Bringing your life together

Review Goal of this Series Developing active exhilarating faith experiencing God's intervention in our daily life. You can believe in God without believing God Faith is believing God that God will do what God has promised to do It is time to synchronize what we say we believe and what we truly believe. What we truly believe is evident in our reality

Review - Continues God wants to bring us to paradise on earth A place of abundance, peace and safety. We need to cooperate with God in order to receive what He already desires to give us. God does not need us to protect Him We should not give God an escape clause when we claim his promise. The enemy (satan) is determined to stop you from entering God’s paradise. We are at war There are giants in the Land

Review - Continues I relate with God based on how I see Him Many of us define who God is based on our experience of Him or our culture. This is bad. Our definition of God must be base on what God has said. God is bound to His principles, He always keeps to them. His Character (good, love, merciful, justice) God is a “Wild Thing”. We can never fully understand how He is going to work.

Review Continues What God entrusts to us depends on how much truth we know of who He is.

Class V God can do what God says He can do God is willing to do what He says He will do God is committed to do what He says He will do God desires to do what He says He will do NOTE: God is committed to do what He says NOT what we want

God can do what He says He can because He is who He says He is Who we believe God to be and what we believe God can do, controls if we will believe that he will do what He is committed to do.

God’s names/titles reveal his ability and commitments Jehovah Jireh – Provides for His own Jehovah Nissi – Protects His own Saviour – Delivers His own Almighty – No one can stop Him from doing what He wants.

Two Extremes All God does is perform miracles. He is mean lean miracle working machine You just push the right buttons and out come miracles. Miracles are a thing of the past therefore they are hardly happen today

Bible’s view of these extremes Matt 16:4 Those of us who want to make God out to be a miracle machine are considered to be “Wicked and adulterous” Luke 9:41 Those of us who deny the miracle workings of God today are considered to be “Unbelieving and perverse”

Problems with these extremes They both use our experience to determine our expectation of God One insists that God must do what we want simply because He has the ability The other kills hope, expectation, faith and so destroys dependency upon God

Miracles come with God The song says: God moves in a mysterious way He’s wonders to perform..... God asked, “ Is anything too hard for me?” One of the reason we pray is to have God do something the would be otherwise impossible. If this is not a definition of miracle what is. To say miracles have stopped is to say God no longer answers prayer. 1 John 5:14, James 5:13 -16

Why do we have few miracles today? It may due to our expectations of God In the 3 rd world countries, we hear of many more miracles because they have no other place to turn to and so expect much from God This indicates our expectation is based on our experience of God We expect more as we see more or are exposed to more of God’s working Our hope and expectation must be based solely on what God says.

Why do we have few miracles today? Many of us are cynical We would deny a miracle even if it hit us right on the head. We need to expect God to keep true to this previous deeds. Psalm 77:10-14, 44:1 If church can not provide access to God and His miracles, we must close our doors

Isaiah 61:1-3 The purpose of the Church Habakkuk 3:2 Should be the cry/prayer of the church James 5:16b Should be our mode of operation Colossians 3:17 Should be our goal

Priority affects miracles Give us this day our daily bread (food, shelter, clothing, comfort, healing....) It gives God glory that we depend on him to give us our daily bread Before “Give us this day....” comes “Thy kingdom come thy will be done” In order for God to answer “Thy kingdom come....” He sometimes withholds the answer to “Give us this day......”

The way priorities work There is an A, B, C List The things on the “C list” will be done if and only if it does not hinder the things on the “A list” or “B list” The things on the “B list” will be done if and only if it does not hinder the things on the “A list”

Priority Example The priority list I have for Samuel is something like this. A List : Love God, salvation, health, life, safety B List : happy, have friends, be kind, be good C List : cook, drive Every time Samuel makes a request, I go through this list before I answer He asks Can I drive the car ? Can I use the knife to cut up the chicken ? He already made these requests – He is only 31/2 years old I say NO. Even thought it meets “C List” it violates my “A List”

Priority Example Cont Samuel will keep asking until He gets yes He will get yes when the time is right and it will not violate my “A List” and “B List” We must keep asking and waiting with expectation until God’s time is right. We may suffer a little denial of less important things so that we do not lose out on the truly important Romans 8:17, 1 Peter 1:7

The blessing of Priority The knowledge of God’s priority frees us from wrong assumptions when we do not get what we want: Examples of wrong assumptions God does not like me God does not answer my prayer like he does for others God hardly knows I am alive God can not do it God is not willing to do it I did not have enough faith I wavered for a split second I have that sin in my past I am a failure I have made a fool of myself

Things to avoid Things that kill faith Arguing It kills faith because you keep hearing words of why you are going to fail. Don’t argue instead focus on where the person is coming from Judging others Condemning others who are not exercising faith kills their faith Encouraging them will build their faith and build yours.

It is time for your miracles Release yourself Dare to have hope Dare to have faith Dare to expect God to do the impossible The glory of God is available for us if we will only believe John 11:40