Listen to our Liberty Podcast “Rejection”
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Simply click on the link to read or listen or,
You can download either of them to read or play on your own device.
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Big Jesus wins award for the ‘Best Community Entry’ in the parade.
We had a unique perspective on Jesus, His fame and renown. If the crowds were silenced even the stones would have cried out to Him.
This must be what it was like for Jesus to enter Jerusalem, re-enacted for the benefit of his LGBT people…What does this say for us and for Him?
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Watchman Nee –
“Our confidence is not in our faith, but in the faithfulness of God who promised.”
Francis Chan –
“God’s promises are not just for information, but for transformation.”
Martyn Lloyd-Jones –
“Faith is content to rest on the promises of God, even when reason falters.”
Hudson Taylor –
“God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supply.”
Dallas Willard –
“The promises of God are invitations to live in the reality of His kingdom.
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Extract from Jim’s Preach ‘Life in the Spirit’
Romans 7 and 8 taken from a modern bible version
I realise that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, my human nature is there to trip me up.
I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me?
With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being here for us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.
And now what the rules asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us. Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them, living and breathing God!
The reading is some of what the apostle Paul wrote in Romans about the conflict he experienced between his spiritual nature and his human nature. It wasn’t a unique problem Simon Peter had the conflict and many times his human nature influenced by his old Jewish religion would swamp his spirituality. We too have the same quandary of acting according to our old self or, in the newness of our spiritual life. Spiritually we know God loves us and that we can trust Him with our lives, yet we all, me included, can quickly experience anxiety when a crisis hits.
Many years ago when Nina and I went through bankruptcy we both knew, on a deep level, that God was with us and directing our path through it. But our human nature caused us worry and to have trouble sleeping, our human nature reacted to the stress.
Paul’s solution in regards to our new relationship with the Lord is according to Ro 6:11 Reckon or count yourself dead to your old, limited, human nature… conduct your relationship with God as though your humanity doesn’t exist… making you alive to God in Christ Jesus. This calls us to see ourselves with one nature only where the Lord is concerned, our spiritual nature, God sees us as having one spiritual nature which is complete in Jesus His Son. We are children of God, that is our true position and our true situation. We are one with and in Jesus. No matter what our human nature and our emotions are doing.
In Peters 2nd letter he tells us that we share Jesus’ ‘divine nature’. Grace and faith has brought God’s life to our spirits and given us the ability to trust in Jesus who gave us that life. Trusting in Jesus to live that life in us is the only way to live the Christian life in a state of rest. And that is what we are called to do, to rest in Him.
Paul’s statement in Gal 2, The life I live in my humanity, I live by faith in the Son of God. Trusting in Jesus gives life to the believer’s spirit as the Spirit of Jesus unites with our spirit and the two Spirits become one. We mortal beings become immortal, Paul’s statement again in Gal 2 ‘I no longer live, but Christ lives in me’ Jesus said of His people in Joh 17 they are in the world, but not of the world. Now if you are not of this world by virtue you are of heaven the source of life.
My old Pentecostal religion was a mixture of faith and rules, that’s what they taught me because that’s what they had been taught. The rules were there to show me what I had to do to live a holy life, a life pleasing to God. But I couldn’t do that, and according to tonight’s reading the apostle Paul couldn’t do that and neither can anyone else. Like everyone else the rules didn’t match up with my actions but often we pretended we kept them and people saw that as hypocrisy. In a way that’s the same thing that Martin Luther saw in his catholic church, put simply they didn’t practice what they preached. Luther and I made the same discovery of the truths found in the book of Romans and Galatians, I’m told that Galatians became known as Luther’s book
Basically it was this ‘the righteous shall live by faith’, the truth of those few words started the reformation,‘the righteous shall live by faith’. And how do we live by faith? We rely totally on Jesus to make us right with God and not rely on anything we do or don’t do. Living by faith sweeps away religious law, its rules, its principles, its traditions and all responsibility to please God. Shock horror! But its only shock horror if you undervalue grace and faith and underestimate the power of the Holy Spirit within us
Someone in Liberty once ask the question does this mean you can do anything and God will still be pleased with you? The short answer to that is, yes. But I’ll ask another question in response, do you really want to do anything you might desire to do? Only a fool would really say yes to that one. Because I love and respect Nina I want to live in harmony with her, my desire for a relationship with her overrides any other desire I might have. So my desire to know the Lord more creates in me a desire to be more open to Him and be in harmony, in step with Him and also with those He loves.
Not one person comes to Liberty so as to do as they like, no, people come here to be with the like minded. People become Christians not because they desire a lifestyle where they just do exactly what they like, but because they want the spiritual fulfilment of knowing the Lord, responding to his leading in their lives and a more fulfilling life
The Lord’s love has the unique quality of satisfying every individuals needs, He can fill the void inside us that nothing else can fill. After Paul’s admission in Ro 7 that he can’t control his behaviour in Ro 8 Paul explains there is no condemnation from God, God doesn’t find you guilty of anything. And the reason there’s no condemnation is because there are no longer any rules by which to judge our standing with God.
The Holy Spirit does not condemn or convict, the Spirit gives life. The story of creation in Genesis 1 begins with a void and that void was filled by the work of the Holy Spirit. Creation was a perfect complete work only spoiled by humanity ceasing to trust God and thinking they were separate from God, thinking He was angry with them. On the third day of creation life came to what was dead and so it is with the new creation. On third day after Jesus died, life came into his dead body and that life of the Holy Spirit came into each of us, to bring us out of separation and into life in God. A void within us is being filled by the work of the Holy Spirit
Ro 8: 11 If the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your whole being through His Spirit, who now lives in you. The Spirit gives life. But the same problem still exists, we can do our best to live what we see as a Christian life according to standards and rules and fail, because everyone fails. Or we can admit we can’t do it and trust the Spirit of God to work in us as we walk through life in communication with God’s Holy Spirit.
2Co 5:17 if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The Holy Spirit, has given us new life. Let’s live more and more trusting in the Lord and allow him to grow and mature that new life within us. As the song lyrics say, I am a new creation…No more in condemnation…Here in the grace of God I stand…My heart is overflowing…My love just keeps on growing…Here in the grace of God I stand.
Full Notes in Preaching
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