The Circlecast

What does it mean to be a friend?

It is a great question, but it has so many layers. Angela and a friend dialogue over questions people asked towards the Circle about what it means to be a friend in today's world and have faith in Jesus. Listen in as the discussion gets intense but insightful and getting to the depths of Scripture.

Does the Bible give us any guidance or tools to create self-awareness?

Does the Enneagram (or other personality tests) harm or help us?

What does it mean to have your identity in Jesus but struggle with knowing your personality —the qualities of you?

If faith in Jesus and following Jesus as King and God is a relational movement between God, Others, and Self. How can we use human tools well in lived faith?

Listen in as, Phil Worrall, one of the co-preachers and leaders explores how personality tests like the Enneagram can give us some self-awareness in order to best reflect our identity in Jesus Christ through our thoughts, actions, and behaviors.

Angela continues in with our series, Back to the Basics, talking over obedience. Obedience isn't a sexy word, definitely not something we have positive connotations when it comes to religion and faith.

Angela helps us understand that obedience is worth doing because it keeps us in step with God's will for our lives. It brings us into new understanding and trust, which leads us to deeper engagement with God's Spirit. Obedience can be difficult; maybe, scary. But, obedience isn't always the big things.

What if obedience has to do with making the small faithful steps first, then what seem to be big ones. All of us are on a journey with God either in following Jesus, or yet to follow Jesus. That first act of obedience is called repentance —turning around and embracing Jesus. Those of us who follow Jesus need to ask if we have gone through the next steps of obedience: baptism. Others of us need to re-examine our lives to see if we are continuing in obedience.

God desires our quality obedience, not our quantity. It is the motivation and heart behind our obedience that will lead us into fruitful, flourishing lives as we follow Jesus as God and King.

We continue in our conversation about Jesus followers and Jesus' community getting back to the basics that the closest friends of Jesus practiced. Last week, Angela spoke on the concept of fellowship and bands (groups of 3-4 people) who dig into knowing, sharing, and caring for living full-devoted lives to Jesus.

Phil continues our series by talking about a very familiar prayer and seeing how Jesus gives us the heart of prayer. The heart of Christian prayer is to partner with God, seeing God loved and moving out into neighborly love. The Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6 gives us some great resources on what to pray. Additionally, Phil has an uncommon idea that Jesus followers are called to just pray this prayer, consistently with intentionality.

We started a new series called Back To The Basics, wherein we are trying to understand and recover some of the earliest Jesus community's practices around worshipping and following Jesus. Angela opens up the conversation by engaging the topic of fellowship. However, Angela digs a bit deeper than just that you and I need or are built for being in relationship with others. Fellowship gets to the heart of truly knowing and being known.  It takes a band, a small group of people (3-4 max), that you can entrust and share your life with to a degree that enables vulnerability and forming each other towards flourishing. Our ultimate flourishing happens when we come around the person of Jesus Christ, who is and what he has done. So, when we get a band around us as we follow Jesus, then something amazing happens. What we get is fellowship, lived-loved, vulnerability, and accountability.