God's Purpose And Destiny For Our Lives

We have spent the last three lessons talking about how we cannot fulfill our destiny if we are not in relationship with our brothers and sisters in the Lord. We discovered that some people are naturally outgoing and find it very easy to form relationships, but most of us have to work at it. We need to be proactive in reaching out to others in our local church body, to build relationship with them, instead of waiting for them to reach out to us. (A lot of people are starving for relationship, but they are not good at reaching out to others.)

1 John 4:7-8 tells us, "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love." Verses 20-21 go on to say, "If someone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also."

In short, part of our destiny involves being in right relationship with our brothers and sisters in the Lord. That means that if we are not in good and loving relationships with others in the body of Christ, then we can't fulfill our destiny.

Building relationship does not come instantly, it takes time. I shared four steps or levels that we go through in the process of building these relationships. They were

• Level 1 -- Membership
• Level 2 -- Friendship
• Level 3 -- Partnership
• Level 4 -- Kinship

We talked about the first three levels in previous lessons, and we began to discuss level four--kinship or deep belonging to each other. We already talked about being a family, in our previous lesson, but I'd like to say a bit more on that topic.

Building Family In Your Local Congregations

God wants us to fulfill that second greatest commandment, which is to love your neighbor as yourself. And how are you going to do that? Where is God going to train you to love? It's going to be in the church. That is going to be the beginning place.

John 13:35 says, "Your strong love for each other will prove to the world that you are my disciples." Make that personal. Your love for each other in your local church will prove to the world that you are Jesus' disciples. It will prove to the world that Jesus is real. It will prove to the world of the truth of the Gospel.

What kind of testimony is it when the church is always killing each other and not loving each other?

The bible has some things to say on this topic. Let me share a few of them with you. I John 3:10 says, "Anyone who does not love other Christians does not belong to God." I John 4:20 says "Those who do not love their brothers and sisters whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have never seen." This is one of the ways that God is going to teach us to love Him, is by letting us practice by loving each other with what real love is. Next verse, in John 3:14. "But if we love other Christian brothers it proves that we have passed from death into eternal life."

The evidence is love.

If I were to pinpoint one thing that I think should be a characteristic of the church, it would be love. I mean, if people say, "Well, I'm just coming to hear great sermons," it falls short. They are going to be disappointed from time to time. If people came just because we had great programs, programs come and go, and they will eventually be dissatisfied. I don't think I would want the reputation of a good teaching or of a good program. That's not what I think we need to have.

I think we need to it to be a reputation of love. We need to learn how to love each other. We need to love each other like Christ loves us. That is the key. We will not function or fulfill our purposes if we do not learn how to love, and we begin that by learning how to love each \ other--right here in our local churches. We learn how love as we get connected with each other and build relationship with each other. You will not succeed, and you will not fulfill your purposes without other believers to be connected in a covenant relationship with. You need them to be able to fulfill your purposes.

One piece of our destiny is our personal relationship with God, based on obeying Him because we love Him so much, and also based on worshipping Him because of Who He is. When we do that, we build a quality vertical relationship with God. But God also expects us to build horizontal relationships with each other. E.g., another piece of our destiny is to love His people, loving His children, loving the family of God.

Let's look at this a bit more. How do you get into the family of God?

Galatians 3:26 says, "You are all children of God through faith in Jesus Christ." Faith in Christ Jesus is the very first step is in a relationship with Jesus. That's step number 1. When you invite Jesus to come into your life, at the moment that you say "Jesus, here's my life," and you give your life to Him, there is a transformation. A change takes place. Then, by His Spirit, you're now inducted into the family of God because you're a new creature, you're a new creation. You just entered into it by faith, and you're part of His family.

The next step is then, "I'm going to commit myself to be a part of a church family; I am going to belong. I am going to develop that moving up to the next level by becoming friends with people here. I'm going to develop that friendship by sharing, sharing my experiences, sharing my home, sharing my problems. I'm going to share my life with others."

Then we grow to a deeper level by saying, "I'm going to partner with you, I'm going to come along side of you, and together as a team we're going to be able to fulfill the purposes that God has for my life and for your life together. In that process, I'm going to learn to love you, and you are going to learn to love me. And we want to have such a relationship with each other that when I see you, you are my family, and I feel that love."

I assume that most of you reading this teaching are already believers. But if you are not, you can fix that right now. You can give your heart and life to Jesus, and enter into His family. That's step one. You can't build the type of destiny-fulfilling relationships if you are not a part of God's family.

I'm going to lead you in a prayer where you can pray this prayer and God will hear this prayer if it's coming from your heart. He will come into your life; He will induct you and adopt you into His family. If that is your passion, if that's your desire today, and you've never done that, just invite Him in faith. If you talk to Him right now, He will hear you. Just say to Him:

"Jesus, I have blown it. I have sinned against You, and I'm sorry. And, Jesus, I'm going to turn, and I'm going to follow You. Forgive me of my sins. Come into my life and be my boss. And I will follow You forever."

Now if you've prayed that prayer, Jesus is in your heart. He's in your life. And you're in the family of God and you've taken the first step today. If you prayed that prayer, could you tell somebody you did that?

I would like to pray for those of you who are in God's family--regardless if you just joined it or if you've been a member for a long time.

Lord, I pray that You will help us to love our brothers and sisters in Jesus. Please enable us to remove every barrier, every hindrance, every issue that we have. Lord, that we'll just begin to work it through and let Your love rule our heart. Teach us today to love. Help us to begin with our brothers and sisters in Jesus. Give us a passion to connect.

Father, for those who've just simply cocooned themselves so far away from others, I ask that You would break them out of that, and bring them into deep and good relationships with others.

Father, I pray that You'll just begin to build friendships. And Lord, continue to get us connected with other people.

Father, reveal to us our place where we fit in the body. Show us that. Expose how you made us and shaped us. Father, let us be willing to share, to build friendships with people. Father, just enable us to share our spirits and our homes, things we're going through in our lives. Father, we just want to move up into this level of friendships with others in Your church. Lord, we just love You.

We pray this in Jesus' Name. Amen