Graceriver

The Gospel preached in the power of the Spirit does not to ask people to produce the Christian life, but calls and equips them to participate in the life of God.

I have spent enough years believing what people believe about me. Now I want to believe what God believes about me. The Gospel is the proclamation of what God believes about you and me and every person we will ever meet and it is good news because The Gospel preached in the power of the Spirit, does not ask men to produce the Christian life, but invites and equips them, to participate in the life already given; Christ.

The reason so many in the nations remain in darkness is that so many in the church live as light salesmen. We preach a gospel that makes promises to people of light, if only they will pay a price. But there is no power in preaching a gospel that points people to their behaviour as their hope of light. There is no power in a gospel that points people to themselves! There is no power of the Spirit in such a man-centred gospel to bring people out of darkness because we have not been given God’s Spirit that we would be promisers of the light, but that we would be the light.

Singing the scriptures in River City this morning. John 15:13 "Greater love has no man than this, than he lay down his life for his friends.' and 1John 4:19 "We love Him because He first loved us." Thank you Nicola and Joshua.

God does not regard salvation as anything less than a living relationship with Him. Grace is not a gift that God gives, so that you can continue living by yourself, because Grace is not a thing, He is a person. Yes grace is a gift, but it is not a thing that you receive like a gift left on your doorstep. Such a gift that is a thing can be a blessing to you, but it cannot bring you into a living relationship. You can get a new car left at your door, that someone else has paid for and so is freely given to you, but that is not a true picture of grace because you can’t have a living relationship with a car.

The gospel is not the news of what might be, if you. It is the news of what is, because He, Christ! • The Gospel is not the proclamation of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that people may partake of that knowledge and then do something about the evil in their lives. • The Gospel is the proclamation of a dream fulfilled, a tree of life, that God has done what you could never do, no matter how much you know about good and evil!

The gospel is not the promise of the dawn, it is the dawn rising on the darkness. It is not the promise of glory that dispels the darkness, it is the present glory in us, that dispels the present darkness in the world and that is why right now, when the world has never seemed such a dark place, has never been so blinded and deafened by man-made light and sound, this is not the hour for the Church to be captivated by earthly events, but to be setting her eyes above, where her real life is (Col.3:1-4) for from there, the heavenly realm, the realm of the Spirit, today, is being trumpeted the eternal call of the Spirit to the bride across the world "Arise, shine, for your light has come!"

Until you know your true worth to God, you cannot say you know who you are.

"I" can never be like God, because God is not an "I".

Countless believers have deferred their hope of salvation to a place one day, rather than a life today. Better days are always coming, but never seem to arrive. To know God as your father today, is to know today the life of His son, the life that is content in all situations, the life that no longer looks at circumstances to see if God is still my father or not.

Man-made religion can only present us with a god like us; a god who is never satisfied.

"God’s not asking you to make your life new, by leaving your past behind, because in Christ, He has already left your past behind! "

"The best the voice of a manager can do, is tell you who you could become. Only the voice of a Father, can tell you who you are. We have 10,000 managers, but not many fathers!"

When you are full of the Spirit of Him who is no longer counting people’s sins against them, you will no longer count their sins against them

"So then, no one is to be boasting in people. For all things belong to you, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come; all things belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.' 1Cor 3:21-23

f the Gospel your heart has believed has not astonished you, then it was not violent enough to shake the foundation of your old mindset; I. If the foundations of our captivity are not shaken, then there is no lasting freedom. The life you are believing in, is the life you are living.

Jesus lived in the IS of the eternal life of the Father, Son and Spirit and from there, He called men and women out of the darkness of religion, the world where everything is becoming but nothing is, into this eternal life, this eternal IS, where you are who you are by the grace of God. That is the Christian life, the Christ life.

He never had a plan to save the world through our obedience. His plan was to save the world through His love

God is not expecting people to come up with repentance and faith in Christ ‘by themselves’, because ‘by themselves’ is the very condition that they are perishing from.

What would that look like, if we gave the same grace to the stranger, as we do to our own children.