The Steps of a Good Man

Luke 15:11 When I ask the question ‘Who are we’ it is imperative we know who we are, what we are and what we do. We won’t know what to do until we know what we are. We won’t know what we are until we know who we are. We first need to know where we are from. We need to find our identity. If God created us, blew his breath of life into us, created us in his likeness, then we should know who we are. We are all called to be royalty but if we don’t come to the conclusion that we are royalty, realize what God made us to be, we will forever be peasants. Much like the prodigal son, how many times have many of us walked away from our Father’s house? Ran to ‘far off lands’ and squandered what our Father gave to us? Many of us here today have run off to far off lands and we need to make our way back. I read the story of the Prodigal son and, in hindsight, I see him make all of these mistakes. Wasting his money, running from his family, gluing himself to a man of the land who treats ...

God does not desire that our tragedy end in tragedy, but victory. But that also doesn’t mean you won’t go through the tragedy. God is not a happenstance type of Father. He has a plan. God’s word has the ability to change your life. There’s so much we concern ourselves with that consumes us. We’re so wrapped up in social media, we have no room for Jesus. If all we allow into ourselves is the world, all we’ll have faith in, live our lives based on, is the world. And God doesn’t like having to share us with the world. He desires to be the center of our worlds. This week we talked about the paraplegic man. We talked about operating in faith, out of love. To get this love we must first know God. As we come into contact with Him, make room for Him, we will operate from a place of love, know that love. The friends of the paraplegic man loved him. That love brought him to the house, carried him onto the roof, lowered him down. That love operated in faith. God will respond to your faith...

As I look back at the battles, the hardships we faced in 2018 it was only to prepare us for the victories in nineteen. Now that doesn’t mean 2019 will be easy and we won’t have any battles in 2019. It just means God is molding the Kingdom. He is preparing us. There will still be battles in 2019 but because of the battles in 2018 we are better prepared for them. Do we really know how important ekklesia is to God? Ekklesia, being the bride, His end reason. We need to begin to expand the way that we think and begin to cultivate a relationship with God. God knew before He even created light that man would sin. He had a glorious bride envisioned at that time. Let there be light because they all have a purpose, a reasoning. So that we will be joined with God and His son for all eternity. Jesus came. Why? For the Kingdom. Everything that has been done has been for the kingdom. He allowed Himself to be humbled as a baby, as a human man for the kingdom, allowed Himself to be taken care of...

Everything Jesus has done has been for Kingdom purpose. The reason He has done everything He has done for us, has been for Kingdom purpose. I can’t begin to fathom this. All that this means. Everything God has done and will do has been for us, for the ekklesia. Looking back at the birth of Christ in Luke 2 we see that God became flesh. And it was messy. Childbirth is messy and the Lord our God became flesh, became human and allowed Himself to be born! Jesus was born. Came forth from a woman’s womb, with all the blood and other stuff. He allowed Himself to have his diapers changed, to be fed and burped. He became HUMAN. He tripped, He fell, He skinned His knees. GOD! Can you even begin to imagine? I cannot fathom the creator of earth, of light, humiliating Himself, getting His diapers changed. I imagine it got interesting being those close to Him. You’d begin to see Him as a normal boy and then He’d do something crazy and you’re reminded THIS IS GOD’S SON! You’d be just hangin...

Being a part of the body is imperative. I believe that anyone that is saved is connected to the body and anyone that is connected to the body is saved. You can’t really have one without the other. Everyone is a part of a body, but what body are you a part of? Today we’ll be talking about clans, and not the Ku Klux Klan, but a clan as in a family line. We need to identify that it is to be a part of a nation, a tribe, a clan, a family. A family is your immediate circle of accountability. Not just your mother and your father, brother and sister, but your family is anyone that keeps you accountable, that keeps you moving towards Christ. Next is your clan, your gospel community, your small group or bible study. Then comes your tribe or your local church. And finally your nation, your life in the body of Christ at large. Not everyone in your nation is a part of your family, or even your tribe. But you are all a part of the same nation, all a part of the body of Christ as a whole. Jo...

What is it to be a part of the team, the ekklesia? To be a part of the team, the tribe, the ekklesia we need to identify and value what we see. We need to have a picture and value what we see within that picture. To even begin to have a picture we need to go back, all the way back to Creation. We see in Genesis 1:1 the Trinity. God speaks, ‘let there be light’, the Spirit hovers over God’s creation and the Son being the light that God speaks. God was unified. Creation was a collaborative effort. Creation was an expression of their unity and man, a culmination of their unity. Without their unity, Creation would not have come to be. UNITY creates things, disunity destroys them. Jesus prays that we might be one as He, His Father and Spirit are one. How can we get to the place of this kind of unity? Like Creation, the Father must speak over it, the Son must be the powerful spoken word and the Spirit must hover and brood. Just as in creation each must play their part. I play mine ...

Acts 1:4 Before ascending to heaven, dying on the cross, Jesus gathers his disciples. He brings them all together in koinonia. He gathers them together and speaks to them as one. When Jesus is saying ‘you’, he is speaking to them, assembled together, in one accord. People mistake being in one accord with always agreeing, being of one mind. Being in one accord doesn’t mean we always agree on everything. The disciples didn’t always agree and yet they were of one accord. Being in one accord is being one, being together even when we disagree. Seeing beyond the disagreement because it’s not about who is wrong and who is right. We each have our own points of view, our own vantage points. I am a firm believer that until you have a good, heated argument with an individual, you aren’t in a relationship with them. Until you have been through the hard times, the furnace, you won’t know if you can take the heat. It’s not about if you are right and they are wrong, it’s about if you make...

John 17:20-18:1 Jesus prays. Not just for himself and his disciples but for us. ‘…but also for those who will believe in Me through their word.’ He prayed not just for the disciples but for those that they would reach. He prayed, more than 2000 years ago, for you and I. Jesus knows what will transpire in His last days. He knows He is going to be killed. Yet he still prays for not just Himself, but His disciples and even us. Let’s look at the points He makes as He begins to pray for us. Point 1. ‘That they all may be one as you Father and me are one.’ His first point to pray for is for us to be one. There are some in the body of Christ that don’t believe that oneness is important but Jesus Himself prayed that we would be one. He was praying for our unity. Point 2. ‘That they also may be one in Us.’ Point one is that we would all be one, His second point is that we would be one with Him. Is it possible for us to be one with the Father if we are not first, one with each other? ...

When talking about the parable of the sower and the seed we need to understand that the field is our hearts. Looking at our own hearts we can not make the mistake of believing we only have good ground in our fields. There are areas where we have rocks in our heart. Areas where we get excited, fired up for something but once the sun comes out, it withers. Areas that have the thorns, the cares of this world that choke out that passion when it has sprouted. Areas that people have trampled over. Areas that can’t even receive the seed because it has not been cultivated. We must look within at those areas. If we want to become the Ekklesia, the Kingdom tribe, we must first look within and tend to those areas. What’s within us affects what is on the outside, affects those around you. Our thorns affect each other’s lives. Your thorns affect me and my thorns affect you. Take a step back, evaluate and love. Don’t take the splinter our of your brothers eye when you have a beam in yours. Foc...