Not That Into You: Parent Cue for August

NOT THAT INTO YOU:

Series Overview

Every one of us has experienced it at some point. At one time, we were really into a relationship—whether that’s a friendship or a dating relationship—and now, well, not so much. We’re just not that into it anymore. So we walk away or we let the relationship die. But what happens when that relationship you’re not that into anymore is the one you have with God? You were really into Him at one point. You were feeling connected, directed, close. Now it feels like nothing. How do you deal with it?

Session One: The Breakup? (Aug 8^th 2012)

There is a natural ebb and flow to our relationships, isn’t there? There are times when we feel really close to someone, and times when we don’t. The reasons vary, but there are times when we’re just not feeling that into a relationship. It’s true of our friendships and other relationships, but what happens when it happens in our relationship with God? And when it does, why is it so difficult to admit it?

Session One Parent Cue: Describe a time when you felt really close to God. Now, describe a time when you felt really distant from Him.

Session Two: Fight for Me (Aug 15^th 2012)

When you’re not that into a relationship, you have a choice—to stay or to go. God has made it very clear in the Bible that He’s not going anywhere. He’s in. But we’re the ones who struggle with the choice, and that struggle sometimes involves fighting our own feelings and perceptions. It’s a fight that we have to be willing to take on, and a decision each of us has to make. And while it may feel like it, it’s not one-sided, God isn’t going anywhere. So are you going to fight your own tendencies to pull away? Are you going to fight for your relationship with God?

Session Two Parent Cue: Have you ever been tempted to walk away from God? What made you come back to Him . . . or walk away? 

XP (XPerience: (Aug 22nd 2012)

Our hope for this XP is that students and leaders alike will find encouragement in knowing that these times
of disinterest or distance from God will come and go—they don’t have to stay around forever. But we also
want to make sure we don’t gloss over how tough it can be to just make it through. Ultimately though,
we can be thankful that when we are feeling not that into God, we have a God who will be faithful to us,
fighting for us, and working to get our attention in these disparaging seasons.

But we aren’t. And the XP for “Not That Into You” is about reassuring your students, and maybe you and
your leaders, that if you have ever felt this way, if you have ever wrestled through this, you are not alone.
This XP, like the first week of the series, is about getting to the place where we can honestly admit and
openly talk about the seasons of our discontent with God, and will take place between the second and third
sessions of the series.

The XP for the “Not That Into You” series involves putting together a panel of individuals and providing
them a series of questions ahead of time to talk about seasons when they weren’t that into God.

Session Three: Do You Know Me? (Aug 29^th 2012)

So you decided to fight, to stay in your relationship with God even though you’re feeling not that into Him. And for some of you, you’ve already seen a big change. There’s a new connection. There’s excitement. But for others, you’re fighting and nothing’s happening. You’re working, but you’re not getting anything in return. So what’s the problem? It may be that “me” is getting in the way, that your focus is on you. And in the process, you have made God very small, boring and predictable—a God you think you know, but One who is actually so much bigger than us.

Session Three Parent Cue: What are some things you’ve learned about God in your relationship with Him? Search online for “names of God” and go through the list and identify specific ways you’ve “experienced” those names. For example, one of the names of God means “provider.” How have you seen God provide in your life?

IMAGINING THE END

Focus your energy and effort on the issues that will make a lasting impact

Leaving Home: 5 Things I Want My Children to Take With Them

By Reggie Joiner

A few years ago my daughter Hannah, who was 20 at the time, moved out of my home. She moved into a house with a few other girls. It was one of those things I knew was coming, but I just didn’t know it was going to happen as fast as it did. She had been talking about it for a while, but one afternoon when I got home, everything was gone—well, the things she wanted to take were gone. She left the things she didn’t want.

I remember looking around and, as a dad, it was kind of a sad moment. I remember thinking this may be it. She may never be back in my house again. She may never move back. It created a little controversy in our house when it happened. One of the issues was with her eighteen-year-old sister who came to me very upset. At first, I thought she was upset because Hannah had moved. But I quickly found out that it had nothing to do with Hannah—all the curling irons in the house were gone.

I started looking around at the things Hannah had taken and the things she had left. Do you know what determined what she left and what she took? Simple. She took the things that were important to her and left the things that weren’t. Trust me, when I figured that out, I really started looking around—I wanted to make sure she took a picture of the family and me! But the bottom line was, what mattered to her was gone—with her—and what didn’t matter was left behind.

I had to keep telling myself, “Okay, she is twenty, she is on her own, she is in a house”. And as I went over it again and again in my head, late one night, I took out my notebook and I started writing. She was out of my house and doing her own thing. She was an adult and she was moving forward. So how do I pray for her how? I wrote down five things. And these are the five things I want to pray for all of my children. These are five things I want for all my children’s lives. But that night I prayed this for Hannah:

1) That she will keep moving in a direction towards God. That is the end goal. At the end of it all, I just want to make sure that whatever happens in her life, she just keeps moving in a direction towards God.

2) That she will have an ongoing relationship with God’s Truth—that the value of Scripture and the value of God’s Truth will not dim in her life. I want the message to ring so loud and clear in the hearts of my children that they never get away from the power of God’s truth in their lives.

3) That she will have the right people in her life to challenge her and inspire her. This makes me nervous. This is what keeps me up at night. Besides her mom and me, I just want to make sure there are other adults, other friends, other people who will continue to challenge her and inspire her in her walk and her faith, because I know how important that is. That is community.

4) That we will still be friends. When it is said and done, isn’t that what every parent wants? Let’s be honest. Isn’t your dream that when your children grow up and move away that you are still good friends and still in relationship with them? Absolutely. I still want to have a degree of influence in her life. I still want to be her friend. I still want her to be friends with her mom, friends with her sisters and brother. I still want all that to stay in tact. I want that to be a value in her life that she never gets away from. From her graduation from college, to her wedding day, to when she has kids—I want all of that to be intact and all of that to be right. That is family.

I wrote down one other thing that I pray for.

5) That she will never get away from her sense of mission to be the church. I want her to know that she is wired, that she is created, that God designed her to be the church. I pray that her influence in whatever circle she lives in will be the kind of influence that God has designed her to have. I don’t want her faith to be tied to a place where she goes. Rather, I want her faith to pour into every area of life and every person she encounters. I pray that her significance will come not from what she is doing but from the fact that she knows she is doing the thing God called her to do, and that sense of purpose will always be a part of her life.

Those are five things I want to be really true of her life, and true of the lives of all my children. This, for me, is the essence of what a life needs to become, it’s what I want to move my children towards. And it’s not only how I pray, but the grid through which I process my actions and words to make these things a reality in her life.

These five things may not be a tangible object that Hannah or any of my other kids can pick up and pack up, but they are the things I want them to take with them—no matter how close or far from home they live. 

Reggie Joiner is the founder and CEO of The reThink Group, and the author of Think Orange.

Get connected to a wider community of parents at www.orangeparents.org

hvarvell@wordalive.org