Focus Young Adults Ministry

During my recent teaching on worship, the final point that I talked about was about the attitiude the we put into our worship. Apathy is not acceptable. When we worship God, we should go into it with EVERYTHING that we have. This video speaks to this idea of being wholehearted, and puts it better than any other way that I can. Watch this video again, and think about how much you put into living a life of worship...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyPkUXGq1S0

And...   if you have not seen Facing the Giants yet, then I highly recommend that you find it, and watch it. And when it comes out on DVD, then buy it. This movie is a must-have for every Christian's movie collection!

Focused on Him,
Dan

A couple of weeks ago during our 10.4.06 teaching, Who is this King of Glory?, the second point that we discussed was regarding our proper position during worship.
 
We discussed the different types of body posture in worhsip:

• Standing - An act of reverence, a willingness to move and do His will, identification with the ressurected life of Jesus.
• Dancing - Performance, congregational worship, and ecstatic dancing in the Spirit.
• Bowing - Includes all forms of bowing, kneeling, and falling prostrate (facedown) on the ground.

Specifically, when we look at the behavior of the 24 elders in the book of Revelation, they are always found "falling on their faces and worshiping Him who sits on the throne". These elders are believed to be a representation of human beings in Heaven. So they show us what it is like when we approach the presence of the Throne of God. We should be facedown in worship when we are in His presence!
 
This facedown position puts us basically in a position of surrender to God. From that position, we cannot enforce our will, but rather submit ourselves to His will. When we are facedown, we are saying that we surrender ourselves to Him, and that He can do whatever He want to do to us.
 
I've even been thinking more about this since I taught this lesson. I've been pondering more the impact of this when we consider that "worship" is really more than just a song. It is really the offering of our lives that we give to Him. If our whole life is an act of worship to our King, then what does this facedown worship look like when I am at work? At home with my family? When I am at the grocery store picking up some things for dinner? When I am playing football with the guys? When I am watching football?
 
I think you get the idea by now. Our lives should be an act if surrender to His will. We should consider what His will would be everytime we make some kind of decision. This is a totally selfless life when we think about Him first. This means doing things that you know would bring a smile to his face. Like going the extra mile to do a good job at work. Like telling your spouse, kids, or other family members that you love them every day. Like letting someone get in front of you in line at the grocery store...    Again, I think you get the idea...
 
If we are going to change the world around us, it starts with who we think of first when we make daily decisions. Proper worhip to God is a life that is surredered to helping Him change people's hearts, and we can't do that if we are always thinking of ourselves first.
 
Check out some of these resources to help you dig deeper into this topic of "facedown worship". Just remember that your whole life is an act of worship to your King, and that when we come together for corporate (singing) worship that we are approaching the throne of god with our offering.

• Facedown Worship [a Bible study from Matt Redman]
  http://regalbooks.com/facedown_study.pdf

• Facedown, Matt Redman (the book)
  http://www.worshipmusic.com/0830732462.html

• Worship Articles - Facedown
  http://www.integritymusic.com/worship/worart/0804.html

 
Focused on Him,
Dan
 
 

During our 10.4.06 Teaching, Who is this King of Glory?, the first point that we discussed was regarding the question, "Who is Jesus to you?".
 
God is referred to in many different way in the Scriptures. The reason for this is to display different aspects of His character. This is similar to how we give nicknames to people. We might call someone who is very tall "stretch", or someone who is a teacher "teach", or someone that picks their nose "booger". Jesus is a lot of things to a lot of people. The question here is who is He to you.
 
If you are "saved", then at minimum He is your Savior. To me he is:

• The One who holds the key that releases me from my self-made prison
• The Donor that gave me a chance with a heart transplant
• The Governor who grants me a pardon for my crimes
• My Savior
• My Friend
• My BEST Friend

Who is He to you? Pray and meditate on this for a while, and discover who He is to you. Check out some of these resources to help you discover who exactly He is to you...

• http://www.theinterviewwithgod.com/
• http://www.everystudent.com/wires/whatlike.html
• http://www.characterbuildingforfamilies.com/names.html
• http://www.blueletterbible.org/study/misc/name_god.html

Focused on Him,
Dan

It's official! We have the topics for the next series of small group studies. This series of groups will start on Wednesday night, October 18th. They will run on 10/18, 10/25, and 11/1. Here are list of the studies and their descriptions...
 
God's Love... Receiving It and Sharing It (by Lucy Ann) - A study on being opened to receiving God's unconditional love; God's ability to love us "just as we are" and His desire for that love to affect those around us. Changing our world one relationship at a time!!

How to Repent (by Adam and Ryan (and Dan))- Repenting from sins may not be our favorite way of passing time, but it is necessary. Caring for others is ine, but being a Christian also involves preaching-and practicing-repentance. In this study based on the life of David, we will see what it looks like.

The Elijah Chronicles, Part 2 - Only God Can Make it Rain (by Shelley and Krista)- 1 Kings 18 is set in the nation of Israel during a time of terrible drought and famine. The people were in a beaten down and powerless state. They had seen so much hunger and death that it was hard for them to recognize a fresh alternative in the face of Ahab's power. There was little faith, and what there was of it was hiding in the caves. The worship of Yahweh was virtually extinct, until one man, Elijah, stood and challenged the people's lethargy. This text describes a true power encounter. God rests his credibility upon his ability to outperform the prophets of Baal.

Let any of your Focus Leaders know if you have any questions. Thanks!
 

Focus Ministries is now on YouTube! We have created the Focus Young Adults Ministry channel, and here you will be able to find all of our video annoucements, and soon we plan to add some teaching and music videos from our meetings. Eventually, we also plan to integrate this functionality more directly into the rest of the "Focus web site". If you have thoughts, ideas, or think you might want to help a little bit with this extension of the ministry please let Dan know.

Otherwise, check out the Focus Ministry channel on YouTube.com, subscribe to it, and tell all of your friends! For now you can find it in the "Links" section of this page, or by using the following web site address:

http://www.youtube.com/user/FocusMinistry

Focused on Him,
Dan

During the month of September there will be "Big Group Teaching" on September 6th, and then "Small Group Study" on September 13th, 20th, and 27th.
 
There will be three different small-group topics running at the same time, and each study will be completed over a three-week period with new studies then starting in October. The list of the studies being offered are as follows:
 

• God's Faithfulness and Isreal's Forgetfullness - This study will take a close look at some of the miracles that the early nation of Isreal saw, and try to understand how they still could have turned their backs on their God. Some time will also be spent discussing how these things apply to our modern lives.

• Getting Real With Jesus - This study will be a practical discussion around how we can walk out our faith in today's world. Jesus called us to be different, so what can we do to live up to Jesus' standards for our lives, and how can we affect the world around us.

• The Elijah Chronicles, Part 1: God is True to His Word - This study is part one of a three-part study that will be offered over the next three months. This study looks at the life of Elijah in 1 Kings 17 and discusses how God is true to His Word. When we stand up for the Word of God, God stands up for us.

Please let us know if you have any questions about the upcoming studies. We look forward to digging into God's Word with you and learning how we can better walk out the principles that we will be studying.
 

As most of you know, we are getting ready to make a big change in how our ministry operates. Traditionally, the group was limited to singles between the ages of 18 to 25. Soon we will be opening it up to include all young adults (regardless of marital status) from 18-32. Basically it will be a 20-somethings group, plus or minus a couple of years.

One of the greatest reasons for this change is to expand the outreach of this ministry. The leadership of our church have a great vision for this group to be a pivotal force in our community. We are not simply trying to boost the numbers so that we can say that we have a larger group, but we are trying to reach more people for the Kingdom!

With this change, we will begin having our own worship, which will be led by Young Adults from the group. This new Focus Worship Team is dedicated to leading us before the throne and ushering in the presence of the Holy Spirit in a modern way that will not only enhance our relationship with the Living God, but also minister to Young Adults that may not even know Christ.

We will be together for occasional "Big Group Teaching". But because relationships are so important, and since relationships are better nurtured in smaller groups, then we will also spend some time in "Small Group Studies". We are also taking a different approach to Small Group Studies, and we will be rotating through three-week study topics rather than run 10-12 week studies. This will give everyone the opportunity to jump around and try different studies without the long commitment associated with the 10-12 week studies.

You will also be able to look forward to other activities outside of our regular meetings. We plan to create opportunities for everyone to just fellowship with each other and build relationships. We also believe that relationships will be built and strengthened through ministry opportunities to other people within the church, and through outreach activities designed to reach the lost in our community.

It is our prayer that this "new" Focus Young Adults Ministry be an incredible blessing to you and your friends! It is our heart to see you grow in your walk with Christ, have some fun, and help in building His Kingdom! I look forward to renewing our "Focus" with you!

Focused on Him,
Dan King
Ministry Servant
Focus Young Adults Ministry
Fellowship of Believers Church
 

This week's study was an interesting perspective on God's unconditional love for us. In this week's video, Rob Bell discussed the situation with his son who was overtaken by shame and guilt from taking the little white ball and pushing his brother that instead of dealing with the consequences for his action, he chose to hide under the covers in his parent's bed (hence the "lump"). Rather than condenming his child, he pulled back the covers hugged his son, and told him, "there is nothing you could do to make me love you less".
 
This lesson hit several interesting points...

1. We need to let God pull back the covers on us, even though it means that we then have to lie there total exposed to judgement.
2. We also need to understand that even in the worst of our sins, God still loves us, and will never love us less as a result of something that we do.
3. It is much better to 'get out of bed' and walk with the Father, than it is to lay under the covers sweating and stewing in our shame.
4. Our lives should reflect a response to God's unconditional love for us. We should be proud to stand up and walk with him! Reflect His love today!
5. Look at other people the way that God does. Everyone of us is hurting in some way. But God loves everyone in the same way that He loves us. Treat others as though they are in the same love that God shows to us when we a just a lump in the bed.

As some of you noticed, Tim was unusually quite tonight, and he rushed off pretty quickly after our time of study. As it turns out, there was a big reason for this. Apparently God was REALLY working on him tonight through this study, and he left so that he could go get into God's face and deal with what he was feeling. Well, Tim ended coming back to our house after everyone left after giving his live to the Lord. On June 30th, Tim Myers became a child of God! We talked a lot about it, and I am VERY proud of Tim for the decisions that he has made. The best part is that they were totally his decisions, and not something that he felt pressured into making. I truly believe that his testimony will have a great impact on bringing others closer to Christ as well! If you see Tim, please give him a big hug and welcome him into 'the Family'!
 
Ultimately for Tim, it was the realization that God's love for us is unconditional. There is NOTHING that can separate us from the love of God! Tonight, this knowledge brought Tim to salvation in Christ! However, I believe that even though we might already have this salvation, that this truth should move all of us into a deeper relationship with the God who loves us. Think, pray and meditate on this for a while this week. Get a hold of how big this idea of God's love being unconditional is. Then think about how you are going to let your life reflect this fact. If you truly believe in god's love for you, you WILL act differently.
 
Focused on Him,
Dan
 
 

This week's study was quite interesting to me. Personally, I thought that this Nooma would probably be one of the weakest in the series, but God showed up and provedme wrong! I think that our discussion was right on the mark, and totally led by Him! Here are a few things from this week's study to help review what we discussed, and some things to consider throughout the week...
 
First, we started with the simple question of, "What does the world outside of the church think of Christianity and Christian people?" To sum up the responses that we recognized, we came up with: hypocrites, judgemental, overly and fake friendly, summed up...   they don't think very highly of us (in fact, I think that the word "hate" was used to describe some people's feelings).
 
In the Nooma, Rob Bell posed one very interesting question...   "How did the best, most incredible message in history end up like this?" First of all the message of our Lord and Savior truly is the most incredible thing that has ever happened to us in ALL of history! But throughout history, it has gotten a distorted image because of how Christians act. We (collectively as Christians) are laregely responsible for the world's perception of us. And, are you satisfied with the world looking at you, and labling you with all of the words that we used earlier?
 
Therefore, it is OUR responsibility to create the image that we want the world to have of us. So this begs two questions:

1. What image do you want the world to have of Christians?
2. What are we going to do to create the positive image of Christianity that we want the world to have?

We also watched the short video, and discussed the "San Jacinto Story". This was the story of a church that truly affected its community through its actions. The challenge that I currently have for all of you is to think of creative ways that we could begin to reach out and start to have an effect on our community. It might be something simple like volunteering some Habitat for Humanity hours for a single mom who has not other means of getting the hours to complete her home, or it may be a larger, more widespread program that has us working regularly with a specific people group or addressing a specific need in the community.
 
Just remember that the focus should be on sharing God's unconditional love with his people (and that includes the ones that "the church" may not traditionally love).
 
Focusing on Him,
Dan