But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.

-Revelation 2:4

I fell in love with Jesus at the tender age of five. With as much Bible knowledge as my little mind could understand, I knew Jesus loved me and I wanted to love Him back.

In kindergarten I had uncharacteristic boldness when talking about Jesus. I happily raised my hand to suggest “Jesus” as a “J” word when we got to that letter in the alphabet.  I raised my hand again to correct the teacher in her spelling of the beloved name!  (She had tried to put two s’s in the middle: Jessus.)

Another time in the same year, my friend came over to play one day and ended up begrudgingly helping my family unpack from a recent move.  I encouraged her that maybe we would get a treat from the prize box.  She replied, “Yeah, cross your fingers.”  Having never heard that expression, I was confused and said, “No, we should pray about it.” She had never heard that before, and by the end of the day she had fallen in love with Jesus as well.  We never did get that treat from the prize box, though…

My passion for Jesus has never died, but there have been times in my life when Jesus’ rebuke was meant for me personally.  Getting out of those dry times of lackluster love has always started with sheer discipline.  Just as Pastor Dave mentioned on Sunday, “if you want to love your car, wash it every day.”  Setting aside significant, uninterrupted, daily time with God has been the key to bringing vitality back into my relationship with Jesus every time I wander.

It feels like work at first.  It feels almost hypocritical, like you’re just going through the motions.  But when we stick to it, our hearts begin to realize where our treasure really lies.  If you’re in that place of lost passion, I join Pastor Dave and Jesus Himself in urging you to “do the deeds you did at first.”

If you are already burning with passion for Jesus, go further.  The message was not given mainly to individuals, but to a group of believers.  Does your small group have the passion of first love for Jesus? Do even know what that would look like in your group?  As leaders, brainstorm ways to foster this kind of love for Jesus within your group. What do the deeds of first love look like for a group?

Have you seen any growth in your small group members? Are the lesson objectives being met? Do you think these are important objectives to be focusing on?

I have one suggestion that I don’t think is in the leader’s guide: start putting together a list of accountability questions for your group members to ask each other in smaller circles of two or three. Each one has made commitments to be regularly hearing, reading, studying, memorizing, and meditating on the Word. Don’t let those be forgotten as you move onto another topic in the second module.

BTW, the second module is titled God: Who is He and What’s so Great about Him? It is due out at the end of November. There may be a lag time of a week or so between modules, for which we apologize. Plan ahead to study sermon questions or have a social night that week.

For the next several weeks, we will focus on GROWing compassionate hearts. During the holiday season there are many practical ways we can GROW compassionate hearts together. Inside this week’s bulletin, a flyer will list several opportunities for GROWing compassionate hearts.

For example:

• Does everyone in your group have plans for Thanksgiving?  If not, consider inviting them for dinner.
• Would your group benefit from having a Shoebox Party where you invite other children from the neighborhood to participate (Grab a Hand)?
• Could your group serve together and “grab a hand” of unchurched friends/family to serve with you?
• Would your group benefit from challenging another group towards the collection of food?
• Would your group simply benefit from serving or giving?
• Consider attending the upcoming “World Vision Experience: AIDS” traveling museum with your small group.

Please prayerfully consider ways that you can both Grab a Hand  and GROW compassionate hearts in your GROW group.

Raising up new leaders is hard work. But it is also highly rewarding. Consider for a moment, why did God only create the first two humans? Why start with just two? Why not create a whole city full of people? One conclusion is this: God shares with us the pleasure of creating new life—both physical and spiritual.

Imagine for a moment…how do you envision your small group in three years? Who will be attending? How many people will be attending? Who will be leading? The answers to those questions reveal your vision for your small group. Perhaps you haven’t thought much about this…I certainly haven’t thought about it enough. But there is much at stake (souls!), and each of us as small group leaders have significant opportunity to make disciples via our small groups. Consider the benefits of seizing this opportunity.

By training new leaders, we are creating capacity for more people to connect with the body of Christ…more opportunities for people to serve, more opportunities for people to participate, more opportunities for people to lead, more opportunities for people to become disciples of Jesus. These are not merely opportunities to become busy, but, much more than that, opportunities for meaningful, everlasting spiritual connection with God and with other people.

My immediate charge is to recruit, train, and equip young adults at Bethel. So, what’s my vision and passion for young adults? Consider this: the young adult population in the TriCities is growing. And God continues to bring more young adults to Bethel. In the past six weeks, we’ve had over 40 young adults express interest in a small group. Considering that we have about 150 people in young adult small groups, it represents a potential increase of over 25%. Further, we have multiple groups with more than a dozen people. With our current leaders, we do not have capacity to accommodate a 25% increase. Bottom line: we need more small group leaders and you play a critical role in training new leaders. My vision and passion is to see small group leaders work to train up new small group leaders, all for the purpose of obeying and following Jesus.

Let’s be clear: we do not need more small group leaders to accommodate more people. Rather, we need more small group leaders in order to make disciples. As such, view “raising up new leaders” as an opportunity for growth for you and the new leaders.

As a small group leader, you have a brief window of opportunity to positively influence the people in your group to become disciples of Jesus. Why not view your group as a training center for new small group leaders? Pray and identify those whom God wants you to train. Give them opportunities to lead and set them up for success within your group.

I had allowed some changes in my health to come between me and my time with God.  After several weeks of this, during that sermon I was convicted that I needed to get back into fellowship with Him.  But by that time, I was already in the darkness.  To my surprise I found that I really didn’t want to step back into the light. After so many weeks of unconfessed sin, I knew there would need to be a lot of cleansing that I was reluctant to go through.  I didn’t want to see my sin in the light and be broken by it.

With an almost numb heart I went to small group on Thursday night and confessed to my accountability group.  I knew I needed to get right with God, but I didn’t want to.  They encouraged me, prayed for me, and promised to call me the next day to make sure I had taken that time with God.  Putting that out there into the light was the first step. After that, it seemed so much easier to confess to God and let Him cleanse me.  I was reminded of Ephesians 5:13-14:

But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light. For this reason it says,

“Awake, sleeper

And arise from the dead,

And Christ will shine on you.”

Daily confession and repentance keeps you in the light, and in fellowship with God and other light-walkers.  Here are a couple of resources to help you and your small group with that goal.

The first is a Confession Guide, which is a list of confession questions extracted from the book How to Develop a Powerful Prayer Life by Gregory Frizzell.  These are intended for use in personal confession time, but a few key ones could be used during group confession time.

The second is a playlist of repentance songs from my favorite bands at Mars Hill Church in Seattle.  Surrounding yourself by light-filled media - like songs, sermons, and the Bible - is a great way to keep your mind filled with the light and your heart wanting to be in the light. Here it is:

But Paul’s list is in the opposite order. Not that a knowledge of Christ is less important.  Its importance is actually highlighted by being the culmination of this list.  Everything that Paul has prayed for until now are like rungs on a ladder leading up to a true knowledge of the mystery of God, Christ Himself.

If you unwrap the logic of Paul’s prayer, you see that the knitting together of our hearts results in hearts that are encouraged.  Encouraged hearts can attain to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding.  This full assurance results in a true knowledge of Christ.

Paul uses a compelling picture of Christ as the treasure chest of God, in which all the riches of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.  A true knowledge of Christ is not knowing what the box looks like or even simply knowing how to open it.  A true knowledge of Christ is a knowledge of the treasures inside.  You’ve opened the box, you’ve seen the treasures, and you are beginning to examine each jewel, each piece of gold, each priceless item.

So how do you open the box and start studying the treasure within?  Paul, in a burst of delight in these treasures, says in Romans, “Oh the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!“  Yet Jesus gives us hope that we can indeed begin to understand these riches because He promised to send us the Holy Spirit.  In John 16:13-15, He encourages His disciples with this promise:

But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth…He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.  All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.

Jesus’ description of His relationship with the Father in these verses fits exactly with Paul’s image of a treasure chest: “all things that the Father has are Mine,” “God’s mystery, that is Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

But Jesus goes on to describe not only His relationship with the Father, but with the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit of truth is our key to open the box and our expert to point out the amazing intricacies of each piece of treasure that easily escape the amateur’s notice.

This is what we want for our small groups and for ourselves: to know Christ and all the treasures we have in Him. Strive for this in your prayers for each of your group members.  And don’t forget the path that leads to true knowledge.  Never bypass unity and love, encouragement, and assurance in an effort to get to knowledge. You’ll end up with the “knowledge that puffs up” and wonder what happened to the love.

Here are links to the sermon questions for this week. They are separated by campus because the West Pasco campus is one week behind the Richland campus.

• Richland Campus, taking a one week break from the Blood of Christ sermon series: Questions on Todd Hunter’s sermon
• West Pasco Campus, on week two of the Blood of Christ sermon series: The Blood of Christ, part 2

Great dinner from Famous Dave’s. Singing culminating with Our God Reigns. Theresa Richardson on suffering and leadership. Music, Scripture, and sculpture by Robert McMinn. And now Todd Hunter. Post your takeaways below.

…begins in about an hour. This is a pic of the water/fire feature that we will make use of tonight. Will post more later.