Our men's groups have begun, so I thought I would set up this blog for those of you who are unable to join us as well as a place to talk further about each lesson. This will be a summary and discussion area for us to go a little deeper in our discussion each week. Enjoy!
This weeks discussion centered around investing our lives as ambassadors. We have acquired authority by God and with this authority we have the ability to deliver God's message. There are a few things we must understand first:
1. What is the message we are called to deliver? We must have a working knowledge of God's message, which is found through His word (Bible).Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.' " (Matthew 4:4).
2. It is as disciples of Christ in the marketplace , that we are his ambassadors. A disciple is someone who has learned and been trained to lead. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age"(Mt. 28:19,20).
3. As part of our leadership role as ambassadors we are called to reconcile others to God. All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18).
Our life can be our investment into others. However we must have something to invest. We must tap into the areas of our leadership that will invest toward a positive change in the life of an individual.
As men who lead, how can we invest in others?
Feel free to add other comments.
The part that hit me the most during this lesson was "where are you investing your life?" It's interesting that some of the verses discussed were the same ones we had been talking about in previous weeks in our small group. The parable of the talents was the primary one. As men in the regular work force, we discussed what it means to practically "be ambassadors for Christ" during work.
ReplyDelete- How do we do that while selling shoes
- How do we do that while working at a country club?
- How do we do that while teaching school?
- How do we do that while cleaning teeth?
Sometimes it's hard to figure that out.
We went on to discuss the rest of our lives and how we are (or aren't) living them for Christ. One of the discussion questions was, "When I receive some extra money, say, $1,000, is my reaction to want to invest it in the kingdom or spend it on myself. I'll admit, I'm most often of the latter opinion. I think that's just an indicator of where my heart is...where I want to invest my treasure.
So far it's a fantastic study and I think the guys in our group are going to get a lot out of it.
BTW, we will NOT be discussing the next lesson (lesson 2) until next Wednesday, September 29 as our group will be meeting with some people at school to pray for it, and I feel like skipping a week of discussion wouldn't be good.