Focal Point

Dave Drewery: Today on Focal Point with Pastor Mike Fabarez.

Mike Fabarez: The issue isn't just am I being motivated, we need to start motivating. Do I recognize it's not just about me? Do I realize that the small group that I'm a part of, that I attend, or the table that I'm a part of at women's or men's Bible study is not just what can I get out of it? Are you taking that stuff and investing that in someone else's life? Are you taking what God has invested in you and spurring people on by your life to love and good deeds?

Dave Drewery: Welcome to Focal Point with author and pastor Mike Fabarez. I'm Dave Drewery. Is there someone in your life who challenges you just a bit? Is there a person who's willing to push you when you're standing still or lagging behind? You might think, who needs friends like that? But the answer is, we all do. Today, Pastor Mike explains why a closer relationship with God requires people in your life who encourage us in the right direction. He calls the message, "Motivated by Real Christian Friends."

Mike Fabarez: My wife always says when we hear those news stories of these movie stars, these gals that have babies and they lose all their weight, they look great about three or four weeks after they have a baby, she always says, "But remember, they have a personal trainer." There's always somebody there pressing them and prodding them and policing their meals. That's just how they live.

I thought of that yesterday. I was having lunch, stuffing my face. I was watching TV on my lunch break and I saw Richard Simmons being interviewed on television. You remember him? Little curly-haired, skinny guy, a loud gym-short-wearing little guy who's lost like 120 pounds and he's yelling at everybody else to lose weight.

How irritating must that guy be? If he followed me to lunch, he'd have something to say. Watching me plop on the couch, he'd be yelling at me to get up and do something. I thought, what a guy that is. Then it dawned on me as I was watching him, that's why he's on television. That's why he's being interviewed. He's there and he's the guy they seek out to talk about nutrition, health, and being fit because he's successfully prompted people to lose a lot of weight.

Guys like me look at him and say that guy's irritating, but a lot of other people look at him and go, "I'm so thankful for him because he has helped me lose a lot of weight and now I'm healthy and I'm skinny and I'm fit." When it comes to your walk with Christ and your spiritual health, God says you need some irritating people in your life.

I'm not kidding. I'm not making this up. As a matter of fact, if you have your Bibles, I want you to open to Hebrews chapter 10 as we continue in our series. The Bible says when it comes to the reason you were made, and that is to know your Creator and have an intimate, real, personal relationship with him, what you need is some people that irritate you.

Literally, this particular word is only used once in the Bible in a positive way. The rest of the times you see this, not only in the Bible but outside in ancient Greek writings and extra-biblical writings, it's a negative word, like the crowd was incited to riot. This is the word here.

I found one ancient extra-biblical manuscript that took this word that's translated to "spur one another on," it's translated "to pester." That doesn't sound positive. But the Bible says in this text that when it comes to our need to know God, we need some people in our lives that are going to, look at it, verse 24, "Consider how to spur us on to love and good deeds."

Sometimes when I'm preaching, I'll throw out a Greek word, usually in frustration because I can't find a nice, tight, simple, terse equivalent in English. One word I throw out a lot is the word *Teleios*. Have you heard me say that word, *Teleios*? I say that word because so often the English translations just don't do it justice.

It's usually translated perfect or perfection, and that brings up in our minds this idea of someone who's got a perfect record, or something that's flawless, or something that doesn't have anything wrong with it. It's spotless, and that's not what the word *Teleios* means. As a matter of fact, I've been thinking of that word repeatedly as I've studied in Hebrews chapter 10, though it never appears in this context.

What he's trying to get us to recognize is that we were made for God. As Augustine said, our hearts will be restless until we find rest in him. We saw that great exhortation that we are called to draw near to God, and because of Christ, we now can. That word *Teleios*, just right, that we are made in our hearts to connect with God and when we have that, we start to get that sense of *Teleios*, just right.

It's that feeling that I get when I'm fumbling through my toolbox for 10 minutes trying to find just the right tool for the problem that I'm trying to fix. You finally find that wrench and it fits perfectly on that bolt and you say, "It's like it's made for it. It fits." That's the word *Teleios*. It doesn't mean that that wrench or that socket doesn't have any scratches on it. It just means that they fit together perfectly.

The Bible says we need to strive for that, to have that perfection. He knows that we're all scratched and dented and we got our flaws, but the point is he wants to get us to a place where we're fulfilling our purpose, where we see our lives and God's life start to go click and that fits, it's right, it's *Teleios*, it's just perfect.

The Bible says if you're going to experience that after we had this great exhortation in the preceding verses, verse 22, "Draw near to God," and all that great verbiage, now all of a sudden, it's like a brand new topic, verse 24. But it's not a new topic. The point is if you're going to get to this place of real genuine gratification and fulfillment in your relationship with God, you need some people that are going to push you, prompt you, they're going to even pester you a little bit to get to the place where you need to be in terms of love.

I don't think we're talking about love for each other. We're talking about our love for God, that connection with God and good deeds, that service for God. If you're going to get there, you need some trainers. You need some spiritual trainers in your life. They're going to be the kind of people that are going to push you forward.

Verse 25, it says you don't need to push those people away. As a matter of fact, you need to get together with those kind of people a lot. "Don't give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let's encourage each other." Let's really get in there and encourage each other and we need it more, not less, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

You and I, as it relates to our relationship with God, the ultimate reason that we were created, we need to, number one, get motivated. The thing that's going to motivate us is some people around us that have the same passion and concern to know and serve God, to love him and to serve him more perfectly. Those are going to be the kinds of people that start to challenge our Christian life.

That isn't always going to feel good. It's just like us as parents. We look at our kids growing up and it's interesting how the older they get and we watch them grow up and the more they get to make their own independent choices, one of the concerns we really have in their lives is that they choose good friends, right? We're so concerned that they get to hang with the right people.

It's not just a teenage concern, it needs to be an adult concern because our heavenly Father is looking at us and he's saying the people you choose to hang out with, the people you pull into your life, the people that you let into your sphere of influence are people that are either going to help your walk with God or they're going to hinder it. They're either going to help move you to what God has created you for or they're really going to be a roadblock and a stumbling block for you.

That great passage, and I know you quote it to your teenagers, but it's a good one for God to quote to you as you think about this text, it's Proverbs chapter 13, verse 20. Do you remember that Bible verse? It says, "He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools suffers harm." Though it's not as dramatic as us grown-up adults, we can choose friends that really are for us foolish choices that will be a detriment to our spiritual walk.

It comes in a very benign package. It comes with people that just like to put their arm around us and tell us everything's fine. When it comes to our relationship with God, they say, "Oh, you know what? God is a God of grace and a God of love, and so you don't have to work too hard at this. You're okay, I'm okay."

The bar is always nice and low for them and they get around you and they want the bar to be low for you. They want you to think, well, you don't have to work so hard, you don't have to pray so hard, you don't have to go to church a lot, you don't have to do those things. God loves us, it's fine, it's about grace. They're always lowering the bar for us. Caution, be careful. You and I need to find and seek out challenging Christian relationships.

You've got to have some. You've got to have some people that unfortunately feel a little bit like Richard Simmons when it comes to your diet and your exercise. You need people that you're going to find are always going to say something when they watch you choose something that is less than conducive for your spiritual growth.

The habit is, as it is in verse 25, that those are the kinds of people we sometimes say, "I don't know, it's a lot of work to be a friend of that person. They're always talking about growing and God and evangelism." We want to push them away. Don't. You need those people. You need those folks in your life. You need to have people that are concerned for you like the Apostle Paul is concerned for you.

Here are a couple great texts. First Corinthians chapter 15, verse 58. I love that verse. It's the pinnacle of the writing of the first letter of First Corinthians and Paul says this. It's a great prayer for these people, and I wonder how many friends pray this kind of prayer and say these kinds of things to you. Paul says, "Hey brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord."

Listen to that. A lot of our friends say, "Hey, you need to always work to give yourself a break. You need to slow down. You need to relax a little bit. You just need to give yourself a little time off." Paul says, "You need to stand firm, don't let anything move you, be totally resolved, always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord." Do you have friends that say that kind of stuff to you? Do you have people in your life that are always pushing you in the right direction?

How about this statement as Paul writes the Romans in Romans chapter 12, verse 11? He says, "Never be lacking in zeal. Always be zealous. Keep your spiritual fervor. Serve the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer." You can hear him, he's just cheering these people on. Or how about Philippians chapter 1, verse 9? He says, "Guys, I'm praying for you that your love would abound more and more in knowledge and in depth of insight."

Are there people in your life that are constantly saying those kind of things to you? That's the kind of people that we need to say, "Yeah, I need to seek out that kind of relationship because when those people are in my life, they're constantly trying to direct me, push me, and even pester me a little bit to be a little bit more what God created me to be." I tell you, you'll never look back at those relationships and say, "Wow, I never should have invested in that relationship," because you'll see how their lives have helped to sharpen you. As iron sharpens iron, Scripture says, so one man sharpens another. We need those people in our lives to sharpen us, to help us grow in our walk with God.

We need it on three levels. This is a biblical model and I just want to go outside of Hebrews chapter 10 real quick. If you turn with me to Acts chapter 2, we need to develop this kind of challenge on three separate levels in our lives on three separate levels. We'll bullet point those real quick, but let's turn to Acts chapter 2 and we'll see a great example of this.

I want friends, I want people around me that are not content with the status quo. They recognize that we as followers of Christ need to go a little farther, need to dig a little deeper, need to serve a little bit more fervently, that we need to always be abounding in the work of the Lord. Those are people I need around me and those are people that you need around you.

Acts chapter 2 shows us it happens on a few different levels. Look at verse number 46. It says the early church was every day continuing to meet in the temple courts. Now, you remember the picture in Acts 2, they're there early on, there's preaching and Peter's preaching and all these people are coming to Christ. As a matter of fact, look up at verse number 41. We know that on that day, after Peter's sermon, there were 3,000 people added to their number.

So we got 3,000 plus the group that started out. By chapter 5, we have over 5,000 people meeting regularly on the temple courts. That's a big group setting. It says in verse 42, they were devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching. Some apostle would stand up and teach about Christ and direct people to trust in Christ and draw near to God and there was someone up there preaching to them and it was happening in a big group context.

Let's just bullet point that as a sub-point. It needs to happen in a challenging kind of relationship as it relates to a church. We all need to seek out a challenging church. You need that. You've got to have one. In a day when a lot of people are trying to create and foster and promote churches that never challenge you, I think it's important for us to recognize that's not the call of Scripture.

Your church should feel a little irritating sometimes. Does that ever happen? It happens. In a good church, it should happen. You should go out going, "Wow, that was tough. That was rough. He kind of pestered me this morning." Instead of turning it into barbecued pastor for lunch, which often happens, instead of doing that, maybe you should stand back like I should and say that's exactly what church should be, something to spur me on, incite me, invoke me, push me, pester me to love God more and do more good deeds.

That's the point of church. That's what the apostles' teaching was all about. They weren't up there giving suggestions to people. They were up proclaiming with authority the teaching of Jesus Christ and the call for all of us to draw near to God. So we need a challenging church. I know I'm preaching to the choir because most of you here, you're already committed to our church and I trust it's irritating enough for you.

There are a lot of people out there that are looking for churches, they're shopping for churches that make them feel good. Pat me on the back, make me feel good, affirm the things that I already know and already do. That's not the kind of church they need to be looking for. As a matter of fact, if you don't have a church that's pushing you forward, you're wasting your time there. You need to find a place where someone is there committed to God's word who is trying to push you a little bit further every single week that he preaches to you. That's a bottom-line, baseline commitment.

In verse number 46, they do more than just meet together on the temple courts. There's another level of intimacy where there's good things going on that's driving people closer to Christ. It says they broke bread together, this is the middle of verse 46, in their, what's the word? Homes. It got to a smaller level.

Nobody had a home big enough to fit 5,000 people. On the temple courts, you had a lot of people there and someone standing up and booming without a microphone, his voice out and preaching at people to draw near to God. But then there was another level where they got together, they ate together with glad and sincere hearts. They were doing things like this in verse 47, praising God together and enjoying the favor of all the people and God was so pleased with that he was adding to their number daily those who were being saved. This was a good pattern and God affirms it right there in verse 47.

Secondly, let's just bullet point this way. We need to not only have a challenging church, we need some kind of challenging small group in my life. There ought to be a group where they know your name and when you're not there, they know you're gone and they know something of you and you've taken your walls down enough for them to know something about how you can and should respond to God's word and there's some kind of group accountability there where you're moving forward in the Christian life.

There ought to be some level of that. We see that all throughout the Scripture. Big group, that's church, great, easy to get lost on the temple mount, easy to be lost on the temple court. But when you get into someone's home or you get in a small group, now you've got an opportunity where people know you and all the chairs aren't facing one direction, they're all facing each other and we have some kind of dynamic of spiritual prodding and promoting and inciting and spurring on that you're not going to get in church. That's effective and it's important.

Unfortunately, 70% of the people that attend church on a Sunday, that's all they do. They get lost in the temple courts, they listen to some guy preach, they go home, often times eat barbecued pastor, they think about what they heard and that's it. No accountability, no follow-up, no what did you think about that, no what are we going to do about that. That's what the small group is all about. You need a church that challenges you. You need some kind of small group that challenges you.

Thirdly, Second Timothy chapter 2, verse number 2. It is the pattern of Scripture that we also see throughout the Bible two people pairing up and connecting on a level that's more than just friendship, it's a challenging friendship. Let's bullet point that, a challenging friendship. You need a friendship in your life that just doesn't shop together or go golfing together or go fishing together or hanging out. You need a relationship that when you hang out, you've got something there between you that helps to provoke and incite a conversation about your spiritual growth.

Second Timothy 2, verse 2 says that we ought to be just like the Apostle Paul, following this great pattern. That is that Paul says to Timothy, the things that I've entrusted to you in the presence of many witnesses, these things entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. To see that chain of taking these transferable concepts of spiritual growth and to hand them off to someone else.

You know friends that are so committed to whatever their hobby is or maybe it's weight loss and they're carrying chips around and they've got meal plans and they've got a person that meets them at the gym and all that and they're really serious about it. You may look at this and say that sounds like a lot. You want me to not only come to church, you want me to be in a group, you want me to meet with someone individually.

Listen, if we want to be spiritually healthy, if we want to connect with the living God which really is the whole purpose and point of our life, that when we get there and get a taste of that we start to recognize this is what I was made for. Then you'll realize this isn't just some kind of superfluous kind of structure around my life and scaffolding that I don't need. You'll recognize this is exactly what I need. It's the kind of thing that moves me into a place where I realize the whole purpose for my being here on earth.

I highly recommend that you find challenging Christian relationships on all three levels. You got a challenging church, you got a challenging small group and you have a challenging friendship, a one-on-one connection with somebody who's helping you and keeping you accountable for memorizing Scripture, sharing your faith, fighting temptation and all the issues that show up in our partner's manual. Even if you don't use that, at least have something, some kind of one-on-one relationship where you're talking about your spiritual life and helping one another grow.

Our text, Hebrews chapter 10, if you look at it, I think is very valuable for us just to look at and ask ourselves the question, do I have that in place in my life? Do I have that in place in my life? It's important. But that's really not what the language of this text is saying to us, is it? Look at the way these verbs are positioned and posited. He's not saying, hey, make sure that you have people that do that to you. The text is telling us specifically and directly that let us all, each of us, consider how we may spur one another on to love and good deeds. The issue isn't just am I being motivated, we need to start motivating.

The real issue for us is God has called us, no matter if we're two weeks old in the faith, two months old, or 25 years old in the faith, we should be motivating others. We ought to be taking their faith from wherever it's at and doing whatever we can, humbly, creatively, carefully and helping them love God more and helping them serve God more perfectly. That's the most important thing for us to do is to say God, this passage is telling me specifically how can I be a motivation for someone else. I want to make sure you've got the relationships in your life, but the real question here in this text is, am I doing this in someone else's life?

Do I come to church with a purpose? Do I recognize it's not just about me? Do I realize that the small group that I'm a part of, that I attend, or the table that I'm a part of at women's or men's Bible study is not just what can I get out of it? But the point is, particularly in this passage, are you taking that stuff and investing that in someone else's life? Are you taking what God has invested in you and spurring people on by your life to love and good deeds?

That's going to take a few things. The first thing it's going to take in verse number 24 is that we start to think. Look at that word, consider. That's not just the word to think about. There's a Greek word for think, but there's a preposition stuck in front of it that makes a little intensified compound word and it's the Greek preposition *Kata* and *Kata* means down.

The verb here is to think down on. I love the way that kind of brings the imagery of kind of get your mind focused down on this. It's like sit down and think about it. Give some energy and attention to get your mind to really focus its sight down on this. The text is saying you consider it, think about it. He doesn't tell us what to do. He says you need to think about what to do that might spur someone on to love God more and do good deeds.

If you think about it simplistically, particularly in the first century, they're listening to a guy who's reading this letter from some preacher that's talking about how to love God more and draw near to God. They think, well, if I'm supposed to do that to someone else, the simplistic thinker thinks, well, I guess I got to go around and preach to my friends and tell everybody I run into, well, you ought to draw near to God and you should love God more. He's saying, no, you think about it. Let's get creative. Get creative and start thinking about how I might in creative ways, beyond just saying something like, "Hey, you need to be closer to God, you need a deeper relationship with God." What other things might help that? What are some of the ancillary issues that might be brought into your friend's life that might really assist in that?

Dave Drewery: What a gift it is to have people in our lives who won't let us coast. You're listening to Focal Point and a message from Mike Fabarez called "Motivated by Real Christian Friends." Part of his mini-series, "A Closer Relationship with God." We'll continue this study tomorrow. If you'd like to revisit any of these messages or pass them along to someone who could use a push in the right direction, head off to focalpointradio.org or download the free Focal Point app.

Right now, we'd like to send you a resource that fits right alongside what we've been talking about this week, the deep genuine kind of relationship with God that doesn't happen by accident. It's *The Pursuit of God* by A.W. Tozer and it's this month's featured book here at Focal Point. Tozer understood that drawing near to God requires something real from us, an honest turning of the heart away from distraction and toward the one who made us for himself.

Readers often describe coming back to it year after year, finding something new each time because it's the kind of writing that meets you where you are. Request your copy of *The Pursuit of God* when you make a gift to Focal Point today by calling our team at 888-320-5885 or by giving online at focalpointradio.org. If you'd rather send your donation by mail, just write to us at Focal Point, PO Box 2850, Laguna Hills, California 92654.

The men and women who give each month as Focal Point partners are truly what this ministry is built on. Their faithful giving is what funds solid biblical teaching and puts it in front of new ears all across the country and around the world. As a partner, Pastor Mike's hand-picked monthly resources are sent straight to your door. Join the team today by calling 888-320-5885 or sign up online at focalpointradio.org. I'm Dave Drewery. We'll be back with more from this study tomorrow because when following God starts to feel like an uphill race, you need people who will run alongside you and refuse to let you quit. That's Thursday on Focal Point with Mike Fabarez.

Mike Fabarez: Pastor Mike here. I pray today's message will help you live out your faith with truth and love. After all, that's the kind of biblical faith that changes lives and transforms a crooked culture. But if you haven't truly surrendered your life to Christ, then I'd like to invite you to get in touch. We'd love to pray with you and help you discover God's plan of salvation. Visit focalpointradio.org.

Dave Drewery: Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.