The Perfecting Church: Recent Episodes
The Perfecting Church
Podcast of the Perfecting Church located in Sewell, NJ.
For more information visit, www.theperfectingchurch.org
It’s never been easier to compare ourselves to others than the time we live in. Researchers have found that one of social media’s most damaging effects isn’t seizing our attention—it’s that it constantly invites us to compare our lives to others. Psychologists call this “upward comparison”: looking at people who appear more successful, more attractive, happier or more fulfilled. The result is often greater anxiety, lower self-esteem and a distorted sense of identity. We were created to behold God, but we’ve become experts at beholding everybody else. In the Digital Age, comparison has moved from an occasional temptation to a way of life. But comparison is identity theft. It causes us to look horizontally for something that can only be found vertically. It makes us look around for what can only be found by looking up — to Christ.
Faith is not a sprint from promise to fulfillment—it is a journey marked by seasons of waiting, testing and transformation. God often does His deepest work in places where His purposes are not yet visible, teaching us to trust Him before we see the harvest. Psalm 126 reminds us that tears and joy are not opposites but companions along the way, for the God who allows us to sow in sorrow also promises a season of rejoicing. Wherever people walk faithfully with God, He leads them to a place where their joy is made full and His glory is unmistakably revealed.
Some of us have spent years seeking the will of the Father. We’ve pursued it, discerned it and even caught glimpses of what God wants to do in and through our lives. But too often we’ve tried to accomplish a heavenly calling in our earthly strength. And the weight of disappointment, delay, grief and unanswered questions has left us spiritually exhausted. Like the disciples in Gethsemane, we’re still awake—but our souls have fallen asleep. We’re going through the motions while overlooking the very place where strength is found.
The distance between where we are right now and where the Father is leading us is not measured by our talent, our determination or our grind. It’s measured by one word: Nevertheless.
For months and years we have watched the world grow louder, angrier and darker. The temptation for the Church has been to become just as outraged, just as fearful or to simply disappear into the shadows. But God has never answered a dark generation by removing His people from it — He answers darkness by raising up a people who reflect His glory within it. The Holy Spirit was not poured out to make us comfortable in this world but to make us faithful in this world. Today is not the end of a sermon series; it is the commissioning of a Church called to shine.
We live in a world obsessed with approval. Every day we’re being liked or ignored, praised or criticized, followed or canceled. Through social media, the expectations of family and friends, workplace pressure, church culture, or our own desire to belong, voices constantly tell us who we should be and what we should do. The temptation isn’t just to hear those voices—it’s to live for them. One of the most uncomfortable realities of following Jesus is that faithfulness doesn’t always earn applause. Sometimes obeying God means disappointing people, standing apart from the crowd, and being misunderstood by the very people whose approval we want most. But when the voices around us become louder than His voice over us, we begin trading God’s purpose for people’s approval. And nothing costs more than living for them.
In a world shaped by pain, poverty, persecution, injustice and grief, Christians are called to endure hardships and suffering differently — by remaining faithful to our King despite personal or societal pressures and conditions.
We’re living in an age shaped by self-rule and self-exaltation — where comfort, control and autonomy are the highest pursuit. But Pentecost reminds us that humanity was never designed to rule or exalt itself—we were created to live under the life and reign of God. That’s why the Spirit comes -- not simply to inspire us, but to restore us, disrupting what we’ve grown comfortable with and forming the life of Jesus within us. Pentecost is not spiritual spectacle; it’s the restoration of God’s rule in human lives. And the uncomfortable truth is — we cannot be filled with the Spirit while remaining full of ourselves.
We live in a world that constantly tells us we never have enough—more money, more success, more security, more stuff. Excess isn’t just present in our culture; it’s the goal in our culture. But the Kingdom of God calls us to live by a different economy: not accumulation, but generosity; not ownership, but stewardship; not “what can I keep,” but “what can I release for the good of others.” As followers of Jesus, we are called not to fit into this world, but to become an otherworldly witness in the middle of it — Generous in a Culture of Excess.
oin us this Mother’s Day as we honor and celebrate the women who have nurtured, shaped, and inspired us in many different ways. We also recognize that this day carries a range of emotions and experiences, and we want you to know there is space for you here.
Come expectant for worship and a prophetic, life-giving Word that speaks into every season—whether you are a mother, grandmother, spiritual mother, a man honoring the women in your life, or someone simply in need of hope and encouragement, this day is for you
While the cross memorializes a violent injustice inflicted on Jesus by the imperial systems of this world, it also models a Kingdom framework for justice to roll down. Through the power of Love and a life committed to prayer, preaching, protest, and preparation, Jesus, as the embodiment of the Word of God, displays a pathway to a just peace through biblical reconciliation.
Loving Our Enemy in a Culture of Enemies confronts the ways our culture conditions us to label others as adversaries and invites believers into the uncomfortable yet transformative calling of Christlike love. Jesus reframes the nature of our fight, teaching that true victory is not found in overpowering opponents, but in refusing to imitate their behavior and instead responding with love and prayer. We are being called to a mature, wholehearted love that reflects the Father—a love that transforms not only how we treat others, but how we see them.
Life is filled with firsts—moments we don’t feel ready for, yet God calls us into them anyway. These are the moments that shape us—conversations we didn’t script, decisions we can’t delay and pressures that stretch us beyond our capacity. In John 16, Jesus doesn’t prepare His disciples for easy moments, but for defining ones—calling them beyond comfort into calling. And He anchors them in this promise: when the moment comes, you will not face it alone—the Spirit will be present and powerful. You are not unprepared—you are being prepared. And when your moment comes, the Spirit will give you strength for it.
We live in a world obsessed with comfort. Comfortable lifestyles. Comfortable truths. We even want a comfortable Jesus. Not just a Savior, but a Savior who never challenges us and keeps us from challenge. But Jesus never promised that kind of life. In fact, in His final moments with His first disciples, He does the exact opposite. He prepares them, not for comfort, but for pressure. And then He makes a promise: I will send you a Comforter. But not to make us comfortable in the world, to make us faithful in it.I’m giving you a peace that won’t break.
Scripture(s): NKJV
John 14:15-17, 27
There are moments that inform us and then there are moments that redefine reality. The resurrection is an encounter that redefines reality — personally, experientially and eternally. Because the power of the gospel is not only that Jesus rose from the grave, but that He is still alive revealing Himself today. The resurrection isn’t merely the story of an empty tomb; it’s the story of a living Savior who steps into real places, meets real pain and transforms real people. So the question is not — Did the resurrection happen? The question is — Has the resurrection become a reality in your life?
The Israelites yearned for a King that would bring them peace from their oppressors. God desires to bring us a peace that surpasses our imagination, but it requires that we surrender to His will and purposes for our lives.
In Matthew 8, Jesus steps onto the shore and confronts the darkness that has terrorized a region, restoring two men who’d been stripped of dignity, identity and peace. The men are set free, but the community asks Him to leave, because the deliverance disrupts their comfort. This passage reminds us that surrender isn’t just about inviting Jesus into our lives—it’s about allowing Him to disrupt everything that keeps us bound.
What do you do when your boat starts shaking? Do you trust your own personal experience? Your expertise? Do you try to just hold on and “white knuckle” your way through life? What if there was a better way to live when your world was rocked? That’s what Jesus wants us to know as we follow him—even when he takes us places we have never been.
Following Jesus is not about our convenience, comfort, self-advancement or even self-improvement. Following Jesus is radical, risky and life-altering. When Jesus says, “follow me” we often hear it in the key of our own theme music — anticipating the outcomes, status, success and results we want. But Jesus flips the script with two encounters in Matthew 8, exposing the true cost of discipleship — sacrificial surrender and reordered surrender — revealing the Kingdom of Heaven is an all in or not at all endeavor. Half faith and conditional faith have no place with a God who asks for it all. His Kingdom over everything.
Since the fall in Genesis, humanity has been born into brokenness. So we search for a “fix” in people, places, and things. Surrender calls us to stop giving ourselves to substitutes and fully yield to Jesus, the only true remedy for our brokenness.
Most of us don’t struggle with believing Jesus has power. We struggle with giving up our power. We pray — but we still build contingency plans. We call Him Lord but we still try to negotiate our terms. Control feels safe. Surrender feels foolish. But the Kingdom of Heaven does not advance through our power — it advances through our surrender. And in Matthew 8, Jesus meets a man who understands something many church-going people miss — surrender means living under His authority more than loving our authority. Surrender makes outsiders insiders.
We’re living in days where vision is blurred, compassion is thin and fear-filled, divisiveness passes for wisdom. The darkness of our times isn’t only moral — it’s perceptual. We are losing the ability to see one another as God does. But glory was never meant to remain on the mountain or in the sanctuary — it was meant to move through the streets. Matthew 8 shows us what happens when a surrendered life carries the glory of God into broken places. What happens when the holiness of heaven walks among the gross darkness of the earth.
God’s glory is more than moments we remember—it’s also encounters that keep returning to form us. Each time His holy presence meets us at the edge of our ordinary lives, it exposes what we’ve settled for and reorients us toward who He truly is. Glory doesn’t merely confront us; it consecrates us—shaping a people set apart for God’s purposes. And every genuine encounter with His glory sends us back into the world, not changed and commissioned to carry His holiness into everyday places.
Glory is one of the most familiar words in our faith and one of the most misunderstood. We imagine glory as something distant, displayed through power or spectacle. But glory is not just something to admire; it is something we encounter— drawing us near and working within.There was a time when God’s glory stood outside of us, revealing truth and exposing what was broken. That glory was real, but it wasn’t the final word. The glory of God has moved closer. What once confronted us from the outside now meets us on the inside, reshaping our hearts and renewing our lives. The glory we are invited into is not a moment to watch, but His holy presence to remain within. We’re not only rescued by His glory; we’re formed by it and made more and more like Him — from glory to glory.
A people of holiness, formed for and from Himself, has been God’s idea all along. Eons before men made plans for the building of nations, the heart of God imagined not just a person or a family, but a people—a nation-- who would bear His image and His likeness, living in ways that demonstrate His great Love, great care, and great Glory in all of His creation. The Church is that people and our shared eternal and divine assignment is to be holy.
There was a time when God’s glory was associated with distance, danger, and separation, marked by smoke, fire, and a curtain that stood between God and humanity. That barrier reminded us that sin had created a gap we could not close on our own. But our text today declares that through the death of Jesus, access to God has been opened. His holiness has not changed, but our distance has. Because of Jesus the message is no longer — clean yourself up and come, but because you have been made clean, draw near.
Most of us move through life on what feels like ordinary ground — routine days, familiar struggles, predictable places — lives we control and we’ve settled into. But Exodus 3 reminds us that there are moments when God steps into our ordinary and reveals Himself in extraordinary ways. When the Holy One draws near, nothing remains common — especially not us. The Extraordinary One invites Himself into our ordinary, interrupting our routines and helping us recognize that we stand closer to holy ground than we realized. And if we respond with reverence and surrender, these moments become encounters that reshape how we see God, ourselves and our place in the world.
We live in a world that has mastered distractions but lost its capacity for wonder. A world that trains us to scroll past glory, to treat the sacred as familiar and to speak God’s name without trembling in His presence. We are busy, informed and stimulated but too often untouched and unchanged. Marked by Glory is a journey into holiness, not as our moral achievement, but as the result of encounter. It’s an invitation to behold the Holy One — to recover reverence, awaken awe and allow God’s presence to leave its mark on our lives.
Throughout 2025, God has been at work rooting and grounding us more deeply in Himself. What He’s formed in us this year was not incidental—it was essential to becoming fruitful and flourishing people in the year ahead. On this final Sunday of 2025, we pause to look back—not to linger, but to prepare ourselves for the way forward. In a rapidly changing world, God’s answer is a rapidly maturing Church—one rooted in Christ, grounded in love and ready to bear lasting fruit.
So much of life is spent chasing the shallow happiness of this world—moments that fade, applause that ends, a feeling that’s temporary. But God’s joy is different. Deep, unshakable, and eternal, it breaks into the ordinary, tired, frustrated parts of our lives and whispers — I am here. True joy has come. Not a happiness that depends on paychecks, bonuses, vacations, or new things, but a joy that carries us, keeps us, and shines in our darkest moments.
Advent celebrates the first coming of Jesus and we celebrate with great expectation His return.Jesus has not left us without what we need. He left us with His peace, not the fragile circumstance driven kind of peace that the world offers. His peace is unlike any other. It stays, guards, sustains, and can carry you through the most difficult times. It's a deep preserving, enduring, life-giving peace that can only come from a relationship with Jesus.
As we enter this season of Advent, let us remember that God doesn’t want our hope to be in a Christmas tree or a beautifully wrapped gift, or in our government, our business or even in our own ingenuity. But our Hope should be in His Son, Jesus and his ultimate return. And that seed of hope can bring forth life in every barren place in our lives.
We're going through a tough social and political moment full of economic instability, polarization, and hatred (the valley). We must go back to Christian first principles, center Christ in our public witness, and seek justice and righteousness in order to go through faithfully. We can't depend on the ways of the Left or the Right, we must glorify God through our response to this moment.
There are moments when God calls us to stretch—beyond what’s easy, familiar, or comfortable—into His greater purposes for us. And it’s in those stretching seasons we realize: somewhere along the way, we’ve gone dull. We’ve grown tired. We’ve lost the edge we used to carry. But what feels lost to us is never lost to God. He calls us to recover what’s slipped, what’s been buried, what we’ve mishandled—to return to His work with renewed focus and fresh fire. And as the darkness of our world grows louder and more blatant, God is calling His people to rise—sharp, ready, and fully committed to His Kingdom. He’s restoring our cutting edge.
Our allegiance to Christ shapes how we live, work and engage in a culture
that is driven by greed, fear, and self. We live in the profound truth that gives us both
our identity and purpose; we are citizens of the Kingdom of God and of the world. Our
dual citizenship may seem to be a contradiction, but in fact it is a calling. We live in the
tension of the values of Christ and the seduction of the world. Through the power of
God, we walk with integrity, generosity, justice and compassion considering “the other”
as we balance both worlds.
The spiritual battle is real — but it’s not what it seems. Behind every cultural divide, political argument and personal wound lies a deeper battle for our hearts and loyalties. Our enemy isn’t flesh and blood; it’s the deceiver who feeds fear, pride, and polarization until we start fighting the wrong battle for the wrong kingdom. But the Lamb has shown us a better way — a way of truth-telling, love and power under the cross. God is commissioning us to live as witnesses of that Kingdom — to wage peace, not by force or fear, but by the faithful way of the Lamb who has already overcome.
Winning the war within means dying to our flesh daily—putting the flesh to death to discern the voice and leading of the Spirit—ushering in the shalom of God to and through us.
We may have been born again, but that doesn’t mean we’ve learned how to win the war within. We may have followed Jesus for years, but that doesn’t mean we’ve grasped the key to Christian maturity. We can be gifted, but that doesn’t mean we’re seasoned; active in ministry, but that doesn’t automatically mean mastery over self. The Holy Spirit doesn’t just want to use us—He wants to form us, until Christ’s life becomes the life that leads us. And this is how we finally win the war within—not by striving harder or serving more, but by surrendering deeper to the Spirit who transforms us from the inside out.
The flesh is not just our weakness—it’s our willfulness. When it rules, it reshapes our desires, fetters our freedom and wars against the Spirit’s work of ushering in peace. This battle isn’t fought out in the streets; the war is waged in the soul. The flesh deceives us, arguing that life works best when we sit on the throne. But every time the flesh rules, peace dies—first in our hearts, then in our relationships — with people, places and things. The only way we overcome is to live life surrendering to He who has overcome the world.
Every day the world is shaping us — with screens, schedules, slogans, and algorithms whispering, “Buy this, chase this, be this.” We think we’re free, but our loves are being trained; we think we are choosing, but our choices are being choreographed. Before we know it, we are more shaped by our feeds than our faith, more discipled by Netflix and podcasts than by Jesus. But there’s another way — the greater love of the Father. His love frees us from restlessness, reshapes our desires, and makes us whole. We are being shaped by love — the false loves of this world, or the Father’s love that makes us whole and free.
We live in a time when the battle is no longer hidden — anxiety, violence, division, and deception press on every side. From the classroom to the boardroom, from our homes to our headlines, blows are aimed at the very place we think, hope, and believe. This fight is not against flesh and blood but against powers and principalities that seek to steal peace, distort truth, and destroy identity. In this moment, we dare not step into the fray uncovered. We must reach for a salvation that shields our minds, a word that becomes our weapon, and prayer that breathes heaven’s strength into our earthly battles. This is not the work of one generation or one culture alone, but the call of the whole body of Christ, young and old, every tribe and tongue — to stand firm together covered from head to toe.
We’re living in a day when it feels like the very air is thick with — fear, division, and pressure coming at us from every direction. And the battle isn’t only out there; it rages inside us too, with voices of doubt, anger, and discouragement. Just like the Roman soldier couldn’t survive without his shield, none of us can face today unprotected. What scripture calls the shield of faith is God giving us covering, courage, and strength. And when we lift it together, faith doesn’t just guard our lives — it becomes a fortress darkness can’t conquer.
Every day, invisible powers are attempting to dress us — how we think, how we react, how we love, and what we fear. And often, without even noticing, we step into our day wearing their lies — clothed in worries, armored in self-protection and self-promotion. But there’s another way to dress. God offers His armor—not for conquering people, but for standing firm in a world of shifting truths and manufactured fads. Dressing for the invisible war isn’t just for protection; it’s the daily practice of becoming who we really are in Christ.
We go about our day — commuting, checking email, social media, debating over social issues — while an unseen enemy infiltrates our minds, shapes our desires, and rewires our beliefs. This isn’t loud, obvious war. This war is subtle. And before it takes our peace, our joy and our purpose, it takes our attention. We are living in the midst of a spiritual war — not against people, as much as it’s against powers. It’s a war of ideologies, affections, and allegiances — and if we don’t wake up to it, we’ll be destroyed by it.
We live in a fallen evil world. Because of sin, the natural drift of the current of this world is downward. If we’re honest, the darkness and evil isn’t just out there; we feel it in us from time to time too. The natural response is to resort to our own resources and efforts to make it — work harder, go to more therapy, be nicer, change schools or find new friends. All of these things may be appropriate, but without the wind of the Spirit it just leads to futility and exhaustion. We need to be filled with the Sprit. We need to be intoxicated Christians.
In Mark 4:35–41, the disciples were caught in a storm they couldn’t handle, but Jesus was in the boat with them. What overwhelmed them was silenced by the One who has power over the wind and waves. Jesus is more than able to speak peace into the storms of your life. No matter how fierce it gets, Jesus is about to calm every storm because He’s not sitting idly by—He’s in your boat.
God can do all things and works through us to fulfill His purposes. Too often, we hold back because we think we lack what’s needed. In Acts 3:1–8, Peter met a lame beggar and, in faith, trusted God to meet his need — and He did. Money can help, but it’s not always the answer. God asks us to be available, to trust Him, and to believe He has already given us enough to serve others
Every believer will endure fiery trials. It is not if, but when. The story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego teaches us how to navigate the difficulties of life. That even with personal struggles, challenges, or even persecution God is always present with us. We must remain faithful and trust God above the circumstances, even when the pressure tries to seduce us into compromising and bowing to the fire. Our outcome will not only be deliverance but lessons in endurance through the fire. Our unwavering faith during adversity serves as our testimony to the power and presence of a God who never leaves His people.
When the incidents and accidents of life in this fallen world leave us bent over, today’s message reminds us there is always hope in Jesus. There is no earthly power or might more able than the strong hand and compassionate heart of Christ our King. Though time may have caused us to settle for a less than existence, this word reminds us that despite religion’s expectation, Jesus sees us, He frees us, and releases us to give Glory to His Name!
Crisis doesn’t catch God off guard. Even when famine gripped the whole world, God had already gone ahead to prepare a place of provision, protection, and purpose. Goshen was a space of divine difference, where God’s people were covered in crisis and multiplied in the margins. Goshen reminds us that we don’t need to be removed to be redeemed—because God is more than able, right where we are.
3 Questions to Receive all God has for you: God has so much for all of us, but are we in a position to receive it? The blessings of God are not incentive or carrot sticks but ways that he wants us to live day in and day out. These 3 questions will help you possess all he has for you.
Text: Matthew 5:13-20
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Are you fully present?
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Is your Light Shinning?
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Is the Gospel working for you?
In different seasons of our lives, we face circumstances that test our faith in God and His ability to provide for us. The blessing comes in knowing that God has already prepared for our situation long before we entered into it. Therefore, we have a choice, to trust, believe and follow His plans or to complain, doubt and create our own. His plans are always better and more abundant than anything we can contrive by our own hands.
Some things in life aren’t just broken—they’re beyond repair. They’re finished. Ezekiel stood in a valley of dry, scattered bones, where death had settled in. But God didn’t bring him there to mourn—He brought him there to act and to speak. God doesn’t just raise dead things—He restores what others have given up on. God is not only willing—He is more than able to restore. He has a vision for our valleys.
As highlighted throughout this series, humanity’s fall corrupted God’s “Very Good” intention for Creation, undermining mankind’s mandate to dwell interdependently and justly with God and one another. As a consequence, self-preservation displaced community transformation as love, mercy, and justice were replaced by hate, prejudice, and politics. However, God’s plan for creation has not changed. This series finale details how the ministry of Jesus serves as the ultimate act of civil disobedience, disrupting the systems of this world and recommissioning us for the glory of God and the "Very Good" of creation.
Before God ever gave the world a prophet, a king, or a pastor—He gave the world a father. Before there were positions, platforms, or pulpits —there was a garden…and in that garden, God planted a man. Not as a ruler to dominate, but as a reflection of Himself— A cultivator, a protector, a name-giver…Fatherhood is sacred. Not just functional. Not just biological. Not optional. It’s part of the Very Good design of God.
In a year of being Rooted and Grounded, we’re recovering the foundational truths of our relationship with God, one another, and creation. In a time of shaking, we’re committing to become the people God envisioned—whole and holy, deeply established in His love.
God’s creation was never meant for us to passively occupy or consume — it’s always been accompanied by a call to actively participate in its flourishing and fruitfulness. From Eden to now, stewardship is a sacred thing. It shapes creation, reveals our faith, and transforms our lives. What we tend—or fail to tend—forms us and the world around us.
What if I told you that God created us to rule… but not to dominate? To reign… but not to own? What if our job on this earth wasn’t to take, but to tend? Not to consume, but to cultivate? For generations, power has been used to exploit, image has been reserved for the elite and creation has been treated like a commodity. But Genesis doesn’t begin with a human grasping for godhood. It begins with God graciously giving us a role in His rule — in His very good design. We are not owners—we are image bearers. We are royal stewards, called to make the invisible King visible in how we treat His creation.
In the beginning, God didn’t just create individuals—He formed a world that was woven together in relational goodness. “Very good” wasn’t about perfection; as much as it was about connection. We were made to flourish in relationship not in isolation. God isn’t just saving you—He’s saving us.
Before the foundation of the world, God entrusted womanhood with a sacred echo of Himself—the call to mother. Not merely to bear life, but to shape it, nourish it, and speak courage into the soul of creation. Today we honor that call—not as a role, but as a holy assignment woven into the fabric of God’s image in the earth.
Throughout our lives we are seeking and searching for love, for peace, for joy, for identity, for security, for purpose and for wholeness. And the only One who can supply our deepest need is God alone. So, when we awaken to the knowledge of what is truly good for us, we will always be in pursuit of a deeper relationship with the God of all creation.
Jesus came to fulfill the Father’s promise from the Garden — as the seed of the woman who would crush Satan’s rule and restore us to God’s Kingdom. In Christ and through His resurrection, all things are made new. Today, we don’t celebrate a tomb — we celebrate the God of the resurrection, who meticulously rights every wrong by His resurrection power.
Jesus’ very first introduction of the Church was accompanied by a declaration that the gates of hell would not prevail against it. From its first mention, God’s plan for an increasingly darkening world was a continually maturing Church. We must recapture and recommit to God’s original intent for the Church, realizing it’s more than Sunday morning.
When we pledged allegiance to Jesus we became residents of another Kingdom — another world. In this world, we are offered paths of compromise, comfort and self-preservation. But we're not called to escape; we are called to stand firm, bearing witness to another Kingdom — another world. We are called to remain as faithful witnesses to God’s reign, even when the world around us is hostile and uncertain.
Those who’ve accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior have seen something. Eyes that were once blinded to the truth of His death, burial and resurrection have seen that indeed He is the Christ. Having seen and accepted that truth our lives have been radically and eternally changed. We have seen something and we have to say something!
We live in a culture of “now” moments. Good and bad ones. It can be discouraging what we see in our world. What we see in our nation. What we see in our cities. We must get beyond the cultural and worldly “now” we get stuck in and realize God’s Kingdom is here, and it is our NOW! It’s our new reality. It has redefined our “now”. Given our “now” a new perspective. Because Jesus and His Kingdom is Here.
Prayer is an act of resistance. Prayer honors and esteems the unseen, eternal God over all the little temporary gods -- refusing to give them the reverance and allegiance that belongs to Him alone. Prayer gives us perspective and power to oppose realities that are accepted as inescapable and unchangeable by those who suffer from prayerlessness. It’s in prayer that we access and surrender to the rule and reign of God on earth as it is in heaven. The act of prayer is an act of resistance.
It is in prayer that we become portals for the wisdom and revelation we require—heaven has hopes for you and for me and it is in prayer that we access the power of God that is necessary to live in and to live out the plans of God.
Coping techniques are the conscious and subconscious things we do for relief and comfort in the on-going stress of daily life in a fractured world. Our lives are filled with things we do, some knowingly and others unknowingly to cope. The challenge with coping in a world filled with problems and difficulties is that our coping sometimes ends up needing coping. But there’s a coping technique that God gives that helps us to truly deal with problems and difficulties and the problems and difficulties that our coping techniques created. It’s the ultimate coping technique.
As the newly minted King of Israel, Solomon worships God at Gibeon. In his prayer he teaches us that although power is given, power is never owned. His heart towards God and the power entrusted to him, causes him to become a version of himself he’d never known and the world had never seen. We often believe power means do what you want, but power actually means become what I’ve designed.
Losing control never feels good, but it always has the potential to produce great good. Times of crisis open our eyes to how little control we really have in this fallen, troubled world. Those that experience losing the illusion of control know the kind of desperate prayers that can come from those moments. In crisis and impossible circumstances, we learn how to pray out of control.
Jesus’ very first instructions on prayer included the phrase, “on earth as it is in heaven.” This is still the heart of all sincere prayer — that the Father’s will would be done on the earth as it is in heaven. While prayer can include more than this, it is never any less. On Earth As In Heaven, pursues the heart of prayer, just as Jesus’ original disciples did when they asked, Lord teach us to pray.
We are living in a rapidly changing world. A world full of conflicts within its nations; a shifting in world order; increasing droughts, floods and pandemics and technology that is outpacing practices, policies and ethics. In the face of such unprecedented change, we need a Church that is maturing. We need a Church that is rooted and grounded.
As we sit between celebrating the coming of Christ and entering a New Year, let’s reflect on God’s Radical Love in 2024. If God the author and finisher had A Final Word to declare over your 2024, what might that be? Samson had a final word and God had one for him.
The love of God is greater than any love we will ever experience.
His love has come down, but it has also come in. His love is in us and is multiplied as we become more like Him. This great love causes us to live in a posture of "expecting". Through triumphs and trials our position is to expect love to show up in it, through it and after it. The birth of Christ reminds us that love remains and is always present.
Jesus came over 2000 years ago and along with His birth He also gave birth to His Body, the Church. Jesus set things straight when He came the first time and He ascended and He now sits at the right hand of the Father but He promised He would return. He left us with power in the form of the Holy Spirit to help us on the journey between His first coming and His second. Within the help that the Holy Spirit provides is Joy. Therefore we have in our possession Joy for the journey. As followers of Christ it is a must that we maintain the joy of the Lord for the journey.
Corporate worship is a holy, sacred, set apart activity in the earth. There is no other gathering in this temporal world that can replicate what uniquely happens when the saints of God gather to worship Him. In corporate worship God reveals, relocates and realigns. When we worship together, we are changed together.
Worship is a covenantal act. It is our response to the on-going, faithful commands and covenantal love of the Lord God. He is looking for our worship; not because He needs it, but because He knows we do. Worship is the remedy for our unceasing quest to find wholeness, fruitfulness and fulfillment. Worship is the way we access and extend heaven on earth until the new heaven and the new earth.
The Lord God of heaven and earth is a jealous God. In both the Old and New Testament, more than a dozen times, He refers to himself as jealous. The creator of all things has made all things for His beloved. But He will not stand for anything taking His place in our lives. He wants our deepest affections and surrender. He is The Jealous God.
Humanity was created to live from and for the very goodness of God. God’s very goodness isn’t the quality or ability of an individual part; God’s very goodness refers to the completeness and wellness of the whole. We were created to live from and for relational wholeness and wellness — the very goodness of God.
All too often wounds of the heart atrophy our response to the Shepherd of our souls, causing us to miss the Provision, Protection, and Prosperity our Abba longs to supply. There are rituals and routines, sacred rhythms if you will, that are intended to align us with the rhythm of heaven so that our cadence and movement flow with and follow that of the Spirit, the One in Whom we live, move and have our being. As we journey through the 23rd Psalm with an eye on the Good Shepherd, may we encounter the deep healing that comes as we rest the weight of our lives on the Lover of our Soul.
There are times, when God allows moments that bring us to the end of ourselves; times when we face odds and obstacles that we have no way of overcoming; times when we face enemies and assailants that have every intent on destroying us; times when we see our families, friends, and resources under attack with no way of rescue or relief. But those can be the very moments, when God is healing our hearts. Those can be the very moments when we are learning to trust again. Some heart wounds persist, because we refuse to trust God again and again.
Heart wounds are places of unprocessed pain, hurt and hardship affecting the way we see, feel, believe and behave. Some heart wounds go undetected because they’re caused by shared, socially acceptable and normalized events. There is a dimension of our heart healing and wholeness that only comes when we accept and embrace, It All Belongs to Him.
There are times when heart wounds — places of unprocessed pain, hurt and hardship effecting the way we see, feel, believe and ultimately behave — are caused by despair and disappointment over what God did or didn’t do. But God never intended on meeting our deepest needs with what could be found in this world. His plan has always been to give us a peace unlike anything in this world.
Scripture(s):
• John 14:25-28
Slide(s):
The vision of wholeness, which is the supreme will of the biblical God, is the outgrowth of a covenant of shalom. Where persons are not only bound to God but to one another in a caring, sharing, rejoicing community with nothing to make them afraid.
— Walter Bruggemann, Peace
God created the world in a web of relationships that overflowed with forceful goodness. These relationships are far reaching: between humanity and God, between humanity and self, between genders, between humanity and the rest of creation, within families, between ethnic groups, and between nations. These relationships were “very good” in the beginning.
— Lisa Harper, The Very Good Gospel
9.22.2024 Message Takeaways
Some of our deepest hurts are tied to our deepest disappointments.
We were created for a peace that can’t be found in this world.
We’ve been restored and we are a part of His restoration plan.
When our hearts (soul and spirit) are wounded it hinders and corrupts our thoughts actions and motives. Oftentimes, what we describe as, “the way God made us”, is more accurately described as the way life has wounded us. But there is healing for our wounded hearts. God wants us to be made whole. God wants us to learn to live whole.
Scripture(s):
• Matthew 25:24-30
• Philippians 2:12, 13
• Proverbs 4:23
Kevin Brown
Sep 5, 2024, 6:30 PM (4 days ago)
to Christopher, Deborah, Joy, Michael, Jill, Lee, me
Introduction:
We live from the heart. It’s the innermost part of our being. We may think with our minds and act from our physical bodies, but we live from the heart. When our hearts are whole, healthy and pure we think and act as powerfully as we were designed. But when the heart is wounded, weighted down and broken it hinders and even corrupts our thoughts and actions. Oftentimes, what we describe as, “the way God made us”, would be more accurately described as the way life has wounded or broken us. But there is healing for our wounded and even broken hearts. God wants us to not only be made whole; God wants us to learn to live whole.
Scripture(s): (NKJV)
• Matthew 25:14-30
• Psalm 34:19
Slide:
“If your concept of God is radically false, then the more devout you are, the worse it will be for you.” — Dany Akin, A Theology for the Church
9.8.2024 Message Takeaways
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God hasn’t given us all the same gifts but God has the same expectation for us all.
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We're concerned about what we experience but Jesus is more concerned about what we conclude.
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Disconnecting from our feelings is not an act of faith; it’s an act of avoidance.
We began our journey of answering God’s call together on July 10th, 2011. Our first service was held in the United Artists Movie Theater. We ended up with standing room only in the 153 person theater, with people standing in the hallways. We started, not with a moment but with a movement towards His mission and we continue together on that journey today.
We tend to believe forgiveness is for the benefit of those who’ve offended us, but forgiveness is more about us than them. Forgiveness is the way out of victimhood. No matter what others do or have done to us our future remains unchanged, as long as we stay in God’s hands by forgiving them completely.
The words of Jeremiah and the words of Jesus seem to be in conflict. How can a good God, who plans to prosper us, not to harm us, to give us hope and a future also be the God who leaves us in a world so twisted it killed its Savior? Jesus, our High Priest knows the brokenness, depravity and violence of this world first-hand, yet he prays to the Father to keep us here and to keep us from the Evil one. As Jeremiah states, God has a plan. But as we’ve come to know first-hand — There’s Pain in the Plan.
Fatherhood has a unique role in creation. The role of the father is not better or more important than the role of the mother, but the role of the father is different and distinct from the role of the mother. Due to the fall of mankind, all of creation has suffered a father wound and all of creation is in need of healing for our father wounds.
It’s true, the sovereign, radical loving God of creation causes all things to work together for the good. His plans and purposes for His creation will prevail. This doesn’t mean there won’t be afflictions, falls, temptations, traumas and tragedies along the way. It does mean, in spite of it all and in the face of it all, God is working it together for the good. In the end He prevails and in Him we prevail. He’s working it together for the good.
Pits are the traumas, tragedies, and excruciating transitions in our lives that God providentially allows or authors to get us to the people, places and plans He’s pre-ordained and to make us into the person He’s pre-ordained. Our direction and destiny often has much to do with not only what happens to us but how we rehearse and remember what’s happened. If we are going to fulfill the fruitfulness God has intended in and through our lives we are going to have to grow in our understanding of pain and suffering.
"Her children rise up and call her blessed" - Proverbs 31:28
We invite you to join us at The Perfecting Church on Sunday, May 12 at the 9 a.m. or 11 a.m. worship service as we celebrate and honor Mothers. We encourage you to arrive early to participate in a special breakfast prepared and served by the men of Perfect Experience. Create lasting memories with your family members by having a photo taken by a professional photographer. For those attending the 9 a.m service, photos will be taken from 8:00 to 8:45 am and after the service. For those attending the 11:00 a.m. worship service, photos will be taken after the service. Also, all mothers who attend in person will receive a special gift.
We're eagerly waiting to worship and celebrate with you!
The seed of the Word of the Radical Love of God is being planted in our hearts. However, the soil of our hearts must be properly prepared and cultivated for the seed to take root and bring forth much fruit in our homes and our communities for the glory of God.
“What is truth?”, asked Pontius Pilate the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judaea, as he presided over the trial and ultimately the crucifixion of Jesus. It’s a question worth asking in a world where truth is not absolute; truth is no longer black and white nor is it the same in everyone’s eyes. We live in a world where truth is subject to change. But radical love rejoices in the truth; it refuses to rejoice with evil, injustice or iniquity. Radical love is committed to truth and truth is committed to radical love.
To know Jesus is to be in an on-going, life-transforming, life-transferring relationship with radical love. Radical Love keeps no record of our wrongs and then empowers us to keep no record of wrongs. Radical Love is not simply something to be experienced, it’s something to be accessed daily. If we don’t access radical love daily, we will be redeemed from sin and death and still be dysfunctional in our everyday lives. Radical love teaches us to keep no record of wrongs.
Sometimes we can more clearly explain what something is by explaining what it’s not. Radical love ain’t rude. Rude is ill-mannered and disagreeable towards others. But rude is more than that, it’s also ill-mannered and disagreeable towards God. Rude wants what it wants, when it wants from God and everybody else. But those who walk in radical love are yielding their rights, seeing past themselves and learning to rest knowing God is fighting for them.
God-Yahweh Elohim the covenant making promise keeping God, made a promise to mankind in the garden of Eden over 2,000 years ago. He promised He would crush the head of the serpent by the seed of a woman. Jesus was that seed and He has indeed crushed the government of satan in the earth and given us life and life more abundantly in Him and the government of His Kingdom. This morning we celebrate…He is Risen and we are restored.
As Jesus descends from the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem, He knows it will be the last week of His life. On Palm Sunday He faces the painful reality that His greatest impact will be through His most difficult and lonely moments in this world. The mindset of radical love is more interested in God’s plans and purposes than our own promotion and preservation. Palm Sunday teaches us that obedient faithfulness to radical Love is what takes us to places we never imagined.
Pride is a root which the enemy sows in our hearts to choke the fruitfulness of love in our lives. In our pride-filled American culture, we are called not to conform to this world, but to be hypervigilant to recognize and eliminate the weeds of pride from our hearts so we can bring forth fruit for the glory of the Kingdom of God.
The radically patient and kind love of God frees us from the disfiguring grip of jealousy and envy. Jealousy and envy are everywhere — the constant comparison, excessive competitiveness, passive-aggressive pettiness and celebrating the failures of the popular are the flavor of our day. And jealousy and envy make us all caricatures of ourselves, trapped in a race no one wins. Radical love is the thing that makes us free. It is not jealous. It is not envious.
He who is holy is also long suffering. The God who’s love is patient is also the God who’s love is kind. His kindness is close to the top of the list when it comes to how God expresses His love to us. God’s kindness goes beyond the general, generic run of the mill acts of kindness. His kindness is unique, specific to our need and specific to His ability. Radical love is kind.
Before the love of God is anything; the love of God love is patient. We’ve all received radical patience from the God who is love. When we experience and acknowledge God’s loving patience with us and extend it to others we are changed and we become change agents. But when we receive God’s loving patience and refuse to extend it to others, we become hardened, isolated and imprisoned by our judgements.
Jesus never intended for His radical act of love on the cross and His bodily resurrection three days later to end simply with us being born again. That was a part of His divine assignment but not the entire plan. It has always been God’s intent that His people would live drawing daily and continually from His radical love. So many receive eternal life but never learn to live life daily drawing from His radical love. We can not live like or love like God intended until we learn to live lives rooted in the radical love of God.
Because life is not about what happens to us but about what and how we re-member, stories matter and this life is a battle for control of the narrative. The stories we tell set the course for our personal destiny and the legacy we leave. As we transition from the place of altars and memorials, may our hearts settle the question of who authors our story so that we may enter into the radical Love of God.
Now that we've learned what altars and memorials are, it's time to have an honest conversation about what it looks like to live it.
We need to move beyond simply hearing and knowing, to living and applying the truth of what it is to remember and rehearse the way God intended.
The Passover and the last supper are undisputedly the greatest altars and memorials in all of creation. It’s with these altars and memorials, Yahweh Elohim, the covenant making God of creation, changes the identity and the destiny of a people. No altar and no memorial gives identity and destiny like the cross and communion that the Passover and its lambs foreshadow. When we receive, remember and rehearse Jesus’ cross and communion we are changed for eternity and changed moment by moment. In Remembrance of Me.
God understands the importance and the power of our memories. Some things He does in our lives with the intent that we will not only know Him but that we never forget Him. He has literally made mankind and the unfolding of our lives in such a way that we not only know Him — but so that we Don’t Forget Him.
Altars are places in our hearts before they’re places in this world. Some of those altars — places of honor and worship — are erected to the Living God anchoring us in His love, peace and power. But there are also altars erected to lil gods, giving reverence and worship to people, places and practices that aren’t God at all. When we give lil gods the adoration and esteem that belongs to the living God, we invite chaos, disorder and destruction into our lives and this world. There are times when we will have to tear down to build up.
Altars are places where we offer up to God the things that consume us, control us and compete with His place in our lives. We also build altars as an act of worship because we realize God has kept us. Jacob is 97 years old before he builds an altar to God. In Jacob, we see the radical love of a God who presses us until we realize what He’s always known — we’ll never be home in ourselves or in Him until we build Him an altar.
“Often in life we forget the things we should remember and remember the things we should forget.” — Unknown
It’s the stories we repeatedly tell ourselves and the experiences we continually rehearse that shape our way of seeing and being. As we step out of 2023 and over the threshold of 2024 we need to build some altars and establish some memorials to anchor us in the love of God. How we remember a thing has so much to do with how we enter a thing.
The birth of Christ is the most radical act of Love the world has ever known. In an age of excess, empire and power — Yahweh Elohim, the covenant making God, carried out His plan of incarnation. By the womb of a virgin, He made a body for Himself, that He might offer Himself, to restore mankind to Himself.
Joy is rooted in who God is. It is not a fleeting feeling based on external circumstances. Possessions, accomplishments, even the people in our lives, may bring us intermittent feelings of joy. However, the source of all perpetual joy is Jesus.
Peace is God’s gift to the believer, birthing His shalom in this
fractured world. As we celebrate this Advent season, may we embrace the fullness of this Divine essential and our role as sharers of Peace in every space we are dispensed.
God has hopes for us collectively and individually. However, His hopes don’t always align with our dreams or plans. Submitting to His will even when it may cause us personal harm or difficulty is critical to the ultimate fulfillment of the Kingdom of God.
Jesus preached and taught about the Kingdom of God as a central part of His ministry. He has given His life; that we might be restored to the Kingdom and find life as He intended it.
There is no greater evidence that we are children of God than our living together as family. We can not say that we have received and experienced the love of the Father until we’ve given ourselves to love one another. If we’ve been adopted by the Father, we’ve been called to adopt one another as family — The Family of God.
Scripture(s):
If we are born-again, we’re joint-heirs with Christ — we’ve been made one with Him. We now live, move and we have our being in Him. No longer do we look to the fallen world as our source of love, peace, fulfillment and joy. We have found that in Christ — although we are in the world it is no longer our source. This life of “in but not of” brings with it suffering. But the suffering it brings isn’t worthy to be compared to the glory that is and shall be revealed.
There is no greater distinction or identity that a human being can have than to be a child of God. We can make no greater contribution to humanity, to this world or to our families than to live as a child of God. But we can not make ourselves His, only Christ can do that — we’ve been given the work of agreeing with, what He says about us.
We all have practices and values which come from our family of origin. But now that we are resurrected to life in the family of Jesus Christ, it is essential that we discover and practice these seven values of our heavenly family. Without them, we will be ineffective and unproductive in our earthly assignments.
When the Father restored us to Himself through the work of Christ — we were resurrected into new life. We now live from an entirely different operating system. Our new operating system is continually resurrecting us into new lives through the love of the Father. As we let go of and are delivered from our earthly horizontal past we find our true identity as the ones being resurrected by His love.
Adam and Eve rejected the Fatherhood of God. They decided dependence on themselves was more desirable than dependence on God the Father. This legacy of broken relationship was inherited by us all. In Christ, we are adopted and restored to relationship with the covenant making, promise keeping Father. Our adoption and restoration is more than a future in the new heaven and earth. We’ve been resurrected into new life that we might usher in and experience and heaven on earth in the here and now.
When we respond to the love of the Father with rebellion or religion, there’s a word for that — individualism. Individualism (rebellion/religion) is a result of the fall; it says we don’t need you Lord God we can do it on our own. We can do life on our own terms fulfilling our own desires. But resurrection life/to be born again through faith in Christ says the opposite. Resurrection life says, we need you Lord God and we have found there’s truly no life outside of the feast and celebration of your love.
This passage is titled the prodigal son. Prodigal is defined as having or giving something on a lavish scale or a person who spends in an extravagant way. Author and theologian Tim Keller wrote a book renaming this parable The Prodigal God because there’s no one more extravagant and lavish in this parable than God the Father. This parable is ultimately about Him, His extravagant love and the ways His children respond. Never having encountered a love like God’s, we all respond one of three ways — we rebel, we become religious or we are resurrected. But none of us goes untouched by the love of the Prodigal God.
We can’t truly grasp what it means to be adopted and restored to the family of God without realizing all that was lost in the garden. Desiring to be gods to themselves — autonomous, independent, with freedom of choice — Adam and Eve rejected the Fatherhood of God. They concluded dependence on themselves was more desirable than dependence on God and Fatherhood was lost. This is the legacy inherited by us all.
Some of the top movies of the last decade are based on superheroes with superpowers — Iron Man, Captain America, Black Panther, Spiderman, Avengers are among the highest grossing movies of all time. We have an obsession with superheroes, superpowers and capes. Hollywood, and the comics these movies are based upon, show us every superhero has unique powers and a unique part to play in the flourishing of humanity and keeping evil at bay. We too have a unique role in the flourishing of humanity and keeping evil at bay — we all have a cape.
We will never know a voice, like the voice of God. He alone is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. No one knows us, keeps us and has thoughts towards us like Him. We must prioritize His voice, His words, His thoughts over every other. There is no voice like the voice of God.
God speaks in sign language. He uses signs to warn, caution, direct and to confirm. Signs speak even when we aren’t listening, so we can’t say we weren’t told. But when we decide we want to hear from God, signs speak so loudly it’s as if we’ve entered another world. A world where God speaks through sign language.
One of the most frequently used languages in all of scripture is the language of God given dreams, visions, thoughts and ideas. Not only is God still using this means of communication, He promised in the last days He would use them even more. We must reverence the language of dreams and visions that God might move us beyond the boundaries we’ve set for ourselves and others, into His perfect will.
Description:
One of the key features that marks out a Christian as a child of God is the ability to hear the
voice of God. Although the capacity to hear God is given to us, spiritual deafness can and
does still happen for numerous reasons. The key reason for not hearing God is due to not
cultivating a walk and relationship with God. We must renew our walk daily so that we can
learn to hear God clearly.
Exodus 15:1-22
There are times in our lives when God doesn’t make sense. Some would argue, that’s exactly why they don’t follow God. No matter the camp we are in, those who openly reject or those who subtly resist — more often than not our reasons are the same. We want God to make it make sense before we give Him a whole hearted yes.
Celebrations of any sort are always happy occasions where the agenda is to party. Jesus approached a celebration in his day where partying was on the agenda. Yet his agenda was less about being the life of the party, but to be the life IN the party. Turning water into wine certainly kept the party going, but it also showed the transformative power of Jesus. As we celebrate the anniversary of TPC today, partying is on the agenda, but so too is Jesus’ transforming power.
God’s voice is the ultimate expression of His desire for His people: God speaks because God Loves. In a world filled with sound, volume, and distraction, we must become a people ready to hear and respond to the still, small voice of our King.
Hearing from God is an #IYKYK kind of thing. It is exclusively for those who are His. It’s not that God isn’t speaking, it’s that only those who are His recognize and surrender to His voice. Hearing and obeying God is the entrance into an entirely different quality of life — eternal life. If you know then you know.
God has been exalted in us as His Church over the last 11 years. He has made His boast through TPC in mind-boggling ways. From the Movie Theater to Delsea Drive, from Winslow to the West Bank — again and again Yahweh has declared His goodness, His faithfulness and the miraculous through the life of this body of believers. As we enter into this 12th year the question continues to be — Can I be exalted in you?
Eli taught Samuel to pray the most courageous prayer in the Bible — “Speak Lord, for your servant hears.” It’s a prayer of surrender from a posture of humility. We often don’t hear God, because we don’t always want to hear God. It’s the ear, connected to a surrendered and humble heart, that prays the prayer that causes us to hear from the living God.
Learning, discerning and surrendering to the voice of the Lord is literally the answer to every thing we will face in this world. Of all the endeavors we might give ourselves to learning, nothing will impact our lives and the lives of others as much as learning to hear the Lord’s voice. Learning, discerning and surrendering to the voice of the Lord is not only important, it is important now — Before the Lamp Goes Out.
According to the World Health Organization, slightly more than half of the world’s population is male. But males aren’t men until they take responsibility for themselves; and men aren’t fathers until they take responsibility for their children. It’s God’s desire that every male become a father, not having children, but taking responsibility to love, protect and provide for others. Jesus never had children but he was a father — “if you’ve seen Me you’ve seen the Father.” (Jn. 14:9)
The Book of Joshua begins with the word “after”. It implies a continuation, a moving on from what God had been doing to what He’s doing now. God moves forward. And if we’re going to walk with the God who continues, who moves and advances — we are going to have to learn to do the same. God calls us to be river crossers. Our lives are filled with moments where we cross over — from where we once were to where we’ve been ordained to be.
The scriptures reveal that there are many different types of love and various dimensions of love. As humans, we are prone to associate certain qualities of love based on gender. However, in order for the body of Christ to fully mature and transform this world, we have to activate and operate in a higher dimension of love.
So many of the people we once looked to have gone and we're all looking for those who will fill the void. Kobe Bryant, Steve Jobs, Queen Elizabeth, Maya Angelou, Nelson Mandela and Charles Stanley are just a few of the patriarchs, matriarchs, and icons that have gone in the last decade. We’re living in a time of massive transition and change. Times like these, even more than others, demand courage. We are living in the midst of a great transition — a changing of the guard.
In order to see the Kingdom of Jesus come in our lives and in the lives of those around us, we must live out our faith in such a way that it causes others to have a reaction toward Jesus. When our walk and our talk show Jesus to others we live lives that impact and influence those around us for the sake of the Kingdom.
Who is my Neighbor? This seemingly innocent question carries so many assumptions and attitudes. The way Jesus responded to this question is profoundly challenging in a world full of bigotry, racism and segregation. What does the Christian call to love our neighbor as ourselves mean in our world today? How do we, as Jesus’ followers, honor this call and commitment in a world shaped by division and tribalism?
What do we do after our biggest failures, disappointments and pains? Peter knew what it was to be flawed and to fail. “You won’t be crucified.” “You’ll never wash my feet.” “I tell you, I don’t know the man.” Are just a few of his big blunders. But his flaws and failures didn’t disqualify him. In fact they uniquely qualified him to live a resurrected life, realizing he wasn’t fit for any other kind. The resurrection is the very thing that makes it possible for us to be failed Christians but not finished Christians.
Jesus endured the brutal, inhumane torture and humiliation of the cross because He saw something beyond the cross. He had a joy in sight that we must learn to see and grab a hold of too. God’s answer to the suffering, adversity and hardships of this world is found in the joy Jesus saw and the power He has given. Pick up your cross.
Holy Week begins with Jesus’ triumphant entry into the city of Jerusalem for the Passover feast. Three million people fill the city; some have heard rumors that Jesus is the Messiah, fulfilling Zechariah’s prophesy nearly 600 years before. This moment marks the first time Jesus doesn’t resist the title of King. His time has come! Untie em’.
Scripture(s):
Matthew 21:1-9
4.2.2023 Message Takeaways
The living God is a promise keeping, prophesy fulfilling God.
Jesus keeps some things tied until He has need of them.
There are places God has chosen not to go without us.
The Kingdom of God is a never ending source of life for those who find it and are found by it. It is the will and way of God. It is the eternal rule and reign of God. It is the peace and goodness of God. Of all the things in this life to be pursued, discovered and realized, none can compare to the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is a well, well, well.
The destruction and chaos of this world is rooted in the rejection of God and the loss of ourselves in the pursuit of peace and goodness on our own terms. When we reject God and choose our own way to peace and goodness it has a destructive ripple effect. The coming Kingdom restores us to God, our true selves in Him and our call to be peacemakers and keepers of one another.
Scripture (s): NLT
• Genesis 4:1-12
3.19.2022 Message Takeaways
We fall every time we choose a way other than God’s to pursue peace and goodness.
When we reject God and choose our own way to peace and goodness it has a destructive ripple effect.
The human family’s connectedness to God and one another roots us in God’s peace and goodness.
So few of us live in a place of consistent peace with ourselves. Many of our emotional, psychological and physiological challenges are rooted in the fact we lack peace. But the Prince of Peace, the King of Kings has come to restore us to His Kingdom and to give us His peace and peace with ourselves.
Scripture(s): NKJV
Genesis 1:31
Genesis 2:25
Genesis 3:6-11
3.12.2023 Message Takeaways
In the beginning all of creation was very good.
Separation from God, also separates us from ourselves — locking us into sin and shame.
Jesus came to deliver us from sin and shame, restoring us to the peace of His Kingdom
The Coming Kingdom is God’s divine reordering of the world as we know it, reconciling all things to Himself. Though it begins in personal encounter, the expression of His forceful goodness is intended to impact all of His creation through our surrendered lives.
We live in a world of people longing and fighting for meaning, identity and belonging. We may have a family name, but it often isn’t enough to embody all we are and desire to be. When we are baptized into Christ, we are baptized into a new name and family. We don’t lose our earthly ones, but we are baptized into the source and purpose for them. In the new birth and baptism, we connect to a past that predates our birth and a future that goes beyond this temporal world. We enter into the name given for God’s entire earthly family — now and forever.
It was in Antioch where they first called the followers of Jesus — Christians. Never before and no where else in society had Jews, Gentiles, Men, Women, Poor and Rich gathered as one together. There were rigid social boundaries and distinctions drawn around these groups but the Church changed all of that. It became a unique expression of humanity, known for its worship of Jesus and for it’s unity with one another. They Called Us Christians.
Galatians 2:11-16
Acts 13:1
Acts 11:26
2.19.2023 Message Takeaways
Our identity “in Christ” must inform all of our other identities.
When ethnicity is supreme in our lives, we struggle with Jesus being Lord of our lives.
We will be justified by faith in Christ then and we will be justified by faith in Christ now.
Race and class have entrenched us in a false identity never intended by God. This defining and devaluing of ourselves and fellow image bearers has disfigured and dehumanized humanity. The Church was established to be an outpost of God’s Kingdom in the earth, redeeming us from defining and devaluing, by ushering in a Beloved Community marked by its loving esteem of one another and fellow image bearers. God has made us all greater than the way we’ve defined and devalued one another.
The business of building the Church is Jesus’ business; and from the very beginning until the very end, the Church Jesus builds comprises every nation, tribe, people and language. This isn’t to say a mono-ethnic Church is out of His will, it’s to say a decidedly mono-ethnic one is. May His Church be the barrier-breaking, bridge-building, peace-making witness described and prescribed in His word and so desperately needed in this world
We live in a day and time where we address nearly every issue in some natural way. We are more likely to pursue counseling, therapy or medication than we are prayer, fasting and repentance. While natural remedies are important and they have their place. There are some things in our lives that are above natural remedies. They are a different kind of opposition.
As we fast, there must be a focus, there must be an expectation. As a woman who has just been told that she is pregnant, there is preparation for what is to come. Expectation is the womb of manifestation.
God is a gentleman, is a common refrain among clergy and followers of Jesus. It captures the meekness that’s a part of God’s character. He has all power; He is present in all places; and He knows all things — but He doesn’t use His power, presence and knowledge to bully His will into our lives. But there are times, both in the Bible and our personal experience, when God uses His power, presence and knowledge to force His goodness on us. And when we find ourselves in those moments, it’s dangerous and possibly fatal to resist. When God wants, what He wants, for His creation and our lives, it’s best for us to bow and shout - All Hail the King!
If we could take all of the decisions we’ve ever made and form a person with them, it would be exactly who we are right now. Our lives are the cumulative effect of decisions — the ones we’ve made and the ones that’ve been made for us. Fasting and prayer is one of those decisions. Fasting and Prayer is a decision to consecrate, dedicate — setting our lives apart to choose God over and over again.
The Kingdom of God was the message Jesus’ proclaimed — referring to the Kingdom nearly 100 times in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Jesus’ teachings established the Kingdom of God as the priority for our personal lives, of all our endeavors and even our prayers. The Kingdom of God is the territory over which God reigns and rules. Psalms 145 declares, “Your Kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Your dominion endures through all generations.” As we enter into 2023 the posture of our hopes and hearts can be found in three simple words — Thy Kingdom Come!
Scripture(s): NKJV
Luke 11:1-2
12.31.2022 Message Takeaway
This year is an on-going shift — from our agenda to God’s Kingdom agenda. Friends fall into different categories and so do Jesus’ followers. This is the year of the confidant — those who’s hearts and hopes cry, “Thy Kingdom Come.”
On this last day of Advent we anticipate the coming Christ. We look and wait for the manifestation of God’s promise. The original hearers of Isaiah’s message would have heard it as a riddle. While it seems so obvious to us that Isaiah is pointing to the promised Messiah; it would have been less obvious to Isaiah and even less obvious to those listening in that day. Like us today, they all had the same need but each looked for a different solution.
The Christmas season is the time of year to reflect on the love of God through the birth of his son Jesus. However, we can get distracted from resting in God's love entering the world by the troublesome events that happen daily in our world. The birth of Jesus in 1st century Judea provides us with assurance that love can both abide in a hateful place and conquer it.
Scripture(s): NKJV
In the midst of a census, for the taxation of the entire Roman occupied world, God inaugurates His heart Kingdom for all who will receive His Son. There is a deep, personal joy found in Jesus for each of us; a joy that can not be found in any other thing or in any other way. To know Jesus, is to know a deep and abiding personal joy.
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The Messiah has come that we might have peace within, peace with others and peace in the world. The word shalom in all of its forms is mentioned 550 times in the Bible. We typically use peace and shalom interchangeably in the English language. But shalom is far more comprehensive than simply the absence of war and chaos. Shalom is the relational restoration of creation as God the creator and sustainer intends.
Scripture(s): NKJV
Isaiah 9:6-7Luke 2:1-14
We celebrate Advent, Christmas, the arrival and birth of Jesus the long awaited Messiah. Jesus is not only the hope of the entire world, He is the hope of every single event in our lives. No where can hope be seen more clearly than in the way God takes our temporal lives and sweeps them into His eternal plan for all creation.
Dropping Materialism, Individualism and Consumerism is not a once and for all thing. It’s a decision we make daily. This world never stops telling us we aren’t worthy and God isn’t trustworthy. So we must choose God and His way over and over again, until our serial yes produces a different kind of person — a person with a heavenly perspective, peace and provision — a child of the living God.
Mankind traded the good life — life as God intended — for the goods life — buying and selling the life we choose. No where is selling and purchasing the life we choose more celebrated than American Western culture. We pride ourselves on being what we want to be, doing what we want to do and accumulating what we want to have. But in the end, life part from God is a lie. The goods life ends in chaos and destruction or by God’s grace, it ends in being reconciled to God by Christ Jesus.
We are blinded by materialism because unlike other sins it hides and holds us captive. It convinces us our lives consist of the things we have and apart from things we aren't inherently valuable. Materialism is a functional god that forces us to serve it and trust it, convincing us if we have nothing we are nothing. Jesus sets us free from materialism by giving us His peace, His joy and eternal worth -- things that materialism promises but can't deliver.
Scripture(s):
Luke 19:1-2
Luke 12:15
Luke 19:3-7
Luke 19:8-10
Materialism, Individualism and
Consumerism undermine Jesus’ intent for our lives and the Church. The Church was never intended to exist simply to make our lives better. Jesus’ Church has been placed in the world to extend His Kingdom and to usher in eternal life.
Individualism stems from a determination to get what we want rather than embrace God's will regardless of the outcome. But, it's in our valleys, times of despair when things don't go as we hoped, that we develop a deeper dependence upon God and experience God's power to shelter, protect, sustain and position us in His will now and for what is to come. It's in these moments that we must trust God is a Good Shepherd who according to Psalm 23 leads us, lays us down and restores us, especially When the Rain Doesn't Come.
Listening to God demands radical love that engages a community sacrificially requiring excessive generosity - THIS turned the world upside down - let’s turn our city upside down
Before Jesus dropped the mic ending His earthly ministry, His final priestly prayer for those that would bear His name was a prayer for unity. Of all the things He could have asked of the Father as He left this sin-stained, demon-infested world — His deepest desire was that we would be one. Unity is of far more value than we’ve realized. It’s tied to our destiny here and our destiny in the world to come.
Have it your way, do your thing, just do you, are a few of the catch phrases that’ve become the norm in daily thought and language. We live in a hyper-individualized, materialistic culture that’s all about getting what you want and doing things your way — because after all You Only Live Once. But for many of us the biggest obstacle to our peace, joy and flourishing is the very thing we’ve been encouraged to pursue. What if the three-headed monster of Materialism, Individualism and Consumerism was the silent killer, destroying our lives, our families and our societies? What if the way to fullness and fulfillment was not more of what we’ve been after — but in dropping the M(aterialism) I(ndividualism) and C(onsumerism)?
Philippians 2:1-4
The God we serve is love and He empowers us to love- to answer the call of the great commandment to love, the great commission to go and the ministry to reconcile.
We’ve all experienced brokenness in relationships. Some of us have siblings we haven’t spoken to for years. Others among us are at odds with in-laws. Some know the pain of divorce. But if we’re ever going to live as the reconcilers God has called to be, we have to stop normalizing ex’s and lean into God's grace to be reconciled.
Who hasn't been hurt by the actions or words of another -- a parent who constantly belittled, a colleague who sabotaged a project or a friend who was disloyal? We’ve had traumatic experiences -- being physically or emotionally abused by someone. Wounds caused by others can leave us with lasting feelings of anger, bitterness and even vengeance. If we don’t learn to forgive, we will never experience the fulness of Love. We must learn to embrace and embody a love that forgives.
We’re part of a world filled with people who have lost the way. The way for humanity in the the mind of God has always been the way of love. We were created in Beloved community; we were created by Beloved community and we were created for Beloved community. When we go the self-absorbed, self-exalting, self-glorifying way of this broken world; we become what Love hates – we become the opposite of Love.
The human ego is one of the biggest enemies of God’s love. Ego works to exalt our will, our way and the pursuit of our glory over God’s. But we were made in Love; we were made by Love and we were made for Love. When we refuse to live in love we destroy ourselves. If we’re ever going to recover the beloved existence God intended -- conformed to His will and way – we will have to choose God’s love over our ego..
God is calling us, inviting us and teaching us to love. He knows apart from Love we can produce nothing, become nothing and gain nothing of value. We were made for Love; we were made by Love and we were made in Love. When we give ourselves to real Love, we begin to really live life – a life of real love.
As those born of Love, we’ve been supernaturally equipped to live in Beloved Community. Our rebirth and renewal changes everything—our new life resting securely on the foundation of our immersion into His abiding Love. Love is not just what we do; Love is who we are.
Love God's 4-Letter Word: Perfecting Love 428 views Streamed live 22 hours ago Introduction: At some point real love shows itself in what it does, not simply in what it says or feels. Love that says or feels but never does, is not real love. We try to really love, but apart from God we can’t – God is love. In order to perfect lov(s): NKJV 1John4:15-18 8.7.2022 Message Takeaways Confessing is more than saying with our mouths – it’s reflected in our lives. The God who is love teaches us to abide in His love. Love is perfected in us when it becomes who we are.
Over the last five years, popular culture has become inundated with spirituality, particularly New ageism. On any given day now, you can walk into a store and find crystals, and books with a concentration on chakras and the power of the mind. It is Indeed fascinating to explore the possibilities of being able to manifest one’s own destiny, ideas that we find in both Christianity and beyond. The question, however, is, are these things true? Am I really the master of my own fate, Is it possible to manifest my own destiny and if so, is this the way God intended for it to be?
The God who is Love came to deliver us from lesser loves. When our affections for created things exceed our affections for the Creator of all things we become enslaved. The God who is Love is lifting us and restoring us to our identity and destiny in the Beloved.
In a world filled with complexities and confusion how is one organism — the Church — to have clarity on its mission and purpose? We must look to and hear from Jesus, that we might grasp the mission and the mandate from the Master.
Love may very well be the most used and abused word ever uttered by mankind. It’s been used to describe our mothers, favorite ice creams and travel destinations. It’s been used to manipulate, corrupt and to restore. Some of us can remember our first love and some of us have experienced so much relational pain, we’ve sworn to never love again. But long before there was a mother, difficult break up or travel destination – even before the world was, there was love. God is love and love is His four-letter word, more than anything else.
Scripture(s): NKJV
Graduation is always a time to celebrate the accomplishment of completing a course of studies or a program. But just as graduation is about completion, graduation is about launching out for something new. With the certificate or degree or competencies that you come away with, you now have the capacity to make change in your community, in the society and in your own life. However, a piece of paper or even reading books or passing a test isn’t enough to enable and empower you to actually change the world. You will need a set of divine instructions to set you apart for actually changing the world once you graduate to launch out. This set of divine instructions come from none other than the divine architect that will help us build a structure that will stand long after we depart from our assignment.
In track and field, wind assistance is the benefit an athlete receives during a race as registered by a wind gauge. Due to a tailwind’s ability to enhance performance in certain events, there’s a limit to how much assisting wind an athlete may perform under if the performance is to establish a record. In life, we all need to run a wind-aided race, and there is nothing that pushes us forward like the tail-wind of a good father. The bible and empirical data prove that few things are a predictor of success in life like the presence of an active father – I would argue nothing aids in life like the wind-assistance of a present, active, godly father.
In Exodus 3, God Himself announced that not only had the cries of His people reached Him, but He personally had come down to deliver them. Yet, when Moses broadcast this message to those bond in Egypt in Exodus 6:7, scripture tells us that they couldn't hear nor believe him. This is the work of shame... a pervasive sense that even if you don't like where you are, you deserve to be there. Rather than embrace the deliverer in front of you, shame convinces you to accept the devils behind you.
This healing message will dismantle the work of shame in the life of God's bride, liberating us from barrenness to be a blessing.
Scriptures: Isaiah 54:1-8; 11-17 (NKJV) Psalm 139:5 (TPT) Psalm 139:23-24 (TPT)
Takeaways: 1. Sin is not satisfied with shaming our past; it seeks to stain our future. 2. Shame tells us there's not only something wrong with what we've done, there's something wrong with who we are. 3. God turns barrenness into blessings.
Introduction: According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness 50% of adults will develop anxiety, depression, eating disorders, bipolar disorder, PTSD or some other mental illness in their lifetime. Generation Z (1995 and 2010 ) is growing up in an age of increased anxiety and stress. Approximately 70% of teens across gender, race and family-income levels say that anxiety and depression are significant problems according to the Pew Research Center. And this is not altogether new, from the beginning all of creation was impacted by the fall, including humanities’ mental health. Whether it’s anxiety, depression, trauma or life dominating mental health challenges our minds matter to God. He’s concerned about our overall well-being and He has given His only begotten Son that we might be made whole. Scripture(s): NKJV
Philippians 4:4-8
4.24.2022 Message Takeaway God loves to ask the impossible and then make all things possible. God is the source of every good and necessary thing. It’s not what happens that leaves a lasting impact but our thoughts and conclusions about what happened.
Antonia was a fortress and military barrack built in Jerusalem by King Herod around 19 BC. At Antonia, three days before the resurrection of Jesus Christ the most famous public trial in human history took place. A trial with consequences reaching further than Marbury vs. Madison, Brown vs. Board of Education, or Roe vs. Wade. This was the Passover Trial of Jesus (and Barabbas). One was a notorious rebel and murderer, the other a rabbi, teacher and miracle worker, who called Himself God. This very public trial famously ends with one being released and the other sentenced to death by crucifixion. Barabbas was not released because of innocence. His crimes of murder and rebellion were more tolerable than the crime of claiming to be God -- Give Us Barabbas!
Jesus came during a time when the Roman empire was spreading throughout the world. Their military, political and social institutions dominated the Middle East, Northern Africa, Western Europe, Greece, and the Balkans. As he entered Jerusalem, Jesus was fulfilling prophecy and entering the hopes of a people who’d been waiting for over 500 years. Those present as He entered Jerusalem were looking for His Kingdom and the dismantling of Rome. But Jesus came to begin an inside job that is still going on today.
often believe we’ve placed our faith in Christ but ultimately discover it’s really in success, true-love, fame, fortune or the life we want to live. The culture teaches us to believe these pursuits hold the key to contentment and fulfillment in this life. It’s no surprise many of us feel lost, alone, disenchanted and even angry towards life and God. When we take good things and make them supreme things, they become idols that drive and control our lives. There’s only One who can wholly satisfy our deepest desire for contentment and true fulfillment and until we train our hearts to embrace that truth, we will be discontent.
For many of us, the way we define contentment is the very thing that makes us discontent. As long as we believe contentment is self-sufficiency based on having all the provision and protection we need – we will never be content. The enemy of our soul subtly deceives us into defining contentment in a way that makes us independent of our abiding need for Christ. The moment we learn our sufficiency and true contentment is in Christ and always will be -- we begin to grasp the secret of contentment.
We live in a world of discontentment – filled with people dissatisfied with their possessions, positions and conditions – convinced if I just had more, I would be content. But discontentment is an affections issue. Contentment is not found in possessions, positions and conditions. Contentment isn’t the result of having more of something or something different. Contentment is an enduring result, only when our affections are rooted in the right thing.
Jesus promised He would build His Church and the gates of Hell would not prevail against it. The Church of Jesus has been built for greater works. The works of hell in the earth will not prevail against the greater works of His Church in the earth. The Church has keys to something far greater than every work of darkness. The Church has been built for greater works.
As we continue to journey in the year of Greater, we must acknowledge that greater works or doing come from a place of greater being. Apart from a life filled with and animated by the Holy Spirit, we are powerless to produce the fruit God desires and the works He has purposed for our generation. The ministry of the Spirit is essential for the believer to live Greater in 2022.
Introduction: There is an attitude of deception and pretending in this culture. We are constantly left questioning and trying to determine, “who is genuine and who is not?”
Scripture: 1John 1:5 - 2:1
With His cross and His sinless, sacrificed body, Jesus gives us His peace. We are no longer enemies of God – through Jesus, God’s wrath towards our sin has been satisfied. Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit to teach us how to walk in that peace, live in that peace and enter into the greater work of extending that peace – a peace that surpasses.
Jesus promised He was going to prepare a place for us in His Father’s house. Every follower of Jesus has been restored to the family of God. We all have a future with Him in the new heaven and earth. But Jesus has also prepared a place in us and the Holy Spirit has come to abide in and to live through us. There is a place prepared for us and there’s a place prepared in us. Scripture(s): NKJV John 14:18-24
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Greater generosity in our lives always results in greater influence through our lives.
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Jesus made this world and more specifically His disciples, the object of His greatest act of love. The Father showed Him the end He had in mind, to restore mankind to Himself and Jesus gave His all to accomplish that end. He gave a greater love and the Father gave Him the greatest power. Jesus now calls us to give Him our greatest love that He might give us a greater power to continue in His works and greater works.
As we acknowledge God’s prophetic declaration of greater in 2022, we must also recognize our need for increased surrender and humility. Like John, we too have a destiny to glorify Christ our King—He must increase, we must decrease.
We live in an ever-changing world with ever-changing circumstances. The tendency can be to anticipate what’s next, look to others who’ve faced what we face or who’ve accomplished what we hope to accomplish. But looking to do what’s been done or to mimic the choices of others rarely leads to the greater works Jesus has in mind for us. If we’re going to live as He intends, moving from good to greater, it’s going to require a different kind of faith.
Jesus came to restore us to the Father. He revealed this truth to His disciples when they asked Him how to pray and He answered – “when you pray say our Father.” We see Jesus’ intent to restore us to the Father when Simon Peter discovered who Jesus was – “blessed are you Simon Bar-jonah because flesh and blood didn’t reveal this to you but my Father in heaven.” Jesus was unveiling this truth yet again, as He prepared for the cross. If you’ve seen me -- you’ve seen the Father. Jesus came to restore us to the Father and through that restoration -- greater works.
When we place our dependency, hopes and expectations in things that are subject to change, we invite heartache and disappointment into our lives. Sadly, we often end up attributing those heartaches and disappointments to Jesus’ failure to come through for us. But Jesus does not exist as a way to give us the good life we’ve envisioned for ourselves. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life – He brings us into a life that is far greater than anyone could conceive or accomplish apart from Him.
Jesus eulogized Himself with the text long before anyone ever used it to eulogize a loved one. This entire chapter helps us to understand how Jesus intends for us to live in this temporal, transitory, ever-changing world. What Jesus’ closest followers see as the end of all the good they’ve dreamed of and given their lives for is really the beginning of something greater -- something Jesus has dreamed of and given His life for. #Greater2022.
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law…” “I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born, I set you apart and appointed you…” What is true of Jesus…what was true of Jeremiah, is true of all of us. We were known by God before the foundation of the world and we have been sent into this world. Too often, we cry out for God to take us from the very thing He has sent us to. Everything in our lives looks and feels different when realize we’ve been sent to this world — we don’t come from this world.
Selah, rest and interiority are gifts from Jesus. They’re exit ramps, delivering us out of the disordered priorities, passions and pursuits of this world – and on-ramps taking us into the finished works we’ve been created for before the foundation of this world. Selah, rest and interiority are keys in helping us to fulfill our call to collaborate with God.
God has made us with His hands and He holds us in His hands. We are at our best when we surrender to the beauty of that design – handmade and handheld. We are at our worst when we busy ourselves trying to do what God has already done. Selah is about acknowledging and accessing the finished works of God in ourselves and in this world.
Interiority is the very real terrain within us that can’t readily be seen – our thoughts, our feelings, our inner struggles, our dreams, our hopes, our self-knowledge. We often have a hard time living in touch with our interior-selves because the world around us is consumed with surface living. Many believe what we gain on the outside, will somehow address what we leave unaddressed on the inside. But what is addressed on the inside empowers us to address the surfacy world around us.
Too often the pace of our days is dictated by external demands that cause us to strive for success, but Jesus offers us a different rhythm in His divine invitation to selah. This is not a mere suggestion, but a prescription for the abundant life He ordained for us as we cease our grind and embrace the grace of the Father.
Mankind wasn’t created to work for God or apart from God. It has always been God’s intent that we would work with Him. When we ignore God’s sovereign position in creation and our lives by His mercy He works to remind us. As we enter chapter 40 of Isaiah, the prophet is prophesying of a time to come when Israel will find themselves in captivity due to their rebellion against their design and call to work with God. Like those who proceeded us we are designed to work with God, not for God and not apart from God.
In the new heaven and new earth believers will come to the end of human striving and experience creation as God intended – the ultimate place of rest. But God doesn’t want us to wait. He’s calling us to rest and cease from our works and ways now. Selah and rest are related. Selah is the practice of stopping, listening, being introspective, retrospective, and experiencing time in God’s presence as sacred – it is the pathway to ceasing from our works and entering into God’s rest. There are promises and a power in rest that can not be accessed by any other means.
We live in a hyper-paced, world filled with people striving to exchange time for value. The world in which we live doesn’t assign value to human beings; it assigns value to human doings. But the reality is, our human efforts and accomplishments can’t provide a lasting sense of worth and value. Jesus, the creator and architect of life, comes to deliver us out of the futility and vanity of this temporary world by bringing us into the rest of His eternal Kingdom – teaching us the power of selah. Jesus teaches us to live with just one concern.
Embracing an eternal perspective of success is one of the most transformative changes we make in our deliverance from a temporary view of life. We can’t consistently see life from an eternal perspective, if we’re entangled in temporary pursuits. Self-manufactured success gives us a fleeting sense of security and worth. It causes us to live pursuing the next thing and the next thing, over and over again like an addict trying to find lasting significance in a temporary world.
To live life as a follower of Jesus is to live beyond the seen realm. It’s to live in this world from the vantage point of another world. Our call is to live in this temporary world that’s passing with our eyes and hearts fixed on the eternal world and Kingdom to come. Living with an eternal perspective or for another world is to willingly lose our lives in this world that we might find the lives He created us for now and forever.
Death is one thing we can all be sure of. It is an inescapable truth we all must face. We will either embrace human speculation that when you’re dead you’re done or divine revelation that Jesus died and rose again -- so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him.
There are few things more important for us in this life than developing the character to see eternally, while hurting presently. Anybody can respond well and look good when things are going well, but pain and adversity expose us. True Christian character and deeply formed dependence comes from time spent with God and trust forged in adversity. To live as an overcomer in this world, we will have to learn to see eternally, even when we are hurting presently.
Although we live in a temporary world, our call is to live life from an eternal perspective. Life from a temporal, earthly perspective is lived clinging to this decaying world, believing we can find identity, worth and value pursuing what can be seen, owned and controlled. Living from an eternal perspective means living with our eyes fixed on the unseen realities and truths of God’s word and Kingdom. Living from an eternal perspective means living life from the inside out.
An eternal perspective is fixed on the unseen realities and truths of God’s Kingdom. It’s a view of life free from the limitations of the temporary, earthly pursuits that consume the lives of so many of us. An eternal perspective is a heart captivated by the reigning King of Kings who’s ushering His Kingdom into the earth. It’s a life lived longing for and pursuing the restoration of all things in the new heaven and the new earth.
In a day and age where our pace is driven by doing and achievement, how does one find space to discover or simply… be? Not only is rest vital for the health of our souls, it’s crucial to our identity and the sanctity of community.
Could it be that our fruitfulness, multiplying and replenishing is not found in doing, but in rest? In other words, our doing should not be mutually exclusive from sabbath—a place of rest where the divine resides and we’ve been created to abide.
We are constantly bombarded with images, songs and media which strive to shape our hearts and minds to the world’s standards. They present to us what should be perceived as beautiful, desired, pursued and successful. But God’s standards are different! And as followers of Christ, we must aim to measure up to heaven’s standards for our lives and not the world’s.
The fall of mankind not only separated our lives from God and corrupted them with sin, it also corrupted the earth and everything in it. The earth is no longer a permanent place. We live between two eternal destinations – an eternity with God in the new heaven and the new earth and an eternity apart from God in the eternal torment of hell. This earth literally sits at an eternal crossroad and God calls us to seek those things which are above.
If our greatest hope in this life is something earthly, natural or temporary we haven’t embraced the greatest hope God has for us. He has prepared a place for us, a new heaven and a new earth where there will be no more sin, no more death, no more sorrow and no more pain. God will dwell with us there, we will be His people and there will be no end. When our greatest hope becomes this prepared place – the new heaven and the new earth – our lives in this temporary place is forever changed.
We were not designed for ourselves and our own glory. God designed us to interdependently bring Him glory. As we find our uniqueness in Christ, we also find what we’ve been uniquely given as a part of a greater whole. This Is Us reconstructs the beauty of us and we, while dismantling the heart crushing deception of me, me, me.
Before the foundation of the world, God existed completely united as one. God’s eternal purpose was to extend the union of the Godhead into the earth through Us, His image bearers. Satan has worked from the very beginning to break the unity God was extending through Us into the earth. Jesus waged war against Satan and the fallen angels with His cross, reconciling and restoring Us back to God. Today, we are fighting in a war already won — giving our lives to the reconciliation and the restoration of all things. This Is Us.
None of us are exempt from experiencing tragedies and traumas in life. And yet, because of our divine call, God has graced us with His love so that we are not imprisoned by our wounds, but empowered to live fearlessly under the influence of His Holy Spirit.
The Western world teaches us to focus almost entirely on self. Personal choice and personal happiness are celebrated, valued and exalted above nearly all else. This worldview and mindset aren’t unique to the secular world; it’s embraced and preached among the redeemed. But the shared calling on our lives will not be accomplished with a focus on self, personal choice or individual happiness – We have a shared, divine call.
Christians are called to be in this world but not of this world. Our union with Christ has made us distinct from all people, in all places. God has fashioned us in Himself and as we draw from the fullness of His powerful love — He is able to accomplish in and through us infinitely more than we could ask or think. While others draw from this world, we’ve been called to draw from Christ, the source of all life, love and power, that we might display His glorious wisdom established before the world began.
In a world full of possibilities and choices, we all end up in one of two categories — collaborators or perpetrators. Collaborators are those who surrender to the reality that God’s wisdom and glory exceed all other pursuits and in Him we find the truest version of ourselves. Perpetrators are those who choose the deception of being a god unto themselves, investing their lives in the pursuit of their own glory by their own wisdom — making themselves enemies of God. Collaborating or perpetrating is not a choice we make at once, it’s one we make day by day — to collaborate or to perpetrate, that is the question each our lives will ultimately answer.
Every day we make a myriad of decisions which impact our destiny. The mechanisms and parameters we employ to arrive at these decisions affect every area of our lives. As ambassadors of the Kingdom of Heaven, our God-King does not want us to walk through life making our decisions according to any current cultural, familial or national parameters or appetites, but He desires and requires that we Walk THIS Way!
We live in a time and age that puts so much emphasis on the individual and personal choice. Our focus on self tears at the very fabric of our design and human relationships. But God has called us together into something bigger than ourselves. And one of the keys to the eyes of our understanding being opened is the revelation of Us.
There are three sacred things that only the Heavenly Father can provide for us. Apart from them our lives are filled with disorder, inadequacy and purposelessness. And there are three significant things that our earthly fathers can provide for us that stabilize and advantage us in this world. We’re all in need of the Father Factor.
The hardships and suffering we experience in this world have a purpose that works for us and extends far beyond us. Our response to hardships and suffering shape us and set a stage for God’s glory and for God’s judgement to be revealed. God’s glory is revealed when we respond His way, with His words and His intent. God’s judgement is revealed to those who resist and refuse His way, words and intent. But the present suffering, hardships, glory and judgements are not worthy to be compared with what we will soon see — at His second coming.
So much of the culture wars of our day are about responsibility and culpability. Who’s at fault for the injustices and inequities that plague this world? Some lean towards seeing everything as a matter of individual responsibility — if they hadn’t been there, if they hadn’t done that, if they had worked harder or been smarter. Others lean towards seeing everything as systemic and structural — the deck is stacked, the system is broken, there's no justice for some. Both perspectives carry truth, but both are secular world views. The follower of Jesus is called to biblical responsibility — to participate, demonstrate and advocate for a way of life that is accountable for one another. We are one another’s keeper.
God is generous, God is just and equitable and God is our advocate. Biblical justice is the overflow of God’s character into our lives, our practices and our social structures. The follower of Jesus is called to be an advocate, one who stands against unjust, ungodly practices and systems that undermine the wellbeing and opportunities for flourishing in the lives of others. To be a follower of Jesus is to be one that speaks up, stands up and shows up for others but especially for the marginalized.
Justice in the eyes of God is not about us or anyone else getting what they deserve. Justice in God’s eyes is about us getting what He intended. Biblical justice is connected to the very character of God and its outworking in our everyday lives. If we are going to live justly and promote God’s brand of justice, we will answer the call to see our neighbor as those who bear His image and not our own.
For some, Mother’s Day is an opportunity to celebrate mom and our gratitude for her special place in our lives. For others, it’s a reminder of what they’ve lost or never had. To honor these intricately faceted perceptions of motherhood, we’ll host an up-close and personal panel discussion with women who’ll share their insights of A Legacy of Motherhood.
We all have felt dishonored by others in some form or fashion and instinctively want punishment for those who have hurt us. God wants to entrust us with greater grace and power. He wants to collaborate with us to execute His judgments and His justice in the world. But He will not trust us with greater power if we can not trust Him with our offenses.
What the world calls justice is typically not justice at all. It’s just vengeance carried out for us by someone else. Justice is often defined and described in terms of vengeance — they got what they deserved. But justice is not simply about them getting what they deserve. Justice is about us all getting what God intended. Justice, unlike vengeance, has two sides — a punitive side and a restorative side. True justice exists to make us whole. Justice For All.
The popular chant of so many protests and marches echos one being shouted from heaven right now — No justice. No peace. The difference is, heaven is longing for a justice and peace that doesn’t flow from the source of human vengeance, courts or laws. Heaven is shouting for a justice and peace that flows from the throne of God and the veins of Jesus. No justice. No peace.
If you’ve been deceived, manipulated, abused, shamed or hurt by someone, the instinct is to strike back. We want them to feel what we felt, lose what we lost, experience what we experienced. But the truth is they can’t give us back what we lost or feel what we’ve felt. We want it all back — but they can’t give it to us. They don’t have it and they never did.
Jesus’ first disciples were made part and privy to the greatest plot in human history. The plan of God to lift mankind out from under the eternal sentence of sin and death over our lives. It still remains God’s intent to use us in this — the most significant restoration project in the history of creation. But the same obstacles that stood opposing them in the first century, stands opposing us now — stones, demons and unbelief.
The long awaited moment had come. Jesus, revealing Himself as Messiah to the city of Jerusalem and all gathered for the Passover celebration. They welcomed and made room for the King! But they pushed Him to the cross when His deliverance didn’t look like what they’d imagined and when His Kingdom wasn’t the Empire for which they’d longed.
So much of what we do today is a response to what was done to us in the past. It may sound over simplified, but we rehearse what they have done to us or we rehearse what Jesus has done for us. When we rehearse what they’ve done, we ultimately become the very thing we despise. But when we rehearse what He’s done, our lives increasingly become more than we could ever imagine.
In the Garden of Eden, Satan went to work planting seeds and causing division in the first family, our spiritual ancestors. He’s been at work ever since, planting destructive seeds in us too. We keep giving ourselves a pass when we don’t do what we’re feeling and rehearsing. But not doing what we want is not the same as doing what God desires.
Vengeance is one of the few things that God tells us not to do as He does. God is love and He calls us to love. God is generous and He calls us to generosity. God is merciful and He calls us to be merciful. God is holy and He call us to holiness. But vengeance is God’s alone. Yet, like the tree in the midst of the garden of Eden, it’s one of the things we find ourselves obsessed with. We must not allow vengeance to keep us from collaborating with God and from collaborating with one another. Vengeance is God’s alone.
Syncretism is the reckless blending of different often opposing views and beliefs into one new belief. Syncretism is deadly and it destroys the people of God. It destroys the flock of God. Jesus was diagnosing and prescribing a cure for the syncretism that was threatening to make His work ineffective in the hearts and lives of His disciples. We need the same diagnosis and prescription today. Are we called to self-help or self-sacrifice? Are we pursuing greatness in this world or the greatness of His Kingdom? They stand in direct opposition to one another and the two stand directly in front of us.
If you look closely at what we do, you will see a story revealing what we really want. Our wants and desires drive our lives and push us towards our choices. Typically all we want is the thing we could never seem to get. But what we do to get what we want, makes all the deference in our lives and this world. The question is not what will we do? The real question is what do we want?
Jesus demonstrates the power of one with His life. He leaves heaven and willingly lays down His life to rescue and redeem our lives. Too often we’re afraid and unwilling to lay down what we value. We too are called to give ourselves, to collaborate with God and extend His Kingdom one obedient step at a time. We are called to extend God’s Kingdom over building our empires.
Jesus called a little child into the conversation when His disciples asked Him, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?” The people with child like faith may not look like much to the natural eye, but their level of trust, dependence and availability to God is what makes way for His glory — it allows God’s greatness to shine through their lives.
Jesus’ disciples had the desire for greatness, but they didn’t know what greatness was or how to achieve it. God alone defines greatness and He calls us to it, through collaboration with Him in childlike faith. This means, there will be times when we have to let go of what man calls good enough to embrace what God calls great.
One thing that hinders many from living with a child like dependence on God, is believing we have to look out for ourselves. The truth of the matter is we aren’t as capable of looking out for ourselves as we believe we are. In fact, looking out for number one is the very thing that keeps us from being the one. If only we knew and trusted how closely heaven watches and keeps us, we could take our rightful place as the one.
This year’s esteemed panelists will shed light on ways the “Drum Major Instinct” has led to the many disparities and inequities the pandemic and recent political turmoil unveiled, while highlighting the fact that "Everybody can be great because anybody can serve,” as Dr. King famously concluded.
In any partnership, it is imperative we agree on terms. We have heard repeatedly this week “words matter.” As believers, this is not news (life and death are in the power of the tongue) but prayerfully, in the course of the recent and coming messages, we are seeing with more acuity how this Truth matters to you and me.
Could it be that while Donald J. Trump and other nationalist leaders like him were being sworn into office around this country and the world, God was beginning a campaign of His own to make our hearts childlike again? A campaign to show that man apart from Him does not know what greatness is nor have the ability to make anything or anyone great. While man is at work foolishly trying to make himself great again, God is powerfully and personally at work to make our hearts childlike again.
Greatness and glory are synonymous with God. Some have no desire for greatness or glory, others are obsessed with it. God has purposed us for glory, His greatness to be seen on our lives. He intends for us to be great because He is — and we‘ve been called to collaborate with Him.
Tonight, we begin a journey by stepping into the grace of God that will challenge, shape and guide us throughout this year. The one word that captures what God is saying and revealing is collaboration. There’s so much packed into that one word. Tonight we begin unpacking, as God begins pouring great grace into us — His Church for Collaboration 2021.
It’s true we can’t move forward while looking behind. But often those things behind were preparing us and revealing to us what will be needed ahead. So we look back, but with the awareness that we’re being prepared to press on. The first year of this new decade has shown us much and prepared us for much more.
Beginnings are important to God, you can never ignore them with Him. After all, the first four words of the bible are, “In the beginning God…” Beginnings are often choreographed to help us understand the scale, scope and intent of God’s work, if we just look closely. This is the case with the beginnings of the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ. He started in the manger…now we’re here.
Jesus is not satisfied with us simply no longer being oppressed. Jesus came to commission us, to set others free from oppression. It will never be enough for us to be free from oppression, we must also embrace our calling to set others free. Our on-going freedom is rooted in our on-going freedom fighting. We have been set free and sent forth into the anti-oppression work of Christ.
Since the Garden of Eden, the Kingdom of Darkness has sought to destroy the plans and purposes of God in the earth. As ambassadors of Heaven, our eyes must be opened to recognize the unseen forces working to subvert the will of God. And like Jesus, we are anointed to destroy the works of the devil. We are commissioned to be Troublemakers on behalf of the Kingdom of Light!
Oppression has been a devastating reality on this planet since the Garden of Eden. Oppression began when Satan willfully took a place and position of rulership belonging to God and His representatives agreed to it. All oppression is rooted in Satan causing and exploiting spiritual brokenness between God and His image bearer, mankind. Jesus came to cause good trouble — healing the brokenness and restoring liberty and justice for the oppressed.
In these dark and perilous times the church must learn how to see and how to function in the grace to open blind eyes. Blindness is a frequent theme in the bible, mentioned directly over 75 times and indirectly throughout the Old and New Testament. Jesus was anointed to bring recovery of sight to the blind and His body, the church is called and anointed to do the same.
Jesus came proclaiming the gospel — the good news of His Kingdom — entering a broken fragmented world and our broken fragmented lives. God’s solution for a world held captive by the inhumane grip of orphans fighting for significance and permanence through empire building, political systems, caste systems, and resource hoarding was and is the gospel. When the Kingdom of God enters our lives and this world it ushers in good trouble — it ushers in freedom for captives.
Since the fall of mankind in the Garden, God has sought to restore His children to relationship with Him, standing up for the poor, marginalized, oppressed, imprisoned, sick and brokenhearted, and standing up to the people, policies, systems and devil causing them. This is the very reason Jesus came, delivering us from the consequences of sin and the systems erected upon them, modeling for His Body to do the same.
The Gospel of the Kingdom was the good news Jesus preached. His Kingdom coming had profound impact, reconciling and restoring mankind back to God, ushering in a Kingdom way of seeing God, seeing others and seeing ourselves. The Kingdom of God coming, first and foremost, was and is good news to the poor.
The good news of the Messiah's coming — the Promised One — ushers in good trouble. It upsets the status quo when the One who owns it all, rules it all and controls it all, comes to redeem and reconcile it all. And the gospel of the Kingdom has come to upset the existing state of affairs. Jesus and His body are anointed to bring trouble — Good Trouble.
Jesus has many names that reveal His character and the nature of His ministry; the Lamb of God, the Author and Finisher of our faith, the I Am and the King of Kings are a few. Although it’s not explicitly in the biblical text, Jesus has another name that is equally true about His character and the nature of His work — The Great Emulsifier. Jesus’s life and cross bring things together that are opposed and distinctly different, making something entirely new.
In light of it all and in the face of it all, don’t forget the sovereign God — He sees further than we can see; He knows in ways that surpass human understanding; He loves with a depth that exceeds our love; and His eternal purposes go beyond our temporary lives in the earth. God
You may be feeling challenged, overwhelmed, stressed or even depressed by the current affairs in our society. Trusting God and remaining faithful when He initiates or allows difficult situations to accelerate His purposes is essential for the believer.
The Sovereign God has promises ordained for each of our lives and for each promise, there is a process of manifestation He has determined. Though it often differs from that which we would have chosen ourselves, we can confidently trust in the Master’s process for His masterpiece.
Life from an eternal perspective causes us to see and experience day to day in a profoundly different way. Things that seem insignificant are significant and things that appear to be of little value are the key to it all. Like a good cook knows not to throw away the scraps — life from an eternal perspective reminds us not to judge useless, what others wish they could forget or just get beyond.
Life with the sovereign God brings moments and seasons where it appears He's for someone or something other than us. In fact, there will be times when everything happening seems to prove, God is against us. The eternal truth of the matter is, God is absolutely for us. He’s just for a version of us that is united with and yielded to Him. Because we were made by Him, for Him and unto Him, the best version of us will always be the version found in Him.
Kitchens are places of preparation and transition. Kitchens are where raw ingredients are made into finished products. Kitchens can be messy. Often, it seems the best chefs, have the messiest kitchens. With a focus on the end product, they give their greatest attention to the outcome, the end point, not the messy and often difficult details along the way. We live chopped lives with messy kitchens.
The glory of the triune God is that He is diverse yet one. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are distinct and unique yet completely united as One. We are made in His image male, female, every culture, every ethnicity and we reflect His image and glory when we are united. Our division denies the glory of God and leaves men, women, black, white other cultures and nations fighting for supremacy. We have been made and born again, diverse but not divided.
What if our purpose in life was inseparably connected to our response to the evil and adversity we face in life? So often we believe our purpose is wrapped in ascending to some adversity free experience in this world, but that view isn’t consistent with scripture. The question isn’t will experience evil and adversity, the question is do we believe our faithfulness to God’s ways and words will deliver us from evil? The Mater’s Recipe for our lives is seasoned with ingredients we would never choose for ourselves and a goodness and sweetness we won’t find in anyone or anything other than Him.
We tend to struggle with the unknown, grey, and in-between. We want to know what God is doing and we want the details. But the truth is we can’t handle the full picture. We wouldn’t want it. We wouldn’t understand it. We wouldn’t pursue it. God never tells us all we want to know about what He’s doing. So we must learn to trust Him in the midst of chaos, suffering and difficulty — knowing He’s good even when we don’t know what He’s making.
Life throws some of the most difficult things at us — things we didn’t ask for, things we feel we don’t deserve and things we never imagined for ourselves. Yet, time and time again, God takes life’s most bitter and detestable ingredients, using them to accomplish His will. Few things turn out just the way we want; but all things work together for God’s good and eternal purposes. We live Chopped lives — His ingredients producing His results.
We are sent people. We are living in this world, but we are not of this world — our primary source is the mouth of God/God’s word. Our sent lives begin when we’re restored to God’s word and liberated from secondary sources as first priority. It is the word of God that perfects us — restoring our mindset to the original intent God had when He sent us to the people, places and times we find ourselves. We are here to live a sent life.
Perspective matters and how we see and perceive is rooted in what we believe. We will never have right perspective, if we don’t begin with the simple yet profound truth — we don’t come from this world; we’ve been sent to this world. Too often, we cry out for God to take us from what He has sent us to. Everything in our lives looks and feels different when realize we’ve been sent to — we don’t come from.
We’ve all met someone, were making small talk or being introduced and were quickly met with the question, “Where are you from?” The question is asked so often because it tells so much or at least leads to so much assumption, about who we are and what we’re capable of. Even Jesus was dismissed by one of the early disciples when introduced as, Jesus of Nazareth. Can anything good come from Nazareth? The truth of the matter is our destiny is linked to our origin and our origin is linked to our destiny. The two are inseparably intertwined. Life will continue to ask us, “Where are you from?” And more than we realize, our destiny is tied to our response.
God is visionary. He sees what we can’t, knows what we don’t and has the power and resources to bring those unseen realities into existence. We typically associate new beginnings with leaving our circumstances and surroundings. But over and over throughout the bible, God begins again in the same place. No where is this tendency to begin again right where we are more stunning than in the life of Hagar. This enslaved, pregnant teen shows us what it means to be called and seen by the visionary God.
Our thoughts initiate our actions, our actions create our habits and our habits determine our destiny. Our Heavenly Father desires that we set our thoughts and minds on His plans and purposes for our lives and that we not walk in fear and fall into the traps that the enemy has made for us. We must be diligent to regulate and lift our thoughts so they rise to the level of God’s truth so we can fully manifest His desires in the earth.
Pain is a universal part of the human experience in this fallen world. Not one of us is immune. Our heart’s response to the pain we experience— and inflict —plays a pivotal role in our experiences becoming either a portal for manifestations of God’s power or for them becoming portals for great destruction as we respond in our own power.
This is the time to wail, mourn, and grieve over all that is happening in our nation, our states, our cities, our communities, our neighborhoods, and our churches.
There is a clarion call from the Father who sees the destruction of His people. He is sending for an army, not of military might, but of women who are skilled at wailing, willing to cry tears over the broken systems, lives, dreams, and hearts of His people. This wailing is a sound that God commissions to alert the oppressed that He has heard their cries. His desire is for His people to mourn and seek Him.
We all have things in our lives and this world that we want to change. Some have tried and found it’s too painful to change things in our lives and this world. Some have witnessed others try to change things in their lives and this world and lose jobs, friends, family, and even their lives in the process and concluded it’s just too expensive. But some have come to realize we are here to bring about change. God has created and positioned us to push against the pain, to work with Him to remove the thorns in our lives and this world.
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Too often, we limit our definition of change to something physical and external, overlooking the profound power of our mindset. Mindset can be defined as the beliefs, attitudes, and feelings that shape the way we choose and live each day. External change typically results in the same kinds of choices and the same kinds of results, because external change doesn’t change our mindset. Among all of the ways we can seek and pursue change, nothing is as powerful as a changed mind.
Crippled as a child, Mephibosheth spent the majority of his life in hiding. He came from royal lineage, but his life and experiences were far from royal. Mephibosheth shows us how radically our lives and circumstances change when we experience the sudden power and supernatural reach of the King’s Table — the promises of God. Like Mephibosheth, we are never beyond the capability or reach of the King’s Table.
Some of the greatest teaching moments in our lives happen right after we catch a glimpse of the true condition and position of our hearts. Reckoning tables are like final exams. They reveal what God knows about us, but we have yet to realize. God uses reckoning tables to show us ourselves and to order our steps. They are His way of adjusting our course so we hit the mark.
There are times in our lives when sacred tables are prepared to help us encounter God and His promises. There are also times when hindering tables are positioned to keep us away from God and His promises. We will experience both in our lives. When Jesus came across hindering tables, He overturned them. Jesus is still turning hindering tables over today and giving His followers the authority to do the same.
Sacred tables are places of intervention, confrontation, instruction, implantation, and promotion. God prepares sacred tables in our lives, where He encounters us personally. God also commissions us to serve others on His behalf. We are God’s wait staff, called to serve His truth and eternal perspective to those being repositioned by sacred tables and those being confronted with His truth while sitting in positions of power.
Tables are sacred to God. They are places of intervention, confrontation, instruction, implantation, and promotion. David, the Shepherd King, experienced God setting up sacred tables all throughout his life. But it was the tables God arranged and put in place in the presence of his enemies, that had the deepest and most transformational impact on David. God is still setting up tables in the presence of enemies and those tables still change us in “never to be the same again” ways.
The Resurrection is the source of the most profound hope we will ever find. Through His suffering, death, burial and resurrection, Jesus rescues us from a debt of sin while modeling how to RISE above our darkest days and crippling doubts to enter into His joyous plan. When Jesus rose from the dead, He laid a foundation upon which we can rest, knowing there’s nothing from which we cannot rise, nor is there anything that can separate us from His love.
There was nothing good about that Friday for those who loved and followed Jesus. Friday marked the death of their Rabbi, their Messiah, their hopes and their dreams. But Friday proves the Father has better hopes and grander dreams than we do. Friday represents the day(s) where what we know and value is crushed, so what God knows and values can be revealed. There’s a goodness in Friday that has the power to change every other day that follows.
Scarcity entered this world back in the Garden of Eden, when we separated from our Source. Scarcity does not return to generosity until we are restored to our Source, the Prodigal Father. Scarcity works to deceive us into believing what we really need is resources and control, but we didn’t lose resources and control back in the Garden. What was lost in the Garden was the life-giving connection with God as our Source, and our distinguished position of being the Prodigal Father’s Beloved.
“Prodigal” is expending resources freely, what some might consider recklessly, wastefully or extravagantly. The God of heaven is The Prodigal Father. He uses all kinds of resources, means and approaches to extend His loving, abundant Kingdom to those who are locked in and disfigured by the scarcity of this world. He is determined to see us restored and reconciled to Him and His ways. The Prodigal Father is constantly inviting us into the feast of relationship with Him and a place in His Kingdom.
The global health crisis has awakened us all to a truth we too often forget. No matter our religious beliefs, socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity or culture, we all share one world. In this one world we all live with two choices. We will live and ultimately perish in scarcity or we will live and live abundantly in generosity. We all share this inescapable truth of living in one world with two choices.
There’s a popular saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Said differently, beauty is not found in the object, beauty rests in our perception. The same can be said about scarcity and abundance. What one person sees as more than enough, another sees as lack. It’s not about how much or how little we believe we have. It’s absolutely about what we see.
This world is filled with secondary success and governed by primary abundance. Secondary success is what we see, experience, manage and own in the physical realm. Primary Abundance is the triune God and His Kingdom, the source of all we see and experience in this physical world. It’s possible to have secondary success and never experience primary abundance. But God promises if we seek Him and His primary abundance, we will surely experience secondary success.
Texts. Emails. Tweets. Posts. DMs. In a day and age where our pace is driven by our tethered device, how does one find space? Space for rest, space to think, space to create, and even more so, space for the soul to be healthy.
Given the choice, most people will choose the riches of a good temporal life over the treasures of the abundant eternal life. Scarcity deceives the human soul so thoroughly, it makes it nearly impossible to get beyond defining what we see as the greatest thing to be possessed. As long as what we see is more valuable than what He says, no matter what we have we will live trapped in a world of scarcity.
In our journey of faith, we are often tempted to settle in our comfort zones, satisfied with the blessing we have received thus far and content to wait on rapture or resurrection for our exit. But what if there’s more—a higher call, a deeper surrender, a greater devotion that God requires, and that adds to us the significance we spend so much of this life seeking in other places? What if the path from scarcity to generosity is not lined with more stuff, but more surrender? What if the significance we seek lies in our wholehearted devotion?
Everything in the physical realm began in the unseen, spiritual realm. All we can see and handle was once a thought in God’s mind and a word in His mouth. Seeing and experiencing life abundantly is rooted in knowing God as the originator and source of all things. When we live ignorant of this all-encompassing truth, we see and experience life from a scarcity mindset, confined to being in this world and of this world. Functioning solely in the natural realm locks us in the scarcity of this fallen world. We must know and never forget — it’s all spiritual before it’s natural.
God’s rescue and reclaiming of humankind through Jesus Christ is the most exceptional act of love in the history of creation. There will never be another act of love more extravagant than God choosing to willingly give Himself for us. Jonah shows just how hopelessly we are lost in the madness of sin. It’s complicated because we’re loved by a God who is dedicated to our good and more aware of what that is, than we are.
The American Dream has been redefined by the next generation. They no longer want to live lead by a pursuit of provision and security first. They aren’t willing to simply pursue a secure place in the world. The next generation is fueled by a passion to make a difference and change the world.
God has an overarching plan for creation and our lives. He has created all things for His glory, that all of creation might reflect His goodness, honoring Him as Lord. When we get off track, departing from the unique plans and purposes for which we were created, God is so fierce in His all encompassing love that He interrupts the course of our lives. Our lives are marked by holy interruptions and divine timeouts, God Himself intervening, rerouting and brining us into His glorious designs.
Christmas expresses the truth of God With Us in a way that requires us to grasp its gift over and over again to truly and fully appreciate it. Receiving the gift of Immanuel transforms us into someone radically different from who we were or ever could be. Jesus, embodying flesh, yet miraculously ushering in His Spirit and truth, is the most awe-inspiring act of and for humanity. Mary, the mother of Jesus, lovingly reveals how we are to respond to the truth of God With Us… either refuse to believe who He is or grasp and embrace all of Him, realizing we have nothing without Him.
Since the fall of humanity in the Garden of Eden, we have sought to return to God’s presence. Despite man’s best efforts to obey the law or carry the Ark of the Covenant, we were unable to return to Eden. However, God’s love is so great that when we couldn’t get to Him, He came to us. The greatest gift, God with us, changes everything because even when we aren’t looking He sees us!
We must always remember who we are, priest of the Most High God. And despite the difficulties and seeming failures in our lives, we must trust and believe that the God of creation has our times in His hands. Since God is with us, we are free to hope in the salvation only He can provide for every situation.
“Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, God with us — Matthew 1:23. As we enter into our last series of 2019 and the Christmas season — the celebration and remembrance of God wrapping His only begotten Son in human flesh and sending Him to be with and ultimately to give Himself for us — we are asking God to help us see and more deeply understand what it means for God to be with us. How would our lives, our hopes, our thoughts, our concerns, our perspectives change if we really believed God is with us?
We live in a world full of exhausted people. Social media is taking its toll. Sleeplessness, anxiety, stress and depression are on the rise. While the age of connectivity grants us access to everything, we fend for ourselves, denying the One who can deliver us from anything what He most wants and we most need—connection with Him.
We live in a world and time where the popular solution to every difficult experience is cheer up and get over it. Too often our tendency, with even the most excruciating experiences and crippling emotions, is to shake it off with happy. Many of us are exhausted because we’re going through life with so many unresolved issues. It’s foolish at best and ungodly at worst to think we can simply put a bandaid on everything. Some things in this world are difficult beyond explanation. We must learn how to mourn and find the supernatural comfort of God or we are going to die trying to be happy.
There’s an exhaustion that comes from remembering and rehearsing the negative events and experiences we have. The words and events we remember and rehearse, build memorials within us; and tragically our tendency is to build memorials around negative experiences and carry them for the rest of our lives. When God establishes memorials He does it to remind us of Him and the significant ways He has moved, demonstrating His power and love for us. God’s memorials are established to anchor us in the confidence and power that comes from knowing He is with us and for the plans and purposes attached to our lives. The way we remember a thing not only shapes the event; the way we remember a thing shapes us.
There are things in our lives and this world that can only be overcome by fasting and prayer. We’ve all experienced it at one time or another. We give the right effort and commitment to progress or overcome, we just lack the right know how and tools. God has given us a gift in fasting and prayer. Fasting and prayer give us access to a dimension of faith that can’t be entered any other way. Fasting and prayer delivers us from the exhaustion that comes from trying to do the right thing with the wrong tool.
There's a unique and devastating exhaustion we can experience in this life. It's an exhaustion of the heart that comes when we start looking for another god. If you give your life to Jesus and follow Him long enough, you will experience times when you see Him moving in the lives of others, but feel as if He’s abandoned you. There will be times when people around you are being healed of their conditions, promoted and progressed in life, but you will remain stuck in your trouble, hardships and pain. The drift that can happen in our hearts when we experience this, brings an exhaustion that leaves us going through the same motions, but inside our affections and heart commitment have gone looking for another god. We become exhausted by wandering and searching for someone or something to give us what we want.
We live in a globally connected, 24/7 world, that’s been sped up to warp speed and tied together in a world-wide web. They say that New York City is the City that never sleeps, but we’ve become a nation of sleepless cities and people. Our never stop, always connected world is destroying our souls. We’re losing ourselves to exhaustion. Technology has taken the limits off of everything in this world except us. We were created with limits. We were made for God. We were created to be human beings, not human doings and we must learn to do the one thing in a do it all world.
Exhausted. There’s an epidemic of tired in this world. Chronic fatigue, anxiety, sleeplessness, depression are at epidemic levels all around us and in many cases it’s simply because we’re tired or more accurately stated — exhausted. This series is going to reset and restore us by taking us to answers that medicine alone can not provide. It’s time to get delivered from exhausted.
If you’ve been in a relationship of any kind — family, friendship, marital you have experienced offense. Offense can turn even the most fruitful relationship on its axis. If it is not acknowledged and unaddressed, offense can tear at the very fabric of a relationship and destroy it. Offense is a divisive weapon, creating a narrative that attempts to override the truth of God’s word.
The Greater Philadelphia region is comprised of Philadelphia, the four suburban counties of Bucks, Montgomery, Chester, Delaware and the Southern New Jersey counties of Burlington, Gloucester, Camden, and Salem. This region is shaped by Philadelphia, the 6th largest city in the United States and Camden the county seat of Camden County — the largest county in Southern New Jersey. Philadelphia is affectionately known as the City of Brotherly Love and Camden’s motto is, In A Dream I Saw a City Invincible — an excerpt from a Walt Whitman’s poem where he dreamt of a utopian city where love triumphed and flourished. It is here that God has called us, The Perfecting Church, not just to live and worship, but to be a part of His eternal plan to impact and transform this region by extending the Kingdom of God.
The Church of Laodicea is an example of the destructive power of pride. When we think too highly of ourselves and wrongly of Jesus, we end up lukewarm. Lukewarm is worst than any other position we could be in — it’s too close to God to be cold and too far to be hot. God’s letter to the Church of Laodicea provides a prescription for the lukewarm ones.
Compromise provokes the divine discipline of God. It’s among the Church’s most destructive enemies. When we willingly lower God’s standard, we destroy ourselves and the power of our witness from within. Wherever there is compromise, Jesus comes with His two-edged sword drawn to deliver us from being lost.
Nothing challenges our faithfulness and loyalty like pain, suffering and loss. It’s not hard to find commitment when times are good, expectations are met and winning is the norm. But faithfulness is a part of our character that can’t be seen until circumstances aren’t optimal and staying committed carries no obvious benefit. It takes a special kind of person to keep it together and a special kind of Church to stand together during times of pain, suffering and loss — God reserves a special kind of reward for those who do. He has a special kind of love for Smyrna.
First Love is not an emotion. First love is God. The God of Heaven is our first love; He knew us, named us and embraced us before the world was. His love is the First Love here in the earth too. All other loves are secondary loves. The Church loves Him because He first loved Her. We must embrace and vigilantly work to keep first love first.
Historically the church (individually and collectively) has been used by God to transform society and bring spiritual and natural freedom. This has required disciples who respond to God’s call to take action to address issues that are larger than they can correct on their own. Through God’s leading community transformation occurs when we understand our calling; convene with wise counsel; collaborate with others to leverage resources and follow His clear strategies. We are called to be the church not to just attend one. Now more than ever the world is asking “will the Church stand up”?
Opinions are as common as rocks. They are everywhere and we can all quickly pick them up. But no matter how informed or strong, opinions should never be confused with truth. Opinions are views and judgments based on personal perspective and experiences. Truth is based on unbiased and unchanging absolutes. God has purposed His Church to present and demonstrate the truth of who He is to a world full of opinions. Who do you say I am?
What was Jesus saying when He declared He would build His Church -Is His declaration still relevant for us today? The Church seems to be out of step and behind the times — is it being replaced by other social and political constructs? These questions have existed for over two millennia. But Jesus’ words, “I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not overcome it” still stand. And those words are the foundation for our greatest hope in an increasingly dark world.
Joseph was able to see beyond the treachery, the abuse, the betrayals and the suffering he experienced at the hands of his brothers, the Midianites, Potiphar’s wife and the Chief Butler. He learned to rest in God, knowing those things as grotesque as they were, would be used as a part of the sacred call on his life. Joseph learned to see in the dark. He saw beyond what they were doing and what he was experiencing, into the development and ultimate fruitfulness God had ordained for his life.
We all have a unique, sacred call to fulfill God’s dream for our lives. Not one of us can fulfill that sacred calling apart from God. Each one of us is a part of a dream that originated with God and emanates from God. He is the dream interpreter and becoming is far more dependent on Him than it is on us.
God has a process for perfecting our character and the talents that He has hidden in us. The pits and the peaks of our lives are all purposed to cause us to become something that far exceeds what we would have planned on our own. God is moving us from where we are today into His sacred calling for our lives. With each obedient, submitted and faithful step we are becoming — moving from where we are, to where He’s purposed.
There is a process to becoming and fulfilling all that God has called us to become. That process involves both the natural and supernatural. There’s a part that we can bring to the process of becoming and a part that only God can bring. We are living to access and utilize all that God has stored up for us not what man is handing out to us. We are in the process of becoming.
There is a general call on all of our lives, but each of us also carries a specific call. The general call’s intent is for us to come to faith in Jesus Christ and to become more like Him. The specific call is directly connected to our unique role in God’s eternal plans and purposes. As we surrender more and more to the general call of God on our lives, the elements of His specific call become clearer and more compelling. We’re infinitely more than our natural beginning. We are His supernatural offspring, planted at unique, pre-ordained points in human history.
There are two callings on all of our lives. The first calling is a general calling, to surrender to Jesus as Lord and to become more like Him. The second calling is a specific calling, to uniquely show off God’s glory, by extending His Kingdom in ways assigned specifically to us. Each of us is carrying a vital part of God’s dream for the generation in which we live. We’re all called to become.
The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren has sold over 32 mil copies and was a New York Times bestseller for over 90 weeks. The late Dr. Myles Munroe, a best selling-author of 69 books, most of them on purpose and leadership said, “the passion of my life is to help as many people as possible, from every nation, race, creed and social status, to discover their true potential.” Michelle Obama’s book, Becoming sold over 1.4 mil copies in its first week and after just fifteen days became the bestselling book in the US for 2018. Calling, purpose, meaning and becoming are at the heart of what it means for us to be human. We are going to look to God to answer questions like — How do we discover destiny? How do we unearth calling? How do we become? because He is more qualified than anyone else in creation to utter the words, “I Knew You When.”
God has placed His glory in us and made the details of our lives a part of His plans and purposes for creation. He’s doing something with us individually and collectively that’s greater than we can fully see or grasp. Our trust must remain rooted in Him, in order for Him to bring out the glory He’s hidden in us. Because in spite of all we have faced and will face in this world, the unwavering truth remains — His glory is in us.
There are seasons in our lives where we can clearly see the glory of God expressed through our lives. However, there are difficult times and times of transition where God’s glory is not so evident to the natural eye. Regardless of the season we are experiencing, we are called to rest in the knowledge that God is transforming into His image and expressing His glory through us. God is taking us from glory to glory.
Romans 8:18-19 proclaims all of creation awaits the manifestation of what Colossians 1:26-27 describes as the hope of glory—Christ in us. The greatest opposition to this glory heaven hopes to be revealed, and the world longs to see is… US! This message celebrates the strength found in weakness, and its power to unleash God’s glory, asking, “Does this world need more of us or Christ in us?”
God’s glory is on display throughout all of creation. The skies, the seas, the stars, they all reflect the jaw-dropping, splendor of God’s glory. But no where can the glory of God be seen, in the way it’s seen in us — those made in His image and after His likeness. We were born for the glory of God and God has called us to meet with Him face to face to get it.
God has made us for His glory. We have not made ourselves. There is no such thing as a self-made man or woman. We have all been constructed by God for God’s glory. God wants to wear us as His garment. He intends to put Himself on display, through our surrendered lives.
We all want to be glorious. We all want to be great. We all want to make a lasting contribution to this world. That desire is tied to the fact that we were all born for God’s glory. Each one of us was born to reflect the glory of God in the earth. We were created to point to Him though the unique expressions of His substance and character through our lives.
As priest of the Most High God, we have an awesome assignment and a tremendous privilege to re-present the King of Glory to mankind. In this present hour, it is imperative that we not remain in the outer court, but daily go Beyond the Veil to access the power and provision God has for us.
They carried the Tent of Meeting with them in the first testament. God instructed them to build the Tent so He could dwell among them and reign over them as their God and King. In the second testament, God has made us His dwelling place. He has taken residence within us and He’s extending His Kingdom through the willing submission of our lives.
Moses’ Tent of Meeting was replaced by Solomon’s and finally Herod’s Temple. Herod’s, second Temple was destroyed in 70AD. But the heavenly temple, not made with hands, from which the Tent of Meeting and the Temples were patterned, still exists. Jesus has made the Church His priesthood, and we have been called to worship. We were made for worship, in a Temple not made with hands.
God no longer requires us to sacrifice bulls and lambs at the Temple as an act of worship as He did in the Old Testament. So, what is true worship, how should we worship, where should we worship, and when should we worship as New Testament believers? As we go deeper into the heart of God to discover the answers to these critical questions we will come away knowing that true worship cost us something.
As royal priests of the Most High God, we are required to worship. This is our number one priority. God desires to fellowship with us and the Tabernacle was the place designed for worshippers to meet with God. But as New Testament priests we are called to sanctify our bodies, which are the temple of the Holy Ghost, and become Holy meeting places for the world to get to know our King.
The highest of all calls for the human being is the call to worship. Worship is the thing that shapes our passions, our pursuits and our desires. Whatever we worship rules our time, energy, thoughts, longings, and choices. More than anything God desires our worship, not as a duty, but as our heart’s reaction to Him revealing Himself to us. Worship is our highest call. And worship brings us into a fulness of joy that’s inaccessible by any other means.
Jesus could go into the deep on His own, but He’s determined to bring the Church into the depths with Him. He wants to get us off the shore; He wants to get into our boats, and He wants to fill our boats — overwhelming us with waves of His grace and goodness. The deep is the place beyond our wildest dreams, into the fullness of joy that’s only found in the dreams that God has for us.
Life is filled with suffering and difficult moments. The wildfires in CA that destroyed over 250K acres and displaced hundreds of thousands of people and the recent Tsunami in Indonesia that took over 400 lives, are proof that this year has been no exception. And if it wasn't natural disasters wreaking havoc, it was fierce nationalism and violent racism against black and brown people and religious minorities sweeping the US and nations around the world. So many mass shootings have taken place that gunviolence.org has cataloged every incident in 2018 — Parkland HS where 17 were killed and most recently the 11 killed at Tree of Life Synagogue being the most deadly. And then there are the crushing difficulties we’ve experienced here in our own church family — deaths, divorces, job losses, addictions, persistent sickness. Even as Christians we are not exempt from suffering and difficulty. So what does God have to say about all of this? What hope is there for His sons and daughters?
God and His promises come wrapped in unlikely packages. Swaddling is an age-old practice of wrapping infants in blankets or cloths so that movement of the limbs is tightly restricted. Swaddling helps the baby transition from the womb to the outside world. Jesus is “The Promise” wrapped in swaddling sent to liberate us from the swaddling we’ve been bound by.
It’s with faith and patience that we inherit the promises of God. Too often we go on never experiencing God’s promises because this hurried, “I want it my way” world works to rob us of the purpose in waiting and faith-filled prayers. We need both if we are to inherit the promises of God. We must learn how to wait and we must learn how to pray in faith.
Nobody likes to wait. But waiting carries far more purpose than most of us ever realize. Learning to wait is more important than receiving the promise. The person who doesn't know how to wait, never truly receives the promise. Waiting prepares us for the promise that’s been given.
There are some sicknesses that are obvious and others that go undetected. It’s the sicknesses that go on undetected that often cause the greatest damage to our lives. One of the unseen plagues that goes on undetected and even accepted at epidemic rates for both christians and non-christians alike, is thanklessness. If we knew the effects thanklessness had on our lives we would go after it with more tenacity than we have towards almost anything else.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth…” In the polarizing times in which we live, one could not only choose the wrong side, but the wrong fight, and therefore, the wrong weapon. As followers of Christ, we must remember that our greatest power doesn’t reside in a weapon, but a message… the gospel, not only because it leads to our own salvation, but the salvation of all, empowering usto “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you!”
We are reminded that we’re a family at war, as we close our series Family Matters from the book of Ephesians. God’s family is an eternal, adopted family; each one of us has a cape - gifts, abilities and passions woven into our design; we carry the family name of Jesus, a name above every name that can be named; we are a family diverse in culture, ethnicity, and tongue, all made one in Christ; we are a family that is perfected in a place and action called prayer; we’re a family on a shared mission to reconcile all things to God; and we are a covenant family, loved by our Father in a way that changes how we love others. But all of these truths about our family are not clearly understood apart from understanding we are at war. And the stakes in this war are eternal.
God is a God of covenant and His family is a family of covenant. The only way God enters into a relationship is through covenant. Our understanding of covenant shapes the way we relate to God and the way we relate to God shapes us. We can not truly understand what it means to be in the family of God apart from understanding God’s covenant love.
Some of the great families that shaped our history have a clear common mission. Families like the Kennedys are known for their commitment to public service in government and the Jacksons are known for their influence in musical entertainment. However, the family of God has been called to a much broader mission – to reconcile ALL things to God. This is not a religious statement but a call for His sons & daughters to extend His influence in every domain of society. As a family we must understand what He has equipped us with and what we are to do with this “equipment”.
Prayer is the place where we, as the Family of God in the earth, come to commune with our Heavenly Father. When we pursue the heart and presence of God in prayer, we begin to see what He sees and what He longs for. Communing in prayer with our Father takes us beyond the natural realm, bringing us into a greater and greater awareness of His profound power and love towards us. In prayer is where we can see what’s impossible with man, but is already done with God. We are perfected in prayer.
God’s family in the earth is made up entirely with adopted people. He has chosen us, we have not chosen Him. Our last name is no longer our most significant name. The name that gives us our greatest identity, belonging and resource, both now and forever, is the name of Jesus. In Him we’ve all been given abilities, gifts, passions and unique parts to play in reconciling humanity, causing it to flourish and overcoming evil. God’s family is a diverse family. He has adopted people from every nation, every ethnicity and every culture. In Him we are many, who’ve been made one.
What a beautiful family name we’ve been given in the name of Jesus. For the Christian our last name is no longer our most significant name. The name that gives us our greatest identity, belonging and resource, both now and forever, is the name of Jesus. His, is the only name given under heaven by which we can be saved — being adopted and redeemed into the eternal family of God. In the name of Jesus we have received an inheritance of every spiritual blessing. We live, move and have our being in our family name — the name of Jesus.
The top grossing movies of 2018 were all based on superheroes with superpowers — Black Panther was the 3rd highest grossing movie of all-time; Avengers: Infinity War was the 4th highest grossing movie of all time; and Incredibles 2 was the highest grossing animated movie of all time. It’s fair to say we have an obsession with superheroes, superpowers and capes. Hollywood, and the comics these movies are based upon, show us every superhero has unique powers and a unique part to play in reconciling humanity, causing it to flourish and keeping evil at bay. We too have a unique role in reconciling humanity, causing it to flourish and keeping evil at bay — we all have a cape.
Our lives are shaped by how and where we get our sense of acceptance and belonging. God’s family is unlike any other family, organization or affiliation we can have in this world. God’s family is not based on what we’ve done or can do, but what He has done and chosen to do. God adopted us. God chose us. This truth of being chosen/adopted before, is the foundation of our existence in God’s family. Understanding our adoption is the way we truly enter into and experience the transformative power of being accepted in the beloved.
In God We Trust was a clarion call to return to God with our whole hearts. It’s was a bright, redeeming light shining into the depths of our souls to awaken, renew and deepen our trust in God. In God We Trust was the resurrection of our faith and trust in the God who has power over the nations, nature, and the details of our lives. In God We Trust is the confidence that even when life hurts — God loves us; God is good; and God has the power and desire to extend His faithfulness to a version of us we’ve yet to encounter.
Our understanding of faithfulness is incomplete if we see it only as God's commitment to us or as our devotion to Him. Ultimately, faithfulness is a defining characteristic of God's relationship to Himself. We can be encouraged to rest in this faithfulness, as we discover our identity in Christ and God's commitment to see His eternal purposes demonstrated in our lives.
God has total control of all things past, present and future. Nothing happens that is outside of His knowledge and control. All things are either caused by Him or allowed by Him for His eternal purposes and plans. God is the only absolute, all powerful ruler of the universe and is sovereign in creation, providence and redemption. We’re all free, but we’re all in God’s hands, because He is sovereign.
In 2008, to the astonishment of the world, the U.S. economy was plunged into a recession because we trusted in the leaders of our government and financial institutions to behave ethically and morally for the good of its people. The hopes and dreams, the savings and security of millions, were erased within a matter of days. Only by trusting in God can we obtain true peace, love and joy. Everything and everyone else is subject to fail, because it is temporal. But Our God is Good, and He has a plan and a purpose to provide for all of our needs.
The Church has been redefined by modern culture, but it has never been changed in its role or power by God. God has established the Church as the epicenter of life, society and blessing. She is the steward of God’s revelation truth and miraculous power to transform humanity. There is no corporation, organization or institution more powerful and significant than the Church in all of creation. The Church is God’s chosen transforming agent.
God, the creator and sustainer of all, is a God of justice. Psalm 89:14 declares, “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; Mercy and truth go before Your face.” From an early age this sense of justice can be seen woven into the fabric of humanity. We’ve all seen and been, small children looking for an adult to judge between us and a friend, and when the verdict was rendered cried out, that’s not fair! Justice is the process of using laws to judge and administer fairness, rightness, reward and punishment. All societies have laws designed to bring order and civility. But God is the judge of all. His rule and reign is over every authority, power, dominion, throne, principality, domain and kingdom. God is the God of justice.
The “fear of the Lord” is not one of His attributes. It’s the effect He has on all who truly encounter His holy presence. Holiness is the quality of God’s character that makes Him higher and superior to everything in the created realm. God’s holiness makes Him other, different, high and lifted up, set apart from all others. It’s the distinction of His holiness, that leaves us drawn to God — in awestruck and reverent fear. Our reverent and awestruck fear of the Lord and His holiness will be the difference maker in our lives now, at the end of this age and for eternity.
God is the creator and sustainer of all creation. Nothing exists whether seen or unseen that originated apart from God. God is love. His love is an all-knowing love. His love is an all-consuming love. His love is a fully committed love. God is good. God defines good. God is the standard for good. If we took all of God’s attributes and rolled them into one word — the one word that would embody all of God’s attributes without compromise would be Good. But the angles in heaven do not cry out sustainer, sustainer, sustainer; they don't cry out love, love, love; nor do the angels in heaven cry out good, good, good. The thing that has all of the heavenly host awestruck without ceasing is God’s holiness. God’s character is best and most accurately described as Holy, Holy Holy.
Looking back at the top news making events of 2011, seven years seems like a lifetime ago. Arab Spring. Protests spread throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa fueled by unemployed young people, frustration with longtime leaders and corrupt police — leading to the overthrow of government leaders, in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Osama bin Laden. The mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans was shot and killed by Navy SEALs. Occupy Wall Street. Protesting income inequality and corporate abuse, activists camped out near New York's Wall Street. The movement spread throughout the US and even spilled into other countries. Someone Like You by Adele, Look At Me Now by Chris Brown, You Are More by Tenth Avenue North and I Smile by Kurt Franklin all led the music charts. And TPC held its first public gathering at the Fels Planetarium in Philadelphia, with over 300 people braving torrential downpours to witness the birth of a new part of Jesus’ Church. And here we are in 2018, in the midst of some of the most divided times in our country and the world. In the midst of it all Jesus is crying out to us, just as He has to every generation before — Follow Me. Acknowledge Me. Ask of Me. These commands are timeless and eternal and they are just on time and for this very moment.
God the Father is the source and giver of all the goodness that fills this earth, both seen and unseen. There’s never been one thing good in this earth or any where else in creation at any time in the past, present or future that didn’t originate in God the Father. Apart from God, there wouldn't be anything good. God alone is the source of all good things. “God is good” means — God defines good; God is the source of good; God is the only One good. Unwavering trust in God is rooted in knowing, believing and submitting to this truth.
The millennial generation has grown weary of organized religion but their zeal for God can be ignited if they have a proper view of Jesus.
God is good. This simple statement is going to take us weeks to unpack and even longer to work into the depths of our soul. On the surface, every follower of Jesus believes God is good. But if we pull back the curtain, there are times and sometimes extended periods of time, when we struggle to see and embrace God’s goodness. But temporary struggles do not change the unwavering, eternal truth — God is good and God defines good.
As of the1st quarter of 2018, Facebook had 2.19 billion active users. YouTube just reported 1 billion, and Instagram says it has 800 million active users. That’s nearly 4 billion people active on social media, as a regular part of their daily lives! What is it that drives us to publish our lives for the world to view? We all have an insatiable desire to be known. We all have an insatiable desire to be loved. We were designed by the God who knows all, for the God who knows all.
Two questions are at the heart of what it means to be human: Who are you Lord? Who am I? While there’s arguably more than one answer to these questions, none is more fundamentally true than — God is love and we are loved. Sadly, it’s possible to be so shaped and affected by the “love of man” that it keeps us from ever truly knowing and experiencing the love of God. God is love and His love is unlike any other “love” in all of creation. God’s love is an all-knowing love. God’s love is an all-consuming love. God’s love is a fully committed love.
There are two questions that everyone on the face of this planet has asked and continues to ask at different times and in different ways, throughout the course of life. “Who are you God?” and “Who am I?” In fact, these questions are at the heart of what it means to be human. We fully become who we are as we come to know who God is. We are made in His image and we bear His likeness.
Today, we recognize Pentecost and celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit that was given to the Church. When this was done in Acts 2, the Church also received the ability to prophesy, but many of us don't realize the power we have in the Spirit to do this. The first step is to pursue love.
There’s a study resource that lists over 950 names and titles for God found in the first and second testaments of the bible. Of all the names, there’s only one that God didn’t give to Himself. This one name is given to God by an immigrant, a woman who’s an enslaved surrogate mother. This is a person who considers herself invisible. It’s not likely any of us have experienced being an enslaved, immigrant who’s carried a child for someone else. But we’ve all experienced feeling invisible, alone or painfully unappreciated in our lives. There are times and sometimes extended periods of time, where we feel invisible — nothing more than the assignment that’s due, the money that’s needed, the hands that fix the meal or the car, or the ride that get’s them to practice. Today is the day we come to know El Roi — The God who sees you.
Jesus is the God of the comeback. He comes back for us over and over again throughout our lives, resurrecting us into the joys and realities of our place in the heavenly realm. Jesus will ultimately return at a pre-appointed time, known only by the Father, to resurrect creation into a new heaven and a new earth. That day is one we look forward to when we’ve experienced Him coming back for us many times before, that great and dreadful day — When Jesus comes.
While none are immune from trauma as a result of the fall of mankind, the very fall of mankind and the consequences it yields in our lives were inspired by the enemy’s attempt to thwart the plans and promises of God. God not only comes back for us or even in spite of us; He comes back because of us and the plans and promises He has for us.
Jonah thrown overboard into the sea… Mary pregnant out of wedlock… Paul watching and holding coats as Stephen is stoned to death. There are traumatic accounts throughout the bible. Our attention is often on the miracles, the deliverances, the hand and plan of God in those moments. But we need to identify with the human experiences. Seeing the accounts from the eyes of those portrayed, provides a window to see God in a new light. The God of the Comeback, resurrects us from life’s traumas, restoring our souls and giving us His new life.
In Christ we can expect to comeback from every disappointment and loss we experience. As born again believers we are in the grip of His resurrection life. No matter what we experience here, it does not catch God by surprise. Disappointments and loss, as real as they are are not terminal for those who learn to live in resurrected life, anchored in the God of the comeback. He is able to resurrect us from the disappointments and losses we will experience in this world.
When Jesus came back from the dead in Jerusalem over two-thousand years ago, it changed everything. His followers moved the day they gathered for worship from Saturday to Sunday. Every weekly gathering became a celebration of His resurrection and their new lives in Him. Although our annual celebration of Resurrection Sunday has passed, His resurrection continues to be the one reality that changes every aspect of our lives. Jesus’ resurrection is the basis for every true comeback we will ever experience in this life, including our own physical resurrection out of it. God of the comeback is about learning to live — In the Grip of Resurrection Life.
The life-altering reality of Jesus’ resurrection is lost and leaves us stuck in unbelief if we don’t first realize this world and everything in it is crying out for resurrection. We’ve all found and will find ourselves in places we never expected to be. We’ve all learned and will learn how it feels to be overwhelmingly disappointed, discouraged and hopeless in this world. Jesus' resurrection gives us the courage to no longer run from the tombs and graveyards that fill this world and our lives. His resurrection life lifts us out of this world and restores us to the Father’s divine power and intentions.
God has called The Perfecting Church to be an extension of His counter-culture Kingdom in this generation. Where there is hate, we will love. Where others are fleeing, we are going. Where there is great need, we will be great provision. Where God’s rule is being rejected and made low, we will submit and lift Him high. We enter 2018 expecting to be used by God as His Difference Makers.
A people who are captivated by the truth that "God is" become an uncontainable people. Nothing is impossible to them and nothing is impossible through them. Those who have come, and continually come to realize, "they are" because "He is" are unstoppable. He is I Am. He is Yahweh, the Lord of all. He is the Difference Maker!