As we serve God we often times cannot see where He is due to being so crowded with life. But if we can learn to be persistent and desperate enough to be moved by our faith we too can see miracles come into our lives!
Sermon Notes: https://www.heartofgraceministries.com/blog/after-the-fact/power-persistence/
36 They also which saw it told them by what means he that was possessed of the devils was healed.
37 Then the whole multitude of the country of the Gadarenes round about besought him to depart from them; for they were taken with great fear: and he went up into the ship, and returned back again.
43 And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any,
44 Came behind him, and touched the border of his garment: and immediately her issue of blood stanched.
45 And Jesus said, Who touched me? When all denied, Peter and they that were with him said, Master, the multitude throng thee and press thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?
46 And Jesus said, Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me.
47 And when the woman saw that she was not hid, she came trembling, and falling down before him, she declared unto him before all the people for what cause she had touched him, and how she was healed immediately.
48 And he said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.
Matthew 9:19-22
19 And Jesus arose, and followed him, and so did his disciples.
20 And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment:
21 For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole.
22 But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.
36-37 – It was crowded and difficult to maneuver around to see Jesus. Unless you were going to be strong enough to get to Jesus you were pushed out of the way
43-44 – We find a point of desperation; how desperate was this woman after she had suffered for 12 years with something she could not explain? How desperate was to find a solution after she has spent everything she had? This desperation was finally enough to use faith to push through when she could not see Jesus…to get where He was.
45-48 – Now the woman knew she had touched Jesus. Jesus wanted the woman to know that He knew she had touched him. As she testifies the witness of her miracle stirred all whom heard her speak.
As we serve God we often times cannot see where He is due to being so crowded with life. But if we can learn to be persistent and desperate enough to be moved by our faith we too can see miracles come into our lives
5 Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children;
2 And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.
3 But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints;
4 Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks.
5 For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.
6 Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.
7 Be not ye therefore partakers with them.
8 For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:
9 (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;)
10 Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.
11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.
12 For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.
13 But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.
14 Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.
15 See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,
16 Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
17 Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.
18 And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;
19 Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord;
20 Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;
21 Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
10 Life Transforming Actions To Make It Count
We’ve got to learn to make it count for something. To redeem the time while we can. To be happy while we still live. To enjoy life through Christ before we die. And while we’re here, to show the difference to the lost and dying world.
Learn and understand in a deeper way how God takes what seems impossible and turns it around into something that can be done!
Enjoy the video!
Sermon Notes: https://www.heartofgraceministries.com/blog/after-the-fact/god-going-turn-around/#.VcZgrnFVhHw
40 Let all things be done decently and in order.
3 Be merciful unto me, O Lord: for I cry unto thee daily.
17 Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice.
8 So will I sing praise unto thy name for ever, that I may daily perform my vows.
34 Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors
13 But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
31 I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.
23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.
54 Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord.
2 Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes;
3 For thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.
4 Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more.
5 For thy Maker is thine husband; the Lord of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called.
6 For the Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith thy God.
7 For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee.
8 In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer.
Sometimes I find it difficult to understand when I do not have that God will speak to me to give, or to shout when I do not feel like praising, to encourage when I feel discouraged myself, to get up when I feel like giving in. At first glance the victory that God appears to try and lead us to appears to be blunt and even insensitive to our problems. It’s almost like you can feel insulted by instruction before you even try. Believe me, I stand here oftentimes wondering what God is going to use me in next with a little anxiety of how bold or crazy it may seem. While He has seen the breakthrough, we are trying to decide if we will make it through. What I have discovered as a result of giving God a chance is that what appears to be the worst thing to do turns around into the thing I could not have done without.
Most Christians would say amen to scriptures that speak of God’s turnaround nature. We want to follow a God who can make the unlivable places livable again, who can bring prosperity to the land and restore it to its former glory (Isaiah 58:12). While we love to speak of God and His incredible power, and we may say amen and even teach the lessons, that does not necessarily mean we really believe it. It’s only when we start to act on what we amen that we begin to discover how certain we are of God’s turnaround ability.
Jesus was criticized in the way He performed miracles, the days on which He would carry them out, and to whom He would extend them. The Bible is full of stories where God’s answers seemed insensitive, where a prophet’s behavior looked more crazy than sane, and where Jesus’ ministry seemed careless and wasteful. One time, a prophet asked an influential ruler to wash in a dirty river, an instruction that was both disrespectful and insensitive to the ruler’s position in the community (2 Kings 5). The prophet Elisha instructed a woman with nothing to go and find more emptiness that she would be required to fill (2 Kings 4).
God told a starving widow who was about to use her last handful of flour and oil to feed her son a last meal to take those ingredients and feed a hungry prophet instead (1 Kings 17).
God asked an elderly couple, who were ready for retirement, to have a baby. He instructed a stuttering shepherd to speak to Pharaoh and to deliver an entire nation. He told a boy on a hillside to leave the sheep and kill a giant. He chose a teenage girl to carry the Savior of the world.
Turnarounds by nature are radical; they bypass nice and sensible, they freak out the orderly, and they do not line up with agendas. But turnarounds reveal our miraculous Savior to our messed-up world.
God doesn’t downsize people; He enlarges them. He removes their comfort zones and throws them into the unknown, where His capacity overshadows their ability and they participate in the turnaround ministry of the God they serve.
Jesus came to turn the world upside down in the three years of His public ministry. He called a group of young men, mostly made up of teenagers, to come help Him turn around an entire world. He asked them to leave the tranquil lake for the sea of hurting humanity. Jesus’ ministry was not safe; it was revolutionary. He came with miracles, not slight improvements—and often it was people’s willingness to believe in His turnaround power that determined whether they went away healed and whole.
Jesus could have seemed insensitive when He said to cripples, “Get up and walk!” or to grieving relatives, “Open the grave!” His methods were questioned, but His miracles always brought answers. Turnarounds are not polite or politically correct; they are not people pleasing or protocol appeasing. Jesus wasn’t trying to fit in; He came to turn things around. Throughout His ministry—in persecution, torture, misunderstanding, and betrayal—Jesus carried on undaunted, seeing a joy set before Him that would only be attained with a complete turnaround commitment. God sent us a turnaround Jesus and then He gave us the turnaround facilitator, the Spirit of God.
We are now the custodians of that same turnaround power. As God’s people, His Spirit rests within us. We are commissioned to work with Him to turn our world around, to speak into the darkness and bring forth His light, and to find those who are bound and bring them His gift of freedom. We have been given authority to turn around injustice with His justice and hopelessness with His hope. Yet often, we allow our doubts to question this power and let our fears contain this freedom.
We cannot allow our circumstances to compromise what Christ paid the highest price to attain. We must awaken our hearts, stir up our faith, and begin to look again at the places God has positioned us in. We need to see with new eyes the possibilities that our turnaround God can create in the places where no one else sees potential. We must seek to be the ones who bring answers where others only see problems. We need to shake off the complacency that can so quickly enter our hearts, causing us to settle for less than His Word promises.
There is so much more for your life to embrace, so many breakthroughs for you to play your part in. We need a greater revelation of Whose we are, and in that understanding, we can grow a greater confidence of what He has called us to do.
9 And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment;
10 That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ.
11 Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God.
Abound yet more in knowledge = overflow
Let us overflow that we may be lift up God, be genuine towards others and live to not offend them as alone as we live
Overflow = you are filled with an overwhelming conviction to do whats right
Let’s read the promise of the Father:
The Spirit of God is a spirit of might, and of power, as well as of knowledge, of understanding, of counsel, of love, and of a sound mind; whereby they were to be fortified, and inspired with courage and greatness of soul, so as to look their greatest adversaries in the face with boldness and intrepidity, and freely, and without fear, speak unto them; and whereby their ministrations would be succeeded to the conversion of many souls; and accordingly so it was: for after the Spirit was poured out upon them, they who before were timorous and fearful, came forth publicly, with undaunted courage, and resolution, and boldness, to the amazement of their adversaries; and their preaching was with the demonstration of the Spirit, and of power; who may be said to be “from on high”, since he descended from heaven upon them; and they may be said to be “endued”, or “clothed” with him, since there was such an extra ordinary and plentiful effusion of his gifts and graces on them: and now they were to wait in Jerusalem for this, that in the place where the Spirit had been dishonoured and blasphemed, and the unpardonable sin against him had been committed by the Scribes and Pharisees, the might be in a most visible and signal manner honoured; and also, because the doctrine of the Lord was to go out of Zion, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem.
Romans 15:13 – Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.
We abound in hope and keep peace through overflow. It’s time to seek God through overflow.
Mark 4:35-41
[35] And the same day, when the even was come, he saith unto them, Let us pass over unto the other side.
[36] And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as he was in the ship. And there were also with him other little ships.
[37] And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full.
[38] And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish?
[39] And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.
[40] And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?
[41] And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?
Here we begin at our lord’s long day of preaching.
The crowd was so great he had to teach from a boat
Topics were:
He closes the day’s end with his disciples in an adventure they would never forget
The promise at evening 35 – let us pass over to the other side
The Christian life is like this journey
The Peril of the storm (v. 37)
Lessons we can learn from the disciples:
Storms come to us all!
The purpose of the storm (v. 38-41)
The storm enabled them to measure their faith
There are different storms for different purposes
This storm was to build their faith
Don’t judge the purpose of another’s storm
To walk is to be propelled into forward motion. We must be in constant motion in our walk with God. We must learn to walk again. How? With God and the attributes that when within us will make us a blessed set of individuals.
We must learn to walk:
In the spirit – Galatians 5:16
[16] This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
In the newness of life – Romans 6:4
[4] Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
By faith – II Corinthians 5:7
[7] (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)
Worthy – Colossians 1:10
[10] That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God;
Circumspectly – Ephesians 5:15
[15] See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,
In love – Ephesians 5:2
[2] And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.
In light – Ephesians 5:8
[8] For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:
When I think about studying to show myself approved, I remember hearing the same message through the halls and sanctuaries of many churches. I remember looking back on bible schools that were always set on trying to play games on memorizing the most bible verses. I also remember hearing as I grew up that there would be moments where you would need to be ready to share the text of the word of God. I’m sure that you may have some memories as well that bring you to the remembrance of that phrase, right?
The question I have for everyone today is, did we or have we got it wrong? Before you may jump to a quick conclusion of NO, please consider the reasoning that I share with you today and know that this is something that I not only learned in ideal but in experience as well.
To me, studying to show thyself approved goes so much further than knowing the bible word for word. In fact, attempting to do this would prove to be difficult as there are more versions to learn and memorize than what we even have time for to study! It goes further than learning Gods word to attempt to witness to someone by your head knowledge of the bible. When you think approved, think about the phrase “being pleasing to God”. Think about how that people at all times are watching your life, whether they believe in God or not. The bottom line is this, being approved in Gods word is directly correlated in how you live according to the word that lives in you that you actually use. In other words, we come out from being a hearer and wanting people to be drawn by listening to the true meaning of the word by doing it and letting it be a witness towards others!
Let people see the word that lives in you by your love and faith in how you live! Then in the end you succeed and win others to Christ!