Righteousness leads to faith and releases boldness! The goal of this message is to take the listener or reader from insecurity —> confidence and/or from confidence —> BOLD faith! Boldness (bold faith) is not something we put on, but instead it comes from taking something off. Boldness is the manifestation of NO condemnation! So what’s the solution to condemnation? Listen to this message and hear for yourself!
Sermons
“What do you want Me to do for you?” & Ministry of Righteousness
Jesus asked blind Bartimaeus "what do you want Me to do for you?" Faith asks. If you are not ASKING you are not "faith-ing." Jesus said that we will ask and receive from our place of conneciton with Him (John 15:7-11) and that continual process of asking and recieving will make our joy full. We need to be careful that we don't get lulled into eating the fruit of last season's asking without sowing the seeds of faith for the next harvest of righteousness in our life!
Condemnation causes us to lose our confidence before God. 1 John 3 says that if our heart does not condmen us we have confidence before God and whatever we ask we receive from Him. The message of no condemnation is opposed by the accuser of the breathren who inverts the actual ministry of the Holy Spirit which Jesus made clear in John 16:7-11. The reality is the ministry of the Spirit is a ministry or righteousness! (2 Cor. 3:5-9). When you received the gift of eternal life (Rom. 6:23) you also received the gift of righteousness (Rom. 5:17) He became sin who knew no sin that you might become the righteousness of God in Him! (2 Cor. 5:21).
It's time to start asking again! Faith works by love - not just our love for others - but also our recognition of God's love for us and our right standing in Him! If you are in Christ, you are in perfect right standing (perfectly righteous) before God because the blood of His Son Jesus has cleansed you from ALL unrighteousness!
"So what do you want Me to do for you?" asks Jesus.
Recalibrating to the Goodness of God & Effortless Change
Fine resteraunts serve multiple courses. In this message there were a few different "courses" as well. Enjoy the following topics:
- Time to Ask!
- Recalibrating to the Goodness of God after having Experienced Loss
- Don't Let the enemy kill your Tesitmony
- Grace is your answer!
- Effortless Change
Testimony from Word of Knowledge
This recording has a tesitmony of a knee that was healed after corporate prayer based on a word of knowledge a few services ago! It also contains a short teaching on operating in words of knowledge and the prophetic. The rest of the sermon did not record successfully, but we already planned to revist that same content next week (1/6/19) so please plan to listen to that recording once it is available!
Transformed Fruit
If you are bearing fruit, the Father will prune you. How much the pruning hurts depends on how much you’ve placed your identity in the fruit you just bore. In the natural, pruning is done at the place of connection. The Father is always pruning us back to that place of connection.
- Grace is God‘s performance on our behalf whereas the law / works is our performance on God’s behalf.
- Grace is RECEIVE not ACHIEVE.
- Grace is my past, present, and future sins completely forgiven ONCE and for all.
- Perfect right standing with God regardless of how I feel about it.
Matthew 13:52 says “Then He said to them, “Therefore every scribe instructed concerning the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure things new and old.”
Ministry From Identity
Workers need a job description. Sons minister out of a set of core values. Job description never produces what identity produces. When people don’t have an identity you need to give them a job description so they do the right sorts of things … but when have the core values - when we have identity - it produces a whole different set of results.
Our vision is to have a church with no ministries - just ministers. So how do you step into that place of ministry?
The goal of this message is to continue (from the previous message on 10/7/18) to share some of the prophecies made concerning us in order to begin to empower each member of our church with the prophetic charge that I believe has been given to Agathos so that we can start to do the work of exploring what this new wineskin might look like.
He's a Rewarder
We can have strongholds IN THE LORD. He after all is our refuge and strong tower! He is the lover of your soul and there is not a moment that He doesn’t want to be with you. That’s also why He promises emphatically that if you will draw near to Him He WILL draw near to you.
Believing that "He is"
You can create Godly strongholds in your life. The Lord has developed a new stronghold (or perhaps just a new facet of an old stronghold) in my life over the past few months. I want to share about that over the next couple sermons.
Sunday Service
Using the New Testament scriptures that seem to speak most directly to Sunday service, we asked ourselves "what can we conclude scripturally about Sunday service?" We saw many themes - some suprising or perhaps different than we normally think of Sunday service (listen to the recording for more). After that group discussion we asked ourselves "what do these scriptures reveal about our Father?" In addition to "humble" and "community-focused," it was clear how empowering our Father is! If you listen to this sermon, I would encourage you to do the same study we did with the following scriptures:
- Acts 2:42
- Acts 2:46
- Eph. 4:11-16
- Heb. 10:24-25
- Acts 20:7
Enjoy!
Not One Member, but Many
“And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.” (Acts 2:42) There is no relative importance given to this list of 4 activities of the early church. They seem to each be an equal part of the mixture.