Video Transcript: Connection 1 - God
All right, welcome to the communication effective communication class. And over the next several sessions, we're going to be looking at the seven connections, hopefully you remember them from the Getting Started class. These are the seven most important connections that any person has in their life. And certainly, as I said, In the beginning, communication is really about connection, connection to the people around you. And so I thought, let's spend a little bit of time talking about these important connections, as it relates to communication. So in this session, we're going to look at connection one, which is the most important connection, that's your connection to God. The fact that we can actually communicate with God is amazing. If you think of God as the One Who created the heavens and the earth, the galaxies, the nebula, all this, I mean, as far as, as far out, as we can see with telos, God created all of that. And then in that sea of the universe is this tiny, infinitesimal speck of dust we call the earth. And then there's you this incredibly small speck of dust on this speck of dust, your life and yet you can communicate to the God who created all of this, you can talk, you can listen, okay? Basic Communication path to God, the basic communication path to God is the basic communication paths to anyone. If you want to communicate, if you want to connect with anyone, it takes these three things. First of all, it takes talking and want to connect with God it takes talking to God, it takes listening to God and you have to do it repeatedly. Talking, listening repeatedly. Now we have a special terms for these. We have a special term for talking to God. We call it prayer. Prayer to God, we can give him our needs, our hurts, our pains. We can tell him our frustrations, we can give our praise, we can give our thanks. We can, we can moan we can groan we don't even need have to use words in our prayers and God listens. Listening. There are many ways to listen to God. You can listen to God to His creation. You can listen to hear what God is saying to other people. But the most consistent way, most trustworthy way to listen to God is through His Word, the Bible. So we have prayer, we have Bible. Now in Christian in the Christian world, when we put those two together prayer and Bible, we have another term for instead of repeatedly, we call it devotions. devotions is the repeated pattern of talking, listening to God through prayer, and Bible reading. This is the most consistent, Path, this isn't just one little add on that a Christian should have this should be your main tool for communicating with God. What do you need to succeed? A lot of people try devotions for a time and then they quit and they fail and they start again, and they quit and they fail. New Year's resolutions are filled with Lord help me be more consistent in my devotional life, what do you actually need to succeed in this? Number one, you need a path? In other words, you need something that you're studying, are you going to read a verse a day? Are you going to read a chapter a day? Are you following some pattern given to you by your church? What is the path that you're going to go on? Secondly, you need to stick your path into your schedule. A lot of people fail at their devotions because
they don't have a schedule. I'm gonna read one chapter of the Bible every single day, and the first morning they get up and read it. Next day, they don't read it in the morning. They forgot about it and they read it at night. In other words, there's no schedule. Most of life, we need a schedule, you get up in the morning, you take a shower, you just do it automatically. You have your coffee, you just do it automatically. You get dressed, you do it automatically. You need to somehow get a schedule, do it at the same time every day. If you hope to succeed. Third, you need accountability. We we only do what we are accountable for. If you look at when you know why people show up on time at work well, because if they don't, their pay goes down. You're accountable to your boss. So how are you accountable for the devotions that you do? Is someone keeping track? At our church, we actually do that. We keep track various different ways we had, we had a tree. And then, you know, when we complete a book of the Bible, the kids got a leaf, you know, the Genesis leaf and they put it on their tree. If you don't do Genesis, then you don't get the Genesis leaf. Accountability reward? What's the reward? I'm not talking about money, but I'm talking about, you know, how do we measure success, you go to school, you work hard, you get a diploma. You go to work, you work hard to get money. There's some kind of recognition system that says, yes, you're on the right path, you're doing the right thing. And finally, you need support. You can't do this on your own. You need other people that are doing the same thing. When there's a whole group of people trying to do something, you're more likely to succeed. Well, why most do not succeed? This is the most important habit that we have in life, connecting with God, what's more important than that? And yet, we fail over and over again. Why do most not succeeded? Number one, procrastination. We're going to do our devotions. We're gonna get on top of this, but not today. Not tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe next month. Number two, were too busy with this, we're busy. How can I fit this into my schedule? Again, we we do what we really want to do, we can make our priorities, we have to fit it into our schedule. But if we don't, we always have more to do in one day than we have day to do it. So if you don't fit devotions into this, they will always drop off because you're busy with so many things, mixed up priorities, and you're getting other things done, the the urges, this has to be done right now. And so I do it, but it's not the most important thing. Life is to good. We have liked to, we're busy with things, we're enjoying ourselves. And we don't feel the need. devotions not meaningful. I think this is true for a lot of people, they're doing devotions. They're reading a Bible passage every day or whatever they're doing. They're just going through the motions, it's not doing anything for them. You sit down with your wife, you read it, you discuss it for two minutes, you're both in a hurry to go somewhere else. And it just doesn't do anything for you. Lack of support connections two through six. Your your marriage partner isn't involved. Your family isn't involved. Your church isn't involved. You just don't have the support to make it happen. Lack of a
mission. That's connection seven. If you were sharing your faith with people left, right and center, you would want God's presence, the sense of God's presence, you'd want something to share. If you're telling people that they need to start talking and listening to God, you would definitely stick with talking listening to God but if you have no mission, you're not sharing with anyone. Well, there's no need to you know, stick with it yourself. Understanding your communication senses preference, okay, our senses, sight, smell, hearing and so on. Number one, do you like reading with your eyes? Can you like reading? Well then find devotions that are reading intensive? Or you like listening with your ears? Well then listen to stuff, listen to sermons, listen to things on the internet. Listen to the lectures like this, you like listening? Or maybe you like seeing with your eyes and listening with your ears. So video is perfect for you. Or you like tasting and smelling you know light some incense while you're reading the Bible. Some people need those kinds of things, in order to get themselves to engage in it. Understanding your communication style. You see God in discussion with groups. When you're with a group of people, and everyone's talking about what the passage means to them, it helps you you're engaged, you're you're fully a part of it. Or maybe you see God in your own personal devotions, you need to be in a quiet place. And when other people are talking and sharing what they think it's a distraction for you. Or maybe you see God and contemplation. It's not just studying something. It's like reflecting a word or a phrase and you need to think about it over and over again. Or maybe you see God in in-depth study. You need to figure out what passages and you need to have commentaries open. And that's how God communicates to you, you have to have the sense of how you operate. What works best for you see God in action. Some people have a hard time sitting, reading the Bible understanding, getting into Bible studies and all of that they want to do something. They want to see God in action. They want to take the word that the Bible says, in the words become alive when, when they're doing something. So what style fits, you don't just do devotions, but figure out what fits you the best ways to pray. A.c.t.s. A.c.t.s. stands for adoration, confession, thanksgiving supplication or your needs. I remember when Henry and I first started working together, we made these little A.c.t.s. prayer sheets, they were little pieces of paper, and we put A adoration,C confessions, T, Thanksgiving supplication, we had our kids filling those out every single day. It was like a guide, helping them write down what the next day they do it again the next day, and they do it again. And the act of writing it down helped them be consistent. The seven connections you can you can take each connection. So connection, one is your personal walk with God. So now I'm talking about my personal relationship with God and my prayer, and then the connection two is marriage, then three is family, then it's my friends in my support group, then it's church then its kingdom then it's the world. Each connection, the circle is getting bigger and bigger. And I make my prayer follow
that pattern. But the Lord's Prayer, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. So I'm focused on my praise to God, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done now, my, my life and what's going on in my life? How do I dedicate what
I'm doing to God's will give us this day our daily bread? So what do I need? What are my needs to see and go through the Lord's Prayer, and each phrase becomes a separate topic. And that topic becomes the topic of my next, the next part of my prayer. Keep a prayer journal. For a while write down everything that you're putting before God. Write down the answers and keep track of it. Something different will happen than your normal pattern. Try it for 21 days in a row. Back in the early days, that's what Henry and I would challenge people do this for 21 days. It's not working, keep doing for 21 days, we actually gave people a green sticker, they did it 21 days, they put it right in in their Bible. And then 42 days, they got the silver sticker. And then 63 days in a row, they got the gold sticker. You stick with this habit, and then see what happens. Prayer beads, Catholics have been doing this for a long time. That's what the Rosary is. Rosary is just beads. And each bead has a different prayer. We'll make up your own. What can each beans, this is my family. This is my marriage. This is my relationship to God. This is the people at work, you know, you could you could label these beads. And then that becomes the guide that helps you stick with it. Put your plans for the for your day before God. A lot of people like to write out to do lists. Okay? Write out a to do list put to do and then in parentheses, say prayer list. Because everything you're going to do today is something you want God to bless God, here's my list. Here's what I want to do. This is my prayer team. I'm putting it before you. You want me to do something different? Let me know. Put your fears before God. Put your dreams before God. Put your sins before God. Put the people in your life before God. You know have a directory have the people that you care about on your phone. If you have your contact list, you know go through A through E today and then F through G the next day. You know these people are the people that are important to you. Why not pray for them? Ways to read the Bible. A verse a day. In a one verse every day, a verse a week. Bible reading plans, there's so many plans. You can read through the whole Bible in the year you can read through the New Testament a year. You can read one chapter a day you can read the Bible in sort of chronological order. There's all these different ways that you can pick a plan or just crack it open for one week, every day. Just get up and blindly open it up and start reading. Try it for a week and see what happens. write songs. In our church we probably have 150 songs that we have written directly right out of the Bible. We don't diversify them. We take the Bible verse, especially Psalms, it's so easy. If you want to get started, start with Psalm 100. Because they're almost songs are ready, come up with the tune, open the Bible and try to see if it fits. So find different ways. write poetry, write your feelings. Keep a journal, again, all these different ways that you're trying to make yourself a part of this whole devotional
experience. Don't just keep doing the same thing and quitting time and time. Again. Your relationship to God is the most important relationship that you have. It takes talking, listening, repeated prayer Bible in some form, but don't just give up. Try different things. Get support, and that's what we're going to talk about next. In connection two.