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Making Friends With Purpose
THE POINT: Jesus’ primary ministry was through close personal relationships.
FRIENDSHIPS WITH PURPOSE
- Being a follower of Jesus involves every aspect of your life, including your friendships.
- Most of Jesus’ ministry centered around His relationships with His closest friends.
- Modern discipleship involves close personal relationships
- To follow Jesus we need to learn how to have relationships with purpose
SOME OTHER POINTS:
- Many Christians look at the Sunday Service as the primary method of learning. That was not Jesus’ style.
- There is tremendous life-changing power in close personal relationships.
- Some Christians have “church friends” and “real friends”. Our most important ministry is to our “real friends”.
- Almost nobody teaches you how to make friends and build relationships.
Luke 5:27-30 (NIV)
After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow me," Jesus said to him,
and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.
Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them.
But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"
Mark 3:13-14 (NIV)
Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him.
He appointed twelve--designating them apostles--that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach.
The result of a purposeful relationship is “fruit that will last”
- Fruit grows
- Fruit gives life
- Fruit has seasons
- Fruit multiplies
- Fruit ROTS if it just sits there
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John 15:12-17 (NIV)
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
Greater love has no one than this that he lay down his life for his friends.
You are my friends if you do what I command.
I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit--fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.
This is my command: Love each other.
2 Timothy 1:2-7 (NIV)
To Timothy, my dear son: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
I thank God, whom I serve, as my forefathers did, with a clear conscience, as night and day I constantly remember you in my prayers.
Recalling your tears, I long to see you, so that I may be filled with joy.
I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.
For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.
2 Kings 2:9-12 (NIV)
When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, "Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?" "Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit," Elisha replied.
"You have asked a difficult thing," Elijah said, "yet if you see me when I am taken from you, it will be yours--otherwise not."
As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.
Elisha saw this and cried out, "My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel!" And Elisha saw him no more. Then he took hold of his own clothes and tore them apart.
WHAT THEN SHALL WE DO?
How many speeches have changed your life?
How many classes or seminars have changed your life?
How many relationships have changed your life?
How many lives are you changing through relationships?
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