Sunday April 25, 2021
Did You Ever Hear God Speaking to You?
I. Sometimes revelation comes through something a friend or leader says.
I Peter 4:11 NIV
11 If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
We should focus on what is being said to us.God uses humans as a mouthpiece.
II. This is why we need to recover the practice of testimony. We need to listen to one another; we need to hear the faith struggles and the understandings that come from those who occupy the pews next to us.
John 4:25-29 NIV
25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”
We testify to what we have seen and heard. We learn from the testimony of others.
III. We need to be open and in the habit of listening to those who are different from us, who have a different perspective, who come from a different background, are of a different race.
Acts 11:20-21 NIV
20 Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. 21 The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.
Non Jewish believers shared the gospel.
Conclusion:
We can cultivate ears for hearing the voice of God from different people and in different settings.
The invitation is to listen, to carefully listen. But not only listen, we expect to hear. What a radical thought that is, we can hear God speak.
Loving you through the love Christ gives.
Pastor Mike
A question was asked this week:
Something I have been pondering: is it inappropriate to pray to “fill us with Your Holy Spirit” or “pour out Your Holy Spirit on us” since technically the Holy Spirit already resides in us??
Pastor Mike responded:
It’s technically both appropriate and inappropriate, for me it is dialectic. Holding the two extremes in balance. Sure we receive the Holy Spirit by faith.
Of course we don’t need to go through mental exercises to conjure some feeling. But, I see in this world secondary to that once primary infilling …. reenergizings of that faith, I see it conferred by laying on of hands of the Apostles Acts 1, 8, 10, then it was sometimes quickened for healings and miracles by Paul’s pieces of cloth and aprons and Peters shadow Acts 19:11-12, Acts 5:15-16
So verbage can also reenergize. When people pray for his immanent presence to seem localized “here”, “in this place” well of course He is already omnipresent, already in dwelling….it could seem silly, but when we focus on filling, laying on of hands, commissioning, receiving elements, sending out prayer cloths, preaching the word, singing, praising, praying, etc. , seem to all have some secondary roll in catalyzing the Spirit that already dwells in us.
I don’t think God is all strung out about it.
Sunday April 11th. 2021
Pastor Mike’s Message
‘How Our Struggles Benefit Others‘
I. Stories of transformation
Acts 22:6-21 NIV
About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, ‘Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?’ “ ‘Who are you, Lord?’ I asked. “ ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied. My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me. “ ‘What shall I do, Lord?’ I asked. “ ‘Get up,’ the Lord said, ‘and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.’
II. Hope clinging in difficult situations
Acts 12:5-17 NIV
5 So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.
6 The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. 7 Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. “Quick, get up!” he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists.
8 Then the angel said to him, “Put on your clothes and sandals.” And Peter did so. “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,” the angel told him. 9 Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision.
III. Faith is alive
I Thessalonians 3:2-5
to strengthen and encourage you in your faith, 3 so that no one would be unsettled by these trials. For you know quite well that we are destined for them. 4 In fact, when we were with you, we kept telling you that we would be persecuted. And it turned out that way, as you well know. 5 For this reason, when I could stand it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith. I was afraid that in some way the tempter had tempted you and that our labors might have been in vain.
Conclusion:
I Corinthians 1:4 NIV
who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
Pastor Mike
“Loving you always, with the love that Christ gives.“
Sunday April 4th, 2021
Lent, the season that helps prepare us for the celebration of Easter, is all about the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the desert. These events are recorded in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. It records events in Jesus life before He began his public ministry.
As Lent draws to a close during Holy Week, we remember Jesus’ death on a cross for us. Then on Easter Sunday, we celebrate the resurrection, that Jesus is alive.
Allowing the Holy Spirit to make these closing events come alive each year is part of our joy as believers.
Hopefully you have experienced that Easter joy again this year. So that the truth of the resurrection feels real and fresh.
I. Think of the immediacy of it, like the women at the tomb when they were told by two bright angels that Jesus was not there because He had risen from the dead.
Luke 24 NIV
1 On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here; he has risen!
II. Think of when Jesus appeared to the disciples in the upper room in his resurrection body.
Like 24 NIV
36 While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
37 They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. 38 He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? 39 Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”
40 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. 41 And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate it in their presence.
III. Think in these times of Easter joy, there is certainty that every power that ever dared to war against God has been brought to nothing.
Ephesians 1 NIV
19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21 far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. 22 And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.
“It is finished”, He was crucified, was dead and buried, but “He is Risen” He brings closure to our eternal hope, He is our Eternal Hope.
Loving you always, with the love that Christ gives.
Pastor Mike
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