.

If we mix things up once in a while, people will pay attention. And to be honest, when I am watching a sermon, or slack-lining with friends. I want to know what happens. So why don't we give our students something to get on the edge of their seats about.