The Father we never knew: Recent Episodes
Phelim Doherty
Our problem today is not people alive being mistaken for dead, but those living dead to God and mistaking that for life.
In this message Phelim shares from 1John 4 where God's life is declared to be the all consuming love of God. His love is not something separate from His life, so we are not being asked to produce His love, but to receive and let His life, His light, deal with the darkness of sin and death.
What really happened to the human race through the resurrection of Jesus Christ? How is Jesus now the Last Adam? Why are all angels present at the resurrection sitting?
You can’t make yourself believe. You can’t persuade you own heart. You can’t produce faith. It comes by the God-given revelation of His love: the gospel of His love (not yours).”
The new creation in Christ is a body. Finding the grace of God empowering divine relationships
Unless we begin with the Father qualifying us through Christ, we have no beginning at all!
The Gospel is not 'Behave' but 'Behold!' for to see how much has been given to you in Christ is to see what God sees. It is to see what God believes. It is to see the One faith, the only faith; the faith of God and to find that faith in you.
What greater awakening can come to the Church, than for us to awaken again to the reality that the Cross was not a failure, that Jesus’ death and resurrection changed everything and that old things, like our life ruled by sin and death, have passed away and all things, like our lives before God have become new.
God is so big that unless God reveals Himself, we cannot know Him and unless He gives Himself to us, we cannot receive Him.Christmas is when we celebrate that He did both; He caused us to know Him by giving Himself to us, first by His Son and then by His Spirit.
In heaven the Kingdom is not a future hope but a present reality.And so to be filled with the Spirit of God, is to find yourself living/being in that eternally present Kingdom.It is by men and women living in the Spirit, seeing by the Spirit, speaking by the Spirit, that His Kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven.
In every generation of the Church, when God’s people start to see as God sees; the abundance of His presence with them, they rise to be proclaimers of His praise and trumpeters of His Kingdom.
it was never the gospel; that God wanted us to live as if real life started sometime in the future, in a place called heaven and that this life was simply a waiting room until you discover whether you have done enough to get your name on the roll.He never wanted us to live a life becoming with Him, but a life being with Him.Eternal life is not getting to heaven one day.Eternal life is knowing the God who is with you today
The spirit of the world can only say “Could be”The Spirit that comes from God says “IS”.To live filled with “the spirit of this world”, is to live trying to be a Christian.To live filled with the Spirit that comes from God, is to live being a child of God, for the Spirit persuades our spirits that we are the children of God.Session 1 of 3 messages on the subject "Raised with Christ" given in Inverness in June 2024
“You cannot thrive in your marriage if you keep going out at weekends acting as if you are single. What would you say to a friend who got married recently but has decided that every weekend he is still going to go out on the town with all his single mates and do everything they do?That is what the Holy Spirit is saying to the Church, the New Creation.How can you reveal the new creation life, the married to God life to this generation, when every weekend you get together in church with people who speak to you as if you are single? “
River City Worship from Pentecost Sunday. "I heard a sound from heaven, like the sound of many waters"
A life-giving message contrasting the futility of self, with living from the life God breathes into us in Christ. "Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." John 12:24. This message was given in River City Church on Saturday May 28th 2024.
His words have such power, that by the time you hear them, everything He said is already accomplished.
To preach the Gospel in the power of the Spirit is to find yourself, much to your own surprise, speaking to what is not, as if it is. Of all the voices that are speaking to you in this world, the voice of God is the only one that does not speak to you according to your natural state.
Live reconciled. Live from the party, not from the field. Live from His acceptance, not for His acceptance.It is not your job to reconcile yourself to God. God has done that through the man Christ Jesus.
Let His life do the work. Let His life be done unto you according to His Word to you. Let the power of the Gospel call up in you, His life.
“You cannot carry the weight of trying to save yourself from death. That burden will crush you and steal from you your innocence; the joy and wonder at just being alive. What you need is a Father, who gives you a life greater than death, and so lifts from you the burden of trying to save yourself."
A conversation with Jeff and Roger Fields on the beauty and power of the Gospel and our journey in understanding that when we dilute down the generosity of God, we take the metanoia out of the message.
Here is the reckless scandalous gospel in all its glory….God thinks you are worthy of giving His life to.... so He did! That’s not advice. That’s news and news on such a scale as to awaken those dead to God as He truly is, that they may see the true knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.
When you grow up in a world that doesn't believe in a Saviour, such a world can only teach you to be your own saviour.
If we don’t grow to know Him as the God who loves His enemies, we will never love ours.
Only when your heart and mine is persuaded that the Father has not left us to save ourselves, will our attempts to save ourselves through our own piety be put to rest
The natural mind, apart from the Holy Spirit, does not have and cannot have a true image of the Father.
If Christ and His work is not laid as the foundation of our new life, we will continue to put far too much weight on our own performance/obedience as the foundation for our lives. Of course my obedience to God’s direction is important, but what I want to show you this morning is that my obedience is not the foundation of my new life in Christ.
Right the way through the Bible, God’s voice calls life into being.But that being, is not being an individual, it is being with God.
In heaven, there is no one trying to become anyone, for all have found their being with God. The Kingdom of heaven is not the realm of becoming. It is the realm of being.
10 minute excerpt from a talk given to the Ascension Ministries Council of the Apostolic Church UK on "Shifting from Church-centric to Christ-centric discipleship.
In the first Adam our life fell, from being to becoming. In the last Adam our life rose, from becoming to being. In Christ our being is in God.
We preach the riches of God’s mercy and grace and we will keep preaching that until we all are completely healed of grasping for life and see our lives rise, from becoming to being, for the mind of Christ is not a mind trying to become someone, but being someone.
The Gospel preached in the power of the Spirit does not to ask people to produce the Christian life, but calls and equips them to participate in the life of God.
I have spent enough years believing what people believe about me. Now I want to believe what God believes about me. The Gospel is the proclamation of what God believes about you and me and every person we will ever meet and it is good news because The Gospel preached in the power of the Spirit, does not ask men to produce the Christian life, but invites and equips them, to participate in the life already given; Christ.
The reason so many in the nations remain in darkness is that so many in the church live as light salesmen. We preach a gospel that makes promises to people of light, if only they will pay a price. But there is no power in preaching a gospel that points people to their behaviour as their hope of light. There is no power in a gospel that points people to themselves! There is no power of the Spirit in such a man-centred gospel to bring people out of darkness because we have not been given God’s Spirit that we would be promisers of the light, but that we would be the light.
Singing the scriptures in River City this morning. John 15:13 "Greater love has no man than this, than he lay down his life for his friends.' and 1John 4:19 "We love Him because He first loved us." Thank you Nicola and Joshua.
God does not regard salvation as anything less than a living relationship with Him. Grace is not a gift that God gives, so that you can continue living by yourself, because Grace is not a thing, He is a person. Yes grace is a gift, but it is not a thing that you receive like a gift left on your doorstep. Such a gift that is a thing can be a blessing to you, but it cannot bring you into a living relationship. You can get a new car left at your door, that someone else has paid for and so is freely given to you, but that is not a true picture of grace because you can’t have a living relationship with a car.
The gospel is not the news of what might be, if you. It is the news of what is, because He, Christ!
• The Gospel is not the proclamation of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that people may partake of that knowledge and then do something about the evil in their lives. • The Gospel is the proclamation of a dream fulfilled, a tree of life, that God has done what you could never do, no matter how much you know about good and evil!
The gospel is not the promise of the dawn, it is the dawn rising on the darkness. It is not the promise of glory that dispels the darkness, it is the present glory in us, that dispels the present darkness in the world and that is why right now, when the world has never seemed such a dark place, has never been so blinded and deafened by man-made light and sound, this is not the hour for the Church to be captivated by earthly events, but to be setting her eyes above, where her real life is (Col.3:1-4) for from there, the heavenly realm, the realm of the Spirit, today, is being trumpeted the eternal call of the Spirit to the bride across the world "Arise, shine, for your light has come!"
Countless believers have deferred their hope of salvation to a place one day, rather than a life today. Better days are always coming, but never seem to arrive. To know God as your father today, is to know today the life of His son, the life that is content in all situations, the life that no longer looks at circumstances to see if God is still my father or not.
Man-made religion can only present us with a god like us; a god who is never satisfied.
"God’s not asking you to make your life new, by leaving your past behind, because in Christ, He has already left your past behind! "
"The best the voice of a manager can do, is tell you who you could become. Only the voice of a Father, can tell you who you are. We have 10,000 managers, but not many fathers!"
When you are full of the Spirit of Him who is no longer counting people’s sins against them, you will no longer count their sins against them
"So then, no one is to be boasting in people. For all things belong to you, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come; all things belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.' 1Cor 3:21-23
f the Gospel your heart has believed has not astonished you, then it was not violent enough to shake the foundation of your old mindset; I. If the foundations of our captivity are not shaken, then there is no lasting freedom. The life you are believing in, is the life you are living.
Jesus lived in the IS of the eternal life of the Father, Son and Spirit and from there, He called men and women out of the darkness of religion, the world where everything is becoming but nothing is, into this eternal life, this eternal IS, where you are who you are by the grace of God. That is the Christian life, the Christ life.
He never had a plan to save the world through our obedience. His plan was to save the world through His love
God is not expecting people to come up with repentance and faith in Christ ‘by themselves’, because ‘by themselves’ is the very condition that they are perishing from.
What would that look like, if we gave the same grace to the stranger, as we do to our own children.
The Gospel is not good advice, it is good news and there is a profound difference between the two. • Good News is the news of something that has already happened, that benefits me. • Good advice can only be about something that hasn’t happened yet, but might happen, ….if I follow the advice.
Can you see then, that • good news leaves your attention on what was done for you, but • good advice leaves your attention on yourself; your ability to follow the advice, but salvation is not of yourself. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.
Advice, leaves your hope on yourself.
"Hear the voice of the Spirit, to a church waiting for a better day. Do not receive the grace of God in vain, for I heard you. I helped you and I tell you, “now is the time of God's favour, now is the day of salvation. (2Cor 6:2). The Kingdom of God only manifests on this earth, when God’s people operate by the knowledge of what NOW IS, not the knowledge of what MIGHT BE. For the Kingdom of the Son, is the realm of what NOW IS."
"Don’t let some fiery passionate preacher on repentance, simply lead you back to eat of the self-effort tree, rather than to partake of the Tree of life. How do you know if that is what has been happening in your life? No matter how many times you hear the Gospel, you can’t seem to help hearing it as good advice, not good news."
"Doing all the right things is not the way into the right life; God’s life for you. Such a belief has left many people very religious all their lives and yet they have ended up bitter and alone because their faith was actually in what they were doing for God, rather than in what He had done for them. They had been living on good advice, not good news. One is earthly food and the other heavenly food. Earthly food can never satisfy. Within a day you are hungry again. The last thing you need today is more good advice. You need good news, heavenly food! “Man cannot live on bread alone, but on every word that keeps proceeding from the mouth of the Father.”
Without a revelation, that we are the habitation OF God, we will always be waiting for a visitation FROM God. When you cannot see what God has done, you will spend your life grasping for something better. Here is the Gospel. There is nothing better, than Christ in you, the hope of glory. To see that we have already been blessed in the spiritual realm with every spiritual blessing in Christ, brings an end to grasping and an entering into, the rest of being whom God has made us to be, sons of God and co-heirs with Christ.
Faith, the capacity, to live from our union with Him, comes by hearing this gospel, (that’s Rom 10:17 ‘faith comes by hearing’) so what are you hearing and so believing about you and Him? • Is it the unchanging, eternal, timeless Gospel, a message that never changes in any year, because it points to Him who never changes and the sufficiency of His work? • Or is it a message that seems to change every week because it is pointing to us and what we need to do and when you are pointed to yourself, there always seems to be no end to what you need to do. In other words, are you hearing the gospel as good news or as good advice? Are you hearing the Gospel on earth, as it is in heaven?
"What is the Gospel? If believers are living shrunken lives, it is for one reason and one reason only. Honey, we shrunk the gospel.! And when you shrink the gospel, you shrink the kids.
"God is not good to you because you are good. He is good to you because He is good and to be persuaded of just how good He is, is to be set free from the self-centred religious life that can never please God, for He has always known, what so many of us are only now glimpsing for the first time; the self-life can only ever produce a self-ish life."
"If you, then God" is a message for a people who are waiting for God to do something. Here is the Gospel. God did something and He didn’t do it in response to your goodness!
You may think your greatest need right now, with so many strong opinions flying around, is to know who is right and who is wrong, that you may choose the right side of an argument. But we all have a greater need than to know the right thing to do. We need to know the heart of Him, who went to the Cross, not so that He would be right, but so that we, who were his enemies, could be right.
Ministry, wasn't where Jesus got His name from. To come out of the desert knowing your name, is to come out in the power of the Spirit.
A hope on yourself, is not a strong enough hope to get drunk on. All we do when we water down the Gospel of God’s grace, is leave men thirsty enough to go looking elsewhere for a drink. Never tell anyone they need more faith. Give them the Gospel that brings faith.
You can’t train eyes to see in the dark, who have never been in the dark long enough to see through it.
To live blind to the finished work of Christ, is to live blind to the heavenly realm. Starve believers of the Heavenly Gospel (The Good News of what God has provided for them) and feed them instead with an earthly gospel (good advice on what they need to provide for Him) and they will lose their ability to see past their natural circumstances. They will lose the ability to see in the dark. Right now, this world needs the Church to be seeing in the dark.
Religion is too tiny a pot to grow the life of Christ. Oaks of righteousness can’t grow in religious pots. The only thing that grows in a pot called self, is self-righteousness!
Repentance is not some work of the flesh to try and become something we are not, it is a work of the Spirit to remove the scales from our eyes, that we may see who we now are in Christ; a totally new creation, the bride of Christ.
To live the Spirit filled life, life in the Spirit, is to be rooted and grounded in heaven, not on the earth and the more the Church grows in this life, the more the Kingdom of heaven is established on the earth.
To speak in the Spirit, is to speak from a place of communion with God. It is to speak, not in the language of separation, but in the language of union, the language Christ spoke in. How can it be God’s will, that the body of Christ speak in a language, that Christ Himself never spoke in, the language of separation!
I believe that in this hour, the primary challenge before the Church, is to recognise that so much of what we have been doing for Him, has not come from being with Him!
You don’t operate in the life of the Kingdom by trying to become someone, but by being someone
There are only two types of people. • Those who live by the name they have given themselves • Those who live by the name God gives them.
For children of God, our hope of being like God, is not in what we do, but in who we are.
Church, catch your breath! Now that you have stopped. Catch your breath! And the breath I made you to catch and to carry, is my breath, what I know, for to breathe in what I know, is to know that I have set you at one with me, it is to know peace and be a breather of peace.
The Holy Spirit is calling the Church in this hour, to rise out of doing and up into being. With the 'kitchen' closed, the Martha Church has a divine opportunity and invitation before her!
In eternity all truth IS. The Holy Spirit comes to witness what IS in heaven that it may be on the earth,.
The Holy Spirit witnesses to what is, not what might be. So preach the Gospel as 'what is', that the Spirit may witness to what is, not what might be.
Question: How do you know if you are beginning to see people as God sees them? Answer: You begin to speak to them as a Father, not a manager.
The Gospel is not a message about what will be, if you. It is the message of what is, because He! it is not a you first message. It is a He first message. The Christian life doesn't begin in you. Life begins in Him.
The less you see the change that Christ has achieved, the more you will try to achieve change yourself x2
We are talking about change God’s way and the first truth we need to establish is that ..God’s way of changing men, is not through what they do, but through what they believe. So he opens our eyes to see what He sees, that we may be changed by what we see.
God is not asking you to produce His good life, the most loving and generous life in the world. He is asking us to bear that life, by being joined to Him.
When Jesus said my peace I give you, His peace was His presence, for true love comes in person.
The Gospel is not a message about what will be, if you…. It is the message of what is, because He…..
A St Patricks day message about the liberty that the gospel brought to the nation of Ireland.
When men reason, apart from the Spirit of God, religion is always the result, because religion (self-effort) to the natural earthly man, is the only reasonable way by which he can obtain the blessings of the life of God. Multitudes of Christians have been blinded by a reasonable gospel. The only gospel with the power to open eyes to the eternal realm, to resurrection life today, is the one that sounds utter foolishness to the reasonable man; In Christ, all things are already yours!
Patrick understood the gospel; not as good advice about how you can lift yourself, but as good news about how we have been lifted, by God Himself
There is no higher life a person can live, than to live believing that God is their Father.
The only life the Father is looking for us to live, is the one He has freely given to us; the life of a blessed Son. He is not looking for us to produce a life of our own, a righteousness of our own, or a love of our own. Here is the good news, the Gospel; Apart from Him you can do nothing. That’s good news because it reveals to people that far from being really ticked off at them for doing nothing godly, God in fact never intended that anyone would be able to be like Him, apart from Him, because even He cannot be like Him, apart from Him, because God is not an individual, a self, but a communion of loving persons.
The Holy Spirit helps us and teaches us, in our prayer and worship, to rise out of our souls and to begin to pray and worship in the Spirit, in the truth, and here is the truth that leads the mind into peace; all we need for life and godliness has been prepared beforehand, in Christ!
Throughout the old Covenant, eternal callings were announced by angels, but since the appearance of Christ, immortality is now revealed through the Gospel! (2Tim.1:9,10
Some worship from River City's 'Let the River flow' prophetic worship ministry meeting.
Many of us as Christians have spent years waiting, abiding for Christ, rather than abiding in Christ. We have spent years thinking of ourselves as apart from Christ and we have discovered that Jesus was correct, “apart from me you can do nothing!”
"The greatest paradigm shift in the mind of believers, what transforms our lives most, is when our thinking is enlightened by the Holy Spirit, to begin to see that everything earthly-minded religion tells you that you need to do, Christ already did on the Cross!"
If you are asking for fresh move of God's Spirit, then be prepared to be perplexed and amazed, to have your theology ruined and your vision restored.
No matter how often a potted plant is fed or moved, it can never grow beyond the size of its roots. This message was a declaration of how the Gospel of Christ's finished work removes the small pot (Law mindset), that has hindered the roots of the church from being established in the liberty of the soil of God's unlimited love.
“I know for certain, that before I was humbled, I was like a stone lying in deep mire, and he that is mighty came and in his mercy raised me up and indeed, lifted me high up and placed me on top of the wall. And from there I ought to shout out in gratitude to the Lord for his great favours in this world and for ever, that the mind of man cannot measure.” St Patrick. (385--493 AD) A Christian is someone who can live from the top of the wall, not the mud at the bottom, someone who can present themselves to God as ALIVE FROM THE DEAD.
There is no shame in a supernatural union." It may surprise you to know that there is something that God desires in this nation more than bigger churches; bigger Christians! The two aren’t mutually exclusive, but we can’t build one at the expense of the other. The Holy Spirit persuades the believer that they are of the God kind, of His nature, His Spirit. Ungodliness is not our father. Grace teaches us that ungodliness is not our father (Titus 2:12)
We cannot speak to believers as if the blood of Jesus has done nothing and they are still separated from God by their sin.
A personal testimony of disappointment with God, leading to a fresh revelation of the grace of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. This talk was given by Phelim Doherty in 2013 to the staff conference of the Apostolic Church, UK. The theme of that year's conference was the grace of God.
God wants the Church to have a level of conversation with Him that is a true reflection of the level of communion we now enjoy through Christ. The Holy Spirit is teaching us to speak the language of heaven, the language of union rather than the language of the earth, the language of separation.
Learning to speak
It is not what you do, but what you believe, that is making you the person you are. No amount of rejection in your life, can hold a candle to the acceptance you have in Christ. So live in Christ, not in the hurt of what they did to you. Live in the light, not in the dark.
If many people in this nation are living as if God’s presence is in heaven, but not here, then they are living as if God is effectively dead. This is the great danger in preaching a gospel that only talks about the presence of God being in heaven one day; You leave people living today apart from God’s presence. Religion blinds people to the presence of God.
To only know about God is to know Him as if He is dead and that is the reason why this nation is in such a state, because too many people have been raised in churches, (catholic and protestant), to know God as if He is dead. Their experience of God has never been founded on being right WITH Him, but rather on doing right FOR Him because the foundation they received growing up in their church was Old Covenant. This causes them to they live as a people trying to do right for God and when you live like that, the focus of your life is not Christ, it is you and so you will always preach the gospel as doing rather than being. Such a gospel, whose hope is in you saving yourself by your piety, does not bring life, but death.
Moses writes this about the righteousness that is by the law: “The person who does these things will live by them.” (Romans 10:5)
This message from River City Church was a celebration of the enduring power of the Gospel to open the eyes of men and women to see what God has seen from before time began; you and I in the light of His purpose and grace.
The English come from England, the Irish from Ireland. Christians come from a country called "In Christ". In this message is asked a question; How did the Church become so religious that many of us have never walked in the liberty and blessing of this new state?
"The highest quality of life there is, is the life of a person who believes that God is their Father."
It was always God’s intention that living waters will flow and that they will flow from His temple, His Church, into the earth. This morning's message from River City was the second part of a teaching on how the words of the Spirit are opening the eyes of the Church. The extraordinary supernatural testimony of Jesus, (the Spirit of prophecy), the declaration of the scandalous extent of God's grace, is enabling the Church to see what the Spirit sees about us, that we may see and speak in the Spirit to this generation, words that no man has ever spoken over them.
"At last. Spirit of my Spirit!" In God’s eyes, every Christian is a very good Christian, because in God’s eyes …..no-one ever made or makes themselves a Christian! This morning's message in River City was a declaration of who we are in God's eyes and how the Holy Spirit gives us God's eyes.
The Holy Spirit, through the apostle Paul, pleaded with Christians that they have been given not the spirit of the world (spirit of NOT YET) but they have been given the Spirit that comes from God that they may know the things that have been freely given, the things that are already theirs, NOW. Look at what the Spirit is saying to the church in Paul’s generation and tell me that this is not what the Spirit is saying NOW to the Church in our generation. "....we plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain. 2 For He says: “In an acceptable time I have heard you, And in the day of salvation I have helped you.”[a] Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation. (2Cor.6:1,2)
The language of the Spirit is from the country/Kingdom He sees us to be in: Christ! This is the language He speak to us in. He speak to us as people "in Christ". In fact the Holy Spirit addresses the Church in this language throughout the epistles to every church, no matter what the state of their behaviour, no matter what the direction or exhortation or teaching given, it is spoken in the same language, the language of a place called “in Christ”. Most of us as believers have not grown to see ourselves as in Christ because the language we have been taught to speak throughout most of our church life, is not the language of In Christ, the language of union, but rather the language of separation. That’s the language that man-made religion speaks in, for it is the language of our feelings, the language of the natural man who only sees this world through his natural senses and to whom the realities of the Spirit are foolishness.
My self alone, my self apart from God, has always lived a selfish life. That is what selves do. Dogs bark, Cats meow and selves live selfish lives. Religion’s answer to the self-life, is to exhort it to try harder to reach the heights of the Spirit. Religion points men to themselves and that is why religion doesn’t work, for your self can never be your hope, for your self is your problem.
As a self, you can never be good as God is good, for God is not a self. He doesn’t have a self-life. He has never been alone. Right from the beginning, life to God has always been communion. God did not say, “I am going to make man in my image.” He said, “Come let us make man in our image.” Through the body of Christ, God has reconciled the selfish world to Himself, so that all who will accept God’s way of life, Christ (God’s Way, God’s Truth, God’s Life), no longer have to live alone, but can begin to live from and live in communion with God.
The subject of this message is the fundamental difference between man's idea of holiness and God's. If its not good news....it ain't the gospel! This message was given by pastor Phelim Doherty at River City Apostolic Church in Derry, Northern Ireland on May 21st 2017. Other such messages can be heard at www.graceriver.org/church-podcasts This message was podcast originally under the title "Self-righteousness: a bridge too short!"
A talk given by Phelim Doherty on the subject of grace, faith and revival during the 2017 'The Father we never' knew teaching day at River City Church in Derry.