Discovering The Spirit-Filled Life XV, The Power Of Becoming

Now then, as always, stand to the front and give the glory to the Holy One. And give the glory to the Holy One. And give the glory to the Holy One. Hallelujah, we give you glory, Lord. We give you glory tonight, Father. Yes, you are worthy of that glorious praise. For we have overcome by the blood of the Lamb. By the power of His blood we shall stand. We have overcome by the blood of the Lamb. And He will bring our victory. We have overcome, yes we have. We have overcome by the blood of the Lamb. By the power of His blood we shall stand. We have overcome, yes we have overcome by the blood of the Lamb. And He will bring our victory. Yes He will, He will bring them victory. And He will bring the victory. He will bring the victory. And He will bring the victory. Oh Lord, the light of your light is shining. In the midst of the darkness shining. Jesus, light of the world, shine upon us. Set us free by the truth you now bring us. Shine on me. Shine on me, Lord. Shine on me. Shine, Jesus, shine. Fill this land with the Father's glory. Place, be replaced. Set our hearts on fire. Oh, river flow. Oh, river flow. Love the nations with grace and mercy. Send forth your word, Lord, and let there be light. Just the ladies sing the next verse. Just the ladies. Lord, align your shadows into your radiance. By the blood I may enter your right place. Search me, try me, consume all my darkness. Shine on me. Shine on me, Lord. Shine on me. Shine on me, Lord. Everyone, everyone join in. Shine, Jesus, shine. Fill this land with the Father's glory. Place, be replaced. Set our hearts on fire. Oh, river flow. Love the nations with grace and mercy. Send forth your word, Lord, and let there be light. Now, for this last verse, everyone sing together. As we gaze on your kingly brightness, so our faces display your likeness. Ever changing from glory to glory, mirror here may our lives tell your story. Shine on me. Shine on me, Lord. Shine on me. Shine, Jesus, shine. Shine, Jesus, shine. Yes, Lord. Fill this land with the Father's glory. Place, be replaced. Set our hearts on fire. Oh, river flow. Love the nations with grace and mercy. Send forth your word, Lord, and let there be light. Shine, Jesus, shine. Shine, Jesus, shine. Fill this land with the Father's glory. Let this be your prayer now. Place, be replaced. Set our hearts on fire. Oh, river flow. Love the nations with grace and mercy. Send forth your word, Lord, and let there be light. Father, we thank you right now. Go ahead and join the hand of someone by you. Just touch someone near you. Father, we join our faith together right now. And in the name of Jesus Christ, we declare that to that one on our right, that to that one on our left, your word, your word, Father, as it comes alive will bring life. Your word will bring release from darkness and discouragement and depression. Your word will open doors of opportunity that no man can close. And your word will draw every one of us into that place of service to the Master, of service to the King of kings, as kingdom builders, Lord, as kingdom builders, as messengers of yours, as ambassadors of yours, Father, placed on this earth for a purpose. God, I pray that every one, every man and every woman and every child's destiny in this place would be fulfilled. And I pray, Father, that tonight we will take yet one more step, one more step in seeing your will unfold and our lives, your purpose for our lives, for living. We give you the glory in advance, Father, for the work that you will do. And all God's people say, amen, amen. Children, guess what? It's time for you to go. Have we got the overheads? We should start with the sixth graders, I think. Fifth and sixth grade boys to my left, you can go. Fifth and sixth grade girls to my right. Fifth and sixth grade boys and girls. Okay, down to the fourth and third levels. Third and fourth grade boys to my left. Gosh, I see so many sad faces on our parents. Third and fourth grade girls on my right. Okay, down to the ones and twos, Nance. First and second grade girls to my right. First and second grade boys, the goats, to my left. Well, the girls certainly weren't the goats. Next level, fours and fives, the scooters to my right. Scooters, get on your motorbikes. Scooters. And the only thing we should have left is the rainbows. Twos and three, two and three-year-old rainbows to my left. And now my pastor right in front. Lots of great things happening as we pray every day and ask the Lord to pour out His Spirit. And I want to welcome our visitors here tonight and folks who are new to us. As Scott mentioned, the whole experience of getting involved in a new family of believers can be traumatic when you don't know the tradition. It's kind of like going to someone's house for dinner, you know, and they have a funny way of eating their chicken. And you don't know if you should do your way or their way. But after a while they say, hey, just use your fingers, you know, and off you go. That's kind of the way we are here on Wednesday nights. And if you're a visitor tonight, we're really glad you've come. In fact, we want to just give you a little gift tonight, which is something that we've put together. It's a small little packet of information that we've prepared to tell you about the church. We want to welcome you tonight and let you know we're glad you've come to share this evening with us. If you're a visitor, just wave your hand right now, would you? Let's welcome them, church. Go ahead, wave your hand up there. Wow, hold it up there. That's great. Look at there. Over here. Welcome, sir. God bless you. Way in the back also. About eight or ten visitors tonight. That's tremendous. We're so glad you've come to be with us. Inside that little envelope, there's a card in there that we have prepared. And if you take a moment before the service is over, we're going to gather our offering, and we'd like that to be your offering tonight. It's just that little card letting us know you were here with your relevant information, any prayer requests you might have. If you'd like to do that, we'd love to hear from you. Very, very quickly. Yes. Oh, one little one. Doesn't know where they're supposed to go? Well, come on up. Bring her up here. She has to be up high enough. Someone lost their parents here. Parents are lost. Where are the parents of this one? Okay, here we go. There she is. Mom will take care of her. There we go. We did come to seek and to save those who were lost, so that's what we're doing. We do want to have a time of prayer tonight, but I want to make these announcements and get them just sort of off the docket real quickly. By the way, someone with a Mercury station wagon, and I hate to do this, but your lights are on, NKE885, cream-colored station wagon. Probably that little girl's. Is it? No. There you go. Flash up those announcements over here. Look at this, folks. Friday night, if you're not part of World Christian Fellowship, you're missing a great evening of information and expansion and expansion and eating. And that's this Friday at 630. You need to make a reservation, though. That's expansion of your spirit and your body and every other way. But this Friday, 630, right out here. You can sign up at the registration tables. Next, Mothers of Young Children. Next Tuesday at 930, Nancy Dukes of YGI will be sharing how children learn. They have an adult class on that. I'd like to pick that up myself. And then finally, Seeker 3. Not the same one we've had. A new chapter in the journey. Performances on February 26th, March 3rd, 4th. Real quickly, one reason why we're just asking you to pick up a ticket for a dollar, which obviously isn't to make any money on the thing, but it's so that we can kind of plan on how many people are going to be here. And we're really encouraging all the North Way families to come on the 26th. And then for you to bring people the following weekend. This is a great outreach tool, folks, a wonderful way for you to invite your neighbors who have kids to come and share the evening. And if you're a single person with kids, you'll still like it. It's a lot of fun, and it's very well done. I know Susan and all the folks are working hard to get this thing. I saw Diane here, Diane Layton, to help with the final touches on some of this. And this is going to be a great performance. So it's a week from Friday, right? Sunday, a week from Sunday. Okay. Now, folks, sometimes we don't – you may walk in and out of here and not really feel like you know what's going on. I feel that way lots of times. And, I mean, there's never a night that this place isn't used by somebody for something. But tonight I want us to agree on some things in prayer. I'm remembering the message on Sunday on mountain-moving prayer. We've got some mountains we're going to address tonight in prayer and praying together. You may have a personal mountain that certainly qualifies to being shared in a prayer circle. But I want to ask you to agree with the whole church on a few matters. And I believe if we get 300 people here tonight or whatever we have, almost 400 people, if we start agreeing tonight on some things, altogether we're going to have a powerful time of release in the Holy Spirit. And these things we're going to share tonight are significant to our body. Here's the first one, and then I'm going to have you break up, and I'll direct you to the next. But I want you to pray for the leadership. As you'll hear tonight, you know, leadership has a responsibility to you, but you have a responsibility to leadership, and that's to pray for them and to honor them. And we need lots of wisdom in our leadership, and we have several areas there. The Crisis Pregnancy Center, Aid Christian Academy, the prison ministry, you name it. There's lots of ministries, and, you know, there's all kinds of outreaches going out there. We had 80-some women on Saturday morning at a career woman's breakfast. Well, those kinds of things need leadership, and leadership needs anointing and wisdom. Jean Yannikos had a dozen new believers in her class and said, You know, great, 12 new believers, that should make you happy. And she needs wisdom and anointing to teach them, and we have 50 people in Discovering the Way. Well, they need the Holy Spirit in that class, amen? Now, I'm going to ask you to pray for God just to meet these leaders, to wake them up at night and refill them. Just fall apart. So let's either turn your chairs around or stand up. Why don't we all stand up to start out anyhow? You can sit down if you want to, and find three prayer partners. So we'll be in groups of four. Go for this one, and then I'll call you together in a moment for the next one. Just do this request first, would you, church? Focus on this one first, on the leadership. That's easy. Go for it. Focus on the leadership. Go ahead into prayer. Oh, Lord, we agree tonight in the name of Jesus. Oh, Lord, we thank you, Father. Oh, Lord, we pray for our leadership, Lord God. We pray for wisdom. Oh, Lord, release them from burdens. Take the weights off of them. Protect their families, Lord. Keep them in grace, Lord. Thank you, Lord Jesus. All right. Praying now for unity amidst those leaders. And on to the next one now. Here's number two. Look up. In fact, I'm going to show you two and three, and then let you go. Here's number two. Release, now listen, this is so important, of God's perfect provision for future growth in terms of land and building and approvals. I want to tell you something, folks. This is the time to pray about this. Things are happening. I want you to know that. I can't tell you what they are. Things are happening. I want us to agree that God's perfect provision. I want you to know the difference between perfect and okay. Perfect is what God wants us to have, and it will be right for us in terms of land, buildings, and approvals. And I'll tell you as soon as I know something, but I want you to pray for that and then go on and finally pray for the great harvest that the Lord is opening to us through all kinds of things that are happening. Youth ministry, SOAR 89, Seeker coming up, Cutting Edge. The Cutting Edge people here, wave your hand. Bless you all. You know what I'm talking about. Sunday services, we're praying for ten to find Christ every Sunday service, ten people to find the Lord. And then, of course, what's happening in all the Operation Harvest and Home Group Ministries and so on. All right, two great things. Pray for them. Go for it. We'll leave them up for you. Go ahead. One more minute. Go ahead and lift your voice against the powers of darkness now. Exercise the authority we've been given in Christ. Lord, we receive the harvest. We receive the harvest. We receive it now, Father God, in the name of Jesus. Now, with hands remaining joined, would you turn and face the front just as soon as you finish praying. Let's continue to join hands as we face the front together. Let's sing this song. With all my heart, I will follow after you. With all my soul, I will praise you all along. With all the strength that you have given me, I'll not be led astray. With all my heart, I will walk in your ways. With all my heart, I will follow after you. With all my soul, I will praise you all along. With all the strength that you have given me, I'll not be led astray. With all my heart, I will walk in your ways. With all my heart, I will follow after you. With all my soul, I will praise you all along. With all the strength that you have given me, I'll not be led astray. With all my heart, I will walk in your ways. With all my heart, I will walk in your ways. Hallelujah. Now, let's release hands and lift them before the Lord for a moment. Heavenly Father, as we have prayed, Lord, we would just expect you now to empower us to be the fulfillment of these prayers, Lord. To be the one that speaks, the one that serves, the one that gives in order to see these things which you have ordained come to pass. Father, we thank you that we have been given authority over every obstacle, every design and device of the evil one, Lord. And we thank you that your word and your spirit are sufficient, Lord, in all of our lives to be more than conquerors through him who loved us and gave himself for us. Lord, by your spirit, we will walk in your ways. We do honor you, who have been given the name above every name. We worship you and honor you this moment. Hallelujah. Let's sing it together. You have been given the name above all names. And we worship you. Yes, we worship you. You have been given the name above all names. And we worship you. Yes, we worship you. Made for your glory. And we worship you. Yes, we worship you. We are your people. Made for your glory. And we worship you. Let's steal as we sing softly. You've redeemed us, Lord. You have redeemed us from every sin. And we worship you. Yes, we worship you. You have redeemed us from every nation. And we worship you. Yes, we worship you. Let's listen to John. Let's listen to God. God is speaking. He wants to speak some things to you. Listen to God. Listen for your own life. Don't wait on Him. Yes. The Lord would speak to those who have taken steps out of a bondage. There are some tonight who have recently determined in their hearts that they would follow God. You've left a bondage. I don't know if it's a relationship or an addiction or an involvement of some kind. And the Lord is saying to you tonight, even though you see the enemy tearing after you, even though you see those things which once held you in pursuit of you now, the Lord says, fear not. For even as you see them on your path, and though you see the wall in front of you, am I not the God who separates the sea and opens a way of escape? And I shall surely deliver you from those things which you have left, says the Lord. As you place your eyes upon me and as you look to me, as you lift up the authority in your hand that I have given to you in the name of my Son, I shall surely deliver you from that addiction. I shall surely deliver you from that oppression. And I shall surely take you and place your feet on dry ground. And I will bring you into the land of promise, the land of covenant, the land of serving me with your whole heart that you've desired for the longest time, says God. And I will do it. Fear not for those things which pursue you, for they shall not overtake you. I will deliver you, says the Lord. Yes, God. Yes, Lord. Yes, God. I just want to, before we go on, I believe that was specifically for some people tonight. If that was describing your circumstance and you received that word, raise your hand right now. Go ahead. Oh, God, thank you, Lord. Lord, I just bless these people now, Lord. Speak that into their spirit, Lord. You are their deliverer. Jehovah Nissi, you are their banner now, in the name of Jesus. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Yes, God, we hear you. We hear you, Father. We love you tonight. Just a word of knowledge on healing right now. For someone whose hip, the hip has been painful, and whether it's arthritis or in and out of the socket, or there's a tremendous pain in the hip. Lord, we want to touch that with healing tonight. The Lord wants to heal a hip problem tonight. He's speaking to that. If that's you tonight, raise your hand and receive that word. If there's anyone tonight, it's my hip. Just receive that word. Lift your hand up. If that's you tonight, say, that's me. I want that hip to be healed. Hallelujah. I know there's someone today. Over here? Yes. God bless you. Okay. Receive it tonight from the powerful God, just for this one right here. Amen. Amen, Lord. There's someone today that was in a major operation to replace a hip, and we receive that for that person as well. Thank you. The Lord gave me this encouragement just before he gave Pastor Jay that message, and I felt that the ministry that followed that was more important than this word. But the Lord still wants you to be encouraged to know that it was because you sought first to give him the firstfruits, your worship and your praise, that he was blessed, and he has then heard, his ear has been inclined to our petitions, to our agreement in intercession, and that he truly is going to pour out a harvest like we have never seen before. And he gave me just glimpses of vision of growth and of people and of worship. And I just want to pass that on to be an encouragement to you that God did hear, and God is blessed, and he loves us, and he thinks you're really neat. Praise the name of the Lord. Let's stand and exalt him again. Yes, we worship you. You have been given the name above all names. And we worship you. Yes, we worship you. I sing praises to your name, O Lord. Praises to your name, O Lord. For your name is great and great need to be praised. I sing praises to your name, O Lord. Praises to your name, O Lord. For your name is great and great need to be praised. Let's sing it again, I give glory. I give glory to your name, O Lord. Glory to your name, O Lord. For your name is great and great need to be praised. I give glory to your name, O Lord. Glory to your name, O Lord. For your name is great and great need to be praised. For your name is great and great need to be praised. Let's stand and exalt him again. Yes, Lord. Amen. Lord, may it always be that anytime we're quiet before you, Lord, we hear your voice. We know what you're telling us, Lord, that we might walk in obedience and receive the blessing you have for our lives. In Jesus' name, Amen. Amen. Do you want to hear the Lord in your personal life? Do you give him time to speak? Do you shut down enough to hear him? It's a great challenge in our culture to be quiet enough just to listen to God. If you really want to hear the Lord, I don't want to embarrass you, but tell someone. It's good to make a confession. Say, I want to hear the Lord's voice. Tell someone that and then be seated, would you? Go ahead. I want to hear the Lord's voice. I want to hear the Lord's voice. You may be seated. Go ahead. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Those of you who... Turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 9, and while you're doing that, I want to say, those of you who received the word, the Lord just confirming his delivering grace in your life, it's very important when the Lord speaks that way for you to say, now by faith, I expect there to be something different. I expect there to be a release in my life, and I want to urge you in that. I have two messages tonight. Do you want message A or message B? How many want A? How many want B? What about the rest of you? Do you want to go home? Go home. Is that what you said? What did you say? No one said both. I'm a little hurt, but that's all right. That's right. If you were really charismatic, you'd want them both. I just want you to know that. 1 Corinthians 9. All right, let's see how well I can do here. The first one, I don't want to go through a whole chapter and just skip over the first half of it, but it's about wages and salary and pastors and ministries, and I want you just to hear why the Bible says that you should pay ministers. How many want message B? It won't take long, I promise you. It is in here, though. Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not the result of my work in the Lord? Even though I may not be an apostle to others, surely I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. This is my defense to those who sit in judgment on me. Don't we have the right to food and drink? Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers in Cephas? Or is it only I and Barnabas who must work for a living? Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink of the milk? Do I say this merely from a human point of view? Doesn't the law say the same thing? For it is written in the law of Moses, Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain. Is it about oxen that God is concerned? Surely He says this for us, doesn't He? Yes, this was written for us, because when the plowman plows and the thresher threshes, they ought to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? If others have this right of support from you, shouldn't we have it all the more? But we do not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ. And don't you know that those who work in the temple get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is offered in the altar? And in the same way the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel. Now, very quickly, because the major thing I want to say tonight is in the next verses. Paul is addressing those who are judging him and saying that his motives for starting this church were to make money. And it should be encouraging to you to know that throughout the millennia people have been suspicious of ministries. So what's happening today happened 2,000 years ago. It hasn't changed. When you start a new church, it's particularly important that your motives be above board and people don't suspect you of trying to do something to get your pockets full. I was just recently, as you know, out in Phoenix, and I visited with my friend Jim Lane, who used to be the pastor at Faith Community down in the South Hills. Many of you know that church. Jim's now in Phoenix, and he's sharing the struggle he's having in getting people to even listen to what he has to say because they're so suspicious. And he told us, he told Carol and I, that he had knocked on 400 doors and had been invited into one home. Pretty bad percentage. Might have to try a new strategy, we think. And one of the main reasons, people are suspicious. Suspicious about what's going on. And there's, by the way, hundreds of thousands of Mormons in Phoenix, and that's one of the reasons. It's unbelievable. There's a lot of reasons that people question your motive. But Paul writes down here six reasons why we should support people in ministry. And I'm going to give them to you. One, two, three, four, five, six, and not really explain them. If you want further elucidation, then you'll have to ask me back for message A at another time. Number one, Paul was an apostle. He was called by God, and he was called to set that church in position. He says, I started this church. I'm the one that got this thing to be here. He was an apostle. An apostle is one who's seen the Lord and is sent with a message. And that call was deserving of support. Number two, it was prescribed in other human customs. Verse 7 talks about this. Soldiers fight in battles. Farmers tend their crops. Shepherds tend their sheep. And they all take portions of that for their sustenance. Paul said, shouldn't that be true here as well? Then he goes on and says, in verses 8 and 9, this is established in the Old Testament as well. The law tells us it's so. And he uses this interesting illustration of an ox threshing out the grain. Now, you all know the picture of this, don't you? I mean, back in those days, they didn't have grocery stores with bakeries just lined up. When people wanted to make bread, they had to... I mean, it was a basic, very difficult kind of process where an ox walked over the grain and separated and crushed the heads of the grain, and the chaff had to be thrown up, and the grain fell, and all that kind of stuff. And Paul uses this image, and he's saying, if an ox is threshing that out, you don't put a muzzle on him, he's able to eat. If he wants to bend down and eat every once in a while, he's allowed to do that. And eat some of this grain. And look at the deep hidden motivation here. It says in verse 10, When the plowman plows and the thresher threshes, they ought to do so in hope. And I want to tell you one reason why it's important. Every one of us involves ourselves in activities, and we want to have hope of advancement, and hope of reward. How many of you do what you do, and you don't care if you never get another raise? Well, it's natural. You want to participate. You want to participate in the increase that you hope to help precipitate in that particular company. As they get blessed, you want to share in the blessing. And there's nothing more discouraging than feeling like nobody cares about what's going on with you. How many of you came from churches that had a missionary barrel? A few of you. The missionary barrel. What that is, is a place where you bring the things that you don't want anymore. The clothes that you feel like you've already gotten your usage out of. Whatever. You pile them into the missionary barrel. We bundle them all up and send them on over. And some missionary that's scraping, waiting in line to get the basic necessities of food, living in a 110 degree heat, in some shack somewhere, and you send him this box of ragged old clothes, and you're blessing the missionary. And that's the mentality that gets into the church. If they're really a servant of God, you'll keep them poor. Because if they're poor, they're humble. How many of you know that's just not what the Bible says? God does not equate poverty with humility. And there's this thing that gets into churches, and I know, and let me just say real clearly, that's not a problem in this church. God has blessed our leadership with wisdom, and we're well provided for, and this isn't a message because I've got any, you know, there's no problems here. But I want you to know that many of you know pastors and other ministry leaders who are really hurting, because someone hasn't read this very carefully. And maybe you can be an encouragement to them somehow. You see, this is an important thing, because you lose hope. And you get, you know, as spiritual and godly as it sounds, you lose hope, and you don't want to go on, if your needs aren't being met. And I could go on, and that would be more of message A. Let me just skip on then to the next thing. There wasn't a precedent that was set by others. Is that number four? Okay. There it says that they were already paying others and helping support them. If others have the right of support from you, shouldn't we have it all the more? Certainly they do. And so they were already supporting something. Paul is appealing to support them. Number five, it was in the pattern of the priesthood. I read today, did you read it in the book of Leviticus? How many of you read Leviticus today in your Victory Bible reading plan? Great. What did it talk about in there? Here's your test now. What was it? I don't know if I read the same. It talked about when you bring the offerings, remember? Part of it went right in and was burned up, and part of it went home with the priests. Now, we don't do that exactly here in that way, okay? But that's an Old Testament pattern. It was established. And finally, it's the principle of Jesus Himself. Verse 14. Jesus Himself had the same principle. He said, in the same way the Lord has commanded that those who preach the Gospel should receive their living from the Gospel. Well, can I just say this in conclusion in message A? Do you believe it's the Spirit of Jesus to be liberal? I don't mean as opposed to conservative. I mean... in terms of giving. We have learned this lesson. When someone comes in to minister and they say, well, this is what we need to minister. We're at the place now where we say, great, we're happy to give you that. And you should see their jaws drop. Because usually they're expecting us to fight them down, you know, or negotiate it down to as low as we can. And that's how I used to do it. But I'm beginning to realize it's wisdom to bless. It's wisdom to pour out. It's wisdom because it's the Spirit of God. God, our Heavenly Father, is a generous God. And if we can learn that principle, even as we respond to ministries, He will stand us in good stead. Now Paul says, despite all that, I'm going to lay that right down. Isn't that something? Look at the next verse. He says, but I have not used any of those. Even though it's appropriate, I have laid it down. Because I have something more important. And the second message I want to bring tonight is the message on becoming. Or, if you will, the debt that we owe to others because of what God has done for us. Let's read on. Verse 19. Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to every one to win as many as possible. To the Jews I become like a Jew, to win the Jews. And to those under the law I become like one under the law, though I myself am not under the law. So as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I become like one not having the law. Or yours might say lawless there. That doesn't mean necessarily rebellious. It doesn't mean without the law of God. So as to win those not having the law. Verse 22. To the weak I become weak to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. If I could synthesize my observations of how lives and ministries begin to deteriorate, it would be around the issue of digging ruts in your life. Now write this down. It would probably be the best quote you'll hear tonight. The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth of the hole. The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth of the hole. And it is amazing how easily Christians build ruts and dig ruts that then become the grave in which parts of their ministry, parts of their personal life, parts of their ambition and their desire in God, parts of the church's ministry begin to just lie in state, lifeless and without hope. The very nature of being a Christian is to be a dynamic relationship. How many of you know what ran many of you out of the church when you were a kid or a teenager or a young person? What ran you out of the church was the rules and regulations that put you in a rut. Or the predictability when you walked into church you knew what was going to happen every time and you hated it. It was a rut that became a grave. Isn't that terrible? When God is, the Bible says, new every morning are His mercies. The Lord is wonderfully new. Every day has something new to show us about who He is. Our relationship is supposed to be fresh and inviting and bubbling like an inner well springing up every single day, John 4 t