Beyond Religion: 1st Year Class Notes

WEEK #15

Monday, January 7^th

Speaker – Dann Farrelly, Dean/Bible Instructor, BSSM:

Old Testament significance in New Testament teachings

Examples written down for us to use as meaningful direction for how we are to live our lives
Everything in our past was written to teach us that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we may have hope
Makes us aware of our need for a savior
Jesus taught about Himself using the writings of Moses and using the prophets

Jesus Himself found Jesus all over the OT – expect to find Him there

Reading the OT reminds us that we’re part of His story rather than Him being part of our story

We’re at our truest/most authentic best when we find ourselves in His story

Salvation History

When we read the OT, it is the beginning of the redemptive story of all of humanity
The Bible Jesus Read by Philip Yancy

The OT is a library, not an individual book
In the Temple, Jews saw a basket of scrolls, not a single book
Read Scripture like a letter from Somebody who loves you
Don’t stumble on the things you don’t understand, cling firmly to the parts that you do understand
In the OT, there’s a movement toward the grace that would come with Jesus
God chose to work with the people’s moral condition at it’s current state – seeds of grace
God gradually edged His people towards a different way of thinking

· Jesus redeemed not as a perpetrator of violence, but by suffering at the hands of violence

The Gift of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels by Thomas Cahill

Western Civilization would not make sense without the Hebrews
The Hebrews gave us ‘the conscience of the west’ – radically new concept
Most of the freedom movements throughout history would never have originated apart from OT concepts
We really can’t fully appreciate the NT apart from the OT
Apart from the OT, we have an impoverished view of who God is
“I dare not speak for God without listening to God speak for Himself”
The OT is a reminder that the world revolves around God, not us

· We live in God’s world, rather than Him living in ours

‘To not take the Lord’s name is vain is to never live as though God does not exist’ – Vaber
Pagans were in ‘hit-and-miss’ mode with whether or not they pleased their gods, but God actually provided us with an outline of the ways in which we can please and honor Him
Sometimes God works very quickly while other times He works very slowly
The OT shows us that God is personal – contains record of over 200 dialogues between God and people
Much of the OT is devoted to showing that not only does God exist, but that He also cares greatly about your personal problems
Our behavior matters to the Lord, and so do we
God prefers honest disagreement to dishonest submission
I Vow by Martin Buber

· God is personal – speak to God as though He exists, don’t simply speak about Him as though He doesn’t exist

What we say has an enormous effect on God
Reverses the flow of all previous religions where people were seen as pawns moved about at the whim of the gods to a God who put humanity at the pinnacle of creation
We exist to fulfill a meaningful destiny given to us by a personal God
The Hebrews could repeat their history with God and the story of that relationship

The stories of Scripture are not meant to be like fables designed to illustrate a theme, but as real stories from which we can take and apply principles
Put away your need to ‘fix’ God and just let God be God

A lot of the time we want God to ‘behave’ and be the ultimate ‘Christian’ but we need to allow God be God, even in His wildness
We cannot domesticate the Lion of the Tribe of Judah

‘Sir, I don’t know who you are, but I’d rather be eaten by you than fed by anyone else’ –CS Lewis, The Horse and His Boy

God is wild, unsafe and outside the box, but He’s good and He’s love

Until you actually take a stand, wrestle with things and write things down, you aren’t actually learning
Where we struggle is when we divorce His wrath and His love, which is something we cannot do and end up well
Sometimes, the stories of Scripture are not a prescription but a description

Speaker – Mark Brookes, Senior Overseer (1^st Yr), BSSM:

Testimony means ‘do it again’

What God does once, He’ll do it again
‘The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy’

There is a war against the testimony because the enemy knows the power it holds
Testimony can be a weapon used to bring great freedom for the hearers

Tuesday, January 8^th

Speaker – Kevin Dedmon, Bethel Church:

God’s will is always to heal
It’s easy to believe the lie that we don’t have what it takes
Jesus always comes to bring life, the devil always comes to steal/kill/destroy
Our job is to destroy the works of the devil (John 3:8)
If you don’t have the gift of healing, get it!

Take some risk, easily desire it – step across the chicken line!

When you pray He comes, and when He comes He does good things because He’s a good God in a good mood
There are over 330 names for God in Scripture, each one speaks about the nature of God

If you want to know God’s will, find out what He calls Himself

It’s always God’s will to heal/provide/etc. and it is not contingent upon your behavior
You never have to doubt that it’s God’s will to heal, because His name is YHWH Rafa
In the Kingdom, whatever your name is, that is who you are and what you do

In Biblical times, names had natural and supernatural implications

Your name determines your destiny
Devil comes from the Greek meaning ‘to divide’ – where ever the devil is, he divides

It’s always Satan’s will to do his name – kill/steal/destroy/divide/accuse/oppose

By praying ‘in Jesus’ name’, it means we’re to pray according to His will

It isn’t a formula for us to use to get what we want
It isn’t just words that we say, it’s something we release into the atmosphere

We have responsibility to partner with God in governing the earth

Not everyone is saved because very few are willing to take radical risk
Not everyone is healed because very few are willing to take radical risk

When you pray, God’s Kingdom comes

Jesus would not have told us to declare ‘Your Kingdom come’ if He had no intention of coming

You must be 100% confident that every time you pray, the Kingdom comes and every time the Kingdom comes things change
If we can learn to appreciate & acknowledge what God is doing and give thanks for what He’s doing, more will be added

When the Kingdom comes, a mustard seed is planted that grows with the giving of thanks to God for what He is doing

God’s Word will not return empty, but it will accomplish those things for which is was sent out
We don’t have the power to heal but it’s our risk that partners with God’s power and brings results
More drunken-ness = more risk
Freely you have received, freely give – freely you have received power, authority & a Kingdom…
John 20:21 – ‘As the Father sent me, so I send you’

The disciples had not stepped out in risk again since they’re failure with delivering the boy with a demon in Luke 9, so He anointed them with Holy Spirit

If we want more power, we must have more Presence – more Presence = more power
We pursue intimate relationship with God first, then from that place we pursue the power of His resurrection – if we get the two flip-flopped we get into religious formula which doesn’t work
Nehemiah 8:10 – ‘The joy of the Lord is your strength (empowerment)’
Learn to embrace creativity with Holy Spirit – Jesus didn’t heal the same way every time
You can release the presence of God over people on accident and they’ll get healed
You have what it takes to change the world, one encounter at a time

Speaker – Chad Dedmon:

Invite people to become best friends with the Creator of the universe
We need to be the same son outside the house as we are inside the house

As a son we are free to be who we are, no matter where we are

You never fail when you take risks in the Spirit realm – celebrate risk-taking!

Dare to contend for breakthrough in areas that no one has every experienced breakthrough before

Hang out with people that are crazier in the Spirit than you are
You don’t ever graduate from son-ship

You can be a son and a father at the same time, there’s no age requirement

Fatherhood = your ceiling is their floor

You can never be fired from fathering
The only requisite for being a good father is being a good son

Mothers/Fathers & Daughters/Sons are supposed to run together

Giving an inheritance in the Spirit doesn’t require the parents to die first
Give away your inheritance now so you can see your children enjoy it
Kingdom principle – the more you sow the more you reap

The best missions trips are those where you’re almost killed
If you want impartation from someone, do life with them and serve them
Stay away from the Elijah/Elisha model and pursue the Paul/Timothy model
As a son you can never fail – as a son you always hit a grand slam

As a son, before you ever say a word or do anything, you’ve pleased your Father

Out of a place of striving, performance & comparison, the best you can hope for is to be a bad version of someone else
The 2 main parties that will challenge your son-ship are the enemy & the religious spirit

People will try to get you to perform to prove your son-ship
Requires you to be secure in your son-ship

If you don’t get healed of your hurts from your parents and/or authority figures, those hurts will skew your perspective of God as your heavenly Father
God so loves hanging out with you that He watches you while you sleep
It’s so important for you to surround yourself with pillars in your life before you ever need anything/anyone to lean on
If you don’t have fathers or mothers speaking into your life, you have the spirit of stupid

Honor your father & mother and you will have long life on the earth

When you receive a prophet in the name of a prophet, you don’t get the prophet’s wilderness experience, you receive for free the breakthrough they worked for
You should have way more fathers than you have teachers
Malachi 3:6
Be an amazing son and surround yourself with fathers & mothers
Put off the spirit of rejection and allow your leaders to have healthy boundaries

Don’t get discouraged, be tenacious!

You’ll get to know father’s and mother’s as you begin to serve them and walk with them
As a son or daughter you will attract fathers & mothers
Jesus was the greatest model of son-ship
We should have the confidence to tell the world that when they see us they see the Father
God isn’t looking to raise up gifted revivalists, He’s looking to raise up sons & daughters
Learn to draw upon your identity as a son, not as a performer
It’s never too late to be a son

Wednesday, January 9^th

Speaker – Dann Farrelly, Dean / Bible Instructor, BSSM:

Review of Assignment on III John

Kris Vallotton, Associate Senior Leader, Bethel Church: (Get Audio File from Eddy)

It is normal to struggle in certain season if you’re doing anything for God

That resistance looks different in different seasons

It may be common to struggle in something for your whole life rather than just for a season, but it isn’t normal

‘Normal’ and ‘common’ are not the same thing

The good news is you don’t have to live like that your whole life

It may not be something you can get through without help

If you aren’t struggling at times in a culture where there isn’t much in the way of external persecution, then you may not be doing much to take ground in the Spirit
Ephesians 6

Our struggle is not against flesh & blood, but we do have a struggle!
There are demonic powers (principalities) that teach people to believe principles that are irrational
A perfectly sound-minded person can believe things that are completely irrational by coming under the influence of demonic principalities
Principalities rule principalities – princes over municipalities that control the way people think
You cannot use rationale or intellect to talk someone out of their irrational belief because they didn’t get it through rational but from a demonic principality, it can only be cast out
A stronghold is a lie we believe to the point that we begin to defend it

II Corinthians 10:3

You aren’t supposed to war with your old man
If your old man is alive, you’re in serious trouble because you don’t have weapons to deal with him because you’re supposed to kill him, and the only way you can kill him is in the baptismal tank
You can’t make your old man die, you can only obey God and let him kill your old man
Many people try to punish their old man through penance, thus trying to create their own salvation (like Judas Iscariot)
If you punish yourself, you’re punishing the new man who you are supposed to be nourishing and cherishing
If you feel better about yourself when you punish yourself, it’s proof that you are under the influence of a principality

Humans are the only beings God ever created with both authority AND power

Satan has to use you against others because he needs your authority and power to move against others, or even yourself
Satan has the ability to destroy people, but no authority to do it, so he has to use people so he can use their authority
Strongholds are thoughts, speculations and lofty ideas

Not ‘out there’ but ‘in you’

How do I know when I’ve encountered a fortress? People will defend it
How do I know it’s a spirit? It isn’t logical
You can’t talk someone out of an illogical fear because they weren’t talked into it, they were ‘principalitied’ into it
We can tear down strongholds, but we can’t talk them away
A familiar spirit is a principality that’s been around so long that you think it’s part of your personality and you don’t think you have a problem, but everyone around you knows you do
Satan hides, masquerading as you or someone else, because you know you have power over him, but if you have a problem that is someone else, or even yourself, you don’t think you have power over that
You can’t talk yourself out of anything you weren’t taught or talked into

Facts will sooth you for a moment, but the truth (reality) will set you free

Types of Fortresses

Speculations – what if’s, always irrational and negative
Lofty ideas – something that’s bigger than God

Nothing is bigger than God so that thought is irrational, but it still feels real
The anxiety of the problem is bigger than the peace of who God is
If the ‘lofty idea’ is always in the same area, it’s a spirit

Thoughts – sometime you have a thought that you can’t bring to mind

A troubling thought that is in your subconscious & carries troubling emotion with it
The clearer you see into the prophetic realm, the more tormented you can be by these things

It’s easier to deal with a demon than a character flaw – you can cast out a demon, but a character flaw takes time and requires you to work on it
I Peter 1:13

DO NOT BELIEVE ALL YOUR THOUGHTS

Just because you have a thought doesn’t mean you should believe it
Not all your thoughts are yours
Your brain is the bridge between the seen world and the unseen world
Your brain doesn’t think thoughts, it stores them and re-calls them

· Your spirit and your soul think thoughts while your brain records and recalls them

Your spirit, the Holy Spirit, and demons can give you thoughts

· Not disturbing if you understand that not all the thoughts you have don’t originate with you

· Like watching a movie you can determine what you’re watching isn’t reality, you can also determine some of the thoughts/fears you hear in your thoughts aren’t reality

· You must learn to manage your thoughts – never let your thoughts tell you what to think, you tell your thoughts what to think

· You must always be ready to do battle in the thought realm – learn to keep your armor on and gird your mind for action

It’s not normal to live in a constant season of warfare on the inside,
You need to know what season you’re in – one of the greatest pieces of armor for you is to know what season you’re in
GOD ISN’T GOING TO SHOW YOU ANYTHING HE ISN’T ABOUT TO TAKE CARE OF
Temptation is not a sin, it’s a sign that you’re human

You cannot be tempted in any area in which you don’t have an appetite
I am not defined by the temptations I resist, I’m defined by the passions I embraced
Temptation doesn’t define my character, temptation tests my character
Temptation doesn’t show my character, how I respond shows my character

Struggles are normal, but a lifestyle of struggle is an issue

It’s important to know what doors are open in our lives
Most common door – Unforgiveness (esp. unforgiveness for ourselves)

You don’t have a right to walk in unforgiveness against yourself, you don’t own you!

Second most common – Self Pity

When you throw a pity party your friends don’t come, but demons do
What you are owed that you didn’t get is something you don’t want – hell

Addictions

If you’re addicted long enough, a demon will get involved
If you leave your door unlocked long enough, eventually someone will come inside uninvited
It starts out as you, but before long it’s no longer you and you can’t control it anymore

Demons exist in space, they aren’t omni-present

Remember, there are more for us than against us
We all deal with evil spirits, but we don’t all have evil spirits
It’s normal to deal with evil spirits when you’re taking ground
Demons leave really easy when there’s nothing to eat, so clean up the mess and close the door

Demons and darkness only have power over you if you believe they have power over you

The God that’s in you has power over them, and we’ve been empowered to torment the devil
You receive what you believe for – both darkness and light
If the devil had real power over you, he would have killed you long ago

Thursday, January 10^th

Speaker – Chris Gore, Bethel Church: Logic vs. Faith

Get Jesus what He paid for
My job isn’t to understand how healing works, but just to believe that He is who He says He is
You can say what you can’t do and you won’t, or you can do what God says and you will
We aren’t doctors, but we are ‘physicians assistants’
We have to fall in love with Jesus, not in love with what He does
Don’t allow logic to get in the way of faith
Luke 18:8 – ‘When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith upon the earth?’

Will I find someone who believes I am who I said I am?

Jesus messed up every funeral He ever went to, including His own
To have child-like faith, you simply need to see out of the heart of Jesus, which is the exact representation of the heart of the Father
When we walk in child-like faith, it’s not our job to work out how it’s going to happen

If we do, we put logic directly in the way of faith

Our job is simply to believe the He is good at His job

It’s not actually us, it’s Him through us
Therefore, we don’t need to be all that good at our job

It’s not how smart you pray, because our prayers don’t heal anyway
It’s not the matter of a polished prayer, it’s a matter of believing He is who He says He is
We must minister out of a place of rest

Rest is NOT inactivity
Whether you’re working from love or for love, you’re still working

We owe the world an encounter
The Bible never tells us to pray for the sick, the Bible tells us to heal the sick

Grace is the operating system of Heaven
It’s not about me, it’s about all of Him in and through all of me

You don’t need somebody famous to come tell you that you have a healing anointing before you can heal the sick

I John 2:20 says you already have the healing anointing
He lives in you, you just have to let Him out

We don’t have to feel Him to heal the sick, we just have to come with child-like faith and believe that God is inside of us and we just have to let Him out
Hebrews 12:2 – let us fix our eyes on the author and the perfecter of our faith
Grace is opposed to earning, but it’s not opposed to effort

The woman with the issue of blood still had to push through the crowd to touch the hem of His garment, and Zaccheus still had to climb the tree
The rich young ruler tried to achieve his own salvation and he missed it

I’m not in a fight with the enemy, I’m just on a journey with Jesus

The enemy is over-rated, and he doesn’t deserve all the attention we give him
Become more aware of Jesus, His heart and His nature, and ignore the enemy

Don’t allow yourself to see the missing arm, allow yourself to see the arm that’s missing

Seeing the missing arm is lack, seeing the arm that’s missing is abundance
“If you can see it you can have it” –Bill Johnson

There’s something extremely powerful about believing God is who He says He is
Work to come into this place of rest where nothing is impossible

You must continually renew your mind
You know your mind is renewed when the impossible looks probable
Mark 8:6, John 6:9 – the bigger the miracle, the easier it is

Healing is only difficult when you think it has something to do with you, it’s simply all of Him through all of us

What do we need to do? Surrender
If you think it’s your big smart prayer, then you don’t need Jesus

Jesus is the healer it’s about a relationship – knowing who He is in us and through us
Angel to Zaccheria – ‘The prayer you no longer pray has been heard’

His many years of praying were still on his record in Heaven for believing for a child
There’s a persevering faith where if we push through and don’t give up we’ll see breakthrough
Your prayers in faith out of a sincere heart do not just disappear

When Zaccheria says ‘How can this be?’ it’s logic getting in the way of faith

The angel responds by silencing him for the duration of the pregnancy to prevent him from putting more logic in the way of faith
There are many times when people feel a sense of hopelessness come upon them and consider giving up
You have a choice to make – you can give up and not transform the world, or you can keep going and you will
I cannot allow hopelessness to set in, because if I do I will have allowed the problem to become bigger than the solution
Never allow logic to get in the way of truth (reality)

My Bible says that I can do greater things than Jesus, what does yours say?

When you get knocked down, you must continually make the decision to get up, not to allow logic to set in, but to live in faith
You don’t need to feel God in order to see breakthrough – stay in a place of faith and quit working out how it is going to happen

When things in life come up and you don’t know what to do, we must learn to stay in that place of child-like faith and see the situation through His eyes
There isn’t anywhere in Scripture where Jesus tells us how to address unanswered prayer
We must refuse to create a theology around our powerlessness

Many times we create a theology around our powerlessness to justify our powerlessness, but in doing so we’ve actually created another Gospel
God isn’t sitting there deciding who He’s going to heal and who He isn’t, that decision was already made when Jesus was hanging on the Cross

My job is to see how much of Heaven I can get here on earth

It’s not about the anointed man of God, it’s about the anointed God of man
We must not change our theology to justify our lack of breakthrough – only succeeds in pulling down the Biblical standard to the level of our experience instead allowing the Biblical standard to raise our level of experience

Get back on your face before the Lord and tell Father you must have a greater revelation of who He is in you and through you
If we’re going to take the burden when something doesn’t happen, then we’ll take the glory when something does
At the end of the day, come to the foot of the throne and give God all the glory and all of the burden – will leave you in a really freeing place to simply minister out of love and minister out of power
Now is not the time to die!
We must refuse to be offended at God for the things that haven’t happened
How we respond to what happens today will determine the fruitfulness of what happens tomorrow
Just because you pray and you don’t see a breakthrough don’t ever think that you didn’t have a breakthrough

If you minister in love, it’s impossible to pray and nothing happen

God’s goodness is not based upon our circumstance
Isaiah 40:4 – the crooked way will be made straight
When we can celebrate with others in their breakthrough, it opens up doors for us to get our breakthrough
Know that every day you’re one day closer to receiving your victory
What makes the difference in whether or not you become a great healing revivalist is if you can step over hopelessness and step beyond logic
We don’t grieve like the world grieves – we grieve like there’s a hope and we don’t let hopelessness lead us into faithlessness
It’s not the results that make you a success, it’s taking the risk that makes you a success

You’re more of a failure if you don’t actually step out and do something

We have an obligation to love and a responsibility to bring the Kingdom of God
If you want to start seeing more sick people healed, start praying for more sick people

Speaker – Chris Overstreet, Outreach Pastor, Bethel Church:

Isaiah 26:3
Start dreaming about what it would look like to walk in words of knowledge and in the miraculous
To the degree you believe in what you dream is the degree to which you will see it manifest itself in reality
Every individual has to overcome discouragement

Every successful person has set themselves up to overcome discouragement

Matthew 7:28

Write this Scripture on a 3x5 card, along with dreams you want to see fulfilled with God
You need to get out of your comfort zone and overcome fear

Most of the body of Christ, along with the rest of the world, live by their emotions

Did you know you can change your emotions with your thoughts?
‘A sound mind’ means disciplined thought patterns

If you’re going to see the breakthroughs you want to see, you’re going to have to get aggressive about changing the way that you think

Don’t allow discouragement to establish bitterness in your heart
Don’t look to place blame when things don’t go well, go deeper in pursuing your vision

Word of knowledge releases faith both in your life and in the life of the receiver
Homework – go on YouTube and search for William Branham (sp?)
Ways to receive a word of knowledge

You can receive a pain in your body that is not your pain
You can sense that someone is in pain without actually feeling it yourself (includes emotional pain)
Sometimes you just have a random thought out of left field

Word of knowledge also releases a corporate faith
A hunger in your heart brings an expectation to see God move through you
The church should be known as the most powerful people in the world!
The people you’re believing for don’t need to have any faith – we’re the believer, they are not

WEEK #16

Monday, January 14^th – Wednesday, January 16^th

Randy Clark Healing School

Thursday, January 17^th

Speaker – Jason Vallotton:

The goal is to take these big, larger-than-life ideas and concepts, and break them down into something practical and do-able
Your imagination is one of the greatest things that you have
The question is – what are you doing with what you’ve been given?
We are all very much in a performance-based culture

Not for our identity, but if you don’t do something with what you’ve been given, you don’t get more

We need to realize we’re in a season of change
If you don’t grow with the changing times, you won’t grow at all
Often we want to be done with growing, because growing is hard

Working to gain a new skill to change with the times gets harder as we get older
It’s not that we can’t grow, but we aren’t willing to change as the abilities and times change

Are you able to identify what season you’re in

The ability to which you are able to discern which season you’re in will determine, at least in part, the extent in which you will grow in that season

It’s hard to mine the gold out of seasons of trial, but that’s when the best gold is mined
There is typically a difference between the season you’re in and the season your community is in (i.e. BSSM, Bethel Church)
When you get performance before identity, you set yourself up for confusion and a loss of identity down the road
The hardest part about seasons is that we’re typically going through a different season that the people around us

During the winter season is when the trees send their roots deep
If you don’t take time to embrace the winter seasons, your fruit will be more than your roots can support and your tree will topple

There are many things that you’ll be given during school that are time-delayed and won’t manifest until later
In order to grow, you will have to change

It’s impossible to grow without changing
Growth isn’t always painful

When you see someone bearing fruit in their season, you can get to a place of blaming yourself and getting mad at God because it isn’t happening for you – unless we realize we’re in a different season
The watering hole that you drink at will determine who you become
If you want to know who you are, follow the road of ‘What am I good at?’ you will find out who you are

Much better question than “Who am I?”
When trying to figure out ‘who’ you are, ask yourself ‘What am I good at?’

‘A man’s gift will make a way for him and bring him before kings’
God wants us to be so secure that we’re okay with failing in the process of developing our gifts
“Never leave something for tomorrow that you can accomplish today” –Ben Franklin

Gives you momentum
Gives you favor
Causes you to appear better than you really are
The more momentum you have, the further you go (Newton’s Laws)

Narrow your focus

If you try to be good at everything, you won’t be good at anything
Somebody who works on one strength will eventually be a master of that thing, but those who work on everything become a jack of all trades, master of none
We’re told to work on the season God has us in, rather than work on everything
Until you’ve mastered something, there’s no point in moving on

“Don’t work on a weakness unless it’s keeping you from your strength” –John Maxwell

Ask yourself ‘What’s the one thing I’m good at?’

A good preacher can be so compelling and so motivating that people walk away convinced they need to do ‘that’ thing, even when the message was not intended for them but for another

Narrow your vision down to what God wants you to do, or you will take on more than God’s has planned for you and you’ll burn out

Very successful people take time to do things that most people don’t want to do
Ask yourself ‘Who’s on my team?’

Whatever part of the body you are, if the body doesn’t work together than you don’t work either
You aren’t the best at knowing where you should be or how to get there, philosophers no where they should be but no know how to get there, leaders no where they should be and know how to get there
Most of the time, if you could fix your problem on your own you’d already be fixed – but you’d also only be as big as you are instead of growing
Whoever you have on your team can give you the favor that is on their lives
What does it look like to have a bunch of people on your team? SERVING

Whatever you serve, that’s what you become like

Those of us in the Kingdom aren’t working our way to the top, we’re working our way to the bottom
Our gifts will become a huge blessing in our life when we honor

Everyone should have short-term goals so we can get to our long-term goals

ST goals should be achievable and will create momentum to achieve LT goals

Most people approach tasks in order of what screams the loudest

80-20 rule – 80% of the stuff you work on in a day gives you 20% in returns
We waste so much time working on things that we aren’t supposed to work on

Stand on your core values (shouldn’t really ever change)
If the task is in my strength and in my season, then I prioritize it and de-prioritize others
If you aren’t careful, you’ll take opportunities when you aren’t supposed to

Your gift will invite you to a lot of things, but make sure you’re ready for it
Your team helps you decide between ‘good’ and ‘best’

Answer the 4 W’s, take the right opportunities, narrow vision / maximum impact, Kingdom transformation

Speaker – Chris Overstreet: Abiding in the Vine

John 15

God has massive fruit for you to love
God is so much love
He wants us to discover how much He loves us, because inside of that revelation lies the massive fruit for us to bear
The moment we forget about God’s love is the moment things get ‘complicated’
God is doing a refocusing so we can re-fire
This fruit isn’t fruit we have to toil for, it happens naturally out of identity

Most people only tap into about 10% of the potential that God has placed inside of us – primarily due to fear

When you move in a place of fear and you step out of peace and love, you forfeit your authority
The moment you step out of peace, you step out of your authority

Every day you have opportunity – don’t just be hungry for tomorrow, be hungry today
Reflect so you can re-focus and be able to re-fire
Make the decision not to go to bed each night without having prayed for someone that day
Nothing changes unless something changes
Abiding in God has a practical aspect to it – people who make history are people who do things that make history

WEEK #17

Tuesday, January 22^nd

Speaker – Kevin Dedmon:

See Audio File

Speaker – Bill Johnson:

Most of us have a ‘normal’ way that we hear God, so sometimes God likes to change up how He speaks to help expand our skill set
You never want to grand stand the devil’s manifestations, but he will try to humiliate the person being set free – you always want to protect the dignity of the person being set free
Hebrews 5:12-14

One of the measures of a teacher that teaches the true Word is that their senses are trained to sense good and evil
You learn to discern good and evil by your acquaintance with good
‘Trained’ means discipline and intentionality

God’s presence is the greatest reality in the universe – that being so, He should be that hard to find / recognize
Always pay attention to the atmosphere shifts that occur when you change setting – develop your ability to perceive
It’s possible to live with an awareness of the presence of God to the point that you can begin to anticipate what God wants to do
The more you perceive, the more confident you are in the things you say and do
If the weightiness of something was dependent upon how often Jesus said it in Scripture, then being born again wouldn’t be that important
If I’m not aware of how He’s manifesting Himself to me, then I can’t steward it – and if I can’t steward it, then it’s impossible to get the increase I’m looking for

Focus on the manifestation that you sense, and thank Him for that
When your hunger for more is greater than your level of thankfulness, you get frustrated at God for not giving you what you want
When your thankfulness is far greater than your hunger for more, you become complacent

If you don’t cultivate a friendship, then you aren’t as likely to recognize the manifestations of your Friend
God likes to show up when you aren’t even thinking about it so that we can’t reduce Him to formulas but instead learn to relate to Him as a person
We don’t need to understand the manifestation, we just need to be able to discern what He’s doing

Obey quickly, because delayed obedience is disobedience
If you delay too long, the anointing for the moment will pass right on by

Likely more is happening to us than we realize, and when we get to the place that we can discern it, it’s puts us in a better place to minister when that time comes
Jesus didn’t start His own ministry until He could say ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me’

‘Put on Christ’ means to wear Him on the outside

Hebrews 5:12-14

Milk comforts, solid food brings about change
So often we’re too busy and fast past that we don’t recognize our divine encounter when it comes
God didn’t speak to Moses until he stepped aside to look at the burning bush
Some burning bushes capture your heart, and when they do it is important to keep the ‘awe’ at what God is doing

The sign is real, but it points to something more real

The exit sign isn’t the exit, but it points to the greater reality – the actual exit
Those who get bored with the miraculous have never seen beyond the sign
Those who see where the sign is pointing will never have a bored moment
If you find yourself becoming accustomed, it’s because you stopped at the sign

John 9:3

The original text contains no capitalization, paragraph breaks or punctuation
Sometimes, Scriptures are translated out of doctrinal predisposition
The religious mind wants to know why the sickness came, but the Kingdom is focused on bringing the answer

Jesus doesn’t focus on causes as much as He focuses on solutions

Often times, there is a realm of attack on those who are pursuing healing

We don’t hesitate, but we should understand that we need to bolster up as we step into that realm
We take the Word of God and minister to ourselves when fiery darts get past our shield of faith
Hope deferred makes the heart sick

Learn to navigate life so that when there is a perceived let down, because if we don’t learn to process those things well, they can become the weak link in the chain that invites affliction
Prosper even as your soul (mental / emotional core) prospers

One of the ways you can discern what season you’re in is based on how He’s dealing with you

Advancement comes through the exercise of faith (Matt. 11)
The Kingdom of God suffers violence, and the violent take it by force (Mark 10)
On one hand, He wants to show you your inheritance as a son, and on the other He wants to show you what is yours through warfare
Some things God can only entrust to soldiers, some things He can only entrust to sons
Passion and hunger in the Body of Christ can accelerate the seasons where more happens in a shorter amount of time
There are times where seasons disappear, because the need for season has shifted

The only reason the Culture of Honor works is the willingness to confront and not place people on a pedestal

There’s no punishment or shame, but we do confront in love
Each person’s willingness to clean up their messes determines how far they will go in this thing
Anyone can serve, but you don’t trust authority to those who are not proven

Our anointing doesn’t develop from the pulpit, it develops in the trenches

While we can’t get to know everybody, we can get to know somebody
We can’t let the size of the crowd keep us isolated

Paul told Timothy to fight the good fight of faith according to the prophecies he had received

Ask God to remind you what the prophecy was so you can write it down
Encourage your heart with what God says, ponder them in your heart
Protect them – don’t throw something that is of value to you before those who won’t treasure it

Wednesday, January 23^rd

Speaker – Bernie Ooley, Bible Instructor:

Genesis contains the beginning everything except God, for He had no beginning
God always brings us out of and into something greater

How you leave one season determines how you will enter the next season

Often times, the people who know you the best don’t get you
Joseph was an ‘overnight success’ that took 17 years to play itself out and included slavery and prison
The ‘womb’ of Egypt protected the Israelites from the famine and many wars raging in the regions outside of Egypt’s borders
Pharaoh ordered the killing of the baby boys of the Israelites

An echo of Herod killing all baby boys 2 yrs old and under
The enemy tries to enact pre-emptive strikes to prevent his own destruction from coming upon him

In the palace, Moses learned writing, government, and warfare
Moses had a good sense that he was a deliverer, but he had a poor sense of timing
Becomes a shepherd in the wilderness – trains him to shepherd God’s people
Moses receives his call while he was stewarding his father-in-law’s flock (vision)
The call will always call you – you can run, but you can’t hide

God always calls us beyond ourselves so that we must partner with Him

God turned Moses’ staff into the rod of God for Moses to lean on
God called Moses even in the midst of his inability

God calls those alongside of us who are strong where we are not
It’s wisdom to surround yourself with good council

God is the master of cultural relevance – He speaks to the Egyptians using their own cultural symbolism

The snake symbolized the king, and the staff symbolized
Each plague was a judgment against the gods of Egypt

God is the God of natural and spiritual law – He can use any method He wants
Pharaoh hardened his own heart again and again and again, until God gave him over to a reprobate mind

The Egyptians believed that goodness was light as a feather, so the harder your heart was, the heavier it became, and when you died if your heart wasn’t as light as a feather it would fall into the region of the damned

The plague of the death of the firstborn was not against the Egyptians specifically, but would come upon anyone who was not under the blood of the lamb
Psalm 105 says everyone who left Egypt the day after the Passover left completely healed and whole – we should leave communion completely healed and whole
The Egyptians paid the Israelites to leave – back wages for slavery
The book of the Law reveals the standard of God, but also serves as a tutor to point the way to the Messiah

The Law revealed the heart of man apart from salvation through Jesus

The Tabernacle symbolized God’s provision through sacrifice

The sacrifices made there was a shadow of the coming sacrificial Lamb of God
God was always home, and the priests served as mediators between God and the people – a shadow of our High Priest and Advocate Jesus who was to come

Scarlet – Salvation
Blue – Revelation
Purple – Royalty
Gold – Divinity
Silver – Redemption
Acacia Wood – Would not decay
White Linen Undergarments – Breathed, and God didn’t want anybody sweating it
The pomegranate is called ‘Abraham’s Fruit’ because it has so many seeds
We need power and love when we’re ministering in the Spirit
Bronze is a type of repentance and judgment
‘Afflictions’ does not mean diseases, it means pressure – when you are given a Word from God, pressure comes immediately to steal it away from you
Things that were unavailable to people in the OT are not available to us in the NT through relationship

The heart of a true worshiper brings access to the things of God

Philippians 2:12 – Jesus laid aside His divine privileges and became a man anointed of the Holy Spirit
Wage war through worship!
The veil of the temple, that which separated the presence of God from mankind, was torn from top to bottom (from heaven to earth)

In those days, when someone’s heart was broken, they would tear their garment from top to bottom
God tore His ‘garment’ from top to bottom when His Son died

The Tabernacle is also seen as an unfolding of church history
Secrets are for seekers, and it is the glory of kings to seek out a matter – you are kings

Speaker – Kris Vallotton: Generosity

Transition of Government – Israel moved from 12 Patriarch to 2 Generals (Moses / Joshua) to Judges to Royalty (Kings)

God planned to give Israel a king, but not ‘like other nations’ (i.e. Saul)
Israel asked for the right thing, but out of the right timing

You cannot have a true reformation without generosity
Having a generous heart is part of the transformation that God is doing in each of us

If you don’t give more to God than you give to the person who waits on you at a restaurant, I question your heart for the Kingdom

The point isn’t giving a specific amount, the point is having a heart that is generous
God doesn’t need what I have – when we bless Him, we’re giving to Him what He doesn’t need

When we give to God, we aren’t giving to Him out of need, we’re giving to Him out of honor
Royalty knows both how to give to the poor & how to honor those to whom honor is due

Laborers are worthy of their wages – it’s okay to get paid for what you do
An honorarium is based on who you are, not what you do – it’s tied to your personhood, not to your labor
God has a very high value for giving to need and taking care of the poor
God doesn’t need you to tell Him He’s amazing, He’s never had a bad day

You worship for your benefit, not for His
It’s amazing that God lets us give Him something He doesn’t need to allow us to feel like we’re giving something valuable to Him who doesn’t need anything
God doesn’t love our gifts and attention for the sake of the gifts and attention, He loves them because of what they represent – out hearts
The beauty is not in the painting, the beauty is in the painter

Do we give to God based on our balance statement or based on our hearts?
It’s not what you give, it’s the fact that you give

Every country started as a 3^rd world country, but the way to stay a 3^rd world country is to not be generous

Tithing is pre-Law – Abraham tithed to Melchezedek before there was ever a Law

When Abraham tithed, He reaped a legacy where His offspring got credit for something they never did (Levi)

Tithing isn’t just 10%, it’s the first 10%

When you had a crop, you had to give your first crop not knowing what your second crop was going to be
Tithing is a principle of faith, not of Law, because you’re supposed to give it before you know if what you have remaining is enough to cover your expenses

Luke 6:38

‘By your standard of measure, it will be measured to you in return’
The amount of gravel at the gravel yard doesn’t matter, it’s the size of the truck you bring that is important

The law of increase is tide to faithful giving – steward your giving and God will give you more to give
It’s not about money – there are plenty of rich people who would give any amount of money for some peace
If you have a problem talking about money in church then you have a problem with Jesus because 70% of all the parables dealt with money
Luke 16:10

‘He who is faithful with little is faithful with much’ and vice versa
How do I know when I’m serving money? You’ll be mad when people try to get it
You will always work harder to protect your ‘true god’

Jesus didn’t just share the New Covenant, He IS the New Covenant
It never ceases to amaze what depths people will go to in order not to give
You can have wealth, but it cannot own you

Some people own houses and some houses own people

Remember – you’re always eating last year’s crop at best

Sometimes God supernaturally multiplies seed immediately, but usually you eat what you sowed the year prior

There’s more than one principle to stewardship – like hard work, receiving, etc.
Giving is not just an act, it’s a lifestyle

Builds confidence that you will reap a harvest again, regardless of the current conditions

Isaac sowed in famine, and reaped 100 fold in the same year

He did the opposite of what the circumstances dictated
God produced what Isaac couldn’t
Isaac didn’t let his circumstances dictate his stances
‘If you watch the wind you will not sow, and if you watch the weather you will not reap’

When you give ‘Joe’ money, Joe doesn’t give you a reward, God does
No matter how much money you make, you still need to live by faith

We don’t want to work for our own prosperity, we want to work for God’s
The reward is tied to what you did, to your own heart
The reward is not tied to anything apart from what the rewarder wants to give you

Don’t be limited by what you do and your capacity to make money, access and operate by His level of supply which is unlimited
All of us who live in God are living by faith, regardless of where we get our money
Acts 4:32

God created capitalism when He wrote the 10 Commandments with ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal’ because stealing indicates private ownership, not community property
The believers are living communally
The Apostles didn’t take an offering, they were internally motivated
Those with houses and lands sold them, but did not distribute the funds among the poor, they laid it at the Apostles’ feet
They trusted their leadership more than they trusted themselves to distribute their money appropriately
They weren’t just generous, they were honorable
If you don’t trust your church leaders with money, how can you put your trust in what they’re saying

When in doubt, give too much
We like to say that we can’t out give God, but then we live like we can
Long story short, you have a God who expects you to be generous
There’s a difference between riches and wealth

Rich people are defined by what they own
Wealthy people are defined by who has them
It’s not about having a penance kind of attitude, which isn’t generosity

We don’t live by principles alone, we live with The Prince

Thursday, January 24^th

Speaker – Mark Brookes:

Some days you don’t feel very victorious – testimonies remind you of the Truth
Don’t go to work for a paycheck, go to work to glorify God
Many people forget why they’ve come here
We’re learning not to live from the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil, but to live from the fruit of the Tree of Life

The other tree will kill you even though it seems appealing, feed on life and forsake the other

Don’t look for outward reasons to honor others, look at the anointing on their life
God set it up so that we couldn’t fail by placing Himself inside us – learn to live out of that reality
A person who takes ownership over their life is powerful

They grab a hold of their identity and put it on, wearing it like a garment
They take responsibility for the call on their life
There is an entire world that is counting on you to live out your identity, to fulfill your divine destiny for the sake of this planet

When you lose your focus is life, you drift away from your identity and become fodder for the enemy
You cannot live this life without a supernatural infusion of the Spirit
When people get together who aren’t whole in the same area, they lead each other astray in that area of common wounded-ness
Ownership keeps you holding on to your vision
ALWAYS BE FAITHFUL IN ALL THE LITTLE THINGS

‘On Time’ is 5 minutes before – you have to let yourself die

If you want to raise the dead, hang out with people who raise the dead
You must make the decision to die
Ownership empowers us to live out of that God-given identity that He’s given us

When we feed on the fruit of the Tree of Life, grace feeds our Spirit
Grace is empowering, it gives us the ability to say ‘yes’ to the right things

When we come face-to-face with the mountain of society, you’re supposed to influence it, not allow it to influence you

The real question is, ‘Who owns you?’
You’re the only one who gets to say yes or no for you
Ownership says yes to the purposes of God

We’ve been given ownership of our own territory, and it’s up to us to decide what is allowed to come in and what isn’t
Are you motivated by the external or the internal?

When you submit your life to God, you are at the steering wheel and He’s your co-pilot

Know the core values to the point that you can teach them from Scripture
The Tree of Life builds an eternal structure inside of you that sustains you
Guilt & shame is not part of your identity as a believer

Speaker – Angelo Jean-Pierre:

John 15:4

Abiding in the Secret Place
Abide – means to stay in a place
The degree of your hunger determines the degree to which you get fed
Set your hearts violently aimed at His presence
Learn to wield the sword that God has cast and sharpened in you

Acts 4:13

They were untaught/untrained men, but it was evident that they’d been with Jesus
Finish stronger than you started

Luke 8:14

The seed and the soil of the heart
We’re in a greenhouse right now to initiate & enhance our growth
Take this time to prepare to leave the greenhouse & impact the planet

Ask God if people see Jesus in you, especially when you’re out and about
True wisdom lies in knowing when to listen to the voice of another instead of our own voice

WEEK #18

Monday, January 28^th

Speaker – Dann Farrelly, Dean / Bible Instructor, BSSM:

Who controls the meaning of the text – the author or the reader?
As believers, we still hold to an absolute truth while many post-modernists don’t
The author controls the meaning to the extent to which the reader gives them permission
In the real world, in many instances, we don’t have the freedom to interpret the author’s meaning of the text (e.g. bills, traffic signs, etc.)
People can read Scripture for any number of reasons, but we only allow the author to determine the meaning when we see it as God’s Word
As readers of a text, we don’t create meaning, we discover meaning
The two primary questions every reader should ask of the text is ‘What is the author’s meaning?’ and ‘How will I apply it?’

As the reader, we’re not to ask ‘What does this mean to me?’ because that promotes the reader determining the meaning of the text rather than the author

If you can make the Bible say anything you want, then ultimately the Bible says nothing
Scripture contains the Spirit of God in it’s pages, we don’t need to superimpose our thoughts and opinions on it as though we’re bringing our ‘spiritual insights’ to the text
We’re supposed to use our sanctified imagination while reading Scripture, not to establish our own meaning, but to more fully experience the meaning implanted there by the Holy Spirit
If you only take the entire Bible literally, you may miss the meaning represented in the text – we are to take it literarily, with understanding of hyperbole, metaphor, allegory, etc

Read Scripture wholly through the lens of Holy Spirit, but as a literary text

Avoid the use of allegory – the extensive use of symbolism

Take care not to hyper-allegorize Scripture, applying symbolism to every little thing when it may not actually be there
We don’t want to read our interpretation into the text, but rather get our interpretation from the text

Not every connection we make within the text necessarily should be made
‘Extended application’ can lead us to building a rickety bridge over the Grand Canyon
We cannot say that the author’s meaning is the only meaning, because certainly Holy Spirit has packed Scripture with prophetic words and revelation unknown to the author
Don’t try to read Christ into every Old Testament passage, interpret the meaning of the passage, then look for Christ within the true context of the passage
Abraham had no writings to teach him about God, only his experiences with God
“Sometimes faith is a leap into the dark” –Kierkagaard
Abraham’s faith was the faith of a man who had a close relationship with God

‘I know in whom I have believed and He is able to do all that He has promised’

We need to re-connect faith and reason – your faith is reasonable, and everyone who reasons has faith at the heart of their reasoning

Speaker – Banning Liebscher:

Lesson #1 – being ‘in charge’ is not all it’s cracked up to be
Most of the time, the prophetic isn’t necessarily new but is confirmation of stuff God has already placed within your heart
It’s important to hear the Word of the Lord for us, but it’s equally important to know how to handle it
I Samuel 1:15

John 15:7 – ‘…ask what you desire and it shall be done for you’

As a leader, our mandate is to carry the Word of the Lord and the prophetic

The picture of Hannah is the picture of our life – she accessed a realm of faith that is necessary for our heart’s cry to be realized
Samuel is a prophetic move of God that ushers in King David

We are called to usher in a move of God that will bring about the Messianic Kingdom
God’s Words must abide in me – this is my top priority as a leader

For your family, finances, future, city, nation, etc.
If you don’t have the Word of the Lord, you need to go get it – go wrestle in faith until you get the Word of the Lord (like Hannah)

There’s a big difference between receiving the Word of the Lord and carrying the Word of the Lord – between receiving and carrying a prophetic word

So often, we don’t need more prophetic words, we just need wisdom on how to carry the words that we have (like a baby to term)

The prophetic is like a ‘pregnancy test’ – when God speaks to you, He’s letting you know that you’re pregnant

The difference between the natural and spiritual is that in the natural, pregnancy means you’ve got nine months, here it comes ready or not, but in the spirit it takes so much longer than you ever imagined for that baby to come to term

You have to let that word abide in you that you being to carry that ‘pregnancy’ to term
Your default mode should always be ‘Lord, what are you doing? What are you saying?’
How to carry a Word from the Lord:

You need to pray it out

The prophetic in your life needs to become the fuel for your prayer life
Most of prayer is just telling God what He said to you – ‘God, this is what you said…’ then you pray it and you pray it and you pray it

You have to prepare for it (this is a big one)

Your life should be different after the word than before the word
The Lord is wondering ‘Can I trust you with what I’ve said?’
One of the ways it looks different is I’m actually believing what He said
God wants to know if you really believe Him
Sometimes we cry out for things in prayer, not realizing that when we don’t prepare for it, it communicates we don’t value it – a lack of preparation contributes a lack of value
Do something to prepare for what He’s specifically told you, no matter what it is or how small it may seem
Most often, our level of preparation determines the level of outpouring

· II Kings 4 – the only can only fill the number of vessels we have

· When you receive the Word of the Lord, your life becomes simply preparing vessels to hold the coming outpouring

Change the way you talk

We somehow feel we have permission to say something differently than what He said
When you receive a Word of the Lord, we forfeit permission to say anything different than what He said

· Sometimes God calls us a ‘million dollar Lamborghini’ but we walk around talking liking we’re a broken down Pinto

One of the problems with being a leader is that you’re constantly encountering your inadequacies

· A bigger staff just means more people to tell you the weaknesses in your life

We usually don’t feel like it, but we know what He said, so what we agree with and that’s how we talk – otherwise we neutralize what He says

You have to make it ‘the main thing’

Don’t allow yourself to get distracted
You must absolutely be consumed with the Word from the Lord
Your entire life is filtered through that Word from God
You give up freedoms and are held to a higher standard in certain areas of your life because of that Word that others won’t have required of them

You must understand that you’re on a journey

It is not enough to hear the prophetic word, you have to carry the word
There is no set time table for your ‘pregnancy’ to come to term
There is a process and journey we are on that will take much longer than we ever anticipate
When we lose sight of the fact that we’re on a journey and it’s a process, we easily get frustrated and discouraged
When the Lord speaks to you, His next step is to ‘grow’ you

· He shows you and then He grows you

We tend to have a sense that we are behind on the timeline of our life

· ‘Stop being in such a hurry to get into the inner place of anointing & just take time to die in the outer court’ –Bob Jones

· Allow God’s process to come to fruition in you

God always speaks an anointing over you that is much bigger than you are at the time, even though you feel big enough to manage it

· It’s the grace of God that He doesn’t release the things He has for you to you before you’re ready to handle it

God gives us a vision then hides us in a cave and tells us to serve really well

· If you’re going to carry what He said to full term, you must be okay with the process and being on a journey

· Slow down – don’t be in a hurry, you’ve got time

· God knows what He’s doing – trust Him

· When God releases things they come so fast that it makes up for all the seemingly ‘lost time’

· Be okay going it slow – don’t ever be in a hurry

How is my life reflecting that I even believe God?

Tuesday, January 29^th

Speaker – Dann Farrelly: Hermeneutical Guidelines

Scripture is written by both God and man, so our interpretation / application must be kept in tension
Our interpretation should always be in light of God’s meaning
“If our study doesn’t begin in worship and end in worship, then it’s meaningless”
Gordon Fee (How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth) – “In true exegetical work, we’re attempting to engage with the author’s spirituality, not just his words.”

Not is some general sense, but we’re interacting with the author’s relationship with God via Holy Spirit

When we’re doing hermeneutics, it helps us to stay out of the ‘school exercise’ aspect by remembering the living, breathing relationship Paul has with Jesus and is trying to impart to us
Exegesis = there and then
Hermeneutics = here and now
Holy Spirit is the author and His intention should be the primary focus

The Bible only contradicts itself when it intends to do so, but the purpose of such contradiction is to lead us to truths that we need opposing ideas to reach

Be suspicious of any interpretations that decrease our faith, hope and love, or cause us to view God in any way that is less than good and holy (according to heaven’s definitions)

Speaker – Danny Silk:

We are living in an apostolic age, and we are practicing that more than ever
Living in an Apostolic Age (I Corinthians 12:27-28)
Jesus taught His disciples to prayer ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’ (Matt. 6:10)

What does it look like to you when the Kingdom comes?
You will get what you expect
We invite His Kingdom to come happen around us the way His Kingdom happens around Him

Sometimes the most urgent, painful thing at the time is ‘the Kingdom’ to us
There is an overthrow of an existing government that is taking place

There is a church government that has been in place for a long time that has made the Kingdom of God very small
There is an infinite amount of supply at heaven that is aimed at transforming the earth… and it’s not

It doesn’t matter how much resource you pour into a debunk government, that resource will never make it to it’s intended government
The only way we can change the system is to overthrow the government
Any time there is a revolution (overthrow of an existing government) there are casualties

The casualties in this revolution are the Christians

Christians have to be willing to move from being the central theme of the church

The central reason we have church today is for the Christians
We have church so that the Christians will come
Christians have become accustomed to this, and have capitalized on it to influence church leadership to cater to them in exchange for their financial support
As a result, Church leadership has bowed the knee to the ‘customer’, and the church has become a ‘customer-run’ organization

I Corinthians 12:27-28

‘Now you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, various kinds of tongues.’
Anywhere the western world has influenced Christianity, you will find ‘first senior pastor’ (and there had better be a strong teaching/administration gift to go with it), and ‘second evangelist’

Ephesians 4
Our anointing colors the way we see everything in the world, and we interpret the world accordingly – then, if we aren’t careful – we judge the other anointings that see the world through a different colored lens

Surrounding yourself with people who only have the same anointing you do will only serve to reinforce you

The Gifts of Christ in Contemporary Church Government (the anointings)

Pastors – The Church

Automatically prioritize the needs of the Christians

Teachers – The Word of God

Good at sorting things out, innately have a need to be ‘right’
When a teacher delivers a message, it creates a line down the center of the room – everyone who wants to be in the ‘right’ and the ‘truth’ on this side, everyone on the other side is in increasing levels of deception (which is why there are plenty of other churches out there)
All attention will be given to the Holy Scriptures
Instead of being a gift to the body, they create fracture lines all over the place
‘Agreement’ has become an idol – you will know we belong to the Lord because we agree on a certain idolatry

Evangelists – The Lost

Priority given to the lost
Focus on winning people to Jesus – ‘the only thing we can do on earth that we can’t do in heaven’

Prophets – The Spirit Realm

Prophets see meaning in everything

The office is completely different than the anointing!

We all have an anointing, or a mix of them
Offices are only passed out by Jesus – other people recognize it on you!
The office of the prophet opens the eyes of people’s hearts to see things they have never seen before and they see things from heaven’s view point
The office of the apostle draws attention towards the presence of God, the supernatural resources of heaven, and the blueprint of heaven

Look to bring the realities of heaven to the earth and to confront the earth until earth changes

Evangelists get along and are comfortable with everyone outside of church, Pastors have the most favor with the Christians, and Teachers begin to ‘lawyer’ for the Christians
There is the belief that the only one capable of supernatural is the devil
When you strip the supernatural out of the body of Christ you end up with a ‘natural’ church, with no more power than any other earthly organization
The prophets and the apostles have more favor with heaven
The pastors and the evangelists have more favor with people
Requiring these different offices and anointings to be in agreement before their allowed to function has caused God’s structure for the church to be whittled down to systems of distribution that eventually becomes a denomination that must be protected

The empowered leaders in an (see audio file – 3:25pm)

Current Church Government / Priorities

Pastoral – Christians / Church
Teacher – Doctrine
Administrative – Stewardship
Evangelistic – Salvation Message
These things are important, but the cannot be the MOST important

God’s Church Government / Priorities

Apostles – Heaven
Prophets – Spirit World
Teachers – Understanding the Kingdom
Workers of Miracles – Supernatural Activity

Pastors / Teachers have church so that Christians will come, Apostles / Prophets have church so that God will come
We are now not going to die for a particular doctrine, we are going to die to protect the presence of God
Supernatural activity becomes so normal that to not have supernatural activity is suspect
We have a tendency to want to honor ministers but it isn’t the ‘five-fold corporate ladder’
Your need to be ‘first’ doesn’t make you an apostle, it makes you insecure and a little hard to deal with
A father (apostle) isn’t just someone who acts ‘fatherly’ but it’s someone who gives you DNA

I Corinthians 4:14-16
Carry Kingdom Power – I Corinthians 4:17-20
An apostolic father will create an environment where people are willing to sacrifice whatever they have to in order to get more of ‘that’
Stimulate all the other anointings – Romans 12:1-9
Catalyst for Change within the culture of the society – Acts 17:6
Pastors / Teachers don’t transform culture, they build up the church
What makes you an apostle is not that you’ve started a bunch of churches
Supernatural Validation Required – II Corinthians 12:12

When we strip away…. (see audio file)

Wednesday, January 30^th

Speaker – Dann Farrelly:

The author of Hebrews calls the teaching of eternal judgment ‘elementary’ doctrine
Acts 10:42

Who’s the judge? Jesus!
Resurrection was kind of a new idea – not accepted by the Sadducees or Greeks

In the NT, those who know better receive a harsher punishment for sin than those who sin in ignorance
Romans 14 & I Corinthians 4 – Judgment for Christians
I Corinthians 3 – Judgment for Church Leadership
II Peter 2:4 – Judgment for Angels
Grace has rescued me from being eternally judged for my sin
For many unbelievers, God’s existence is intolerable, as is the prospect that He’s going to judge them

God is upset with unbelievers on the basis that they repress the knowledge of God within them

‘Gahanna’ is used 12 times, ‘Hades’ is used 10 times to describe hell (see BlueLetterBible.com)
Hell was not made for humans, it was designed for Satan and his demons

Jesus speaks about Hell to rouse the hearer to action – He purposefully paints a horrific picture of Hell
Undermining Scriptures picture of Hell is a dangerous practice
Jeremiah 26:2-6, 36:2-3 – God often speaks things to us to prompt change in us

The Pharisees always found a way to avoid faith in the moment with Jesus

To those who only understand fear, the Lord and His love only speak fear

II Peter 3:9-10 – God desires everyone to come to repentance
Jeremiah 33:11 – God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather desires that they would turn from their ways and live
The light has come into the world, but men loved darkness rather than life

Hell is largely self-chosen
The doors to Hell are locked from the inside
At the end, those who don’t say to the Father ‘thy will be done’ the Father will say to them ‘thy will by done’

Read the books The Great Divorce and The Problem of Pain, both by CS Lewis
We all have a history of God remaining faithful to us when we were faithless, and holding us up when we were unable to stand
The presence of God is the centerpiece (focus) of Heaven
‘I was made for another world’ – CS Lewis
Being in the presence of God is our training ground for Heaven
God is not a byproduct of getting to Heaven, God IS the destination

God’s idea of joy is working for Him

Speaker – Kris Vallotton: Worship & Resurrection of the Tabernacle of David

Exodus 19:5

Moses goes up on the mountain with God for 40 days
God said to Moses ‘You shall be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation’

The people responded ‘Let not God speak to us, lest we should die’
Instead of everyone being priests, Israel relegated priesthood to the Levites, but that wasn’t God’s intention

Since Israel didn’t want to be ‘a kingdom of priests, a holy nation’ God gave them The Law

God wanted a relationship with everyone, but the Israelites didn’t want a relationship with God, they wanted rules to follow, so God gave them their request and they came under the ‘curse of the Law’

Under the New Covenant, God has what He wanted from the beginning – we are ‘a royal priesthood, a holy nation’

We were born to be holy and be possessed by Holy Spirit

John 4:20

Jesus speaking with Samaritan woman at the well
True worshipers worship the Father in spirit and in truth

The Father seeks not worship but worshipers!

Worship is a triune experience that your spirit should be leading

You do it whether you feel like it or not, because your spirit is in charge not your soul
When you do things for God when you don’t feel like doing them, it’s called a sacrifice (the sacrifice of praise) – when you do things for God when you don’t feel like it, it means more

Just because you don’t feel like it doesn’t mean it’s not real
What makes you a hypocrite is when you sing like heaven on Sunday, but live like hell the other six days of the weak

The word truth comes from a word which means ‘nothing hidden’ – that is what God is looking for with you, true intimacy!
In an intimate relationship, there isn’t just nothing hidden physically, there should be nothing hidden in every area of life – that’s true intimacy

Romans 12

‘Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice’
If your heart is truly yielded to God, there should be no difference in the level of worship between church on Sunday and your every day life

People can easily reach the belief that they have two different lives, one spent in a worship service and one spent doing everything else

Luke 4:6

Satan is tempting Jesus in the wilderness
The ‘war of the worlds’ is over who will be worshiped – God or Satan

‘Lucifer’ means ‘light bearer’ – his name change went from ‘light bearer’ to ‘accuser of the brethren’

You’re going to worship some one; the only question is ‘Who?’

Humanism is the worship of yourself

Many Pharisees and Scribes were the leaders of the emerging Church because they were the ones who knew Scripture

‘Christianity’ was known as ‘The Way’ because it was primarily a gentile movement, so they couldn’t very well keep the name ‘Judaism’

Three structures in the OT were responsible for housing the presence of God – The Tabernacle of Moses, the Tabernacle of David, and the Temple of Solomon
God was telling the grace story within the details of The Law & the Tabernacle of Moses

The Holy of Holies contained the Ark of the Covenant – it didn’t represent God, God was in the box
In the Old Covenant, God placed Himself in a box

When Jesus died, the curtain in the temple was torn top to bottom – God wasn’t trying to let us in, He was trying to get out

The Tabernacle of David wasn’t made according to the pattern of the Tabernacle of Moses

II Samuel 6 – story of the Ark and Uza

You can get so familiar with the presence of God that you lose your reverence for Him
Don’t try to control the move of God
The Philistines can get away with things you can’t because they are ignorant – you can’t look at the world to tell what you can get away with because you live according to a completely different standard

There was no joy in the Tabernacle of Moses – it was all serious
The Tabernacle of David had 24 hours a day worship before the Ark

All of Israel was bringing up the Ark, Michael was watching from the palace window

· When you aren’t worshiping, what everyone else is doing often looks ridiculous

David ministered before the Ark in priestly garments along with the Levites – only problem is David is from the tribe of Judah
What David did wasn’t just un-biblical, it was anti-biblical for that day, but the amazing thing was no one died in the Tabernacle of David
David saw into God’s heart and saw God’s desire for a nation of priests, not a nation of Law

When Peter spoke in Acts 2, he prophesied not that God would rebuild the Tabernacle of Moses, but instead He would rebuild the Tabernacle of David

God never called the Israelites in the Old Covenant to be a royal priesthood, that was reserved for His people in the New Covenant
The most powerful weapon on the planet is not an atomic bomb, the most powerful spiritual warfare is not a direct assault on the second heaven

Want to make the devil mad? Worship God
Concentrating on the devil will bring the devil, but concentrating on God flees the devil
Never give the devil attention, he loves attention – don’t give him any credit
Satan is much more afraid of you than you are of him, you just don’t know it

Praying without ceasing means literally praying without ceasing

When you are born again, you have to work to not worship because you were made for it

Thursday, January 31^st

Speaker – Jason Vallotton:

Write out your daily schedule

Are you being responsible with the time you’ve been given?
Don’t forget to have fun – sometimes we get so locked into producing that we forget to have fun in life
Fun is a re-charger – without fun you will have a nervous breakdown
365 hours divided by 50 things equals not good at anything, but 365 hours divided by 1 thing equals really awesome at that thing

Establish your ‘ultimate goal’
Identify what season you’re in

Focus on what God has told you to do in this time period
How’re you stewarding your time to focus on God’s priorities during this season?

Equation: Season + Gift + Effort + Serving = Success

If you do these things in the wrong season, you won’t have the grace to achieve them

If you have something you can achieve on your own, you aren’t reaching heaven’s goal – a heavenly mission is one you cannot achieve on your own, God must do it with you
When you serve people, hopefully they will invest in you in return

Fathers shouldn’t have to work really hard to keep their sons around
Every father wants a son to champion
You don’t want to take people on who are a pain, or who you always have to fix
‘Do you mind if I glean from you?’ while serving them – they should want to be on your team, to be in your corner

If you don’t take care of yourself, you will reach a point where your body will make you take care of you
‘Blessed are the flexible for they shall not break’
A car that’s moving is easy to turn, but a car that isn’t moving is difficult to turn

Wait around for God long enough and you’ll see Him when you die
Find something in your heart that you really love and go after it

Indecisive people lose support, overly-decisive people lose trust
You can always go too far with anything – that’s the beautiful thing about the power of choices
It’s okay to fantasize about Scripture and place yourself in the midst of the events

The world has taken plenty of things God intended to be gifts and twisted them

Speaker – Chris Overstreet:

The way that we think often determines how we live
Matthew 4:18

‘Follow me and I will make you fishers of men’
The words Jesus spoke were spirit and life

It’s in following Jesus that He makes you everything you’re called to be

As you respond to the voice of God consistently He will set you up to become the person He destined you to become

After all that Jesus did / said to the disciples, they still scattered when Jesus was taken
John 15:16

‘You did not choose me, but I chose you and have appointed you that you should go and bare fruit’
Peter called Jesus the Messiah, then denies Him 3 times
Holy Spirit empowered the disciples to add conviction to their belief system

It’s one thing to have a belief system, but another thing to have a conviction

‘Conviction’ – to have an unshakeable belief in something without need of proof or evidence
When you go to minister, do you go with conviction or just a belief system? Because a belief system without conviction will bleed you dry
Conviction will take you further and farther than you ever thought you would go

Empowering Beliefs

God loves me and wants to use me to love others
God is excellent and powerful
God is good and wants to do good things for people
With God, anything is possible to those who believe
I release light and joy to those who are in darkness
My very presence affects the people around me
His love will never fail me and will always transform others
I am the salt & light of the world
When I pray / speak, heaven moves on my behalf
I’m a child of God, which gives me free access to everything in heaven
There is no junior Holy Spirit

Disempowering Beliefs

I can’t do it
There isn’t enough
What if nothing happens?
People are too busy and they won’t really want to hear it
Maybe instead of leading people closer to God I’ll push them further away
When I pray for someone, God won’t have my back and move
What if I’m rejected?

When you have a conviction, it changes the way you live
The saddest thing people can do is to have at the end of their life a long list of ‘I wish…”

The saddest thing is unfulfilled potential

Fear holds people back from everything God called them to be
Establish conviction with commitment
Many people have disempowering beliefs that stem from things people have spoken over them in their life, or disappointing circumstances
Embracing disempowering beliefs locks us in a box
One of the most selfish things we can do is to hold back the gift that God has placed inside of us

Happens for one reason – FEAR

The way to eliminate your list of disempowering beliefs is by adding conviction to our empowering beliefs
Holy Spirit enjoys the partnership He has with us

He’s already taken the first step, now He’s asking us to take the next one

WEEK #19

Monday, February 4^th

Speaker – Dann Farrelly:

· The Evangelical interpretation of Scripture is amazing and wonderful, but it is also limited

o It is typically limited in the areas of God’s presence and the supernatural today

o Just because Holy Spirit resides within us does not automatically guarantee correct interpretation of Scripture on our part

· Today we can both be powerful and purposeful in interpreting Scripture

· Scripture may not contain any new information on a natural corporate level, but there is new information available to the reader through Holy Spirit all the time to anyone

o It’s not about purposefully hunting for a meaning of Scripture that no one has ever seen, but about looking for Holy Spirit to open your eyes to things that are new to you

· Holy Spirit convicts us of the divine truth of Scripture

o Works on our minds to understand it, works on our hearts to bring change, and working on our will to act out the will of God highlighted through Scripture

· Ephesians 1:17-19

o In this passage is an invitation for Holy Spirit to reveal Himself in ways that aren’t necessarily found in Scripture

o At one end of the spectrum are some conservatives that say the only way to know God is through Scripture, and on the other end are some charismatics who suggest we no longer need Scripture because we have Holy Spirit – the truth is we need both to equally bring us into a place of fully experiencing God

· Philippians 4:13

o Not just referencing being content in trying times, but in times of abundance as well

· In-Class Assignment 13-3, 10a (GGW p. 247) – See audio file

o I Timothy 6:10 – ‘The love of money is the root of all evil’

o Loving money in your heart bears fruit of evil in your actions and sorry in your heart

o ‘Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’

Speaker – Jerry Aaronson (Marlene’s husband):

· God reveals Himself through His creation, so earth contains symbols and types

· There’s a big difference between understanding something with your head and understanding with your heart

· There are many levels of truth – barriers can also be doors, exits can also be entrances, etc

· Science and the New Age have been proving the Bible for many years now, they just don’t realize they’ve been doing it

· The quickest way for the enemy to get Christians to abandon it to him is for him to take something and misuse it in front of them

o In order for something to be counterfeited, there must first be an original

· Often in the church we throw away our inheritance and identity because we don’t see any value in it

· Kingdom Enemies

o Gnostic Beliefs

§ Imbedded in the church to this day

§ So subtle, we don’t even see it

§ Separates the physical and the spiritual

o Old Covenant

§ Not allowed to even walk where the lepers walk

o Eschatology

§ No matter what you believe about the end times, it is impacting what you do right now

§ Too often we do for the devil what he can’t do for himself

· Ezekiel 28 – Do you know who you were made to be?

· “Imagination is more important than knowledge” –Albert Einstein

o You can have all the knowledge in the world, but without imagination you won’t know what to do with it

· The Power of Prophetic Declarations

o God is allowing us to co-create with Him

o When we speak, we are affecting everything around us

· John 1:3 – All means ALL

o All things were made by God, not by the devil

· Colossians 1:16-17

o All visible and invisible things were created by and for God

· Galatians 4:11

o Everything was created to bring pleasure, praise, honor & glory to God

· Quantum Field

o The reality we see here is not the greater reality, but is caused by a greater reality, and the greater reality is sound

o Everything we see is caused by sound (vibratory things that can cause sound)

§ It’s as if creation was sung into existence – musical vibrations have taken on form

· Crystals

o Originally used in radios due to the frequency they generate

o There isn’t a computer in the world that doesn’t have a crystal inside of it

o Crystals vibrate and give off energy – just like the New Agers say they do!

§ We need to be bridge builders, not run for the hills and alienate

o Passing light through a crystal causes light to come into unity with itself (i.e. laser)

o We even have crystals in our bodies

· Hans Jenny – sound can create, and sound can make pictures

o No one in the history of the world has exactly the same voice

o No one in the history of the earth has your voice to speak the declarations of God into this planet

§ If you don’t say it, it won’t happen

o Jenny tried using different languages of the world to replicate it, but he didn’t come up with much in the way of results until he got to the Hebrew language

§ The spoken letter formed the design of the letter exactly

o In order to create 3D images, it would require 3D sound

§ God’s voice as ‘many waters’ could be described as ‘many frequencies

o The sound of a baby crying will cause a mother’s breast milk to start to drop

o The Law of Sound is greater than the Law of Gravity

· Crystals purify energy – God had the priests wear crystals around their necks and their chest

o It’s the genius of God that put this stuff into motion, not the devil

o Flavius Josephus 37-95 A.D. – ‘From the stones which the high-priest wore there emanated a light, as often as God was present at the sacrifices…’

· Sympathetic Vibration and Resonance

o The first example of sonic warfare in the Bible – the battle of Jericho

o Luke 19:40 – ‘the very stones would cry out’

o Psalm 66:4, 145:10, 69:34

o Everything is making noise, from the planets to our DNA

· What if we are the physical manifestation of a song that was in God’s heart?

· Contrary to popular belief, only 2% of your DNA has anything to do with causing major diseases – the 2 major factors are upbringing and lifestyle

· George Washington Carver

o Single-handedly saved the farming industry in the south

o He used to speak to flowers and plants

o Mark 16:15 – ‘Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creation’

o Testified that his faith in Jesus was the only mechanism by which he could effectively pursue and perform the art of science

o ‘If you will only love the universe, it will trust you with it’s secrets’

· Jesus walked on the water by partnering with creation

· People were created the way they were for a reason

· Step over the 4 foot fence!

· Everything in creation is looking to you, waiting to hear messages from you out of God’s heart

o Everything around you really is praising God, you just can’t hear it

Tuesday, February 5^th

Speaker – Kevin Dedmon:

· Our mission statement – REVIVAL!

· Revival is NOT an event

· Revival is way more than a meeting the way that BSSM is way more than a church

· Our goal is to create a lifestyle of revival that is a culture, not an event or curriculum

· Revival is the personal, regional and global expansion of God’s Kingdom through His manifest presence

o We aren’t expanding a church

o God uses the church domain, but He also uses you, gov’t, business, etc., but His Kingdom is not any of those things – it’s not about an entity, it’s about His presence

· Most people think of the Kingdom of God as a geographic location, but it

· YAHWEH is king over the earth weather people acquiesce to His kingship or not

· We aren’t going to a country called the Kingdom of God, we’re going into His manifest presence, something that is not confined by time or space

· For many, the Bible has become an acronym meaning – Basic Instruction Before Leaving Earth

o Jesus said ‘the Kingdom of Heaven is within you’ (Luke 17)

o ‘Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven’

· I Corinthians 4:20 – ‘the Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk, but of power’

§ Where ever Jesus went, He did an explanation of the Kingdom of God and a demonstration of the Kingdom of God

· We like to give people a brochure (the Bible) and ask them to sign their life away without first giving them a demonstration of power

· Evidence that the Kingdom of God has shown up is we see the power to change manifest

· Righteous literally means ‘wrong being made right’

o We’re now the righteousness of God – we’re God’s right things that used to be wrong

o It’s already settled – you are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus

· Jesus came to release the justice from heaven, and in doing so brought life

o That life is released in the power of the Kingdom of God

o Over-rules Satan who comes to steal, kill and destroy

· Psalm 89:14

o ‘Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne’

o Everything in the Kingdom is righteousness and justice

o Justice is getting what He paid for

o Righteousness is making wrong things right

· When wrong things are made right, it turns peoples hearts back to the Lord – that is righteousness

· Psalm 85:10

o The Kingdom of God is not some future dream land, its present right now!

· The prayers of a righteous person are powerful and effective

o If you could become righteous by your good works, Jesus would not have had to die

o Our righteousness is not based on what we do, it’s based on what Jesus did, and we cannot lose our righteousness by committing sin – so the power of our prayers is not based one way or the other on the way we live our lives

· Isaiah 32:17 – ‘the fruit of righteousness is peace’

o Where ever righteousness is established there is peace

o Peace is not symptoms, it literally means to bring alignment between earth & heaven

· Colossians 1:19

o His death brought us peace with God

· ‘Drunk (in the Spirit) people take more risk than sober people’

· The Kingdom of God is not meat or drink, but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit

· Acts 8 – ‘…so there was great joy in that city’

Speaker – Matthew Barnett, LA Dream Center: Finding the Cause Within You

· God never decreases, He always keeps moving on to the next level

· Wrote the book The Cause Within You

· Proverbs 3:5 – ‘In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path’

o We get it wrong when we try to direct our own path, when God is looking for someone who will just acknowledge Him, and He will direct their path

· When God gives you a word that is transformational, never let the enemy take it away from you

· Die to the dreams you think you have of being a success and spend the rest of your life building the dreams of others

· When you have a word from God, just give it some time and things will start happening

· When you need God to pull it off, that’s one way you know you have God’s vision

· Don’t focus on being a success, just acknowledge Jesus with whatever He puts in your hand

· Whatever God gives you, you have to protect it because the enemy will try to steal it

· When somebody tells me your vision cannot be done is usually the sign that God is about to make something happen

· ‘If the idea doesn’t make sense, there’s a good chance it’ll make history’

· You need to be in a place where you need God

· You know you have an outreach church when the ushers are wearing ankle bracelets because they’re on parole

· See the attacks of the enemy as confirmation of the word God has given you

· ‘If you want to be a bridge of hope to the world, you must allow yourself to be walked on’

· Never pour water on anybody’s dream!

· Believe that when God tells you He’s going to do something that He’s going to do it

· Whenever you want to quit, God always puts ‘the nicest person in the world’ in your path

· The desire to quit is a sign of success because it means you have something to quite – only champions can feel the desire to want to quit

o Every time you crash through a wall of wanting you quit, you step into a new realm of His anointing

o It’s okay if you want to throw in the towel because God will throw you another one

· Never is ALWAYS a word of confirmation

· There’s love for people in our heart that we never even knew we had a love for

· There are dreams in your heart that you don’t even know about yet

· In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path

· When God saves people, He doesn’t just minister to their need, He ministers to their potential

· Protect the moments of divine revelation in your life

· The only thing that truly matters is protecting what God has spoken over your life

· You can find your greatest cause through the greatest setback or regret of your life

· ‘If you chop me up, every piece of me will tell you that Jesus loves you’

· Tell people who they are going to become, not who they are right now

· We’re not supposed to tell people about their situation, they know their situation

· God has called us to tell people things about themselves they can’t see

· The Blessing in the Gospel changes things

· When God gives you something, you hold onto it

o No matter what you have to go through in the process, purpose in your heart that the word you’ve been given is set in stone

· When God says something, it will become a reality

Wednesday, February 6^th

Speaker – Dann Farrelly:

· Read The Blue Parakeet by Scott McKnight

· A little bit of the fundamentalist mindset is that the world is going to hell and they are the fortress of truth, so if the world wants Jesus let them come to us

o There is a tendency to pull one idea from Scripture without leaving the ideas attached to it, dismissing them as irrelevant – just an illustration of how we like to pick and choose what Scriptures apply today

· What’s modeled for us in Scripture is not ‘what’s good enough for Moses is good enough for us’ but that we adopt Scripture to be culturally relevant today (like Jesus did)

· ‘The NT contains 1^st cent expressions of the Gospel and church life, not permanent timeless expressions, they are timely expressions, they are Spirit-inspired expressions. But they were and remain 1^st cent expressions. We aren’t called to live 1^st cent lives in the 21^st century, but to live 21^st cent lives as we walk in the light of the revelation God gave us in the 1^st century.’

· Quite frankly, being legalistic is far easier than being led by the Spirit

· When we shape Scripture to match culture, it no longer transforms culture but only reflects it

· The Gospel is meant to strike home in every culture, age and language

· We don’t need to return to past centuries, but a fresh blowing of God’s Spirit on our culture

· We need Christians living out the Bible in 21^st century ways

· ‘Read the Bible with tradition, not through tradition because you will always find what the tradition says you’ll find, and you’re left with very little ability to see it in a fresh light’

o Read it with the great story of salvation history in mind, holding onto the great tradition of God, but not subscribing to any one specific tradition or denomination

o It’s amazing how many people say ‘I follow this guy’ and don’t read the Bible for themselves – it’s hard to read the NT regularly and believe a bunch of ‘stupid stuff’

o Tradition is inflexible and unable to change

o We should look back to the Bible so we can look forward to our future

· We aren’t teaching you a system here, we’re trying to teach you to be Holy Spirit thinkers

· Peter/Paul/John new Jesus’ words so well that they could bring those words of Jesus and apply them to their specific culture and time

· The Pharisees were about the letter of the law, Jesus was about the Spirit of the law

· Read The Living Sword by Harold Everly

o The Scripture in human hands can sometimes become a terribly destructive thing, we should leave Scripture in Gods hands and allow Him to bring life through us

o We tend to establish a doctrine, then cling to that doctrine more than Holy Spirit

o Locking revelation into doctrine and tying ourselves to it turn something that was life-giving into something that is dead and life-less because we tie ourselves to an ideology instead of to the personage of Holy Spirit

o ‘Apparently, God interpreted His book less legalistically than I did’

o ‘Our hermeneutics of logic only hold a false sense of security’

o Holy Spirit always glorifies Jesus – always look out for any exalting of humanity or lowering of Jesus in our hermeneutics

o Demons foster pride and special revelation that no one’s ever received

o ‘Special revelation’ causes a withdrawal from the body of Christ

o The love of the brothers/sisters must be fostered by genuine revelation from the Lord

o If you’re being pulled into deception, you’ll gradually be pulled out of fellowship with other believers

o If you’re unwilling to submit your revelation to spiritually minded believers

o No doctrine is worthy of being our master

o Prophets are often the key to being woken up out of bad doctrine

Speaker – Steve & Wendy Backlund:

· There are no hopeless circumstances, only hopeless people

· Read You’re Crazy if You Don’t Talk to Yourself by Steve Backlund

· Most of us are ‘joy-impared’ for different reasons

· A car engine without oil burns out and seizes up

o Isaiah 61 – Joy is the oil (for our engine)

o We won’t have what we won’t value – we must value joy

· It’s better to be in God’s will in the middle of nowhere than out of His will in Hawaii

· Make decisions above your ability to make decisions

o You’re making decisions at the moment that are going to establish a direction for your life and ministry

o God is raising us up for something better than we know

o David was tending sheep and had no idea what He was being raised up for

§ Lots of people might have criticized all the time David spent playing with his sling shot because it wasn’t ‘spiritual’ – but God used something he was passionate about to defeat Goliath

§ Stop dividing ‘spiritual from secular’ in your head, God does it all

· The Key to Diagnosing a Stronghold – Every area of your life that doesn’t glisten with hope means you are believing a lie, and that area is a stronghold of the devil in your life

o Ask God ‘would you please show me every lie that I am believing?’

o You may find out that most of the things you believe are lies (even with great doctrine)

o Let God take you on a journey to get you addicted to the truth

· The very nature of deception means you don’t know you’re deceived

o I can change what I believe!

· All joy and peace increase when you begin believing the truth

o The moment I believe truth is the moment I become filled by the God of hope

o My hope level becomes the indicator of whether I’m believing lies or truth

· If you don’t know what your problem is, you have a real problem

o Your hopelessness about a problem is a bigger problem than the problem

o Your hope level about your finances/relationships/healing/etc. is more important than your problem in that area

· The Kingdom is not advanced by good conduct, it’s advanced by good belief

o The question is not ‘God what should I do?’ it’s ‘God what do I believe?’

· We cannot truly be transformed until we begin to think at a higher level about that think

o Hope is the beginning point of all mind renewal

o The moment we start to get hope, our mind is being renewed

· As Christians, it seems easier for us to surrender our actions than to surrender our beliefs

· In the spiritual, our faith is the action behind the action

· It’s important to be obedient, but it’s essential to do it in faith

· Faith isn’t blind, it’s visionary

o You can’t see in faith if your vision is one of failure

· We don’t usually discipline ourselves to allow Holy Spirit to show us anything, but we allow the enemy to paint us a picture of failure based on our experiences

· We are new creations and we can’t determine our future according to our past

· We must ask Holy Spirit for a better future than our past

o When Holy Spirit shows you something, don’t just run off and do it, ask Him to show you what that looks like, to show us that thing succeeding

· The ultimate Christian maturity is the perspective of hope

· Hope is the ultimate expectation that the best is coming

· People want a visionary leader, somebody who has something they want

· Hope and joy are not things you work up, they must be attached to a belief

o If you want real hope & joy, you actually have to believe something that brings you hope and joy

o The only way to have consistent hope and joy in your life is to change what you believe

o There is a big difference between belief and mental ascension

o You know you really believe something when your emotions line up with it

§ Your whole being lines up with it

§ What you believe is what comes out when you’re frustrated and tired

· Trying to walk in faith without hope, it leads you into a poverty mentality

o Faith without hope is weird

o Hope has multiple options – if this doesn’t work out, something else will

· You can’t get hope without joy

o ‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy’

· God’s joy is your strength and is medicine to your body

o A good prescription is to laugh heartily 3 times a day

o In His presence is FULLness of joy

· A study found that little kids laugh an average of 400 times a day, while adults laugh an average of 15 time a day

· Psalm 2:4 – God laughs in heaven at what His enemies are saying and planning

o If God is laughing at lies and at His enemies, so should we

· Have a holy laughter prayer meeting – start off by asking if anyone has heard any good lies lately, then laugh at the lie as a group

· Joy and laughter are really keys to longevity in our life and ministry

· A lot of people think they can’t be happy unless everything in their life is good, and as a result they aren’t happy

· You cannot hold onto a critical spirit and laugh at the same time

· You cannot hold onto a pessimistic eschatology and laugh at the same time

· We can’t allow other people determine whether we can be happy or not

· There are no health benefits to laughing on the inside

o You aren’t being fake, your laugher mechanism is just rusty

· When you hear the lie in your head, you need to say it out loud (bring it into the light) so you can laugh at it

· We like to call things by their past, God calls them by their future (Romans 4:17)

o Our perpetual agreement with negative past experience creates the biggest stronghold that block by purpose

o We are not who our past says we are, we are who God says our future is

· The highest level of spiritual warfare is taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ

o Past experience argues with the Word of God for your future

· The prophetic ministry is an argument demolishing ministry, releasing people into a future they don’t know they have

· ‘Stronghold’ – a place of defense

o Our brain is always looking for proof to support and defend what you already believe

o What are you looking for proof of in your life?

o We need to begin to work with our mind instead of against it

o The thoughts we have to take captive don’t want to be taken, which makes it warfare

· Many people are in bondage to their emotions

o Emotions don’t validate truth, emotions just follow what you believe

o It’s not about denying your circumstances, it’s about changing your conclusions based on your circumstances

· God hasn’t called us to be realistic, He’s called us to be supernatural

o It’s not just enduring your circumstance, it’s overcoming your circumstance

o It’s not enough to have the Word memorized, are you killing anything with it?

· You can’t consistently do what you don’t believe you are

o We continually create our experience from our beliefs

o We must realize it’s not about our denial, we must realize our new identity in Christ

· What if a baby determined their future based on their past?

o Babies know they must get their identity from their parents, not their past

o We need to be looking at our Daddy to get our identity

o We cannot be afraid of failure – I haven’t done that yet, but I will!

o Be okay with the process of learning things we’ve never done before

· Proverbs 18:21

o Life is in the power of the tongue

o We can’t think our way out, we speak our way out

o Jesus didn’t think His way out of the wilderness, He spoke His way out

· We are all on an argument demolishing mission – we are demolishing strongholds

· Faith 101 – you are something before you ever become it, and you can do something before you’ve ever done it

o Was must speak in faith to demolish the strongholds in our life

o Just getting into unity with yourself will make it possible for you to change the world

o Until we change what we believe about ourselves, we won’t consistently be able to do what we want to do

· When you fail, don’t ask what you did wrong, ask what you believed!

o Instead of trying harder, we have to believe differently

· Acting like you’re something when you don’t believe you’re that thing, you aren’t in unity with yourself

· We need to believe to create the result, not wait for the result to cause us to believe

o Faith releases the Kingdom

o You get free on the inside, you’ll get free on the outside

· You can only receive what you think you’re worth

o Applies to anointing, favor, success, etc.

o As soon as you start receiving more favor than you think you’re worth, you will sabotage that down to the level you think you deserve

o Go to the depths of your heart with these declarations so you’ll be ready for the blessing and not step out of the flow of it

Thursday, February 7^th

Speaker – Steve Backlund:

· The love of God is IT

o We are the love of His life

o He is calling us 50 times a day, asking us to go out with Him

· We are not who our past says we are, we get our identity from who God says we are and who He’s destined us to be

· Read Let’s Just Laugh at That! by Steve Backlund

· Life changing belief – there is always a solution (I Corinthians 10:13)

o The brain won’t even seek a solution if it doesn’t believe there is one

o Hope is the beginning point of all change and all solutions

· Expectation is another word for faith, so whatever I expect produces faith for that thing and draws it to me – even if my expectation is rooted in a lie I’m believing

· We are not victims of a pre-ordained plan of God to restrain us

· We are victims of nothing apart from our own bad beliefs

· We may not have the power to change this or that, but we have the power to control our mind

o It’s impossible to renew your mind with truth and not be transformed

· Nobody’s past can stop them, but current beliefs can

· We cannot elevate past experiences above truth

· If you’re cursed, you can still do everything right and still get the wrong result

· If you’re blessed, you can still do everything wrong and still get the right result!

· Whatever you talk a lot about you’ll see more of

· Intentionally build strongholds of good beliefs to replace the strongholds of bad beliefs you’ve inadvertently established in your life over time

· God gives life to the dead by calling those things that are not as though they were

· Living according to our past sets up strongholds in our lives that block God’s purposes in our lives

· Your past experience my be true for you, but it isn’t TRUE

o Do you talk more about attacks or protection?

o Do you talk more about lack or abundance?

o Do you talk more about sickness or healing?

o Do you talk more about sin or righteousness?

· Even if we are attacked, we are a protected person having an attacked experience

· If we feel powerless, we are a powerful person having a powerless experience

· Of course there’s something wrong with you, there’s something wrong with everybody, that’s why God sent Jesus – so get over it!

· It’s impossible for you to get prayed for and have nothing happen

· When we get prayed for, there is more happening than just an encounter – we are in the process of demolishing arguments

o Our experience will always catch up to our beliefs – the gap time is called faith

· When our experience catches up to our beliefs, we’re no longer walking in faith at that point, we’re walking in reality

· You cannot do what you don’t believe you are

o We can’t do encounters unless we believe we’re a walking encounter

· We must celebrate progress and not just perfection

o The spirit of religion says we can only celebrate something when we’re perfect in that area

· Fire! Freedom! Breakthrough! No limits!

· This does NOT mean we walk around in denial and aren’t allowed to be genuine & authentic

· The positivity of a food fast + a negative attitude = 0

o Go on a negativity fast and a positivity feast!

· There are 5 areas where are minds are renewed:

o Beliefs about God

o Beliefs about ourselves

o Beliefs about the people in our lives

o Beliefs about our circumstance

o Beliefs about our decision making and the decisions we’ve made

· No one has been pre-destined to mediocrity

· You can’t develop strength in the natural or the spiritual without pushing against resistance

· There is no convenient season to renew our mind

· ‘I see problems as opportunities to see how big my God is’

· As soon as something has affected your heart, it’s affected you

· Intentionally increase your level of expectation

Speaker – Angelo Jean-Pierre:

· We’re carriers of His presence, no matter where we go or what we’re doing

· Fear highlights the areas in your life where you have the most potential for breakthrough because those are the areas the enemy is most afraid of you

· The things we need in life God will give us, but the things we want in life we must go after

o God is faithful if you will take the risk of stepping out

· Every time you have an obstacle in your life, that is just God highlighting to you an opportunity for you to breakthrough, and that will make you an overcomer in that area

· If you’re afraid to do something, don’t wait for the fear to leave, just do it afraid and those chains will fall off

WEEK #20

Monday, February 11^th

Speaker – Dann Farrelly:

· Without the Old Covenant, there is no New Covenant

· The Israelites revered the Law of Moses and were grateful that God had laid out a structure for them on how to obey Him

· We aren’t to go back and find Old Testament Laws to put ourselves under, unless they are restated in the New Covenant

· The Law is paradigmatic – sets a standard via example

o The Law is much more like the US Constitution than the Penal Code

· The Law was given to show our inability to keep the Law (Apostle Paul)

· Exodus and Leviticus cover the first year after leaving Egypt

· Numbers is the second year after leaving Egypt

· Deuteronomy is written at the end of the 40 year journey in the desert

· Anti-nomialism – means ‘against The Law’

o Rooted in Gnostic thinking and/or Ultra-grace teaching

· What does it means if we get married, then act in ways that don’t sustain the marriage?

o What does it say if we enter Covenant with God, then live in ways that don’t support the Covenant

· Don’t despise The Law because it was a gift from God to tutor us

o To allow a hate for The Law to rise up is to allow bad seed to take root in your heart

· Tithing is an OT Law that we Evangelicals like to teach… as a law!

· It’s a dangerous thing to put ourselves under The Law again

o Subscribe to the principles

· ‘Tithing is the hand rails into a generous lifestyle’

o Tithing isn’t the goal, it’s to make the journey into a ultra-generous lifestyle

· Many Christians have a mechanistic way of thinking

· God uses money as a training tool – it’s a symbol for our time, energy, security, future, etc.

o When we tithe, the money is a symbol of all the things in our lives that we are using to love and bless Him

· ‘Giving is the Kindergarten of Spiritual Maturity’ –Bill Johnson

o If God can trust us with unrighteous mammon, He can trust us with true riches

· ‘We don’t have to tithe, we get to tithe’

· Tithing was established in Genesis, which was 500+ years before The Law of Moses

· ‘Tithing is not Law to me, it is life to me and my family’ – Robert Morris

o Read The Blessed Life by Robert Morris

· What resources do I want to sow/invest in the Kingdom so that I may get it back with increase?

· In the NT, you don’t hear the tithe highlighted, you hear generosity highlighted!

· Luke 6:38

· II Corinthians 9

Speaker – Mark Brookes:

· Eternal life means that God took over your life, exchanging your old, carnal nature for His Zoe life

· We can have great programs, but without Holy Spirit it’s nothing

o A lot of revivals started out with Holy Spirit and finished as good programs

· Never stop saying ‘yes’ to God, no matter how tough it gets along the way

o The natural man lives by the five senses

o Not all your thoughts are yours

o You must tell yourself what to think – the training of the Spirit

· I Samuel 1:8

o Hannah is child-less and grieving before God

o So many times in our lives, we have this feeling inside where we feel the fire has gone out and gone is waiting for something to come out of you

o Your Secret Place before God will be the answers to the questions you have in life

o That place of desperately crying out to God from the depths of our heart

o Seize the moment – what has God spoken to you and over you in the seasons of your life?

§ Will you be like Hannah and fight for those things?

§ People will misunderstand you and misjudge you as you answer God’s call and place your life in His hands

o The enemy loves to tell you that it’s all a waste of your time, you’ll never make it, it’ll never work – the enemy knows exactly how to push your buttons

o God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called

§ He doesn’t call the best, He uses those that say ‘yes’ to Him

§ If you don’t know how to silence the lies in your life that you’re believing, it will keep you from stepping fully into your God-given destiny

o Joseph was a dreamer (Psalm 103:19)

§ Until the time that God’s Word came to pass over Joseph’s life, that word spoken over His life was tested

§ Everything is a test, and you must see it as a test, because on the other side of that test is promotion

§ Is God’s Word over your life being tested?

o When we’ve had more than we can take, do we turn to God, or do we get bitter?

§ Your determination will always help lead you to your destiny

§ Get alone with God and let Him prepare you for your destiny

o God remembers your prayers, you need to remember the promises He’s given you

§ Hannah asked for a child, and she received a prophet

o We all need people in our lives to remind us and challenge us to pursue God’s promise

§ When we receive the promises of God, we need to hold it up as a trophy to God’s goodness and faithfulness, and we need to rub it in the enemy’s face

o We are in a turning point in history – we must answer the call, no matter what it looks like

§ Evil prospers in the world when good men/women do nothing

o We live in a day when the voice of the Lord is very clear, and we can all know Him

· How deep is your Secret Place? How much do you believe God loves you? How much do you really believe your new identity in Him? How much do you believe His promises to you?

o God is looking to raise up men/women who know Him, His voice and His ways

· God wants to change the whole world, and He wants to do it through relationship with us

· Make sure you’re dreaming with God, because if you can see it you can have it

Tuesday, February 12^th

Speaker – Kevin Dedmon:

· No matter your eschatology, it affects how you are living today

· ‘Nobody knows the day or the hour’ –Jesus

o As soon as we’re told not to do something, the tempter comes along to get us side tracked

o The Father tells us to forget about it, because it’s not the point anyway

o The issue is not when He’s coming, but that He’s coming and what we should do to prepare

· Theology is man’s attempt to understand God

o It’s a human enterprise, and is therefore not inerrant

o Someone becomes Orthodox by becomes good marketers and promoters of their heresies

o Holy Spirit is continuously leading us into all truth, but we haven’t arrived yet

o So we don’t live by theology but by theophany, and our theology should lead us to a theophany

o Sometimes we’re trying to get more clarity and God wants us to learn to live with more obscurity

o There are some things in the Kingdom that should not be know

§ ‘Things that are too wonderful for me, I let alone’ –David

o Many Christians are still in process regarding the establishing of their personal eschatology – we tend to know more about what we don’t believe than what we do believe when it comes to our eschatology

· The devil is always trying to counterfeit what God is doing, that is not new

· When does heresy become orthodoxy? When we’ve believed it for so long that we accept it as truth even though it’s a lie, or when enough books are written to convince us

o Happens in ‘religious’ environments where people confess theology without having an understanding of why they believe it

· Dispensationalism was started in the 1830’s by John Darby

o God deals with man differently in different sections of time

o The Kingdom of God is not coming to earth, we’re going to heaven with Jesus to inherit the Kingdom there

o Summed up by the old song “I’ll Fly Away”

· Bibliology is the worship of the Bible

o The Pharisees were scolded by Jesus for this

· These days, we do more Isogesis than Exogesis

· There’s a big difference in escapism and establishing/expanding the Kingdom of God on the earth

· Basic Assumptions

o Born out of Gnosticism, which is born out of Plato-ism, which is Dualism

o Don’t depend on a Strong’s Concordance, LEARN GREEK!

§ We rarely know as much as we think we know

o Gnosticism manifests itself in fatalism which manifests itself in escapism…

· It’s the kindness of God that leads to repentance, not the judgments of God

· God still loves His creation, and it is still ‘good’

· Prophecies have multiple levels of fulfillment

· Preterism is the belief that everything that Jesus promised about the end of the age happened in AD 70 when Jerusalem was destroyed

o They believe the age of Law was completed in AD 70 and the Kingdom of God has been in full effect since the day of Pentecost

Speaker – Bill Johnson:

· Praise your way into a worship anointing, and from that place experience the Lord

· We have a privileged assignment to live in the glory

o In the glory, all of our ‘agendas’ fall by the wayside

o It’s not that it what you’re seeking isn’t important, it’s just not important in that moment in the glory of God

o There are just times when you have to ‘take your shoes off’ because of the holiness of the moment, and there are other times that are even more profound where you can keep your shoes on

· You can’t go any further in this journey with God unless we learn to cut some stuff off

o The farther we go with the Lord, the less we can take with us

· Marriage is never about boasting in a covenant or the fruits of it, but merely in the ongoing intimate relationship

o Power and authority are not the reason for a covenant relationship with God, it is a byproduct of intimate relationship

· The glory is an environment where the Spirit of God is touching every part of you

· When the glory of God is flowing, the moment can become so holy that to speak or try to add anything to it will succeed only in defiling a moment

o What happens in the glory is a tendency to become insecure/nervous, and there’s a compulsion to do something (e.g. Peter – let’s build 3 tabernacles…)

· Luke 5 – ‘the Spirit of the Lord was present to heal’

· ‘When the Spirit of the Lord is like that, you don’t even need to lay hands on people to see them healed’ –Smith Wigglesworth

· Once we experience the glory, our desire

· Our relationship with Him should be the foundation of all that we do, rather than all that we do being the foundation for our relationship with Him

· In a public setting, we need to learn to drink deeply of His Spirit without appearing drunk, because the people in the world are not wired to see manifestations of the Spirit, they are wired to see you

o We must learn to carry Presence without calling attention to ourselves, or we will be what distracts them from experiencing His Presence

· Sometimes God gives us commands that we can’t do, but that He’s fully prepared to do through us

o In a Kingdom’s sense, it’s logical that He would take us deeper into realms of society while simultaneously taking us deeper into His Presence

· There’s an awkward tension in the responsibility that comes with influence in society around us

· To go further into His Presence, you have to lose your agenda; to go deeper into society, you have to lose your agenda – from our perspective they’re world’s apart, but from His perspective they’re connected

o You can’t take what He’s doing and filter it through what you’re thinking

o We must not try to flavor what He’s doing according to our call, we must let His glory flavor our call

o We must be completely satisfied with encountering Him and loving Him

· We can become so concerned with influencing culture that we dull our message, sacrificing it for the sake of increased appeal

· In the coming years, the Presence will become more valued in the worldwide church than the fruit or byproducts of His Presence

o He is giving us access to what is most precious

o Lucifer became caught up in the byproduct of the Presence and He lost everything

· He gives us experiences when we’re still so we can learn to carry it while we’re active

· What we see with our eyes so often cancels out what we’re perceiving in the spirit

· Don’t make the switch from an awareness of God to the awareness of human need

· We don’t study so that we can teach, we study so that we can learn, then when we teach we draw upon on our own experience/encounter with the Lord, that way everything we share is tried and tested

o Always ask for God what He’s saying NOW

o Discern which way His Spirit is blowing and go with it

o Learn what works best for you and God co-laboring together

Wednesday, February 13^th

Speaker – Stacey Campbell: Praying the Bible

· The greatest thing you will ever do is try to find the great kings of the next generation and raise them up

o We are the generation that will change society instead of society changing them

o We are called to bring massive amounts of Kingdom influence on the earth

· When we prophecy over someone, it’s like giving them a fish that will feed them for a day, but when we teach people to pray Scripture, it’s like teaching them to fish and be fed for a lifetime

· Be doers of the Word and not hearers only, because deception comes from hearing the Word but not doing it

· Prayer is one of the key ways we get to know God

o You can’t become friends with anyone we don’t spend time with

· Prayer is not a discipline or religious exercise, it is communion with God where we converse with the ruler of the universe and our Father

· Keys to Praying Scripture

o You must learn to pray

§ Luke 11:1 – heaven moved when Jesus prayed

§ God listens to His friends, and His friends do what He asks

§ Everybody has to learn to pray

§ Becoming a deep prayer warrior typically doesn’t happen overnight, it is like a skill that must be developed, and it is available to everyone

§ When you learn to pray, you will find depth to your relationship with God that you’ve never known before

§ It will become a wellspring of life to you because you’ll know how to wait on Him

o You must determine to work at prayer

§ Prayer is not passive, it’s active and requires effort

§ Hebrews 5:7 – Jesus prayed with loud cries and tears, but He wasn’t heard because of His cries, but because of the attitude of His heart

§ When Jesus prayed, He was fully engaged & passionate

§ I Thessalonians 3:10 – ‘Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith’

§ Colossians 4:2 – Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful (vigilant) and thankful’

§ In western culture, we’ve been taught to pray passively, but it isn’t that way in other places

§ Get aggressive in your prayers!

§ ‘Don’t pray like a Canadian, pray like a Korean or Nigerian’

§ More than anything, this will help your relationship with Jesus

o Set a time and place to pray

§ ‘The reason that most Christians don’t pray is not because they’re fundamentally disobedient, but because they don’t set a time or make a place in which to pray’ –Mike Bickell

§ You keep the appointments that you actually make

§ The Israelites set specific times and places for prayer to God and had them as part of their culture framework

§ Daniel 6:10 – ‘Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem, three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before’

§ If we don’t set times to meet with God, we actually don’t meet God

§ Jesus did this – He would often go off into quiet places to pray and commune with God regularly, and we need that too

§ Everything will explode if you will do this

§ Set a weekly schedule, write it down – if it’s not scheduled, it doesn’t happen

o Pray to God

§ Don’t pray to the room, don’t pray to anybody else, pray to God

§ Typically what happens is we close our eyes and start to worry out loud

§ Develop a picture in your mind and address the Lord

· Revelation 1, 4-5 – the Almighty Father

· Ezekiel 1, Daniel 7, Isaiah 6

· Exodus 33, 34

· Entire life of Jesus – ‘In the beginning, the Word became flesh’

§ Pray heaven to earth – ‘On earth as it is in heaven’

§ Scripture is the greatest description of God that exists

o Pray the Bible

§ Learn the language of the Spirit to express your heart

§ God has a language, it’s call the language of the Spirit

§ I Corinthians 2:13 – ‘This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words’

§ The Word only has power if it is believed

· The Word doesn’t profit those who do not mix is with faith (Hebrews)

§ We can become more and more ‘partakers of His divine nature’ (Peter), but we must believe it or it will have no profit

§ We each have as much of God as we want

o Pray out loud

§ It’s key because (1) you know when you’ve stopped, and (2) It’s hard to think about something else while you’re talking

§ ‘Use your tongue to lasso your mind’

§ You solve the problem of the wandering mind by praying out loud

§ Say every word out loud and meditate on it

§ Westerners have the worst prayer form in the world, pray like the Jews at the Wailing Wall – praying out loud and moving

o Be silent and let God speak to you

§ When you stop praying, be silent and let God speak to you

§ Open your inner ears and let God pour Himself into your heart

§ Contemplation is a pinnacle point of prayer, not a beginning – we don’t start prayer in silence, silence is what we do at the peak of the crescendo

§ Mindless prayer is of no profit to any part of you

§ Release your emotions in your prayer time with Him (tears, laughter, etc)

Speaker – Kris Vallotton:

· Jesus said the spirit is will and the flesh is weak, He didn’t say the flesh is ‘evil’

o ‘Jesus learned obedience by the things that He suffered’

· Your new man isn’t evil, but that doesn’t mean it’s mature

o Although Jesus was never disobedient, He still had to learn obedience, and He did that through the things He suffered

· We aren’t at war with our old man because our old man is dead

· Jesus may be finished, but you are not – you are in the process of growing up, not from evil to good but in going from glory to glory

o It doesn’t mean our feelings go away, but that our response to our feelings mature over time – we respond differently to the same situation as we mature

o There’s a maturing process going on in our new man

o Most of the epistles are about you growing up and seeing/acting differently

· Our old nature is dead, but our new nature needs to grow up, so the NT epistles are full of tools to help us grow up and mature

· The good news is that God says He has a land of promises for you, but the bad news is that your promised land is being occupied by others who think it belongs to them

o In NT terms this means evil spirits are controlling the land that’s been promised to you, and they think it belongs to them

o For us to take possession of our promised land, we must drive the squatters out

· Satan has no power in the Kingdom unless we deputize him and give him our authority

o Part of what we do as believers is enforce the laws of God over the universe

o We are called to enforce the law on outlaw demonic forces

o They may be there whether they have permission or not

o Often, demonic spirits show up in the lives of Christians who leave their door unlocked, then convince them they were sent by God, so they aren’t resisted

· If you aren’t encountering resistance, then you aren’t a threat to the kingdom of darkness

o ‘We war not against flesh and blood’ means it is normal in certain seasons to struggle

· Do you have a struggle in seasons or is it a lifestyle?

o Typically our life becomes a struggle when we open the door to the devil, hand him our gun and badge and invite him to take us captive

· Ephesians 6 isn’t referring to years, it’s referring to seasons

o Our norm is that our life is full of joy and we have seasons of battle

· If your heart isn’t centered on God, then it’s centered on you – having your heart centered on yourself isn’t a very good plan

· ‘Seek first the Kingdom’ means if it isn’t in the Kingdom, you don’t have any reason to be involved in it

o Part of your destiny is to love people and love God, so if you do that you’ll run into your destiny

o Your profession won’t affect your relationship with Jesus, He has a way of getting you where He wants you as long as you love Him and love people

o God has a way of getting you into your destiny (e.g. Joseph)

· How do you torment the devil? Give God your attention because that’s all he wants

· A spirit is a person in another realm – evil spirits hate you because you’re made in the image of God and they hate God

o Demons are insane, but they aren’t stupid

o Train the demons that are assigned to you that it will cost them to mess with you

§ Inform them that every time they torment you, you will advance the Kingdom

· How do you help a possessed person delivered? Get them born again

o If you get them delivered but not born again, seven more demons even more evil will come back and possess them

· Deliverance = closing doors

o Satan is a law breaker, so even when he isn’t legally allowed, we may have to enforce the law against them as agents of heaven

o The demon always manifest its own personality within the person

o Diagnose by asking questions – if the demon doesn’t leave when the person is born again, diagnose the problem, close the door and cast it out

o Have them participate in the process so they can learn how to be free and stay free

o Tag team with Holy Spirit, and once you’re convinced they’re free, make a point of telling them that they’re free

o The exit interview is very important, because seven spirits more evil than the first is coming back, and they need to be prepared to resist that

§ Don’t want to create faith it will happen, just say ‘in case that ever comes back, do these things…’

o Angels and demons travel at the speed of thought

o Demons have no staying power or endurance, they won’t be able to stick around long

· Sometimes we have a familiar spirit, one that’s been around so long that we can’t imagine life without it

o The challenge becomes to convince that person what it looks like to be free

o It’s really a bummer to be convicted of sin while not being convinced of a Savior

o The bottom line is the person must want to be free in order for us to free them, so if they don’t want to be free all we can do is pray that they will get miserable enough to want to be free

· Remember that we’re talking in ‘boxes’ and the spirit world doesn’t exist in boxes

· Don’t try to overpower principalities and powers, just try to out-truth them

o Focus on taking away the root reasons for them being there, close all the doors and they won’t have any way to come in

o If there’s a pile of poop, you can shoo the flies away, but they’ll only come back – so you can go into full time flyswatter ministry or you can get rid of the poop

· Remember that hating people is not the way to deal with anything

Thursday, February 14^th

Speaker – Dann Farrelly: Millennium Timeline Comparison

· Ebb & Flow of Eschatological Perspectives

· Points of (near) universal agreement

o There will be a sudden, visible, personal and bodily return of Christ Jesus

o Christ wants to “catch us” being obedient and diligent

§ Revelation 22:10-17, Titus 2:11-12

§ Anytime you want to know when Jesus plans to return in order to know when to get your life together, that’s a really immature way to live out your faith

o His return will result in the judgment of the unbeliever and the reward for the believer of an existence without sadness or suffering

o The church past and present disagree about most of the remaining details

· Historical Views on End Times Prophecy Interpretation – SEE HANDOUT

· The Jews were always refusing to be assimilated into culture, which prompted ‘The Jewish Question’ of ‘What are we going to do with the Jews’ in Europe starting in the 1700’s

o The establishment of the nation of Israel in Palestine was considered a ‘pipe dream’ until the early 1900’s – undertaken by English after WWI

o Israel was restored as a nation in 1948 – started a fire in Dispensational Pre-millennialism

Speaker – Paul Manwaring: Son-ship

· Our Heavenly Father wants His kids back – He wants His family

o If we know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will God give good gifts to those who love Him

· From the front of the Bible to the back, it’s a story of relationship

· We know who we are, and we are the sons/daughters of the King of kings and Lord of lords

· How do you father an organization?

o Before you can be a father you have to be a son

o Somewhere along the way, we typically stop being sons – which is the problem

· Who God is to you is who He’ll be through you

· We are all radically saved, because we’re all saved from hell

· We should be like Jesus, and He was a son who did only what He saw His Father doing

· There is never a moment when we’re to stop being a son – ever

· The quality of the son is never based on the quality of the father

· You don’t graduate from servant hood to son-ship to lover, you integrate all three

· So often we skip over the son-ship piece, and just focus on adoption

o The term ‘adoption’ in the world refers to the orphaned and abandoned, but is different in Scripture

· So often, what we do in life becomes our identity

o We can easily slip into seeing life as a series of responsibilities

· Repentance from something is different from repenting unto something

o It’s important that we repent from stopping being a son and repent unto son-ship

· No matter what it is, if your tour guide is the Holy Spirit and you come out closer to Jesus, it’s good

· So often, we learn to do everything ourselves – we have no grid for having joy in negative circumstances

· It’s easy not to have a grid for a God who will give you gifts you don’t need

· The curse is fatherlessness & sonlessness

o The enemy has invested in robbing the earth of what a father and son look like

o The planet has been robbed of fathers, and men have been robbed of permission to be affectionate in healthy ways

· The enemy has no originality but is a liar, a cheat and a copycat

· An apostolic move of God is a relational move of God and must be partnered with an inner-healing move of God

· Isaiah 9:6

o ‘A child is born, a son is given’

o A child is an offspring, a son is a bearer of the family name

o The closest thing to Scriptural adoption is not that we feel like a tenant in our new father’s home wondering if we really belong, but we become like a ‘daughter-in-laws’ – we fall in love, we take the family name, and we become joint heirs with a family inheritance

· It’s God’s desire to say over you ‘this is my beloved son and I am well pleased with Him, and whatever He does on earth, I’ll back Him up’

· We are not going to an election, we are going to a wedding to marry Jesus

· The true son wants to bless the next generation, but the unhealthy generation will be jealous if the next generation goes further

· Son-ship is not a peripheral issue, it is the centerpiece, it is the primary issue and we never get away from it, it is always central

WEEK #21

Tuesday, February 19^th

Speaker – Dann Farrelly: The Wisdom of Church History

· We study history to be transformed

· ‘The ability to use the lessons of the past to make decisions in the present and plan for the future” –Dr. Rufus Fears, Historian/Professor at University of Oklahoma

· What is the church? The local, visible fellowship within the global, visible and invisible fellowship of God’s people (believers both living and dead)

· Why Church history matters:

o It’s our family story – all this did no start with us, nor will it end with us (unless Jesus returns)

o History effects everything about who we are from how we worship & hope, view God, Jesus, Scripture – everything

o History is an experimental model for predicting how things will go, full of wisdom and perspective – we gain understanding through the experience of others

§ When the church is in charge, things don’t always go smoothly

o Theology develops over time & in process / conflict with the 7 Mountains

§ Family

§ Religion

§ Economy

§ Education

§ Government

§ Arts / Entertainment / Media

§ Science & Technology

o History encourages us – the faithful courage of our ancestors inspires us, often to change

o The church is Christ incarnate – He has not left, rather we are His body

§ Jesus identifies with His church body and so should we

§ I Timothy 3:15 – ‘the church [not Scripture] is the pillar of truth’

o History is partially ‘His story’ – along with some of our colossal blunders/evils – and Christianity is a religion that asserts that God acts in history and all history is ‘heading toward’ God

o If you don’t meditate on your history you’re very likely to make the same mistakes

· Everybody brings their religion into the public square, so don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t bring yours

· To stop interacting with history because you’re uncomfortable with what you find there isn’t the best approach

· Rufus Spears, historian:

o Humans do not learn from history, to our pain and misery

o Humans think science and technology will make life better, but usually we use them to make more deadly weapons

o Science and technology is a source of enormous hope, but it lacks the morality to guide us

o Freedom has not been universally valued by people throughout history – there are precious few democracies found throughout history

§ Most peoples throughout history do not love the awesome responsibility of self-rule

o Power has been universally valued by people throughout history

o Along with a lust for power, religion / spirituality are the most profound motivators throughout human history

· Christianity was the only religion outlawed by a Caesar that we know of (Nero)

o For 250 years, it was illegal to be a Christian throughout the Roman Empire

o Changed the way missions were done – missions were effectively invented by Christians

· Christians rejected other gods, which was a big problem at the time

o There was a ton of money around war and religion

o Religion spawned festivals, idols, pilgrimages, processions & benevolences

· Christians also had no sacrifices, no temples, and no sacred cities – very confusing to the pagans

· Everyone was welcome in Christianity, clashed with Roman caste system

· Jews and Christians had no relationship by 100 AD (about 60 years after Jesus)

· Christians were viewed as atheists because they did not believe in the local gods

o Christians were blamed for bad events, natural disasters, etc.

Speaker – Andre Van Mol:

· Apologetics is trying to explain theology in an adverse environment

o Give a reasoned defense, not mudslinging

· In the world of philosophy / theology, there is a belief that all things come from a higher power

· Apologetics is particularly prone to falling victim to the Scripture ‘knowledge puffs up’

o Nothing deflates the balloon like on the job training

· You run the risk of winning the argument while losing the soul in question

o Paul addresses this in II Timothy

· If you want to receive grace, you must give it

o Grace is the fuel the Kingdom of God operates on

· God examines the heart, not the outward man like we do

o David asked God to examine his heart because he couldn’t asses it accurately

o Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger

· Biblical mandate for apologetics

o The cultural inner circle is not for the less-than-excellent

· When God asks you a question, it’s never because He doesn’t know the answer

· Note the difference between critical thinking and the hyper-critical spirit that promotes their own monopoly on the truth

o The heart of the righteous studies how to answer

o ‘Fool’ is used in Scripture to describe people who cannot hold their tongue

· The watchman who is derelict of duty is responsible for what comes, but the watchman who communicates what is coming to an unhearing populous is no longer held responsible for what happens

· The term ‘long suffering’ lets you know what you’re in for

· On average, people hear the Gospel message 14 times before they bite

o Don’t judge people by their reaction, just watch your own reaction

o To teach a new concept to somebody usually takes 6 to 7 exposures, and that’s with a willing audience

· I Thessalonians 5:21

o The Scientific Method was originally known as the Biblical Investigative Method

· ‘My people perish for a lack of knowledge’

· It’s not enough to understand a teaching in theory, are you ‘a farmer with dirt under your fingernails’

· ‘Canon’ means a standard by which something is judged

· There exists more historic confirmation of the accuracy of Bible than the next 10 runners up combined

· The Dark Ages were called the Dark Ages because there were bands of Visigoths roaming the lands knocking everything down

· The monks gathered all valuable art and literature and safeguarded it in their monasteries

· Reformation changes all societies

o Revival usually attracts youth and smaller demographics

· ‘Those who want to win the world for Christ must have the courage to come into conflict with it’

· Mercy ministries started with Christianity

o Christianity came into the world as the religion of healing

· ‘Modern science was born out of the Christians worldview’

o ‘The scientific enterprise was still-born everywhere else until Reformation Europe’

o Historically, Christianity has fostered scientific achievement, not suppressed it

· Biblical Nalism – the belief that there is no truth in the Bible

o Archeology has supported rather than contradicted Biblical history

· The term ‘fundamentalist’ originally represented scholarship, not ignorance

· The Dahli Lama practices the most demonic form of Buddhism

o The Dahli Lama is now urging his monks to following the Christian examples of adding works to their beliefs

o Easing human suffering is not found in eastern religions

· The account of a Creator created the universe in a single event is unique to the Bible

· ‘It’s not that Christianity isn’t falsifiable, it’s that the proof is enormous’

· Read book called Darwin’s Black Box

· ‘There may be no worldview in the history of the human race that holds a higher regards for logic than Christianity’

· ‘The depth of your preparation will determine the depth of your ministry’

o ‘If I had only two years left to live, I would spend a year and a half preparing for 6 months of ministry’ –Billy Graham

· Knowing something means you can explain it

· There is a price to be paid for ignorance

o Cults are the unpaid bills of the church

· The Nazis did not rise to power in a Christian Germany, Germany was 100 years post-Christian and was primarily influenced by liberal theology (no absolute evil)

· ‘God calls us to destroy the obstacle at its root’

· Make sure you’re doing what God’s blessing, and not trying to get His blessing on things you want to do

· Prophetic – God’s timely and anointed words

o Words in seasons – the key to people’s hearts

· As apologists, we should also be evangelists to draw people in and build bridges

· People are ambassadors to go into enemy territory

o Freedom of speech and freedom of expression are believed by many to apply to everyone else but Christians

· The statement ‘this is just who I am’ is not an argument

· We are all contending for the freedom our children and grandchildren will enjoy

o The rest of the world is, so should we

· You can’t be everything

o If you try to be everything, the person you were made to be will suffer

o Often our family suffers most – we don’t want our kids to grow up and say ‘oh yeah, Jesus is the guy who stole my dad from me’

· Always stay focused and pointed

o Avoid the ‘surf and turf’ (red herrings and rabbit trails)

o Avoid homonyms and anger

o ‘Man’s wrath does not produce God’s righteousness’ –James 1:20

o Learn to hold your tongue and pen

· ‘Just put a stone in their shoe – give them something to think about’

· ‘You don’t get flack unless you’re flying over the target’

· ‘You are going to be the best Christian some people may ever meet’

· ‘Evil is the result of people putting God aside for the sake of their own agendas’

· www.bethinking.org

· If something catches your eye or pricks your heart, it could be Holy Spirit speaking to you – save it for later

· When you’re talking with someone, you should be praying the whole time and try to preamble whenever you can

· How we treat those who disagree with us says more about us than it does about them

· When you remove Godly assurance, you also eliminate Godly restraint, and all you’re left with is humanism (e.g. French Revolution)

· Historically, Atheism is much more efficient at killing than Christianity ever was

o Christianity is a force for restraint

· When people see excellence they want a piece of it, and they typically aren’t too concerned with where it came from

· Show people the same grace God has shown you

· www.andrevanmolmd.com

· When you do the ‘wrong / right’ thing, you’re telling people their baby is ugly, and nobody likes hearing their baby is ugly

o Just tell them how much God loves and focus on what Jesus has to offer

Wednesday, February 20^th

Speaker – Bernie Ooley: I & II Timothy

· Establishing of church leadership positions

o Paul listed 22 qualifications for church leaders

o 3 of them have to do with talent, skill or anointing

o 19 of them have to do with character

o Our anointing / gifts will get us in the door, but our character is what will make us a success

· Words of council from a spiritual father to his spiritual children

· Scripture is full of the potential for divine encounters

· Timothy was to fight the good fight of faith with the prophecies made concerning him, and we should do the same

· God doesn’t change His mind about the words He gives you

o He wants you to succeed more than you do

· The Sword of the Spirit is the Rhema (spoken, right now) word of God

· Sometimes when we get a word things look 180 degrees opposite, but those are the times we need to hold most firm to the word we’ve received

· Even if you record your prophetic words, it’s key to right it down and to pray into it – gets it off the paper and into your heart

· Daniel 9

o You want to deploy angels on your behalf? Pray the Word, pray your prophecies, pray your prophetic words

· When you’re interceding for someone or something, you make it personal and stand in the gap – requires us to step out

o May take baby steps to start, but don’t despise the day of small beginnings

o Start prayer-walking a nation, ask God to take you there and pray into that

· If you’ve got an infirmity, find others who have that same things and start laying hands on them and praying for them

· Faith is the door – by faith, we have access to grace

o We soak and declare, we soak and we declare

· If we keep faith and a good conscience, we’ll avoid shipwreck

o If we reject faith shipwreck is inevitable, we default to accepting the lies of Satan, which leads to every form of death and destruction in some form

o Shipwrecks don’t happen with a sharp turn, they happen with a gradual drifting off course

· Faith gives us the ability to believe God’s report above the current circumstances

o It’s not blind, it’s looking at it through a better pair of eyes – God’s eyes

· Faith is impossible where the will of God is not known

o If we want to please God, we will always have more to grow in faith

· Our spirit man is 100% on board with whatever God is doing

· When we violate our conscious – we believe rational lies by rationalizing or make up excuses why we don’t want to do it – it becomes harder and harder to hear that still, small voice of God, as if you’re building up a callus & He wants us to be sensitive

o We get more light when we walk in the light we already have

o God does not want to set us up for failure by giving us more than we can handle

o You are responsible for what you’ve been given

· When we aren’t rightly related to authority, we are open to deception

o Coming under authority is not suppressive, it’s empowering

· Don’t wear Saul’s armor – it’s never in style!

Speaker – Kris Vallotton:

· Matthew 18:21

o Verse 35 is the most concerning spirit in the NT – ‘my Father will also do the same to those who do not forgive others in their heart’

· Believing lies empowers the enemy in your life

o ‘My people perish for a lack of knowledge’

o What I don’t know CAN hurt me

· Captives believe lies, prisoners are in sin

o Most often, when a Christian is demonized (demon oppressed) through (1) unforgiveness, (2) addictions or (3) self-pity

· The demonic realm doesn’t follow hard and fast rules, it’s fluid like ours

o Demons are persons in another realm who hate God and hate you

· If you don’t forgive, Scripture says that literally God turns you over to the tormenters

o God removes His covering and you are at the mercy of the enemy to give you motivation to learn to forgive

§ The Israelites would never have crossed the Red Sea without the Egyptians chasing them

o When you forgive, you get permission from the King to be released from prison

· Demons can smell fear – when you encounter them, never get afraid

o Fear is belief in something’s ability to hurt you, and it empowers the enemy to hurt you

o Proverbs – ‘the wicked digs a pit for the righteous, but he falls in it himself’

· Emotional fear isn’t motivated by a demon but by my soul

o Discerning of spirits is important to differentiate whether the fear is coming from the emotions of my soul or from the spirit of fear

· I Corinthians 12

o ‘a variety of gifts but the same Spirit, a variety of ministries (administrations) but the same Lord, and a variety of affects (occupations) but the same God

o People can have the same gifts, but different administrations and/or different occupations

· When you touch them, if it’s a spirit then you will start to experience the manifestations of that spirit (you start to feel like you have that problem), if not then it’s

o In a believer, an evil spirit can never originates the problem, the spirit is a symptom of the problem!

o Your ability to control yourself is a fruit of Holy Spirit in your life

§ If you don’t have the Spirit in you, you don’t have the ability to control yourself – i.e. sinners act like sinners

§ We end up judging people for something they don’t totally have control of

§ Believers have an ability to control themselves that unbelievers don’t – their ‘open door’ is that they don’t know Jesus

§ The devil has the keys to their car, he doesn’t have the keys to yours

· The best way to prepare to cast out demons is to study God, focus on Him and who you are in Him

o To tell a counterfeit, handle the true article constantly

· Repent doesn’t mean ‘I’m sorry’ it means that I don’t think that way any more about that sin (i.e. I acknowledge that thing is killing me and I no longer wish to have that lifestyle)

o The door you have open is killing your relationship with God and it’s killing you

· Pornography is more about feeling powerful than feeling sexual – especially for men

· Being ‘possessed’ means the person no longer has a will because the demon has taken away their will

o A person who is possessed

· Sometimes, the root of depression is instead of being mad at someone else, you’re mad at you

o Demons can effect your body chemistry the same way they can bring sickness

· The Kingdom of God is not meat or drink, but righteousness, peace and joy – a promise (not condemnation) that you don’t have to live with depression

o It’s usually easier for it to be a spirit than for it to require them to embrace change

· All demons are spirits, but not all spirits are demons

· You need the distinguishing of spirits to determine whether the issue is a character flaw or a spirit

· A principality is a prince that has power over a municipality

o The government of God displaces principalities and replaces principalities

o Apostles & Prophets bring and establish God’s government (lay the foundation)

· Ephesians 6 – not oppression or possession, it’s a battle WHICH IS NORMAL!

o When you begin to believe new things (i.e. take new ground for the Kingdom) you come under attack

· KNOW YOURSELF

o If you’re going to trust yourself, you better know yourself!

· If you’re superstitious, it means you believe and you’re giving it power over you

· Fear without reason is a spirit

· Read Nehemiah chapters 1-6 will show you all the ways the enemy comes after you

o It isn’t what happens to you, it’s the stories you make up about what could happen to you that really cause you a problem

· If you forgive someone, it doesn’t mean the relationship will be restored, but you will be free

o There is no wisdom in the second kick of a mule – if a mule kicks you once that’s called a mistake, if the mule kicks you a second time that’s called stupid

o All relationships ride on trust, so without trust there can be no real relationship

o We must forgive even those who haven’t repented

§ Whoever you forgive God will forgive, but whoever sins you retain God will retain

§ If you don’t forgive you become the victimizer because you aren’t allowing someone else to be forgiven by God

· Trust is built by under-promising and over-performing

o If you over-promise and under-perform, you will undermine your relationship

o Breaking trust and building trust and always a big deal

WEEK #22

Monday, February 25^th – Deployment Week

Speaker – Dann Farrelly:

· The book of Revelation is difficult to understand, but not impossible

· It has been very difficult for the church to nail down where we are on the millennial timeline, and to our knowledge no one has ever gotten it right

o One day we’ll know for sure, but we’ll know in hindsight

· By establishing very strict exegetical rules, you can almost guarantee how people will read the text and come out believing

· Historically, we have taken Revelation literally unless it’s speaking symbolically

o But if the author said it was symbolic, then we should do the opposite

· One of the major problems with Revelation is that it’s a prophetic book that has been historically interpreted by teachers instead of by prophets

· In Biblical history, mostly prophets didn’t predict the future, they explained that God’s hand was behind some of the political power shifts of their day

o Prophets were primarily trying to prompt a behavior change in the present by prophesying the future

· The way that we disagree with each other in the church typically leads to fractures in our beliefs about the meanings of the book of Revelation

o We need to look for the core values of those with opposing views with which we can agree

· Failed predictions have wasted a lot of time and strength, and disappointed many

· It’s extremely difficult to interpret the book of Revelation while staying within the book of Revelation itself, rather than pop-out and start referencing other books in Scripture

o The book of Revelation was supposed to be a self-contained piece of Scripture

o The book of Revelation changes when you just stay within it’s pages

· Written in the late 80’s / early 90’s AD

o Comes from an external source, not an internal source

o From book written by ‘Irineas’ (130-202 AD) – though language of original text is somewhat ambiguous

o The interpretation of Revelation is greatly impacted by whether or not it was written prior to or after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple

· Christianity was outlawed by Nero in the Roman Empire in AD 63 or 64

o Only major religion to be outlawed by the Romans

· ‘Hope to those who are suffering, and a challenge to those who are complacent’

o Revelation centers on being an overcomer

· Revelation is self-described as a book of prophecy

o Is it about a future to those who received it, or is it about a future for us alive today?

· There is a moving of Revelation out of the apocalyptic literature and into prophetic literature

· How much of Revelation is a careful literary work, and how much of it was a simply a description of an encounter had by the author?

· John had so mastered his material that it’s useless to regard the work as a compilation – the Apostle John was a literary prophet and poet

o Of the 404 verses, only 126 verses (roughly 25%) are without any OT illusion – though the OT is not mentioned at all

o God doesn’t speak English, but He speaks the language that exists in our head that we use

o Holy Spirit likely spoke out of John’s knowledge of the OT in speaking his language

· Revelation has the most powerful picture of Jesus found in all of Scripture

o Calls Jesus the Alpha and Omega where previously only God had been referred to as the Alpha and Omega

· The purpose of Revelation:

o To pull back the curtain of life & show the heavenly perspective of current events – makes life incredibly meaningful when we get a peak behind the curtain

o To get hope and be encouraged – if we’re reading it and become hopeless then we’re reading it wrong

o We haven’t realized our bent – in many ways we’re in a habit of viewing Revelation through our own millennial bent while remaining blind to it

· Helpful info on end-times:

o The Last Days According to Jesus by RC Sowell

o Revelation and the End of All Thanks by Craig R Koester

o Victorious Eschatology by French

o IHOP’s Overview of Key End-Times Event

o Google Chuck Swindol – Prophetic Passport

· If you’re being persecuted then Revelation gives you hope, if you’re not being persecuted then you hope it doesn’t happen

· A uniquely Christian idea is that you sometimes you win by losing – Jesus won by losing

o Whether we live or we die, we still win

· Whether or not it’s the end of days, it will be OUR end of days at some point

o Whether or not it the last generation, it will be our last generation

· Instead of reading Revelation and asking “WHEN”, read it and ask “WHO”

o Jesus is king, not Satan or the governments of this earth

· One of our issue is that we like to see all of prophecy literally fulfilled literally

Speaker – Paul Manwaring:

· Our mandate is to raise up and deploy a generation that will display the raw power of God

· God doesn’t work in formulas, because if the formula worked then we would begin to worship the formula instead of worshipping God

· Deployment isn’t an option, it’s a response to the One who loves and has called us

· We are part of the answer

o Learn to see yourself as a part of what God is doing here on the earth in this time

o We’re all in the midst of the writing of the extended books of Acts

o We must own the fact that we are on this planet ‘for such a time as this’

· The first step in the process is to ‘get’ that we are sons / daughters of the Most High God

· II Corinthians 3

o You and I have a greater glory than was on the face of Moses

o Demands a question from us – what is my personal glory?

o Moses’ glory was outward and fading, our glory is indwelt and increasing

· God has a value for the things that are made by the hands of mankind

· Moses was uniquely prepared for his destiny by God, and God is uniquely preparing us for our destiny

· What’s beautiful to you? What are those things that you love, the passions of your life?

o The problem is that we’ve left those things outside the church in the hands of non-Christians

o Ask God how you can take what’s beautiful to you and lift it up in a way that will give glory to God and His name

· The first person Moses sees the presence of God upon after coming down from the mountain was a craftsman – how did we miss that?

· We’ve ended up with a mindset that makes God irrelevant and out of touch

· We’re called to live in the constant awareness of His presence beholding His beauty

· So what’s beautiful to you? What makes your heart beat faster?

o We’ve been raised to believe that it was ‘illegal’ for us to pursue dreams that were outside the church

o Instead of fearing the world will pollute us, we go in to confidently pollute the world

· God designed you so He could work with you to fulfill the desires of your heart

· Often the absence of love and/or the presence of abuse keeps us from discovering ourselves

o When we learn what we love, we’re learning about the gifts God put in us

o God designed us to do what we love

· ‘Glory’ is the biggest word apart from God’s name in the Bible, but it might be the most undefined word in the Bible

· ‘The whole earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God’ –Habakkuk

o When you get the whole earth you get the whole church, but when you only get the church you don’t get the world

· God’s glory is the result of God expressing Himself

o The more you understand God the more you understand His glory and the more you understand His glory the more you understand God

o An artist does two things – an artist copies and expresses themselves – but when God expressed Himself there was nothing to copy

· You have permission to dream, to discover, and to realize that thing that you love is legal!

o Beauty affects us all differently, and we all want to enjoy it differently

o How can we take those things and use them to bring God glory

· We were made to look and act like God – we don’t have just a piece of Him within us, we have all of Him within us

· We were held in a curse until Jesus, but creation was held in a curse until us (Romans)

· We cannot keep the glory of God in the box of the Church

o Is. 6:2 – ‘the earth is full of His glory’

o What’s missing is the knowledge (experiential) of God’s glory filling the earth

· ‘It’s the glory of God to conceal a matter, it’s the glory of kings to search it out’

o The tragedy is we should be the leaders of this, but we left it to the world

· The greatest single achievement in the history of mankind was probably the Reformation

o We must learn to partner with Holy Spirit to spread the knowledge of God’s glory over the whole earth

· If you don’t know what you love, you sell your neighbor short, which makes learning what you love a really big deal

· Every legitimate occupation is a legal opportunity for glory

Tuesday, February 26^th

Speaker – Dann Farrelly:

· Don’t just assume because there is growth in the church that God is being glorified

· Satan has never created a pleasure, he tempts us to abuse the pleasures that have all been created by God for us to enjoy

· Heresy is not simply ‘fuzzy thinking’ but continued insistence on a particular teaching that the larger church community has deemed to be inaccurate or destructive

o When someone takes ‘a’ truth and makes it the whole truth

o Over-explaining something when Scripture hasn’t

· Truth is reality as God knows it to be

o There are things that God alone knows, and there are things that have been entrusted to the church

o The bottom line is God is trying to get people into heaven, not keep them out

· The Bible is a human book AND a God book

· A pneumonic device to help remember the order of church councils:

o “Nice (1) Alexandrian Con (2), Carthage (Bible), Ephesed (3) Chalcedon (4) to Cons (5-6) but did so Nicely (7)”

· Nicea (325 AD)

o Articulated basic doctrine of (a) Trinity, (b) Divinity of Christ, and (c) produced Creed of Nicea

· Synod of Alexandria (362 AD)

o Articulated basic doctrine – Father, Son & Spirit are 3 persons who share the same essence

· 1^st Constantinople (381 AD)

o Affirmed Jesus had a human mind, not just a divine one

o Enhanced Nicean Creed

· Synod of Carthage (397 AD)

o Final standardization of the Bible

o Books written in the 100’s/200’s/300’s were not included because they were not viewed as authoritative texts

· Ephesus (431 AD)

o Against Nestorius’ supposed teaching that Jesus was 2 separate persons in one body

· Chalcedon (451 AD)

o Condemned teaching that Jesus had just one nature

o Articulated powerful description of Christ – “two nature without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, the distinctiveness of the natures being by no means removed because of the union, but the properties of each nature being preserved”

§ Often times when combating heresy, the church can only successfully articulate what something isn’t as opposed to what it is

· 2^nd Constantinople (553 AD)

o Again put down “one nature” teaching

o Declare Mary a life-long virgin

§ Likely came out of the doctrine that all things pleasurable were evil

· 3^rd Constantinople (681 AD)

o Affirmed Jesus had 2 wills that never disagree; in opposition to the teaching that Jesus had 2 natures, but only his divine nature could make choices

· Nicea (787)

o Denounced Adoptionism – that Jesus was not God’s son by nature, but adopted by God at His baptism)

o Allowed revering of icons, but not worship of them

· The NT was written when Christianity was a much smaller, less significant off-shoot of Judaism receiving persecution from the Jews and civil pagan authorities (i.e. at a time when Christians weren’t ruling anything)

o Therefore, we have template in the NT for how to set up and lead a nation

o As a result, many have assumed that Christians were never supposed to lead anything

Deployment Panel with Paul Manwaring:

· The more you say ‘yes’ to God, the more He’s going to use you

· You can talk about the Kingdom or you can become the Kingdom

o Dead fish float downriver too

o We don’t just want to know the message, we want to become the message

· Students will study, but disciples do

o Unless you can live something, rather than simply be able to repeat it, you don’t know it

· Are you willing to give up everything to become the message?

o Sometimes we don’t get to choose our life because it’s not mine anymore

· We have been discipled so we must disciple other

o Teach as many people as you can how to hear God’s voice and follow the Spirit

o We must become like them so we can connect with them and lead them to the father

· Most of the world, because of secular theology, wants nothing to do with the supernatural

o Do we still present a supernatural Gospel, or have we watered the Gospel down to fit secular culture

· The offerings in times of praise when it’s a sacrifice is key

· The biggest challenge for some is heading out on their own as a forerunner with Holy Spirit without a partner or team

o We must remember that our anointing is a grace on our lives that gives us access to the heavenly realm in whatever area we are called

· In different season we learn how to stand firm

o Seasons change in a moment

o It takes a moment for breakthrough to come

o Just hold on to what God has called you to do and where He’s called you to be

· It’s easy to be raised in religion but to only read the Bible as a bibliography and never meet Jesus Himself

o When you are connected to the Vine, you just produce fruit – get people connected to the Vine and they will produce fruit

· It’s important to remember that what we get to do with God is always such a privilege

· What does it look like for me to dream with God regarding the situations we’re seeing in the world right now

· Before you leave school:

o Make sure you spend time hanging out with those who have what you lack

o Press in for your breakthrough – outside this culture, what you do and don’t have will be revealed

o Push through for healing anointing

o The idea of intentionality is so huge – going deep rather than wide

o Learn how God wired you and designed you to function so that you can give 100% of who you are without feeling like you have to constantly change who you are

· You need to make sure you partner with God and agree with Him, not everything else around you

· There may be parts of the Body that we don’t understand, but we all need each other

· Whatever God has put before you to be faithful in is what is going to carry you to the fulfillment of the prophecies over your life

o So often, when we considered the larger-than-life prophecies over our life, we think ‘it has to look like this’

· Charities to consider:

o Charity Water – New York City

o Tom’s Shoes

o Invisible Children

· Value the word of the Lord to you – He is depositing things in your heart to incubate until it comes to term and then it will be born

· The path God has you on isn’t always linear – hold onto the things He’s spoken over your life in faith

· Always look for opportunities to say ‘yes’ to God in your life

· Once God speaks to you, you must take the steps to be prepared to steward and carry the anointing that He’s releasing on your life

· We’ve come here for a fresh start, so have one!

· Are you living in overflow, constantly giving out of what God has given you? Or are you the sucking sound in the room that is always in need of something?

o Be a thermostat, not merely a thermometer

· Success is being faithful in stewarding what God has given you

· True success in the Kingdom isn’t always glamorous

o Seasonally, success looks different

· Be true to yourself and hold yourself accountable to yourself

o Learn personal integrity – when there’s no one else around to hold true to, hold true to yourself

Speaker – Paul Manwaring:

· If you don’t know what you love, or you live in the presence of fear, either way you get performance

· The devil is a liar, a cheat and a copycat – he listens to what God has spoken over your life and he speaks the opposite to try to get you to head in the other direction

· That thing that you’re afraid of, if you reverse it you may very well be looking into your destiny of what you were called to do

· Who Jesus is to you is who He’ll be through

· In our families, God gives your family special God-given DNA that you inherit

o Like God giving your ancestors a DVD player, it is up to each member of your family what DVD they will play in the DVD player

o What is your family DNA?

· Do something you love, gain some skills and make some money

o Put things in the perspective of ‘what I’m doing now is helping me get to where I want to be’

Wednesday, February 27^th

Speaker – Paul Manwaring: Deployment Week

· ‘Revivalist’ is a word whose definition may be limiting us more than empowering us

o A revivalist literally brings life where there is death and who brings life where there is darkness

o The problem is we have literally created a grid for ourselves that classifies those who are qualified to do that and the rest of us who aren’t

· John 1 – ‘In Him was life, and that life what the light of men’

· We live in a day where there is tremendous change and tremendous opportunity that has never been seen upon the earth in all of history

· We were brought on this planet to bring transformation to this planet

o We have left so much of that to those outside the church because we have misunderstood the meaning of the word revivalist

· The major paradigm shifts in the history of this planet are all due to communication

o Flat earth becomes a round earth

o Invention of the printing press

o Electricity – audio and visual media

· One day, communication, light and life will line up and we will have no doubt about light, we will have no doubt about life, and everyone will know

· Read the book Never Surrender by William Jerry Boykin

· The devil ALWAYS oversteps himself

· There are things that you have in your life that you allow to disqualify you from being a revivalist, but those are the very things God wants to use to qualify you for revival

o God always starts where we would never have dreamed

· Don’t beat yourself up for not being somebody else, just be who God made you

· ‘Jesus was born of God and a woman, man had nothing to do with it’ –Sojourner Truth

· Give people the best of Jesus AND the best of what you have

· What has prevented you from stepping out as a revivalist?

o With all respect – get over it! There’s a world out there that needs you

· What’s happening here at Bethel is echoing around the world

· We’re not always the world’s most popular people, but we’re the ones people call when things have gone horribly wrong

· By and large, the world is all out of answers

o The only qualification we need is that the Spirit of the Holy God lives within us

Speaker – Kris Vallotton:

· Class encounter

Thursday, February 28^th

Speaker – Alumni Panel:

· (See Audio File)

Speaker – Paul Manwaring:

· God doesn’t waste a thing

o He watches over His word faithfully to perform it

o ‘Things work out great for lovers of God who stay in His presence’

o Everything God has brought you through has been preparation for what He has ahead

· Get help

o Ask questions

o Go find someone who can help you over a hurdle

o If you don’t have promises to stand on, get one in the Word

o If you don’t have answers – pursue them

· Make a record of where God has shown up in your life – refer to it often

o Look at the track God has traced through your life and it will point to your future

o Take time to process things

· Take action

o Don’t just sit waiting for the big doors to open – walk through the small ones that are open

o What will your life look like in 5 years time, and what core competencies will you need in order to be good at those things

o Ask how you can prepare yourself for your future, and get after it

· Do whatever you can to enter the sphere of influence you’re called to – find a door in

· In life, for all your life, you must continually be doing things that grow your skill level, exercise your passion, and steward money

· You can start impacting your sphere immediately by making declarations

· Start preparing for your life’s calling today – begin to build and steward a history with God so that when you come into your destiny you are ready & prepared for it

· There are people that do and there are people that don’t – just do something!

· You probably hear God much more than you give yourself credit for, you just haven’t given yourself permission to hear Him in those ways

o Give yourself a break – your relationship with God isn’t black and white set in stone, it’s a fluid interaction

· Fathers show their children what the world looks like – they go out and bring the world back into the home

· Don’t look for ‘balance’ – push 100% in all directions

o We must learn how to steward the tension that is created in our lives as we pursue our destiny, and learn to do it together in family and community

· In your life right now, make sure in some way you’re doing what you love, in some way you’re growing in skills, and in some way you’re taking care of money

· A lot of people are looking for promotion (a step up) – if you’re always looking for a step up, you will quit moving forward

o Always keep moving forward (‘pro motion’) – your steps are ordered by the Lord, but sometimes it’s a dance

Speaker – Chris Overstreet:

· Those that step into everything God has called them to be are individuals that are hungry

· Every time we encounter someone, we’re faced with the choice to keep going or stop and take time ministering to someone

· Matthew 7:7

o Start asking, seeking and knocking because God wants to respond to your prayers

· Loving people is what opens up the door

o Everywhere you go, people around you are screaming out ‘HELP!’

· You thrive in life by keeping the main thing the main thing

o It’s not about your status, position or ministry – it’s all about Jesus

o Jesus will open the doors for you

o Place action with the passion He’s put in your heart, and He will open doors

· An amazing, world-changing ministry of signs and wonders is a by-product of a close relationship with Jesus

· Keep the main goal of your life your relationship with Jesus & all else will follow

· One of the greatest things you can do is ask yourself powerful questions

o ‘How can I be an encouragement to someone today?’

o ‘How can I inspire someone today?’

o ‘How can I motivate someone today?’

o ‘How can I demonstrate God’s love today?’

o What am I passionate about today?

o Every time you take the focus off yourself and place it on others, the fear leaves

· Whenever we constantly are focusing on what we still haven’t overcome, we lose sight of what we have overcome – often doing so can be rooted in fear

· The focus isn’t about becoming like someone else, the focus is becoming like Jesus

o Develop a backbone this year like you’ve never had before

· Honor is fueled by your love – love is the motivation of everything you do and say

· Our ultimate goal in one-on-one evangelism is not to get someone to pray a prayer but to make sure people feel loved

o God has called us to harvest, but He’s also called us to sow seed

o Holy Spirit is the greatest evangelist – He is good at being Holy Spirit

o We aren’t the one who has to bring about conviction – it’s okay for us not to share everything all the time – takes the pressure off us

o Our first goal is to make people feel loved, and give Holy Spirit the freedom to work differently through us to encounter we meet

Beyond Religion

1st Year Class Notes - Spring 2013 (Pt.1)

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