Cells and Strengths
11th March 2007
Trevor Withers
Mark 12 v 28-31: love God and love your neighbour
Question: what makes a cell a cell rather than homegroup?
When was the last time you did something for the first time? This week Trevor travelled by train first class for the first time. He found it was outside of his normal culture eg being served with drinks and nibbles he didn't have to pay for, and the quiet specious environment.
The culture in our cell groups may feel like that to people who are not normally part of it, outsiders. How good are we at connecting with people beyond us? We have a mandate to reach out beyond our culture, our group.
Loving God is one ‘DNA strand’ of our cell groups, it's a good starting place and would make a good Bible study group, but God wants more. Loving one another is the second strand. The New Testament contains the phrase 'one another' 52 times. Love your neighbour. Love people. Give a horizontal connection as well as a vertical one. This would make a good Care group.
The third DNA strand is loving the lost. Praying for each other that we would make a difference in our workplaces and in our spheres of influence. Seeking to enable and equip and empower us to live like Jesus in the world where we live. Loving the lost world.
He’s out there
We discover God and are empowered by him as we walk with him and he walks with us in the world. The danger is to separate our cell group from the world as we come together. But God turns up in the most surprising places. Trevor told a story about someone, a non Christian, who had a dream which resulted him in attending an Alpha Course.
God's out there doing things in peoples lives. Let's take him with us too.
We had the visual illustration of Trevor wearing his jumper inside out, it felt uncomfortable having what’s usually on the inside showing on the outside. We're like that about our faith, we keep it inside, it’s the old adage which says don't talk about money, sex or religion. Our faith is private that we do with God. But we can 'wear' something of what we believe on the outside, demonstrate it. Also demonstrate what we're part of, this community, our cell community. Many people would love to be part of such a community, make a gateway for them.
Share God’s heart of love as we demonstrate the community of the Holy Spirit in our communities. It's a risk, as people come into our group they will mess it up, but Jesus also took a risk. Nobody is excluded from his love.
Strengthsfinders
This is a tool which helps us in the cell values of ‘every member growing’ and ‘every member ministry’.
EVERY member. We are all growing, God speaks to us while we're out and about, or while we're in a quiet place, we're all on the journey. So we can make a difference, see out relationships become different.
However many of us don't know what we have to offer. We are too aware of our weaknesses. Our focus is on the cross rather than the resurrection, we are people of both. We are sin focused, failure conscious, which isn't wrong, but we also need to be aware that God can use us. Overcome our negativity, help us discover the good things God has invested in us, what we're good at.
The book 'Now Discover your Strengths' will enable each of us to discover the areas in which we're strong. What we do successfully.
Trevor shared with us last week the picture of the castle of our lives being rebuilt. Castles are built on strong places, on the heights, on rock, not in the valley or on sand. Many of us think we can make a better contribution if we can improve the areas in which we're weak. This book identifies the areas in which you are already strong and encourages us to walk in them, not worrying so much about the things we can't do well.
As a body, as each person walks in their strengths, our areas of strength will overlap and cover each other, where one is weak another is strong.
Take a copy, (contribute £5 if you can but don’t worry if not), read the first 70 pages and do the questionnaire on the website, and it prints out your top 5 strengths, it’s very accurate.
You have permission to be yourself.
Discuss it in your cells, learn how to work with each other.
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