Our church was established in 1943 as the Bremen Church of God. Pastor Rone Norton had been preaching in an old brush arbor, and they finally got the money to build a building right around the corner. Around 1968, they built what we call the Coley Building and relocated their church. When the pastor left about 30 years later, John Butler and the pastor he was serving at the time decided to come to Bremen to see if they could get the church going again. In 1999 or 2000, we became Covenant Life Church of God, changing the name of the church to communicate to the community that something was different, but in all these years, we’ve never really talked about what a “covenant life” is. We have used the term a lot within the modern church, but we might not really know what it means. This week, we’re starting a brand-new series called “Covenant Living” to see what it looks like to live a life in covenant with God.
Pilots prefer to take off in a headwind because it allows them to climb better. As a matter of fact, naval aircraft carriers turn into the wind when they are getting ready to launch their planes. Headwinds don’t scare an experienced pilot, but once they get off the ground, they need to move from a headwind to a tailwind. They have to move from one air mass — or one river of air — to another. The prophetic word that God gave to our church in the spring suggests a season of acceleration, and just like planes, this requires us to rise. Planes can travel faster in some air than in others, and sometimes, you have to go higher in order to go faster. Using the response of the people of Israel in Exodus 19-20, we’re exploring what it looks like to rise and reach the top of the mountain to which God is calling us.
John 15:1-8, which has been used as the primary scripture or a supporting passage multiple times this year, is all about being IN Jesus. These verses talk about the importance of abiding, dwelling, lingering and getting into lock-step with Jesus. It’s all about losing yourself in His character, nature, calling and empowerment. It’s more than being around Him, knowing about Him or being acquainted with Him. The connection is stronger, deeper and more important than that. It’s being connected to Him as the Source of everything — just like a branch is attached to a vine. This week, we’re exploring the topic of what it really means to be IN Jesus.
Healthy things grow, and growing things change. However, change requires intention, and too often, we respond to these changes with fear. When we’re afraid, we put up walls and push back from other people, but growing deeper with God requires us to put ourselves in difficult and uncomfortable situations. This week, Pastor John delivers an honest call to authenticity and embracing change in our relationship with the Lord. We should not avoid our calling or shrink away from Jesus when life gets difficult. Instead, we need to push through the discomfort because there’s so much more to live for and experience on the other side.
If there is one thing that hangs heavy in the minds of believers, it’s the will of God. We want God’s will to shine out like a lighthouse, so we will know when there’s danger. We want to hear the course corrections clearly and precisely. People are often terrified they’re going to miss the will of God, and sometimes, they’re terrified to find it. There is a way for us to find the will of God shining through the darkness and hear His voice directing our paths. As we learned last week, though, it’s hard to find the right answer if you’re asking the wrong question. This week, we’re going to talk about the will of God and explore the idea that we may be searching for the wrong thing.
People tend to think of vision as something exclusive to churches, businesses or organizations, but you can apply the same principles to your ministry, family or personal life. How do you find a God-pleasing direction for your life? Start by asking right questions. Pastor John consistently prays about God’s vision for Covenant Life and what we should do as a church. In response to these prayers, he recently felt the Holy Spirit show him that Godly vision doesn’t start with a “what.” Instead, it starts with a “who.”
In Mark 2, we see Jesus going back to His ministry headquarters in a place called Capernaum. The people of the town found out He was there, and soon, there was standing room only at the house He was in. Jesus was teaching the people when four men walked up, carrying a paralyzed friend of theirs on a mat. They wanted to take him to Jesus, but there was a crowd of people around Him. As a result, they climbed up on the roof, dislodged some tiles and lowered their buddy down in front of Jesus. Most sermons that are preached on this passage heap praise on the man who had the courage to be healed or the faith of the his four friends to get him to Jesus no matter what. These are worthwhile points, but today, we are examining the account from a different angle by asking an important question: how did the man get out after he was healed? The Bible says he walked out through a crowd of stunned onlookers, but is it possible that these people gathered were standing in the way of seeing a miracle?
For about a year and a half, God has been steadily sending our church messages that challenge us to get healed. We’ve talked about what it means to get healthy, forgive ourselves and those in our past, get strong in the Lord and tap into Him and the Holy Spirit as our power source. This week, we’re talking about the purpose for all that healing, strength and power by talking about the “main thing.” In Matthew 28:18, Jesus meets with His followers after His resurrection and makes a stunning statement; He says that all authority in heaven and earth has been given to Him. This is the same Jesus who remained silent in the face of His accusers, but here He is, standing on a mountainside in Galilee and saying something that had to blow their minds: every created thing in the universe is under His command.
Last week, we started talking about the connection between prayer and peace. The foundational truth of this message was that you can pray or worry, but you can’t do both. We discovered that prayer isn’t about persuasion; it’s about permission. It’s not about convincing God to move on your behalf; it’s about surrendering control of it to Him. Additionally, we found out that God wants us to pray about our own struggles with worry and anxiety just as much as He wants us to pray for other people and situations. This week, we’re going to continue exploring prayer and peace, but first, we need to revisit some of the other things we discussed in Part 1. We learned that prayer is power, the path to peace and progress, but these things are universally true. In 1 Kings 18, the prophets of Baal prayed earnestly and sincerely, but nothing happened. There was no power in their prayer. As we dive into Part 2, the central truth for us is that prayer’s power is in direct proportion to the power of the One to Whom we are praying.
Throughout the Bible, God talks a lot about peace, and it makes sense. He identifies Himself as a God of peace, and Jesus is called the Prince of Peace. The Bible also talks about worry and anxiety a lot because they are the enemies of peace. God loves us, and He wants us to walk in peace. During our last series, we talked about the replacement doctrine, which means that we have to replace our negative activities with positive ones, and this is exactly what we see in Philippians 4:6. This week, we’re starting a new series that explores the connection between prayer and peace.
Over the past six weeks, we’ve been in the “Prescription for the Promise” Series, exploring the three, two-word imperatives that the Lord gave us in a prophetic word a few months ago: Get Healthy, Get Strong and Get Ready. There were great promises contained in that prophecy, but it was clear that they were contingent upon us carrying out the commands — or prescriptions — God provided. We spent a couple of weeks talking about how to get healthy, the last four weeks learning how to get strong, and we’re ending the series with what it means to get ready. Let’s assume that we are all healthy or getting healthy, and we are learning to walk and live in the love of Christ, which is the source of spiritual strength. We could look in the Bible and follow scriptural principles for these first two commands, but the command to get ready leads to many questions. Get ready for what? How can you study when you don’t know what’s on the test? How can you be ready when you don’t know what’s coming? This week, we’re going to look at three things we can do to get ready for any time or place God may lead us.
We’ve been in a series called “Prescription for the Promise,” in which we’ve been talking about getting healthy and getting strong. This week, we’re continuing to focus on what it means to Get Strong. The central idea is to get strong in the Lord’s power, and we’ve explored many aspects of spiritual strength — all of them important, valid and backed up by multiple scriptures. In Ephesians 3:19, Paul writes about experiencing the love of Christ, so we can be “made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.” Throughout this potion of our series, we have learned that growing in God’s power is what gives us strength, and the Bible tells us that kind of strength only happens when we experience the love of Christ.
Covenant Life received a prophetic word a few months ago, in which the Lord told us to do three thingsL Get Healthy, Get Strong and Get Ready. We have been referring to these as prescriptions that we need to fill in order to see the promises that God said were coming, and we’ve been looking at each one throughout our current series, “Prescription for the Promise.” We have to actually do what He tells us to do if we expect to receive what He said He wanted for us. This week, we’re continuing to explore what it means to Get Strong. We already learned that spiritual strength has to be endued, which means that we have to surrender and allow God to wrap us in His strength. We also learned that spiritual strength has to be renewed; humans are weak and prone to leaking, so we have to be refilled. To “be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power,” we must learn how to stop poking holes in the supernatural buckets of our lives.
This week, we are continuing our series called “Prescription for the Promise.” The Lord spoke a word to Covenant Life a few months ago that included some wonderful promises He has in store for us, but it also includes three things that we need to do. The fulfillment of the promises is contingent upon our willingness to do the three prescriptions He gave us: Get Healthy, Get Strong and Get Ready. This week is the second part of our focus on “Get Strong.” As we started to discuss last week, strength and courage are often seen together in the Bible. To encourage means to put courage in, but you have to take something out before you can put in something new. Perhaps, the reason some of us have not gotten stronger in the Lord is because we’re trying to add strength, but we haven’t removed the fear first.
This week, we’re continuing our series called “Prescription for the Promise,” exploring the prophetic word about our church that the Lord gave to Pastor John a few months ago. Within this prophecy, there are three kinds of statements. There are descriptions that tell us what’s happening and predictions about things to come in the future, but there are also three commands we must do to see the promise be fulfilled. We’ve already talked about the first prescription: get healthy. Now, as we shift our focus to the second prescription, we’re going to see what the Bible says about getting strong. Ephesians 6 tells us to be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power, and in John 15, Jesus says that we’re unable to do anything without Him. Together, we’ll discover ways to improve our union with God, which is crucial for spiritual strength.
Last week, we began a brand new series called “Prescription for the Promise,” which seeks to unpack three commands within the prophecy that God spoke to and about Covenant Life a few months ago. He said that we need to get healthy, get strong and get ready. By doing these things, we will be prepared for the promises that He also spoke to us: victory, growth, freedom and repentance. With Get Healthy: Part 1, we talked about the first two steps in the process. First, we need to ask God for an honest evaluation about the areas in which we’re not healthy. Then, we have to be humble enough to accept the evidence and admit that we may have work to do. This week, we’re continuing the conversation about how we can be physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually healthy.
A few weeks ago, Pastor John released a prophetic word for Covenant Life. Part of that message is descriptive; it describes the breaking and shaking of strongholds many people in our church are experiencing right now. Some of it is predictive; it predicts that the result of the sharking and breaking will be resolution, freedom, repentance, victory, revival and growth. Another part of the word is prescriptive. It is prescribing a course of action that we should take. This comes in the form of three commands that will hasten the fulfillment of the promises: get healthy get strong, get ready. This week, we’re talking about the first imperative and exploring its biblical foundation. No matter who you are what God has planned for you, you need to be healthy, strong and ready to walk into it.
Over the past three weeks, we’ve been talking a lot about sounds and how we often hear the rumblings of God doing things in our lives before we see those changes come to pass. As powerful as sounds are, though, I don’t think we realize that what we see has a significant impact on our lives. In fact, it’s more about how we see than it is about what what see. So much of life is about perspective, and the impulses deep inside of us tend to color how we interact with and see the world. If the way we respond to the things that happen to us is determined by the thoughts and tendencies we have, it’s worth some analysis. This week, we’re learning how we can properly guard our hearts and ensure that our default reactions to the inconveniences of life are more in line with the Word of God.
When you grow up in the church, one of the common themes that gets drilled into your brain is that faith and facts are in opposition to each other. We are taught that the “what is” of facts and the “what shall be” of faith are somehow diametrically opposed to each other, but what happens when the facts surrounding your life actually lead you to a step of faith? Could it be that facts and faith can work together to lead you to a future that pleases God and blesses you? There are a lot of man-made traditions and false conclusions that people have passed off as sound doctrine. Following Jesus is a faith walk, and The Bible is clear that it is impossible to please God without faith. However, it doesn’t mean that we completely ignore the evidence around us. We’ve been in a series called “Sounds From Heaven,” talking about the ways God speaks to us, and this week, we’re exploring the possibility that He may be speaking to you through the circumstances of your life right now.
Last week, we learned that there’s a sound before there’s a sight. We often hear something before we see something, and this is supported by numerous verses throughout the Bible. This timely and important message reminded us that God is always speaking to us and provided a necessary reminder that, if God ever stops communicating, we’re in serious trouble. Thankfully, the author of Psalm 29 shows us that the voice of God is everywhere. Sounds from heaven are emanating from the throne like a spiritual radio station, but we often miss it because there’s too much interference from doubt or distraction. This week, we’re exploring the sounds that surround us and the ways the Father, Son and Holy Spirit speak into our lives.