City of Refuge Fellowship

The New Testament gives us a clear picture of Jesus sitting at the right hand of the Father ever making intercession for us. Jesus is our Intercessor and as such He has called us to be intercessors as well. What does that mean? What is an intercessor? What is intercession?

Ezekiel 22:30 is the verse we most commonly refer to when talking about intercession, it says “So I sought a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one.” Intercession begins with God. It is not man trying to move God, it is God seeking out men that would stand with Him, for Him and between Him and those that are under His wrath. Intercession is all about the love of God. It is God’s love that seeks out those that will intercede, it is God’s love that births intercession in our hearts and it requires God’s love to be able to hear, listen and proclaim according to the leading of God rather than the desires of men.

I pray today that we will all take up the invitation from God to be those that build a wall and stand in the gap, that we would all love God with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength and then love our neighbors as ourselves, that we would make our prayers, our petitions, our actions for and about the love of God. I pray that we would all choose intercession, choose the ministry of reconciliation and choose the heart of God toward the world. May the love of God move us to prayer, to fasting, to declaring and to obedience. May we choose to be partners with God in intercession so that we can become the laborers for the harvest that is ripe and ready to be reaped.

Isaiah 56:1 says “This is what the LORD says: ‘Maintain justice and do what is right, for my salvation is close at hand and my righteousness will soon be revealed.” In biblical terms justice and righteousness are the same. When Scripture tells us to maintain justice, it is not in the worldly sense of giving others what they have earned or deserved but rather it is living in and offering righteousness, God’s truth in all situations with all people. As God’s people how do we maintain justice, how do we partner with God in justice? I believe the answer is as simple and complex as Jesus’ revelation about Himself in John 5:19, “the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does the Son also does in like manner.” To maintain justice is to follow God closely, watch God fully and obey God constantly. Justice is whatever God says in any given moment to any given person.

Acts 3 tells us a story of Peter and John going to the temple to pray and being used by God to bring healing to a man that had been lame from his birth. In this scene we find the man begging for money and Peter, being led by the Spirit and empowered by the Father, gave the man not the money he requested but the justice that he needed.

Administering justice requires confidence in what God has done in our lives and boldness to join God in doing whatever He has promised to do in the lives of others. Peter moved in confidence and boldness, he offered healing and the removal of shame and he was used by God to glorify the Father and magnify Jesus. A harvest of salvation came that day because when justice is restored hearts and lives are opened to the truth of God.

The harvest that God is speaking over this community and yours will require a partnership of justice and that partnership will require confidence in what God has done for us and boldness in what God has promised to do through us. If we are lacking in confidence or boldness today let us pray for the Holy Spirit to renew and restore us. May our community by shaken by our prayers for boldness and may harvest be poured out through a partnership in justice that destroys shame and glorifies Jesus. May we become partners in justice so that we can be laborers in the harvest.

Our theme for 2012 is Harvest, becoming partners in God’s promises. John 4 tells us about Jesus’ interaction with a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well. This interaction begins with Jesus asking for a drink of water and ends with many from a Samaritan city putting their faith in Jesus as the Messiah. In the passage I believe that we see Jesus’ heart and plan for harvest, for the Samaritans on the day it occurred and for us today. The plan is simple but powerful:

1. Jesus restores order. Society had chosen prejudice. The Jews were prejudiced toward the Samaritans, they considered them to not be “pure” Jews and so they despised them because of their race. When Jesus spoke to this Samaritan woman He was rejecting the idea of prejudice, He was turning what was upside down right side up and He was restoring order that said that He came for all flesh and that no one was to be rejected on the basis of race or gender.

2. Jesus destroys rejection. Jesus asked the woman to go and get her husband, she responds that she does not have a husband and then Jesus reveals that He already knows that she has had five husbands and now lives with a man that won’t marry her. This woman had been constantly rejected. She had been “put away” five times and now, the man she lived with does not find her worthy of becoming his wife. Jesus is showing her that He knows her life and He has chosen her, not in spite of it, but in the midst of it. Rejection is destroyed when acceptance is offered. This woman was an outcast in her own town and yet it was her that Jesus chose to reveal Himself to and to use as the spark that would light the flame of salvation for her town. Being chosen by God heals the rejection of the past.

3. Jesus reaps a harvest of salvation. When order is restored, when rejection is destroyed salvation springs forth! In our minds, Jesus’ could have gone into that city and preached a great sermon and many would have been saved. God chose to not work according to our minds, but His promises. His plan was to bring salvation to this city, but the plan He chose was to use a rejected woman as the catalyst for the harvest. Our calling today is to see God’s plan and to enter into it. To listen to His promises and not just believe them but join Him in the midst of them. It is time  for the Church of Christ to restore order, to turn the worlds ideas, plans and thoughts right side up. Too many of us have followed culture rather than establishing culture. We are called to restore order to our communities. From that place we will be given the opportunity to destroy rejection. We need to stop weighing whether or not people have earned what they have, we need to realize that they are less than they were created to be. Jesus’ point to this woman was not to reveal her sin, she was aware of it, but to embrace her and heal and forgive her sin. Harvest is the restoration of God’s plan in creation, we take part in that restoration when we are led by the Spirit and when we long for harvest.

This next year will bring us many opportunities for harvest. It will be our time to restore order and destroy rejection, it will require us to make harvest our priority, to let nothing get in the way of salvation and to choose the ways of God no matter how much they seem to cost us in this world. The harvest is ripe, the only thing lacking today is laborers, may we pray to be the laborers and to see the reaping of the harvest of God in and through our lives.

Today’s message is much different from our usual sermons. In this week’s message we closed out our 2011 year plan called the “Year to Increase”. The message begins with several people sharing their stories from the year.

For many, 2011 was a year of sorrow, a year in which there was loss and difficulty. Those sorrows are not to be hidden because of shame or given the power to overtake and consume us, but they are to be given to God and entrusted to Jesus. Matthew 5:4 says “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” For most of my life, I have believed that the comfort is the removal of sorrow and pain, but I have come to learn that comfort is not the absence of sorrow but rather God’s love in the midst of sorrow, His concern in the midst of hurt, His grace in the midst of failure and His joy in the midst of weeping.

My prayer is that when we look back at this year that we will not simply define it with one outstanding emotion or event, but rather that we will see clearly how God works in the midst of every emotion and event. There has been great increase in my life and in the lives of many, but what I have learned in the midst of that is what John the Baptist declared long ago, “He must increase,but I must decrease.” The increase of God always costs the decrease of me, of my understanding, my personal plans and my ambitious desires. There are even times in which sorrow, struggle and difficulty create a decrease of my own strength so that I can finally depend upon and trust in the strength of God. This year I set out to increase for His glory and God has kindly decreased me and shown me the increase of His life through mine.

Remembering is always supposed to be for a future purpose! Looking back with longing diminishes today and overshadows tomorrow. I cannot fulfill my purpose for today if I wish I was in yesterday. Passover was a look ahead to the Messiah by way of the deliverance from Egypt. The Lord’s Supper is a look ahead to Jesus’ return by way of His death and resurrection. When we partake the bread and the wine of communion, we are giving thanks for Jesus’ death and resurrection by applying them to our current lives, living in change and transformation and longing for His return. My prayer today is that we will give thanks by looking to the future. That we will be those in the Bride that join with the Spirit and cry out to Jesus, “Come!”

In Psalm 37:5 David wrote “Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.” Today we will discuss three key points that make us ready to take part in the harvest that God has planned: Commitment, Trust and Waiting.

What does it mean to commit our lives to the LORD?

How does trust protect me from and heal me of disappointment?

What is the role of waiting in preparing for harvest?

My prayer today is that we will see from Scripture that waiting builds trust and trust leads to commitment and commitment prepares us to be the laborers that the harvest field has been waiting for. May we be found not watching the harvest, but int he middle of the fields rejoicing over the abundance that is being gathered and feasting over the goodness of God’s timing!

Mark 6 tells us the story of Jesus’ miraculously feeding the 5,000. The miracle of this story is often viewed simply as the multiplication of food, but there is so much more at work here. Jesus chooses to set Himself, His needs and His desires aside for the sake of a people that are in need. Mark writes that Jesus and the Apostles were trying to go to a “deserted” place so that they could have time together to share what had happened in and through the 12 as they had gone out in ministry, and also to be able to mourn and process the death of John the Baptist. When they arrived at the “deserted” place they found more than 5,000 people there waiting for them. Jesus looked out at that crowd and instead of being frustrated that they had found Him, or disappointed that His planned time of quiet and fellowship had been interrupted, Mark says that He “was moved with compassion for them, because they were like sheep not having a shepherd.” Instead of seeing the crowd for what they were taking from Him, He saw them for what they lacked that He could provide. That is the definition of compassion.

As we live we are surrounded by people that are like sheep without a shepherd. We are surrounded by people that are left to their own devices. We can evaluation how they got to this point, we can examine whether or not this was by their choice or someone else’s failure, but the compassion of Jesus looks past the circumstances and sees the hearts of men and then sees that within Him is the answers that they need and the help that they lack. Our focus today is on our response to the world, community and even family around us. Are we moved with compassion or are we hardened with frustration? The feeding of the 5,000 was the outcome of Jesus’ compassion, my prayer today is that we would see God work miracles through our lives for the world around us, but miracles are birthed out of compassion. Lord, give us hearts like yours that we might walk in your love, pour out your glory and see the fulfillment of your desire of redemption for the people that you have placed in our lives.

One of my favorite chapters in the Gospels is Mark 5. This one chapter tells us of three different miracles that Jesus performed, but it is not the power of the miracles that move as much as much as Jesus’ love and concern and kindness that He shows to those that He touches in this chapter. In the course of the chapter we find Jesus being sought out by three desperate people. Three people that have lost hope, that have no other alternative and no one else to turn to, either see Jesus from a distance or hear of Him from others and choose to seek Him out believing that He is the answer to their desperation.

Our study today is not one of being desperate for God nearly as much as it is being the representation of Jesus to the desperate that surround us. I am of the belief that we in the Body of Christ have spent far too long trying to reach for the hem of Jesus’ garment when in fact we are equipped and called to become the hem of His garment for the world around us. Why would we need to reach for the hem of His coat when we have been clothed with His righteousness? Why would we need to reach out for a touch of His hand when we have been filled with the reality of His Holy Spirit? Our challenge today is to become the salt of the earth, the light of the world and a city on a hill that we might move forward into the greater things that Jesus has promised by becoming the hem of His garment that the desperate of our community and our world can reach out to and receive the freedom, healing and salvation that are only found in Christ.

Have you ever felt like the things around you were keeping you from fulfilling the will of the Father for your life? Have you ever had experiences and circumstances that seem to be holding you back from what you believe God has created and called you to be? In Mark 4, Jesus and the apostles got in a boat and started an 8 mile journey to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. In the midst of the journey Jesus laid down and went to sleep. As Jesus slept a great windstorm started, it rocked the boat and created waves that began to splash and fill the boat with water. The disciples did everything they knew to do but nothing seemed to slow the water that was filling the boat and then finally, in desperation and frustration and fear they woke Jesus up and said “Do you not care that we are perishing?” Jesus rose from his nap and commanded the storm to stop, immediately everything that was once out of control was calm, and then He rebuked the disciples, “Why are you so fearful? How is it that you still have no faith?”

What the disciples discovered is something we may also need to find, and that is that their external circumstances were being used by God to reveal the internal hindrances to His will in their lives. Their problem wasn’t the storm, it was their fear, it wasn’t the wind it was their lack of faith. I encourage and challenge each of us today to allow the difficulties in our lives to reveal our hearts and give God the opportunity and the freedom to change our hearts rather than demanding that He change our circumstances. Storms are real, difficulties need attention, but it is only our hearts that hinder us from God’s will. May we give our hearts fully to God and let Him lead us unhindered, in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.

This past Sunday we had an extended time of worship that was absolutely beautiful. During that time the Holy Spirit led some people to pray and to share some things that were on their heart. After this time I did not feel it was appropriate or necessary to preach the sermon I had prepared and so instead I just shared a few things that had been on my heart regarded prayer and the leading of the Holy Spirit. Most of these thoughts are out of Luke 11 and Romans 8. I pray that this recording was able to capture the atmosphere of worship and the presence of the Holy Spirit from which these thoughts were spoken.