Sometimes as I simply try to step back away from everything, as if to remove myself from everything that I know, and try to look at all that I know without any preconceived notions or ideas about how things should be, a question arises that I think we have asked in personal relationships often and hardly ever in relationships with the rest of our Communities. Continue reading “Afraid to Love?” »
In many conversations with folks I have often said that my hearts desire is to see our Community become a Community of Faith. People will look at me strange when I make such a statement. I’d like to explain very briefly what I mean.
Regardless of the worlds various ethnicities, religions, sects, denominations, cults, divisions, just almost anyway you can possibly be divided into a “specialist” group of people good or bad, Jesus speaks of only two groups. Gods chosen, the Jews, and the rest of the world, the Gentiles. Continue reading “Community of Faith” »
This past weekend we ended the series Freedom on the fact that in Jesus we have the freedom to be bold in risk! The basis for this message was found in Acts 4:13-22 where Peter and John had healed a crippled man and the Leaders and Elders were opposing their actions and threatened them not speak in the name of Jesus anymore. The KEY to this passage was that Peter and John’s opposition recognized their fruit and it was because of their fruit that they were not killed or imprisoned!
However, that was only the beginning! Peter and John and the others did not shrink in the midst of their resistance but rather shifted into a FULL COURT PRESS!
I want to encourage you as a believer that now is the time for a FULL COURT PRESS! You know what I like about the biblical version of this? Even though they “cranked it up”, they let God do the cranking! I think sometimes we are guilty of being so excited and determined that our FULL COURT PRESS becomes a contest between the will of Men rather than the will of God! I’m not saying don’t crank it up…by all means now is the time! But let’s do it in the power of the Holy Spirit rather than the power of the will of man.
Reading further down in Acts 4 we see a perfect example of what it means to trust God for the impossible! Their reaction to the men who opposed them was a HOLY PRESS! They didn’t go after them in their own might but rather turned to God in prayer and said, God, you take care of this and empower us to be bold in your calling. That is exactly what God did! But the impossibility of what they prayed in Acts 4:29-31 is the AUDACITY that I encourage you as a believer to also tap! Ordinary men prayed for the extraordinary power of God and as impossible as that may seem, that is exactly what God gave them.
It is time for a FULL COURT PRESS! Believe God for the impossible!
