Spiritual Growth: Building Community

Hello,

"Dear friends let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God." (1 John 4:7)

We pray that your week has gone well and that you are keeping up with your classes! As you continue to build the ministry on campus this semester, please keep in mind the need for community. As students connect with one another in your ministry their desire to come to other events and activities increases. If they keep coming, their relationship with the Lord is likely to grow. When they become more comfortable with others in the ministry, barriers will be broken down and people will more willingly open up about what they are thinking and struggling with.

Some simple steps to cultivate community:

• Incorporate simple ice breakers or games into your weekly meeting/bible study. Activities to get people sharing about themselves and laughing together. You can go to the website http://www.godsquad.com/discipleship/icebreakers.htm for some great ideas. If it isn't too difficult have snacks or refreshments at/after your meeting or Bible study.


• Plan some fun activities outside of your regular meeting times: game night, bowling, mini golf, make your own ice cream sundaes, go to a fall festival together. Go out with others after the meeting


• Get together as a smaller group - invite 2-3 people over to your apartment (if you have one) for dinner, or ask them to meet you at the dining hall. Meet for lunch on campus


• Plan a girls night out/guys night out. This is a great way to bond and develop friends.
  People are much more apt to open up at bible study and volunteer their time to help out if they are friends with the people in the ministry. Don't forget the fun!

Acts 2:42,46 "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." "Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,"

Fall Getaway

Spiritual Growth: What are you thirsty for?

Hello, what are you thirsty for? What do you long for? The Psalmist David writes “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” Psalm 42:1-2

Isn’t it wonderful that the Lord of the universe loves us? He loves us completely and unconditionally. Our prayer for you is that you would grow in your understanding of God’s love for you. This is also our prayer for ourselves.

Eph. 3:17-18 "...And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ," He loves you no matter what. Do you really believe it?

One of the best ways to grow in our love relationship with God is by spending time with Him. Only as we sit at His feet, talk with Him and read His love letter to us (the Bible) will we be able to truly grow in our love of and longing for Him. We can also practice recognizing His presence with us throughout the day whatever we do and wherever we go. Please go to the godsquad website to check out some other ideas related to connecting with God.

Quite often in ministry we get so busy doing, that we forget Who we are doing it for! It isn't good for our ministry to be born out of duty or obligation. We experience so much more joy and motivation when it is an outflow of our love for Him and His love for us!
We encourage you to take time with your Father today, and every day.

If you have a few more minutes please check out the fall retreat testimonies in the column to the right. It was a great blessing for those of us who were able to come. If you were not able to come, I trust you will enjoy reading a little about how God is working in the lives of some who participated.

Spiritual Growth: Are You Satisfied?

Hello, Are you satisfied with your walk with God? How about right now? When I sat down to work on writing this, I realized that I wasn't quite satisfied, I just needed to take a few minutes to stop and talk with God about some of the anxieties on my mind. 1 Peter 5:7 "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you."

Sometimes in our busyness and efforts to do good things like leading a ministry or sharing our faith, we can trust in our own efforts and strength to live the Christian life. When we take this approach, it usually results in frustration and discouragement. We want to encourage and equip you as children of God to stay in fellowship with our Heavenly Father, to walk in the power of the Spirit.

This can often involve a moment by moment struggle for us. For example, I know that all too frequently I say yes to my flesh and no to the Spirit when I don't get my way. Often it can be as simple as me getting anxious or irritable because I'm behind schedule with what I want to accomplish, or the person driving in front of me is driving slower than I like or someone behind me is too impatient for my liking. Then if Melissa (my wife) asks me to help her with a small task or asks a question, instead of responding in love, sometimes I say yes to the flesh and get impatient and irritable ("the fruit of the Spirit is .... 'patience'"). Can anyone identify with this type of struggle? I am sure that at times you can, Paul illustrated this well when he wrote Galatians 5:16-26. Verse 17b says: "They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want"

The following are some principles taken from Campus Crusade's "Satisfied?" booklet:

It is only through faith in God and in His promises that we as believers can live the Spirit-directed life. As we continue to trust Christ moment by moment our lives will demonstrate more and more of the fruit of the Spirit and we will be conformed to the image of Christ.



Moment by moment we are making decisions to either gratify our sinful nature or say yes to the Holy Spirit.

We will also have a more meaningful prayer life and more fruitful times in the word. We will experience God's power in witnessing. We will be prepared for spiritual conflict and receive power to resist temptation and sin!

If you are ready to yield control of your life to Christ, confess any sin that you are aware of and desire to be filled with the Spirit; You can be filled with the Spirit right now by faith through prayer. This is based on God's command found in Ephesians 5:18 "...be filled with the Spirit" and His promise in 1 John 5:14-15 "This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask--we know that we have what we asked of him."

As we yield to the filling of the Holy Spirit, He will produce great fruit in our lives (see Galatians 5:22-23). Please take some time this week with the Lord to read and meditate on Galatians 5:16-26 and Ephesians 5:15-21. As we apply the principles of the Spirit-filled life, He will transform us from feeling frustrated and discouraged. We will experience true joy and the excitement of seeing God at work!

How wonderful is God's provision for us!

Spiritual Growth: Helping New Believers Grow

Hello, we pray that you are doing well and that your fall semester is going well. We talk a lot about sharing your faith - the importance of taking the initiative, talking with others about Jesus faith and reaching students on your campus. We pray that you will get to see a number of other students make decisions to begin a relationship with Jesus. We also want you to know what to do once you have seen someone trust in the Lord. Whether you led them to Christ, or they are a new or immature believer that is in your movement, there are several excellent resources that might help you, help them.

On the website http://www.godsquad.com/discipleship/index.htm there are some tools that are called "Life Concepts". They are found under the discipleship section. The lessons cover valuable topics such as:

• Assurance of salvation
• Forgiveness of the believer
• Filling of the Spirit
• Walking in the Spirit
• Spiritual growth

New Christians need to understand who they are in Christ, the above topics will help lay that foundation. The new believer also needs help in these areas:

• developing a regular habit of spending time with the Lord in prayer and in His word
• finding a good local church where they can learn and grow
• close fellowship with other believers
• encouragement and equipping on how to share the Good News of their salvation with those around them

Ephesians 4:14-15 "Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ."

What a wonderful privilege we have to be involved in what the Lord is doing in the lives of His children! We pray that your ministry will bear much fruit and that you will have the awesome joy of helping others grow and mature in their relationship with Christ.