Introduction

Trust is essential for teams to experience success. Trust is also rather fragile as it is easily compromised by selfishness, deceit and mixed motives. Teams that work to develop an atmosphere of love and trust find that they collectively achieve far more than any competitor could individually.

Application

1. What are some attitudes and actions that promote the building of trust among teammates?
2. What are some ways teammates behave that tear down the trust that has been built?
3. How deeply would you say you presently love and trust your teammates?

• Shallowly like a parking lot puddle.
• Somewhat deeply like a muddy river.
• Deeply, from the heart, like an ocean.

Bridge

1. In I Peter 1:22-23 we find some straight talk about the attitudes that develop deep trust and the source of the power to build it: “By obedience to the truth, having purified yourselves for sincere love of the brothers, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again —not of perishable seed but of imperishable—through the living and enduring word of God.”
2. How would obedient, pure and earnestly loving hearts lead to trust among a set of teammates?
3. What are the opposites of these attributes which would tear down the trust in a team?

Connection

1. What trust-killing attitudes and actions have you been purified from as a teammate?
2. What are the trust-killers that still exist among your team?
3. How can your team overcome them?

Discovery

Take a moment and search your heart for any trust-killing attitudes that still need to be purified. Ask a teammate to pray with you as you confess that attitude and seek to replace it with one built on the imperishable, living and enduring Word of God.

Close

Memory verse: “No one has greater love than this, that someone would lay down his life for his friends.” – John 15:13