1. Become a Christian-
Trust in the finished work of Jesus (his perfect life, sacrificial death, and glorious resurrection) and give Him control of your life, then His Spirit will dwell within you.

2. Be open an willing to do whatever He leads you to do, whatever-

3. Ask Him to lead you-

4. And, eliminate conflicting voices- Things drunkenness, drug use, and actively pursuing sin which will shut out the Spirit’s leading in your life and make Him hard to hear or to distinguish.

My mouth is open to saying whatever He has to say. My feet are ready to go where He wants me to go. My hands are stretched out, ready to do whatever He wants me to do. My heart is waiting to me moved by whatever moves His. My life is lived in the Spirit; the Spirit lives within me. I am a part of the Body.

As I walk in the Spirit, His work is accomplished through me and I have the priviledge of seeing God’s will fulfilled before me.

I want to feel what He feels, do what He does, go where He goes, say what He says, see what He sees, and touch who He touches. My life belongs to Him and can be used for whatever purpose He has called me. He has given me an unquenchable desire to see His Kingdom grow and because of that I am desparate and jealous to be a part of such a move of the Spirit. Revival is here and will come.

• The Holy Spirit wants us to do a lot more than speak in tongues!
• The Holy Spirit is not weird, people are weird! And ‘those’ people will go from church to church being used by the enemy and will destroy the church with their (the insistence of the usage of their pet- my addition) bizarre gift.
• Church’s often don’t grow because their pastor’s vision has been hijacked (by the people mentioned above).
• Just because you (the pastor/church) know how to do every spiritual gift doesn’t mean that you have to ‘do’ them every Sunday morning when the lost are there to hear of the grace of God.
• People want to come to church and find out about Christ but they don’t/can’t because they can’t find a ‘life-giving’ church (where Christ and His new life is focused on in services over the showing off of Spiritual gifts- my further explanation).

What surprised me as I prepared to give this message is how opposed Christians were to the idea of being able to have ‘fun’. One parishioner within my church actually sent me a long email about how ‘they’ were offended that I would actually speak about ‘fun’ in church. The email’er told me that told me that church was a very ‘serious’ thing to them. They mentioned how they attend church regularly and fellowship with other believers regularly but that wasn’t fun for them. I wonder what it is then. This email embodied the very thing I was trying to speak against and because of this person’s misconceived notions about what church was supposed to be, and possibly what fun was supposed to be, they missed the message altogether (i.e. didn’t show up).

As I stood in front of the congregation, the Spirit of God moved on me with every word I spoke. He was speaking freedom and joy to His people to find release from the bondage of legalism, religion, and death. I spoke of Ezekiel Chapter 37 where the Spirit of God calls on Ezekiel to prophecy to the ‘dry bones’ to come back together and receive the breath of life to live once again.

What was interesting though was the spiritual battle that I felt I was going through as I spoke this message from the Word of God. I mean this was good stuff I was speaking, but there was SO much tension and resistance hovering in the church’s auditorium. As I called the church to see itself as the valley of dry bones, they only confirmed this metaphor with the look of complacency and death on their faces.

I knew, though, that God was really attempting to break through to this group of people so that they could experience freedom once again. So I pressed through and called on people to come forward to receive a fresh breath of the Holy Spirit on their dry bones in order to live a new and exciting life of fun for the God who takes pleasure in them and for the sake of the advancement of His Kingdom into a world that rightfully perceives the Church as a dying and boring organism. At first, one or two people trickled to the front to receive prayer. The work was not done. Another call was made for people to come forth. A few more people trickled down the aisle as the remaining crowd looked ahead trying to hide their illicit relationship with religion and pride. I called out again, this time because of a prophetic word given to me by a woman who had previously came forward for prayer, saying that God was hurting because people were avoiding His blessings due to their own pride. And then more people came forward- a girl who had experienced an oppressing fog over her life for the past 6 months that caused her to question the love of God in her life- a girl who a day before was a runaway half-way across the country standing on a bridge to kill herself came forward with tears streaming down her face desperate for the love of God. It was beautiful! But there were still more who God was dealing with who blatantly refused His offer of freedom and joy; and that breaks my heart. More than that, though, I am thrilled for those who pressed forward into the blessings of God to receive the breath of fresh air that they so desperately needed.

Something is happening in the world. Something is happening in our nation. And something is happening in my church. Those who are freely accepting what God is causing to happen are those who the Church historically has rejected. Those who may miss the boat of what God’s doing are those who are more concerned with religion than they are about freedom in Christ. It will be a sad day when they see that they have missed something…the very thing that offered them new life.

Rick Bezet recently had an appendectomy that put him out of commission for a few days. That made him slow down and see what God was trying to say. He realized that one day the people he’s pastoring will be in the presence of God and that he wants that to be a good day for them. He remembered that Billy Graham told him to “always live your life with the end in mind because the end is going to come.” Bezet stated that it is imperative that we finish well.

Bezet, wanting to finish well, began to think about people that have never heard the gospel or were backsliden in his state. He declared that the fields were ripe in this day and time for harvest, but sometimes we forget about the harvest.

Rick Bezet then gave 7 Measuring Tools in Terms of the Harvest:

1. Is your church humiliating?

To prevent visitors from being humiliated New Life Church holds a ‘believers service’ where they want the Holy Spirit and want God to touch them but are aware of the ‘nonbelievers’ around them.

Bezet made the brilliant statement that “everything (Spiritual gifts) doesn’t have to happen in every service.”

He asked the audience if it’s embarrassing to bring friends to their church? Pointing out that you don’t have to compromise your convictions, but that the church exists for its non members because unchurched people are showing up.

He told a story of a time where he wanted to share the Gospel with a friend, but was scared that if his friend came to church, he would ‘lose’ him (getting saved).

He pointed out that at church, the Holy Spirit is very good at drawing people to the Father and sometimes we ruin it by the things we expect Him (the Spirit) to do.

He pointed out a statistic that 85% of all 1^st time church visitors will go to your website before they go to your church – to make sure that you don’t embarrass them.

People that were unchurched and lost loved to be around Jesus- why don’t they love being around the us?

Nothing ever hurts church growth more than having a friend who visited your church then they get in the car and say they will never come back because then you will probably never invite anyone again.

2. Be nice

Bezet told pastors not to let weird people be greeters, let nice people do it. And be nice about how you open your services: Start with a countdown,  ask how many guests have been to church before, tell them that there’s a lot of ways to do church and God likes them all, then explain how you do church. He tells  his crowd: When we start the music our aim is to worship God. We don’t know your background, so participate in worship in a way that feels comfortable to you.

3. Music

Rick advised to never set up your church to have the style of music you like . You’re not trying to reach you. People don’t flip through the radio looking for choir music, so pick music people like. Churches grow because they have good music.

4. Sermon

Bezet said that the Word of God is very cutting edge. It’s ahead of its time. When preaching, use terms people are familiar with. Find something in the Word that relates to people. God and people are looking for people to be real.

5. Your Church is Schizophrenic

He said that churches are always changing; always changing services and ministries and not getting things right. Even thought he knew perfection was not possible, he stressed the important of being consistent in the quality of what you do. This point was a tad bit grey as it was the thing he talked least about.

6.Relational

Bezel said that churches have to be relational because people know when you love them, and when you’re just being fake.

7. Are You Delusional?

“The heart of God is looking for those who are lost.” Are we delusional and forgetting that?

Next Priscilla Shirer shared on the importance of the Power of God in your services. I will post my notes from that session momentarily.

Too often, Bible teachers spend little to no time thinking in advance what they’ll be speaking about. Either because of an overloaded schedule or an arrogant-like, over-dependence on the leading of the Holy Spirit; they’ll plan their message (in it’s entirety) for that week…THAT week, often even the night before.

I’ll adress those two reasons.

First, I believe that the teacher (usually also the head pastor) within a church has its most important and central role. They are the ones who communicate the church’s mission, vision, purpose, beliefs and values. They are the ones who teach the church the Bible, preach visitors the Gospel; and cast vision and envision ministries to the glorification of God and the advancement of His kingdom for his elders, board, deacons, ministers, and volunteers to administer and implement.

Too many times these leaders are expected by the their church to do too many things: counseling, visitation, secretarial work, book keeping, adminstering and implementing different ministries, prayer gatherings, phone answering, etc….

Now of course, all of these things are things that a pastor will have to do from time to time- especially more so in a smaller church. But the more empowerment a leader gives to elders, deacons, ministers, and volunteers; the less of a load he will have to carry so that he can spend the majority of his time doing what’s most important in his job: preparing the preaching of God’s work and casting vision for the church to follow.

Second, the most important thing a teacher (pastor) can do, after continual Bible study, is rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to direct, guide, and inspire them.

However, I have seen and heard of too many leaders that almost overly rely on the guidance of the Spirit when it comes to message prep.

You’ll hear things from them like,” I haven’t been led to know what I will be speaking about this weekend yet,” “God will give me what to say when I stand up to say it,” and “I haven’t gotten the go-ahead yet from God on the message I want to bring.”

Now trust me, I believe in the Spirit of God leading a teacher what to speak about. But the Holy Spirit is not a God of disorder. He’s a God of order. And while the Bible is clear on the sovereignty of God, it’s also clear on the responsibity of man. One such responsibilty we have is planning. This especially comes into play when getting ready to speak the Word of God.

I believe that failing to plan is planning to fail. And I don’t believe that God will greatly bless us in our efforts if we don’t prepare and work properly on the task at hand.

Look at Joseph in the book of Genesis! His whole life was sovereignly moved by God, but it was also a life of taking responsibility and allowing God to change bad situations into positive ones through faith, planning, patience, and the using of his gifts and talents.

So allow the Holy Spirit to lead you what to speak about. But pray about it and envision your speaking topics months, if not a year or so, in advance.

God will guide you, then you’ll have time to properly execute the preparation of your message. You’ll have time to come up with the right illustrations, study the right materials, write out exactly what you want to say, and to study and rehearse your finished message- all of that probably finished weeks before the day you nbd to give the message.

Planning out ahead gives you the opportunity to teach on large themes or books of the Bible and to connect them with other message series before or after them. It gives you clarity when planning the rest of your schedule for months into the future.

Planning ahead will always be most simple and most effective if you do series. Planning far in advance stand-alone messages would be very difficult.

With a series, you can decide many months in advance what you will focus on each week of the series, then have ample time to study and prepare a sermon for each of those topics.

Some people are afraid that they won’t be able to come up with a series months in advance. Don’t worry! God WILL guide you, but if you really can’t come up with anything, pick a book of the Bible and expositionally walk your people through it over the course of several weeks or months (even years). You can’t go wrong with the Bible. Just make sure that you break the book down into parts that you want to spend a week on, determine how long the series will be, then plan the next series after that and start studying for upcoming series.

Once applied, this principle will be liberating. Involve your elders and minaret staff in your decisions for your speaking calendar. God may use them to direct you where to go. Plus, you may even plug them or other great speakers into a rotation so they can take a week or two of your series for you so you can focus on…planning the next series…

I have always found that no matter how good of a speaker you are, audiences always respond better to someone who has invested much time and forethought into the preparation of the message being given. And they can always tell if someone is unprepared or simply winging it.

More to come tomorrow-

Without complaining or going into details; I worked many hours last week but because of how I get compensated, we did not recieve a paycheck for the work I did.

We had a wonderful day otherwise, but we were very depressed and confused by what we thought was God’s lack of provision.

We reflected on how we were positive we were doing what God’s will was for our lives, our commitment to Him and His will, our service to Him, our financial giving, our reading of His Word, etc… Not that we have a quid-pro-quo theology of God, but it just was looking like what we were doing was not going to work much longer because God didn’t appear to be providing for us.

After a private heartfelt discussion together, Susan and I walked out of our room trusting in God and that His will was perfect for our life, yet truthfully still disapointed with Him.

On the way down our stairs there was an unexpected knock at the front door and when we answered it, someone who handed us a check for a substancial amount of money. The amount was comparable to what a “normal” weekly paycheck would be….amazing!

The person just said that they felt led to brin it over, and they did. Thank God for their financial margin and obedience to God’s voice! Someday I hope to be able to have enough margin to be able to bless like that as well.

After the visitor left I went on a run. I was happy for God’s provision, but still a little disapointed of how He provided and how I did not actually recieve a paycheck for my work.

That’s when God spoke to me and said something to the effect of;” I’m the one who pays you and signs your paycheck.” Wow! Every good and perfect gift truly does come from above.

So now, I’m still a little confused and am wondering how God is going to come through for us, but He lifts us up right when we need it and He will provide for us as we do His will.