We all face suffering in some way. It’s not a question of if we will face suffering, but how we will face suffering. How we look at trials will decide how suffering makes us look. It comes down to perspective.
Pentecostal Liturgies: Provision
We are over-worked, over-medicated, under-rested, and over-worried; always hungry, never content. When we seek God and His provision, we find contentment. We find rest in our souls and freedom in our lives. God frees us from slavery to “more”. Matthew 6:25-34 is an expansion of the Lord’s Prayer. When we pray a prayer of provision, we are making a request from God. How do we pray for provision?
Pentecostal Liturgies: Pentecost
Pentecostal Liturgies: Declarations
Key To Community
The world has this idea that we need people who are the same as us for community. It is problematic because it doesn’t make us more connected. It makes us more isolated. We want community on demand.
Real community is different-- It’s diverse, unique, different, difficult, uncomfortable, and it requires sacrifice and obedience. In a world longing for community, Jesus gives us the key. Those that humble themselves before the Lord and passionately practice His love will build a strong community.
Hope And Healing: Contend For Others
Hope And Healing: The Power Of Purity
Hope And Healing: Redefining Fatherhood
Hope and Healing: You Are A Child Of God
Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we have a greater and more secured identity. The more we find our identity in Him as children of God, the more secure we will be in our life. We are able to resist temptation, experience a deeper love, and endure hardship with an eternal perspective when our security is in our God given identity.
Hope And Healing: The Resurrecting King
Exodus: God's Plans Are Greater
Moses is going to Pharaoh, the most powerful leader, with a message of liberation for the Hebrew slaves that Pharaoh holds. Moses easily could be killed because of his past and because of his message. God will use what is in Moses’ hand—a staff—to demonstrate miraculous signs and wonders. Aaron will be the spokesman for Moses.
Exodus: Where Is God?
As the Israelites are crying out to God for freedom from slavery in Egypt, God sees, hears, and knows their suffering and has a plan to free them. Moses is part of that plan. God calls Moses to be the one to lead the Israelites out of slavery. Moses believes that God has called the wrong person for the job. God dispels Moses’ doubt and excuses by using what is in Moses’ hand right now—a staff—to be part of the miracle God will perform. Moses is going back to Egypt in God’s authority and power, not his own.
Exodus: The Desert Experience
We often think of desert seasons as punishment because it feels like the in-between gap between a calling and fulfillment. Often the desert brings discouragement. Some things you cannot learn in the palace where there is comfort and fullness, but only in the desert where it is dry, difficult, and desolate. In the desert, we learn to be led by God.
Exodus: Who Is God?
God Never Said That: “God Helps Those Who Help Themselves.”
The idea of “God helps those who help themselves” is not only not in the Bible, but it comes from the marriage of a protestant ethic of blessings and a modern economic theory of capitalism success and leaves us feeling like we have to work to earn God’s favor, God’s love, and God’s blessings. The truth is that there is nothing we can do to get God to love us more or less than He already does. He loves us and he wants to help us because it’s who He is.
God Never Said That: “He Won’t Give You More Than You Can Handle.”
God Never Said That: "Do What Makes You Happy.”
God Never Said That: “It Doesn’t Matter What You Believe as Long as You are Sincere.”
All people, not just Christians, are drawn to the sacred—sacred things, sacred places, sacred acts—because we love the feeling the sacred stirs deep within us. There is a desire in our culture to be good and to be sincere, but there is also a difference between sacred things and sacrifice, and all religions are not the same.
