Monthly CCIM delivers this topical Bible Study to Indigenous Pastors and Lay Leaders around the world.
“Cyndy, thank you you so much for the word COMPASSION. Am blessed, I have understood what it means, my heart has not remained the same. May the good Lord continue to use you.”
“Greetings, Today we have shared Volume 3, FORGIVENESS. Really God has touched people’s hearts!”
“Thank-you so much for the Volume 1. It’s real Bible Study!”
“May God’s grace give you all the wisdom you need as you take us through the living word. I am happy that the word of God gives me strength. True freedom is essential and profound. Your teaching is indeed reawakening.”
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” Colossians 3:16
God wants to heal our lives. He wants to heal our hearts and minds and bodies.
We know this in the church and for many of us we have made it our habits of church and christianity to declare and pray healing over others.
And yet, we have often made healing a product of church. We have taken what is meant to be a free gift of God to all people and have made it a proprietary (something owned by just a few people) product of the church.
Spiritual Authority is:
These are found in surrender.
Are deepened in further surrender.
And are ever-present in continued surrender.
We use the word church to indicate the place where we gather. We know church to be the building in which we come for worship, for teaching, and for fellowship in the body of Christ.
When our Bibles tell us to ‘care for the church’, as we read in Acts 20:29, we may immediately think of taking care of the building, the gatherings, the programs, Sunday service, prayer meetings, and such.
“Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.” Acts 20:28
When Jesus Christ came to earth there was a well-established religious system. There were the scribes and pharisees, these were the keepers of the law, the ones schooled in the specifics of the keeping of the law.
These were the leaders of the Jewish religion and the ones that enforced and taught God’s ways. They were the ones living their best to be good and right and perfect and by this managed to appear better than anyone else.
At that same time, when Jesus came to earth, there were the common people like you and I. These common people were living their lives trying to do as God might have them do, trying to be as God might have them be. They were working hard but perhaps, in contrast to the religious leaders, felt inadequate and not quite measuring up.
I continue to be caught by the story of the prodigal son. Let’s begin by reading from Luke 15:11-31
11 To illustrate the point further, Jesus told them this story: “A man had two sons. 12 The younger son told his father, ‘I want my share of your estate now before you die.’ So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons. 13 “A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and moved to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money in wild living. 14 About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. 15 He persuaded a local farmer to hire him, and the man sent him into his fields to feed the pigs. 16 The young man became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything. 17 “When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, ‘At home even the hired servants have food enough to spare, and here I am dying of hunger! 18 I will go home to my father and say, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, 19 and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Please take me on as a hired servant.”’ 20 “So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. 21 His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son.’ 22 “But his father said to the servants, ‘Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him.
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Two weeks ago I was meeting with a prayer client. She had been meeting with me for some sessions and was in the midst of facing some hard decisions. As we came before the Lord inquiring of His thoughts it occurred to her that her trouble was that she has been trying to understand every part of what she was facing.
The Lord revealed that the problem was that she wanted to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, how to go forward; she was looking for a surety within her own mind and understanding.
The Holy Spirit brought to her mind this verse:
“And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:7 ESV
“And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:7 NASB
“Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7 NLT
“You can enter God’s kingdom only through the narrow gate. The [road that leads to destruction]ESV* is broad, and it’s gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.” Matthew 7:13-14 NLT *[highway to hell] NLT
I have become convinced that the wide and the narrow roads that Jesus talks about are not in regards to sin per se, but about our response to sin. The Wide Road experiences sin in shame and condemnation and out of that experience works to rid itself of sin.
The Wide Road is where we put in good works and our own efforts to try and make ourselves right with God. The Wide Road is where we participate in religion that appeases the Gods, that focusses on self, that works to come clean.
“If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.” 1 John 4:18b
The Narrow Road, on the other hand, does not experience sin as condemnation and shame but as a matter-of-fact part of our humanity and our fallenness. The Narrow Road despises the shame and condemnation and instead remains turned toward Jesus Christ the Saviour of our lives.
I grew up in the church and often heard about revivals that happened over the years in various places. Yet I never had a working definition for revival. Earlier this year I began asking the Lord to give me a better picture of revival, what it is, how it comes to us, and the impact it leaves in our lives.
To begin, let’s define revival. If I had to give a definition to revival it would be when the Kingdom of God breaks in upon our realities; it is when we are touched by the living God and our lives no longer remain the same.
In my study of revival I found out is that Revival requires three necessary ingredients.
Lets take some time to look at these three key ingredients for revival.
At Capturing Courage International Ministries we are called to work at the roots of difficulty and despair. Imagine, if you will, a tree. The tree has branches and on these branches there are fruits. The tree has a trunk and connected and below the surface of the soil are the roots of the tree.
Consider that the branches of the tree bear the bad fruit that we see in our communities. There is poverty, sexual abuses, injustice, corruption, educational difficulties, family breakdown, modern slavery, sex trafficking, and more.
Often, we look at these bad fruits and we are drawn to action. Now, action is always good and right and necessary, absolutely necessary. We must enter into these problems and make a better way for everyone involved.
Within our Christian cultures we do not often leave room for lament. The ability to lament may have been lost in our excitement over the saving of our Lord and yet, lament still holds an important place in our daily lives and in our walk with God.
To begin with, lament reminds us that we are hopeless without Jesus Christ.
It brings us to the end of ourselves and it is deliberate validation of the pain in our lives; this is key to a healing and releasing of our lives. In order to loose off the pain of our lives that pain must be acknowledged, recognized and spoken for what it is; only then are we are free to go on to forgiveness and the new things that God would have for us.
We read that Jesus was a man of sorrows, and that he wept.
“He was despised and rejected – a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.” Isaiah 53:3
“Then Jesus Wept” John 11:35
Lament brings us past being wounded, to being broken.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20
The church is where disciples are being made.
Where disciples are being made there is the church.