FOUNDATIONS: PT 5
The purpose of Pentecost in Acts 2 and how it connects to key passages in the Old Testament. Pentecost wasn’t a random event, God had an agenda to linked all the way back to the Tower of Babel and his plan to reclaim the earth for himself.
We also started a discussion on the spiritual gift of tongues and what exactly was happening in Acts 2 compared to the tongues that Paul speaks about in 1 Corinthians.
FOUNDATIONS: PT 4
So often, spiritual gifts are abused because they are being used from an unhealthy source, the false self. In order to walk in the authority and power of Jesus we need to establish our true identity and learn to recognize our false identity that is at work to sabotage the purposes and plans of God for our lives.
FOUNDATIONS: PT 3
1 Corinthians 13 is not a chapter for wedding ceremonies, it is a foundational understanding of the nature of God. It is a description of who God is and what his baseline demeanour is toward us. Love is the essential foundation for how to engage in the spiritual gifts of the Spirit properly. Without it, we’re just a noisy gong.
FOUNDATIONS: PT 2 — The Holy Spirit Brings The Kingdom In Us
The Holy Spirit is not only given to us to live in us as a deposit guaranteeing our salvation, He also wants to bring the kingdom of God in us, in the places within our heart and soul, our thoughts and emotions and behaviours that are resistant to the will and desire of God. In Heaven, God’s will is always done but in order for His kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven we need to be willing to yield the places of our will to his will. There are places in all of us where the kingdom is absent because it is being blocked by our will which exercises its own control and power. One of the foundational works of the Holy Spirit is to bring the kingdom in these areas of our inner life.
FOUNDATIONS: PT 1 - The Holy Spirit And The Kingdom Of God
The central message of Jesus and the apostles was the arrival of the kingdom of God. After his resurrection Luke tells us in Acts 1 that Jesus spent 40 days on earth proving that he rose from the dead and teaching them about the kingdom of God. In this first week we will discover what the kingdom is and the truth that the Holy Spirit wants to bring the kingdom to bear in us so that he can express the kingdom through us. The danger is that we can perceive the kingdom as a threat to our pride, security, comfort, need for control, insecurities etc.
James: Pt 10 (5:12-20)
In this last passage of James, the author shifts gears dramatically to talk about the power of prayer for healing and our need to walk in the light if we want to be able to access the power of God. James talks about confession and the role of secret sin as a possible block to prayer for healing.
Easter Sunday
Before Jesus was resurrected from the dead on that first Easter Sunday, he was walking in his resurrection identity. Four days after one of his closest friends, Lazarus, had died Jesus went to visit his friends (Lazarus’ sisters) who were grieving, and into the middle of their grieving and pain he makes a declaration about his identity saying “I am the resurrection and the life.” In that moment Jesus is communicating something powerful and profound about his identity and nature. His statement “I am” is not only an identity statement, it is a statement of presence in the present. Jesus is calling Mary and Martha out of the past (and the disappointment of what he didn’t do for them) and also out of the future (what might happen) and into the present. I am here now and I am the resurrection and life. Jesus is calling us today out of a life of bondage to the pain and disappointments of the past and out of a life dominated by anxiety, fear and our need to know and control the future. Jesus is inviting us to live with him and receive his resurrection power in the present.
James: Pt 9 (4:13-5:11)
In this passage James has some direct and confrontational things to say about planning for the future, our ideas of control and what it means to release our lives into the hands of God instead of tight-fisted, white knuckle living.
James: Pt 8 (4:1-13)
James: Pt 7 (3:13-18)
In this part we examine James 3:13-18 with another searing pastoral challenge from James that has powerful application for us today as well. James continues to press in toward the source of our destructive speech patterns, and the source lies in our mind and heart. James establishes that there are two sources for wisdom, one is from above (God) and the other from below (worldly/demonic). Once again James isn’t coaching us in behaviour management, he is challenging us to examine the source that feeds our heart and our need to cultivate the soil of our heart so that we can plant the right kind of seed there.