Sunday VT – 8/31/2014

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Speakers:

• Steve Atherton
• Charles Hocker

Scriptures used:

• James 1:1
• Romans 8
• Ephesians 4
• John 12:26
• 2 Corinthians 4:6

Subject:

• Falling into divers temptations – when you willfully run out and get in a mess of trouble and you realize what you’ve done was wrong.
• Why would we joy when we find myself falling into sin?  Because that is when we know we can turn to the Lord and seek His grace, mercy & forgiveness and receive it.  This builds our faith knowing that God is faithful and that we have an advocate with the Father.
• He has set us free, pulled us out of the mud and we are free and that is joyous.
• Being circumcised in heart – when we are pulled out of that miry clay we have fallen into, our hearts are circumcised towards the Lord.
• It becomes evident to us that we too can fall into that miry clay and when others fall and the devil rejoices, we can extend grace and mercy to them because we know what it’s like.
• Until we have fallen how can we know what it’s like for others?
• The internet never allows us to forget when we have done something wrong.  The worlds way is to hold everything we’ve ever done against us forever.  The Lords way is once we have lifted it up to Him and repented it’s gone.  That’s the way we should be toward one another and toward everyone.
• We are to be Christ like – that is what Christian means!  As He forgives, we should as well.
• Brother Steve talked about how we are being perfected in the Gospel, not in ourselves.
• The Gospel makes God extraordinary – He came and lived a perfect, sinless life among us, we hated and reviled Him, and then He died for us and held none of it against us.  That is contrary to us and our nature.
• We are Gentiles by nature, alienated from God, but the Word says to walk not as other Gentiles do in the vanity of their own mind.
• Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, all thy mind, all thy strength and all thy soul.
• The mind is an important thing.  We need to realize that the battle is in your mind – always.
• Carnal mind loves pride, thinks badly of others and well of ourselves.
• The walk of faith does not look exactly the same on every person who believes.  Jesus and John the Baptist are a good example of how that’s not true.  John the Baptist couldn’t drink wine, lived in the desert, ate locusts and honey and the people thought he had a devil, but that’s what the Father had him doing.  Jesus, by contrast, was turning water into wine.  Yet both of these men were doing what they were to be doing.
• John and Jesus were both serving the Lord faithfully but their ministries looked very different.
• You are seldom going to see the reason behind what someone does.
• Though the walk of faith looks different, what do these people have in common?  They were dedicated to one purpose – unto death was dedicated to serving the Lord.
• Israel was not ready for a deliverance or they could have had it when Samson was alive.
• Their minds were wholly dedicated to knowing and performing the will of God continuously.
• Jesus ministered to the world continuously.
• Which way, in your mind, do you want to go?  Do you want to serve the Lord, seek after and follow the Lord?  That is the question for all of us.
• The mind of Christ believeth all things and hopeth all things.  If you struggle with belief it’s because you have a carnal mind rather than the mind of Christ.
• Are you continuously attentive unto your master seeking to know what they would have you do?  If not it’s because you are walking in your carnal mind.
• The choice is hard, walking in it is not necessarily that hard.
• We receive mercy so we can go forward in that, not bringing back to remembrance constantly how we fell short.
• People will look at you and still see you as the same old dirtbag you always were.  There is nothing about you in the natural that will turn people toward the Lord.
• People come against you – troubled on every side yet not distressed – why?  How can you be troubled on every side and not be distressed?  Because you are at peace with God and He’s bigger than anything.  Steven – when he was stoned – showed no distress about being stoned.  He stood up and looked upon it and spoke of what he saw, which was the risen Lord.
• You’re going to run into a lot of situations where you may not understand what’s going on, but in spite of your lack of understanding you will not despair because you recognize you are a servant on a need to know basis and it’s obviously not important enough for you to know.  Your mind needs to be steadfast on Him.
• If we truly Love God and seek to be with Jesus, then why would we seek to avoid death?
• The Holy Spirit is the comforter and we will know we are not forsaken in the midst of these things.
• Your sadness is for those who are persecuting you, because it’s not about you, it’s about the Lord and His justness if they repent not and He casts them into hell, because they came against you without cause.
• The body of Jesus Christ experiences all these things in every generation.  There is never a generation that does not crucify the Lord again.  (The Lord has been received in some places in one generation but not the next.)  Reference was made to a book on George Rogers Clark “The Hero of Vincennes”.
• Those who are important in the Lord, who really did the work (and others enjoyed the fruit of their labor), they’re seldom exalted in this life.  Paul writes in 2 Timothy how all those people departed.  When you see Christ’s mind in his service and that of John the Baptist, Paul, Moses had to serve the people (even though he wouldn’t enter in he wanted to see the people enter in).  If we’re going to love with all our mind, we’re going to have to fight for that.