“Spiritually speaking we need to be prepared, we need to be grounded…
The antidote to being “lovers of pleasure” is that we would be “lovers of God”… that all things would be looked at through the prism of the love of Christ…
Please be weary of spiritual fads, and new doctrines…
Heartbreakingly, no matter how faithful the witness, some will turn away from the truth wanting to hear what they want to hear… This for me is one of the hardest parts of ministry… when in love, truth is given, and left on the table… There are a lot of very clever voices are sewing a lot of very clever half-truths and deceptions…
- We see false teaching out of the corner of our eye, then the little thing tries to take over the whole house…
*Only briefly touched on Sunday Morning…
I am going to be specific, it’s not my desire to needlessly offend, but it’s my responsibility to seek to protect us from the traps of the enemy…
Hyper Word of Faith…
- I believe in faith and the power of prayer, and the power of our words, but it can reach a tipping point it moves into superstition and our words become magical…
- Hyper word of faith is great when our will lines up with His… but sometimes it doesn’t and our heartfelt desires go unmet, what then? Has God become deaf to me, is there something lacking in my faith, etc… Sometimes there are other factors at play, free will being the biggest one…
- And when this idea falls in on itself it leaves people broken hearted, doubting their faith, and blaming themselves… so many hearts have been broken because they made no room for the sovereignty of God and the freedom of man…
Hyper grace… I believe in the grace of God, and receive it daily… I have no clue the limits of His grace…
- Grace is too often used as a tool for dismissing the transformative work of Christ… an easy believe-ism… Grace was never meant to be a license to sin… Grace gives us freedom from sin…
Hyper law… I believe in a crucified life, and strive to die more and more to self… we are to be wholly dedicated to God…
- From the early days of the church people have been trying to add to salvation… Judaizes and others did it… Some Pentecostal groups believe you must speak in tongues to be saved…
Hyper Word of Faith, Grace, Law or whatever the trap is; the only way to guard your heart is to be grounded in Him and truth and be in community… *
All these things make me angry… it’s unjust… to see the beauty of the person and the work of Christ twisted… and because of that people walk in weakened faith, or will leave the faith altogether…
Just as Timothy received grace, through that grace, God is calling him to share it… but this wasn’t to be a one-person job…
- The truth of God’s word, lived out by example, passed onto others that would then pass them onto others… God’s calling us to community… and involvement… along with being grounded…
So pastor what do I do with this, how do I stay/ become grounded:
- The basics, stay in the Word, Prayer & Worship… The basic idea of living in communion with God…
- Stay connected to the church body… community
- Get involved and invested…
- Eventually plug into home small groups…
The simple point is this, we need each other, we need to be pouring into each other (2 Tim 2:2)…
- We need to challenge each other in the word and how we live out the Gospel within our lives…
- We need to encourage each other in our low places…”