Q: Does anyone’s phone ever act up? Like, it won’t open an app, has slow performance, experiences an app crashes, overheats, has problems connecting, or has excessive battery drain?
Q: What’s a most common fix for that (besides handing it to your teen or grandkid)? Most of the time, it just takes a reset – turning it off and back on again – to get everything working like it could and should.
Here’s the Oxford Dictionary definition of “Reset”: “To set again or differently, as in, “I must reset the alarm”.
For your phone, there are frequent software updates and patches from the manufacturer that are essential for maintaining the security and stability of your device. Resetting your phone after a software update gives it a chance to dis-engage from running it’s current programming so the operating system can apply any necessary changes for better or more efficient operation. Neglecting to reset your device can lead to compatibility issues with new apps, security vulnerabilities, or limited function of certain features.
Your phone has a complex collection of programming from the manufacturer that directs its operations. With new and foreign input developing all the time, those updates and new directions allow it to adjust and stay stable. You could call it your phones “core beliefs”, the fundamental programming it uses to achieve its goals and maintain its existence.
For a person, a person’s core beliefs are your deeply held convictions or principles that you hold to about yourself, others, and the world around you – your developing fundamental assumptions that guide your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. You do what you believe. That is the basis of faith – trust plus action, belief acted-on. It’s essentially your unique way of viewing the world and how you choose to live. It’s what the Bible calls the human heart, the core of what makes you you that you operate from. That’s why we’re warned in Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
A lot of what makes you you is often formed in childhood, based on experiences and relationships, shaping how we interpret the world around us. But that’s not all, nor does it have to be.
Romans 12:1-2 NIV – 1 Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – His good, pleasing, and perfect will.
And as you see as He sees, it becomes easier to do as He says!
Youth Week begins tomorrow at 5:30pm! We get a whole week of eating together, playing together, worshipping together, and syncing our hearts and minds around God’s Word together. Our youth ministry core values are built on the last and lasting mandate from Jesus in Matthew 28:19-20 to “…go and make disciples…”. We are carrying this out by embracing and instilling Biblical values into our strategies, our programs, our leaders, and people. Having clear, healthy, and developing values enables you to focus on and develop what’s truly important for ministry (helping people, else it’s not really ministry) and to weed out what’s not. This is what God’s people do. As a church family, we need your prayer, encouragement, support, and participation to maintain a safe and healthy place for youth and their families to land in, as well as for children, adults, and your friends and family. I have 8 worthy core values to talk about with you this morning to help us all reset.
1. God is love – this defines our efforts
1 John 4:7-8 NLT – 7 Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. 8 But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
Love is genuinely caring for the best interests of others. God cares for our best interests, whether you really believe that yet or not. If not, I sincerely hope you will. This is for all of us!
1 John 4:9-10 NLT – 9 God showed how much He loved us by sending His one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through Him. 10 This is real love – not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
It’s our sin that separates us from God. When we love God back and love others, we will help acquaint others with the one true God Who loves them and is willing to take their sins away, encouraging them to do the same for others. We’re about developing deeper friendship with God and bringing everyone else we can with us. That includes…
2. Praying on behalf of others – intercessory prayer – fuels our efforts
1 Timothy 2:1-8 NLT – 1 I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them; intercede on their behalf, and give thanks for them. 2 Pray this way for kings and all who are in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by godliness and dignity. 3 This is good and pleases God our Savior [the goal in Romans 12:2], 4 who wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth. 5 For, there is one God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and humanity – the man Christ Jesus. 6 He gave His life to purchase freedom for everyone. This is the message God gave to the world at just the right time. 7 And I have been chosen as a preacher and apostle to teach the Gentiles this message about faith and truth. I’m not exaggerating – just telling the truth. 8 In every place of worship, I want men to pray with holy hands lifted up to God, free from anger and controversy.
I recall being in 10th grade, and a youth leader introduced me to the idea of having a burden for lost people. He asked if we ever considered people going to hell, and would we step in to help if we could. He asked us to ask God to give us His perspective and compassion and to give us a burden for lost people like He has. I did. Shortly after, I went with my family on vacation to Stone Mountain, GA. Looking out over the thousands of people gathered there for the nightly laser light show, it was the first time I’d considered other peoples’ eternal trajectory. My heart actually ached for bringing hope to the crowd, and I felt really small in the moment, but I wanted more. I think I became a little less selfish at that moment. It’s as though my heart grew a size larger, just like the Grinch.
Pray on behalf of others: Ask God to help them with their needs or circumstances, and ask how He wants to use you. It’s essentially standing in the gap between God and the person you are praying for, inserting yourself in their situation, and letting God use you to bridge the gap.
Because God wants everyone to be saved, and He’s in us believers, we should, too.
We pray for each other and for the lost, in every way we can. And we talk to God about people as we talk to people about God; otherwise, we probably won’t. Where you invest your heart (including in prayer), you grow your heart.
3. Evangelism drives our efforts
Romans 1:16 NLT – For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes – the Jew first and also the Gentile.
In 10th grade, some of the high school leaders in our youth group took those of us willing to go to the Palm Beach Mall to share the Gospel. Before we embarked, the leaders took us through the tract, “The Four Spiritual Laws”. We rode over in the church van and divided up into teams of 3. My team came up on a guy sitting on a bench, and we asked if we could share the Gospel with him. He was very welcoming. I began to share with him from the tract. He politely asked if he could see it, took it away, and politely nodded to me as he said, “now continue”. In that moment, I became keenly aware of my lack of understanding. I also couldn’t tell if he was already a believer just testing me, or if he was politely showing me my lack of credibility. I was partly embarrassed, but partly convinced he needed what little understanding I had as a newer believer. So I prayed for us both under my breath and shared what I knew – which sounded nothing like “The Four Spiritual Laws”. Come to find out, he was a believer testing me, and he thanked me for my heart for him to know the Lord, and he said he was encouraged by our going-out there for the sake of the Gospel.
Evangelism puts believers in a situation where we are forced to rely on God. Here’s another side of it: It also causes us to “count the cost” of being a follower of Jesus, because to share the Gospel, especially with a friend, could mean putting that relationship or friendship at risk (depending on the hurts, background, or defensiveness they may currently carry). Now it’s a value choice, which demands we embrace, and that we instill at least 3 Key Elements, from the top down and from the inside out: 1. Gospel Urgency – understanding why it’s important to share the Gospel in our circles of influence; 2. Gospel Fluency – the ability to articulate the whole story of the Gospel in a clear, connecting, and compelling way (how you talk up Jesus’ Good News, including our testimony), and 3. Gospel Strategy, training y’all believers in our care to share the Gospel in a clear and compelling way. G.O.S.P.E.L.
Ministry travels at the speed of relationships and trust. This is you. This is now.
4. Leaders model and set the pace for our efforts
Luke 6:40 NLT – Students are not greater than their teacher. But the student who is fully trained will become like the teacher.
My hope is that every one of you would do better than my too-often insecure and desperate efforts! A healthy church will recruit, equip, and mobilize leaders who are willing to pray for the lost, live and give the Gospel, and make disciples in dependence on and in the power of the Holy Spirit. These leaders set the pace and create the culture for effective evangelism and disciple-making. So either step it up or keep it up!
5. A disciple-multiplication strategy guides our efforts
2 Timothy 2:2 NLT – You have heard me teach things that have been confirmed by many reliable witnesses. Now teach these truths to other trustworthy people who will be able to pass them on to others.
I got this half-right for a while. I joined the wrestling team my senior year of HS. My Health teacher talked me into it. I’m glad he did! I learned how to be part of a team that had to help each other in order to get better. I was about 2 yrs old in the Lord, and so I had a few old camp and Christian t-shirts that were aged to the point I would wear them to practice. I prayed for my new team, and I invited people to church regularly. I talked with my youth pastor about it, and he started to drive by us when we would run at the end of practice, honk his horn at me, and even drive up behind me on the sidewalk, still honking his horn. The last week of the season I asked him if he would come to the start of practice on Tuesday to invite the team to a crusade our church was hosting. He did, and coach was impressed enough to ask the team to come Wednesday night. They did! And at least half of them trusted Jesus that night! Here’s the thing: That was exciting! But I didn’t see most of them again – they just blended back into the thousands of others at my school. I have gotten in touch with a few of them since, mostly because of Facebook, but if I could do it again, here’s what I hope would be different:
We – followers of Jesus – don’t stop until every unbeliever is a believer and every believer is a disciple-maker. God loves us and welcomes us as we are, but He does not call us to stay that way, and He loves us too much to leave us that way. I wish I had been more intentional with follow-up and fellowship alongside people back then.
When someone puts their trust in Christ, we want to see them grow in Christ. As much as possible, we must help each other reach and disciple our own friends, encouraging them to do the same for others.
6. A bold vision focuses our efforts
Acts 1:8 NLT – But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be My witnesses, telling people about Me everywhere – in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
This bold vision comes straight from Jesus and starts across the street, reaching our neighbors, our friends at school, and our co-workers – those near us (our “Jerusalem”). The Holy Spirit is always prompting us to deploy as disciples – at every school, workplace, and community clubhouse to be missionaries and to reach our peers with Jesus’ message of Good News. If you are a follower of Jesus, you are not just a student, employee, or community participant, you are a follower of Jesus, cleverly disguised as a student, employee, or community participant, acquainting others with Jesus – bringing them life, love and hope – and encouraging them to do the same for others.
That same bold vision extends to our neighboring communities that are different than ours (our “Samaria”). When we leave our weekly gatherings, we are sending disciples out consistently to be ambassadors of hope to people who are not like us, but who need the Gospel just the same.
Finally, this bold vision expands around the world. Our consistent challenge is to take the Gospel to different cultures in other parts of the world (to “the ends of the earth”) through our giving, through our praying, and as much as possible through our participation in mission trips and missions endeavors.
7. Biblical outcomes (fruit) measure our efforts
Acts 2:41 NLT – Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day – about 3,000 in all.
Just as the early church measured their impact through numbers of baptisms and new disciples being made and multiplied, we gauge our effectiveness by both qualitative and quantitative measures. Qualitative in deeper spiritual maturity, investment in our community, and fruit of the Spirit visible in our lives. Quantitative in new believers, baptisms, and number of Gospel conversations. We value souls saved and lives transformed by Jesus’ Good News, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Value is communicated both verbally and visually.
Life Church, led by Pastor Craig Groeschel, expresses their values of reaching people in these ways:
- “We’ll do anything, short of sin, to reach people who don’t know Christ. And to reach people no one else is reaching, we’ll have to do things no one else is doing.”
- “We give up things we love for things we love even more. It’s an honor to sacrifice for Christ and His church.”
- “We are big-thinking, bet-the-farm risk-takers who will never insult God with small thinking.”
- “When it comes to generosity, you will see it.” This is the same church who created the YouVersion Bible App and makes it free and available all around the world!
Vision drives us, but values help shape our culture.
8. Ongoing programs reflect the goal of our efforts
Matthew 18:20 – For where two or three gather in my name [in Jesus’ name], there am I with them.
Think about this! We are as close as anyone may ever get to being in the presence of Jesus, because we, collectively, are the body of Christ. And when we gather “in Jesus’ name” to worship or in small groups, or to collaborate on a ministry project, or even to pray, that means we gather in light of who Jesus says He is, what He says about reality, and what He actually promises to do. Academic pursuits and content consumption are no substitute for community, getting together, focusing together on The ABCs of community: Accountability to these convictions we profess, Belonging, and Care – nurturing each other’s souls – ministering to the ministers – each other.
We all need to help make sure that our weekly, monthly, and annual programs focus on intercessory prayer, evangelism, and disciple-multiplication, with the goal of advancing Jesus’ love and Good News in and through …us. In the Youth ministry, we consistently communicate the Gospel at our meetings and stive to equip each other to do the same in our spheres of influence. This is more than just an academic pursuit. It’s life filtered through faith in the Son of God, Who loved us and gave Himself for us, Who says of us collectively that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit.
You can’t separate your philosophy from your practice. You can’t teach what you don’t know. You can’t lead where you won’t go. You gotta’ know it to show it, and you gotta’ live it to give it.
Next Step
For some of us, this is a reset where you just downloaded a bunch of new information that you have to consider in light of your current practice. May God give you wisdom and courage to trust Him in new and fruitful ways!
For some of us, this isn’t new, it’s just affirms things God has been teaching you along the way. Be refreshed and encouraged!
The Apostle Paul said in Philippians 3 that he wants to know Jesus better and to experience the power of His resurrection, as the Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead lives in us who believe! He says he hasn’t arrived at his goal, but he presses on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of him. Keep on keeping on! You’re not home yet!
I’m going to wrap this up “old school” with a blessing from the Old Testament. May our hope, our vision, and our collaboration reflect Psalm 102:18 NLT – “Let this be recorded for future generations, so that a people not yet born will praise the Lord.”
