Sunday VT – 4/13/2014

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Speakers:

• Steven Atherton

Scriptures used:

• Ephesians 4
• Hebrews 12

Subject:

• We’ve been getting hard messages lately.  As we go through those it’s hard.
• But it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness.  Then we can walk in Him in confidence as Jesus did with Lazarus.
• We need to get shed of all the confidence in ourselves.  We need to cease from our own works.
• If man in his best state is altogether vanity, what do we have that is worth hanging onto?
• We think we are better than someone else.  With whatever judgment we judge, we shall be judged.
• The time to learn these truths is now.  We can learn to love the Lord and everything of His kingdom.
• Paul was a prisoner of the Lord, and wasn’t able to escape.   He had a chain.  He was the Lord’s.  He was the apostle to the Gentiles for a purpose.
• We want to do our own thing.  We want our own way.  And we want God to bless that.
• We can make ourselves the Lord’s.  We can choose to join Him, and trod our own life underfoot.
• It doesn’t go away after we trod on it, it comes back up.  We will have to confront and deal with it again and again.
• What the Lord has for us is better than anything we have in mind.  Bringing the Gospel of peace to others.
• When we share the Gospel there is nothing in this world that compares to watching the Gospel transform another person’s life.
• We have to want it.
• If we choose to go forward and share the Gospel, the Lord will be with us.  We won’t get there as long as we hold out for what we want.
• Paul is beseeching the people because they are not doing it – not walking worthy of the vocation wherein they are called.
• Self-justification is a miserable place to be.
• Step out in faith and don’t let anything stop you.  Trod it underfoot!
• Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world.  Go forward in it.  If you don’t believe it stop lying to yourself.  But if you don’t believe it but you want to, ask Him to strengthen your faith, and pray in the Holy Ghost.
• That battle is there every single day.  It never goes away.
• With all lowliness – this is an accurate assessment of one’s self.  When we do this everyone else looks very good, better than us.
• We don’t want to hear correction from someone else.  But they are there to pick you up when you are down.
• If we are going to go forth we need to get an accurate understanding of who we are.  Then we will have lowliness of mind.
• Meekness is ready to receive instruction and correction because we’re not hanging onto the old stuff that agrees with us.  If it agrees with us it is wrong.
• Longsuffering – He gives us time, space and place to learn the things He wants us to learn.
• Forbearing one another in love – a decision you make.  Not according to what you feel.
• You forbear when you realize how much forbearance has been done for you.
• Endeavoring – takes effort.  It’s not what you feel like doing.  So what?  Did your feelings ever guide you the right way before?  Trod that feeling underfoot.
• The Unity of the Spirit – one.  No division.  You want to do what the Holy Spirit guides you to do.
• I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me.