John 1:46
46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”
This past Sunday, PD talked about how we can serve our VIPs.
The first way we can serve our VIPs is to pray. We pray as a way of admitting that we can’t do it on our own and that we need God’s help. Changing somebody’s heart is not something we can do, so we should leave it all to Jesus through prayer.
How can we pray for them practically? We can follow Matthew 7:7-8 as a guideline, which reads:
7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.
Looking at these verses, we can pray by asking, seeking, and knocking.
We can ask God to be revealed to our VIPs.
We can seek for ways to express love to them.
And we can knock by helping our VIPs with their difficulties and areas of need.
And when we pray, we can receive 3 answers from God: yes, no, and wait.
Prayer is not getting everything we ask for, but it is where we receive what God has prepared for us. God knows what is best, so we can pray with confidence.
And when God does say no, we can see it as an opportunity to grow and to experience God on a deeper level.
The second way we can serve our VIPs is by being a witness. To witness means to show evidence, so we show our VIPs evidence in our lives.
One evidence we can show is personal evidence. We can do this by developing our friendships, spending time together, visiting them when they’re sick, comforting them when they’re down, and so on. It’s about showing them genuine care and concern.
Our friends and VIPs know if we want to care for them genuinely or not, so let’s not see them as an object of ministry, but as an object of love.
And we can also share our difficulties and what God is doing in our life. It’s a way of showing our imperfection, which is why we need Jesus in our lives.
Another evidence we can show is the evidence of spiritual family. As Jesus says, people will know that we are his disciples if we love one another, and our VIPs can see us love one another through our house church meetings.
And eventually, we may be able to persuade them using the timing that God gives us. So be wise on when to ask and when to wait. And we can also plant a seed of God during RJM, because no one can believe unless they hear. The word of God has the power to change someone’s heart.
We can’t save people through our power, but through us they can have the opportunity to see the evidence. So for house church, let’s make it a place where people can want to come.
Discussion Questions:
– What did you learn from the message?
– What are some way you enjoy serving your VIPs?
All Nations Fellowship 