Intentional Brotherhood, by Aaron

As the nine of us sat around the campfire last Saturday during our retreat, we had a discussion about being intentional about well, each other. As Bill mentioned in the early post we now have nine members of our fellowship of friends. We are all in similar places in life it seems; some of us are married and have children, some are about to have children (again), one of us is about to get married, and some of us are single (but ready to mingle, just kidding, ish). Whether we are married with a family or not there is one main thing we have in common, we are all really busy!!

So I talked to the group about this simple idea I had about being intentional and accountability. Jeremy spoke before me on Saturday and explained that accountability is not just pointing the finger because you have not read the Word or prayed enough. Accountability is encouraging your brother to be a better person and encouraging them to be an imitator of Christ. One easy way to be intentional, in a realistic sense because we all live in different locations is being intentional about praying for each other. We are going to battle for each other.

Ephesians 5:1-2 says “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us”. We want to become imitators of Christ, in everything that we do. To be more like Christ, we have to be in relationship with Him so we know His thoughts and hear His voice. Luckily (in our case), there are nine of us that can assist each other throughout our crazy busy lives. So the idea I had was that since we are going through this initiation period that will last a year, as Bill mentioned in an earlier post; for one month we will all have one person out of our group of nine to focus our pray on. We will be praying to the Lord about multiple things for them including giving that person peace, blessing them, drawing closer to the Father, drawing closer to their families etc.

We are going to battle for our brother for a month. We will not ask the person if they have been reading their bible or how much they have been praying (which don’t get me wrong that is not a bad thing at all). We will be discussing with them what God has laid on our hearts about their lives. We will discuss with them that they are loved and always have a brother to lean on. We will give them words of affirmation throughout the month. We will pray for them to be imitators of God. We will pray that God will refine their skills and draw out their desires (Jeremy may talk about that in a future post). Then the next month we will all have a different person to pray for in the group and do the exact same thing. Honestly, we just want to encourage each other as we go through this crazy life. We are constantly in spiritual warfare each day; why not bring a brother with you to fight?

Peace and God Bless!