8. Forever Connected

Read Revelation 22:6-17

When we live the life of power and connectedness we see that God does the work. The journey we lead here, as we keep that mindset, reveals to us the intricacies of God. His Spirit connects to us and we walk this life, glorifying as He leads us, we live a life and then the time comes for the outcome of this life when we join Christ in Heaven forever. The joy that fills our heart will be unexplainable. Imagine reaching Heaven and meeting face to face with an old friend, I imagine that the feeling would be glorious. Conversely, if you just prayed a prayer and did not live the life I imagine the feeling would be similar to a nervous trip to the principal’s office when you were young but with much more concern for you to writhe around in. You aren’t meeting your old friend, but the judge. While those who are close are also facing the judge, the judge is someone we have known well for quite some time and we understand He has worked out the deal.

For most of us, we believe that now and the time when we meet God after this life on earth is quite a way off. Of course we don’t know that for sure. Let’s not forget though, this journey is the beauty of this connectedness, so how do we protect it? How do we continue? How do we make this happen? I have no specific answer, but we keep asking those questions and we keep seeking an answer. How I connect may offer a good suggestion to others, however, I may connect better one way that you do and vice versa. I connect best in silence, other with music, some while reading the Word, others while journaling. The point is that you seek it out; you search from your heart for your answer. We are built differently; we enjoy different things. That is the beauty of His creation. So similar, yet so different, yet all unified in our need for this connectedness with our Creator.

The beauty is also; once we truly are connected…everything changes…it doesn’t mean we become perfect. What it does mean is that the things we may try so hard to do or stop doing on our own power, we turn over to Him. Once this happens He takes over our life, and before we know it, the struggles we used to wrestle with and have no victory over are suddenly not that much of a problem. Stumbles still occur, but it is much different.

I hope you are encouraged with this journey we are all on, and the journey that you are on with God. He loves you in a way that is profoundly unexplainable. I hope this weekend has shown you that. I hope that what you have learned this weekend has shown you that this is YOUR journey to discover the many avenues that God wants to be connected with you. He is desperate to have connection with you, I pray that you become desperate for you time with Him as well.

1. What has changed?

2. How do you want to impact or change the world?

3. Explain what new thing you have learned this weekend about God’s love and desire to be connected to you (if you have learned anything new).

7. Restored Connection

Read Galatians 5

This connection comes from our understanding our brokenness, understanding the crisis that we come to without God’s Spirit working in us. Seeking a trip to Heaven as the total Christian experience is shallow and ineffective. It is unfulfilling, unfruitful, and disheartening. There is no power in a Christian life that has no connection. When we come to a place of understanding how ineffective it is for us to try to live this Christian life on our own abilities, the better.

However, what does a life look like that is connected, a life that understands…truly understands, God is doing the work through us? This is where we see the power, the change, and the true connection. This is where we see victory; this is where we find the beauty in God’s plan because He reveals it to us. He reveals it to us, because we understand He must do it. This is where we begin to learn and see how powerful trusting God is, this is the place where we see faith come alive and realize there is so much depth to what faith is. This is where we see a glimpse of the life that God wants for us.

This connected lifestyle is where we feel the presence of God surrounding us, and even though we go through tough times, we truly feel that He is there; because He is, but now we experience it. This is the place where your relationship with God is not just positional but experiential, this is the place where you don’t just call yourself a Christian, you are living with God living through you…you experience Him in your life. With this is great power.

Imagine approximately one hundred and twenty people experiencing this power, which is the number of followers Christ left behind, and from that the world has known of Christ for centuries. What could He do with thirty people in our area? I don’t want to become cliché, but what if thirty peoples heart broke for what breaks God’s heart? They banded together to be the change? What would that look like? What if we lived our life as a sermon to those around us, not by the neat ideas we could come up with but we lived our lives connected to God’s Spirit and let Him live the life through us?

What would a group of teenagers look like that came together realizing, I mean really realizing, that if God wanted to, He could change the world through them. Do you believe that? The world? Nothing is impossible with God. What if we were hungry for that? I imagine, a group of students that had this hungry, God led desire, could do so much damage to mediocrity and all that the enemy tries to attack us with that we would see lives changed by the hundreds, dare I say thousands? Millions? Who knows, but do we really believe that God, through a connected life could do that?

I have resolved to do continually work towards this connection. I believe God can take me, and all my mess, and blow my mind as I continually seek to be connected and live my life given to Him. I believe that is what he wants from you. I believe He wants to be connected to you, work through you, for His glory. I believe He would love to blow your mind with all that he has planned for you. I believe He wants you to not live your Christian life by the pre-conceived notions, but He wants you to allow Him to live His life through you.

I believe In God’s power, and I believe in God’s power through you.

Do you?

When the connection that God intended to have with mankind is restored in a person’s life, look out, because there is no telling what God might do through them.

That, my friend is so exciting…I don’t have human words for it.

1. What can you do to get more connected with God?

2. If you had all the money you needed, all the resources you need, everything, what would you do?

3. Give me 1-2 things that have excited you about God in the studies we have been doing.

6. The Deeper Connection

Read Romans 8:1-17

Here is where the beauty comes in. Thus far we have been discussing in these chapters, matters that discuss this connection between God and others, but He also wants you. It may not seem that way, but He does. I understand this may all seem somewhat foreign to you, this connection that we have been talking about is still happening. The Spirit of God, the almighty God, the loving Creator, the One who sacrificed of Himself to break the barrier, the One who broke Himself to heal our brokenness.

This is for available for all, but we must realize, it is for us, it is for you…you.

He wants you to want Him. He wants you to want to hear from Him. He wants you to want to connect with Him. There is nothing you can make happen or conjure up, just be open. Realize that He has so much that He wants to share with you. How He feels about you, He wants to direct you in the matters you are confused, He wants to show you so much in His Word, in His creation…by His Spirit. He wants to be with you. Just like I mentioned before, we often make God out to be someone “out there” we may not say that but we feel it. We must ask Him to reveal to us that He is here and now, and realize, despite how we feel that He IS here!

This is contrary to how we communicate in our version of normal. We communicate in ways that are very material and we expect concrete response. When we talk face to face we physically see people, when we text or type on a website we see the letters of response, even if we talk on the phone we hears audibly a physical response. With God, it isn’t physical necessarily, it is spiritual. It may connect with us in an emotional way, in a connection with our conscious, in a motivation, and in ways that are absolutely unexplainable. It is a God thing that we will never fully understand.

That is the beauty of this connection.

How do we do it? How do we connect? I cannot give you an exact answer because it works differently for everyone as we are individuals. I know we must search for Him, and not in a way that is based on how good of a person we are. We must search for Him in a way where the desperation meets a hungry search because we understand in that desperation how depraved and broken we are. If we have no understanding of our brokenness, we risk the ability to connect. Why? Because if we don’t understand how broken we are, we are being prideful in thinking we are doing fine on our own.

God resists that…

…but, God loves a humble person. If we are selfish enough to believe that we don’t really need this connection because we said a prayer so we are going to Heaven and really that is all we care about…we have completely missed it. Heaven is the byproduct of this journey, not the motivation. The motivation is to be reconnected with our Creator and letting Him use us to glorify Himself through us.

Heaven is not the motivation…it is the byproduct, it isn’t the point of a Christian life…it is the outcome. This is a concept that is lost on many of those who call themselves believers. Instead of asking, “if you were to die tonight, would you know where you would go (heaven or hell)?” Maybe we should be asking, “If you knew you had 20 years to live, what life would you live?” Christ said to “Follow Me,” He didn’t say, “Pray this prayer so you can get in!” He wants us to connect, live life with Him, let Him bring us to a place where we can live life to the fullest as He planned for us to.

We let Him have…us. We seek the connection. We long for the chance to glorify Him. We prepare by continually drawing closer to God by letting go of self. This life isn’t about us, it is about connecting to Him because we believe that is His desire and the design He has for us. We let God be our personal God, not just the “out there” God who is punching our get out of hell free cards. Let Him connect; lay your life open before Him. We often try to pull off the “Adam and Eve hiding in the trees “bit, but we have to remember, they were hiding because they had lost the connection.

1. What is the best way for you…you personally…to connect to God

2. What is your biggest hindrance?

3. Are you willing to hear things from God that are scary? That may cause you to have to change things in your life that are important? Are you sure?

5. The Ability To Reconnect

Read Colossians 1:9-23, Acts 2

Christ made the once for all time sacrifice, there was an understanding that God connected with us. The issue was, now what? He was gone again. What was mankind to do? Those who followed Him most closely forgot that Christ said He would send a Helper and said that we would do greater things than He did. Greater things? How is that possible? There was a time of celebration in Jerusalem (the capital of Israel) and many people came from all over to this celebration.

Something happened…

Something very big…

God connected with those who believe.

Think about this, every since Adam and Eve, man had not had the connection. Christ came and a few people in this world had a connection with God, now…anyone…anyone who believed in Christ could have a connection. You see, when God created mankind he also gave us a spirit. He gave us an inner person, if you will, that guides and directs us for better or worse. The reason everything changed is because, God sent His Spirit to connect with ours.

This changed everything.

This meant that we could ask God what to do and feel His presence guiding us in our decisions. In times of necessity, God would speak to us and point us to where we should go. As we read His Word, He can help us discern what it is saying. We just need to seek Him and He meets us. This is amazing. If you have ever experienced the presence of His Spirit, how can you describe it? What words can you use? As an example of this major movement of the Spirit, the first movement, God’s Spirit connected with His followers and gave them the ability to speak in many different languages. Remember I said, people came from all over the place to Jerusalem? They heard the truth of God in their native tongue. Keep in mind, these followers of Christ didn’t speak other languages.

The Spirit spoke through them.

Can you imagine that? Take a minute and picture that.

A disciple gets up and feels as though He must speak out about the truth of Christ, he goes to open his mouth and He begins to speak Chinese or maybe a tribal language from Africa. The astonished look as the first follower spoke must have been priceless. The feeling of speaking in that language, and then doing so with authority, not knowing how this was happening but the words flowing from your mouth with comfort. Amazing.

Many came to know Christ, and therefore, become connected to God through His Spirit. What a powerful display of what connection can do. God plugging Himself into the human spirit, connected, energized, glorifying Himself through His creation as we were intended to. It wasn’t the same as the original connection, but what a powerful connection. Reunited and it feel so good. There is power when God connects with us. God gave them the ability, and the beautiful thing is, we have the ability too. The followers prayed and sought Him, when you seek Him, you will find Him and His Spirit will connect you.

1. Think about it, what can God…plugging Himself into you do

2. Explain it to me as if I was a non-believer, How does this Holy Spirit thing work?

3. What are your thoughts on connection with God?

4. The Plan

Read John 1:1-18

The thought of a God desperate for anything is foreign to us as a whole. God enjoys two things, receiving the glory due to Him and the love of His creation. That is the beauty of His plan to bring us back into a restored relationship. His plan would not only conquer His enemy and ours, it would bring a way for us to have fellowship and be connected again as we should be. The plan would be to take our brokenness, the fractured people that we became when Adam and Eve sinned and break Himself in order for us to be restored.

Before that happened God instituted a sacrificial system. If a person sinned, they had to make a sacrifice. There were many variances of sacrifice, all to cover sins in a temporary way. While I do not believe it wise to make light of this because of it foreshadowing of Christ’s coming, I do want to focus on the sacrifice that God made on His part. The sacrificial system that was set up was based on man sacrificing for his own sins, the plan that God had would be Him paying the price we could not. One was temporary, the other eternal…once for all. One covered our brokenness temporarily the other would fix it permanently.

This system was not the original plan or a perfect world, and God knew of a better plan than the sacrificial system that was in place. The connection was still broken; the brokenness was not fixed with the sacrificial system but it was a foreshadowing of what had to take place. Something greater than a lamb would have to be sacrificed. Something would have to be given to draw mankind back to God. For God and mankind to be reconnected…

…He would stand in our place.

Where we were broken, He would be.

This was no easy task; God would send Himself, in flesh to earth to live life with the mankind that He created. While here, He would live a perfect sinless life that no one else could, then He would die. His sinless life would satisfy the requirement or price that was needed to be paid so mankind could be reunited with God. Can you see His passion? His desire to bring us back to that connection? His desire would bring Him glory and honor and in the same breath bring the brokenness to an end. God had a plan. He would come from Heaven to earth, leaving the splendors of His unfathomable home, to walk this dirty earth that He created but we had made into something most foul, a cesspool of sin and human depravity. He would live here in this mess we had created of His creation, live as we were always intended despite mankind, and become broken. This was necessary to reconnect us.

As amazing as this plan is, it is much deeper. It is a far greater plan than we could ever understand fully. It is a God sized plan, and only He could work it out. He did so, perfectly. God carried out His plan as Christ died for our sins, rose again after three days, and later ascended back to His home in Heaven. That part of the job was complete. The barrier was removed; sin lost its hold on those who accepted Christ as Savior, as the One who died for their brokenness.

But there is more that God accomplished...

1. Have you ever thought about God’s plan and how elaborate it really is

2. Do you often sit and think about the magnitude of what God did? Do you His desire to be connected? In what ways

3. Take a moment, think about this thought, “God … broken” and write down what comes to your mind.