The High Priest was responsible for many things, but it all boiled down to one main thing: he alone spoke to God for the people, and He alone heard from God for the people; now fast forward to 2012. Some Christians and churches still believe the pastor or priest talks to, and listens to God for them. Hebrews 5 says that’s a problem, we should be doing our own hearing and speaking. Jesus came to be the final High Priest, but when Jesus left the earth, He appointed a new priest – me and you. When Jesus left the Holy Spirit came to help us hear God’s voice so now we can go to God, one-on-one. We speak to Him in prayer, and He speaks to us through His Word, the Bible. That only works if we pray, and we read, but do we?

Most of us now, and most of the Hebrews then understood that, so why is the message repeated for all of us to hear? The answer is, because we know it, but we run from it. We prayed, and trusted God for something – something big, or something small, it doesn’t matter – we trusted Him, and it all fell through. We may never know why, but at that moment, the fear, and doubt, and hurt crept in; and we stopped speaking, and we stopped hearing, and we stopped growing – or worse, we started sliding backward. Do we know we can still pray, of course. Do we know God is still there, yes, but we stop trusting Him with our lives and our futures.

Read Hebrews five; actually read chapters one through five, none of them are long so it will only take you a few minutes, but it’s a few minutes that can restore your hope, and trust, and confidence in God’s Word for your life; not the preacher, or the priest, or the reverend – you.

God’s Word is ALIVE – it can give you life. His Word is ACTIVE – it works today, and every day. The Word is POWERFUL – it is stronger than your worst problem. God’s Word is a SWORD – the sword cuts, and penetrates all the way to our heart. The Word is our JUDGE, and here it is critical to understand that John chapter one says, Jesus is the Word, which means He is the judge. But this Judge faced pain like we face, and has encountered sin like we do, but He won! So when we come before Jesus as Judge, we face a Judge Who has already been where we are – He was the priest, now we are the priest. So He offers mercy when we’ve done wrong, and He gives grace when we need help doing right. Talk to Him again and don’t be afraid; read the Word, and listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit’s voice.

You are the priest. Lay your wrongs on the altar, then receive God’s forgiveness and blessing at the altar, and let them begin a Hebrews 5 change in you.

Verses Used:
*Hebrew 5:5-14

I can’t help but see many parallels between Jesus’s death and resurrection and Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. Just as Jesus carried his own cross at his death; Isaac obediently carried the wood that was meant for his own death. Just as Jesus obeyed His father in the ultimate sacrifice to save humanity; Isaac obeyed his father even as the sword was over him. The place where Isaac was sacrificed, Mount Moriah, became the site of the Temple of Solomon. It is believed that the crucifixion was at the summit of Mount Moriah.

Abraham’s dream for years was a son. As his “dream” and heart were tested on Mount Moriah God proved faithful and provided true to his promise. Like Abraham, God puts dreams in our hearts. Our dreams can be tested. This testing can be painful at the time but through this testing comes endurance. Through endurance comes God’s provision. God will always provide! All Abraham had was belief and a promise. His only response to God telling him to sacrifice Isaac was “we will go to worship and we will return!”. Church, this should be our response when we go through our own trials and testing! We will worship and we will believe! This is all God requires. Today, Easter Sunday, represents a moment of remembrance of when God took the keys of Hell and rose to conquer death! All he requires for us to have access to this love is to “just believe”!

Oil in the Bible is a metaphor for the Spirit in both the Old Testament and New Testament. Oil was used to burn for light, to cook, even for healing. Oil was always used in making their lives better, and just as oil was critical to their lives, the Holy Spirit is critical to our lives. Everyone is able to minister in the Spirit, and it is through the Holy Spirit that we find the miraculous. It is also through the Spirit that we can challenge ourselves in giving. There is story after story of people challenging themselves in the natural in giving with supernatural results.

I want to take a moment to present an opportunity for ministry especially for Easter in relation to the story of the widow’s oil. In verse 4, Elisha tells her to gather empty vessels, go into the house, shut the door and start to pour the oil into the empty vessels. The Spirit can move anywhere (marketplace, street, hospital) but some miracles are meant for the house (the church). All around our lives are empty vessels needing to be filled. If someone is struggling in his or her marriage, they are empty; if someone is battling cancer, they are empty; if someone doesn’t go to church, they are empty; if someone is facing financial hardship, they are empty. Think of empty vessels around you and determine how you can pour the oil of God into their world. Let their desperation embolden you in reaching out to them to bring them into the house.

Lastly, make sure your oil isn’t flowing in the wrong place. It is great to give to causes but don’t put giving to something that can heal naturally before giving to something that can heal supernaturally. It is time to start believing the word spoken over your life. Set aside time to consider what you can do.

Verses Used:
*2 Kings 4:1-7

We are called to respect the altar of God – back in the days when priests offered sacrifices for the people, there was an increase of bribery as folks wanted to get rid of their lame, crippled and diseased cattle or sheep, and paid the priests to offer those on the altar, as if God were blind! Malachi was a prophet to the priests who had a lot to say about honoring and respecting the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, as you can read in the verses noted above. God’s principles don’t change, He will always bless you if you put Him first. If we have all our bills in front of us and wait til they are paid up to pay our tithes, we will never manage the 10% because the bills always seem so insurmountable. But if we line them up and put the tithe at the head of the line, we will find that supernaturally, the money is there to pay the rest! The priests (pastors) are responsible to tell the people that God is righteous and deserves the firstfruits of our labor, as Malachi aptly points out. We will miss out on a huge life blessing if we allow that 10% of our paycheck, disability or unemployment check (whatever we are getting as income, as opposed to monetary gifts from others) to go unpaid to the local church, the storehouse of blessing.

Tithing is probably the scariest thing we will ever do as Christians! It is easy to get saved, but it sure it hard to trust God with our money. Only 6% of the church in America tithes, according to Barna Research Group. This proved true several years ago, when Ps. Phil asked me what I had given in an offering. We discovered we’d given the same amount, and in a group of over 100 people, each of us had contributed 1/3 of the total offering taken that day. The 6% had prevailed, sadly. We are promised a return on our tithes and offerings, thirty, sixty or even a hundred times over what was given. No bank has ever given me that much of a return! What God can get through our hands and into others, He will get to us so we can do it again. If we are on food stamps, share some with others – there are always areas where we can give to people.

We have to learn that God sees our heart, He knows how much we make, and He is asking us to repay Him for the blessing of being able to work, or being able to draw a check due to disability, unemployment, etc. We want everyone in this church to thrive, and tithing is foundational to making that happen. We must look at our hearts, decide to give the Lord the honor and respect He deserves, lay our tithes on the altar, and watch the miracles unfold! I can’t wait to share more about this and tell you great stories of many who have tithed and received new jobs, raises, bonuses – all because we took a chance and risked loving God with our whole hearts.

Verses Used:
*Numbers 18:26
*Malachi 1:6-8
*Malachi 3:8-10

While we believe that Eden was a real place, it is also representative of the human heart. Each of us has the responsibility to tend the garden of our heart – the garden of who we are. The four rivers represent principles that God has given to help us cultivate good fruit in the garden of our lives. The first river, Pishon, represents increase and expansion, a principal that Jesus taught repeatedly. To experience increase in our own lives we must believe that God is our source of all things, learn how to get into God’s flow, and avoid the things that cause us to get out of the flow.

Today we live in a society filled with self-help gurus. As a result, we often think we can will ourselves to success if we just find the right book to read. But the river comes from God and we can’t will or self-help ourselves into the life He brings. If we try to make it in our own strength, there will come a point when our human strength will fail us. When difficulties come, when we can’t take one more step, we must look to the God of the River of Increase to be the source of whatever it is we need. Whether it’s strength, peace, joy, forgiveness, grace, patience, wisdom….whatever it is you think you’re out of, God has it and wants to give it to you. We only need to plant our lives by His river and let Him be our source.

We all know that water is an incredibly powerful thing. Rowing against a strong current will quickly tire you out and make it virtually impossible to reach your destination. But, as humans, we often seem bent on rowing against God’s flow – trying to get to our destiny under our own power. The Holy Spirit is God’s river. He flows into our hearts and wants to branch out into every area of our lives and spill over onto others. But we have to get into the flow.

You don’t need to look hard to find examples of people who have fought their way to the top but have not found happiness. Rowing against the river of God will never get you to a place of contentment. We each must decide to turn our boat and stop fighting God’s flow. The river may take us to places we don’t understand, but we will find ourselves in a place of unending increase that will spill over and grow the Kingdom of God. So come on and jump in, the water’s fine.

Over the next few weeks, we will be discussing the four rivers that flowed from the heart of the Garden of Eden. But before we can, we must understand the importance of the Garden. We need to go back to the beginning. Genesis tells the story– “In the Beginning…” In the beginning, God planted a garden. He didn’t make the garden magically appear; He planted! He put seed in the soil! Soil is a second part of this already mind altering concept! God created soil to be worked. Let that sink in. God purposefully designed soil to be worked so that it could produce. Growth requires work. Soil must be prepared; seed must be planted; work must be put into it; and then there is growth! God set everything up from the beginning. He planted the seeds to grow the Garden in rich, worked soil, producing Paradise. Eden is the image of what the earth was supposed to be and can be again.

Referencing back to Matthew 13, the human heart is the soil where all seeds are planted. The human heart is designed to have things planted within. It craves seed. It does not care which seed is planted as long as something is planted and something grows. The heart is the battlefield; you are responsible for the outcome. You are responsible for the condition of the soil; you are responsible for what goes in; you are responsible for what grows. You and you alone are responsible for the garden of your heart.

And whatever you let into your heart flows out of your life. Jeremiah 17 talks about what happens when a person allows the knowledge of the world to be planted in their hearts. They become a shrub. That is what it says: shrub. The very word is unpleasant. Have you ever met a person who is a shrub? I have. You can see it all over their lives. They are dry and barren and salty. They are a shrub barely scraping by in the desert of their life. However, in contrast, Jeremiah calls those who place their hope and trust in God and who willingly submit to His covering tree planted by the river.

So choose now:]Will you allow your heart to get dry and shrub-like? Or will you work to till the soil of your heart, allowing God to work along side you in breaking up the hard ground of attitude and bitterness and pain to create a soft field that yields to the seed and produces good fruit? What will it be?

Verses Used:
Genesis 2:4-14
Jeremiah 17:5-10
Matthew 13: 11-17

After dinner, however, the mood shifts. Jesus took another cup, symbolic of the new covenant they were about to enter into between God and man. “This cup is the new covenant written in my blood, blood poured out for you…I will not drink wine again until the Kingdom comes to earth.” Last week we learned the depth of what those words meant, now we know that 50 days later at Pentecost, the Kingdom of God came to earth in the form of the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist had told his followers, “There is one coming after me…who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” In the upper room of Acts 2, 120 faithful followers were filled with the Spirit of Jesus and begin to proclaim in other tongues the glory of God’s kingdom. Thus, the Kingdom is within us when we are filled with the Holy Spirit, and we are building His kingdom here on earth! It is now within our grasp, as we pray His will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven.

In Luke 5, we read these words of Christ: “You don’t put wine in old wineskins; you get new wineskins for your fresh vintage wine. And no one who has ever tasted fine aged wine prefers unaged wine.” A wineskin was the scraped-out hide of a sheep or goat. The reason new wine needed to go into new skins was that the fermentation process was so strong, the skins had to be able to expand to hold it all in. New skins were pliable, soft, like our hearts need to be. We can always stretch out some more when we are being filled anew every day with the Holy Spirit! The symbolism of the Cup of the Covenant is a fresh touch from Jesus on our lives and hearts, the fermenting of our dreams & visions swirling around and being made reality. “I have to go so my Spirit can come live in you”, He said to those who begged Him to stay. We are the vessels that the wine is being poured into. It’s so easy to get stuck in the “once upon a time” experience. Old wineskins could be made pliable again by being immersed in oil – God doesn’t want the vessel (us) to burst or break from His new; wine of dreams & visions for our lives! Make it a priority to empty ourselves of what the Lord has given us so we can be filled with the next new thing He has for us. Be ready to live new experiences; God is going to challenge our mindsets and wants to change us to become bigger in all areas of our lives. Being filled with the Spirit means getting fresh vision, dreams that bring us joy, and not allowing our hearts to harden for any reason. When we keep our vessel full of the new wine of what the Spirit is calling us onward to do, we will find our dreams fulfilled, as Christ’s were after he drank from the Cup of the Covenant and did what His Father had called Him to do for the coming of the Kingdom. Come unafraid to the altar for a fresh touch, fresh oil and new wine!

Verses Used:
*Luke 22:17-20
*Matthew 3:11
*Acts 2:1-41
*Luke 5:33-39
*John 14:16-17

Up until this time in Acts, Peter and John had only been water baptised. Water baptism is only one step in the process. The second and continual experience is being filled with the Holy Spirit. Everytime the leaders got together, they were again filled with the Holy Spirit. After they were filled, they then laid hands on others for them to receive the Holy Spirit. Believers in Jerusalem were growing in number and meeting daily until the believers scattered due to increasing persecution–culminating in the stoning of Stephen.

Philip, a deacon in the church, went to Samaria, and there, he began preaching about Jesus. A revival started as a result! Soon, John and Peter came to see all that God was doing and to help. Now, some people today claim that miracles could only be from apostles, but here was Philip, a deacon, performing miracles! He started as a servant, giving food to the widows, until God promoted him. Peter and John served as overseers over the movement, including Samaria. Philip could have gone back with Peter and John to Jerusalem, but God lead him to the desert. God is into accountability. There is freedom in oversight; Peter and John told him to follow God’s leading. God wants to release people within boundaries and structure. It is how the church works.

Philip does not flinch at God’s leading. He sees a caravan in desert as he is walking. The second in command in Ethiopia was a Proselyte Jew returning from pilgrimage to Jerusalem. By now, Jerusalem was in turmoil, the 25 thousand believers meeting daily only to suddenly stop following the stoning of Stephen. The Ethiopian man came there during that time. The man did not know anything about Jesus. He did not know the “people of the way.” The Holy Spirit told Philip to go up and talk to him. He invites Philip into the chariot. The man was reading Isaiah, and Philip shows Jesus to him in the scriptures. The Ethiopian asks to be water baptized. There are Ethiopians today who can trace there lineage and faith back to this scene, all because of Philip heeding the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit told Philip to do things he did not know how to do. We are a church of the Holy Spirit. When we heed the Holy Spirit, we never know what God will do through it.

Next, it’s important to realize that our souls are birthed at conception, and the being which is created at that point never dies. Our conceived beings are eternal, as we are made in the image of God, and He is eternal! So when the horrible happens and a child, born or unborn, dies, we can take comfort in knowing that God receives them and that their names are written in the Book of Life, burning brightly as innocents. As we age, when we turn to the Lord, again our names are bright lights in that book as we become more like Christ and want to make His name higher than ours. Those who continue to turn away from the Holy Spirit’s promptings will find their names fade from that book, if they choose not to reach out to what God is offering them. Our name is a vital component of who we are, and, in Proverbs, we find out that “a good name is better than great wealth” – Prov. 22. Your name is your calling card, for good or bad, and for all eternity.

The Holy Spirit is God on the earth today, and it is HIS job, not ours, to convict all men of sin, to comfort, and to bring understanding as we continue to search out what God is saying to us individually. In the Old Testament, God the Father spoke to the men of that time, and the Holy Spirit instructed the prophets what to say to the people of Israel & Judah. Then, for 33 years, Jesus was God the Son on the earth, showing us what God looks, acts, and sounds like. He had to die, not only for the sins of man, but to release the Holy Spirit to empower men, women, and children to have the authority we are talking about. Our authority comes from living in Christ and being filled with the Spirit! Remember how important that is! Even our impossible situations can be fixed up and made BETTER by God’s miracle-working power when we know who we are and what we have. In 1906, people were for revival in the country of Wales, UK, and in the city of Los Angeles; now, as a result of their prayers, over 1 billion Pentecostals filled with the Spirit are in the world today! We must look up to heaven, position ourselves in alignment with God’s Word, and realize that in every situation, God is bigger, more powerful, more abundant, and “able to do exceedingly more than we ask or think” – Ephesians 3.

We have been exploring the topic of who we are in Christ. We have authority in Christ. We have authority to do greater works in Jesus than He himself did. We have authority to cast out demons and heal the sick. We have authority to speak God’s word into existence. We have authority to teach all the nations.

Authority is powerful. It is something given to you – given from a source over or above you. When you are at work, your boss gives authority; he gives you access. When you start operating in that authority, you become so integral to the work, that you end up having more power over that process than the boss who gave you that authority. Jesus said to his disciples, “I’m leaving, but I am leaving you the Holy Spirit.” God has given us access to His power. He has given it, or delegated it to us. We need to step into that position and move within that power. He had all authority and He gave it to us. He said we could do greater things then He did, IF we live and walk in that authority.

Matthew 18:18-20: “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. “Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” We have been given the authority to open and close things, to bind or loose them, and to unlock or shut them in the context of prayer. We use this authority for when a breakthrough is needed. We are loosing the will of God on earth. The Kingdom of God is bigger than us. God’s will is bigger and more powerful then the world’s will. Jesus was talking about prayer and faith, about standing on the Word of God in authority. It can change the course of human life. Words are powerful. In authority, words can change the course of human life; they become potent. It is like having a nuclear device in the world of the Spirit.

Mark 16: 17: And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues. These miraculous signs will follow those who believe: healing and casting out demons. You have the POWER of the Holy Spirit in you! Don’t live in first gear when you have a V8 engine inside! In authority, we can bridge the natural and supernatural! Jesus spent so much time in prayer, He knew the heart of the Father. All the perfection of heaven can heal the broken. In those times that you need to stir the faith and soul again, go back to a time in your life when the will of heaven and the will of earth collided, and in God – everything aligned. See that time, visualize it, and find the confidence and authority in Christ.