Ivy Grow Group notes

I’m going to be talking this Sunday about church (surprising eh?)

Specifically I want to focus on membership

Being apart OF not apart FROM the Body.

Read 1 Cor 12, then pray together

What parts of the passage are hardest to understand?

What parts go against how we naturally think and live?

Let’s think a bit further on this:

The gospel is like ‘LIVING WATER.’ (where does that phrase come from? Find out and read around it).

What does water do? It fills any receptacle – without retaining the form of any. The container isn’t what’s impt.

The CONTENT stays the same, the CONTAINERS change.

We are individually containers, and we meet together in containers. List what containers Ivy presently meets in that you know of.

Pray for the new outreach starting soon- Ivy Sharston – and the team led by Matty Hawthorne getting it going. Are you called to help with this on Sunday afternoons? Contact the office!

The body looks like it does because of its DNA – that’s what makes us what we are and (to some extent) makes us what we WILL be… = it’s in our DNA.

Much more impt than WHERE we are, is WHO we are!

Go on the Ivy website, look at our church DNA. Remind yourselves of what Ivy is really all about and pray for one another.

I recently visited Harrogate. I love that place! You know the spa water just used to bubble up from ground – then people ascribed to it having life enhancing properties. (to me it just tasted horrible and like a bad egg).

Then what used to be available to all, just bubbled up, had some people put a SYSTEM in place.

People charged for it.

People made a living from it.

Visitors came from all over, and they got religious saying it had to be drunk at certain times, from a certain cup. It was drawn in special cups, by professionals…

They built walls round it (bunker mentality) and charged so much for it ordinary people didn’t get much of a look in.

Discuss:

Any parallels?! How do we do church in ways that help rather than hinder getting that living water to people? What is your GG going to do before Christmas?

We have the living water people need. And we’re putting it out in different shaped containers (look around!).

Ivy is living though the time when you need lots of new wineskins because the wine keeps getting poured out.

Elisha told the widow – go and get more containers – we have to present containers, and heaven won’t run out of oil!

Pray:

Jesus IS what people need. Jesus IS who people need. The Holy Spirit of God – the living water – HE is always relevant!

We don’t do DECRY and DENY.

We do INVADE and PERVADE.

Did you know you smell? You smell good to God!

How smelly are you?

2 Cor 2:14ff But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him.For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life.

Pray that this church gets smellier!

Notice how he leads us? TRIUMPHANTLY!

Where does his fragrance spread?

Everywhere we go! So don’t just stay here!

Some will LOVE the smell, it’ll be LIFE to them…

Others will say it smells like DEATH but really it’ll just be them getting a whiff of their own grave clothes they’re going through life in.

But we aren’t ever meant to just close the doors down and shut the world out… that’s why I love this church going OUT…

Like it or not, the Lord has chosen us to live in VERY interesting times! I believe we are living at the most EXCITING time in history! An extraordinary time! God wants you to do some extraordinary things! Will You play your part?

God is birthing the greatest spiritual awakening in the history of the church. Jesus says, ‘come to me and drink…’

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