Jesus Started a Life Group
Let me ask you a question. What would you do if you had three years to change the world? If the assignment handed to you was to change the world, and the time allotted to you was one thousand days, what would you do?
Jesus was baptised in the River Jordan when he was thirty. He was crucified at thirty three. Three short years, one thousand calendar days, and his mission was nothing less than the redemption of the world. Read the Gospels with that in mind and you come to a conclusion that ought to stop you in your tracks. Given an assignment that enormous, Jesus narrowed his attention to a very small activity. Sometimes in life, in order to go big, you have to be prepared to go small. Jesus gave the lion's share of those three years to twelve men. Given the job of changing the world, Jesus started a Life Group.
He did life with them. They ate together, worked together, prayed together, laughed together, travelled together, grew together. And here is the thing that gets me every time: so little is known about the people who heard Jesus preach, and so much is known about the people who shared his time. Publicly Jesus preached sermons. Privately Jesus shared his heart. Let me give you eight things I see happening inside that group, because sometimes it is not the corporate environment that changes our lives, it is the intimate one.
First, it is where the greatest discoveries were made. One day Jesus sat down with his twelve and asked an open ended question: "Who do people say the Son of Man is?" (Matthew 16:13). That is a Life Group at its raw essence. Believers around the Word of God, and a question put out for the group to chew on. What you hear you take in to a small degree, but what you discuss you take in to a much larger degree. It was Peter who answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16). He had probably had a vague awareness of that for a while, but in a Life Group he said it out loud, and it went from a lurking thought to a proclaimed revelation.
Second, it is where the greatest God moments took place. I started following Jesus when I was eighteen, and the first time in my life I felt the manifest power of God touch me was not in a church service. It was in my Life Group, with a circle of my friends standing around me. At nineteen I went to a conference that changed my life, but do you know what really happened? On the final night a few of my closest friends and I went back to a house and started praying at ten o'clock on a Saturday night. We prayed until two in the morning, and it felt like thirty minutes. That is what happens when the glory of God comes near. A day with the Lord is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like a day (2 Peter 3:8). We kept that group going for years, and nearly all of us ended up in full time ministry. It was not the conference. It was the Life Group. The Gospels run the same way. The Transfiguration, the raising of Jairus' daughter, the salvation of Zacchaeus. Not sermons, but intimate gatherings where the glory came down. The greater the unity, the greater the presence.
Third, it is where the greatest prayers were prayed. The greatest instruction on prayer in all of Scripture came out of a Life Group. One of the disciples said, "Lord, teach us to pray" (Luke 11:1), and Jesus answered, "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name." We would not have the Lord's Prayer without that question. It was not a sermon, it was an answer to a Life Group member. Friend, if you want to learn to pray, you are not going to learn it in a seat on a Sunday. You will get faith in a church service, you will get worship, you will get community. But you learn to pray when someone in your group is going through something and you all pray for them and you hear how other people pray. Even Gethsemane works this way. We only know what Jesus prayed in the garden because he invited his closest friends in to pray with him (Matthew 26:36-39).
Fourth, it is where the greatest secrets were revealed. The disciples noticed he spoke differently to them than to the crowd, and Jesus said, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables" (Luke 8:10). When I talk with you, he is saying, I talk at another level. That happens because there is a depth of relationship. So when God is doing something in you, a promise, a dream, something you need input on, you need a circle you can say it to, because what you know internally and never confess externally you can lose. And you do not reveal your heart to people you do not know.
Fifth, it is where the greatest friendships were made. "I no longer call you servants, I have called you friends, for everything I learned from my Father I have made known to you" (John 15:15). Here is what I believe with all my heart: the people closest to you will decide the most about you. When you choose your friends you choose your destiny. I would rather be close to the right people than have the right doors open. I moved to Australia four years ago, and one of the first things I did was start a Life Group with three other men who were all, like me, in a big season of transition. I have to be honest, it is the most expensive Life Group in the history of the world. Thursday afternoon twilight golf, eighteen holes, and I am the worst golfer alive, then a steak dinner afterwards, because dinner equalised all our talent. Someone was up, someone was down, and we kept encouraging one another. Four years later we are still the closest of friends.
Sixth, it is where the greatest conversations were had. The Son of Man must die. New wine calls for new wineskins. Come out of the boat and walk on the water. Those are not sermons, they are Life Group conversations. Some of the greatest spiritual discoveries you will ever make will not come from a podcast, or a preacher, and they are certainly unlikely to come from an Instagram reel.
Seventh, it is where the greatest challenges were given. You and I need someone to tell us when we are getting out of line, and people have to know us well for that to be dialled in. Said publicly it is just a hard acceptance or a hard rejection. Said inside real relationship it lands, because faithful are the wounds of a friend (Proverbs 27:6). Jesus told Peter, "Get behind me, Satan, you are a stumbling block to me" (Matthew 16:23), and because of the depth of their relationship, Peter received it. We have become acclimated to swiping left on whatever we do not want to see, and we have started doing it to people, and we are the most anxious, depressed, lonely generation in history. We do not unfriend people who say something we do not want to hear. We draw closer, we get challenged, and we become better for it.
Eighth, it is where the greatest growth took place. Read the Gospels and you see miracles in the crowd. You see belief in the crowd. But you only see growth in the group. The crowd stayed the crowd. The group became apostles. You can get a miracle on a Sunday and come to faith on a Sunday, but to grow I need a group. Sometimes it is what you get taught, and sometimes it is just what you absorb. Oh, so that is how that person prays. That is why they hear from God the way they do. You do not pick that up as an isolated island, you pick it up in a relational community.
I thank God for the Life Groups I have been part of, and for the men and women who walked with me in those rooms and prayed with me. I will not become who God wants me to become on my own. My healing needs your prayer, and your healing needs mine. So here is my honest word to you. If you do not like your life, change your friends. It is the intimacy of relationship that moves us in the direction God wants us to go. We go higher as we go deeper.
