relationship

Preachers should encourage more prayer, stewardship, study, and fellowship not to manufacture blessing but so that believers can experience more fully the benefits of union with Christ that God freely offers.

Instead of measuring your level of leadership by the sophistication of your title, measure it by the human capital you have with others. That’s what really matters.

Relationships: We pattern and rhythm our lives and our world through relationships among family and friends and through relations on social media with their own codes and norms. On a larger scale, institutions like sports clubs, schools, and companies create and sustain patterns of relationships. Our relationship to authority and the state is

The Spirit makes God’s Word personal to us. Has Christianity become personal to you? Have the doctrines and declarations turned into relationship? Has the Great Commission been translated into some specific vision for your life? Do you know you are walking with, and following, Jesus in the Holy Spirit? Has the Spirit of God generated in you holy

The Spirit takes God’s timeless truths and makes them come alive in us. He helps us understand them, shows us how to implement them, and empowers us to accomplish them. He transforms task lists into a relationship.

Is Christianity more of a set of beliefs to which you adhere and a lifestyle to which you conform, or is it a dynamic relationship in which you walk with the Spirit and move in his power?

The famous Grant Study followed 268 Harvard men from their days as college students in the 1940s until their deaths many decades later, in an attempt to discover the patterns of human development and achievement. The study found-and this was a surprise decades ago that the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life. But

When we see God’s work in us as the model for our work for him, three practical principles emerge: 1. God’s redemptive activity always takes place within relationships. 2. God’s first step in changing us is to draw us into relationship with him. 3. Our relationships are essential to the work God is completing in us and in others.

This means at least three things: 1. He has a higher goal for our relationships than our personal happiness. 2. He wants our relationships to be the context for the change he works in and through us. 3. We need to build relationships that encourage this work of change. We can understand this by considering the way Christ works in our own lives.