As God is three in one–God, Jesus, Holy Spirit–so, too, is humanity. We are created with a body, a soul, and a spirit. All three parts are sanctified when we accept Christ as our Savior. We commune spirit to Spirit with God through the relationship established by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and resurrection from the dead. It is in our spirit that we feel God the most. However, there are days when we don’t feel particularly spiritual. That is when we engage all three parts to seek God again.

All things of God engage all three aspects of who we are. The human body struggles to submit to the spirit. The soul is the battle ground where we battle our broken sin nature with its corrupted thoughts and propensity to lean towards the ungodly with the new nature God gave us upon Salvation. These two aspects of who we are, the parts we sometimes feel is what makes us less godly, are parts that have also been sanctified by God. And when we feel less spiritual, we engage these two parts to stir the spirit: We go to our God Zone.

The God Zone is prayer. We pray. We physically take ourselves to a place of solitude. We pour out our souls before God. We pray and seek Him; we seek His will. And our spirits are revived. God said in Joel that He
would pour His spirit out on all people, and they would Prophesy! In the God Zone, we engage that gifting. All three aspects of humanity come together in prophesy. The spirit stirs–whether upon hearing bad news or seeing something tragic or whatever else–and the body and soul engage.

Prophesy is speaking out truth into your world or into the worlds of others. You literally speak. The power of God manifests in speech. God spoke and the world came into being. When we speak, we change our worlds. Good or bad; believer or non-believer; as long as you have faith in what you are saying, it will happen. This principle goes across the board. Imagine what would happen if you align your words and belief with God’s Word? The Word of God is the Power of God. When we align ourselves with His Word and speak HIS truths into our worlds, great things happen. What He promises comes to pass.

When you speak His truths over your world, your world is changed. You can speak His truths over the worlds of your family and friends, over your situations, over your finances, over everything! That is prophecy. Speaking into the future changes the future for the better! Speaking GOD into your future opens the doors for HIM to do what He does best: Be Awesome! He will go above and beyond your expectations! So, speak out in faith! Believe it! Engage your body, soul, and spirit, and let God move.

Today is Father’s Day, but I would like to call it “Fathering Day”. Do you know why? Just because you have children, it does not make you a father. Get your children to tell you how you did in the parenting field. It might not have gone how you thought it did. Your children have a completely different view on things.
The biggest thing in parenting is discipline. Don’t be too strict, but do not be too lax, either. There is a balance between the two. Discipline realistically. You should let your children make decisions for themselves, but teach them what they should do, first, and warn them about what is out there and what could happen should they get themselves stuck in it.

Throughout all of Paul’s letters, he tells the churches to be like Christ, however, in verses sixteen and seventeen, he tells the Corinthian church that he is their spiritual father, and that they should imitate him. He brings correction into the here and now, telling them to do as he does, not as Christ did in the past. The Bible doesn’t do the hard stuff for us; we do it. We show our children how to live by what we do. If your children see you treating your wife or husband badly, that is how they will treat their spouse. Take responsibility for your life and the actions you take.

There is a difference between instructing and fathering. Fathering requires heart. Do not only tell your children what to do, and how to live their lives. Love them. Affection is modeled. If you do not show the love you have for your children, then they will have a hard time farther down the line, when they try to show affection of their own. Speak well into your children’s lives. They want it. Be honest and real; make sure that they know that correction comes out of love.

Father’s Day is either the best day, or the worst day. Many people have horrible memories of their fathers. Many fathers out there are either missing or abusive. However, the greatest redemptive moment is when you use your mess to help someone else who is going through it. There is a point in time, and it becomes easier to forgive and forget the hurt and pain that was caused to you.

Never forget that your children are watching you, and that what you do in life will become apparent in their own lives. Be real with them. Show them that they are loved, and make sure that they never forget it.

There is a big difference between being a believer and a disciple. Most people probably don’t stop and really think about this. Most people probably picture a bearded man in sandals when the hear the word disciple. What’s more, most people probably tend to think that the end of their faith journey culminates in their belief, in their salvation moment. A lifetime spent away from God pivots upon the events of one morning, wherein a person’s heart becomes inexplicably soft—by a pointed sermon or a moment of worship or even the power withheld in the very name of Jesus himself—they respond to that altar call, confess their sins, give their life to Christ, and then for many, they’re done. Not so for the disciple.

Getting saved by Jesus is the easiest task one could ever hope to perform. One doesn’t have to accomplish anything by their own cleverness or effort. One doesn’t need to do anything period. Except surrender their pride and accept the gift. It is, after all, the Holy Spirit who is doing the saving anyway. It’s his work to his glory; not yours. Consider it this way: if salvation were the goal for humanity, if it alone was the charge of the Great Commission, then Scripture would read, “Go into all the world and save people.” Instead it reads, “make disciples of all nations.” Disciples, unlike Christians, are not born. They are made.

Concerning the passage from Matthew above, before the charge to his disciples to go make more disciples, Jesus commands the remaining eleven to go to “the mountain” in Galilee. Scholars have debated to which Galilean mountain he directed them. Some have argued that it was perhaps Mt. Carmel, where Elijah slew the false prophets of Baal. Others have suggested Mt. Table. I personally believe that it was Mt. Hermon, a coastal mountain overlooking Caesarea Philippi, where Jesus had once taken his disciples and proclaimed “I will build my church” (Matthew 16: 13-20). It is this same mountain that Peter, James, John, and Jesus ascend in Matthew 17, where the Lord appears transfigured and meets with Moses and Elijah. Mt. Hermon is, in short, a significant site to the disciples, and thus likely the one mentioned in this week’s passage.

So here Jesus takes all eleven disciples and, overlooking the pagan colony of Caesarea Philippi and all the sinners within, he commands, “Go and make disciples of all the nations.” What, then, is the difference between the saved and the disciples? For one thing, discipleship is necessarily beyond salvation. It’s the next, big step in one’s faith walk. Again, being saved is easy; becoming a disciple, on the other hand, takes work. It takes, according to this passage, first being baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now, this naturally constitutes an actual physical water baptism by which one publicly and symbolically demonstrates their physical death and rebirth in Christ, but it also suggests that we are to be baptized in the name, or, in other words, immersed in the spirit of God. God has a hand in our salvation, to be sure, but He also guides us toward discipleship after He finally gets His hands on our lives.

We must get out of His way so that He may do so, however. One must never underestimate the power of his own will. As C.S. Lewis once suggested, the spirit of God “cannot ravish. He can only woo.” So if the God of Heaven, who merely spoke the cosmos into existence, can approach the door of your spirit but cannot (or rather, will not) force His way through, then we can conclude that a man’s will is a strangely powerful thing. So to become a disciple, finally, we must allow God to take our hand and lead us deeper into Himself. Once this happens, we’ll begin to feel convicted about our sin. We’ll begin to actually want to spend time in prayer, in worship, and in the Word. Getting saved, you see, cleanses our spirit but doesn’t change our bad habits or attitudes. Going deeper into God’s teachings and truths is what ultimately transforms our lives from believers to disciples. We begin to talk differently, act differently. We begin, in short, to live our faith as well as believe it.

A challenge facing Christianity today is that we have a great many Christians and too few disciples. We need more disciples in the kingdom, more Christians walking out, not just believing in, their faith. If the original eleven disciples multiplied and, in time, transformed the the Roman Empire from a land of unrestrained paganism to the site of the early Church, how much more of an impact will a kingdom of disciples have today? Certainly have we more than eleven disciples at the present moment. Our focus, then, as a Church should be to foster a community of discipleship, and not belief only.

In reflecting on our ongoing discussion about the power of God, a theme that you hopefully have seen emerging in recent weeks is the fact that nearly every breakthrough and miracle that we will experience in our Christian walk will require a faithful request or else some sort of bold initiation on our part. I have said it before: “God will use you to work your own miracles.” Scripture confirms this. Two weeks ago, we learned about the woman who was healed because she waded through a crowd just to touch the hem of Jesus’ robe (Mark 5:24-34). The two blind men in Matthew’s Gospel similarly had to call out to Jesus before having their sight returned to them (Matthew 20: 29-34).

This week’s story is a little different. It’s a little shocking, really. It starts off ordinarily enough—if one could ever really refer to Christ’s miracles as “ordinary”—beginning on the heels of yet another ‘self-initiated’ miracle, where a Roman officer has just offered a bold analysis of authority, thereby impressing Jesus and healing his slave (Luke 7:1-10). After this episode, Jesus travels the ten miles from Capernaum to Nain. It is here where this week’s story begins.

Jesus, as you can probably imagine, has garnered quite the following by this point in his ministry. He’s healed leapers (Luke 17:11-19); he’s cast out demons (Matthew 8:28-34); he’s fed the 5,000 (Matthew 14:13-21) and restored the sight to the blind through some rather unusual means (John 9: 1-34). What’s more, he’s probably earned the reputation as a particularly cheeky prophet at that. By now he’s worked a month’s worth of Sabbath days (thereby incensing the local Pharisaical devotees), and even managed to get kicked out of his hometown of Nazareth. Indeed, controversy tends to spiral in his wake. That is all to say that this young rabbi was likely to have a crowd of disciples, onlookers, enthusiasts and scrutinizers surrounding him wherever he went.

So on the road to Nain this entourage, all abuzz with the witnessing of miracles and ten miles of teaching, meets up with a crowd with an altogether different timbre. The crowd whom Jesus encounters in Nain is a funeral procession accompanying a widow who has just lost her only son. This is a rare and terrible blow for any single mother, but even more so for a woman in this time and culture, who would’ve lost not only her last blood relative but her financial safety net as well. She, in effect, has lost everything. At the front of this procession would likely have been a band of her peers wailing along with her in an act of demonstrative sisterhood.

These two crowds eventually meet—one craving life and the other mourning death. The emotional contrast could not be starker nor Jesus’ reaction more surprising. Upon witnessing this woman and intuiting her sad circumstances, he is moved to intervene. His intervention, however, is surprising in several ways. First, it is interesting to note that this woman, unlike the other stories mentioned above, does not ask for his intercession. Her dire worldview has probably become such that she is tired of the faithful and all their optimism. She’s stopped asking for miracles long ago. Her prayers, she tells herself, have not and will not be answered. She’s done. Jesus, though, spots her and calls to her, “Do not cry!” Authoritative. Curiously, Luke reports that his reaction was one of excessive compassion, though most of us are prone to intuit one’s yelling at a widow as an especially insensitive act. The thing to catch here is that Jesus is refusing to agree with her situation, and is instead provoking her to think otherwise. Tough love, some might call it.

But Jesus isn’t finished. He never is. He goes a step beyond speaking and moves to action. As Luke reports, he walks into this crowd, the death crowd, and tells the boy to “get up.” Equally authoritative. And out of an equal compassion. The boy, as you have read, does exactly that. Another miracle has been worked and witnessed.

As an aside, it is crucial to recognize that becoming a Christian is not a one-way ticket to The Good Life. Even after that altar call your day to day existence will more than likely remain a challenging endeavor and your obstacles will still be there where you left them. So let’s be frank, the Christian walk is not paved in bricks of gold. What Kingdom living does offer you is not only a Savior and Redeemer, but what’s more, a community of people who will speak into your world encouragement and, when necessary, conviction. They will become your brothers, sisters, friends, and mentors. It is the crowd round you, and not a plastic smile, that will help to keep your feet moving when life becomes nearly unlivable, and in this circle you will find hope. And Jesus will of course be there as well, teaching and affirming you every step of the way.

What Jesus has effectively done in this story (and beyond) is shaken death by its collar. Perhaps you require a similar ‘shaking.’ Perhaps you have responded to the wailing of the death crowd and decided long ago to tuck tail and walk in their ways—out of fear, or despondency, or faithlessness. Jesus is perhaps calling to you those same tough, provocative words: Stop crying and get up! And perhaps the local church will be the last thing, maybe the only thing, that can help get you back on your feet.

This woman’s situation was possibly the worst. In accordance to Jewish Law, she was completely shut off from society. She had no one in her life save for the doctors who were causing her grief. They would get her hopes up for healing, but she would only get worse and her hope would fall. Despair and solitude are a bad combination. This combination makes room for bitterness, anger, and thoughts that lead to a twisted, darker view of the world. She was completely alone.

Then, she heard that Jesus was coming. Jesus was on His way through town in order help someone else. Usually, Jesus would show up without any one knowing; this time, word came ahead of Him. And she had heard about Him. Now, she has a choice. She can either adhere to the Jewish Law and stay at home, away from society and from the people who were constantly letting her down. Or, she could muster up her faith one more time and break the rules by seeking out Jesus. To venture out was a danger, for she could not hide her disease; she could not hide that she was unclean; but that fact did not stop her. Her faith was stirred when she heard He was coming. Faith comes when the Word is spoken.

The woman came to an interesting conclusion in verse 28. She thinks that if she can “just touch His robe,” she’ll be healed. Why? There is no Biblical mandate stating that the robes of a Rabbi are holy and have healing powers. She could have come to this conclusion because of the rules influencing her world. An unclean woman is forbidden from touching a Holy Man. So, in following the rules, perhaps she thinks just touching His robe will do the trick.

OR…she remembers the Word of God and has received a revelation. Isaiah 6 describes God as sitting high and lifted up with the train of His robe filling the Temple. There are several Biblical references to God’s robe and His glory. Maybe, she knew this. Maybe, she believed Jesus was the Messiah and how He is different from any other. She believes what she hears and decides to take a chance and break the rules. She fights through the crowd–the doubts, the fears, the opinions of the world–and reaches out to Him and grabs His robe…

And Jesus feels it. He immediately stops what He is doing and asks, “Who touched me?” Everyone around Him is like “We all are touching you!” But Jesus knows. This was different. The woman approaches Him, falls at His feet, and tells Him her story. And He listens intently. That is the nature of Jesus. When someone reaches out to Him, He stops everything and focuses on the person, wanting to know their story. Nothing else matters save this one person.

This woman had lived her life in rejection and pain, yet, in hearing the Word, she stirred her faith. She worked her miracle; fighting all doubts and fears to reach Him. And Jesus listened to her. Then, He completed the miracle. In front of everyone, He says, “Daughter, your faith has healled you.” He elevates her back into the Family of God by calling her “Daughter” and seals the deal started by her faith.

Faith is the key. It stirs a person to go the bold. Position yourself, work the miracle, and GO THE BOLD!

Matthew 5:13 & 14 (NLT): “You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless. “You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden.

Arrange your life around the House. That is a concept that is difficult for most Christians to understand. Mainstream Christians have a habit of keeping the “God-thing” in their life separate from the “life-thing.” Isaiah is urging people to live IN the “God-thing.” The Prophet Haggai urged the People of Israel in much the same way. He urged them to repriortize their lives so that the House of God was in the center of all they did. But to those of us who understand and live this principle, we see the blessings.

Yes, it is difficult sometimes to combat the mistakes and overall bad history of the church when living in the world. It is almost too easy to keep the “God-thing” for Sundays. In doing this, we miss the message God is sending to us: A healthy Church is the greatest force on earth! Church is God’s business. He is building His church to be the mightiest force this world has ever seen! Now, it is understood that there is no such thing as a perfect church because there are no perfect people to run them. But if you are willing to invest into the church, you will reap the blessings.

Church is engagement. That is a lost factor in this day and age when people who have been offended by the Church stay at home to watch church on TV or listen to it in podcasts. There is no accountability, no relationship, no interaction. Church is all those things! Offense comes as a chance for us to push through and breakthrough! To conquer mountains in our lives and defeat giants standing in our way! Church is accountability; it is the opportunity to choose good over evil and see where those choices take us.

And when the people of God come into that healthy church, then ” nations will see your righteousness. World leaders will be blinded by your glory.” Matthew 5:14 says that we are “the light of the world.” The world is dying. Everyone born into this world is dying. We are the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world.” Salt is used to preserve; Light is used to reveal! Suddenly, the darkness is chased away to reveal what is truly around us.

The Light is not about us. When you look directly at light, you hurt your eyes. You can’t look directly at the sun without doing damage to you eyesight. We are a light to the world; they are not to look at us (so beware of pride!); they are simply to see the truth when the light comes on. When the light comes on, the world changes!

Notice how Jesus used two different words in Matthew 5. He said “salt of the earth“ and “light of the world.” Salt, as previously stated, is meant to preserve. We dig deep into the earth–into the darkest depths of people’s lives where there is pain. We rub the salt in deep, preserving them by giving them hope when all seems lost, help when no one else is there, encouragement when they lose faith, love in a cruel world; we stay in the depths and we preserve!

The light has been there the whole time, but they can’t see it. You can’t force them to see it. Yet, we keep bringing the light. Sometimes, they catch a glimpse and it angers them, so they lash out. But keep holding on. Because, soon, God moves and the light is seen. Their world is illuminated around them, and they see the truth! The truth is revealed in the light. The light is the revelation that leads them to God, the source of all light.

So, be aware of your affect on the world around you. Don’t be afraid to invest in people. When you care, you can change the direction of a person’s life. When the light comes on, you can see where you are going. If the destination is destruction, you can change your direction now that you see that there is another path: God! “nations will see your righteousness. World leaders will be blinded by your glory.” The only hope the world has is in you and I preserving them long enough for them to see the light! Dial the “self” down and make it about someone else. We are going to change the world!

This is a hard story to read, especially for those of us who are “Make it happen” people. It is almost too easy to look at this story and get angry with Jesus; how could he not tell Mary to get up and help her sister who is obviously working so hard? It is natural to feel more for poor Martha, who is running around doing all these things to make sure Jesus is comfortable in her home. The answer is a matter of perspective.

Perspective is a matter of the heart. Both good and bad experiences in life can alter our perspective of the world around us. Good experiences make the world seem bright. You feel like you can do anything. God is easy to trust and His people are easy to get along with. Yet, in the same way, bad expereinces make life hard, dark, and unfair. Suddenly, God is far away and uncaring and His people make you angry. Church is like a washingmachine. You get tossed up against people of different makes and colors, and if you heart perspective is in the negative, these people will make you angry.

Perspective has a lasting effect and can alter the course of your life. Take, for example, the spies who scouted the Promise Land when Moses was leading the people of Israel verses the spies who scouted the Promised Land when Joshua was leading.Both groups saw the same thing, but the first group spoke negatively of what they saw. Their perspective was one of defeat. They said it could not be done, so they never conquored the land. However, Joshua’s spies came back with a positive look on the situation. They knew God was with them. They said it could be done. And it was. Joshua led the people in taking the land. They had the Heavenly perspective.

Heaven’s perspective is the true reality. But how can that be right? What we see around us is reality, right? Wrong! God’s perspective, though contradictory to the world’s and baffeling to the human mind, is the true reality. God sees that it can be done. God sees the good in the moment. God sees the oppurtunity. And so can we if we allow ourselves to be aligned with God’s will. God’s will is written in His word. We align ourselves with it by studying His word. When we do this, suddenly the circumstances of the world stop effecting our perspective. Suddenly, we see things thorugh the Heavenly perspective; God’s true reality.

Back to Mary and Martha. Martha’s perspective of life was altered by her thinking. She wanted control of her world. She wanted to do everything and be involved in everything and make everything perfect. Her children were in line. Her husband did as told. She was the leading women’s minister in her church. She had it all! So, when Jesus came to town, she naturally opened her house to Him. She cleaned until her house shown. She worked hard to put together a great meal that would display her cooking proess. She made sure that everyone was comfortable in her beautiful home. Everything was in order…

…Except for Mary. Mary, her younger sister, was sitting at Jesus’ feet! To Martha, that was disgraceful! No self respecting woman of faith should ever sit at the feet of a man! She was furious! Didn’t her siste rsee her running around doing all this work? She should be helping! In an indignant huff, Martha demands that Jesus tell Mary to help her. She would show her sister how things were to be done. Service was what a woman of faith did, and Jesus would back her up on this!

But Jesus didn’t. He did something that threw Martha’s perfect order out of balance. He publically reprimands her. He tells her that Mary has chosen the right thing, and He would not take it from her. At first read, that seems really harsh. Why would He say that? That’s so mean! But, when the perspective is shifted, His true heart is revealled. He’s saying to her, “Calm down. Stop bustling about and come sit with me for a while. I want to see you.” Jesus was jealous for her company. He wanted to hang out with her, not watch her run around the house in a frenzy trying to impress Him with her order. He wanted her to let go.

You seem Mary chose to be teachable. God wants us to be teachable. Being teachable means we are open to God. We allow Him to come in and shift our hearts. He aligns us to His will. When we let go of our lives, nothing holds us back from following Him. Our pasts no longer dictate to us who we are and what we can do. Our God is a BIG GOD! He is a SUPERNATURAL GOD! He CAN DO ANYTHING! And we can do anything when we align ourselves with His will which is written in His word!

The cloud is the presence of God, but God was also using Moses, the man, to lead His people. It is a continually evolving pattern where the people moved when the Tabernacle, the Cloud, and Moses moved. They kept it as the hub of their lives. They knew its importance. Today, we need to continue moving forward as believers in the House of God. We need to understand that God;s message has not changed from the times of Moses to today.

When we gather together in the House, we become something that is very strong. We become something that can guide those around us out of trouble. If you have a bad day, the House will be bale to help you. Connection is crucial. The human heart yearns for connection to something more. Connection to God and connection to the House answer that need. We look to each other, and we look to God.

When priorities begin to shift, the House tends to be forgotten. If you life needs work, cling to the House. Leaving the House due to trouble in life is the last thing you should do. Cling to God in trouble. Connection to the House is there for that reason. If your marriage needs work, connect! If your career needs work, connect! If your children need help, connect! The House of God is there for that very reason!

What does our church bring? It brings strength. It brings protection. It brings aid. It brings vision. It brings the Presence of God through great worship. And there is connection. No one was meant to walk this journey of life alone.

You can’t follow God if you can’t follow a man. Though this man is imperfect, God placed him in the position of Authority and charged him to lead His people. God chooses imperfect men to lead. We are asked to follow these imperfect people through faith in God and faith in the vision God has given these people. Perfect nullifies the need for faith. Imperfection leaves room for faith and growth. Faith stands alongside imperfection. Faith has to align with imperfection. There is no separating the two.

Our natural man rebels against authority. Authority let’s us down. Authority is imperfect. Authority is hard to follow. So we buck against it. And yet, despite how much authority has hurt us, God still calls us to submit in faith to that authority for which He has placed over us. Following the imperfect man requires us to step out in faith and believe in the path that has been set before us as a group. Rebellion stops movement. Submission in faith brings forward motion. And when the House moves together, anything is possible. And God blesses those who step out in faith behind the imperfect man.

Faith moves us forward. We follow God, we follow the imperfect man, and we move forward.

The foundation of discipleship is that we are connected like family. Being a believer has a different meaning than being a disciple. Being a disciple means instilling certain patterns of behavior in your life. Believers are born; disciples are made. Our act of faith gives us a re-birth, and we become a believer. But Jesus says in Mark 16 to go into the world and make disciples. You aren’t born with all of the things you need to be a fruitful person. You get those things from being nurtured, fed, cared for, taught and instructed. You need to learn by following those instructions. The process of growing a Christian (little Christ – one that can emulate Christ) is like raising a child. Once you become a mature believer, you can start to nurture and instruct others. We work hard to maintain a healthy environment so that when people are born into God’s family in this church, they can be healthy and grow.

If the new believer is born into a healthy environment, they will begin to grow. Pretty soon, that believer is going to start yearning and desiring more. The Apostle Paul talks about the milk of the Word vs. the meat of the Word. They need to be fed more as they grow. If you don’t feed them, they will die, their growth will be stunted or they will look elsewhere for food. New believers also need covering and a home. The church is the place that God set up to shelter and nurture new believers. The church also brings leadership, discipline and guidance. Getting people discipled – or disciplined – requires leadership. We are a family, and there are certain things that have to be in a family for it to function. Families need parents and leadership. Parents need to bring vision, direction and covering. When that’s in place, there is the potential for awesome things to happen in that family.

Paul made the decision to start teaching this model of family and leadership in the church, even though he had only met many of these people once in his life. He had very little interaction with most of the churches he planted. He would put things in order, appoint leaders and move on to the next city. He would teach the leaders to emulate him – be a disciple – and then raise up more leaders in the same way. “Brothers and sisters, pattern your life after mine.”

In Paul’s day, there weren’t many churches. If you didn’t like the leader, you couldn’t just jump down the road to the next church, so the major things stayed major and the minor things became minor. You had to submit to the church and its covering. Today, there are churches on every corner and people bounce around and don’t get planted. There are valid reasons for leaving a church, like when you aren’t being fed. But the church is meant to be a family. We are meant to be joined into the family. If there is anything in the modern church that is threatening it like a cancer, it is its inability to submit to authority. The spirit of how we live in the Kingdom is not one of independence, but one of submission. Despite what we see in the world, the Kingdom is based on interdependence and interconnectedness. The benefits of being connected and covered are unlimited. Living outside of God’s covering and structure can be devastating. You can’t move from believer to disciple if you aren’t connected in this kingdom kind of way.

What is it that stops one from moving down the path of discipleship while others grow in Christ? It’s pride. The kingdom will challenge your humanity. In our hearts, we are selfish. Without Christ, we are only living for ourselves. If the seed of the kingdom doesn’t get into us and flourish, we aren’t going to move forward and partake of the benefits of God’s kingdom. We have to walk in God’s process. It requires that we lay down our lives, not take up our lives. Paul says we are all connected. You can’t act independently of the church anymore. We are one.

“Pattern your life after mine and learn from those who follow our example.” Learn from those who are living in and for this Kingdom. Learn from the people that God has joined you to and that he brings into your life. God will position people in your world. Sometimes they are people who, in the natural, you may not want to respect. That is where the challenge comes in. Are you going to submit and trust that God put them in your life for a purpose? God will bring people into your life that you would consider the last person you could learn anything from. But God works all things for good for us. If we are proud, we won’t receive what God has for us or what God is trying to get to us through these people. Pride will stop us from receiving. It will keep you crawling when you should be running. It will keep you walking when you should be soaring. God resists the proud, and gives grace to the humble. The Kingdom mindset is connectedness, humility and submission.

As we get stronger, people attach themselves to our strength and we take them on the journey. As the kingdom of God is revealed to the earth through the church, we are on a journey of growth. James says for us to appreciate the trials we go through because that is part of our growth. Not many of us will have our faith tested by living or dying like the New Testament saints did. That’s not to downplay our testing, but we just need to keep it in perspective.

Sometimes things go on around our life that we have no control over, and our only answer is to trust God. When we can’t work it out in our brain or see the answer, all we have left is our trust in God. Trusting in God starts with small steps of faith. Sometimes even just coming to God’s house requires trust. There is always something that is just beyond our reach that God will ask of us. That is right where God wants us, because all we can do is trust Him. Doing anything else will take us AWAY from where we want to go. There’s only one move we can make and that’s to go forward.

Jesus required something of the people that He healed (spit in the mud, the woman that touched His garment). When we read about miracles, the person that is getting healed is always involved in the miracle. Jesus could have instantly turned the water pots into wine. He could have just laid hands on whoever He wanted and they would have been healed. But he wanted them to take part of their own miracles. Faith without action is like a rocket without fuel. We move, God moves.

Luke 17:11 – If you were a leper, you were an outcast. In the Bible, leprosy can often represent sin. When there is sin in our life, we can’t connect to God because He is pure and holy and can’t fellowship with sin.

Jesus told the lepers to go and show themselves to the priest. In the Torah, if lepers were healed, the first thing that they had to do was to show themselves to the priest so that they could do a ritual. Jesus was speaking to them as if they were already healed – the only way that they could go to see the priest was if they were healed. So, the lepers WENT to the temple…and as they WENT, they were HEALED! They moved and God moved. That is the way that God works.

When we hear about a promise, we have to move towards God. We have to believe by moving, and God moves with us. We can’t find what God has for us unless we move. Do what you can do, so that God can do what you CAN’T do. It will take boldness and a huge trust factor, but we just have to start moving.

When we are standing still, God has no power in our lives. When we move, we unleash the power of heaven, and the supernatural power of God. Faith isn’t complicated: it just requires action on our part. No matter where we want to go, we have to just start moving. We move, God moves – bottom line. We are going to live our lives by making moves. Will we make bad choices? Yes. But don’t let your pride get in the way of turning around and moving again.

In the area of Reach, we are all making sacrifices. We will keep moving towards the new building through our commitments. This is a faith move and something that will build our family.