Core Basics of Small Group Ministry ~ Part 3b: God Must Be God To Us
~ by Pastor Rob Krause
In part 3a, I discussed that it is imperative for men to hear the over-arching heartbeat of God throughout the Scriptures and put feet to the values and principles of what the Father wants. The heartbeat that I’m presenting here on Vision Glorious is that God wants to dwell with His people. He wants to be the exclusive God of His people and provide the acceptable Way to approach Him and to know Him. The Father wants to indwell His covenant people, to be God to them and write His laws on their re-founded hearts. God wants His people to live-out His promises and reveal His glory in and through all of the spheres of creation — bringing Him to have FIRST PLACE in everything. And, according to the Scriptures and the patterns presented therein — this is not possible apart from God’s people functioning in Holy Spirit-founded and led community.
The Biblical Promise
While reading through Abraham’s encounter with God, a powerful phrase stood out to me in the promises of God for His people through Abraham.1 That phrase is when God declares to Abraham, "…and I will be God to you…"
The Lord proved that promise again and again. In Exodus 17 we find the people of Israel complaining and putting God to the test. In other words, they were trying His patience — greatly & dangerously. Their cry was basically, "You saved us from Egypt only to kill us in the desert." Our non-capricious Father not only resisted giving them what they really deserved, but He split-open the face of a rock-cliff and turned it into a water-park to bless them when they felt they were dying of thirst. As a community, God was God to them. And He continued to be God to them even when they were in rebellion to Him while walking through the desert for 40 years. Their shoes never wore out, they had shade by day, light by night, manna by morning, and tabernacle-access throughout.
This is just a start into the biblical material that reflects this heartbeat of God. Almost daily, I’m struck with a new verse where God is affirming this point. Tonight, I’m working on a message out of Revelation 3:18-22- the final part of the letter to the Church at Laodicea. Here in Christ’s exhortation to the people is the idea, "Repent & rid yourselves of this lukewarmness — because I love you2 and I rebuke and discipline those whom I love. I will be God to you! I will come back for you and sup with you in perfect, unending, victorious shalom."
I hope to share more verses and thoughts with you in posts to come so that you’ll hear the heartbeat. When I closed our LifeTeam meeting the other night, I asked the members this question, "Where can you tangibly see God being (acting as) God to you in your life?"
A Western, Modern-Day Obstacle
What we’re up against is ourselves; literally, the addictions to self-gratification independent of others — including the way we consume our religion. Who needs ‘em? - when Christianity has been packaged so nicely as an individual journey. I, Alone, want to ‘experience God?’ This is impossible. God is a community-dwelling God and believers are automatically covenanted together and grafted into His family. To have a biblically patterned Church and Christian life, you will definitely become counter-cultural because the Church at its core is not a society of the individual but a unified whole. Author David Wells gives us an insight into the enormous barrier and counter-current to Bible-bred, Christ-centered community:
American culture has tended to resolve the tension (between individualism and conformity) by diverting the stream of individualism into private life and the stream of conformity into public life. Thus it is that in the public sphere Americans are uncomfortable with the unconventional and yearn for consensus, whereas in the private sphere they prize the personal vision, the strength and willingness to live by one’s own lights regardless of what others think and what the conventions dictate.
This combination of traits has created soil uncommonly fertile to worldliness and uncommonly inhospitable to the Church…the modern cultural context is like a pair of powerful pincers locked on the church, in some cases squeezing its identity as the people of God beyond recognition.3
This is one main reason why so many people can be "church-attenders" (public conformists) on the outside and live a "private, personal" life in total contradiction to everything taught on Sunday — and do it for years without anyone noticing. One common characteristic of so many of these people is that you’ll rarely ever see them discipling other people or reproducing themselves in the Kingdom. Where is God showing Himself to be God TO & THROUGH these professing Christians? How is God revealing Himself through the tapestry of His people in accountable relationships in your Church?
Wells continues:
"This adaptation to cultural norms and expectations is precisely the mechanism by which worldliness takes root. On the other side, the need to conform…makes it extremely difficult for the Church to preserve its distinctive identity, to be different… the Church has found it so hard to recognize worldliness and even harder to dislodge it. Indeed, without a powerful theological vision as its antithesis, these cultural currents are impossible to resist.4
I would call for the antithesis to be true Christian community that is recognizable as God’s own; where He presses down and through them. What cultural trend would come close to that? This is exactly where LifeTeams (small groups) become the inner-network to penetrate to this level of accountability AND build a bridge between the public and private walk — to the glory of God. It is right here where God shows Himself to be God to the Church — calling one-another into holiness5 and taking that power out to the fallen creation for His glory.
- I have honestly been meditating for months now on the principle that I’m about to write. It has captured hours of my private attention. I plead patience with readers and learners who are habituated to fast production of blog posts, but I’m not a machine — even though I’ve been called that on a number of occasions… although I do laugh at the Pastor Bauer nickname I’ve been given by friends here. [back]
- by the way, this is phileos love here — affectionate, tender, and emotional. AND, it’s not me loving Him — but Him loving me. He has won my affection. [back]
- Wells, David, God in the Wasteland, p. 56, 1994 [back]
- ibid. p. 57, underline mine [back]
- Author David Wells describes holiness as "vivid other-worldliness" which I find quite creative. [back]
