Follow, Believe and Obey

I’ve now been to three mega churches (Willow Creek, Saddleback and North Point) and they all have something different to offer. Saddleback has it’s 5 purposes, Willow Creek is about Shifting the culture and North Point is all about Irresistible Environments. Now it’s about finding out what Nativity’s thing is, what’s our mission and our purpose? The basic questions is how do we clarify the win at Church of the Nativity? How do we know what we are doing is doing God’s will? And when we find that win, through what medium do we do that?
One of the messages tonight (given by Andy Stanley) was about staying true to God’s will. As a youth worker we tend to tell the youth to just obey God because God wants us to do A, B and C. The most common response to this is often rejection and rebellion. Why should we obey when we don’t believe, why should we obey when we aren’t ready to follow? The point that Andy portrayed is that every time Jesus met someone new he asked them to follow him. He didn’t go around barking out orders, he asked people to follow him, get to know him and believe in him. And, because people followed him, they saw what he could do and because they saw what he could do they believed in him. He became credible and knowledgable so that when he told them how to live their lives and how to obey God’s law they were willing to try and make that step. They might not have liked what he said, or felt uncomfortable but they were willing to go along because they followed and believed.
We were reminded that Jesus wants us to obey God’s commands because of love. We often associate the ten commandments with a discipline meant to restrain us, but in reality God’s laws and commands are meant to free us. God humans; therefore, he is going to know how we work. He is also going to know what destroys us and what hurts us. God gave us free will because of love but he wants us to follow him because he knows that his love will protect us and save us from every evil.