Unstoppable Partnerships

Being unstoppable begins with a mindset. If we continually work these three elements into our mindset, our thinking starts to become unstoppable. I don’t mean a figurative unstoppable, I mean, a literal unstoppable. – Welcoming people into your life – Meeting needs through dedicated actions – Welcoming life change Yet, often times, when embodying these three elements into our lives, we face another problem. We face the problem of life. You see, being unstoppable in y our own mind is one thing, if you lived alone on an island, it’s a totally different thing when you have to deal with people and live in a society filled with people. It causes us to partner up. Trust me, if we didn’t have to, we wouldn’t. Unfortunately, life, as it comes at us hard and fast requires that we form partnerships with other human beings so that the unstoppable mindset we embody can become manifest and start spreading. But we probably all know from life experience that there are bad partnerships, then there are good partnerships, and then there are the “right” partnerships, but the biggest problem is forging an unstoppable partnership. This afternoon, we’re going to look at the Bible and learn how to hit the sweet spot on this because without the “right” partnerships being forged into unstoppable partnerships, it becomes difficult for us to get to a place we will spend in February that is in the land of “favor.” I say this because we are largely skeptical of the idea of favor because we hear it so much and then we don’t see anything come of it, that I think we need to radically reexamine the notion of favor because there is a favor upon your life when you work with God, we just have to be able to harness it and accept it for what it is. Let me try to press this upon you because I think I should have defined what a partner is before I got into this whole deal. But a partner is a person who shares and is associated with you in some type of action or endeavor. Therefore, in our life journey, our partners become invaluable because they are actually sharing in our lives. That means a partner shares in all the good and all the bad that comes with living life. That also means that the partner gets credit for your successes and also that means that they can curb your successes if they don’t hold up their end of the sharing. So, why do we partner up? Let’s look at 1 Corinthians 9. 19 For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. 20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. 21 To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. 22To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. 23 I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings. – 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 I want you to underline this phrase, “I am free from all.” This means that alone, we are unstoppable. You can live your life as a hermit and be unstoppable by yourself; BUT the vision you have for your life should never be that small! Paul says, I make myself “a servant to all, that I might win more of them.” First blank, “We forge partnerships so others can receive the blessings of God with us.” Our life vision and goal and purpose must always be bigger than just ourselves and must extend further than our noses. If it doesn’t, you can just check out mentally right now and pick trash out of the garbage can because that’s where you need to be. God did not create you to be a bottomfeeder worried just for your lonesome. The reason Paul partnered up with people was so that his partners could realize their true purpose and live their lives in gospel oriented fruitfulness—that is to have God touch every part of their lives in a radical way. This is what we all want in our lives. We want to see life more than what it is, we want to live life in a place where we only dreamed of where it can be. That brings me to a place where we may find ourselves: in a bad partnership. You can apply this to your love life, your business life, your social life, wherever you want to apply this because it’s universal. I’m not going to get into the Bible passages for each in the interest of time but I will tell you that if you’re doing your quiet time reading from the plan we developed, you are probably reading or have read the full gambit of bad partnerships through the early days of Israelite history so this should just be a refresher for you. Signs of a Bad Partnership • No equal exchange (Power Imbalance) – this is where one party does more than the other party, that is, where one person in a relationship controls too much or vice versa, where one person in the relationship takes too much. There should be an equal exchange, playback, a give and take. I want to caveat here that this is a holistic look at a partnership because there will obviously be some unequal exchanges in some areas, especially areas of weakness and strengths. (Jacob and Laban, where Jacob worked for 7 years and got the wife he didn’t want. Or you can look at Jacob and Esau, where Esau got a bowl of soup and some bread for his birthright). • No Accountability – sometimes this would be like being friends with a used car salesman. I love this the most, when you’re in a partnership and the other person is totally not interested and loves to flake out or disappear and fails to take accountability for their actions. I was in a relationship once with a girl where every time there was a hard decision to make or if something in my life was difficult, she would disappear. I mean she would be up in my face every time her life got hard, but when my life got too hard, she’d be gone like the wind. • Distrust – no trust, this is all the same. You can’t be in a partnership with people you don’t trust. A lot of us sit here in a place where we are in partnerships with people we totally distrust. I don’t know why. My problem is that I lack tact, or I don’t care enough to have tact, so I tell people, I don’t trust you, which automatically makes me distrusted but we get into partnerships with these people and it’s going to be bad. One example, Bernie Madoff? • No shared vision – If you’re not going in the same direction or if only one of you have a direction, or if you and this other person have such stark ideological differences, then the likelihood is that you’re in a bad partnership because you’ll constantly be undermining each other. But then, the problem becomes, because most of us are engaged in this type of partnership, well, breaking up. I know most of you hate this part and I enjoy it a little too much. Breaking up a Bad Partnership: 37Now Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark.38 But Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work. 39 And there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other. – Acts 15:37-39a Did you see what happened here? They separated. Circle that. If you are in a bad partnership, you must separate. This doesn’t apply if you’re married, unless you’re beating him and he’s beating you, then, not only do you separate, you call the police. When the signs of a bad partnership arise you separate you. Paul and Barnabas are not the only ones to separate this way. Even Jesus says to his disciples, if they are in a bad partnership with a town they are preaching, they need to turn around and leave, but they have to shake the dust off their sandals as they leave because bad partnerships are doomed. I want to press upon you then, the characteristics of who would make a good partner, since you know what makes a bad partnership, you have to know what has the potential for an unstoppable partnership: • Purity – Genesis 39 – Joseph vs Potiphar’s Wife • Wisdom – 2 Kings 22 – Josiah goes neither to the left, nor the right and stays the course • Responsibility – Ruth 4 • Honesty – Job 31:5-6 “If I have walked with falsehood and my foot has hastened to deceit; 6 (Let me be weighed in a just balance, and let God know my integrity!) • Courage – 2 Corinthians 11 – sufferings as an apostle • Forgiving – Acts 9 – Annaias forgiving Paul • Compassion – Mark 10:17-31 – Jesus and the young ruler Just because somebody embodies these godly characteristics doesn’t mean that the person or people are the right partners for you. Not by any means. You can be in partnerships with all these people types of people and still be miserably unhappy. It just means they have the right characteristics to mesh well with what you should be embodying as the other half of a partnership. The “Right” partner takes time to find and usually is the very thing you need at the very moment. But even this is subject to change depending on the season of life you are entering. This I find particularly funny and ironic because I’m coming to an end of seminary and everybody is clamoring about how I don’t have a wife yet and because I’m not dating and all that nonsense and so people tell me they’ve been praying for my “partner.” I don’t know how serious they are about that, but at the end of the day, they just want me to settle. And so I keep telling people, I will stop being a maniac, when I find the “right” person. I’ll be honest with you, there is no such thing. The right person is what you make of it, that embody the characteristics I just told you plus being the person that doesn’t display the characteristics of the bad partnerships from the previous slide. You all know what I’m going to say right now. The “right” partnership begins with Jesus. Let’s just be honest here, if the other person doesn’t believe in his or her own depravity and Jesus as the way to salvation from that depravity, you will have a hard time seeing eye to eye with that person on a lot of other things. Trust me. And FYI, missionary dating doesn’t work. The “RIGHT” Partner is godly and available in your circumstances. How are unstoppable partnerships forged? 1 Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD, now that Ehud was dead. 2 So the LORD sold them into the hands of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. Sisera, the commander of his army, was based in Harosheth Haggoyim. 3 Because he had nine hundred chariots fitted with iron and had cruelly oppressed the Israelites for twenty years, they cried to the LORD for help. 6 She sent for Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali and said to him, “The LORD, the God of Israel, commands you: ‘Go, take with you ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zebulun and lead them up to Mount Tabor. 7 I will lead Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his troops to the Kishon River and give him into your hands.’” 8 Barak said to her, “If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go.” 9 “Certainly I will go with you,” said Deborah. “But because of the course you are taking, the honor will not be yours, for the LORD will deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman.” So Deborah went with Barak to Kedesh. – Judges 4:1-3, 6-9. In the heat of your life, you will find somebody or you will have to choose somebody and say, “If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go.”