More than Enough
Pastor Rollan Fisher
Focus: There is more than enough love for you in the Kingdom of God when you discover your place amongst his people, recognize your evolving role in his family and find the living God in the midst of it all.
Know Your Place
Know Your Role
Know Your God
Know Your Place
You are called to thrive when you find your place within the family of God.
How does God view relationships?
Psalm 68:4-6 ESV
“Sing to God, sing praises to his name; lift up a song to him who rides through the deserts; his name is the Lord; exult before him! Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation. God settles the solitary in a home; he leads out the prisoners to prosperity, but the rebellious dwell in a parched land.”
You enter into the family of God when you are born again, repenting of your rebellion while putting your trust in the sinless life, substitutionary death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.
You then learn that the Kingdom of God is all about God’s truth forming and shaping our lives, families, cities and nations through relationships - relationship with God and one another.
God has for each of us a spiritual home within which we are to settle and grow in those relationships.
Though once prisoners, in the spiritual home, God leads us to the prospering of our souls.
Those who reject God’s design live in a parched land.
We see this playing out in our everyday world.
A May 2nd NPR podcast relayed our present realities from the U.S. Surgeon General:
(https://www.npr.org/2023/05/02/1173418268/loneliness-connection-mental-health-dementia-surgeon-general#:~:text=There%20is%20an%20epidemic%20of,from%20the%20U.S.%20Surgeon%20General.)
“There is an epidemic of loneliness in the United States and lacking connection can increase the risk for premature death to levels comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, according to a new advisory from the U.S. Surgeon General.
The report released on Tuesday, titled "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation," finds that even before the COVID-19 pandemic, about half of U.S. adults reported experiencing measurable levels of loneliness.
And it warns that the physical consequences of poor connection can be devastating, including a 29% increased risk of heart disease; a 32% increased risk of stroke; and a 50% increased risk of developing dementia for older adults.
"It's hard to put a price tag, if you will, on the amount of human suffering that people are experiencing right now," Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy told All Things Considered.
"In the last few decades, we've just lived through a dramatic pace of change. We move more, we change jobs more often, we are living with technology that has profoundly changed how we interact with each other and how we talk to each other."
"And you can feel lonely even if you have a lot of people around you, because loneliness is about the quality of your connections."
Across age groups, people are spending less time with each other in person than two decades ago. The advisory reported that this was most pronounced in young people aged 15-24 who had 70% less social interaction with their friends.
Murthy said that many young people now use social media as a replacement for in-person relationships, and this often meant lower-quality connections.
"We also know that for some kids, being online has been a way to find community at a time when many of them have not been able to," he said. "What we need to protect against, though, are the elements of technology, and social media in particular, that seek to maximize the amount of time that our children are spending online at the expense of their in-person interactions."
So the question becomes for us, if God and his ways are more than enough, what types of relationships should I prioritize?
There are two types:
1. Those that will help you grow in Christ and his Kingdom
Mark 3:31-35 ESV
“And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you." And he answered them, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother."”
Why would Jesus say such a thing?
“Your spiritual family is even more important than your physical family because it will last forever. Our families on earth are wonderful gifts from God, but they are temporary and fragile, often broken by divorce, distance, growing old, and inevitably, death.”
-Rick Warren
Even the apostle Paul understood this, even as he was used uniquely in the history of the church by the Holy Spirit to write approximately three fourths of the New Testament letters and birth many of the early churches in the Gentile world.
Romans 16:13 ESV
“Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord; also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well.”
It is great when the natural and spiritual overlap, but when it doesn’t God has you.
Psalm 27:8-10 ESV
“You have said, "Seek my face." My heart says to you, "Your face, Lord, do I seek." Hide not your face from me. Turn not your servant away in anger, O you who have been my help. Cast me not off; forsake me not, O God of my salvation! For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in.”
When natural and spiritual families do overlap, there is also a blessed confirmation and strengthening through supplementation of God-ordained relationships beyond your bloodline.
God speaks a lot about family in the Bible where we would experience the abundance of love that he has for us.
Loving, Christ-centered families are God’s blueprint for a healthy society.
God desires to begin building such a society in the natural, but in a fallen world, rebuilds what was lost through sin by Christ’s redemption and through the church - which is the household of the living God (I Timothy 3:15).
God has the writers of the New Testament speak in familial terms when they describe their relationships with one another.
Does God really mean these terms?
If so, what do they imply in the Spirit?
What will we have when we walk in such Scriptural dynamics?
What will we lack when we don’t?
2. The second type of relationships that we should prioritize are those that you are praying for and believing to play a part in bringing into the Kingdom of God
Know your role
You are designed to grow as you learn to give and receive love while embracing your evolving role in the family of God.
How can I build Kingdom relationships?
A man or woman with friends must show themselves friendly.
Proverbs 18:24 ESV
“A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”
Proverbs 18:24 NIV
“One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”
Proverbs 18:24 NKJV
“A man who has friends must himself be friendly, But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”
Be proactive.
Come and get what God has provided for you.
We often look for echo chambers and facsimiles of ourselves with whom to relate.
What we see that God is building Scripturally and throughout history is a Kingdom of worshippers devoted to his commands that are multiethnic, multicultural and multigenerational.
God described himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
*This means that God is moving across demographics, seasons and generations.
God is making a point by giving different designations to people during different seasons of their lives, whether they be mothers, fathers, brothers or sisters.
*The breakdown in relationships today comes when people are looking at everyone else as if they are supposed to be and relate to them as solely as their peers, when they are not.
For example, I am not going to come to your apartment and play video games with you, but if you want to talk about what it means to be a husband, father, serve God in your workplace, etc. I am delighted to do so.
*Many people never find their church home because they are looking for homogeneous environments, where amongst other things, they are surrounded by people in the same season and stage in life.
This is not the natural dynamic of a blood family, nor is it of a spiritual family.
God places you in his body with people of different ages and in different stages of life because like in any other family, you have a God ordained role to fill.
“You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.” –Desmond Tutu
In the family, you fulfill a role, using your gifting.
Gifting is a matter of function.
Role is a matter of your place in another person’s life.
You can walk out your role with a variety of gifts.
You can only fulfill your God-given role with genuine love and faithfulness.
Proverbs 3:3-4 ESV
“Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man.”
Your role in the body of Christ grows and expands with age, experience and faithfulness.
Faithfulness is literally the fruit of faith lived out to obey and do the works of God over and over again.
You then make disciples of Jesus by teaching others to do the same.
We need mothers and fathers in the house.
To be in God’s best for you, you should always be able to identify three sets of people in your life:
Fathers and Mothers (Mentors)
Brothers and Sisters (Peers)
Children (Disciples of the Lord)
John 19:25-27 ESV
“but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold, your son!" Then he said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother!" And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.”
Know Your God
We are destined to live an eternally rich and fulfilled life when we strive to fulfill the Great Commission of Christ as a genuine part of the family of God.
Mark 10:23-31 ESV
“And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, "Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God." Peter began to say to him, "See, we have left everything and followed you." Jesus said, "Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first."”
The parable of the sower reminds us that Jesus’ theme is that we’d bear fruit that lasts in and through our lives, no matter the circumstances, in every season of life (whether a youth, in college, a young professional, single, married, with children or retired).
Because he identifies himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, he is showing us the importance of relating within the loving spiritual family unit to fulfill his purposes throughout the generations.
We do this through constantly by remembering the baton pass.
Our methodology for seeing this baton pass effectively passed is every individual, community group and ministry team continuously referring to our
Growth tracks.
“The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. Where the truthful answer to the question "Do you see the same truth?" would be "I see nothing and I don't care about the truth; I only want a Friend," no Friendship can arise - though Affection of course may. There would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travellers.”
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
Second City Church - Pastor Rollan Fisher