REALLIFE STUDY GROUP

"Train Up!"

 

ICEBREAKER:  If you could take a train ride anywhere where would you go and why?

 

INTRODUCTION:  Life is a process where we are being trained up and training up others as well.

 

Training up involves serving, fathering, mothering, nurturing, mentoring, disciplining, coaching, teaching, modeling, correcting, encouraging, supporting, preparing, cultivating, dedicating and discipling.

 

Training up requires patience, repetition, persistence, courage, boldness and sacrifice.

 

And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan. (Genesis 14:14 KJV)

 

You cannot win battles you have not been armed to fight.

You cannot arm for battle those who have not been trained yet.

You cannot train those who do not have a servants heart yet.

 

In other words,

Serving precedes training.

Training precedes arming.

Arming precedes winning.

 

If you train those who do not have a servant's heart, they will break your heart a million times.

If you arm those who have not been trained, while attempting to wound their enemy they may wound you, their fellow soldiers and themselves.  

 

If we refuse to be trained we may never reach our full growth potential. And if we refuse to train others it will take them longer to reach their full growth potential, if ever.

 

CONFESSION: I am being trained to train up others in this world and the world to come. I have been trained up and dedicated for eternal purposes. My training is essential preparation for the trials and triumphs of life. What I have survived and overcome gives me the credibility and credentials to train others. My God is a master trainer of master equippers called apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, spiritual fathers and mothers of the faith.

 

DEFINITION:  Train Up: Chanak Hebrew for train, dedicate, inaugurate, or put a taste of something in the roof of the mouth of a child

Child: In Hebrew is translated babe as well as servant

Go: In Hebrew is also translated mouth or to speak

 

OUTLINE:  BENEFITS OF TRAINING UP OTHERS

·        When you train up someone you are reproducing and multiplying your knowledge, your abilities and your productivity.

·        When you train up someone you are insuring that your legacy will outlive you

·        When you train up someone you are sowing a seed in the next generation

·        When you train up someone you are paying it forward and saying thank you to the previous generation or in some cases you are refusing to be like the previous generation

·        When you train up someone you always get more out of it than what you put into it and learn more through the process

·        When you train up someone you are becoming a river and not a swamp

·        When you train up someone your reward is multiplied exponentially

·        When you train up someone you are held to a higher level of accountability and if you know you have been called and don't respond, you are still accountable. And by the way everyone is called! To be called means you have heard the call and seen the need!

·        When you train up someone your gift goes to the next level. Use it or lose it!

·        When you train up someone sometimes the only thanks you will receive is the satisfaction of knowing you tried to help someone and you did the right thing.  (The joy of serving rarely comes from the appreciation of the people you serve, but rather from knowing you did what was hard, not easy, and that you obeyed God by seeing a need and meeting it! But know this, you will reap what you sow, and with what measure you sow it you will reap it. If you sow nothing you will surely reap nothing.)

·        The sooner you train up someone to do what you do, the sooner you can do something else.

Things to think about when the only church you are a part of is on TV or the Internet or hiding in the audience on Sunday.

·        You can be taught through the media but you cannot be trained up

·        Church is not simply about which local church has the best menu of programs or the most entertaining services

·        You can't really love from a distance

·        You can't break bread with a TV monitor

·        You can't baptize yourself, be accountable to yourself, sing in a choir by yourself

·        You can't truly give to yourself because everything you have already belongs to you

·        Your gifts are only developed when you are actively using them for others

·        True fulfillment only comes when you serve others

·        You can't lay hands on the sick and pray for them or give them a hug from a distance

·        You can't experience a corporate anointing by yourself 

·        You can't see the need, feel the pain or make the difference while sitting on your couch flipping channels

·        You can't feel the touch of a friend or work side by side with a brother or sister in the Lord while just watching on a screen.

·        You can't wash someone's feet, serve someone communion, shake someone's hand, deliver a thanksgiving basket, visit an elderly shut-in, teach someone's child and see the joy on that child's face without getting involved.

·        If you are in a live service you can't turn the channel when the speaker confronts you with truth you do not like

·        You can't make a commitment to be accountable to a TV screen

·        You can't see things as they really are on TV. They only show you what they want you to see. You only see the full part of the audience. You only see the happy sermons....never a flat day.

 

TEXT:  Proverbs 22:5,6 (KJV) Thorns and snares are in the way of the froward: he that doth keep his soul shall be far from them. Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Deu 20:5   And the officers shall speak unto the people, saying, What man [is there] that hath built a new house, and hath not dedicated it? let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicate it.

(The word dedicated here is the same Hebrew word translated train up)

 

Ephesians 6:4; Psalm 144:12 KJV; Psalm 128:3 KJV

 

STUDY GROUP QUESTIONS:

1.    Name someone in your life that made a major contribution to you who trained, taught or coached you.

2.    Identify someone in the Bible that was amazing at training up people. What methods did this person use?

3.    Proverbs 22;5,6 says train up (put a taste in the roof of the mouth of) a child (a servant or a baby that cannot speak for himself yet) in the way that he should go (also translated mouth or to speak) and ... Literally put a word in the mouth of a babe and that word will impact the direction of that child's life.  Identify something we should be decreeing over ourselves, our family and friends.

4.    Why is it dangerous to think that you don't need anyone in life to train you?

5.    What does it mean to have a servants' heart?

6.    Why do you think in America people are less committed to a local church in terms of their regular attendance, their giving and their service to the community?

7.    Training up is also translated to dedicate in Hebrew. When we dedicate something we consecrate it. We give it our spirit or our DNA. Identify one attribute that would cause you to believe someone was trained up to be like Jesus.

 

PRAISE REPORTS & PRAYER REQUESTS:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

                                                                                       

 

ACTION POINT:  This week I will ask God who I am called to train up. Sometimes training is as simple as the power of influence exercised by the lifestyle I model to those around me.