FOLLOW ME - Introduction

Hey, Go Church Family, welcome back to another series.

My name is Gilbert.

I'm sitting here with Pastor Matt Haddable.

Hey everybody.

And I'm sitting here with someone else, Joseph.

Joseph.

Hello everyone.

Hey Joseph, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you.

I'm so excited to have Joseph with us.

I'm here.

I'm excited.

This is going to be a great month, a great series.

And it's special because we're actually three of us speaking.

And this is something new, but it's something that we want to do more often.

Yeah.

It makes the podcast room charged like our last series.

That's right.

You know, it's amazing.

We can never get over our last series.

Right.

We keep building and building and building on these things.

And it's very exciting.

I don't think we ever get away from our series, but you know, we just move forward because

we like to unpack different truths and different layers of truths.

This is something I heard actually recently on during our E-Mina.

But before we get into our series for this month of September, I want to make a few announcement

points as we always do during our introduction series.

The first thing I'm going to say is if you, if this is the first time you've been with

us at Go Church, Go Church is your place to love, grow and go.

We want everyone to experience the unconditional love of God, to grow in his love and to go

out into your world with his love.

And we are a Bible based, we're a spirit filled, we're a group space and we're an English

speaking church.

And we do podcasts like this and we've been doing podcasts like this for nearly a year

now.

It's been a year.

Wow.

We started this in last September and we actually adjusted this format in this way to be able

to better supplement our growth groups.

Because like I said, we are a group center church and most of our meetings happen in small

groups all over the country and at all times across the week.

So Pastor Matt, what is a grow group?

Well a grow group is something that I don't think it's necessarily unique to Go Church,

we just call it that, but it's a group of people that come together and we kind of have

four main values that we want to celebrate in our grow groups and one of those is communication,

one of those is just being activated, putting the word of God into action.

But then also accountable, being accountable to one another and then something that the

New Testament tells us to care for one another.

And grow groups are a place where those four things can be front and center.

Those four things can be prominent and can be something that we can celebrate together

and grow together.

I really love grow groups and I really love my grow group.

I actually come to grow groups at the moment in Sinai Field at 7pm on Wednesday nights

and it's just amazing to walk in and see your intimate Go Church family and be able to share

what's happening week on week with them and get to experience life as well as build on

the subject of the series and dig deeper together and really take the word that we're presenting

now and we're presenting over the month and apply it in our lives and walk in it and see

the fruit of the power that's contained in God's word in our lives.

And Joseph, you helped us start a new grow group in Shbeil.

Yeah, yeah, it's been amazing.

What I love about grow groups and what I have been witnessing in the grow groups of Shbeil

is that this added value that everyone brings into each other lives, you know, you start

discovering people that you don't know and you are spending this time with them and like,

oh, I didn't know this about you.

It's amazing and other people coming and sharing their life with you and life experiences with

you.

It's just rich and amazing.

That's excellent.

And really that element of sharing is probably the one value that I love about our groups

centered focus in Go Church the most.

And one of the things you're talking about grow groups, but all of our groups really

start with alpha.

Alpha is the Greek letter A, very Phoenician thing, the alphabet, and it starts with A.

And we like the word alphabet has alpha.

Yes, it does.

We do have history here, Go Church of running alpha and we've ran alpha on a big scale.

We've done it at hotels.

Gilbert, I think you ran, the first alpha you ran was at a hotel in Ashrafia.

But so we've run, I mean, you weren't the only one, there were several people that were

running that alpha.

Thank God for that.

But we've done we've done big central alphas.

But one of the things I'm excited about is people doing alpha in their homes, you know,

sharing, opening up with friends, neighbors, family, and alpha does all the heavy lifting.

And if you're thinking, what is alpha alpha is, well, I like the way you describe it,

Gilbert, it's like a themed dinner party.

Just bring people over, have some food, and then watch a quick video that presents.

Let's say the gospel truth, but in a way that anyone from any background can hear it.

And the great thing about alpha is it builds relationships.

And everything God does in the earth, he does through relationships.

And I think that's what we're going to talk about this month.

And that's right.

I can give an example on that, like we had one of the testimonies in the alpha, which

this young lady came and she came to alpha and after alpha, she is part of Gocher.

So her testimony was, I came to alpha, there was good food, there was good company.

I made friends, they were nice to me.

And then I heard about all of these questions that I had inside of me.

And the Bible started answering them and my life started to change day by day.

And now she is part of Gocher and like, it's amazing what's happening.

Praise God.

Yeah, alpha is a great, a great series.

I mean, what I really like about alpha is the fact that we create space for people to

come and ask big questions about life.

You know, it's a safe space for people from every background.

I mean, it's not, you know, we are a church.

And obviously as a church, we run alpha, but it's not a church event.

Like what it is, is like Pastor Magistrate, a themed dinner party and we invite people

from all backgrounds.

Everyone's welcome.

It's just, you know, we're opening our doors as hosts, as, you know, as members in this

house inviting people in just to make a safe, comfortable, respectable space where people

can just ask questions.

And we, we really sincerely believe that our job is to get people to ask questions because

the truth answers itself.

Amen.

But we don't, we don't need to defend the truth, but we need to present the truth and

we need to get people to ask questions about what they really believe and have they really

thought about these things.

So it's just a beautiful environment.

And what always stands out to me is the, like Pastor Matt said, the relationships that you

build, you know, there's so much love in the air when you walk into that room and there's

so much, so much room to just enjoy yourself and be yourself in such an environment.

So going back to the different things that we do at Go Church, we talked about groups,

we talked about Alpha, which is, you know, something that we run both in a central location

and also we help and encourage and train you to do this at home if you wanted to.

I mean, this is not too difficult to do, it's not too complicated, you're not expected

to be a, you know, a preacher or, or anything like that.

But if you have a heart for it, we can always help you to get that done.

And you know, if you're thinking, well, these are such new formats, I'm just used to church

on Sunday, every Sunday we get in a room, we sit in rows, we listen to someone speak,

we listen to how many they say or whatever it is, you know, and then we go and we just

have lunch.

Well, what we try to do at Go Church, and what we always strive to do at Go Church is

look at the model that is in the Bible and the word of God and apply it.

So this might be a different type of experience or a different type of church to what you're

used to, but this is not new to how the Lord actually designed it.

If you look through the book of Acts, if you look through all the letters of Paul to the

churches and even the letter of Paul to Timothy, who was the pastor of the church at Ephesus

at that point in time, you see that there are different types of meetings happening.

And you see that there are large gatherings of people where they all met together in the

temple courts where they all met together in public spaces.

But you also see that there are churches in homes, that there are intimate groups of believers

getting together in homes just as we do.

You also see that the leaders of the church and the believers of the church get together

and take time to minister to the Lord, to serve the Lord.

That's what we're also doing in the believers' meetings.

So I challenge you to look through the Bible, to look through Scripture and find what we're

doing in Scripture because that's what we always aim to do at Go Church.

We want to be deliberate.

We want to come closer to the Lord.

This is actually what the whole series for the month is about.

We're titling it, follow me.

But actually before I get into that, I remember there is one more announcement point and this

is about Rehman and about enrollment for Rehman.

Joseph, how excited are you about Rehman?

Oh, I'm so excited.

So excited.

So if you've heard about Rehman before, if you intend on joining Rehman but you haven't

enrolled, there's good news, the good news is that the cutoff date for enrollment is

September 15th.

So if you haven't done that yet, I highly encourage you to do that.

We would love to have as many Go Church members in Rehman because we know that this is going

to bless you.

This is going to change your lives and this is going to make you more effective in what

God has called you to do.

So I'm going to ask Joseph to tell us a little bit about Rehman.

What is Rehman?

Well, everyone, first of all, when they hear Rehman, they ask me the question like, is

that the Rehman that we know the word?

Yes, that is the word Rehman.

But it's not just the word, it's a place and it's a family and it's in Lebanon.

So that is the good news that in October, we are launching our first Rehman Bible Training

Center here in Lebanon.

And you can be part of it.

So if you ask me, what is Rehman?

I can say that Rehman is a center of excellence.

It's a Bible-based spirit field to train leaders into supportive leadership, spiritual leadership,

and societal leadership.

And yeah, that's it.

So is it open to like every church?

Yes, it is open to every church.

Basically, we want to empower churches through Rehman, RBTC, and it's available and it goes

through the pastor.

It comes with a pastor's referral and it has a reporting system where we report and it

encourages practical ministry.

So everyone enrolled into Rehman Bible Training College, it has the time of practical ministry

in their own churches.

That's awesome.

So how can I enroll?

Like if I haven't enrolled yet, which I have, but I mean, if I'm asking on behalf of someone

else maybe who's listening to this podcast, how can I enroll?

So they are very simple steps.

First of all, you can connect with us and we can provide the right information in our

social medias.

There's in the social media platforms on Instagram, on Facebook.

We're all over there and there is enough information.

Or I would also encourage you to reach out to Go Church.

If this is your point of contact, you can always ask your group leader.

You can always reach out to the Go Church phone number.

You can reach out to any social media platform of Go Church and we'd be happy to refer you,

direct you to the right place so that you can get enrolled.

Yeah.

And other thing I want to add on that, whenever we hear about Bible schools or Bible Training

colleges, we directly think that, oh, this is for pastors or this is for apostles or

pastors, so I just want to say it out there that if you are called from the Lord and you

want to serve the Lord, this is a place for you.

If you are part of a church, this is a place for you.

And we put an emphasis on training leaders.

It's not just like a theology school.

It is Bible-based.

Everything is going to be taught by the Bible, but it's about to build the leader inside

of you.

And wherever you are called, either to support your pastor, support your church, or you are

called into spiritual leadership, or even to be a societal change agent.

You know, if you are an athlete, you are your work in business, you are a lawyer, or whoever

you are, you feel you need that training to be a leader in the area that God called you.

This is a place for you.

Yeah.

So, having gone through all the announcements, we are now ready to get into what we are going

to talk about this month.

We are going to introduce the series.

The series is called Follow Me.

I am very excited because this comes right out of the heart of Joseph and into this

potter.

Who is an excellent model of this message.

That's right.

Not just the author of the series, but the truth is demonstrated in his life.

Yeah, and we are so excited to have this come out of his heart, you know, through his mouth

and share this in the podcast.

And, you know, he really helped to build this series up and to basically, you know, lay

it out so that we can study this week on week and apply it in our lives and see how we can

grow in this practically.

So I am super excited about it.

You know, if I think of the words follow me, for some reason I just think of, you know,

Twitter.

I think of some social media platform where you start following people or following themes

or following trends.

But I think that brings up a really important question to make this truth practical right

from the introduction is the question, how do I follow Jesus?

Yeah, it's a good question.

Joseph, do you have answers to that?

Yeah.

I'm going to throw all the questions at you today.

Yeah, so, like, I love how you bring it.

If you want to follow someone like the first idea comes to mind is that you're going to

face, follow them on social media or on Twitter.

But think about it whenever you are following someone on social media, you are paying attention

to what they are saying, what they are doing, what they are posting, you are getting not

just the content, but you are getting that idea, you know, you're getting the core of

what that person is, you are getting familiar with that.

And this subject is basically to highlight that as we follow Jesus, this is not just

that we are kind of like obeying his commandments.

As we hear like, there's this 10 commandments that we have to do, but it's a lifestyle.

It's a lifetime journey that we are connecting with Jesus and we are growing with him and

doing what we are supposed to do.

So where it came from, it came from a lifetime experience that I had with him by the time

that I have known him and decided to follow him until the time that I was in ministry

and I wanted to serve him.

And I thought it was magical, you know, it's going to be like a magic wand the Lord is

going to do and I'm going to be that person.

But what I experienced that I went through certain experiences in life that made me grow,

made me change, made me know the Lord more and know how to serve him effectively going

through that time of discipleship.

So you mentioned the word discipleship a couple of times.

What does it mean?

Well discipleship means that I am positioned in a place where I'm seeing, experiencing,

and doing the right adjustment towards growth to be someone that I am not.

That's excellent.

So you would say discipleship is change.

Yeah, inward change.

Yeah.

So the purpose of this series is we really want everyone at Go Church to understand that

following Jesus is not about gaining biblical knowledge.

Yeah.

You know, the Bible says that knowledge puffs up.

If you think about something that's puffed up, it's easy for it to pop, right?

And there's no substance behind it.

But love builds up.

And so following Jesus isn't, if we want to understand how to follow Jesus, sometimes

it's important to understand what it's not.

What it's not is just gaining biblical knowledge.

In the life and ministry of Jesus, he encountered people that were full of knowledge of the

scriptures and yet they didn't know him.

They didn't recognize him.

So we want everyone at Go Church to understand that following Jesus is not gaining biblical

knowledge but a lifetime journey of discipleship change through every shared experience with

the church body.

Yeah.

I really like what you're saying there.

And you know, leading up to this series, I was just kind of Googling and looking at discipleship

and how people define what discipleship is.

And in this context...

We don't recommend Googling for answers, by the way.

Absolutely.

I have a strong filter in my mind.

So that's, you know, unless you have that, absolutely go back to podcasts.

You know, the best place you could ever go is the Bible.

Yes, exactly.

And that's what we encourage.

So looking, you know, looking for definitions, it's always healthy.

You can go to a dictionary.

Sure.

It's never going to lead you astray.

No, no.

But what stood out to me is this definition of the process of making someone become like

something, something or someone else.

And I like this for a number of layers because number one, it says a process.

You know, it's not something that just happens in one shot, one go, like Joseph was saying,

but it's a process.

And it's also becoming like someone.

It's not like sounding like them.

It's not looking like them.

It's literally embodying who they are.

And that can be so many things, look like so many things, sound like so many things.

But at the end, the substance of who you are changes in that process.

Yeah.

I think that the...

Obviously, we're talking about the subject in introduction and we're going to dig more

into it.

The word discipleship in modern use is sometimes replaced in conversation with the term student.

So it connotates that there is a teacher, there is learning.

But the problem with that is it can limit it to just gaining knowledge.

Right?

If I could, I can go and be a student at a technical school and I can learn something

technical.

I can go and learn at something in a university and I can gain some knowledge.

But the word discipleship actually comes from the word discipline.

And if you think about discipline, if you've ever, if you have children or you have a pet,

you probably have had to apply some discipline.

If you have ever been a child, you have probably had discipline applied to you.

And that discipline is meant to correct something and affect change.

And so as if I set myself, like I love the way you phrase this when we've talked about

this in the past, that you position yourself as the disciple, you put yourself in a position

where he, the master, Jesus, can change me.

Yes.

You know, I really, I'm thinking about what you're saying.

You know, this is something Joseph had mentioned initially when we're preparation, preparing

this series.

And it really stood out to me about being a student, being a disciple.

And you know, what, what stands out to me is if you're a student, you're learning something.

It doesn't mean, you know, you're embodying it.

You're just learning about it.

If you're being mentored, your mentor is pointing you not to themselves, but to somewhere else.

So like your mentorship is basically not learning, but it's someone encouraging you

to be someone they're not.

But discipleship is encouraging you to be someone that the, you know, the person who's

doing the discipling is.

And that's why we're talking about follow me, right?

We're talking about follow who follow Jesus.

And that is the, the essence of the discipleship we're talking about.

Right.

Yeah.

You know, one of the things of following that, if you are following someone, you are following

him into a certain direction.

There's a purpose.

You are going somewhere and there's a result that you want to achieve in going in that direction.

So my experience with that is that the first time I heard about discipleship that you are

a disciple and you need discipleship.

For me, the picture in my, in my head, it was sitting in a class and learning certain

studies or to be in a Bible school.

That is, that is okay.

That is correct.

Something to do that I am sitting in a place where I'm gaining the, sorry, the enough knowledge

and details that they will be inside of me, but they are not going to be effective on

until I start applying those things into my life, you know, until they become life experience

to me, they're not going to do me any good.

So discipleship is somewhere that I am in a place.

I am hearing the word of God.

I am being mentored.

I'm being taught, but it's not going to do me any good.

I'm not going to be disciple until I start applying them in my life and I start experiencing

them, you know, being, living those things as Jesus did with his disciples.

Jesus didn't teach all the time, but there was like the practical minister.

You see it everywhere in the New Testament where he was like talking about something

before demonstrating it or after demonstrating it.

And I think that that brings up our key verse.

I want to read this.

This is the main scripture for the series, Matthew chapter four verses 18 through 20.

And the setting for this is the initial call of Peter to be a disciple.

And the Bible says here, it says, and Jesus walking by the sea of Galilee saw two brothers,

Simon called Peter and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen.

And he, Jesus said to them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men.

They immediately left their nets and followed him.

We can, uh, in other gospel accounts, we can see some more detail about, about what happened

at this time.

Matthew kind of gives us a summary here, but, um, this, the, the elements of our message

are contained right here.

What you were just saying, it's not just about, you know, hearing.

It's not just about learning, but there is a doing thing.

And the change in this verse occurs after the action, not before.

Yes, exactly.

If you look at this passage of scripture and you see where did change happen in Peter's

life?

It happened following his action.

And that is repeated again and again in my life and in your life with the Lord where

he calls us.

That's his action.

And now it's our move.

We need to respond, which we talked about in our charge message, respond to that message.

And the result of that response is change in us.

Yes, exactly.

And if you, if you look at the life of Peter, we're talking about Peter, how the God called

him after he has shown him the, the net of the, the fish that the Bible says the net

was going to be torn from the amount of the fish inside of it.

And on that he called him, he said, I'm going to make you a fisher of man.

And after you see, after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, he preached to treat.

He preached to the people and 3000 people joined the first church.

And you see the effect and the fruit of his decision that whatever happened with him in

the beginning, the Lord has achieved, but there was this process of a lifetime walking

with the Lord willing fully.

And you can go yourself, you know, read the Bible, know about Peter and the processes

that he went, but that was the result of what he went through with Jesus walking by him,

serving with him, you know, experiencing the miracles, experiencing the joy, the failures,

even he denied him.

And then he was built after that.

So it was a lifestyle for him where he was in that place with Jesus that led him into

his destiny and his calling.

So if someone who's listening to this podcast is asking this question to you, Joseph, well,

that was Peter.

What about me?

What would you say to them?

Has God called me like he's called Peter?

Yes, of course.

I can say that God calls each one of us.

Well, first of all, we are called for a relationship with him.

You know, that's calling to all his children, his creation that he wants to be in a relationship

with us.

He loves us.

He is a father and he wants to be with his children.

So there is a call, first of all, to be in a relationship with him.

And there is a call to be discipled, to grow with him, and there is a call to serve him.

So what are we going to cover over this month?

Since, you know, we're coming to the end of our introduction, or I guess very long introduction

podcast, but what are we planning to cover over the weeks in our grow groups?

So I can, I can share about the three points that we want to cover.

And it's taken from the verse, follow me, I will make you a fisher of men.

So the first point is follow me.

That we are called for a relationship.

The second point is I will make you that we are called for discipleship.

And the third one is a fisher of men that we are called to go to serve him.

That sounds like love, grow, go.

Yes, our values.

That's amazing.

Well, this has been a wonderful time.

I know that we're going to have a great time in this series.

And the, the, the practical application of this truth is going to result in change in

us.

Praise God.

Well, if no one told you today, we love you and we are praying for you and we will see

you next time.

Thank you for listening to this message.

We want everyone to experience the unconditional love of God growing his love and go with his

love to the rest of their world.

We invite you to connect with us at one of our groups or our next gathering.

And if no one told you yet today, we love you and believe God's very best for you.