Five Things God Uses to Grow Your Faith 5 – Personal Ministry

Welcome to CROLCC, we are so glad you are here worshiping with us. We have been talking about faith and we said that God is most interested in growing your faith. Just as in the OT the relationship between mankind and God was broken because of trust, God sent Jesus in the NT to rebuild our trust or confidence in Him. Therefore as our faith grows, so grows our relationship with God.

Last week we talked about one of the ways God uses to grow your faith is through private disciplines. We specifically talked about the area of finance and time. It is human nature to trust in our wealth, but God wants us to trust Him ultimately. We value our time but ultimately God controls our time. So when we learn to give God our first few dollars and our first few minutes, we grow in our intimacy with Him.

Today we are going to talk about the fourth thing that God uses to grow your faith – Personal Ministry. If you have ever volunteered to do something for which you felt totally unqualified, then you already know what an experience like that can do for your faith. We will explore the relationship between our faith and our service to others.

Moving Forward

Personal ministry enables us to experience God’s power in our weakness. We may feel ill-equipped and unprepared, but these opportunities are incredibly rich experiences through which God grows our faith. At first, you may perform an act of personal ministry or service in order to benefit someone else. In hindsight though, most people feel like they are the ones that have benefited the most.

Identify a skill, talent, or experience (your bread and fish) to exercise this week as a measure of personal ministry. Have each group member pray a sentence prayer making this skill, talent, or experience available to God to use as he sees fit. Or have group members simply express their availability to God to be used in his service.

Discussion Questions

1. Have you ever sensed that God was urging you to do something, yet you refused to do it because you felt inadequate or unprepared? If so, what was it?

2. When have you ever said yes to something God was urging you to do for which you felt unprepared? What was the impact of that experience on your faith?

3. Read Matthew 14:13-17. The disciples used the size of the crowd and their lack of food as excuses to not do what Jesus asked. As you consider the disciples’ excuses, what were they forgetting to factor into the equation?

4. Read Matthew 14:18-21. What talent, skill, experience, expertise, or ability do you have that, like the loaves and fish, don’t appear to be things God could use in a significant way? What is the lesson for us as we see God blessed the efforts of the disciples?

5. Who has chosen to serve you in spite of the fact that he/she was busy, ill-equipped, and unsure of how things would turn out?

6. What opportunities do you sense God opening for you to practice an act of personal ministry? What can this group do to support you?