Day 18
Experiencing Life Together
How wonderful it is,
how pleasant, for God’s people
to live together in harmony!
Psalm 133:1 TEV
The first time I led a study of Purpose-Driven Life, I had just become the pastor of a church that was about twice the size of Spirit of Joy. It was twelve hundred members. But only twelve were involved weekly in any kind of Bible Study or small group. (Would you be surprised to learn that there was a lack of harmony when I arrived?!)
As a result, Day 18 of The Purpose-Driven Life became the most important chapter in the book for us!
Day 18 began to teach people how to experience life together. No … not just how … this chapter began to create a desire for this kind of life together through small groups and Bible Studies.
Every Wednesday, two chapters a week, I led forty people in four small groups through this book. Fourteen of those forty led seventy more. Within a year-and-a-half, one hundred were in weekly Bible Study through the Disciple Bible Study program. It wasn’t me. I was gone by then. Rather, I credit, in large part, chapter 18.
As Rick Warren says, people were hungry for fellowship … for authenticity … for mutual giving and receiving … for sympathy and caring … for mercy and support. They were hungry for the life that God created them for.
Some of you are reading, right now, The Purpose-Driven Life. Take chapter 18 to heart, asking what you’re most deeply hungry for. If you’re not reading it, dig an old copy off the shelf, check one out of the library, or ask a friend to borrow theirs. Read chapter 18. Maybe you’re already experienced the blessings of fellowship. Maybe this is what you’re truly hungry for.
In Christ’s Love,
a guy who’s seen
the blessings of true fellowship
change lives
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