Connect Church
The Huddle
  • King Of Heaven
  • Grace Like Rain
  • I Speak Jesus
  • Cornerstone
  • How Great Thou Art
  • For those of you that have known me for years now, you know that I love watching football. Unfortunately for me, I am a Razorback and a Dallas Cowboys fan. Neither team has been that great for the last 15 or so years.
    If you don’t watch much football, you may have noticed that before the team comes to the line of scrimmage to start the play, they gather with their team in what is know as the huddle. It is in the huddle that the team gives the play they will run and then they come to the line of scrimmage to start the play.
    The huddle is important because it is where everyone hears the play before they execute it.
    Families need a huddle per se, because when a family doesn’t know the play, they can struggle. It is hard for the family when everyone is going in different directions. Dad does what he wants. Mom does what she wants to. The kids do what they want to do. There is no unity. There is no cohesiveness. There is only chaos.
    Paul begins Ephesians 4 by calling believers to unity. He calls them to humility and a shared commitment.
    See, Ephesians was written to believers in Ephesus. Ephesus was a major city in the Roman Empire.
    When you look at the book of Ephesians, you will notice that the first three chapters of Ephesians focus heavily on what God has done for us. Then in chapter 4 there begins a major transition. Paul moves from belief to behavior.
    It is like Paul is saying, “Because this is what God has done for you, this is how you should live."
    Paul isn't simply saying, "Believe the right things." He's saying, "Now live like what you believe is true."
    And one of the first things Paul addresses is unity. And that is very significant. Because spiritual maturity isn't just about how much Bible we know. It's also about how we live with the people God has placed around us. And that includes our families.
    If you have your bibles with you today, go with me to the book of Ephesians. I’m in chapter four and I will begin reading at verse 1. Look at this with me.
    Ephesians 4:1–6 NIV
    1 As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
    This morning I want to give you 5 things that a family needs to do concerning the huddle.

    1. Get in the Huddle

    I’m not saying this literally, but more metaphorically, get in the huddle. As a family you have to realize that you are in this together. It is only in the huddle that you can discover this.
    Look at verse 2 again.
    Ephesians 4:2 NIV
    2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.
    What does the huddle do?
    It requires everyone to come together. If you don’t get in the huddle then you will not know what the play is. If you don’t know what the play is then you will go in the wrong direction. If you go the wrong direction, then you may score for the wrong team.
    Unity starts in the huddle because that is where you get the correct information that you need to make the play.
    A family needs unity in order to move forward as a healthy family.
    Paul says be completely humble and gentle. You have to love one another. A family is not just about one person. If you are a family of 5 then it is about 5 people. If you are a family of 3 then it is about 3. If you are a family of two then both of you should come up with a plan.
    It is in the huddle that families learn to listen to each other.
    I have often said that the reason marriages end in divorce is not because of a marriage problem, but most of the problems is because of a communication problem. You have to learn to talk to one another. The others don’t know how you feel about something unless you tell them.
    That’s where humility comes in to play with the family. Humility says, “What can I do to make our family stronger?”
    It would be good for our families to come together and have a huddle. Make time to talk to one another. Make sure that you are listening before you are reacting. And please stop assuming that everyone knows what everyone else expects.

    You Can’t Get on the Same Page if No One is Willing to Listen.

    So, once you are in the huddle, the next step is very important.

    2. Know Who is Calling the Play

    Think about a really good football team. When you watch them on Friday night, it can look almost effortless. Everybody seems to know where to go. The linemen block. The receivers run their routes. The running back hits the hole. The quarterback delivers the ball.
    But that kind of unity doesn't happen overnight.
    Take Delphos St. John's in Ohio. In 2007, they went 2–8. They weren't a championship team. But they went back to work. They practiced. They corrected mistakes. They learned to work together. The next season they went 13–2 and won the state championship.
    One of their players said afterward, “With hard work, you can accomplish anything you want.”
    They didn't become a championship team overnight. They became a championship team one practice at a time.
    And here's what I want you to understand: unity doesn't just happen.
    A family doesn't become unified simply because everybody lives under the same roof. You have to work at it. You have to communicate. You have to forgive. You have to make sacrifices. You have to learn how to work together.
    But there's something else every successful football team understands: somebody has to call the play.
    If five different players are calling five different plays, you've got chaos.
    And sometimes that's exactly what happens in our families. Dad wants one thing. Mom wants another. The kids have their own agenda. Everybody is running a different play.
    A family needs to decide who's calling the play.
    For the Christian family, Jesus gets to call the play. Not culture. Not social media. Not our feelings. Not the latest parenting trend. Jesus.
    Because when everybody is listening to the same voice, we're much more likely to move in the same direction.
    Look at verse 3 again.
    Ephesians 4:3 NIV
    3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
    Paul doesn’t tell us that unity happens automatically. He tells us to make every effort.
    You have to be intentional in order for unity to come to your family. And it starts when we all listen to the same coach. For us as a believer that coach is Jesus.

    3. Agree on the Play

    Number 3 is we all have to agree on the play.
    Imagine a football team lining up for a play, but nobody actually knows what the play is.
    The quarterback gets under center and says, “Alright, here we go!” The running back thinks, We're running the ball. So when the ball is snapped, he takes off toward the hole. The receiver thinks, We're passing. So he takes off down the field running his route. The quarterback says, Forget both of them, and decides he's going to scramble. And then, just to make things really interesting, the coach brings the kicker onto the field. The kicker lines up and thinks, Apparently we're kicking this thing.
    Then, the ball is snapped. The running back is running left. The receiver is running deep. The quarterback is running for his life. And the kicker is trying to kick the ball.
    All at the same time!
    At that point, nobody needs to tackle the other team. They're probably just standing there laughing.
    Why? Because everybody is doing something, but nobody is doing the same thing.
    And that's what happens when there is no agreement on the play. You can have talented people. You can have people who are working hard. You can have people who love each other. But if everybody is going in a different direction, you're not going to accomplish much.
    This happens sometimes in our families as well. Nobody knows what the play is that we are running. And so there is complete chaos in the family. Dad is going one direction. Mom is going another direction. The kids are doing whatever they want to do. Nobody is in unity. And the hard part is they aren’t even trying to be in unity.
    It is at that point that the family breaks down and it becomes dysfunctional.
    Don’t let it get to this. Know the play you are running and get on the say page with one another.
    Paul repeatedly used the word one in verses 4 - 6. Look at what he says.
    Ephesians 4:4–6 NIV
    4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
    Unity doesn’t mean everyone is identical. It means that we have a common foundation.
    It is so important that we as believers have shared spiritual commitments.
    As a family you need to decide together, what do we believe? What matters most to us as a family? What are our priorities? What kind of family are we trying to become? What role does Jesus have in our home?
    When a team gets in a huddle, I am sure not everyone agrees with the play they are going to run, but the important thing is they all run the same play together.
    As a family…

    You don't have to agree on everything to be united, but you do need to agree on what matters most.

    The next thing you need to do in the huddle is…

    4. Set the Priorities

    Paul begins this chapter by encouraging each of us to “live a life worthy of the calling you have received.”
    Ephesians 4:1 NIV
    1 As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.
    Whether you believe it or not, if you have a family, you have been called to be an active member of that family.
    In order to be a family moving forward in unity, a family game plan requires intentional priorities.
    Think about your families time for a moment. What are the activities that get the most attention? What things get the most time devoted to them? What uses up most of your families energy? What takes the most resources?
    As a family you have to decide, is this what we want our family to be all about.
    And when you are looking at each of these, it is important that you don’t allow activities, sports, work, technology, or busyness determine your spiritual priorities.
    Take all those things and make them align with what God wants you to do. Make them align with what God wants you to be. Give God first place and then those things can align with what God is doing in your life.
    Let me give you a practical example from our own family.
    This past spring, Brenley came to me and wanted to play on the city's travel soccer team. Now, there was nothing wrong with her wanting to play soccer. But before we said yes, we had to sit down and look at what that commitment would mean for our family.
    One of the first questions I asked was, “How many games are going to be on Sundays?”
    Then we started asking other questions:
    Where are we going to have to travel? How much is this going to cost? How much time is this going to take? How often are we going to be gone?
    Because we had already decided that church and our commitment to God were priorities for our family, we weren't willing to simply say, “Well, she's on the team, so we'll just miss church whenever there's a game.”
    If we had discovered that we were going to be gone every weekend, the answer would have been no.
    But when we found out that Sunday games were usually in the afternoon, and there were only one or two weekends during the entire four-month season that would require us to be gone for the whole weekend, we realized we could make it work.
    We even decided that we could turn some of those travel weekends into opportunities to spend time together as a family.
    So we didn't say, “Soccer is more important than church.” And we didn't say, “Church means our kids can't do anything else.”
    We asked a different question:
    “How can we enjoy this opportunity without allowing it to replace the priorities we've already established for our family?” And as a family, we came to an agreement.
    That's what setting priorities looks like.
    You don't make every decision from scratch. You establish your priorities first, and then you make your decisions according to those priorities. Because if you don't decide what's important to your family ahead of time, the next opportunity, activity, sport, job, or invitation will make the decision for you.

    If you don't establish your family's priorities, the culture around you will establish them for you.

    The last thing you have to do in the huddle is…

    5. Break the Huddle and Run the Play

    Have you noticed that when a team breaks the huddle they put their hands in the middle and say break or go team or something else. Sometimes after the quarterback gives the play he will just clap his hands to break the huddle.
    That is a sign that it is time to run the play.
    The purpose of the huddle isn’t to stay in the huddle.
    You gather - hear the play - agree - and then go execute the play.
    As a family, you need to move from talking about faith to living out faith.
    It is so important for the unity of your family that you practice spiritual habits.
    There use to be a sign in our room that read, “a band that plays together, stays together.”
    I believe that a family that prays together, stays together.
    Read scripture together. Worship together. Serve together. Make church a priority. And it is so important that you have intentional family conversations.
    God created the family from the very beginning. And when you read through Scripture, you see families everywhere.
    Some families got it right. Some families made some terrible mistakes. Some families were healthy. Some were incredibly dysfunctional. The Bible doesn't hide the struggles of families. It shows us the good, the bad, and the ugly.
    But there is one thing that remains true through all of it: God has a plan for the family. And that's why the huddle can't be where the process ends. Eventually, you have to break the huddle and run the play.
    You can sit in the huddle. You can talk about the play. You can agree on the play. You can know what you're supposed to do. But at some point, you have to break the huddle and live it out.
    And if there's one piece of advice I could give every family today, it would be this: When you break the huddle, keep Jesus at the center of your family.
    Let Jesus be the one calling the plays. Let His Word establish your priorities. Let His Spirit guide your decisions. Let His love shape the way you treat one another.
    Because when Jesus is at the center, your family doesn't have to be perfect. You just have to keep moving in the same direction.
    Today we've talked about getting in the huddle, knowing who's calling the play, agreeing on the play, setting our priorities, and then breaking the huddle and running the play.
    But before we break this huddle today, I want us to pray together.
    If you're here with your family today, I want us to join our family groups all throughout this auditorium. If you need to get out in the aisles, go ahead and do so. Let’s join with our families. If you are by yourself, adopt a family for today.
    And I'm not going to do all the praying for you. I'm going to ask you to turn toward your family, put your hands on one another, and pray for each other.
    Parents, pray over your children. Husbands, pray over your wives. Wives, pray over your husbands. Children, you can pray for your parents too.
    And I want you to pray three simple things.

    1. Pray for God’s Presence in Your Family. 2. Pray for Unity. 3. Pray for Direction.

    First, pray for God's presence in your family. “God, be at the center of our home.” Second, pray for unity. “God, help us to love one another, forgive one another, listen to one another, and walk together.” Third, pray for direction. “God, help our family know what You want us to do and give us the courage to follow You.”
    Because here's the thing:
    We don't want to just talk about having a godly family. We want to become one.
    So for the next few moments, I want every family to get in their own little huddle. Put your hands on each other. And parents, I especially want you to look your children in the eyes and pray over them.
    You don't have to pray a long prayer. You don't have to use fancy words. Just pray from your heart.
    Let's get in the huddle and invite Jesus to be at the center of our family.

      • Ephesians 4:1–6NIV2011

      • Ephesians 4:2NIV2011

      • Ephesians 4:3NIV2011

      • Ephesians 4:4–6NIV2011

      • Ephesians 4:1NIV2011

  • I Need You More

      • Job 1:21NIV2011

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