Pursue the Who: Pursue Team Sample

Pursue Team

Ready: 

“… Be joyful. Grow to maturity. Encourage each other. Live in harmony and peace. Then the God of love and peace will be with you.”    – 2 Corinthians 13:11 (NLT)

Set: 

Think about some of the greatest teams throughout history. They moved effortlessly together, as one. Each player knew their role and gave their best for the good of the team. They shared a common goal and worked together to make that goal a reality.

Like all the great teams, we need to have the right players on our spiritual team to help us grow in relationship with Christ. Now that we’ve surrendered to Jesus and chose to trust in Him, the next step is to form a team that will walk with us as we walk out our faith.

At the start of the season, good teams first evaluate goals, individual strengths and how they can encourage one another in their talent.

Before we get too far into our faith journey, we should pay attention to who’s around us and whether we have the right people in place. What do we need to look for, or evaluate, as we determine the right people to share our lives with? This is important, because much of our growth or stagnancy develops from who we give our time and attention to.

The apostle Paul gives us a great example of what it looks like when we surround ourselves with the right kind of spiritual teammates:

Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. 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. (Hebrews 10:24-25)

Over the next few days, we’re going to look at the disciples—Jesus’s great team—and observe their beginnings and transformation as they learned from Jesus, as well as qualities we should look for when it comes to the right type of people for our team.

It’s all about intentionality. When we want to get better at basketball, we work on our non-dominant hand dribbling or spend extra hours at the free throw line. When we want to beat a team that’s been beating us all year, we watch film of previous games to see where we can make adjustments. So, too, we can take assessment and look at the good qualities of people to evaluate who we want to spend our time with.

Go:

• What characteristics make a good teammate? 

• How can you start to pursue the best team God has for you?

• How can you ask God to start showing you who He wants on your team?

Workout: 

John 13:35; Romans 15:5; 1 Corinthians 12:12

Overtime: 

“God, thank You that You have created us for relationship. We are not meant to live this life on our own. Thank You for the body of believers who strengthen one another and shine Your light in this world. Help me to keep my eyes open for those You want me to walk with and learn from. You have good plans for me, and this includes the people around me. Let me be refined in their encouragement and grow in Your Son Jesus. Amen.”