Community part 3 | Sermon Notes
7. Serve One Another through Accountability:
James 5:16 Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
Healed from addiction. Healed from fear. Healed from depression. Your healing comes from God through your connection to others. Your accountability does not just keep you from sinning, but it heals you.
You are saved by God through faith. You are healed by God through community.
We often skip the confess your sins to each other part. And when it comes to the second part, we just highlight the pray part. We say…Pray and you will be healed. However, the “confess” AND “to each other” parts are JUST as important. “Oh I just can’t do that. It’s too personal. People don’t need in my business.” “OK, don’t get healed.” “Ok, keep sinning.”
Hebrews 3:13 You must warn each other every day, while it is still “today,” so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God.
Admit to sin and look to another human to help you overcome it.
Voluntarily develop a circle of Christian friends to whom we are regularly accountable for areas of behavior that are especially difficult, or in which self-deception is easy.
WE ARE TO LET OUR CHRISTIAN FRIENDS INTO OUR LIVES DEEPLY ENOUGH TO SEE OUR WEAKNESSES AND HOLD US RESPONSIBLE TO GROW INTO CHRIST’S LIKENESS.
The best way for accountability to work is for you to be around people enough for them to pick up on the difference. If you only have a meeting once a month where you are supposed to confess your sins to a person and you don’t even know them. It is much more likely for you to hide. However, if you are in close proximity with someone you are able to say…something isn’t right with you.
8. Serve One Another through Forgiveness and Reconciliation
Ephesians 4:2 Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love.
Make allowance not because they deserve it, but because of your love.
Colossians 3:13 Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.
Galatians 5:26 Let us not become conceited, or provoke one another, or be jealous of one another.
- Conceited/provoke= to despise someone, look down and disdain someone because they have less
- Jealous/envy= to feel inferior to, to resent because someone has more
BOTH attitudes breed conflicts and unreconciled relationships.
Matthew 5:23 “So if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, 24 leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.
Matthew 18:15 “If another believer sins against you, go privately and point out the offense. If the other person listens and confesses it, you have won that person back. 16 But if you are unsuccessful, take one or two others with you and go back again, so that everything you say may be confirmed by two or three witnesses…
9. Serve One Another’s interests rather than our own
Galatians 5:13 For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love.
Indentured servants became bond slaves of their creditors until the debt was paid. Because Christ humbled himself and became a servant and met our needs even at the cost of his own life, now we are like indentured servants…to one another.
We owe everyone a debt of love.
Hebrews 10:24 Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. 25 And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.
How much time have you spent this week thinking up ways to spur on or motivate the people in this church family?
Posted on April 22, 2013, in Sermon Notes, theology and tagged accountability, body, church, community, forgiveness, reconciliation, robin steele, sermon notes. Bookmark the permalink. 5 Comments.
Robin Steele 
I’m with you on this lesson, but do have one caution on point #7. Make sure whoever you confess your sins to is worthy of your confidence. Some questions you can ask yourself are: Has this person ever told me something about someone else that I did not need to know? Does this person like to talk and feel important because they have important information? Do you have confidence in this person’s prayer life?
The best way to know the answers to these questions is to have the kind of relationship with them that precludes you even having to ask yourself; you know them good enough to know the answers already. There is mutual respect based on real life situations. In my day we didn’t call this community, we called it friendship. A friend was somebody you would trust your family with if you were out of town. I think there are many folks worthy of this designation, but we have to get off the rat track long enough to engage with them, to really know them at this level.
Right, a community is a network of friendships. I agree also with the idea of knowing about people before opening up. Jesus talked about not throwing your pearls before swine. Maybe we don’t want to throw our trash before them either. 🙂
However, at some point there is a element of risk in the conversation that must be jumped into.
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