Help Us Heal the Heart of America: We Do It Jesus' Way

By Ron Nelson

Heart Builders small groups, where Jesus comes alive in you! Sharing many Christ-filled hearts will Heal the Heart of America!

Jesus loves small groups! That's where Jesus has always expected us to grow. The miracle: it is Christ who grows inside us, eventually to maturity.

Stay with your Heart Builders group unti

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Mar 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685560539

Ron Nelson

As an experienced pastor, the author knows the unsurpassed value of effective small groups in a church fellowship. He eagerly did extensive training in the establishment of a system of small groups.Lively churches wisely develop small groups to assure that the Sunday message "takes root" in people's lives and that people are known, listened to, supported, and held accountable.As we build lives in Heart Builders small groups, we will also bring healing to the heart of America.Welcome to the movement!

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Help Us Heal the Heart of America

Ronald Nelson

Help Us Heal the Heart of America

Trilogy Christian Publishers A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Trinity Broadcasting Network

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Copyright © 2021 by Ronald Nelson

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.TM Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.TM Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked TLB are taken from The Living Bible copyright © 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

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Trilogy Disclaimer: The views and content expressed in this book are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views and doctrine of Trilogy Christian Publishing or the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 978-1-68556-052-2

E-ISBN: 978-1-68556-053-9

Foreword

A Personal Note—From Grandparents to Our Grandchildren and Other Young Friends

Our dear ones,

We love you and pray for your freedom in Christ and opportunity in the upcoming generations. We are very grateful Americans and are eager to tell you of the wonders of America as we’ve known it.

We want you to catch the spirit to live the American dream. Hopefully, our government will keep our traditional economic engine going, and through that, you will be helped to make something of yourself in your God-given area of work. Please know: This is not self-centered because it helps open God’s plan for your life, now and for eternity! Paul proclaims: For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago (Ephesians 2:10, NLT).

Hopefully, you can see the uniqueness of America and draw your peers who may be struggling along for the exciting ride of their lives! We love you so much and wish to see you and your peers flourish.

Our first hope is for you to love and share Christ in your own Small Heart Builders Group. Better yet, let’s start our group inter-generationally! With your vigor, you can help us older ones experience Jesus’ growing in group members and later be able to divide your/our precious group in half to form two new groups. Then we will all be exhilarated to see Jesus, our Savior, coming alive in Small Groups all across the world until His kingdom comes!

Jesus expects us to form Small Groups to bring people along gradually and lovingly. Jesus allowed three years for his disciples to grow and mature. They were the Christian movement’s original Small Group.

Today there are Christian congregations of all sizes, but no congregation is truly large in Jesus’ eyes unless it has a proportional number of lively Small Groups. It is in Small Groups where people are loved, known, heard, and held accountable by loving friends in Christ. This is also where the Sunday sermon/inspiration takes root to grow in our hearts. So, the satisfaction and joy in our Small Group will be immense!

Each of us, led by the Holy Spirit, turns one’s heart to Christ in faith and trust. Then, in time, one’s wild or restless spirit is tamed through loving contact, thanks to Small Group accountability. Considerable time may be needed in Heart Menders for our restless hearts and minds to be genuinely given over and entrusted to Christ, our healer and best friend.

Eventually, our growing faith is tested as God’s plan for our own personal life becomes more apparent.¹ All of this may happen very quickly or may be a slower process for some. At any event, in the end, the Holy Spirit shall have equipped us to be trusted as a new Small Heart Builders Group leader and a genuinely functioning Heart Winner.

The multiplication plan of Jesus, which depends on our owning his vision to divide our own fantastic group in order to form two or more new groups, can be painful for people! That is especially true if they are new to the joy of sharing in a vital Heart Builders kind of Small Group.

So we need your youthful enthusiasm and buoyancy to help us older crusty ones to trust Jesus as we divide up to multiply a growing number of groups. The vision of Heart Builders is for all of us to grow in the Holy Spirit’s special group for us…until each of us eventually becomes a Heart Winner. Doing this inter-generationally will bring amazing joy to God!

Thank you, right now, for your love and partnership in the Gospel. We want to bless you for the rest of our lives here on earth. We offer you our hearts and minds in service to your future! I call upon my fellow grandparent crowd to encourage and enlist your older grandchildren and peers to form an intergenerational Heart Builders Small Group to build the kingdom of God and help heal the heart of America! We need to be together.

Loving your grandchild is a job that is never done!

We want you beside this old grandparent generation as we work for the restoration of freedom in the United States wherever that’s needed and for genuine freedom in Christ, as experienced in Heart Builders Small Groups. Our Heart Builders prayer at group meetings is, "Come, Holy Spirit, into our study. Inform our minds, touch our hearts, and move us in our will so that we are eager to walk in your way." That blessing is our hope and prayer for each of you!

Please know how much we love you and pray for your joyful place in our country and in God’s eternal kingdom. From older Christians with love.

P.S. This book is our challenge to you to help us in America, to open our hearts as never before, to bring exhilarating freedom to every person we touch. Then, in particular, we challenge you, younger ones, to come alongside your grandparents and their peers (as surrogate grandparents), genuinely encouraging them to form a Heart Builders Small Group with you!

Let’s be Heart Builders who bring masses of people close to the heart of God. This writing is a love letter for you and your peers. During the long months of COVID-19, I lovingly wrote this book, especially for you.

I want to express my gratitude: When growing up, it was my good fortune to live in God’s great outdoors. Our Heavenly Father first made Himself known to me in the wonders of His wonderful creation. As a kid on a farm, I came to know the one who set our gorgeous world in motion. I learned to pray for God’s blessings, knowing full well His goodness to us. Often I would stand at the edge of our farm place, watching and praying in the thunderstorm until it hit with fury and power!

Jesus is my (our) Good Shepherd, Savior, and best friend! After being baptized, through the years of my youth and as a teen, I knowingly kept company with Jesus in a personal way. In the fields, riding a (now) old-fashioned tractor, I sang at the top of my lungs, My Jesus, I love thee. It’s been a love affair ever since!

At an early age, I knew that God had come to live inside me to guide, correct, comfort, and delight me as only God can. The person of the Holy Spirit has always been close at hand and so willing and able to bring such joy to life! The Spirit of Jesus, alive and active inside, is the richest gift one can receive. I thank you, God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!

It’s impossible to express enough gratitude to Joan, my dear wife, my life’s partner in ministry, and tremendous parent in the raising and nurturing of our three children. More than five decades of married life have gone very fast! I’m hoping for more.

Thank you, God, for our first born, Pam, who is fiercely passionate about her work, serving people with serious needs. I thank God also for our Cathy, a dedicated school counselor and lay leader in her church. Later, our son Mike came along. He is an outstanding man of God. I’m grateful that to this day, he is my prayer partner. All of our kids have provided us with the seven grandchildren we love very much!

An amazing thank you is expressed to my parents, George and Myrtle Nelson, and to Joan’s parents, Bill and Iola Hargens. They were our role models for a mature Christian life and for Christian parenting. They supported us in a multitude of ways. My sister Judy and Joan’s brother Joel were also recipients of those blessings. We cherish them and share many family memories.

Thanks to the pastors who brought me up in the faith. Especially, I acknowledge Pastor John Pierson, my mentor and friend from high school days.

Thanks to the support staff at Trilogy Publishing for guiding me through the detailed process of publication. Ashley, Rachel, Tessica, and Jody have helped me move the project along. Also, so helpful in tech support, I thank Sage, our daughter-in-law here in Colorado.

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¹ See Ephesians 2:10.

Introduction

First, some personal words: We’ve been a seasoned married couple together since 1964. We were fortunate to have been raised in America by parents of the Greatest Generation.

Those were simpler times! We grew up so naturally with love for God and our country. Joan and I descended from several northern European countries and were raised in rural eastern Nebraska. Both of us