By The Spirit!

KEEP ON KEEPING ON WITH FAITH IN GOD! Luke 11:9-13
When it comes to a prayer of faith, how desperate are we to see God act. Jesus keeps telling us to keep on asking, keep on looking, keep on knocking. The prayer of faith means we will not take no for an answer until God shows us otherwise! It is the confidence to believe.
Last week, I loved what one of you said to me following the service. This person came back to the table to grab more mustard seeds and the response was, “I am grabbing a whole bunch of these to stick all over my place!”
When God is at work and amazing things happen, those who are the instruments remain just that. They are humbled by the realization of what God has blessed them with. Usually the ones who have the gift are the most reluctant to accept what they have been given because they know the depth of where that might lead them and who that might lead them to. They don’t take credit for it, they recognize the hand of God give the glory to God. It’s that simple.

Every movement for the advancement of the gospel must be created and inspired by prayer EM Bounds

Jeremiah 33:3 Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.

His plan for people to come to know Him is by prayer
Isaiah 58:9 Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
Psalm 50:15 and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me."

It is that willingness to be silent, to remove the distractions, to just pause and to listen and wait for his promptings, his leading that is so powerful and transforming in our lives.

The flipside is also true…by not praying is a denial of the power of God, a denial of his nature and his desire for all people. Prayerlessness is a denial of God Himself.

The absence of prayer lessens all the life forces of the soul, cripples faith, sets aside holy living, shuts out heaven. EM Bounds
Intercession for others is the highest aspect of prayer because of its broad and unselfish application.

THE PRAYER OF FAITH IS BELIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT WILL REVEAL THE ANSWER! John 16:5-16
It is the work of the Holy Spirit to convict the world of guilt
· In regard to sin – because men do not believe in me.
The main sin that the Holy Spirit convicts of is the sin of unbelief.
The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 2 Corinthians 4:4.
But when anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 2 Corinthians 3:16…back track a little more and this only happens through Christ v14

It is the sin of unbelief that condemns a person. There are a lot of good humans out there and they have cleaned up their act quite nicely I must admit. They are ‘good’ people, but without Jesus they are still lost and in need of a Saviour. You can quit all your bad habits, still be lost and headed for hell.


The Holy Spirit guides us into all truth. He will not lead you to do things that are contrary to the example of Christ or the teaching of the Word.
He will tell you about the future... This is the ministry of the prophetic. You cannot pin down or tell me how the Spirit works. John 3 Like the wind, the Spirit is invisible, but very powerful. You cannot explain or predict the movements of the wind and it is the same with the Spirit of God. He is the one who will show you the how, give you the when and tell you the way!
He will bring Christ glory The key to recognizing a counterfeit is studying the real thing and with money, it is discovered in the unique markings. When trying to discern when someone is speaking prophetically or sharing about the work and movement of God, get a sense of who is getting the glory here. Where are the accolades going, where are people running? Are they running towards God, is Christ receiving the glory or is it self and the pursuit of personal gain?

Prayer is not ME theology…we pick up on Simon the sorcerer in Acts 8:9 where it states he was, ‘claiming to be someone great’ He was very influential, they called him the great one! He became a believer and thought that He could ‘buy in’ to the power of the Holy Spirit. Peter and John could see right through him.


He will reveal to you what He receives from Jesus...
I can’t figure out why God heals and answers prayers for some people and not for others. I do know this, prayer changes me, it changes my attitude and enables us to build a strong foundation for when the storms really hit. It gives us strength to endure and at times to accept the pain and we must endure. You may get to the place where you say God, “I give up” and it is there that He can also bring assurance and the groanings of the Spirit which cannot be understood, but God knows and He cares very deeply for His children Romans 8:28,29. The Holy Spirit is your ultimate intercessor before God.
Isaiah 64:6 For since the world began, no ear has heard, and no eye has seen a God like you, who works for those who wait for him!
We are being called to put God to work! Prayer moves the hand of God

Christ could do nothing without prayer. The apostles were helpless without prayer – and were absolutely dependent upon it for success in defeating their spiritual foes. The could do all things by prayer.
EM Bounds

The Takeaway
The God of the OT and NT is the same God today and as we pray we will see how He continues to break into history supernaturally.
Here’s my challenge, the wake up BELL for every week -

B – bless 3 people/week –share, give, encourage
E – eat with 3 people/week - Jesus ate good food with bad people…that was his life. get good at hospitality. If you can’t make it, then ‘treat’ it!
L – listening prayer – practice it for an hour/week
L- learn together
S – share together, journal how God is giving you divine appointments and interrupting your life, your workplace during the week and tell those stories to each other in your house churches…be energized by it.

The Prayer of Faith

The prayer of faith goes beyond simple prayer to the place where the desire is awakened in us to the confidence and expectation that God will answer, He will lead and make our paths straight. It is that which we need to be driven towards because prayer stabilizes me and keeps faith alive! The question we need to answer is this; how do we pray in such a way that it does not become routine, ritualistic or some kind of formula? We will discover the fullness of prayer experienced in faith.

YOU WILL SEE SUPERNATURAL ACCORDING TO YOUR FAITH

Mark 6:5 states ‘He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them.’
I went to a Baptist seminary for my training and Baptists are known to be people of the Word. While there I learned about dispensationalism and the study of the different ages of the church basically being categorized in different eras, the age of the law, the age of the apostolic ministry and now the age of grace. It all fit together well sort of. When it came to gifts, it was said that the were foundational gifts that the church was built on but those gifts aren’t active today. So, there was this acceptance that God doesn’t work like that anymore…why, because we have the completed Word and those signs were used as a validation for the Word until it was complete. It sounded good, but it wasn’t biblical. It was a safe idea to not expect anything too crazy, too supernatural to happen. It is the attitude that suggests we don’t want to get our hopes up too high. I believe that today dispensationalism is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I like to call it the Nazareth prophecy….
Now the Pentecostal are known for the power, they are all about manifesting the Holy Spirit…go with the flow of the Spirit, as the Spirit leads and that can be dangerous too because sometimes God puts stuff right in front of you and He calls you to act. He already tells us to do some stuff and we don’t need to feel it all the time when we are called to obey. So, if you go with all Spirit, no Word, that can be dangerous too…
But when I came to the Alliance, I was told we walk in the middle, always keeping the tension strong being led by the Spirit and the Word
But everywhere I see God wants to break into history supernaturally. Yes, there was the age of the law but in the OT there was a ton of miracles going on from the Red Sea, to incredible victories over cities by Joshua and Gideon, to the closing of the lion’s mouth for Daniel, 3 guys safe in a blazing furnace, 1 guy hanging out in a fish for three days…God is all over the course of history.
Matthew 17:19,20
Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, "Why couldn't we drive it out?"
He replied, "Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."
God is not asking you for much…look at the mustard seed, can you pray for that kind of faith this week.
The world is catching on to this idea. Its called ‘the secret’ The idea is that if you visualize on something long enough and believe that it is yours, it will be yours. It’s the law of attraction and Rhonda Byrne is getting rich. There are 5.3 million copies already sold in the States since it came out last year and the secret is that you are the center of the universe.
One article writes:
See yourself living in abundance and you will attract it. It works every time, with every person." The appeal is obvious. Forget education, effort, performance. Everything you want—money, power, comfortable shoes—is yours simply by wanting it enough.
As self-absorbed as I already am, I loved the permission the book gave to sink deeper into a Jacuzzi of megalomania. As The Secret points out: "You are the master of the Universe. You are the heir to the kingdom. You are the perfection of Life." So, I vowed to follow Byrne's simple rules for abundance and see what happened. The book encourages one to start big: "It is as easy to manifest one dollar as it is to manifest one million dollars."
Why do so many people get what they don't want? As Byrne writes, "Imperfect thoughts are the cause of all humanity's ills, including disease, poverty, and unhappiness." Yes, according to The Secret, people don't just randomly end up being massacred, for example. They are in the wrong place because of their own lousy thinking. Cancer patients have long been victims of this school of belief. But The Secret takes it to a new and more repulsive level with its advice not just to blame people for their illness, but to shun them, lest you start being infected by their bummer thoughts, too.
The difference for Jesus followers is that God told us to welcome the sick, to pray for the sick, to believe enough that God can do miracles and that He is the one who wants us to get down and dirty into the mess of people’s lives. You know what we have discovered about Jesus and what He has come to do? Luke 4:18,19 We are to be so counter cultural, don’t get wrapped up in yourself, don’t buy these lies.
http://www.slate.com/id/2165746/

James 5:13-16

Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.
Let me make it very clear that prayer is not magic.
Prayer is a process where we spiritually surrender so that we might become instruments through which God can work supernaturally. It is not about us, it is not about praying the right words. When we do that, we trivialize God.
We don’t go running around either telling people they weren’t healed because they don’t have enough faith. That is the kind of stuff that gives God a bad name. When we pray in Jesus’ name, it is saying that we embody everything that His name is about.

Questions For Discussion and Small Groups

1. What does faith ‘as small as a mustard seed’ look like for you?

2. What have you learned about prayer that has given you more confidence to enter the throne room with God?

Ancient Faith In A Postmodern World...

How can we practice an ancient faith in a postmodern world? In John 21, I see how Jesus is bridging this gap between what we say and how we feel. The more pastoral side of Jesus is coming through here in the commissioning that He gives His disciples and in particular, Peter. Jesus appeals to the emotions of Peter as He gives him his calling. It wasn’t a calling that he was supposed to think about, it was something Jesus wanted him to feel.
The beginning of the modern era began with Rene Decartes’ famous saying, “I think, therefore I am”. However, it is not so for many of us today. Now, more than ever, people are saying, “I feel, therefore I am.” So, can we feel our way to God? The answer I believe is yes because His Word tells us to seek Him with all of our heart and when we do that we will find Him! Jeremiah 29:13 The more important question we need to answer is this, “How can we feel our way to God and what does that look like?”

Doing What We Know Best…v1-5

I think it is interesting to note that 7 of the 12 disciples were fisherman by trade. They were professionals and yet there is something that speaks to their vocation because it required diligence, courage and dedication which are all qualities that Jesus was looking for. Fisherman are also known to stick with it and not quit easily, but it looks pretty obvious here that they were quitting on Jesus.

Following Jesus’ death, the disciples were left floundering and went back to what they knew best – they went fishing. When we doubt, when we fear, when we lose our way, what do we do? We go back to the familiar, we go back to what we know, we go back to our natural learned tendencies. The disciples were fishing all night and had not caught one ‘stinkin’ fish! Now to add insult to injury, someone that they didn’t recognize right away told them to throw their net on the other side of the boat.

Now what is the difference between the left side of the boat and the right side? Is there is any real difference in the water?

No difference right? You better repent! If Jesus tells you there is a difference, there is a difference, no matter how crazy it seems! And then maybe we question, who is telling us to do this? Is this God? The disciples didn’t recognize Jesus at this point, but they listened.

How often do we live by calculation or by faith? Too often we get our spreadsheets out, we listen to the voice of reason as I shared last week. It is hard to listen, it is hard to follow through especially when we think “this is ridiculous, this makes no sense”. You see we are more comfortable talking about what God did then, that is a safe place, we can exegete that very well. But what about today, what is God doing in our midst, that takes courage, that takes faith.

We need to get to the place where we acknowledge the emptiness of our own nets.

Doing What You Are Told! v6-14




How many fish did they catch?

153 fish…anything significant about that – you bet. The known nations at that time in history was…you guessed it – 153!! (Wolfgang Simson shared this in his message on house churches)
Where is the right side of the boat today?

We need to listen more and more to the voice of the Lord. You know how you go into a new mall and you can’t find what you are looking for? So, you go to the information map and it shows you all the locations, but before you can really be on your way, you have to find the ‘blessed ‘you are here’ red dot. God knows where the red dot is and He will lead us to it by revelation.

Over the course of recent history, we have had some major revolutions:

First, it was the industrial rev. with the invention of the steam engine. Then, it was the breakthrough of electricity with Thomas Edison and the light bulb. In 1941, the computer was invented, in ’71, the 1st microchip was created. Now, with the internet which came in the information revolution and we are drowning in it.

Today we are living in the inspiration revolution. People are seeking guidance and they are either being inspired from above or below. World leaders are now listening to their “spiritual advisors’. The Iranian president believes Allah is speaking to him through a prophecy from ‘Humani’ who said Israel will be wiped out.

Come and Have Breakfast! v12

I love this picture of Jesus who calls out to His disciples to have breakfast with Him. We are called to connect not subscribe. Jesus wants to do life with us and in the context of that encounter we hear what we He wants to say. It is always in the context of relationship.

Maybe there’s a reason why the question, “Can you hear me now?” resonates loud and clear with us. We live in a place where relationships have been traded for inanimate objects and where technology isolates us at the same time that it promises to connect us.



Look Me In The Eyes! v15-19

Some of the deepest expressions of love between people are made with the eyes. We can say so much just by the way we look eye to eye. Jesus said that the eye is the lamp of the body or the window to the soul as the Message paraphrases it in Matthew 6:22,23

Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have!

Jesus is restoring Peter in this passage

In this conversation, Jesus challenges Peter to the level of the love he spoke of, a boastful love, a proud love, a love greater than the other disciples, agape love and in Peter’s response he holds back from speaking about a sacrificial love here. In fact, he responds with the love of a friend, phileo. He is not quick to jump to the estimation of his love anymore because he was completely humbled. Jesus in his third challenge even questions his ‘phileo’ love. The fact is that we love Him because He first loved us. If there is any love to be received and given, it is the love that He can place in our heart as we come to Him with our empty nets.

The most important thing that Peter can do for his lambs and his sheep is to love and feed on Jesus Himself. For those of you in leadership positions, the best thing you can offer those you lead is not your knowledge, but your heart. We can only feed what we’ve been fed.

There is also a distinction between lambs and sheep.

The eyes are the light into our soul and we often can see right into a person’s inner sanctum through their eyes if we take long enough time to look. Close your eyes and consider that Jesus is fixing his eyes on you. What message do you sense He would be communicating with you. What would flow out of you if you let Him connect with you in the innermost recesses of your being. Then, reflect on what you could pour into another person and what essence of God could come through you.

In Peter’s ‘look me in the eyes’ encounter with Jesus, he was challenged 3 times about His love and devotion for His Lord. Why does Jesus press the issue? The obvious answer is that he denied have anything to do with him in his three denials.

There are times when God communicates His love for us that are “transrational”. It is those times when encounter the love of God that goes beyond explanation. As Paul shared that encounter will fully be experienced in heaven, but still can know it in part now. We shouldn’t miss that. For many of us who grew up in the church, it was faith, fact, feelings…feelings were the caboose of the train, not to be trusted, put in the back seat, but more and more today, people long to feel their way to God and God is fully capable of being felt.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. (1 Corinthians 13:12)

John 3:8 speaks of the wind of the Spirit. It is not something that you can place your finger on. It happens unexpectedly and it can happen with strangers about whom you know practically nothing, objectively speaking. It is that subjected experience that we are all too often afraid to go to, but when it happens, it is so powerful.

Luke 24: 32They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"

What About Him or Her? V20-22

When you have an encounter with the resurrected Jesus, revel in it, be in awe of it, don’t stuff it and at the same time realize that it is special, it is unique. We don’t try to explain it away, trivialize it and at the same time do we try to normalize what we experience for everybody.

We can spend so much time trying to ‘fish’ for people using our own methods, but when Jesus is leading, there is power. I continue to learn and relearn the truth that Romans 8:14 shares that those who are lead by the Spirit are the sons of God


The Takeaway

We feel our way to God as He seeks us and we seek Him in love and listen to His voice,

The promptings of the Holy Spirit often are right in front of us. He will show you the verses, He will show you the people, He will show you the way. Jesus is still speaking today.

And this goes a whole lot better when we just get quiet.


Technology reduces everything to binary codes
Religion reduces everything to moral codes
Jesus reduced everything to a one word relational code: love

It is a grande passion, not lukewarm. Jesus is calling us into all consuming experiences of life. We are not here just for faith, but a passionate faith.

Questions For Discussion and Small Groups

1. Alright, who purposed listened for God’s voice this past week? Where did you go??

What does the left side of the boat look like for you?
How can you get to the place where you throw your net on the right side of the boat?
What could breakfast with Jesus look like in your home?
Jesus tells Peter to feed his lambs and then his sheep. What is the significance of that?