Beyond Religion: 1st Year Class Notes

WEEK #1

Tuesday, September 11^th

Speaker – Kris Vallotton - Associate Senior Leader - Bethel Church: Main Core Value for BSSM

Desire to build trust & create expectations that can be fulfilled
Desire to create a culture of love

Love isn’t necessarily gooey
You establish the standard for love in your own life

You show other people how to treat you

You must learn to love you before you can learn to love others

You aren’t doing anyone any favors by not liking yourself

A culture of sacrifice can easily translate into you not liking yourself
Avoid false humility (i.e. spirit of stupid) and walk in genuine love
The gift of healing should be a kiss from God, the gift of prophecy should be a hug from God

We don’t want people to have to be delivered from their last deliverance

We work very hard not to control you

We will never work harder on your problem than you do
We will not solve your problem for you, but we will solve your problem with you
You can behave yourself out of the school, but you can’t behave yourself into punishment
We desire to teach you how to think, not what to think
We don’t want to give you the answers, we want to connect you to The Answer
It’s okay to disagree – we aren’t looking to creates cookie-cutter zombies
Denominationalism is a spirit that says ‘if you value me, then you’ll agree with me’

As long as we connect value with agreement, it’s no longer about the subject at hand, but about honoring each other
We encourage honor without requiring agreement
It’s okay to disagree, it is not okay to be disrespectful

The goal is to operate from the inside out, not punish people into purity

An empowering culture requires you to take ownership of your life

We can help you with your problem, but it will maintain ownership of that problem without transferring ownership of that problem to our team
The goal is to make you into great, world-class leaders, but the ability to become great is your responsibility to cultivate

We don’t do fear here

If you come from a culture of fear where the worse you behave, the worse the punishment, you may need to redirect your motivation internally
Our goal isn’t to keep you from smoking, but to set you on fire
As long as you perform so that you don’t get in trouble, that is a form of external control and you haven’t yet taken control of your own life
If you knew how to become a world-changer on your own, you wouldn’t be here

Trust in the process

We expect you to have accountability in your life

Accountability is learning to trust somebody more than you trust yourself

The nature of deception is that when we’re deceived, we don’t realize it
If you don’t trust someone more than you trust yourself, you can’t get out of deception because you don’t know you’re deceived

The bigger your gift, the more accountability you need
Accountability = the more ability you have, the more accountability you need
You can’t just grow vertically, you must also grow horizontally
It is possible to outgrow your accountability

If you aren’t nervous about telling them when you mess up, you need to find someone you respect more or it isn’t accountability

God loves us all the same, but we are not all favored the same

There are levels of favor, which gives us room for growth

We expect to give an account of your life to overseers whenever asked

With a culture of empowerment comes a culture of confrontation

You haven’t come to a pick-up game on the playground, you have joined a team where there are coaches and refs
You are no longer a big fish in a small pond, you are now a big fish in a lake of big fish and we are not overly impressed with you to the point of not holding you accountable
Over the years, some of our most difficult students are those who are “spiritual”
We believe that God honors faithfulness
We don’t judge prophets, we judge prophecies
A great candidate for accountability is found in someone who is present in your life and has more favor with God than you do

Give them permission to speak into your like
Outline the boundaries to which they are free to hold you accountable

Give them the responsibility to communicate those things to you
It’s better to have wounds from a friend than kisses from an enemy

It is the responsibility of those holding you accountable to bring things to your attention, it is your responsibility to receive it and talk to God about it

We all have blind spots that prevent us from seeing things on our own
Don’t be offended when someone brings correction to what you’re doing
When someone corrects you and you get defensive and/or withdraw, you show them you aren’t a big enough person to hear it, and you won’t have anyone who will want to speak into your life

To find a mother or father, you must be a son or a daughter first

Going to school here is a privilege and not a right, and if you want to get the most out of this school, you need to find people who will speak into your life

There are only a few people over the course of your entire life who will speak truth into your life, let them know it, send them flowers!

Faith is spelled R-I-S-K

If you don’t do something wrong at least 3 times this year, you will not graduate because in order to grow you must take risks
If you make a mess, you will clean it up
Forgiveness is mandatory, but trust is earned
Your reputation comes from your repetition

If you don’t like your reputation, change your repetition

If you’re asked to do some exploit for the Kingdom by your leadership, you cannot decline (this requires you to think for yourself & use discernment)

The difference between long suffering and punishment is all in the value you hold in God’s view of you

Long suffering is enduring what you don’t deserve, punishment is enduring what you feel you do deserve and is a form of self-created salvation (Judas spirit)
The difference between punishment and discipline is that punishment is you did something wrong and you are going to suffer for the pain you cased while discipline is based around you being to amazing to let go uncorrected
I Cor. 13 is not the complete word on love, Jesus is the complete word on love

A good rule of thumb is “if I find a member of the opposite sex to be attractive, I will not have any level of relationship with them.” Why? Because I’m married.

Speaker – Bill Johnson, Senior Leader - Bethel Church:

There are those who wake up in the morning with no thought of changing the world, and still others who go to bed at night with no blood on their spiritual swords. What a waste of a good day.
You’re here because you’re hungry for more, and you’re willing to pay the price to get more.
I was never the kid that my parents thought would ever go into the ministry. In fact, my parents were working hard just to try and get me into heaven.

I knew you had to be special to go into the ministries, and I knew I didn’t qualify to be one of the great heroes of faith that I heard stories about growing up
My dad used to tell me how not everyone liked Wigglesworth when he was alive

That type of bold faith is admired… from a distance. But up close it can be very uncomfortable
Faith requires action, and is offensive to the stationary
It’s like Heaven on Earth

He didn’t place us here on earth as His representative to call for reinforcements, He placed us here to make this world look like that one
He took upon Himself what we deserved so that He could give us what He deserved
Jesus was sent to reveal the Father to a planet of orphans

The Father’s heart desires His children to be well, whole and blessed

You receive your authority in the commission, you receive your power in the encounters

“God, enlarge my capacity and touch me again”
When we come into submission to His primary mission do we become commissioned
For authority to work there must be power
Power comes though encounter, whether large or small

Your heart recognizes the Spirit of God, but when your head tries to figure it out you will only get confused
“God, I must have more of you at any cost”

We love miracles and mass conversions, etc. but that’s not what it’s all about
Without His presence it is all for naught, so that is what we seek – His presence
I have to remain conscious of a God of the impossible or I will reduce ministry to my ministry gifts
For those who need an explanation for the encounters we have with God, direct them to Psalms 115 – ‘God does whatever He pleases’
The result of divine favor is eternal honor, but the manifestation of that favor can cost you something (Mary known as the mother of the illegitimate child, Jacob limped the rest of his life)
So many of us race to get to the front of the line to be able to lay hands on the sick and see them healed, but that line gets smaller when it will cost us something
It doesn’t work out for our convenience or our glory, it works out for His glory
Things happen in our encounters with God that are difficult to put into words, and even more difficult for others to understand
“God, if I get You in the exchange, you can do anything to me you want.” (1995)

Look for encounters with God – it’s legal
You can be filled up with theories your whole life, there comes a time when you simply hunger to see God move.
My desire for you is to have an encounter with God that you don’t understand, that you can’t explain, but that makes you cry whenever you think about it

You won’t speak of it easily, but will cause you to ‘limp’ the rest of your life

Many people see burning bushes, they look at it, they applaud it, and they go on their way

Moses turned aside at the burning bush, and then God spoke to Him

The best way to get more of God is to steward what you receive
Welcome to Disneyland – you’re about to embark on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride
A renewed mind is actually seeing from God’s perspective
God is intensely committed to the renewing of your mind
You can see miracles released through faith and through the Anointing, but the most consistent way it comes is through the renewed mind
A renewed mind looks like Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration where He turned into a light
God’s Will: ‘Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove the will of God

Mark 8:13

Beware the leaven of the Pharisees (i.e. religious system) & Herod (i.e. political system)
Jesus fed more people and had more leftovers with the larger crowd which started out with less food
Miracles are given to us as a tutor / mentor to teach us how to see
Faith lives from the unseen towards the visible, unbelief lives from the visible towards the unseen
To operate in faith, you must be more convinced of the unseen than of the seen
Fire activates what’s in you – good or bad
The disciples miss Jesus completely here, so He takes them into their experience

Why does Jesus’s question take them automatically into worrying about what they don’t have?
The miracles should have taught them it doesn’t matter what they don’t have

Once you have experienced supernatural supply, it is illegal to remain in the perspective of what you don’t have because you have been given lenses to see from unseen to the seen regarding supernatural supply
Miracles teach us how to perceive a situation regarding the access we have to that which we do not see
Once we are exposed to miracles, we are then required to see by those lenses

Many people call that insanity, but Scripture calls that logic and reason
Can you see? Maybe not. Is your heart still hard? Apparently it still is. Can you hear? Maybe not. Can you remember? Yes!
The works of man have time limits (the excitement dwindles), but the works of the Lord are eternal (we never cease to be excited by them)

We are stewards of our experiences with God

Wednesday, September 12^th

Speaker – Bill Johnson, Senior Leader - Bethel Church:

There isn’t a greater gift than the presence of God itself, we have no greater treasure than that
In bowling, you have an initial target in the lane markers that help you hit the main objective of the pins

Jesus died as the initial target so that the main objective of us being filled up with Him could happen

Jesus modeled the Father so perfectly that in Isaiah He was referred to prophetically as the Everlasting Father
When you believe a lie, you empower the liar
Luke 3

When Jesus was baptized, the account in Mark says that the heavens were torn apart, it was not a simple “parting”
See Isaiah’s prayer that God would rend the heavens and come down, which was answered the day Jesus was baptized

The prophets of old had glimpses of the promises of God being fulfilled, but they couldn’t touch it

God ripped open the spiritual realm and the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus and remained

Jesus lived in such a way that the dove remained, every step He made was with the dove in mind

Every believer has access to this open heaven

We live under an open heaven, we have the favor of God on our lives
The way you increase anything in the Kingdom is through proper care
Many people love the anointing for what they can do, not for who He is

The Holy Spirit is in every believer, but He doesn’t rest upon every believer

He lives inside of me for my sake, but He rests upon me for yours
There are those who develop intimacy with God primarily for the purpose of ministry, not simply out of a delight for Him
If we’ll give Him our night, you’ll have your day

Go to sleep at night turning your heart affectionately toward Him

Live as one who adores God

The crowd saw what Jesus could do, but the woman with the issue of blood saw the cart of Kingdom blessings He had with Him to distribute

Power just left me, who took it?
How aware of the Holy Spirit do you have to be in order to sense when someone has placed a demand on the anointing that He carries while in conversation in the midst of a crowd
His presence becomes the center of your life, so much so that it monopolizes your consciousness
When your life becomes full of the anointing, it will saturate you entire being, even your clothes
There are times when the anointing is not just carried internally, it is now carried externally (i.e. Jesus, Peter, Paul, etc.)
We have been given access to the same presence and we’ve been commissioned with the same assignment – to carry His presence

Some of the most important things you’ll learn won’t be through a teaching or a sermon, but through adventure with God
Matt. 10:7

Heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out devils, cleanse the lepers – the assignment doesn’t change
The story of the board cutter – using each new board cut to measure the next board (result is each board is about 1/8” longer than the previous)

We measure ourselves in comparison with a previous generation, and we’re pretty close, but we’re a far from the original measurement

We can only give away what we’ve been given, and we’ve been given the Holy Spirit
Peace in the world is the absence of something, but peace in the Kingdom comes with His presence
Release the peace upon a home when you enter it (prophetic paralleled with Noah releasing the dove and it returning to him, because it found no place to rest)

The Holy Spirit is always looking for people to rest upon, and ministry is learning to steward that presence and release Him to rest on others

John 20:19

The dove will not partner with fear, so when Jesus walked through the door and released the dove, it had no place to land

So then Jesus showed them who He was, which caused them to no longer be afraid, and AGAIN He released the Holy Spirit upon them
Then He said as the Father sent me so I send you, then He breathed on them and said to receive the Holy Spirit

Everything we do is releasing His presence

John 7:37

The river of Living Water that flows from us is meant to change the environment around us and give the thirsty something to drink
The Holy Spirit makes you like Jesus
The Holy Spirit was not release until after Jesus was glorified

Instead of the Holy Spirit being released earlier, thus causing Him to make us like the Jesus headed to the cross, we are now in a place where we can be just like He is now (As He is, so are we, in this world)

Many think of the Head as a perfect Jesus while the body is broken and ugly
The Holy Spirit works to make us like the holy, spotless, glorified King of Kings

Speaker – Kris Vallotton, Associate Senior Leader - Bethel Church: Main Core Value for BSSM

Go to KVMinistries.com, take the Prince & Pauper Test
“To know me is to know me. If you don’t love me, it’s because you don’t know me.”
Distinguishing of Spirits is one of the most needed gifts in the body of Christ

It’s not limited to evil spirits, but distinguishes all spirits
“We no longer know one another after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” – Paul
The ability to distinguish spirits means discerning how much favor is on someone’s life so you know them after the Spirit and not just after the flesh
Some of us are sick or have died because we haven’t realized that God sent His answer to our prayer in the form of the person next to us (not knowing them after the Spirit)
In order to move from sowing and reaping (you get what you deserve) into inheritance (you get what someone else deserved), you have to be able to tell when someone has something you don’t have (in the Spirit)
Revival doesn’t have an age, gender, or social class

Revival is coming from a single living generation, old to young
The elders may not be able to perform as well as the youth, but they have more grace

Discipline: “The way you deal with the worst determines whether or not you get the best.” -John Maxwell
Most people come with the desire to be a miracle worker, but don’t be surprised when you are in need of one yourself
You will be expected to walk in the supernatural power of God here, so we suggest you start getting used to the idea
We desire for you to grow in character and power
You have the mind of Christ

What if you aren’t thinking like God? Stop it.
God wants to renew your mind so He can do your will, because your will and His will have become one

The world perverts sex, religion shames it, but the Kingdom celebrates it

The Church is not dealing with sexuality the way that God does

God is not shy at all about sex, it was His idea to make it fun
God uses sex to represent the relationship between God and His bride
The goal isn’t to eliminate sexuality, but to manage your appetites

· See Moral Revolution (www.moralrevolution.com)

Some have the gift of ‘singleness,’ but it takes a supernatural endowment from God to function in that, otherwise you burn with passion

Thursday, September 13^th

Speaker – Bill Johnson, Senior Leader - Bethel Church:

Faith doesn’t come from the mind, or even the renewed mind, faith comes from the heart

A renewed mind enhances faith, it gives faith a track to run on so to speak

John 6 – Peter said we have no idea what you were talking about any more than the crowd did who just left, all we know is that You have the words of eternal life
The Kingdom of God is not meat or drink, it is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit

The Kingdom of God is in the Holy Spirit
When deliverance/ healing occur here, it’s a manifestation of the Kingdom of God
If Jesus did all that He did as God, I’m impressed but I’m not moved to action, but Jesus did all of His miracles as man dependent upon God, therefore I can no longer stay where I’m at

Where ever the Spirit demonstrates the Lordship of Jesus, the result is the Kingdom manifest

Freedom’s the mark of heaven’s citizenship, everywhere He touches becomes free
The Lordship of Jesus is not for restriction, it’s for freedom

Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand -- change your perspective on reality so you can see from the perspective of my Kingdom which I’ve brought with me for you to have access to

The words Jesus spoke were Spirit and were inhabited by God to empower the hearer with grace that wasn’t available prior to the speaking of that word

Many want to be led into something without having to make a decree because there’s no risk and we don’t want to look stupid
Whenever God speaks, He’s releasing power into your life

Faith comes by hearing, hearing comes by the word of God
Faith comes by your capacity to perceive His voice, and your capacity to hear His voice comes by
Faith can’t be drummed up, it’s the residue left after encountering the Faithful One
Faith doesn’t come from striving, it comes through surrender
Faith is the most normal expression of a BELIEVER
The problem isn’t in our ability to hear from God, but it’s in refining our willingness to only hear God’s voice at the expense of all the other opinions out there – like weeds being planted in your Garden, they choke out the good seed

There is a lie that faith is difficult, and that lie gets spread because it’s a good excuse when nothing happens
Salvation is not only forgiveness of sin, but also freedom from torment and healing of disease
Today we plow a field, then sow the seed, but in Biblical times they through out the seed and then plowed it under

It’s not our calling to plow anyone under in order to plant the seed, it’s our job to throw out the seed everywhere and let the Holy Spirit plow it under

Word becomes Spirit, light dispels darkness, and it’s normal for the believer to hear God’s voice

We don’t have the responsibility to hear Him, He has the responsibility to be heard
Anxiety about not hearing stops our ability to hear, and when we turn inward there aren’t any answers

The enemy will always try to get you on the wrong end of the subject because He was to cultivate the feeling of inadequacy it breeds
Sometimes our ability to raise the dead is seen in our ability to keep raising our old, dead nature

Instead, thank God that He’s speaking loudly enough for you to hear Him

Luke 3:21

Authority comes from the commission, power comes in the encounter
The last thing Jesus hears from the Father is “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased,” then the first words Jesus hears from the Father challenges that – “If you are the son of God…”
We all say yes to what God says, but our confidence in that word really only comes when we have that word opposed, and we see if it still stands
The word of God in our life must have opposition everywhere we go

Our confidence in God’s word increases as we see it opposed and then watch it come out on top
You can live in the Kingdom but you won’t advance very far unless you face opposition

The word of God attracts conflict

When God says something 10 times and something else only once, it doesn’t mean that one is more important than another, but the one that is mentioned 10 times will receive more opposition

When the Word of God is opposed, suddenly I must make a decision
Often what happens is the area where you have the strongest word from the Lord is where you experience seasons where you bare the least amount of fruit

My options are to stick to my guns and hold fast to the word from God as a promise that will be fulfilled, or I can question it and shrug it off
The word of God is opposed because you only receive a reward when you have options
If you are always planting seed without expecting a crop, how well would you do as a farmer in that mindset?
Faith is the conviction of things hoped for, and without faith it is impossible to please God, and those who come to Him must believe He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him
Jesus demanded fruit of the impossible (fig tree), and He’s given that ability to us too
God is looking for people to trust with His anointing
There’s a difference between what’s in my account (all things) and what’s in my possession (only those things I can currently be trusted with)
The press that will exalt you will also crucify you
If we all go after that anointing together, it dissolves the assault
The word of revelation has all the power of heaven behind it while the question has no power beyond that which I give it
If you feed on the question, it will undermine the revelation
Many people receive revelation of power, but they don’t walk it in because they can’t get past the question

Nazareth was known for unbelief the way that Babylon was known for immorality

Israel had not heard from God via prophets or dreams for 400+ years
10 generations had not heard the voice of the Lord, but each generation had prepared the next generation to pray for the coming of the Messiah
Jesus is giving them the 1^st shot at transformational ministry by announcing to them that He was the Messiah
They were stunned by the gracious words (those that release the empowering presence of God) and had the internal heart witness that He was the true Messiah
Then someone said, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” which pulled them right out of a divine encounter

· Any word or reasoning without Christ at the center is demonic in nature

Jesus never rebuked His disciples for desiring greatness, but He had to adjust their perspective on greatness

Speaker – Kris Vallotton, Associate Senior Leader - Bethel Church:

Our daily devotions with God may not always be memorable, but it sustains us and really plays a key role in helping us grow up strong
Seasons & moments of encounter tend to mark our lives more dramatically & memorably
When God speaks He creates

God can’t lie because He has integrity, but also because whatever He says comes to pass, regardless of the present circumstances

If marriage doesn’t change your life dramatically, then something didn’t take

Marriage means “to merge”, some marry but never actually merge

Carry yourself with an understanding of how much people value you, or you will destroy those who think you’re valuable with your words

The world cannot hold up under a pauper when he becomes a king
Moses had to be raised in Pharaoh’s house so that he could be raised as a prince and be prepared to lead God’s people

When God asks you a question, He already knows the answer
Story of Jacob & Laben, sheep & goats – There are 2 ways you can live life:

React to what you don’t want to do or respond to what God has called you to do
What you see in the reflection of you imagination, that’s what you reproduce

As a man thinks in his heart, so is he

You don’t become what you want to become, you become what you see in the watering hole of your imagination
Unforgiveness ties you to your past and it undermines your divine destiny

When Jesus forgave you, He gave you the power to forgive others
You aren’t in a prison anymore, but you must let them go so you can be set free too

WEEK #2

Tuesday, September 18^th

Speaker – Kris Vallotton, Associate Senior Leader - Bethel Church:

We reproduce what we see at the “watering hole” of our imagination
“You are not what you think you are. You are not what others think you are. But you become what you think the most important person in your life thinks you are.” –John Maxwell
We need to know what God thinks of us so that we can become how He really sees us

Stinkin’ thinkin’ makes for a stinkin’ life
We’re supposed to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, so not liking ourselves is not a good plan

Jacob goes down to Jabek (means “empty and alone”), and there he encounters the angel who wrestles with Jacob all night

The angel asks Jacob (liar, deceiver) what his name is, and then the angel changes his name to Israel (a prince with God)
Sticks and stones may break your bones, but names will steal your future

Abram to Abraham, Saul to Paul, Simon to Peter, Adam with the animals
Many people live under a name that isn’t the name God has given you (Sgt. MC)

When God is silent, He is often doing His best work
It takes years of religion to convince you that being a loser is somehow spiritual
Satan was trying to get Adam & Eve to do what they had already been made at creation

There are a lot of people who are trying to do so they can be, instead of doing out of their being
Satan tried to get Jesus to perform in order to prove who He was, same way Satan succeeded against Adam & Eve in the Garden
The Word alone is not truth, it must be combined with the Spirit of God

Satan uses the Word against christians out of context all the time

Jesus was led into the wilderness by the Spirit, and came out of the wilderness in the power of the Spirit

When you understand who you are and whose you are, the battle is over!

When you received Jesus you received a name change, you received His name

Jesus doesn’t have a pre-nup
You were also made a saint
As long as you believe you ARE a sinner you will sin by faith
You were a sinner, you got saved by grace, and now you are a saint
You didn’t just receive righteousness, you became the righteousness of God
What Jacob wrestled with the angel for most Christians don’t even know they’re supposed to have
As long as you believe you are a sinner, you will continuously try to “do” your “be”

· You naturally reproduce who you think you are

· We tell others how to treat us by the way we treat us

In the 70’s, government housing projects were built to provide free housing to address the homeless problem

· Within two years those projects were some of the worst housing areas in the entire country

You will reduce your environment around you to the environment you believe you have within you

· You will always produce the environment around you that you have on the inside of you

It is no longer your NATURE to sin

· God didn’t just forgive you, He CHANGED you

You can’t help someone who doesn’t know they have a need
We all start out as sinners (it’s important to remember where we came out of to avoid arrogance)
When we repent, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness

· If we sin, we now have an advocate with the Father

· No one who abides in Him sins, no one who is born of God practices sin, anyone who does not practice righteousness is not born of God

You may sin everyday, but you aren’t supposed to
Most of us had enough faith to get saved but not enough to live righteously because the church didn’t teach us that we should
If I sin without feeling convicted, the Holy Spirit does not dwell within us
Loving God and living in the Kingdom are two different things
If you believe you’re stuck in sin, you’re stuck

· But Jesus put everything under your feet

· You are not your temptation, nor are you identified by your worst day

There’s a difference between condemnation and conviction

· Condemnation tries to convince you that your action is your identity (you are a liar, you are an adulterer, you are an alcoholic)

· Once the devil convinces you that you are what you do, he can go on and bother someone else because you will reproduce what you think you are

· Conviction says you are a way to amazing to be acting like that and your new identity is above that, stop acting below your nature

o It is below your nature to not act nobly

God slayed the Lamb from the foundation of the world

· The first thing God did was create time, but He lives outside of time

· Before the foundation of the world, God chose us

· In God’s realm it’s already finished

o God always starts from the end and works backward

Whenever you say anything that makes you less than a worthy child of God you are insulting you Father in heaven

· It’s not called humility, it’s called the spirit of “stupid”

When we don’t know this, we reduce our calling down to the size of our own self-worth (i.e. small)
Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less

· When you think badly about yourself, it’s still all about you

Prodigal son: “And when He came to himself, he went home”
You don’t know who you are yet, but when you do the manifestations of the Spirit will flow out of you

· Be yourself – be imitators of God

Speaker – Bill Johnson, Senior Leader - Bethel Church:

John 3

There are things in the Kingdom in the things that are true, but then there are things in the Kingdom that are more true

Mercy triumphs over judgment
“I no longer call you servants but friends”
The Lord draws us into understanding of Kingdom principals by painting a picture in nature

· Parables, sowing & reaping, etc.

In sowing & reaping you receive based on what you’ve done, in blessing you receive based on what He’s done
Each new level is built upon the previous
The issue isn’t so much in the area of biblical truth, but in honoring the season that others are in without the necessity to one-up where they are

Why would God increase your wisdom & accountability when you aren’t being faithful with what you’ve been given thus far?

Why would God give understanding to someone who isn’t going to be obedient in that understanding

It is the pleasure of God to conceal a matter, it is the glory of Kings to search them out (i.e. Easter egg hunt)

God continuously hides beautiful things for us according to our capacity to discover
As our capacity increases, so does the level of hiding
God always hides things that they may be found

In this culture, we value insight much more than experience

You can get a college degree in business without ever being taught by someone who ever owned a business
We have so much teaching without experience to back it up
Jesus always made the connection between doing & teaching

Many people stop short of a divine encounter because they’re satisfied merely with good theology

Any theology which doesn’t bring me into a divine encounter only succeeds in leading me deeper into religion
Spiritual maturity is then seen as those who can best argue their points

When I was born again, God gave me the ability to see that which is unseen
We speak what we know, and we testify of the things we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony

We’re coming to humanity with the family stories, and we just can’t find anyone who is willing to listen
The testimony of the Lord is our inheritance forever

· Your testimony now is not just your own story, but you’ve now inherited the full story of God’s personal history

If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can I tell you heavenly things?

If you don’t understand the Kingdom principals I’m telling you using earthly terms, you won’t understand if I tell you Kingdom principals that have no earthly parallel

Always ask God to reveal to you foundational truths

Foundational truth attracts revelation

Earth never sets the model for heaven, heaven always sets the model for earth
Time never sets the standard for heaven, heaven sets the standards for heaven
We bind things that don’t exist in heaven & are illegal in heaven

We bind according to the contract God wrote, exposing the lies of the enemy
Death, loss & destruction are the devil’s fingerprints
Our assignment is to look for those places where the devil has influence and we bind

We bind what’s at work here that isn’t at work in heaven, but we cannot loose the Kingdom we haven’t yet seen
People are never the enemy, it’s the demons that empower them that are the enemy
The secrets of heaven are being held for those who will love His world more than this world

As children of God, we have legal access to mystery
It is His good pleasure to give His children the mysteries of the Kingdom
David’s training ground was in the field watching his sheep

God is looking to release the Kingdom secrets to those whom He can trust them with who will not release them until God says it’s time
He desires us to have a firm foundation in place to stand on that will allow us to reach these new levels of revelation
We are called to bring the reality of the invisible Kingdom into this visible world until this one conforms

In whatever you do, give your best unto the Lord, see what He does with it
All the church is in the Kingdom, but not all the Kingdom is in the church
God wants to give us sneak peeks into the Kingdom so that when something happens here we will know what to do

The Father looks for worshipers, not for worship

You always become like the one you worship
He could want nothing better for you than for you to be like Him

The fields are already ripe for harvest – all people are ready to be harvested now
Do you have an anointing that’s equal to the bondage of those you encounter?

If it takes 12 steps to get someone free use 12, if it takes 50 use 50
There is an anointing that is a 1-step program, Jesus had it & so can we
If 2K demons can’t keep one man from worshipping Jesus, what’s keeping the church from worshiping Jesus?

Sometimes God hasn’t shown up in a church for so long that when He does people think it’s the devil
God intends for those who will host His presence to partake in Kingdom blessing

Look up before you look down

Wednesday, September 19^th

Speaker – Bill Johnson, Senior Leader - Bethel Church:

Luke 4

The enemy will always attack the word of the Lord over your life

This is a vital process
The enemy always presents you with an alternative
If you don’t have an option, you can’t receive a reward for making the right decision
Reward is huge in the Kingdom of God
Jesus never rebuked His disciples for wanting to be great

· Religion will tell you greatness is not an option and will therefore strip you of your potential

· The passion for greatness is good, but they were going about it the wrong way

· Greatness in the Kingdom means being servant of all

When the Lord gives you favor, it’s because He loves the people around you and desires to touch them through you

· The continuous stream of favor is stopped when that favor is used for selfish ambition, building our own empires under Jesus’ name (becomes like the Dead Sea)

Grace is the empowering presence of God that enables you to do what only God could do
“Whoever you have favor on, I will have favor on” –God
There are differing levels of favor, but it is not a static system, vertical mobility comes with being faithful with the favor you’ve been given

· It’s not what you start with, it’s what you do with what you’ve been given

· The most well-known on earth may not be the most well-known in heaven, and those that are the most unknown on earth may be the most well-known in heaven

Flattery is the counterfeit of honor

· Don’t lie, but always find something to celebrate & exhort with

When you show favor God comes & adds His portion to what you’ve done

· It’s a continuation of “whoever you forgive, I’ll forgive”

When Jesus said, “As He sent me so send I you,” He was giving us his proclamation to Nazareth to begin with – “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…”
The best way to get a picture of something is to become as familiar as you can with the book in which the passage was written
Often “ministry” gets reduced to human talent, and apart from the Holy Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit get reduced to my gifts

Like sailboats sitting in a harbor, the sail means nothing without wind, our Spiritual gifts mean nothing apart from the Holy Spirit

Looking forward to the day when the church stands up and says, “If we don’t do the works of the Father, you have no reason to believe our message”
“No prophet is without honor except in His own home town”

The hardest people to minister to is family, which is why all ministry starts at home
If you honor a prophet as a prophet, you receive a prophet’s reward

· Honor is not the atmosphere to make leaders feel good about themselves, honor is the atmosphere where the people of God can become their best

· Honor is celebrating who people are without criticizing who they are not

We all come into a place with our own preconceived notions of how things should works, we compromise the possibility of corporate anointing
“When the power of the Lord is present to heal [corporate anointing], you don’t even have to lay hands on anyone.” –Smith Wigglesworth
When those in Nazareth questioned Jesus’ validity, the corporate anointing was shut down, so Jesus had to move to laying hand upon those who would receive Him
Jesus uses examples of financial provision and healing (two of the most rampant needs in the world, then and now)

· The prophets were sent to individuals outside of Israel because of God’s heart to bless people, but there wasn’t enough honor in the nation of Israel to draw & contain an outpouring of God’s anointing

· They had become too familiar with the anointing, and had become accustomed to it to the point that they no longer honored it

The more you see of who God is, the harder it is to remain a child

· It is the hardest task in the world to remain childlike as we spiritually mature

· Why do you think God seems to always start new movements with a brand new group of people? Because they don’t know what they’re doing

· Becoming an ‘expert’ in how God moves makes us resistant to His next movement because He typically moves differently each time

· When you don’t approach God as though ‘you know what you’re doing,’ you will operate in dependency upon Him

Don’t use your favor to build your empire or prove you’re right, use it to bless others
Familiarity ruins our sensitivity to the subtle moves of God

· If we don’t recognize the subtle, we’ll miss what He’s doing most of the time

· We should desire to know He’s moving even when there aren’t any manifestations, all of which comes out of intimacy in relationship

The religious leaders studied the Scripture day and night, yet they missed Jesus, yet those who were buried in sin and demon possessed knew who He was

The unqualified live with an awareness of need while the qualified live insulated from an awareness of need

Speaker – Beni Johnson, Senior Leader - Bethel Church: History & Ownership

The way you battle something that’s negative is to go extreme in the opposition direction

This is how you destroy that spirit that’s coming against the situation

Poverty mentality is not just money, it’s what you think in your mind and what comes out your mouth

Be an extreme tipper to servers at restaurants blows the poverty spirit away

We’re in a spirit realm, and everything we do effects that realm

Nothing you do goes without effecting the spiritual realm

Whenever you see a piece of trash on the ground, this is your city so now that’s yours
Not everyone in Redding likes Bethel, but that’s okay because we love them
You will get many opportunities this year to bless those who once cursed you
Several years ago, there were several thousand prisoners released in the northern California region & crime in Redding spiked

What if this was a setup for them, that God brought them to Redding so they could have a divine encounter?

Let every day be an opportunity for you to change this city
Sometimes when we intercede we travail, but we grow
Join us in taking ownership of this city

When you take ownership of a city and you really mean it, an authority comes up beside you in the Spirit

Bless our spiritual leaders, and bless the leaders of our city because all of them have great responsibilities

Thursday, September 20^th

Speaker – Mark Brookes, Senior Overseer (1st Year) - BSSM:

One great thing about God is that He can simultaneously love everybody the most
What has taken your teachers years to sow and receive from God is now yours
The History Bible is amazing – for those of you who love history
We believe that last year’s ceiling is your floor – we are in a new season
The Apostolic send, they’re anointed for signs & wonders, and they’re fathers

Increased Apostolic anointing is causing everything else to accelerate

God created you to change the world, and you have come to a place where we change the world
God’s going to fulfill dreams here that you’ve had for a long time – you’ll be forerunners
It is essential to have character and power simultaneously
We are going to do whatever it takes to walk in the fullness of what Jesus purchased for us on the cross
People are going to receive the vision of God’s plan for their life
Acts 19:11

This year is going to bring an increase in the strange & unusual miracles of God

Acts 8

“Those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word”

Whatever we get addicted to can be for life, so watch what you open yourself up to
Paul told us not to compare ourselves to one another, it’s a sign of immaturity

Do not measure yourself by your degree of manifestations or lack thereof

Through Adam & Eve the planet was lost, but thanks to Jesus we got it back!

We all fell short of the glory of God, but through Jesus we got it back

If you come in here and hide, you will miss out on the experience that God has for you
We’ll never be what God wants us to be corporately apart from community

We must have people in our lives that we trust more than we trust ourselves

Whatever anyone teaches you, you need to study it out & confirm with the Holy Spirit
Being teachable is huge – you have to come hungry everyday

We lay aside what we know to receive something the somebody else has
Is a sign of humility – combats the religious spirit

Whatever it takes, become who God really created you to be
It’s not okay not to have relationship, or to have broken fellowship
So many times that God pours out His presence in a place and it is destroyed by immature Christians who stop that move of God

We all can think we’re mature because of what we know or have done, or how long we’ve been a believer, or because of our gifting

When people leave this place without knowing how to develop relationship, what they take out of here cannot spread
Leave this place healthy so you can carry the nuggets God has to give you

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

“Joy is glimpses of longing” –C.S. Lewis
Joy is loud, fun, and can last a long time
The Holy Spirit is cultivating loving joyous people
God wants to touch the whole person

God loves our emotional world
Emotions are not a problem, they are a blessing from God

Often we’re comfortable with someone touching us to produce a spiritual manifestation, so why shouldn’t we be comfortable with the Holy Spirit touching us?
If you try to control everything, you alienate the sort of risk-taking people that are hungry / desperate for manifestations of the Spirit

We’d rather try to pastor a wild fire than to try and set matches to people
Be prepared for some weird stuff to happen, but it’s important to have a culture where the Spirit of God can move spontaneously – Don’t Freak Out!

Sometimes in the move of God there’s a stigma that will surround you

Don’t get a self-justifying attitude when you’re getting feedback

At some point you have to give up the belief that you can tell what’s going on in people’s hearts – don’t be the flesh police!

If what you’re seeing in someone is only 5% God and 95% the person’s flesh, celebrate the piece that is God

Our natural being will always play a part in encountering a supernatural God

Speaker – Bill Johnson, Senior Leader - Bethel Church: Sustaining a Move of God

For this to work, it will take more than teaching / instruction
All the theory in the world never helps anybody unless there’s a chance to live it out
When the Lord reveals Himself in a special way, it isn’t for that person alone

What’s important is that we give away whatever God gives us
He extends favor to us so we can extend it to those around us

The favor on King David’s life came in part because of His passion for Israel
Anytime somebody declares that revival is for a season, you get that from history because every time there’s been a revival it has ended
I don’t want to diminish Scripture to my experience, but to elevate my experience to match Scripture
God’s nature is to take us from Glory to Glory, and of the increase of His government there shall be no end

Revival is therefore not just a shot in the arm for the church (lasting 2 to 4 years)
Is it possible for a generation to live continuously in revival?
Let us not assume something is so simply because it has always been that way

It is theological irresponsibility to take the promises of God and then try to find the time periods they fit into

Amazingly enough, God’s promises are typically for other time periods that we don’t have any responsibility for

Pour into a culture that experiments until we get it right – seeking the kind of habitation of God that changes the course of history
For several thousand years the church has gathered around a weekly message, while Israelcamped around the presence of God
A righteous man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children

Today’s actions will effect a generation I will never see
We want to live with the mindset that what we do today effects generations to come

Luke 11:24

The house gets cleaned and swept, but because nothing was put back into it’s place (of the Kingdom), the enemy returned
Anytime you experience deliverance, realize you are in a war and the enemy will try to retake territory it has lost
Sometimes a fiery dart can imitate an affliction in your body that has already been healed

If you move into fear it sticks around
If you move into faith and refuse to allow it, it won’t stick

When the Kingdom of God advances, it’s about taking over territory

“Organized to beat the devil” –John Wesley

Amazing what happens when administration is at the mercy of a move of God rather than the move of God being at the mercy of administration

It’s about making banks for the river to flow in

God showing up in power is not necessarily an affirmation of that person’s doctrine or lifestyle, simply a confirmation of the anointing on their life
You can beat the enemy that occupies the promised land, but you can’t beat the beasts that would occupy it if I drove out the inhabitants
Typically what happens is the next generation wants to protect the memory of the previous generation (and rightfully so), but often times the next generation knows the disfavor that comes from taking risks, and they decide to build monuments and Bible schools and become stuck administrating it, the following generation now becomes done with the whole thing because they don’t want to tend a museum

If you don’t sustain a move of God in the ground that was taken, the enemy comes back with seven times the force

The purpose of war is victory, the purpose of victory is occupation, and the purpose of occupation is expansion
The next generation is supposed to see how much further they can go than the previous generation

If they risked that much, I will risk double
When you don’t live to expand, you live to protect

· How did that work out for the guy with the 1 talent?

One of the most important things we can teach our children is that one day we will answer before God of all we have done
Each of us have been given a measure of the anointing, and the responsibility is to use my position in the Kingdom for expansion
There is no spiritual armor for our back – there is no retreat
I’m not going to measure my success by how good I feel, or how many people I’ve healed, or whatever else I’ve done – at the end of the day it’s all about “did I do what He said?”
Revival is messy, but it must be non-negotiable
Moves of God sound great, but the process is often undesirable

There are no poop-less cows
If you want the increase an ox brings, bring a shovel because it’s messy

The Lord wants us to delight in doing His will, and He will feed the hungry
Jesus said His food was the will of God – in the way that we consider how what we eat will effect our workout later in the day

The food of God may be bitter to the taste but is always sweet to the stomach, while the food of the table of man is many times so sweet to the taste, but is always bitter to the stomach

If you haven’t eaten a plate full of the will of God, when the critics come your own hunger may cause you to change and embrace the table of man
We can’t measure the success of the church by how happy the people are

The will of God is the best meal ever, and it will always satisfy
It will cost you to get from A to B, but this is progress in the Kingdom which greatly overshadows the cost

When you give a blanket yes that is complete, you won’t have to continue to count the cost because it doesn't matter the cost, you’re in
We’re to go into the world as a living offering to the will of God

WEEK #3

Monday, September 24^th

Speaker – Kevin Dedmon, Firestarters Pastor - Bethel Church:

The church is ‘Vitamin J’ (joy) deficient!
If we want more power, we need more presence

It’s His presence that releases the power

Yada (personal, intimate knowledge) vs. Ginosko (intellectual, head knowledge)
Fruitfulness comes out of intimacy

Paul didn’t want to just ginosko Christ, he wanted to yada Christ
If we really want the power out of His presence, we must be prepared to pay the price that may come in the form of persecution

When we don’t yada Father, we can be deceived into believing He’s the one at fault for the devil’s attacks of thievery, murder, and destruction
It is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the Kingdom, which is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit
The joy of the Lord should not only permeate our hearts, but the environments around us
More often than not, we think God will release His power if we could only prove to God how sad we are

In God’s presence is not mourning, grieving, sorrow, or the gnashing of teeth, but laughter, joy and peace

When we pray, God comes

There is absolutely no way that you can release the Kingdom of God someplace and God not show up

Jesus taught His disciples to pray out of our relationship with Father as His sons in declaration that His Kingdom come, His will be done on earth as it is in heaven
When you release the Kingdom of God into negative circumstances, you are calling heaven to earth, and it comes!

God doesn’t give you sickness, disease or injury to teach you things – He’s a better teacher than that

This is the devil trying to trick you into believing God is your problem

Acknowledge what God IS doing rather than what He ISN’T doing, our faith paves the way for further and deeper breakthrough
Celebrate the goodness of God and you will see His hand more in your life

Risk releases God’s presence that releases God’s power
Compassion is way different than pity or sympathy

Pity says ‘bummer for you’, sympathy comforts, but compassion takes action and does something about it
People don’t need our sympathy, they need our compassion

When the Shalom peace of God is released, it brings heaven & earth into alignment
Celebrate what God is doing in faith that the yeast will permeate the entire loaf
When we pray He comes, and when He comes He does good things because He’s a good God who’s in a good mood and that’s the Good News!

Tuesday, September 25^th

Fall Retreat – JH Ranch

Speaker – Gabe Valenzuela, Senior Overseer (2nd Year) - BSSM:

Matt. 4:18
The pressure in school is to do tons of amazing things, to go out & perform

Jesus will come for you while you are out ‘fishing’

Jesus is asking us to do a supernaturally-lived ‘normal’ life so He can find us right there, in the normal process of everyday life
Don’t live a performance-lived, pressure-filled life

It’s not about doing amazing things to measure up to expectation, the only expectation is for us to do what God as put in front of us
We must be faithful in doing what God has set in front of us now, then God can come find us & present us with a ‘Holy Spirit opportunity’

Learn to lead as a servant & serve with a humble heart (Proverbs 22:4)

Pray greatness into other’s lives, help lead them into destiny
By humility come riches & honor in life
If you pay attention to the praise of men more than to the voice of Holy Spirit, you’ll die out there
You can’t lead from a place of pride, the Kingdom is brought in humility

You must always be teachable (Proverbs 2)

This is one of our most important jobs in life
You can have all the wisdom in the world, but if you aren’t teachable you won’t grow
God has so much more to teach you outside of the classroom

Growth & inevitably greatness come through failure – it’s a journey

The true measure of who you are is success, but your success is built upon you taking risk & failing
Pursuing greatness means great failure - can you fail and keep on moving forward?
You have to push through things that you don’t want to do in order to be prepared for where God eventually wants you to go

‘We’re a research and development (R&D) team’ –Kris Vallotton

This means we try stuff that sometimes doesn’t work, but we learn & grow together

You must keep offense away from your heart

You’re going to have crazy opportunities to get offended at people
Offense typically comes via comparison – if you compare yourself to others you will lose, eventually becoming either defeated or arrogant
If your attitude isn’t pure, God cannot promote you
Arrogance will kill you

Want to be amazing – humble yourself, it’s key

Learn how to hear Holy Spirit – He’s more than a feeling

I Kings 19:11 – the still, small voice
In this environment, we daily feel the wind of God, experience the earthquake of God, or see the fire of God, but that is not the goal – can you hear Holy Spirit?
We must understand what it takes to hear Holy Spirit

Feeling Him is different than hearing Him

Sometimes He speaks really loud and it’s easy to hear Him, other time He speaks really softly and you really have to focus
Learn to hear what Holy Spirit’s saying, not just see what Holy Spirit’s doing

We have to remember what’s important in the Kingdom and that’s relationship

We were built for connection with God
Faith is built out of relationship
In the Kingdom you aren’t dangerous because of WHAT you know, you’re dangerous because of WHO you know – it’s all tie to our understanding of relationship

If relationships are most important, then LOVE is most important

God showing up to heal somebody is much more a statement of how much the Lord loves them than how much you love them
If we aren’t careful, they become a check mark on our to-do list
Don’t mistake His showing up as evidence of your love for people
Without love you are a big, fat waste of time
Make this year about learning to love really, really well
The world isn’t crying out for miracles, the world is crying out for love
God is moved by compassion, and we should be too
If we’re going to change history, it’s going to come out of my willingness to love people as though it was God Himself standing in front of them instead of me

Wednesday, September 26^th

Fall Retreat – JH Ranch

Speaker – Mark Brookes, Senior Overseer (1st Year) - BSSM:

‘Ho’ means a burst of expectation
‘Bliss’ = the ecstasy of God
Isaiah 55
John 15:16

Comforter besides Jesus but just like Jesus
Holy Spirit does what Jesus would do if He were here physically
The ‘original’ Holy Spirit lives within us – there is no ‘Junior Holy Ghost’

Isaiah 61 – The Spirit of the Lord is upon YOU

WEEK #4

Monday, October 1^st

Speaker – Mark Brookes, Senior Overseer (1st Year) - BSSM: Who’s Your Daddy?

The love of God is the kindergarten of the Kingdom, it’s the 1^st building block
If we don’t really have the love of God in us, we will build upon a faulty foundation and eventually our building will crumble
Jesus demonstrated who the Father was, and what it was to be a son

Contradicted who they thought the Father was
It was completely off their grid that God would have a son

In modern society, we live a life in isolation
Jesus had compassion for the multitudes because they were like sheep without a shepherd
Abba Father = a father that was trustworthy to have relationship with

The Jews only new YHWH as God, and had no reference for Him as Father

You can’t receive God’s love through your head, you must experience it

If you learn it but don’t experience it, that’s what we call religion

A key to getting more of God is experiencing more of His love
It is abnormal not to hear God, and it is abnormal not to feel God
The Father has loved us since before the world was even founded
When we don’t experience love, the result is a void within us

We try to fill this void with all kinds of things that are not Him

When we don’t understand the love of our Father, we make very poor decisions to get the need of our heart for love met

We begin to seek pleasure in order to feel something to try and fill the void that only God was meant to fill within us

Christians are in identity crisis – they don’t know who they are and are living out lives that look just like the rest of the world
We were not born to live as the world, but to live as Jesus’ body in the earth

Impossible to do without an experiential revelation of God’s love & our identity

Jesus showed us that we can live a life just like He lived
Repent – change the way you think – because the kingdom is at hand

Requires a new mindset in order to see/function in it

Jesus died so that relationship could be restored between us and our Father
Many Christians are afraid of God, seeing Him as they see their own earthly father

Tough, demanding, not interested in what they are doing, punishing, etc.

Father’s are supposed to give us identity, security and strength

Father’s are supposed to model to their kids what kind of Father God really is

Negative views of the Father

Absent Father

Divorced, work-a-holic, etc.
Leads to serious rejection issues

Distant Father

Emotionally disconnected – they’re home, but they aren’t really there
Message is that you’re on your own – you can’t trust anyone

Harsh Father

No matter what you did, it’s never good enough
Punishment for mistakes/accidents
Hardship & tragedies become God’s way of teaching us lessons

Demanding Father

You become a perfectionist or you’re always running because you fear you can’t live up to His standard
You deal with performance issues – you perform to get loved/accepted

Insensitive Father

Doesn’t matter how you feel, all that matters is productivity
You shut down emotionally

How do I view God? I know He loves me, and would probably do whatever He could to help me, but He’s not able to do much to help me, I’m pretty much on my own, even though I depend on Him to help me at the minimum level, because that’s the level He’s come through for me before, but even then you never can be certain whether He will or won’t and it’s usually best just to do all you can on your own and only go to Him when absolutely necessary. I’m only really loved based on my performance, and I probably can’t measure up to His expectations, so I live to fulfill my own expectations, which much of the time are pretty impossible.

Tuesday, October 2^nd

Speaker – Kris Vallotton, Associate Senior Leader - Bethel Church:

One little 25-second incident where we didn’t control ourselves can change our lives forever
When we pull the trigger on forgiveness, it changes our lives forever

We released someone from prison, and the Lord released us from debtor’s prison, and we were freed to live as a prince or princess in the Kingdom

Matthew 18 – story of the two debtors

“The Kingdom of God is like…”
Unforgiveness is really important to God, that we don’t allow that to grow in our life – it’s the fastest way to be demonized as a Christian
We must learn to keep short accounts
If we know we have relationships with other people that aren’t clean – whether it’s our fault or just our responsibility – we must leave our gift at the altar, go and first make amends
Unforgiveness is a real killer
Don’t let the sun go down on your anger – keep messes between you cleaned up

It’s important that we don’t do the passive thing just to avoid confrontation
Be sensitive to the other person, and if necessary say, “I know you’re not really fine, I can feel it, and I need you to tell me what’s bothering you.”

The Bible says, if you honor your father & mother you will have long life – do you understand the opposite of this??
How perfect does someone have to be before they earn your respect?

That will come back to haunt you
Bare fruit of repentance – apologize & clean up your relational messes
Apologize even for having a wrong attitude

Some of you are living out of a name (label) that God didn’t give you

Refuse to let a name (label) be a wall where you have no permission to talk to someone

It can be very difficult to rebuild trust with some folks, especially following years of abuse – it takes time to rebuild that trust and those relationships
If we only did stuff when it felt good, we probably wouldn’t get very much accomplished
The condition God finds us in isn’t the condition we stay in after He finds us
The goal is that we would think like God
We can’t afford to have a thought in our minds that isn’t in His

Any place that you are in fear is a sign that your love isn’t perfected and the Kingdom isn’t reigning over that part of your life

When I’m mimicking God I am living how I was intended to live

When we’re doing signs & miracles, we are acting like God
We are not God, but God is within us

When Jesus rose from the dead, the cloth that covered the body was lying where it was supposed to be, but the face cloth was rolled up and lying off to the side

When Jesus rose, the head of Christ was revealed, but the body of Christ was yet to be revealed

If God is our Father, we are His heirs, and fellow/joint/co heirs with Jesus (not sub heirs)
We were sent to preach the Gospel to all creatures, because the Gospel isn’t just for mankind, but for all of creation

He was crucified at “The Skull” because He was the head, and he wore a crown of thorns because of the curse on the ground that came with the fall
The curse – you will do the right thing but the wrong this still happens
Jesus died for the world (the word used there is cosmos)
The devil hates us because we have what He wanted, to be like God
What the devil couldn’t get through pride, God gave us through creation

God, the devil, and all creation knows who you are – you are the only one who doesn’t know who you are
We are sons and daughters of God, we are created like Him – one day your eyes will light up from the revelation that will hit you about this

A man with an argument has no power over anyone who has experienced Him

We are not called to the unity of doctrine, but to unity of faith

If you have any thought other than “I am amazing” it is not from God, it is from Satan who is the accuser
Part of God’s punishment for Satan was to imprison him here on earth and unleash us on him to destroy him and his works

Speaker – Dann Farrelly, Dean / Bible Teacher - BSSM: Parables

Parables are like a joke in that if you don’t get the reference of the parable, you won’t understand the punch line
One of the differences between John and the synoptic Gospels is that John covers a 3-year ministry while the other Gospels are more of a synopsis of Jesus life and death
God hides truth for us, not from us

Jesus told parables to communicate truth to those willing to listen & hear

We may know the right answers, but what good is it if we can’t apply the answers to life
Some of Jesus’ parables were not just illustrations of Jesus’ key teaches, but many actually were His key teachings
Parables aren’t allegories – in allegories, every single detail has meaning, but not so with parables

Jesus can use a criminal as the hero of the story while not endorsing criminal activities

Know the audience, be ready to be caught off guard, and correctly interpret the points of reference
Many parables have the meaning spelled out by the author at the parables’ conclusion

It’s important that we don’t miss the clues in the text regarding the meaning of parables, especially when it’s written out for us

Hear it in the “then & there” first, then translate it to the “here & now” for application
Matthew 18: when we withhold forgiveness, WE’RE the idiot from heaven’s perspective

This is a 2x4 to the face for all of us

Parables are designed to provoke a heart response in the hearer to abandon our present lifestyle and move to a Kingdom lifestyle

Many parables of the Kingdom have an urgency component that we no longer hear, so we go looking for another meaning

When we teach the parables, we can catch the audience off guard again by re-framing the details of the story
While the synoptic Gospels are very similar, 90% of John is unique to John
John contains no genealogy, no birth account, no childhood, no transfiguration, no appointing of the 12 disciples, no ascension, no great commission, no teaching on the Kingdom of Heaven, only seven miracles recorded, seven ‘I am’ statements by Jesus, many long one-on-one conversations, recurring themes of light, life, love & truth, Jesus teaches extensively on the Holy Spirit, contains three Passover feasts, much more Jerusalem centered, resurrection of Lazarus, structure is different for Passion week (makes up about 50% of John, but only 25%-30% of other Gospels)

It’s probable that the other Gospels were written first, that John was aware of them including their strengths and weaknesses, leading him to fill in the gaps

Wednesday, October 3^rd

Speaker – Bernie Ooley, Bible Instructor - BSSM:

Luke was a traveling companion of Paul
Matthew is written to the Jews
Mark targets the Roman audience, the pragmatic mind
John was written to a more universal audience
Luke targeted a Greed audience, the upper crust of Grecian society

The up and inners need Jesus as much as the down and outers
Education & reason failed the Greeks the way Religion failed the Jews

Longest book in the New Testament
Luke mentions women more than any other Gospel
God calls us beyond ourselves – always
If your vision doesn’t scare you, it isn’t big enough
He loves to call the least likely to accomplish our purposes

It’s the David’s who slay the Goliaths
It’s the Abrahams & Sarahs that have the children of promise

God will use what we have if we’ll give that to Him, but those things are not what qualifies us – what qualifies us is a heart completely surrendered to Him
No word of God is void of power!

The word of God comes with the power in itself to cause itself to come to pass

You nullify and make void & of no effect the authority of the Word of God through your tradition, which you hand on

We must be open to the Spirit of God to show us another piece of the diamond, giving us an encounter with Him through the Word

Word makes itself vulnerable and open to rejection
Take God’s word to you as the final authority, whether you understand it or not
Faith is not blind, faith sees a situation with a better pair of eyes – from heaven’s perspective – and agrees with that
When you get a promise, the external circumstances often begin to look 180 degrees different – persecutions & afflictions (pressure) arise from the enemy to test that word

So if you’ve received a promise and things are looking opposite, you’re on the right track
Carry the promises of God in your heart in secret until God leads you to share it
Satan loves to cause spiritual abortions and miscarriages

The favor of God opens doors, but it also starts wars

Many people won’t understand, and they fear what they don’t understand

The original title of the Prodigal Son story is The Lost Son

Prodigal means reckless extravagance (term should be applied to the Father)
Part of a trilogy of parables about how we should respond when one who was lost is restored to the family

It was his hunger that drove him home

Pray that they come to themselves and that their hunger will drive them home

It was very undignified for an elderly gentleman to run in that time, but he didn’t care about propriety, his son was home
The Bible contains tremendous pictures that are full of wisdom and truth
The father didn’t see the grime-covered, smelly man in front of him, he saw his son

We don’t have to wait until we get all the dirt off our lives in order for us to have a God encounter
This is the attitude we should have when the lost start coming bath

The robe is a symbol of the father’s covering, giving the son a new identity and covering over his filth and making us look brand new
God’s gifts and His calls are irrevocable, and He never withdraws them – ever!

God the Father does not change His mind about our destiny

We need to see the gold in people and call it out in them
God always restores us to a place better than before if we allow Him to, making us a sign of His goodness and His mercy
The Father’s forgiveness preceded the son’s confession of sin
As soon as we return to the family, the Father gives us access to the accounts of heaven right off the bat
People wearing shoes can go places where people that don’t have shoes can’t go
Peace anchors us to fight like the 6” spikes in the shoes of Roman battle armor
God has seen ahead to our point of need and made preparation in advance
The older brother based his relationship with his dad on his own merits – he treated the father as an employer, not as a father
In that culture, the elder brother got two-thirds of the inheritance anyway – He didn’t know what He had
When we don’t know what we have, it becomes a competition

Jealously is rooted in fear, the loss of control, and poverty mentality

Believes there’s only so much to go around

“Don’t you know that all I have is yours”
“Be you, everyone else is taken.” –Oscar Wilde
God gives based on loving relationship, not based on merit
God wants to uniquely express Himself through us
Remember that He is our ultimate reward, He is our ultimate inheritance
The point of the story is that God wants us to have the heart of the Father

Speaker – Mark Brookes, Senior Overseer (1st Year) - BSSM: Who’s Your Daddy? (Part II)

This is a life long journey, not any single event
You need to be ok with our journey

Where you’re at with God in your relationship with Him needs to be celebrated
Believe it or not, right now you have more of God than someone else on earth

If you’re not comfortable where you’re at, you’ll struggle with falling short instead of focusing on walking through your process with God
Jesus demonstrates how a son should interact with a Father
Obedience is something we should all possess in our character, but greater than obedience is love
There’s a difference between obeying out of love and obeying for ulterior motives

Sometimes we obey God for other reasons apart from love

We want to go beyond obedience into intimacy

He doesn’t simply care to know all about us, because He already does – He wants us to share ourselves with Him for the mere act of sharing ourselves with Him

One of the main lies we must overcome is ‘God doesn’t love me’

Parable of the talents – saw God as a hard man, afraid of Him
How we see God often determines what we get from Him
How we see ourselves also determines what we get from God
Jesus loved the Apostle John to the depths that John saw himself loved by Jesus

The Kingdom is about using what God has for us
Judging is a sin, and that includes judging yourself

Repent of judging yourself & forgive yourself

When we don’t always see Father God as being good, we will misinterpret the Bible

We can convince ourselves that we should obey all God’s commandments so that He will love me, or we can decide to just love God & commandments get easy
Commandments are like a day at the beach when we’re in a love relationship with God

Do we love God for love’s sake, or just in an effort to get what we want from Him?
Many people have a servant’s heart with a slave mentality

We are to have a servant’s heart with a friend mentality
We cannot change our heart, but we can change what we believe which in turn will change our heart
God only shares secrets with His friends, with slaves it’s all about duty
A slave mentality does not believe they have anything worth while to say

God invited Israel into relationship and wanted to lead them into the Promised Land, but their slave mentality kept them out of the Promised Land and they walked in the wilderness for 40 years
The works of the law are under the curse

The law is that voice that says you’ll never be good enough
The harder you try to do better, the worse it gets

Don’t attack anything through discipline or by making commitments (law)

Grace is the ability to do what you couldn’t do before

Our real issue isn’t fatherhood, the real issue is son ship

Most people don’t know how to be a real son / daughter around the Father
We must be a good son / daughter first

Thursday, October 4^th

Speaker – Judy Franklin, Secretary to Senior Leader - Bethel Church:

Resentment leads to bitterness, and bitterness leads to hatred

Repentance at any point in the process ends the process & eliminates it

“Truth devoid from experience must always dwell in the realm of doubt.” –Dietrich Bonhoeffer
God never gets mad at us – He looks at us through Jesus-colored glasses
Don’t ever attribute a harsh tone to God, because He always speaks to us with loving kindness

Our view of God effects the vein in which we hear Him

We have no idea how much He loves us
He doesn’t want us to sin because He doesn’t want us to get hurt
The Father laughs a lot!
He never stops having fun with His good kids just because some of His other kids aren’t making great decisions
He gets excited over our stuff, and He loves when we get excited over His stuff
He delights in us and sings over us
The full saying is: “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back to life again.”
Remember how you get where God takes you, so you can take others
Don’t get really adamant about what you believe about Heaven, because you’re probably wrong anyway
You always judge the fruit
He loves us to know that He loves us
We don’t want to be held by Him because of our sin
You can say, “It’s just my imagination,” or you can trust God & go with it
God will never tell you or show you anything that is in opposition to His word, but he can tell/show you things that are in opposition to your understanding of His word
When we learn to love like He loves, that’s when we’re going to win the world

The world has had enough of judgment, but it’s starving for love

Speaker – Chris Overstreet, Outreach Pastor - Bethel Church:

You’ve been fought for, and Jesus won
Really fall in love with Jesus

Discover who you are through Him and take that Gospel to the world

Be so contagious with the love of God it would rub off on people everywhere you go
The first thing every believer needs is a deep revelation of how much God loves them

When you realize the level of value God has for you, you will start to value yourself the way He does

Holy Spirit is not an “it” but a person
Without the death and resurrection of Jesus there is no Gospel
Please don’t find you identity by what you can do for Jesus, or by a title someone might want to give you, find your identity as sons & daughters in the blood of Jesus
Once you are convinced of who you are in Him, no one can talk you out of anything
Love is a person – God IS love

There’s not a single person that Jesus didn’t die for
When we encounter the love of God it changes us
We can’t properly love others until we know that we are loved
The mark of a Christian should be that they know they are loved and love others
The love of God is centered around the blood of Jesus

It’s not what we do that validates our relationship with Jesus
Do we pray for the sick because we won’t a testimony, or do we pray for the sick because we love them?

It’s all about the condition of the heart

Insecurity in relationship requires that we prove ourselves
Take the pressure off of you and everyone around you and simply start to love people

That is when the gifts of the Spirit will begin to show up powerfully

Learn to love people well who are outside of your circle
Our motivation must first be to love
The presence of God is everything

Holy Spirit is the great evangelist
Holy Spirit wants to work through you to serve people in love

Holy Spirit wants to rest on ordinary individuals – become keenly aware of His presence
You + Holy Spirit = Powerful Overcomer
Often people are waiting for an extraordinary feeling from God as a sign to minister to others
A lot of times we get hurt by people but we take it out on God, and God didn’t do anything to us
God just heals people because He loves people
The joy of the Lord is a heart condition
It’s okay to be open, honest and straight forward with God

“Father, I see this in the Bible but I don’t have it in my life. Help me get this.”

Medical science has proven that joy is really good for your health
Live a lifestyle where the joy of the Lord really is your strength

Just because you aren’t laughing doesn’t mean you don’t have the joy of the Lord
Just relax and let the joy of the Lord flow through your heart

I Peter 2
People are people, they’re not projects
All people deserved to be honored
Honor is a really big thing
If we want to be able to have influence in people’s lives, especially in ministry, we need to treat them with honor
When you treat people with honor, you give them a place in your life and they give you a place in their life
We need to have a long-term mentality when it comes to ministering to people – done in love an honor
Treat people like people and allow God to be God
Hebrews 6:11 – God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him
Our faith pleases Him
Most Christians sit in the church pews without ever stepping out to do something in faith
When we are motivated by love, we can never fail, no matter the risk
We can never outgrow our son-ship

The moment we think we have is the moment we stop growing
Think like a son learning to walk this thing out

Removes the fear – makes Christianity fun

Fear is not a personality, it’s a spirit
The words of God in our mouths communicate life to the hearers
We really don’t need all the right words, just a heart willing to step out for Jesus
Christianity is not all about us – it’s all about our heart condition
Unless you learn how to serve, you’ll never make it in ministry because ministry is all about serving God and serving people

WEEK #5

Monday, October 8^th

Speaker – Dann Farrelly, Dean/Bible Teacher, BSSM: Grasping God’s Word – Chapter 15

Pericopes – section of Scripture with a definitive beginning & ending
Faith is for coping, but also for transformation
Hyperbole – exaggeration used to make a point

We are found of making our sin small, so we make the sacrifice of the Son small
Let hyperbole register with you emotionally, because that its primary purpose is to move us to action

Why are there 4 Gospels?

They are the early accounts that survived and/or the earlier accounts have been swallowed up by these Gospels
Many different people wrote down specific events that happened in Jesus’ ministry for their records
Luke 1 – eye witness testimonies
Christianity is a religion set within history
God wanted us to have four different aspects of the highly complex person of Jesus – provides a fuller picture
Address historical concerns
The Holy Spirit allowed each Gospel to have a particular emphasis to meet the needs and perspectives of their respective audiences

Writing to explain Jesus to a particular audience

Jesus’ audiences were primarily Aramaic-speaking, but the Gospels were chiefly written to Greek-speaking audiences

Illustrations can lose their edge when translated from one culture to another

Jesus’ audience was primarily rural and monotheistic, while the audience of the Gospels was primarily an urban and polytheistic audience
It was in the heart of God for us to have these painted portraits of Jesus, rather than photographed portraits of Him

We get to see Jesus through the author’s eyes as they paint their portrait of Him – showing us different sides of the same coin

Gospel harmonies are attempts to combine all the Gospels into one “Super Gospel”
We all hear differently, and each perspective tells Jesus in a different voice
Scholars & Bible teachers all have an agenda, and they teach from that bias

Ideas formed from internal logic & external writings
Check out Introduction to the New Testament by Carson, Moo & Morris

Mark was written first, and re-written twice (Matthew & Luke)
Matthew & Mark frequently agree in their disagreements with Luke
Luke & Mark frequently agree in their disagreements with Matthew
Matthew & Luke almost never agree with each other in difference to Mark
At no point does Mark follow an order that disagrees with Matthew & Luke

Therefore, however the books happened in the sequence they are written, they either took Matthew & Luke, then whittled Mark down to a smaller Gospel, or (more likely) they took a smaller book like Mark and re-wrote it with more detail in Matthew and Luke
Mark has an obvious relationship with Matthew & Luke

Two-Source Theory

Matthew & Luke used Mark and one other source (referred to as “Q”) that has not survived
Source “Q” contained approximately 250 versus that are similar in Matthew & Luke, but are not contained in Mark

Possible Timeline for Writing of Gospels:

Mark – written late 50’s, early 60’s
Matthew – written after Mark, but before the Temple’s destruction
Luke – written early 60’s around the time Acts was written, Paul died in the 60’s
John – written early 80’s, John lived longer than all other Disciples
All Gospels written anonymously, the names were added later

Probable that Disciples were on 3 ½ year traveling mission trip where Jesus would often tell the same stories with slight variations based on the audience
Matthew took things Luke has spread out all over and arranged them in teaching blocks
John gave voice to his selectivity, he purposefully chose what to include in his Gospel
Think horizontally & vertically when analyzing Gospel stories

Speaker – Jason Vallotton, Associate Overseer (1st Year) - BSSM: Working Through Pain

Spiritual concepts are great, but they can lose some of their value for us until we know how to practically apply them to our life in the moment
Main goal by the end of the year is for us to have tools we know how to use

Forgiveness, inner healing, restoration, etc.

Pain is not weakness leaving your body, it’s just pain
Pain says, “Fix me now! Do whatever you have to do to fix me right now!”

The younger we are in age and/or experience with pain, the louder the voice
Pain says something is wrong and it needs to be fixed, OR it could say something is right and you need to keep going

If you put up fences all around your yard, you still have a problem – YOU!
What is your process for dealing with pain?

“I just give it to God” is not a very practical answer

You know what you’re doing isn’t working because you still in the spot that you’re in
We like to bend reality so we don’t have to see the shape that we’re in
When you don’t acknowledge pain, you forget why you are the way you are, because pain shapes you

When we don’t acknowledge what’s going on inside of us, it begins to form us
It shapes our thinking, our emotional core, etc.
Not a fun place to be

Emotions are created by thoughts that go through your heads

Go back to “What was I thinking?”

Some people shut off their emotions for good

We shut off our emotions because we’re in pain and we don’t want to feel pain anymore
They figure someone who protects themselves has something to lose, and if you have something to lose then you can be hurt, so the safest thing is not to feel

There’s a relief in knowing there’s an answer for your problem
Matthew 5:4 – “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted”
Psalm 126:5 – “Those who sow in tears reap a harvest of joy”
James 1 – Consider it pure joy when you encounter trials…
When you don’t deal with your stuff, with your pain, you pass it off to the next generation and you begin a cycle of poverty – emotional deprivation
In the Garden, Jesus was going through a really tough time, but He faced it without trying to bend reality

He walked through the process and embraced the pain

If you believe there’s blessing in mourning, then the opposite is true because if you don’t mourn you aren’t blessed
If you don’t stick out James 1, and you keep jumping out of your place, you won’t develop

Perseverance is one thing the enemy doesn’t have

What I decide to do with my pain/anger/dysfunction will decide the outcome
The problem with pain is we don’t want to sit in it, we want to medicate or relieve it
Painful memories ambush you at the worst time

Fun memories flip to hurtful/painful memories
They are a gift that we must work through when they come, or we may not get a second chance at them

We can’t be mad at God, people make decisions and sometimes they make bad ones – that’s just life

You can question God all day long, you just don’t get very far

When we push through the pain to get answers from God for all of our questions, then we don’t have anymore questions about it and it’s been dealt with
A painful memory comes, grab hold of it, think through it (“I give myself permission to think about how it felt”), start writing about it & processing it, picture them in front of you and tell them how you feel, then always ask the Holy Spirit how He sees that person

Not a commentary on our character, it’s a commentary on what happened to us
Never use our pain as an excuse to hurt people
Allows us to be real with how we feel as a person
Finish each session in a place of compassion for them

Christians are often afraid of their emotions, especially anger (it’s ok to be angry)

We are unsure what to do with our emotions, so we shove them back down
We see our emotions as a commentary on us instead of a commentary on the situation
We try to put a pretty little mask over our painful emotions and anger so that God won’t get offended – we become like white-washed tombs

When we deny the truth of what’s going on inside of that, we deny ourselves the opportunity to be rid of that

It festers and boils over time, becoming an emotional cancer
You become what anger and sin has made you, a disconnected/distant person

When we know how to deal with pain, we don’t have any trash inside

We know we’re okay when we don’t have any painful memories/baggage

Stay focused on the joy set before you (e.g. the desire to get married again, etc.)
If it’s already dealt with, don’t dig it up (don’t go necromancing)

If you look inside for bad stuff, you’ll find it even if you have to create it
Ask yourself, “What’s going on with me?” regularly so you can stay emotionally healthy – just check the weather

Shame says you aren’t allowed to live happily ever after
Boundaries are like working out, you should do it regularly, but not constantly

You have to be able to set this thing down, go recharge and have fun, then go back to processing (continue the cycle until you can have the memories without the pain)

Tuesday, October 9^th

Speaker – Bishop Joseph Garlington, Senior Pastor, Covenant Church of Pittsburgh:

Judges 6 – Story of Gideon

“The Lord is with you, mighty man of valor.”

Whenever God says, “Do not fear” it’s usually too late
Gideon is a 21^st century model for a global strategy

God seems to pick those who don’t have a very high opinion of themselves
The more highly people seem to think of themselves, the less likely God seems to be to choose them
All of the things that you think qualify you actually disqualify you, and all of the things you think disqualify you actually qualify you
God only fishes from one pool for world-changers, and that is the pool of failures
Most of the people God chose offered Him excuses for why they weren’t the one

All relationships are quantum
“Humility is the God-given self-assurance that eliminates the need to prove the worth of who you are and the rightness of what you do.” –James Ryle
The Lord comes to us in our secret place
Heroes aren’t born, they’re cornered!
In the presence of God, Gideon gets a new summons
God calls things that are not as though they already were
Jeremiah 1

The Word (Debbar (OT) = Raymer (NT)) of the Lord came to me
When the Lord tells you who you are, don’t tell Him you are somebody else
Even if we can’t see what He sees, I need to say what He says
It’s great to want to go places for God, until He tells you to go somewhere you don’t want to know
My existence precedes my conception – my purpose precedes my birth

Purpose is the reason something is in existence

God fashioned us in such a way that we could fulfill His purposes, not ours

Our task is to discover God’s purpose for us, then walk there

We are sanctified – set apart for a specific use, to serve His highest purpose
Even when we don’t know our purpose, God has an assignment for us
Just say, “God, whatever my assignment is, I accept it.”
God is not a kill joy

Many believe if we do the will of God it will not be pleasant

My assignment precedes my awareness
When God gives us an assignment, He typically doesn’t tell us what to do – He calls us to go with Him and just enjoy the trip
God has placed every member in the body as it has pleased Him
Can we thank God for our place in the body even when we don’t know what it is?
Don’t despise prophecy, don’t reject who you are – regardless of how superior or inferior it may seem to anyone else

We have an assignment that no one else on earth can perform, at least not like we can do it

My believing precedes my seeing
God doesn’t ask us to explain to Him what He’s showing us, He just asks if we can see
It’s not enough for God to put His words in my mouth, I must speak His words that He has put in my mouth

God’s words in our mouth are as powerful as they are in God’s mouth, if we will say them

The words we have learned to believe about ourselves battle the words God has spoken over us in our hearts
“You have to say what you hear so you can see what you said”

e.g. – I am the righteousness of God, etc.

When God gives us an assignment, most of us don’t understand, and that is intentional!

Most of us, once we find out what God has called us to, we aren’t certain we want any part of it
It doesn’t matter what your other church did, this is the Kingdom!

“Lord, if you’re doing anything in the earth, I want to be part of it”
Our thoughts are as loud in heaven as are our words, so if you’re thinking it you may as well speak it
Whenever you talk to God, at some point He’s going to say something back
Jeremiah 15: “If you will give up this mistaken heart of distrust… concerning my faithfulness”
God has never failed anyone in all of redemptive history, so why would He blemish His record with you

His reputation is more important to Him than your attitude

You can’t get a bad word from God – even if you don’t like it, you will come to see it as a redemptive word from God
If it’s going to be funny later, then it’s funny now, we just have to find the humor
In the light of the King’s face is life
The Lord speaks strength to us (not always answers)

The answers to complicated questions will always come in His presence

When you don’t have a job, your job is then to look for a job

You can do fulltime ministry and a job

Moses – “Oh my Lord, how can I save Israel?”

When God gets angry at you, that is not the time to tell Him why He is not eligible for His assignment
Moses, Gideon, even David all had image problems
Someone should write a book on the dumb questions men ask God

God sees your limitations as strengths

God wants us to have His divine perspective of us

We are not just human beings having a temporary spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a temporary human experience
Why would you have someone as the Father of Nations who lies like RR ties?

Abraham struggled in his walk with the Lord, and if you don’t think you’re going to struggle in your walk with the Lord, you’ve got another things coming
One thing Abraham clung to was the promise of God

God doesn’t judge you for where you are, He judges you for what you refuse to become

All Abraham knows is he has a promise from heaven, and it’s God’s job to make sure it comes to pass

There are things God knows about you that you don’t know about yourself yet
How is it that someone can be in the presence of God and not know they have already found favor?
One of the problems with the Bible is you can read something in a minute that took 20 years, and you get the impression that it’s going to go fast for you when it isn’t
We need signs and wonders, even the scary ones
We must respond to the goodness of God we have encountered
There’s something about the goodness of God that when you realize what He’s done for you, you don’t have any room to complain

If we don’t get anything from Jesus for the rest of our lives, we should still celebrate what we’ve already received

When you get ready to do something God has called you to do, sometimes you have to deal with some past issues, in which God is telling you, “Stop it”
You have to tear down your father’s altar and kill your father’s bull

A lot of what our fathers have taught us is “bull”
Killing our father’s “bull” is critical for us to go on and fulfill our destiny

“A spiritual stronghold is a mindset impregnated with hopelessness that causes the believer to accept as unchangeable something we know to be contrary to the will of God”
Our purpose is intimacy with God – our assignment will come out of that

God didn’t create Adam because He needed a gardener, but because He wanted a friend – we are called to be friends with God

Obedience is just as effective even when it is stealth obedience

Both Saul and David was anointed, but Saul was crazy
When you serve someone who is anointed, do not receive their craziness

Sometimes your assignment calls you to do something that others aren’t able to do
Sometimes we are called out of where we are so that God can speak to us things that we weren’t able to hear where we were

God didn’t ask Abraham to count the stars while He was in the tent, He called Him outside
God will show you what He wants to show you when He gets you where He wants you to be

So often, we’re prepared to wade our way out gradually into the ocean of faith, but instead we typically get a shove right out into the deep water
Start each morning by saying “Yes”, because God is going to ask you to do something throughout the course of the day, so it’s best to just get the “Yes” out of the way

Speaker – Bill Johnson, Senior Leader - Bethel Church:

One of the difficult things in life is that people seem to want to wash their hands of someone after they fail – God never does that
We never want to go back in time, we always want to have an increasing value for the anointing

There is something on the bones of the dead prophets

Matt. 11:11

Those who are born again are the “Israel” of God
Two baptisms – baptism of water, baptism of the Spirit
When Israel entered the Promised Land, 9 ½ tribes lived on the west side of the river while 2 ½ tribes lived on the east side of the river – but they were all still part of the nation of Israel
If you want to live victoriously, you have to do it His way – often, that means sending the choir in first
We tend to be process-oriented, but the Lord tends to change up the order of the process so that we don’t get set on a formula and have to learn to hear His voice

There is no formula that provides a shortcut to breakthrough – the only reason it works is because He told you to do it that way

The things the Lord has put in your heart come because we hear His voice

We can do something a thousand times and it not work, but when He tells you to do it, it works because all of heaven is now behind you

John asked Jesus for the baptism of fire, but He didn’t have access to it because He was the greatest of the OT prophets

The greatest on this side of the river start out better than where John ended

Mark 10:17

You can’t enter the Kingdom unless you become like a child
There is a shifting of seasons in our life

There are times when the only way we’re going to receive what God has for us is through violent acts of faith, taking it by force (Matt. 11)
Means actively walking out acts of faith – prophesying, fasting, proclaiming, anointing with oil, prayer – you passionately pursue breakthrough and nothing else matters but that we get a breakthrough, even at the expense of propriety and decorum
Some things can’t be entrusted to soldiers, they can only be entrusted to sons

· Acts of faith violence no longer work & we must shift to receiving as a child – “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance”

· Maybe that’s why we don’t have the nations yet, because they can only be given to sons and not to soldiers

Sometimes God doesn’t want to entrust what He has for us to us because there’s too much of a chance that we’ll take the credit for the breakthrough
When God takes the wheel, He doesn’t want you to focus on your authority, He wants build on your identity

· People who know their identity don’t have to prove who they are

If you’re doing everything you know to do and nothing’s happening, there’s a good chance you’re in a season of inheritance
Sometimes the seasons of least activity are those of your greatest breakthroughs, because inactivity shows trust in a way that activity doesn’t
Typically what happens is that we’re in one season while all of our friends are in another season
The immature always want to conform you to their season
The mature recognize the season of those around them and know how to adjust themselves temporarily to accommodate the people around them

· Mourn with those who mourn, rejoice with those who rejoice

John the Baptist recognized that He knew something He didn’t have

· Don’t settle for a baptism of fire that fits your doctrinal qualifications

· You don’t define the baptism of fire, it defines you & must be measured in power

We may only be aware that we are in another season based on the fact that it’s been a while and we haven’t seen any breakthrough

· It does no good to box at shadows just as it does not good to sit on the couch fully armored

God promised Abraham a son, but he still had to have intimacy with his wife for that to happen – Ishmael was born out of presumption, Isaac was born out of faith

Do everything you need to do in the natural with the realization that God will bring the breakthrough

The primary display of power is supposed to be in the teaching of the word, all other things are subtitles to that

If we shift the focus to miracles, etc., then those become ends unto themselves instead of being testimonies of the truth of the word and goodness of God
The fathers who begin something are always given the credit for where it goes

Elisha took the car and went places with it, but Elijah built the car

The baptism of the Holy Spirit is to be an all-consuming fire, not a small flame we might use to warm our hands with

We must have a yearning in our heart for more than what we have received in the measure of the power of God
Don’t pursue something that fits your doctrinal position, pursue something that becomes an all-encompassing fire in your soul

Jesus told the disciples in the garden to watch & pray so that they wouldn’t fall to temptation

To watch & pray means to seek direction from God so that we may avoid the enemy’s stumbling blocks
Jesus set them up to succeed, but because they didn’t watch and pray they didn’t have the equipment necessary to survive the coming season

The favor of God changes how you walk

Jacob walked with a limp, Mary was known as the mother of the illegitimate son
Sometimes the favor of God puts us temporarily in opposition with people here
Part of the evidence of encountering God is walking with a stigma you can’t explain

When we pursue something from God and won’t let go, we will be marked for the rest of our life

You can’t have God willing something that Jesus took care of on the cross
The presence doesn’t increase with the seasons, it increases in maturity
Use the faith you have to discover The Presence of God

Take your faith and use it to find Him

Faith is not expressed through striving, faith is developed in rest

Go home, sit before the Lord, get into a position of rest, and begin to honor Him for His Presence and promises in your life
Activate faith over what God has already said
Find the places in Scripture where He promises His Presence
Once you’ve found His Presence, then abide there

Wednesday, October 10^th

Speaker – Kris Vallotton, Associate Senior Leader - Bethel Church: Purity Week

Maria thought the true value of the ring was in the value of the gold and the diamonds, but the true value of the ring was in the blood, sweat & tears it took to get it from the battlefield to the honeymoon sweet
Anyone can give away something expensive, but only those who understand sacrifice can give away something value
Your virginity is a trophy that you must have a plan to fight for and keep for your spouse, or someone will come along, take your trophy, and smash it into pieces
Far be it for us to offer our future spouse something that cost us nothing
When God said “be fruitful and multiply”, He gave us a sex drive
What does it mean to have a sex drive? It means you want to have sex with somebody
The world perverts sex, the church shames it, but the Kingdom celebrates it
The goal of purity isn’t to eliminate your sex drive, but to manage your appetite
We’re losing a whole young generation because we aren’t teaching our youth about sex so they’re learning it from the world
Sex was God’s idea – He wants us to have great sex… with our spouse

Many of us probably wouldn’t be here if sex wasn’t fun
It was God’s idea that we would have the most fun in the world with the one person in the world that we are most committed to

In America, we have “the talk”
In Hebrew culture, they had a healthy sexual culture

Weddings lasted a week – which is why Jesus made wine in gallons, not pints
Before the ceremony, all the men in each family would come and lay their weapons at the feet of the bride & groom as a symbol of their commitment to defend this covenant between the two families
After the vows, the bride & groom would go into a bridal chamber while everyone else waited outside
Once the marriage was consummated, they would throw the sheet with blood on it over the bridal chamber wall as proof of the purity of their union – only then did the celebration begin which lasted a week
This event was not 18 and over, but all members of the family were present for this, including the little children – so everyone grew up with this awareness
The people are not just celebrating an exchange of vows, they’re celebrating two people who defended and kept their virginity for the bridal chamber
Women have a hymen because God wanted children born out of covenant, so He supplied the blood
Children then become a memorial of the blood covenant of marriage

Covenant says I die so you can live – I’m in this for what I can give
Co-habiting says I’m in this for what I can get – I’m in this for me

I use the fear of abandonment to get you to do what I want
Signing a marriage document takes away my greatest weapon in this relationship, because I’m not with you for who you really are, I’m in this for who I need you to be, and if we get married you’ll start to become yourself instead of staying who I want you to be

When Jesus made the New Covenant with His disciples at the Last Supper, Judas left immediately, then later betrayed Jesus with a kiss

The Judas spirit wants intimacy without covenant

Does “this” count as sex? “If you lust after a woman in your heart…” –Jesus

The goal is for you to bring your trophy untarnished to the marriage bed
Sex is not just physical – when you have sex with someone your soul is tied to their soul
This isn’t a game – no matter how little you use a new car, it is now used
God is passionate about sex – see Songs of Solomon

Everybody’s hungry to hear what God has to say about their sexuality
Hebrews 4:15, Matthew 4:1

Temptation is NOT sin
The tempter came when Jesus became hungry, and the first temptation had to do with feeding His appetite for food
When the Bible says “Behold” it means to stop reading and start looking

The purpose of the Bible isn’t for you to remember what you read as much as it is for you to experience it

Whenever we’re performing to prove who we are, we’re already in the devil’s hand
When you’re performing for love instead of performing from love, you’re already in trouble

When being ‘loved’ by someone provides you with your sense of significance, that’s a problem

When you’re performing for an identity instead of performing from an identity, you’re in trouble
We cannot perform for our identity, we perform from our identity
The temptation in the Garden was ‘do something to be something’

‘If you really love me, then…’
If he really loves you, he’ll take no for an answer; if he doesn’t take no for an answer, then he doesn’t love you he just wants you

The devil comes to tempt you when you’re struggling to manage your appetite
Not all dreams/visions/etc. come from God
Temptation and sin are not the same thing

Temptation means I’m hungry for whatever
As soon as I agree with the temptation, then it becomes sin

What do we do about temptation?

It’s starts between your ears – learning to manage your thought life is the beginning of managing your temptations
Requires you to learn to manage yourself effectively
When we’re in a battle, we need to behave like we’re in a battle & not pretend that we aren’t

Our culture teaches us to manage our appetite in certain areas

e.g. – murder, robbery, arson, etc.
Regarding sexual needs, the culture teaches us to embrace our appetites

How do we manage temptation?

We will always operate out of our identity
If we don’t know who we are, we will operate out of who we think we are
If you don’t decide who you want to be, when decision comes you will give in to temptation
Once you get identity down, the rest of it falls into place
When you believe you are a sinner, you will spend all your time trying not to “do” your “be”
The #1 thing to do is establish “Who am I?”
Your identity and your sexual appetite are directly related

· When your sense of identity waivers, your sex drive increases

Love isn’t love until it costs you something to give it away
Get a symbol of your purity covenant with God (i.e. purity ring) to serve as a significant memorial/reminder, then give it to your spouse on your wedding day
If you don’t manage your appetite, it will manage you and at the expense of other people and your future
Jesus instructs us to manage ourselves from the inside out instead of from the outside in
Make a covenant with your eyes – don’t crawl through a cesspool and think you won’t come out smelling like it

Suggested Rules for Dating

Don’t date someone who isn’t committed to being a virgin

· If their response is anything but a solid ‘yes’ then it’s a no

If your resolve is anything short of keeping your virginity, your sex drive will make your decision for you
If they won’t protect your heart/virginity, they won’t protect yours either
Develop a plan! Without an effective plan you’re dead in the water
Guys don’t take girls to movies with any sort of a sex scene whatsoever

· Don’t take her places that are going to stimulate her sex drive

Guys, don’t take girls home alone – don’t be alone anywhere with someone you have a passion for – it’s stupid, stupid, stupid
Don’t trust yourself! The wrong place at the wrong times leads to the wrong results
Date in groups
No French kissing – if that doesn’t stimulate you, you are dead!
Watch how you hug – breast to chest is far from a great idea, if it doesn’t stimulate you, you are dead
These things may sounds ‘nerdy’ – and they are – but they’re all designed to avoid stimulation & get you to the honeymoon suite with your trophy intact
Girls, if it isn’t for sale, don’t advertise!

· Girls, if you use shark bait you will catch sharks

· There’s a big difference between dressing pretty & dressing sexy

Men are stimulated through the eyes, women are stimulated through touch
If sexual attraction is the only means by which your man is attracted to you, that’s not a good thing
Girls, leave some mystery for the bridal suite
Learn to set boundaries, learn how to say no
Learn to manage your life based on your virtues instead of your circumstances

· If there’s a lot of fear involved in the relationship, fear is a byway for demonic spirits to gain influence over you, and we almost never make good decisions when we’re afraid

· Anyone who’s more important than God to you is an idol

· An idol is anything you have to check with before you say yes to God

The person with the higher sex drive must be the one to set the higher standard – the goal is for both of you to get there together
Guys typically have a higher sex drive – it’s your responsibility to take the lead in managing your sex drives
“What can we get away with?” is the wrong question – that attitude comes out of core values that are totally wrong
It’s all about having a culture inside you that isn’t broken, and this is about protecting what we’ve been given for free

Accountability

Submit your relationship with accountability
A good accountability partner is someone you respect enough that it will grieve you when you have to tell them you failed
Not someone who is a peer or identifies with your issues, but someone who can parent you and help you safely navigate roadblocks & issues
They can help you come up with a plan, but you must be the ones to come up with the plan – you must own the plan in order for it to be effective

Masturbation

Practicing lust in any form is never a good idea
The Bible doesn’t speak to it specifically, figure it out with God
It’s not about lowering standards, it’s about raising them
If Holy Spirit is convicting you, that makes it an issue for you
Don’t just assume it’s not an issue for you, you need to intentionally sit down and have a talk with Holy Spirit seeking His input
If you fall, repent & dust yourself off & go on

What if I’m in love with someone who isn’t involved with me?

Fall in love with someone else
The belief that there is only one person for everybody is a nice idea, but there’s nothing in Scripture to support it

Marry your best friend!
When you slip up…

The King is trusting you with His daughter to honor her as He deserves, not as she may deserve
Shame is not a good motivator – it strips you of your confidence and your identity
When the plan fails, revise it accordingly & move forward

Secrets in the closet are a really bad way to start your marriage, you must be willing to share your past when it’s appropriate prior to saying your vows

Having to hide things in your marriage is not a good place to be – avoid it at all costs

Homosexuality is clearly wrong – read your Bible

The homosexual movement has intentionally and strategically made anyone who disagrees with homosexuality in our culture a “hater”
How do you deal with people living a homosexual lifestyle? You love them like you love anybody else
There’s a whole movement trying to convert a culture & it’s a spirit

Virginity is first and foremost an issue of the heart

Thursday, October 11^th

Speaker – Jason Vallotton, Associate Overseer (1st Year) - BSSM: Healthy Ways to Meet Needs

Psalms 23

Chock full of great information
We all have a “God spot” – whatever serves as the source for your identity, protection, security, comfort, direction, unconditional love, future, etc.
When identity is performance based, what we rely on for our strength becomes our greatest insecurity once we can no longer perform
We know something besides God is in our “God spot” whenever we experience anxiety about that person or thing constantly
You can’t do anything in life with confidence that is lasting without having God in your “God spot”, on the flip side we can do anything in life with confidence that is lasting when we have God in our “God spot”
We begin to build co-dependent relationship with people / things that sit in our “God spot”, eroding healthy boundaries at the expense of that relationship

When we become responsible for someone else’s happiness, we give away all our power in the relationship
Co-dependency means if person or thing isn’t ok, then we aren’t ok

The truth is, no matter what we’re up against, we’re going to be okay because He is with us
God must be my decision maker
Boundaries should be used to protect our love for people, not locking people out

The goal isn’t to be able to keep the whole world out, but to love them

Anxiety’s the red flag for something being out of place regarding your “God spot”
If we really trusted God, we wouldn’t have anxiety about our future

90% of our problems result from moving other people or things into our “God spot”

Stages of Life:

Dependent – powerless
Independent – confidence

· A good parent will nurture their kids into confidence, “helicopter parents” rob their kids of their confidence

· We don’t have enough power over God to ruin our life/destiny

Interdependent – I’ll lend my strength to you & you’ll lend your strength to me

· Like the body of Christ, we all need each other

· I don’t have to have you in order to be ok, I want you in my life

· Since God is my source for everything, there’s no anxiety

· Perfect love casts out fear, but living in fear casts out love

If we get stuck in the independent stage, we become like the Lone Ranger – we’re don’t become well rounded, we become one sided
One reason God doesn’t allow us to be self sufficient is He wants us to learn to walk in interdependency with others – requires vulnerability
When intimacy starts to break down or we don’t have it in our lives, that’s when we start to break down

· We were created for love with God and with man

When you’re telling a girl what you would tell your guy best friend, you’re in trouble
Don’t put girls in your guy spot or you will start believing that men just don’t know how to do intimacy
“I don’t need you, I want you in my life”
People in our life should just be validating the truth that God has already said about us – if they ever become the source, we’re in trouble

Red Flags

Learn to put people in the right place
Learn how to get your needs met in healthy ways
A red flag is anything that warns you right before you’re about to make a bad mistake
Self-awareness says you know what’s going on inside you and around you
Self-awareness involves doing a weather check on yourself, so that you spend of few minutes a day to do a quick check on yourself
When negative feelings surface, if you don’t stop to seek out the source of those negative feelings, you’ll continue to walk in that negative feeling unaware of the reason why
When we bypass the process for relationship building in order to prematurely push our relationships into a place of security, we succeed in jeopardizing the whole thing
Set boundaries for yourself for the state that you’re in
Don’t steal from God what is supposed to be His in order to give it to someone else
It’s not bad to feel the feeling, that feeling is a fact, what’s bad is to not fix the feeling
Up your Emotional Intelligence and increase your self-awareness so that you catch issues when they’re small rather than waiting until they’re forest fires
All it takes to increase self-awareness is ask yourself what’s going on inside
Give yourself permission to take risks, give yourself permission to fail
Validate yourself in love, see yourself with compassion, not as a victim or in condemnation

Speaker – Dann Farrelly, Dean/Bible Teacher - BSSM:

Sometimes we talk about the Holy Spirit’s involvement in a limiting way, especially when it comes to the writing, gathering, translating & interpreting of Scripture
How we got our Bible has been a big, beautiful process, every step of which was directly impacted by Holy Spirit
If you keep shrugging your shoulders when you come to things you don’t understand, you will not learn
We do theology all the time – anything we do with and/or include God in
“Theology is faith seeking understanding” – Antimum of Canterbury
“We have lost the search for truth.” – Allister McGrath
The idea in modern culture is that truth can’t be found

Truth itself has become a devalued notion
Much of western culture believes the truth is that there is no truth – we’ve been raised in an environment of relativism
“In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity.” – Rasmus Meldenius
How much dumb stuff will God let us believe and still allow us to get into heaven anyway?
The degree of truth that we know or don’t know does not prevent us from the pursuit of truth
Falsehood: Because you can’t know everything then you can’t know anything
While we can’t compromise on essentials, we can agree to disagree on non-essentials, and all things should be done with love
The way we do Biblical interpretation impacts our theology
Honest uncertainty about the non-essentials is something we must embrace while not allowing it to dissuade us from a continual pursuit of truth
We may have seasons where we question some of the essentials, but if we resolve to stay with God He will guide us from a place of doubt to belief

Truth is Reality as God Knows It

The Kingdom is true reality as God knows it revealed to His people
Jesus said He came to testify to the truth – everyone who is of the truth hears Him
A reality map is the lens through which we interpret our experience
The Bible is God’s reality map for us
We can’t know everything God knows, but we can know everything He reveals to us
“Jesus was either an incredible deceiver or lunatic, or He was who He said He was.” – C.S. Lewis
One of the Holy Spirit’s jobs is to convict the world of the sin of not believing on Jesus
The truth is someone to know, not something to know

The something flows from the someone, and the something exists only because He does

We often think love, truth & justice are entirely separate from one another and are embodied by God independently of one another
Love doesn’t define God, God defines love
We love ideals because they flow from God, but they do not exist apart from Him
He is not to be compared with the truth, He is the truth
He is the source of all that is ultimately real

This is the message Scripture is trying to get into our reality map

To deny absolute truth and it’s know-ability is a self-defeating statement
Leslie Nubagen – “The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society”
“One who claims to be a skeptic of one set of beliefs is actually a subscriber of a completely different set of beliefs”
The goal is to persuade us to give up our pursuit of absolute truth
The difficulty in discovering ultimate reality should not dissuade us from attempting to discovering it
“Christianity Unshackled” – Harold Ebberly
No matter your source for information, always try to have your “Holy Spirit” antenna up
Spiritual matters were not believed to be subject to empirical testing, therefore faith was thought to be the antithesis of reason, therefore less respectable to intellectuals
Christianity has been re-layed on a Greek foundation, rather than on a Hebrew foundation
Kirkagaard: “Believing things based on a leap of faith is absurd”
Having faith, we have tacitly agreed on something for which there is no proof
The rational conclusion is whatever cannot be observable can therefore not be knowable

This lies as the foundation of much of western thought

Truth is knowable because God is real and has revealed it

We have a limitless being who can communicate to us in our limitations
Truth exists independent of the mind’s awareness of it (not relative)
There is an objectively real God trying to communicate with us, and that process is being stewarded continuously by the Holy Spirit

We don’t have to respect other worldviews, but we must value and respect the people who hold those worldviews

At the end of the day, we are persuaders charged with introducing unbelievers to our God
We should be gracious – as gentle as dove, but shrewd as snakes

Don’t allow non-believers to control the framing of the debate
Some people only speak the language of fear – and Jesus speaks to them too
Every system of knowing rests on unknowable assumptions
Usually, knowing truth comes down to probability, not provability
It takes more faith to be an atheist than a Christian
Because we’ve swallowed the debate that reason and faith are exclusive from one another, we leave reason completely out of the debate

Someone saying we can’t know something to be true that lacks empirical evidence is a falsehood
Reason is always making certain un-provable assumptions

The Bible doesn’t try to prove the existence of God, but affirms His existence
God’s anger is against men because they suppress truth (Rom. 1:18-25)

God has proof for His existence and He’s made it obvious to all
Men are without excuse for not believing on Him

God provides evidence and expects faith

Contradicts Kirkagaard’s leap of faith thesis
e.g. – the Israelites’ refusal to enter the Promised Land

The sin of humanity is that they do not believe in Jesus

God exists, and He rewards those who earnestly seek Him

There is absolutely no justification to say that reason belongs only to the natural realm
All people use reason, and all people exercise faith – all people believe in something and that is their “faith”
Believing is to invest one’s life in what one has determined to be true
True faith, therefore, is never a blind leap
Faith & reason are necessary in both the natural and spiritual realms
Hebrew view: People can learn the ways of God and know Him

The Bible has very little to say apart from this

Jesus is full of grace and full of truth
4 Steps to Freedom:

Abide in Jesus’ words
Become His disciple
We’ll know the truth
The truth will set us free

We can’t be free apart from truth

Speaker – Chris Overstreet, Outreach Pastor - Bethel Church:

Learn how to love well

Without loves, the gifts become empty & meaningless

Love is where the real power of God resides
When the motivation is to love people, the gifts are a manifestation of that
When love is our focus, it becomes easy to walk in power
“If you aren’t moving in love, you aren’t moving with the Dove”
Our identity actually resides in the love of God
The love of God is the most powerful force in the universe
Love – the motivation of everything we do or say
It’s not debates or picket signs, but the love of God that transforms lives
How should we live life? Just look for people to love (compassion)
Holy Spirit lives inside of you and wants to impact the people around you in love
As a believer, our first ministry is to God, to love Him well, abiding in Him, being in a place of continual relationship with Him, telling Him how much you love Him and demonstrating it in your lifestyle, constantly worshiping
Our next ministry is to each other
Our third ministry is to preach the Gospel, share our faith, we only have this opportunity while we are on earth – evangelism is not just for the evangelist, it’s for every believer
1 John 4

The love of God compels us, motivates us, and is what empowers us
Eliminate pressure to perform by learning to love people
God’s love becomes tangible to the people we minister to, setting us up for the gifts of the Spirit to manifest

Make sowing truth out your mouth a habit
Express the compassion of God to people
People don’t need to see stones in our hands, they need to see the love of God in our eyes
Surprisingly enough, many people have never heard the true Gospel before, one that embraces them as a person and literally loves the hell out of them
Let your motivation be “How can I love them well?” & then the door will be opened for God to destroy the works of the devil in their lives through you
If you’re really hanging out with God, you will be changed and your life begins to look like love
The fruit of love becomes manifest in your life and becomes the evidence of the presence of Jesus in your life
Do you believe God is who He is and that He can do through you all He says He can do?
None of us forget to put our clothes on everyday, and we should never forget to put our love on every single day
The most important thing for us to put on is love

That main thing empowers us to keep the main thing

Love actually drives fear out of us – fear tries to intimidate people from stepping into what God is calling them to step out into
When we’re consumed with His love, we aren’t concerned with what other people think about us

We should be on a pursuit of not caring what other people think about us – good or bad
We should not be overly moved when someone praises us or criticizes us

Fear is a spirit, and we need to address it for what it is without trying to sugar coat it

The way to address it is in love

Encouraging someone’s dysfunction reinforces their identity in that area of bondage
It’s never good to argue with God, trying to talk yourself out of what God told you to do
The devil tries to put us in fear, get us out of the love of God, distract us from eternity and help us forget that we’re even born again
Quick obedience is best obedience
Talking yourself out of it causes you to become desensitized to the voice of God
It’s okay to be nervous, but don’t let it cost you your obedience
Don’t be discouraged when you don’t get to reap automatically

You should be as excited to sow a seed as you are in reaping a seed

Jesus didn’t just pay for small sins, He paid for big sins

WEEK #6

Monday, October 15^th

Speaker – Dann Farrelly, Dean/Bible Teacher - BSSM: Grasping God’s Word – Chapter 16

Acts 13:52

Are these events to be a normative part of Christian life, or just descriptive of how God works in the lives of some?
As Christians – must we do these things, or may we do these things?

Answer: Both

Shows us not only what’s possible, but also what’s probable

Try not to read Acts with an eye of ‘What do I have to do, and what can I leave out?’
“Christianity was easier when I didn’t believe this stuff was possible” –Bill Johnson
Acts is not a clear or concrete history of the church, though it contains church history

Primarily includes only Peter & Paul, not the other disciples
Does not include dates
Part of the purpose to show expansion of the church towards Rome

Acts is the Holy Spirit’s orchestration of the moving of the Gospel from it’s Jerusalem-based, Hebrew-oriented beginnings to become a world-wide, gentile-predominate phenomenon
God is moving sovereignly, not always for the comfort of the messengers, but primarily for the spreading of the Gospel
Contains Paul’s testimony 3 times, as part of Paul being brought to trial 3 times and found not guilty at all 3

Luke communicating that the Roman Empire has nothing to fear from this new faith

Contains 5 summaries
The Kingdom of God is mentioned in Acts 14 times

Paul only mentions the Kingdom 14 times in all of his letters

The Gospel is considered for those who, in the law, have no place with God

Welcoming of the eunuch, etc.

Take care to guard against setting up an absolute doctrine for things mentioned in Scripture only once
In Acts, God seems to purposefully stay away from formulas – He intentionally works differently in every situation

Not so much about formulas, but Acts does model patterns of God for us
Holy Spirit is unlimited in the ways He is able to manifest on people/situations

When we grow up in the world, we form our reality map based outside of Christianity, and when we get saved we step away from that into a new reality map – can be an all-encompassing, dramatic experience
It’s amazing how an idea can control a manifestation of the Holy Spirit
The gifts are like anything else in the Kingdom – should start small & then GROW
Speaking in tongues can be a very effective way to introduce us to the realm of our spirit

When we aren’t familiar with the spiritual realm, we can easily mistake our spirit for being our intellect – which can vastly limit our ability to experience God
Tongues can help provide the confidence that we are accessing the realm of the spirit directly and powerfully – can be a great introductory gift that is meant to grow and expand with use & development

Acts 12

Focus turns from Jews who are harassing the Gospel to the gentiles who are receiving the Gospel
Extremely painful experience for Paul

We encourage growth, not indoctrination – “We must learn to eat the meat & spit out the bones”

In doing so, we must avoid wide-sweeping generalizations

Apostles

You can explain away evidence
It’s important for us as Christians to understand the difference between “The Twelve” and apostles
The office of apostle is alive and active in the Body of Christ today, but the original Twelve are a unique entity
There is no special stage in the Gospel history – everything available to us then is available to us now

God intends the Body of Christ to get stronger over time, not weaker

The Baptism of the Holy Spirit serves as the initial filling of the Spirit that is to be followed by other fillings of the Spirit throughout the course of our lives as believers
John’s baptism was with water for repentance, the Baptism in the Spirit is a baptism of fire and power

There is no need to teach a 2-stage conversion – once we receive Jesus we have Holy Spirit, but there is more of God available to us if we’re willing to pursue it
There are continuing experiences with Holy Spirit available to us that will make us a more powerful witness of Jesus
It’s acceptable to expect to be clothed with the power of God to be witnesses

There is an unstoppable confidence that is contagious in all the evangelical messages in Acts

The message of the Gospel demands an expectation of a response

Do you HAVE to pursue the gifts/signs listed in Acts? Maybe not, but you get to!

Be wise in your expression of the spiritual gifts
Our walking in the power of the Spirit should provoke those who don’t practice them to a Godly jealousy, inviting them to step out of their theological comfort zone

Speaker – Mark Brookes, Senior Overseer (1st Year) - BSSM:

As we begin to encounter the Father’s love, everything else starts to flow
As we sit on Daddy-God’s knee, He ministers to us about who we really are

The lies the world has sold us about who we are start breaking off of us
We truly begin to see ourselves as His sons/daughters

When we have an experience with God, we can meditate on that experience and revisit it
Manifesting the finished work of the Cross

Romans 8:19 – The earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.
All about unfolding the riches of our freedom in Him
The truth always sets us free when it’s Kingdom truth
He came to give us abundant life

Transformation – we are called to produce fruit in all seasons

As a tree of life, we don’t have to strain to produce fruit, we just live like a tree
Proverbs 23:7 – Most behavior and emotions are a manifestation (or fruit) of what we believe
Whatever we believe to be true becomes true to us, even if it’s really a lie

That believe system has produced who you are today, and will produce who you are tomorrow
Change the way you see/think and you will be able to enter the Kingdom

Bad fruit results from old, bad roots that we’ve allowed to remain in our soil

Stem from old past hurts & habits, resulting from lies believed & held to

Kingdom truth sets us free

John 8:31-32, Romans 12:2, Ephesians 4:23, Colossians 3:30, II Corinth. 10:3-5
Freedom in the Kingdom involves more than simply quoting a Scripture
Pay attention to your red flags / triggers and work through them with Holy Spirit

Information leads us to Meditation with the Spirit which opens the door for Revelation that guides us into Actualization (living it out) which results in Transformation (i.e. fruit)

A one-way relationship with God doesn’t work out that great (e.g. monasteries)
To go from information to bearing fruit, we must encounter God along the way

We must get it out of our mindset that we are still in the world

Our mindset must be one of the Kingdom so that our world can invade their world

It’s not so much about changing our culture to become Kingdom minded, it’s about becoming Kingdom minded so that our culture will change
Fall so in love with God, making Him such a big part of your life, that He actually begins to step in and possess your life (Smith Wigglesworth)
Benefits of the Cross

Restored relationship with God (Romans 5:12)
Jesus’ sacrifice fulfilled the Law of Sin & Death
Satisfied God’s wrath that had been upon us (Romans 5:1)
Broke the orphan spirit, destroyed the fear of abandonment
The Cross was the greatest turning point in history
We get to be children of God, manifesting heaven now here on earth (Kingdom)

To waste a life living another way is useless

Reconciliation means to restore relationship; to remove enmity (hostility); to re-establish; to exchange; to make things right (Colossians 1:21-22)
Many belief enough to get saved, but stop short of believing their new identity of righteousness
Symptoms of a broken identity

Performing for love & identity in relationships
Feelings of being rejected & abandoned
Spending excessive time by yourself
Think that what others are thinking & saying about you is who you are
Titles are tagged to you (e.g. loner, awkward, reject, etc)
Hard to make close friends or connect with others
Avoid or feel uneasy in public or in group activities
You believe if people really got to know you they wouldn’t like you
Hard to believe compliments about yourself
Co-dependency
Fishing for compliments
Negatively misunderstand or misinterpret what people say to or about you
False humility
Eating disorders

Breaking strongholds – steps to freedom

Confess
Repent
Renounce
Refill with Holy Spirit

It’s important to understand that not seeing yourself the way God sees you is sin
To the degree that you see the sin in your life for what it really is is directly proportional to the degree to which you will get free of that sin
Your forgiveness is dependent upon your willingness to release others from your judgment

Wednesday, October 17^th

Speaker – Kevin Dedmon, Firestarters Pastor - Bethel Church: Evangelism

Information without experience is useless

Our theology must translate into a theophany

God wants us to encounter His Spirit all day, every day
Fruitfulness comes out of intimacy

Allows us to become a manifestation of His presence where ever we go
We don’t go to an outreach, we ARE the outreach!

We can’t release what we haven’t received
God’s goal isn’t for us to simply have an encounter, but to use us to impact those around us, covering the whole earth as the waters cover the sea
People today are so hungry & thirsty for an encounter with God

They’re waiting for us!

The term evangelist is only mentioned 3 times in Scripture

Purpose is to equip, empower & send the saints for the work of witnessing
You don’t have to have the gift of an evangelist to be a witness, and just because you’re an evangelist doesn’t mean you necessarily do witnessing

God wants us to have an encounter so that we become an encounter
The Kingdom of God is expanded through His manifest presence on His people
No where in the Bible does it say intercession is a gift

Intercession is a responsibility that every single believer has
Mediates heaven to earth on behalf of others – our responsibility

In the same way, witnessing is not a gift

We are Christ’s ambassadors, as if God was making His appeal through us

Ezekiel 47
Revival always starts in renewal
We must have continual, daily encounters with God in His presence
When we go out to witness without having a personal encounter, it becomes religion – filled with a bunch of “have-to’s” instead of “get-to’s”
Religion is like wax fruit, and the people of the world can tell the difference
Real fruit comes only out of intimacy
If we only stay in a place of renewal – of encountering His presence – we will die

The very water that sustains us will cause us to drown if we don’t leak
Many Christians only want to leak in The House – they need to be house trained so they will leak outside the house!
God wants us to leak on our neighbors, on our co-workers, on everyone

The further away from the temple, the deeper the river

The further out into the world we take His presence, the deeper the river of His power that will flow

Where the river flows – the Kingdom – everything will live
In His presence is fullness of joy
As the body, we are the river bed – the conduit for the river!
John 7:37
John 17:13

Jesus desires us to have His full measure of joy within us
We weep with those who weep and mourn with those who mourn, but we don’t leave them there in that place, we walk out together with them into Kingdom joy
It’s the Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom

Acts 2

Don’t allow information overload to prevent you from an impartation / God encounter
The first day of church, God kicked the church out of the church – 3,000 people came to Jesus on the first day of church
It’s the goodness of God that leads to repentance, not judgment or repentance
If you argue someone into the Kingdom, someone can argue them out, if you lead someone into a God encounter, no one can argue them out of it

Today’s harvest field looks like this:

People who don’t know anything about the Bible, they’ve never been to church, or if they have they don’t like church
It’s full of atheists, Muslims, new-agers, etc.
When someone doesn’t have a high value for Scripture, you can’t use Scripture to try and convince them to change
People don’t want more information, they want an encounter with God!

We are anointed like Jesus (not deities) to do what Jesus did, and greater than He did!

Speaker – Mark Brookes, Senior Overseer (1st Year) - BSSM:

Restoration restored relationship with Father God

The orphan spirit of fatherlessness was destroyed at the Cross

Samuel 9:19

God cares about your “donkeys”
God chooses the small, but He doesn’t leave them small
When we don’t change our perspective of ourselves in the light of who God has made us to be, we will be forever restricted by the person we think we are

Samuel 13:8

Saul saw himself as small, insignificant & insecure – everything Saul did originated from that self-image, and it cost him everything

Samuel 15:9

God said “I greatly regret having made Saul king”
Saul feared the people instead of God, so his motivation was to look good to the people at the expense of his obedience to God

Saul’s inner life was driving his outer life

His inner heart was manifested in the fruit he bore by his actions
Saul allowed the fear of rejection & the fear of failure to rule his life
Dealing with the fruit on the tree does nothing to effect the roots

It’s not about trying to stop the fruit, but about pruning the roots

Reconciliation breaks off the fear of rejection & abandonment

Bring down the masks & the walls and allow the goodness of God in you to shine
God is always faithful to deal with our issues, but we must be willing
When you can’t take correction or input from others, it’s a red flag
When the enemy comes knocking, we should have the Word on a hair trigger
To take advantage of others in any way should be sickening to us

It should be a core value for us to never violate another because of our own needs/wants/desires

Responsibility – many times we make excuses for our bad behavior

Saul constantly blamed others for his poor decisions
Often we don’t realize that we’re making excuses (but our friends do)
Often we’re simply unwilling to deal with “that thing”
Often we don’t know what questions to ask because we only see the fruit and not the root of the issue

The fruit is simply a window into our soul
What’s inside us will come out, but what isn’t inside of us can’t come out

The Law leaves many of us chasing righteousness based on our own merits instead of being made righteous through relationship with the Holy Spirit

Your “do” can never establish your “be”

The best part about this whole thing is God did all the work

God gets all the credit while the devil gets all the blame

To be justified means to be restored as though you had never sinned (free of charge!)
We can’t change ourselves, we come into right relationship with God and partake of His change for us
Jesus took our guilt upon Himself while letting us go free to never stand trial for sin again
Justification broke the need for us to perform for God (or anyone else’s) love/acceptance

Broke the fear that we’re a failure & will never measure up
We are no longer found guilty on the basis of our performance

Forgiveness restores the standard

Freed us of the need to sabotage our lives when things are going well because we’re holding fast to the lie that we shouldn’t have the good things of God

Father, forgive us for believing the lies that we aren’t worthy to receive the gifts you have given us for free

Overflow in the acceptance of God
God destroyed the scale that was in place to measure whether I’m ‘good’ or ‘bad’

We are totally accepted by Him – we have complete peace with God
We were once a sinner saved by grace, but we didn’t remain there

We are now a child of God & a royal priest
It’s hard to raise people from the dead when you’re preoccupied with your sin

Symptoms of performing for your identity:

Performing for love and identity
Feeling of not measuring up, compare yourself to others
Never pleasing or good enough

Some of the most secure-looking people are the most insecure – they’ve learned to put on a face that is accepted by the world and hides who they’re scared to admit they are
We aren’t working for love because Jesus gave it to us for free
Negativity will always lead you to not liking yourself, and not liking yourself will always cultivate negativity
A good attitude will determine the outcome – catalysts are those with a good attitude that carry the atmosphere with them

Perfectionism (not the spirit of excellence)
Hard on yourself
Call yourself names: “I am stupid/ugly/awkward/etc

Self-pity leads to self-hatred and self-hatred leads to demon-possession

Depression: not motivated to try

If I try and I fail, it simply sends another message that I’m a failure

Play it safe

You don’t like challenges because they could send another negative message

Lack of peace / anxiety issues
Can’t say “no” to favors/volunteering
Mouse on the wheel

You never stop trying to earn God’s favor

Religion has people working so hard for God that they don’t have time to do anything good with God because their shackled in religious works
Steps to deliverance:

Confess it as a sin
Repent & change the way you think about that thing
Renounce the lie that you have believed
Re-fill with the Spirit of God

Thursday, October 18^th

Speaker – Mark Brookes, Senior Overseer (1st Year) - BSSM:

One of the best ways to grow is to be thankful for what you have
Having a heart of thanksgiving will actually teach you how to see in the spirit
Performance-based lifestyle is only as good as what was done yesterday

Never satisfies, and is never satisfied

Propitiation (1 John 2:2) means satisfaction or to appease

God’s holiness and justice requires all sin to be judged
The smallest infraction requires wrath and death
Jesus’ death was the payment (satisfaction) for the punishment of our sins
Jesus took the wrath of God for us
The justice of God now works on my behalf – God judges our accuser/tempter
Removed any need I might have for justice – I no longer have a need to be punished or to punish myself (no more guilt/shame/condemnation)
Removed the critical/judgmental spirit – I no longer need to judge/punish others
Destroyed the fear of punishment
Exchanged judgment for extravagant love and blessings in my life from the Father
Proved the unconditional love and acceptance God has for me
I feel like I deserve to be punished
Blame-shifting, it’s never my fault
Critical spirit – you see wrong in others
In my failures, I turn to other vices instead of turning to God
I justify my actions
Leadership/Authority/Trust issues

Jesus didn’t cover our sins, He took our sins upon Himself
God has placed a need for justice inside of us, and that never goes away

Causes us to seek punishment on some level or even punish ourselves when we deem it to be necessary so that justice is met

Seeking to make ourselves feel better by our works is an insult to grace
Magnifying the sin of others is simply a way to feel better about ourselves
In many ways, the prophetic is calling out the gold in people the world calls worthless
Jesus is big on reward – it’s amazing how many times He uses that word in Scripture
Without the abundant love of God all we get is a dysfunctional, powerless church body
Church leaders are to bring the church to maturity so they can do the work of the ministry
Fear of Punishment:

God’s going to punish me, so I’ll run from Him instead of running to Him
Negative situations are viewed as God’s punishment for past actions
I am hard on myself

When you start blaming God, you start separating yourself from Him

We’re always to be looking at what God can do, not what He doesn’t do
When we don’t have the answer to something, we don’t “live” there

Something things may not be your fault, but they are your responsibility

Take ownership of your life, please
We’re a family on a mission, and you need to buy into that with us
When you don’t understand the things you’re being asked to do, do them anyway until the light of revelation comes – involves trusting others know better than you

“I renounce the lie that failure makes me unworthy of love”

Speaker – Teresa Dedmon, Arts Ministry Pastor - Bethel Church:

The world is waiting for you – you are the secret agent that will invade & change culture
If you continue to walk in the lies of the enemy it will prevent you from walking in the fullness of who God destined you to be
When we meet Jesus and see Him for who He really is, we can’t help but share Him
When you experience the presence of God it becomes necessary to take Him to the marketplace
God wants us to be culturally relevant supernaturally
It’s not what you don’t have, it’s what you do have that will change the world
God doesn’t want to punish us, He loves us just the way we are
The world needs to hear the sound of heaven through us
We need to go where they’re at and bring heaven to them in a way that’s culturally relevant to them
God uses whatever you create for His glory
Always ask the Holy Spirit for a word of knowledge, ask Him what He’s doing

WEEK #7

Monday, October 22^nd

Speaker – Bernie Ooley, Bible Instructor - BSSM: Book of Matthew

Matthew’s Gospel was directly formatted for the Hebrew audience
Focuses on fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies by Jesus as the Messiah
Jesus loves to hang out with the most unlikely people and show us that nothing and no one are irredeemable
This Gospel has more careful design than any of the others
Was used as an instruction manual in the early church
Contains more teachings than any others

Teachings grouped together in great design

Many believe that the five discourses found in Matthew were written in response to the five books of the law
Where there is no voice of the prophet, man’s regulation and control will rise to the top

400 Silent Years resulted from the Pharisees rise to power

Jesus came and began showing them “right side up” which actually showed how upside down they were
Poor in spirit doesn’t mean spiritually bankrupt, it means not spiritually prideful

A perceived need, a hunger, a crying out for God
God will pass over every church in town to show up at the bar downtown where two guys have a sincere hunger to know God – that’s where He’ll manifest

The meek will inherit the earth

Meekness is not weakness, meekness is power under control

We aren’t called to hold our authority over people, but to hold it under them and lift them up – that is servant leadership
Why do we seek to become what God says we are?
Jesus upped the ante on the law so that it was violated if only the heart
Religion is the attempt to become righteous internally based on performing external works
Righteousness is a state of being and our true nature
Ministry is the overflow of a life walking in the nature of God, bearing supernatural fruit
Religion is a man climbing up to be like God, but the Kingdom is God coming down to man’s level to lift us up to His level
The Father who sees what’s done in secret will reward you openly (i.e. heap it on you)
The term “hypocrite” in Scripture means “actor” – to assume a persona and play a role that is not reflective of their genuine selves

i.e. – white washed tombs

Message Bible: “The world is not a stage. Don’t make a performance out of prayer. God will not applaud.”
The inner room in Hebrew culture was the family “treasure room” where they kept their heirlooms and valuables
The root system is below the surface and out of sight determines the livelihood of the tree

The root system of a tree is often a bigger system than the branches – serves as the anchor and source of life for the tree

The bigger our vessels grows, the greater our influence will be, but accordingly the bigger anchor required to keep our ship grounded
God hides truth for us to find, so that only the hungry among us will find it, because only the hungry among us will know how to treasure & apply His truth
A parable is a gift concealed in a mystery with an invitation attached that contains in it a mystery that through revelation explains what is contained in the parable

God trusts us to go deeper and lean further into Him for answers we hunger for

Secrets are for seekers
Parables were meant to drive curiosity and hunger among the hearers so they would seek out God and His wisdom on their own for the deeper revelation
No one but Jesus had access to the mind of Christ until after Jesus’ resurrection, so He taught the spiritually blind with parables while the Apostles taught plainly because their audience were spiritually born again
Revelation becomes progressive – you receive more revelation by walking in the light that you already have
Jesus externally demonstrated the inward reality of His Messiah-ship
When you learn the Word, you begin to know how God speaks & you learn how He communicates – i.e. you can interpret your own dreams and visions, etc.
The deeper your foundation, the higher He can build on it

Speaker – Bill Johnson, Senior Leader - Bethel Church:

Guilt & shame can get you to pray hard for a week or two, but it won’t produce much because it can’t
Some things just don’t relate well outside of the context in which they are spoken
The context here isn’t miracles, the context is the love of God

We may not be able to make sure everyone leaves healed, but we can make sure everyone leaves knowing they’re loved by God

Don’t ever tell someone they didn’t get healed because of they’re unbelief – Scripture says the prayer of faith will heal the sick, so who’s praying the prayer?
If God wanted to flow through us like a funnel, all 4 Gospels would be the same

He wants to work through His sons & daughters with their sanctified personalities included
He desires to flow into us, mark us with Himself, and then flow out of us with our distinct flavor in the mix

Despising humanity, specifically our own humanity, is to despise God’s creation

What we despise He doesn’t – don’t despise what He doesn’t despise

God isn’t afraid of who we are, in fact He rather likes who we are
We are the light of the world, we don’t need to decrease we need to increase
Sometimes we pray things out of religious zeal with total disregard for His value for us
Sometimes we pray things that are totally stupid and God translates them based on our heart into what we meant to say rather than what we did
Mark 4

Jesus silences the disciples storm, in effect answering their prayer, then He rebukes them for not having any faith

Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that whether or not our prayer is answered is dependent upon us having or not having faith

God doesn’t always desire to do things for us – often times the mark of maturity is Him bringing us into a co-laboring role where we don’t make it happen but we do what He says
God doesn’t want us addicted to a formula, He wants us addicted to His voice
If Jesus rebuked the storm, then who sent the storm?
If Jesus raised the dead, then not everyone dies in Gods timing
Jesus gave His internal reality away

When you walk in maturity, your internal reality will begin to define your external world
Living from a place of internal victory prepares you to walk in external victory

Make sure what you teach is what you do and what you do is what you teach

Mark 6

Ministry is both exhilarating and draining
The biggest temptations will not come in your moment of greatest weakness, it will come in the moment of your greatest victory
Learn to recognize your own rhythm for life
God doesn’t ask for what you don’t have, He asks to use what you have
A lot of times the Lord comes close but doesn’t intend to get in your boat
It’s foolish to require God to come to you, if you see He’s doing something across town or across the world, then go there

The character it takes to lock into a possible answer is the character it takes to manage the answer once it is manifested

The reason the disciples had no faith on the sea was because their hearts were hard from the loaves and fishes

Many times we can witness a miraculous moment but not allow it to change who we are & therefore it doesn’t help us
They never realized the food didn’t multiply in Jesus’ hands, it multiplied in their hands – when He said “you feed them,” in the decree was the capacity to do what He said to do
In the storm He said, “go to the other side” but they thought the storm could keep them from going to the other side and completely missed the fact that Jesus had given them the capacity to get to the other side and no obstacle could stop them
The disciples missed their role in the loaves & fishes miracle, so they assumed Jesus would have to be in the boat with them to get them to the other side, not simply have His word with them to make it to the other side

Mark 7

“Making the Word of God of no effect (to render powerless) by your tradition”

Tradition unplugs the electric guitar – now there is no sound

Each of us has authority over our own being to receive the Word of God
When God gave the command to shout for joy, He wasn’t talking to everyone except for those who are quiet and reserved

God is saying to us, “I know who you are and you don’t – you live the way I say and you’ll find out who you are”
If you knew who God made you to be you’d never want to be anyone else

Mark 8

Jesus speaking about leaven of Herod & the Pharisees

The disciples don’t get that He’s talking about the leaven of the mind (political & religious worldview)

Those bound by the religious spirit wash their hands of the matter to disassociate themselves from the matter so that it doesn’t reflect poorly on them
Those bound by political spirit pick up stones to show their zeal for God by condemning the sinner and the sin (very cruel – wrangles over words)
The religious spirit & political spirit are both governed by one thing – the fear of man

Even when you disagree with someone it’s best to take what they say with a grain of salt as to avoid judging them & instead focus on the heart of the matter

Jesus doesn’t correct the disciples on failing to use their faith regarding provision until after the loaves & fishes miracle

We are held to the standard of our experience

Once you’ve seen the supernatural provision of God, it is then illegal to see your need for provision in terms of what you don’t have – i.e. faulty provision
Repentance is about changing the way you think – it isn’t about the outcome, it’s about addressing the root system

Casual repentance doesn’t address the root system

A miracle is a tutor/mentor/gift given to you to teach you what He’s like and to train you to see in a way you couldn’t see before

Our experiences with God should become the lenses through which we see our future situations

Jesus cursed the fig tree because it didn’t bare fruit out of season

He’s the only one who has the right to demand the fruit of the impossible
All of heaven is waiting to see what we will conquer in His name

What have you seen Him do that should have trained you to see differently than you do?

Some of what we witness from God is supposed to have a greater impact on us than it does
Sometimes we have to redirect the course of our life to attract the voice of God (e.g. Moses with the burning bush – when he turned aside, then God spoke)

Your own conversion is the greatest miracle you will ever see
What if every miracle we’ve ever seen equips us to see problems differently?

WEEK #7

Tuesday, October 23^rd

Speaker – Dann Farrelly, Dean/Bible Teacher - BSSM:

(See audio file)

Speaker – Kris Vallotton, Associate Senior Leader, Bethel Church: Prophetic Week

The goal isn’t to just learn, but to become the message
Power and love should always come together
A prophecy should be like a kiss from God
God has many love languages, but specifically the 9 Spiritual gifts listed in Scripture qualify as part of God’s love languages
We should want to create a prophetic culture, not just a prophetic ministry, rooted in love
Everything you should do, including prophecy, should be saturated in the love of God
Often times we see sacrifice and love as the same thing

There are lots of people who do sacrificial things, but love is not at the center of it

The gifts of the Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit are NOT the same thing
There are 9 gifts of the Spirit, there are 9 fruits of the Spirit, and there are 9 Be-Attitudes

Walking in the gifts of the Spirit is not a sign that God is at the center of your ministry or that you have a great relationship with God
Just because you sacrifice doesn’t mean that you love, but if you love you will sacrifice

Earnestly desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you should prophecy

Greater is the one who prophecies than He who speaks in tongues, unless He interprets, that those who hear may be edified

Paul says 8 times in one chapter that prophecy is for edification

May cause some to accuse you of being an “ear tickler”

The covenant that God offers is for the world, not just for Christians
Matthew 5:3

Jesus created the New Testament

In the OT we judged nations, in the NT we judge prophecy
We don’t live in the Last Day (great & terrible), we live in the Last Days (great & glorious)
Acts 2 – the ‘great & glorious’ day of the Lord

We don’t live in ‘great & terrible,’ we live in ‘great & glorious’
The last days began when the sun turned dark and the moon turned to blood

The last days began when Jesus died on the Cross

God often speaks in hieroglyphics & the Hebrew mind understood that
Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved – we live in that season!

The book of Revelations – what happens when a prophetic book is interpreted by teachers
Jesus fulfilled the role of the OT prophet

The point of the OT is to teach us that you can’t do it yourself, you need a Savior

God wants relationship, not rules – but Israel demanded rules, so He gave them what they asked for
The OT prophets job was to judge the people for not keeping the rules

When you get a Savior you no longer need a Judge
One of the main reasons the Pharisees missed Jesus is that they took the OT Scriptures regarding the 1^st and 2^nd coming of Christ and combined them into a single coming – there is no verse in OT Scripture referencing 2 comings of Christ
Our NT ministry is that of reconciliation – not counting their sins against them

You can forgive people who don’t deserve it

When you move the ministry of Elijah from the OT to the NT, he gets a new job description

The spirit of Elijah is Malachi chapter 4
Completely different job description that Elijah had in the OT
We are called to make it rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous

It’s a schizophrenic theology to call for judgment on others for things we’ve done ourselves
Scripture says judgment will be unmerciful on those who have no mercy
We’ll never be righteous enough to run around condemning people when they fail
It’s a much bigger deal when Christians live a lifestyle of sin than when a sinner lives a life of sin – they are living out of their own nature, you are not
Jesus didn’t just forgive you, He transformed you
It’s the Holy Spirit’s job to convict the world of sin, which happens from the inside out instead of from the outside in
There’s a difference between warning and judgment

Warning says if you run out in the street you’ll get hit by a car, judgment says you did the wrong thing I hope you get hit by a car
Warning lets others know of the coming reality, judgment says you’re a bad person that God wants to punish
It’s all in the attitude, which is reflective of the heart condition

Everyone who was born was meant to have their name in the book of life

It’s the goodness of God that leads people to repentance (i.e. reconciliation)
It’s our job to edify, exhort and console one another
It’s our job to forgive those who don’t deserve to be forgiven
Since the days of John, the Kingdom has been preached and everyone is forcing their way in by a violent act of grace by Him, not by us

Jesus didn’t die for you, He died AS you

Ezekiel 37

When Ezekiel prophecies to the bones, he’s prophesying to things that aren’t alive
If we could train and equip an army of prophetic people and send them out into the valleys of dry bones and instead of prophesying things that we see but prophesying what God sees – things that be not as though they were – as part of co-laboring with God
It doesn’t do much good to give a commentary on the dead bones and call it a prophecy
Talk to God about what He sees – He sees differently than we do – you can change the world through prophetic declarations as part of co-laboring with God
It’s amazing how many prophets today prophecy after the event rather than before
We were born to stop storms, to ruin funerals, to change the world – not give commentary on it
I wasn’t born to write history, I was born to make history – there’s a difference
When the most important person in Israel comes to your home and you don’t let your 15 year old son come, there’s a reason
God’s realistic is not yours – we must look at the world with the eyes of God
Our job is to take light into the darkest places on the planet to speak the word of life and light into those places so that on judgment day there are fewer that will receive negative judgment

I Corinthians 14

Tongues are a sign to unbelievers, but prophecy is a sign to believers
When you walk in judgment, people don’t remember the love of the Father, they remember the hurts of a brother

Negative prophetic words stab people in the heart
You can pull anything out of context and make it say anything

Sin isn’t a secret to sinners, but the glory they are falling short of sure is
The word “secrets” in this passage is translated elsewhere “treasures”

I Samuel 9

God knows where your donkeys are
It’s an indictment against the church’s prophetic ministry that we can’t help find lost children but know when the city needs to be judged
God tells Samuel who’s coming and what to do BEFORE hand
Lots of people start out looking for donkeys end up being made king
I’m going to tell you what’s in your heart – I’m going to tell you what’s already in you that you can’t see for yourself
Out mission is to find the gold in people that’s covered up by the dirt in their lives
When we’re 5 we wear a cape and set out to conquer the world, by the time we’re 35 we’ve lost our cape and have lost sight of conquering anything – we forget we were made to make history instead of record it
Learn to look with the eyes of God – He bought the field full of dirt to get the treasure inside

There’s a whole bunch of dirt in your life that’s covering up the treasure
Jesus didn’t die for trash – the price Jesus paid on the Cross determined the value of the people He purchased

If God tells you there’s going to be a famine, the first thing you should do is ask God if you have permission to call off the famine

Abraham negotiated with God for the salvation of Sodom – that’s the heart of a father

Would we know the difference between being with God in the wilderness or being with an angel in the Promised Land?
If God every reveals judgment to you, intercede for mercy and you will prove yourself worthy of being a leader
As the light & salt of the earth, our job is revelation and preservation

When you start tasting like the world, you’re not preserving anything
The light of revelation means telling people how God sees them – as treasure
Negative dreams can be from God to reveal the plans of the enemy so we can speak against it

God never gives you information that is negative for any other purpose than redemptive
If God’s telling me, it’s because He wants me to do something about it

When you’re part of the solution, it’s okay to bring negative information to the table as long as it is in a redemptive manner
Part of the struggle is that we seem to be trying to do with prophecy what we should be doing with discipleship

Using prophecy to confront someone about their sins is actually a sign that you don’t have the level of relationship with them that you should have – i.e. that shouldn’t be the only tool in your tool box

Jesus became our substitute so that His judgment could be satisfied and He could release mercy – we were freed from the need to be punished because He punished Jesus for us

This frees us to have the life that we don’t deserve, because He gives us what Jesus deserves
We don’t have to punish ourselves because He was punished for you

Wednesday, October 24^th

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

Many of us were raised in a post-modern soup that says there really is no truth
People are no longer seeking truth, they’re seeking tolerance

People are seeking peace at all costs instead of truth at all costs

We typically want the truth, but we usually only want it in some areas and not in others
“We owe it to ourselves and others to find the truth and act on it.” –Norm Giesler
Many people are apathetic about morality/truth/religion, saying it doesn’t really matter

We find out they don’t really believe that when someone treats them immorally

Morality undergirds virtually everything we do
Truth effects us personally, economically, legally, physically, eternally, socially, psychologically & morally
All laws are an attempt to legislate morality

You can actually change behavior through legal means
The only question is whose morality will be legislated?

Truth in religion matters

“I don’t believe in the Bible, but if it’s true then I’m in big trouble”

Our ideas have consequences
See book: I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Norm Giesler
Why do people believe what they believe?

Sociological Reasons	Psychological Reasons	Religious Reasons	Philosophical Reasons
Family/Friends	Comfort	Scripture	Consistency
	Peace of Mind	Pastor/Priest/ Rabbi /Guru/Imam	Coherence
Society/Culture	Meaning/Purpose/ Identity & Hope	Church	Completeness (best explanation of all evidence)
Financial	Group/Belonging

John Wesley’s Quadrilateral – Scripture / Tradition / Reason / Experience

Tradition is the alive faith of Christians now dead
Traditionalism is the dead faith of Christians now living
“What the Bible promises I experience” –John Wesley

Components for Discerning Truth

Special Revelation – info primarily from Scripture & prophecy, miracles & manifestations – however, Scripture judges the truth of these three
General Revelation – observation from creation
Experience – observation and interpretation (I was blind but now I see)
Intuition – experience of inner knowing concerning info people have gathered consciously or unconsciously
Will – conscious choice to embrace an idea because of or in spite of the evidence
Authority or Tradition – info from leaders and culture past and present
Reason & Logic – obvious (cultural) coherence, completeness and consistency of thought concerning observed reality
Emotions – info sorted to maximize certain emotions and minimize others

Seeing this way controls fear, makes me feel connected to others, secure, happy, powerful, euphoric, etc.

Scripture is the norm that norms everything else, it’s the ruler by which all other rulers are measured – the objective standard as best as we can gather it
When pursuing truth, we all emphasize certain parts of truth over others
“In the essentials, unity; in the non-essentials, liberty; and in all things charity” –Rupertus Meldenius
Objective Truth – truth as God knows it; truth whether the mind perceives it or not
Generally speaking, going on a sin hunt doesn’t do anybody any good

Speaker – Kris Vallotton, Associate Senior Leader, Bethel Church:

God entered into a blood covenant with Abraham that was unto death

Jesus died so that God could change the covenant

In the OT we celebrated people who killed those that didn’t love God

Mentality reflected in Muslim jihadists of today

In the NT, we celebrate people who love those who don’t love God
If you bring an OT mindset into the New Covenant the result is a really weird Gospel
The judgment on the world is against the devil, and we get to play a role in judging him
We live in ‘great & glorious’ (Acts 2:17), not ‘great & terrible’
Mercy triumphs over judgment – give mercy to people who don’t deserve it
Is it possible that God has another emotion besides anger??
Jesus didn’t die so you could die, He died so you could live
Steal/Kill/Destroy = Satan; Life more abundantly = God
Condemnation doesn’t lead you to repentance, it leads you to shame

Shame is not your friend, it is the devil’s counterfeit for conviction
Shame makes us hang ourselves like Judas, conviction draws us to God

When you believe disaster leads to repentance, you allow him to kill, steal & destroy

It’s the goodness of God that leads people to repentance
God doesn’t require any kind of disaster to reach people

Death & life are in the power of the tongue

The more authority you have, the more power your tongue has
Just because you spoke it & caused it doesn’t necessarily mean that God wanted it

Why are we judging cities we’re supposed to be building?
Judgment words create an “us” and “them” mentality, not a Father mentality
How can you demand people pay for their sins when you didn’t pay for yours?
The world already sees God as the judger & not the lover of the world
Christians think that they’re job is to protect the rules
Read: 1 John 4

All about false prophets
Provides 7 ways to tell false prophets (test the spirits)
Context is that false prophets don’t love
False prophets don’t listen to anyone but “God”
False prophets aren’t part of the Body
False prophecies are rooted in fear, designed to scare people

There’s a shift in thinking when you’re under God’s love (NT) versus under rules (OT)
God didn’t destroy cities in the OT because they were wicked, He destroyed them because there weren’t enough righteous

If God ever tells you He’s going to destroy a city, move there quickly and try to bring 9 friends with you!

God doesn’t think about death the way we do – death isn’t an end to God but the beginning of something else
Often when God speaks judgments, He’s testing our hearts rather than determining our destiny (i.e. – Abraham with Sodom, Moses with the Israelites)

He was testing their hearts for leadership & fatherhood

Why does the church cling so desperately to judgment theology, as if they would lose something if they did?
It takes a lot of faith to believe that something positive can happen in the face of bad times, to believe it’s getting worse is easier because it is
Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more

We tend to think the places that manifest the most evil behavior is where the most wicked reside
Jesus didn’t turn over the tables in a local brothel, He turned them over in the Temple
People with the greatest sin typically look good on the outside, but their heart is completely wrong while other people look completely wrong on the outside and are living in sin, but their heart is in the right place

Bottom line: God knows the whole story, we don’t

Fear is faith in the wrong god

Fear gives authority to Satan
We have all authority and the devil has no authority

Celebrate OT heroes for their faith in God
The OT tells us how big sin is, the NT shows us how big the Savior is
The broad stroke is this – you do not need to sin

But IF you sin, you have an advocate with the Father

While Christians can commit sin, they are not to walk in sin

If you’re living in sin, you’re denying your identity as a Christian

If you don’t want to tithe, the only standard in the NT is to give it all, so which would you rather do?

Abraham tithed before the law, before he was required to

God is in charge but He’s not in control – He gave us free choice

In order to have a choice to love God, He must give you a choice to hate Him – that’s how much God desires real love
As soon as God takes away free will, He takes away our ability to love
God gave mankind charge of the earth in the very beginning

People ask why God allows things, but the bigger question is why do you?
We can make things happen in the natural that God didn’t want to happen with the authority He trusts us with

Any fear that moves you away from God is NOT the “fear of God”
Prophesy in the hands of a Christian who’s using it to edify, exhort and console others is an amazing tool of ministry
Prophesy in the hands of the person who feels the freedom to do whatever and hope it comes out right is very dangerous
Be extra careful not to superimpose on people because it can shape their thinking with unwanted results
We make judgments every day to choose the difference between right and wrong – it’s the judgment that someone deserves punishment that we aren’t allowed to do
Sowing and reaping means getting what we deserve – BIG difference between that and God’s judgment

God doesn’t want you to reap what you’ve sown if you’ve repented

Man’s sin creates an ecosystem of it’s own
God hates sin because it hurts man
God doesn’t heal people because they deserve it, He heals them because He deserved it

Often God steps in between people’s sowing and reaping (e.g. – healing a smoker from lung cancer)

The gifts of the Spirit are gifts, they aren’t awards

They’re not earned, they’re given – that’s why they’re called ‘gifts’
They are not a badge of a great relationship with God, they are evidence of a loving God who loves to give good gifts to His children

“Pursue love, but earnestly desire spiritual gifts” – a command, not a suggestion!

Love looks like something – e.g. healing, deliverance, prophesy, etc.

Spiritual gifts are meant to encourage the church
Gift of prophecy is a gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift of the Prophet is a gift of Christ Jesus
The gift of prophecy is something you do, the gift of the Prophet is something you are
The gift of prophecy is something you should earnestly desire, and everyone should both ask for and experience them

We can all flow in all the gifts of the Spirit because the Holy Spirit lives in us

God chooses Prophets, we don’t get to ask for it
The five-fold ministry gifts were given to equip the church with grace, and grace has ‘flavors’ – e.g. if I come to a prophet, I will get prophetic grace

My faith determines the amount I get, the five-fold ministry gift determines the ‘flavor’ of the gift I receive
Prophetic grace gives you eyes to see and ears to hear, you should be getting better prophetic words than the prophet because while the Prophet is the equipper, we’re the ones doing the work of ministry
The main job of the prophet is NOT to prophecy

Thursday, October 25^th

Speaker – Kris Vallotton, Associate Senior Leader, Bethel Church:

Prophecy should be more common in charismatic circles than speaking in tongues
How do you know when you have a performance-based identity? When you can’t do it anymore, you lose your identity
The Prophet is a gift to the church, they themselves are the gift – not what they do but who they are

Their main ministry is to equip the saints for the work of ministry
Success measured by how well the people around you hear God and walk in the prophetic
A prophetic ministry will give you a word, a prophetic culture will change you into the person you need to be to walk in that

To have a ministry, you need a call (identity), gifting (ability), and anointing (purpose)

The gifts & callings of God are irrevocable
Even if you walk away from God, you leave with the call and gift resident on your life – what you walk away from is the anointing

A gift-based identity is a performance-based identity – you must have an identity based on your call, i.e. who God says you are, not what you do
If you think you’re leading and no one is following, you’re just talking a walk

When David was anointed king, he didn’t become king for at least 14 years

David was already anointed, and he walked in his gift, yet he wasn’t called to the sit on the throne of Israel for at least 14 years

Joseph did it wrong – God gave him a vision and he went and told everyone

Ended up doing his training in prison

Don’t run around telling people you’re a prophet because your brothers won’t like it and your leaders will like it less

Prophecy has 2 dimensions – foretelling and forth telling

Those strong in word of knowledge aren’t necessarily strong in prophecy & vice versa
Prophecy is always about the future (fore telling) and is a proclamation that helps bring that thing to pass in the person’s future (forth telling)
Word of knowledge is knowing information that is currently true that you received by the Spirit – you could’ve have found out on your own, but you didn’t
Starting with word of knowledge builds trust – opens the hearer up to receive prophecy about the future
They power you place on the word determines the power you receive from the word

The gift is ‘the discerning of spirits’ (i.e. spirit world) – not ‘the discerning of evil spirits’

Use the distinguishing of Spirits to determine who is speaking to you
After prophecy, this is the most needed gift in the body of Christ right now
The ability to tell which spirit is influencing the person as well as determining what level of favor God has placed on their life – let’s you know where to sit at the table

In order to get an inheritance, I have to know somebody has something that I don’t have
Without discerning of spirits, I am stuck in sowing/reaping
Understanding the levels of favor on others is the only way to move from sowing/reaping to inheritance
How do you get what they have? Get low & let their anointing flow over you
We’re not here to compete with anybody, we’re there to get something for free, or if we’re the most anointed person in the room then we get to freely give
The guy who is the most gifted is not necessarily the one who is the most favored – you can lack in a gift but be extremely anointed
Judging people based on their gift is to completely ignore the level of anointing on their lives
You may speak with someone and they may be a brilliant orator and highly entertaining, but if there’s no anointing flowing you won’t walk away changed

The Discerning of ‘Evil’ Spirits

If you have the gift of discerning spirits,
Your sphere of influence (metron) is dependent upon how big you are, how much authority you have
If a person is being bothered by an evil spirit, when you come into their metron whatever’s bothering them will bother you
A pastor works like this – the more information I give you the better I can hear you
A prophet works like this – the more info I give you the less likely I am to hear what the Holy Spirit is saying because now I have an opinion
Discern if there is an evil spiritual presence surrounding the person or not – i.e. if there’s an evil spirit of pornography on someone, when you’re around them you’ll have pornographic thoughts, and if something isn’t done to address the spirit, the behavior will come back
Learn to be a thermostat and not just a thermometer

How do you know if you have the discerning of spirits? Your mood changes from metron to metron

The first step in prophetic ministry is “what is God saying?” & step two is “what does it mean?”

Between those two steps is a canyon
Just because you have revelation on it doesn’t mean you know what it means
It’s the glory of God to conceal a matter, it’s the glory of kings to search it out
Sometimes you hinder people’s relationship with God because you give them too much information

Sometimes He wants them to come talk to Him so He can show them the meaning

You’re normally not going to tell people to do about what you just said

Especially people you know & especially your children

If you have to tell people you know how to apply it, you end up owning it instead of them

You don’t have to be profound to be powerful
There’s a huge difference between you saying “God says He loves you” and God saying through you “God says He loves you”
The only thing that makes a prophecy a prophecy is that there is “blue on the red”

The “blue” is the operational power of God, and the “blue” causes the “red” (prophetic word) to happen
Be sensitive to what your surroundings require

Protocol is very important – the goal isn’t to get the word out, the goal is to get invited back

If you’re going to walk with kings, you must learn how to walk as a king and not as a peasant
Kings don’t have a lot of time

Read this book: The Seer by James Gall
How do we grow in favor? We do what we’re told

We do big things by not despising the day of small beginnings
Kill the lion and the bear in secret, then you will be taken out to kill Goliath

There are plenty of people who look very anointed but aren’t that anointed at all, and there are plenty of people who look unimpressive who are extremely anointing

The people who look like billionaires typically don’t have that much, the people who are billionaires typically don’t look like it – they’re just trying to be normal

God is always speaking

Knowledge is powerful, but He doesn’t want the prideful to be the powerful – so God hides his word so that only the humble and hungry can find it
If you’ve gone 24 hours without hearing from God, you don’t know His language
If He has to speak to you audibly, it’s because you are hard of spiritual hearing
Typically, hearing the audible voice of God is a sign of spiritual deafness
Jesus told parables to hide truth, not to reveal it

Why give the message at all? Because some people have eyes to see and ears to hear
Distinguish in the Gospels what Jesus said to the crowds versus what He said to His own disciples – He regularly explained His parables to His disciples, but He didn’t explain His parables to the crowds
Toward the end of Jesus’ ministry, He only taught in parables
He doesn’t want arrogant people to become powerful people, He doesn’t want people without a heart to gain a head

So often, God speaks to us in mysteries – easy to walk by without noticing

The role of the Prophet – open the eyes of God’s people

If you saw what was protecting you, you would never worry
If you saw who was with you, you would never be afraid
The problem with most of the body of Christ is blindness and deafness

They see what’s stacked against them in the natural, but don’t have eyes to see what’s for them in the spirit – there are more for us than against us

The revelation of prophecy is – there are more for us than against us
The more you grow in prophetic ministry the easier it becomes because you see that the Kingdom within you is greater than the kingdom that is against you
A symptom of a real prophetic word – if you don’t protect it, you will start to question what you heard by morning
Not everything you hear from the spirit realm is God
There are 4 primary voices that speak to us in the spiritual realm:

My spirit
Holy Spirit
Evil spirits
Ministering spirits

When the devil speaks to us, he doesn’t announce himself and his evil intentions to you – e.g. he loves to quote Scriptures out of context

The Word of God without the Spirit of God is not true

It isn’t redemptive to talk about what’s already happened (e.g. divorce), it’s disqualifying

You are better than your worst day, you are not your worst mistake

If you are going to violate culture and dishonor leadership, you had better know that you know that you know that it’s God
God honors people who work hard
The spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet – i.e. you can always manage yourself

A fruit of the Spirit is self control

Lots of things are hard, but you can still do them
Learn to discern what’s appropriate and act accordingly

When you sit at the king’s table you put a knife to your throat, you don’t put a knife to His

Visions – there are two kinds

Visions of the Mind – comes to your internal screen

Sometimes you can see more with your eyes closed that with your eyes opened, especially when the tension in the room is heightened
Your spirit and the Holy Spirit share the same movie screen

· Those pictures typically last about 3 seconds then they’re gone

· If you’re paying attention, you usually will get about 3 to 5 per day

Once we get revelation (the vision) we need interpretation (the meaning)

· Interpretation is typically much more difficult to come by than visions

· E.g. Pharaoh/Joseph, Nebuchadnezzar/Daniel

When God shows you His hieroglyphics, ask Him for the gift of interpretation

Open Visions - a vision you see with your natural eyes

like a TV screen right in front of your eyes (can be a video or a snapshot)
If you close your eyes the vision goes away

Trances – out of your mind and into God’s mind

Enter a state where you are unaware of your surroundings
Often their eyes are flickering
Seeing things / having experiences with God
Peter & Paul both went through trances

Dreams – there are 2 kinds

Virtual Reality Dream
Reality Dream – when your soul & body are sleeping, your spirit has an experience while your soul is asleep

Déjà vu is an experience where your spirit has already been somewhere your body has been yet
Approximately 1/3 of all dreams in the Bible are reality dreams – e.g. God came to Abimelech in a dream, the angel came to Joseph in a dream, etc.

Take all the dreams of the Bible and read them all at once, then ask the Holy Spirit what He wants you to learn from this
Job 33:14-18 – many times what God can’t do to you while you’re awake, He’s does to you while you’re sleeping – He adjusts you while you’re under anesthesia

What God did to Adam when He put him to sleep had consequences

Speaker – Seth Dahl:

In the Kingdom, God will award you for facing your biggest fears
Sometimes God wants you to pray so non-religiously so that it will actually work, because it causes you to have to believe it’s Him
Kids are the easiest to teach how to walk in healing because they just go with it

Adults are the most difficult thing in the world
A child’s experience of God working through them to heal someone will always overpower the argument of someone older than them that God isn’t real

When you ask God to talk to you, you aren’t allowed to think you made it up
God will back up your obedience to the things He shows you
Before we can go out and change the world, God has to change us and the way we see the people that are in the world

When God transforms the way you see people, He’ll transform the people you’re ministering to
What He has cleansed, do not call unclean

It’s really important how we diagnose the people of the world – if we misdiagnose them then we’ll misdiagnose how to treat them

The fields are ripe for harvest, but the laborers are few
The world is a womb full of unborn spiritual babies – we should be speaking to them, praying over them, dreaming over them and making preparations for them even before they are born into our world
More than God is a farmer, He’s a dad

Just because they haven’t been born yet, doesn’t mean He hasn’t been speaking to them, doesn’t mean He hasn’t been preparing for their arrival

We get to do much more than reap harvests, we get to bring children out of the womb and introduce them to their dad

What would happen if we saw outreach in that way?
What would happen if we let God change the way we see His unborn babies
Let Him give you His heart for His children that are yet unborn

WEEK #8

Monday, October 29^th

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

Look into book on Biblical Origins by Paul Wegner
As early as the 1500’s, the church was beginning to discover that to control the study notes is, in some ways, to control the interpretation of Scripture

The rapture as a mainstream idea can be traced back to the Schoefield commentary of the 1800’s

The Hebrew language only had about 3,000 base words about the time that Genesis was written

Webster’s Unabridged English Dictionary has 475,000 base words
Fewer words require an expanded capacity & context becomes even more key to draw out the intended message
The average person has about 40,000 words in their active vocabulary
Greek is a much more complex language (i.e. Greek has 4 words that can be translated love in English)

Ideally, pick a translation that you can understand, is based directly on the Greek/Hebrew and not a paraphrase, one that is translated by a committee and not an individual, but primarily one that speaks to you

It’s highly recommended to read several highly regarded translations as to highlight some of the basic issues in interpretation

The Message Bible works well as a commentary, but it is not highly recommended that you use it as your main study Bible
The Amplified shows many different definitions in an effort to amplify the Greek text, but by showing all the possible definitions doesn’t necessarily bring clarity because the author intended only one of those, while most people will pick the definition that appeals most to them in the moment
If the best Greek/Hebrew text is available, it is best to have that represented in Scripture so that we can use it to make the best personal interpretation possible

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

In His presence you are changed – if you want to be changed, spend time in His presence
Be excited that God has chosen you
Never settle for second best in God, for anything less than the fullness of Him

Do not let this day pass you by – God has created a path especially for you, to love you and provide for you and lead you into your future
We are His chosen ones, and He loves us

You’re in a season that was built just for you – a special time and place to prepare you for the purposes and plans He has for you
God is requiring us to lean into Him during this season so that we can get everything He has in store for us
When we put more faith in our old way of doing things than the new things Jesus is doing in us, you will lose both

When you don’t allow God to change you

What is taught in this school cannot be learned, it is caught

Takes a Kingdom thinking mind
Don’t mix kingdoms, it only muddles the water

The process empowers us to live in our Promised Land
God asks us to leave the good in order that we may pursue His best
We were built for love and it’s the love of God that will fulfill us

Enter into the season of rest so that the grace of God can overtake you

Your test will either leave you in bitterness, or it will bring you to the God that heals you
God is trying to give us a new identity
There is nothing that God will not heal. Period.

He mandated it from before the beginning of the world
When we’re faithless, He is faithful

We must learn to be like Him – and the only way to get it is by actually doing nothing in His presence

You get way more done by being a lover of God than a worker

God always tests before promotion

Look at every situation as though God brought it your way as a test that will bring promotion
Problems are opportunities for promotion
What you give your attention to determines what you will become

The more of the love of God you get, the more of God you get
Be done with complaining

Complaining comes out of lack, a lack of being able to see the gold God has provided in the situation
We live in the camp of the enemy where God has prepared a table before us, but complaining comes out of blindness to what God has placed on the table
Will you proclaim God’s goodness over the situation, or will you complain about what you think you don’t have?
Tests of hidden-ness

Even when you feel you need someone to talk to, you can’t and all you have is God to talk to

Tests of need
Tests of favor/abundance

King Saul let his inner brokenness make his decisions
King Saul never had training, David had years of training
None of us are above change or being confronted or doing what’s right

People are more concerned with their destiny, God is more concerned with the process

The process prepares us for our destiny so that we aren’t destroyed when we begin to walk in it
The process brings an anointing/grace to thrive where you couldn’t otherwise

You have one life to live, make it count
However you see yourself is how you start to act and become

The way you see yourself is what allows giants to set up camp in your land, for the way you see yourself is how the enemy will see you
Your biggest giant will be the area of your greatest breakthrough, and it will become your source of greatest strength
If your biggest giant is sickness, your greatest breakthrough will be in healing and your greatest anointing will be the healing anointing

What you fear has power over you

False Evidence Appearing Real is what stops you from your destiny
Fear will keep you imprisoned in a false identity

Like David, we must face our giants

Conquer your giants with God’s grace, with the supernatural word of God, with the prophetic promises God has spoken over your life, and with your faith

Not through works, but through resting in His presence

If God took sickness away under the Old Covenant, how much more will He take sickness away under the New Covenant
God is destroying those strongholds in your life as you come to them and face them

Little by little He will drive them out before us and we will inherit the land

Don’t give up the strongholds God has set up in your life to move on to the next stronghold of the enemy or you will have to fight old battles again as the enemy comes in to retake the land you have failed to occupy
Drink from the apostolic wells and dream the dreams of God

Let Him captivate you so much that you don’t care about anything anymore but His goodness – this will lead you into everything you ever wanted according to God’s will

Stop asking so many questions, just sit back and enjoy the ride with God

Allow yourself to enjoy the journey with Him and the enemy will lose all his footholds in your life

Tuesday, October 30^th

Speaker – Doug Addison:

God likes doing things outside the box

Let’s cut the box up and make signs, because people are looking for signs

If you don’t believe in healing, the best time to start believing is when you’re sick
Get to the place in the Kingdom where God is our only reality

The enemy can’t change our minds, no matter how much suffering he throws at us

When God is your only reality, you live your life in denial of the enemy

When you see something bad in your life, it’s the plan of the enemy

We must reorient ourselves to see the good in people

People know their sin, tell them something they don’t know
The prophetic truly is telling people how they will be when they get through it

The will of God is the opposite of anything the enemy throws at you
God’s been prophesying through the music, have you been listening?
We’re called to live in the light, and we’re called to be lights for others
The New Age movement contains a lot of people the church kicked out as spiritual outcasts
Everything we go through God will redeem and use for our future
Dreams are not psychological, they are spiritual
The Holy Spirit is with you when you step out to help someone – when you open your mouth He will fill it
Job 33:13 – God will speak to God in one way or another, but they will not always perceive it so He will then comes to them in dreams and seal away His instructions inside of them to keep them from pride (also, attacks from the enemy)

Dreams you can’t remember are uploaded in your spirit so that you will walk them out without even knowing it

“Revelation without obligation”

In some dreams, what you see is what you get – they are literal

These are more like night visions

In other dreams, everything is metaphorical

These are more like night parables

Genesis 40:6 – Joseph interprets dreams

“There is no one that can interpret dreams but God”

1 Corinthians 2:14

The person without the Spirit of God does not accept the things that come from the Spirit because they count it as foolish

“Wall Down” evangelism is where you get the walls down and we talk spirit to spirit

John 14:6 was an insider meeting with His disciples two weeks before He went to the Cross – He never said it to an unbeliever
Jesus never used the Scriptures we use to tell unbelievers about the Gospel

Showing people the way is step one, the truth is step two

Most people today don’t believe in a truth, and to tell them you know the truth causes them to shut down
Encounters with God cause people to drop the walls around their heart

When we minister to non-believers, we must approach them as a missionary

Study the culture, learn the language, and meet them where they’re at instead of expecting them to meet us where we’re at
People are already saying “I’m spiritual, not religious”
Can give a prophetic word without sounding like a ‘Christian’?
“What are you, a psychic? means “I perceive you’re a prophet”
If you have to “sneak in the back door” with them, Jesus is okay with that

We aren’t compromising the Gospel by using coded language to work your way into their heart

First step is to discern where they are!

Don’t answer their questions about your beliefs/identity
The most powerful statement you can make to someone who believes there is no absolute truth is “you need to find out for yourself” (John 4:16 ‘hack’)
Connect with them through what they know so we can lead them into an encounter with God – encounter is what bring down the walls around their heart
Ask them if they’re spiritual,

“I went to church as a kid” means they’re parole Christians now – they did hard time as a kid and now they go see their parole officer Jesus on Christmas and Easter

To them, Christian = rules, legalistic, all about money, holier than thou, etc.

We have come to a point where we no longer have an issue with the supernatural power of God, but now we need people to help us learn the language of our culture so we can connect with them
Most people don’t understand “church” – “many witches really like Jesus, they just don’t like church”
We need to change our language

John 1:47 – Jesus encounters an unbeliever (Nathaniel)

Jesus used prophetic evangelism to open doors with him
Prophetic evangelism starts with being able to encourage someone

John 4 – Jesus encounters Samaritan woman at the well

Jesus used prophetic evangelism to open doors with her
Jesus saw the negative, and flipped it – called her honest when she told the truth about having no husband, that was not God’s will for her life
This woman was the kind of woman who knew everybody, everybody knew her, and she knew everybody’s stuff – perfect recruiter to bring people to Jesus

Spiritual principal – the more you do something, the better you get
Notes available on www.DougAddison.com
“Cereal Christians” – fruits, flakes and nuts
Be a Mobil Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) unit

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

It’s a great privilege to talk about God

It’s humbling to talk about His graciousness

Part of the frustration of Romans is that man tries to suppress the knowledge of God given to them by their creator
The Scriptures don’t debate the existence of God, they simply affirm it
Acts 17:22

“What you worship in ignorance, I have come to explain to you”
“God made humans that they might seek God, to grope for Him though He is not far from us”

We have a limited capacity to understand God, but we do know some things about Him because He wants us to know
“I would understand God if He would just explain Himself” is concentrated ignorance
Scripture says “He’s God and you’re not, and even if He were to explain Himself, you would not get it”
Getting to know God is part of our glorious experience as His children
God is looking for those that want to know Him and want to walk wisely
Jeremiah 9:23-24

“Let Him who boasts boast in this – that they understand and know me” –God

Scottish Catechism: The purpose of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever
It’s okay to disagree with other Christians, but remember we’re all in the same family
God is unlimited, except in the cases where He chooses to limit Himself
God knows everything simultaneously that He wants to know

To forgive and forget seems to be impossible for man but possible for God

So many of us have had such bad experiences with authority at some point in our lives that we have real issue with God having laws and commandments for us to obey

The laws of God are nothing more than the virtues of God that, when we embrace them, we become more like Him
The law both points out our sin and reflects God’s virtues – embracing His virtues is a part of becoming like God

Everything there is to know about love is available in knowledge about God
God’s wisdom means doing the best thing in the best way at the best time for the best purpose
The difference between the creature and the creator is a vast one – God necessarily exists in a more excellent way than we exist

God’s being is not just quantitatively different but qualitatively different than us
All else can pass away in an instant, He necessarily exists forever

Picking a ‘king virtue’ of God gives yourself permission to ignore or dismiss other virtues of God

Fairness (e.g. communism) becoming the king virtue means we can violate other virtues in pursuit of fairness
Tolerance becomes king virtue means we can violate lots of other virtues in pursuit of tolerance

God is love (super set), but love is not God (sub set)

When love becomes the super set, we begin to take our definition of love and apply it to God

Colossians 2:9, Hebrew 3

“Jesus is the kind of God God is” – James Sire
When you’ve seen Jesus, you’ve seen God

Attributes of God found in Scripture:

Lion – Is. 31:4
Eagle – Duet. 32:11
Lamb – Is. 53:7
Hen – Matt. 33:27
Sun – Ps. 84:11
Morning Star – Rev. 22:16
Light – Ps. 27:1
Torch – Rev. 21:23
Fire – Heb. 12:29
Fountain – Ps. 36:9
Rock – Deut. 32:4
Hiding Place – Ps. 119:114
Tower – Prov. 18:10
Moth – Ps. 39:11
Shadow – Ps. 91:1
Shield – Ps. 84:11
Temple – Rev. 21:22
The Bridegroom – Is. 61:10
Husband – Is. 54:5
Father – Deut 32:6
Judge / King – Is. 33:22
Man of War – Ex. 15:3
Builder/Maker – Heb. 11:10
Shepherd – Ps. 23:1
Physician – Ex. 15:26

Wednesday, October 31^st

Speaker – Nancy Cobb: The Heart of Prophetic Ministry

You teach what you know, but you impart who you are

You have to figure out who you are before you can know what you’re to impart

The best thing you can do to prepare for prophetic ministry is to know who you are first
We may not have prophetic words that sound like everybody else’s, but just being yourself and allowing God to flow through you will powerfully impact people’s lives
Do you really know specifically who you are, and what you can bring?

Only you can do what you do
You can have a similar gift mix as those around you, but there’s only one you
You have to know the who before you can do the what and the how

At it’s core, prophecy is about identity

God has created a foundation in all of our lives as a basis for who we are – prophecy is building upon that foundation using God’s material
In prophecy we’re going after those very specific things that God’s saying to people
It’s hard to put language to who God is showing you that others are when you know who you are

As believers, our key questions for God involve our identity, and so do the key questions of non-believers
Focus on what you see God doing in other people – identifying spiritual gifts in people

We need to understand what those gifts look like so we can grasp what God is showing us
We all get stuff from God across our screen, but our biggest struggle is with the interpretation of what we’re seeing
When our focus is centered on our self-discovery, we can easily get mixed up regarding the things God is showing us

One way you can tell where we’re going by what’s really prevalent culturally

The enemy will often times release the counterfeit before God moves in order to dull down people’s response to the things God is releasing into the earth

Psalm 20:4

Do a word study on the word purpose
God is pretty specific about our calling and how He’s created us individually
Our heart’s desire and our purpose are linked together
Desire comes from two words – ‘de’ means of, ‘sire’ means father = of the Father
(See audio file)

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

(See audio file)

Thursday, November 1^st

BSSM Track Presentation:

The Kingdom isn’t advanced through good behavior, it’s advanced through great faith
Great leadership begins with great thinking – renewal of you mind is key
Kingdom starts with family – we are all called to mother/father others, and we become that be learning to become the best daughters/sons we can

Fathers & mothers can always see the best inside of their kids

What we believe about this next generation is what we will see from this next generation
Whoever has the edge on creativity holds the reigns to changing culture
Everything you do is a ministry when you do it in the presence of God
We want you to fall in love with each other and terrorize hell
God is in a good mood, but there are so many people who don’t know that
The door to the cell is wide open, but the people are afraid to come out

God’s people don’t make Him look attractive
So often, what people need is a good listening to

Inner healing = go to the God head – they’re waiting for you

There are many things we know in our head, but we have to get them into our heart
God judges us on the condition of our heart, not the condition of our head

“A Christian cannot sin unless they’re believing a lie” –Bill Johnson
“The dogs of doom lie at the gates to your destiny” –Kris Vallotton
Isaiah 61 – those who are oppressed actually become oaks of righteousness that deliver they’re countrymen

Speaker – Chris Overstreet, Outreach Pastor, BSSM:

God wants to open our eyes up in the Spirit and give us permission to dream with Him
To the degree that you see and pray into what you see in your heart is the degree to which we’re going to see breakthrough
God loves showing us things and it is up to us to pray through into what He shows us
There is a marriage that exists between intercession and true evangelism that brings forth amazing fruit
God is igniting a fire and a passion in our hearts to introduce His beloved to Him

God wants to burn in our hearts to love Him and love people

Forget those things that are behind and press on to what is set before us
John 8

“He who is without sin, let him throw a stone at her first”
“Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more”
Do we hold onto the stones of condemnation to throw at those who we think deserve it?

Matt. 9:9

Jesus has a passion for all of humanity, that all would choose Him & have life
He didn’t come to call the righteous to repentance, but sinners
Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick
I desire mercy over sacrifice
Keep your heart soft, press into God for a heart that is continuously soft

WEEK #9

Monday, November 5^th

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

Read the Word until you hear the Holy Spirit
There are many different kind of bridges that can be built to connect us with the times of Scripture over the river of time – in line with everything the Bible already says

Principlizing

Related, timeless, culturally bound, correspond & relevant

Prophetic

Allow the whole of Scripture to impact our interpretation of it

Speaker – Chris Gore:

I don’t need to convince God that God wants to heal them, He has to convince me that He wants to use me
Don’t pray past the miracle
Short prayer, then test it out, repeat as necessary
The person standing in front of you is not a project, they’re a person

We need to love, honor, and respect them & their beliefs
It’s not a time to teach them beliefs, it’s time to get them healed

It’s not our job to tell anybody that they’re healed, it’s our job to pray and it’s The Doctor’s job to tell them that they’re healed
Sometimes people come from desperate states and will hear what you don’t say, they’ll hear what they want to hear you say
Never tell anyone to stop taking they’re medication – that’s their doctor’s job
We end the prayer time as soon as they’re healed – once they’re healed they’re healed

Thank them for allowing you to pray for them
Always leave them in a good place
If they haven’t received, encourage them and invite them to get prayer again
Just because you pray and nothing appears to have happened does not mean that nothing has happened – it’s impossible to pray and nothing happen

The best thing you can do is to live in that place of thanksgiving to God

Encourage them to stay connected to receive mode

Live with the core conviction that it’s impossible to pray and nothing happen
Don’t say anything like “it’s not God’s timing” or say something else to pass off your powerlessness – keep them connected to what God is doing
Give each person our absolutely undivided love, honor & attention
Fire Tunnels

We’re into Spirit wild, not fleshly wild
Watch where you put your hands
No tackling, but no timidity either – stay away from extremes, flow with the Spirit

It’s really important that we walk in the confidence of Jesus

Jesus walked in the absolute certainty that all His prayers would be answered and when He put His hands out, people would be healed
This can be the day for their breakthrough, and we should come with an absolutely expectant heart that today is their day
Come with the expectation that this person in front of you, right here right now is there time to get a miracle
We’re seated with Jesus in heavenly places, so we pray with Him and from Him

You don’t actually need to be that good at your job, because it doesn’t have anything to do with you but has everything to do with Him

Healing is only difficult when you think it has something to do with you
As soon as we realize it’s not about us but it’s Him in us and Him through us, that’s when we’ll see results
It’s not a formula, it’s about loving the person and listening to the Holy Spirit and releasing The Answer that’s already within us
It’s not a matter of what you pray, but do you believe who He says He is?
It’s my job to believe that He’s good at His job

Always keep The Answer larger than the problem you’re about to encounter

When the problem appears to be bigger than The Answer, you’ve got a problem because now you’re coming into agreement with their problem
Don’t turn inward and allow the problem to overwhelm you, put your eyes on The Answer
Sympathy will lock people into problems, compassion will break them out
When we’re absolutely impressed with Jesus, we have no room to be impressed by the enemy
Only look at the devil long enough to pull the trigger
Don’t tell them what they already know, release The Answer (the opposite of everything we see)
We’re not in a battle with the enemy, he’s already a defeated foe
The more you realize His presence is in you, more will happen through you by accident than on purpose

Jesus never projected anything upon them, He just got them healed

If we aren’t careful, we can actually project something on them that isn’t there
Don’t tell them it’s their fault they didn’t get healed – it’s not God’s fault and it isn’t theirs, it’s ours
Don’t project your powerlessness upon them

e.g – do you have any unforgiveness?
Changes their focus inward to their problem(s)
What do we do? We ask questions

As prayer servants at Bethel, we’re powerful people – when people come here they hang on every word that comes out our mouths as if it’s directly from God

We’re not concerned with root causes, we’re not on a devil hunt, we’re not looking for a source to the problem – our job is to love, honor & accept them and get them healed
There are no blockages or hindrances to healing – my atmosphere needs to be greater than their hindrance

If I think everyone who comes for healing is a bad person, that’s a hindrance and I’m not going to see very many people healed

Don’t allow yourself to become introspective and beat yourself up for what you pray for and don’t see happen
If you’ll take the burden when someone isn’t healed, you’ll take the glory when they are

it’s not your burden, and it’s not your glory
we shouldn’t be flippant in our approach, we should be grateful and thankful for everything God does
At the Cross we lay the glory and the burdens while seeking a greater level of who He is in and through me until everyone who comes for healing is healed
Always learn from the experience of what we’ve just gone through

Don’t minister out of your track record, minister out of Jesus’

Your track record may not be that good, His is impeccable
Picture the testimonies that you have seen where that condition was healed, not out of all the ones that you didn’t see healed

Just because you see something on somebody doesn’t mean you have to say it
Don’t make your prayer all about the sickness – it’s not a life giving prayer because you give more emphasis to the enemy than to the Spirit of God

Tuesday, November 6^th

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

We are sons through faith in Jesus, the Anointed Savior
We are redeemed that we might be adopted as sons
Abba = daddy, a simple term of endearment – seems to be a common saying within the Christian community that most likely originated with Jesus

Abba Father puts the Aramaic & Greek together
We are sons, heirs and joint-heirs with Jesus

The invitation is to come be adopted by God into His family as His beloved son
God is not tame, He is wild – CS Lewis
We dare not speak for God, we let Him speak for Himself
Jesus was rocking the world with His calling of God as Abba Father

His primary message – God is ‘daddy’

In the Hebrew culture, the culture & the family is more important that the individual
Romans 8:12-17 contains some of the most definitive language of God as our Father

When you became a believer, you didn’t just subscribe to a certain set of ideas, you were adopted into God’s family and have received the spirit of sonship

Marry God & live married to Him like a faithful spouse, not like a single person

You’ve been adopted, not live as adopted kids

We don’t need a sin nature in order to sin (e.g. Lucifer, Adam & Eve)
The Lord can use fear to motivate us if that’s all we’ll understand, but it’s better to understand Him on the level of His love & be motivated by love relationship with Him
Take time to write down the character traits of God that your parents showed you
“Perhaps it is the man that God can trust the most that He will place at the outpost furthest away” –CS Lewis

Perhaps the dumbest quote ever – there is no outpost God cannot resupply and there is no outpost that He is not present at
Still can feel true at times

Speaker – Bill Johnson, Senior Leader, Bethel Church:

In the Kingdom, two ideas that can appear contradictory without being contradictory
There are two primary principles for advancement in the Kingdom

Keep your attention fixed on what God is doing and not on what He isn’t doing
Protect your heart diligently

You are the only one who can protect your heart and no one can do it as well as you can
Media draws us into an experience that isn’t legitimately ours, but it cultivates drama in your heart and projects conflict onto you
You don’t want to pick up the spirit your opponent has, you should always remain in the Kingdom

Wisdom means to discern the season you’re in & operate accordingly
Matt. 11

Jesus honors John the Baptist here in an appropriate & unparalleled way
John had to learn to keep his attention fixed on what God is doing and not pay attention to what He isn’t doing
Faith = an act of violence in the unseen realm
Faith says I believe in what I can’t see more than what I can see
In some areas we can only gain ground by putting forth effort & working our faith

People are not our enemy, the spirits controlling them are – exercise your God-given authority over the territory God has entrusted to you
Never done to show off but as an expression of His love

Mark 10:14-15

John the Baptist’s position is one of violence, but there are seasons when we are to sit down and let it be brought to us
We must learn to rest because some things don’t come by wrestling, they only come by resting in Him
Many of us are on the verge of a breakthrough, but He can’t give it to us while we’re fighting, only when we enter into His rest

It is essential that you learn to operate in the peace of heaven, how to operate in that atmosphere, how to carry it, and how to give it away to others

Some things just die in the atmosphere of peace – what seems so simple and quiet to us is absolutely terrifying to the powers of hell
All I need do is celebrate in the love of my relationship with the Father and the exploits of my blood brother Jesus, and learn to rest in His peace
Don’t try to think His peace into understanding for it’s beyond our ability to think, it’s truly peace beyond reason

There are things He can only entrust to an heir and not to a soldier
You never have to lose peace to fight
Mark 4:24

“Take heed what you hear, for with the same measure you use it will be measured to you, and to those who hear more will be given”
The standards that we set in our heart attracts those with the same standard

It’s not about quantity it’s about quality
There is something in the unseen that attracts to affirm the standard that has been set
You have the power to attract what you set as the standard in your heart

There are many people that want to grow in faith, but they’ll listen to anything

Whatever seeds are planted in your garden, if it’s not faith it will compete with faith

The test is what you do with what you’ve been given – when you handle it well, you receive more
As these things become established in your heart, you actually become a magnet that attracts the very things you need to get where your called to go
Whatever you laugh at you will eventually embrace – things first become humor before they become acceptable in practice

What sort of things are you willing to laugh at?

Learn the appetites of the heart – don’t be okay with laughing at immorality, because the enemy will use that to change the conditions under which that behavior is acceptable to that our resistance to it is decreased
Some ugly stuff we just run into as part of being on the planet earth, but if it comes to you repeatedly you need to examine the standard that is set in your heart regarding those areas
Start living based not on what is acceptable, but on what is profitable
The person who lives to see how close they can walk to the edge of the cliff will fall off because they will overshoot their boundaries
Clean up your conversation and it will help clean up your life
Watch enough news to be informed, but not caught up in the emotional roller coaster – only you know your limits and you must steward your heart

The enemy wants to get you to combat a wrong spirit with a wrong spirit
You just have to be careful with certain people regarding certain things

You reach levels of great faith by taking care of your heart – faithfulness over the long haul pays off, you’ll be glad you didn’t flake out

Dig in your heels, set righteous standards for what you allow into your heart, as for me and my house…
Whatever you have in your heart will attract affirmation in those areas

When the Lord speaks something to you, WRITE IT DOWN

Don’t be quick to teach the things you here – if you speak it too soon you’ll forget it soon
Give it time to simmer in your heart
When the Lord shows you something it’s because something in your heart needs to change

You can relieve yourself of the pressure of conviction prematurely – you short-circuit the process and end up with a stunted revelation and stunted depth of transformation compared to that which God intends

Sin is a distortion of truth – it is not substance but it is the perversion of substance

The enemy can’t create anything, so he can only distort and pervert what exists

It’s not about becoming more aware of heaven than the physical world around you, it’s about focusing on His presence and spending time with Him, in His Word, and living out of the Kingdom

Misapplied truth is what gets us messed up

You never want to isolate yourself into material blessing to the point that you’re isolated from the cries of the poor

At the same time, if your parents give you a really nice gift for Christmas and you turn around and give it away, it won’t take too many times of that where they’ll stop giving you nice things
Giving is sometimes easier than stewarding – if I give a possession away then I’ve given a responsibility away
It’s all about our faithful, responsible stewardship of the position God has given us in life

We must learn to be happiest in the place God has given us in life
God has pleasure in you being blessed

We have bread and we have seed, we shouldn’t eat our seed and we shouldn’t plant our bread

Give when He is giving, feast when He is feasting

It’s not about building our empires, but at the same time, if God delights in blessing me with something, it may look good to you if I give it away, but God isn’t happy because He delighted in me having it

There are mysteries surrounding some afflictions that we don’t yet know how to dismantle

As we learn more how to hear from God, we will see greater success in healing
His heart to heal says that His timing to heal is now, but sometimes there is a process involved – the good news is Holy Spirit knows exactly how to heal them

Don’t over-commit yourself, when you have a break & take full advantage of opportunities to rest

Remember the farmer during the harvest – you may have to bite the bullet during certain seasons, but when that season is over it’s time to rest
Don’t over-fill your schedule – emergencies will arise and those will break you, so always leave room in your schedule for things that will arise unexpectedly
Always make time for your wife

The Holy Spirit didn’t lead Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted, He lead Jesus into the wilderness to gain victory

God will never put us in a place to fall, He will only put us in a place to accelerate

Wednesday, November 7^th

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

The letters are not systematic theological interpretations, but are written to address specific situations/circumstances
They were never meant to be exhaustive commentaries on doctrine – the authors use their letters to express their doctrine and the application of theology in practical ways

Never conclude too much from one letter over another

None of the letters cover the entire teaching of the author’s theology, but give us snapshots into their doctrine regarding specific topics – some of the material God has given to us, the remainder is for us to work out in relationship with Holy Spirit
Jesus persevered because of the joy set before Him, so when we’re enduring hard times, keep your focus on the joy set before you
There’s a bit of a fundamental brokenness in America that sacrifices community and family for the sake of individual freedom – not a biblical value
NT communities had no church history to draw upon for guidance, everything was new to them & Paul did much of His theology ‘on the fly’ while being directed by Holy Spirit

It’s really helpful to realize that Paul was in love with Jesus

Paul’s job was to connect Hebrew Scripture to Christian theology in order to establish new church communities
Gordon Fee – How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth

Realize the limitations of Scripture
Scripture gives us all we need but not all we want
Reform thinking based on sounds exegetical analysis of the Word
We sometimes ask questions of the text it isn’t answering
Bring a spirit-filled, Biblical world view to the text

Don’t just hear and obey (or ignore) the Word

You’re acting like the world when you separate according to leaders

Christians don’t do leadership like the world does leadership – we’re not to assign our allegiance to a given leader but only to Jesus

Each leader should be careful how He builds on the foundation of Jesus & the church
Our work in the church will be evaluated in eternity
Do not let the world’s standard be your standard

Speaker – Kris Vallotton, Associate Senior Leader, Bethel Church:

Jesus didn’t get voted out of office – He’s still the King of kings
If you’re depressed you put your faith in the wrong person

God isn’t looking for the White House to change the world, He’s looking for you to change the world

If you want to have more dreams & want to be able to interpret your dreams, keep something near your bed to record the dream once you wake up – include every details you can remember, especially including how you felt in general and about everything you see in the dream

Dreams come in hieroglyphics
It’s important to capture all the details you can before you forget it

The interpretation of dreams belongs to God –Daniel

Any time God speaks to us, the purpose is to draw us into relationship
We’re primarily interested in information, God’s primarily interested in relationship
God speaks to us in riddles so that we have to come to Him to find out what they mean, it’s an invitation to relationship

Not all dreams are from God, even if it’s a good dream – just because it’s from the spirit realm doesn’t mean it’s from the Holy Spirit
Sometimes dreams that come from your spirit are signs that it needs some help
Bad dreams

When it’s from God it’s a warning, when it’s from the devil it’s an attempt to scare you – whatever you do don’t prophesy it, pray against it
When you get a bad dream – flush it, when you get a bad dream repeatedly – pray against it, if it doesn’t go away – get some help

When you’re in heaven you are outside of time – you don’t need prophecy when you’re outside of time
So often, context determines definition
Teachers do not understand hieroglyphics, the prophets do

Understanding what the walls of the cave are made out of won’t help you interpret what is etched on the wall
Take Holy Spirit out of the process & you will come up with some crazy stuff – a great way to take you out of relationship with Holy Spirit & miss interpret things

Satan is an intellectual property thief – He is a created being, not a creator

Whatever you see in the demonic realm, you will typically see it’s mirror opposite in God’s Kingdom
Anything that’s powerful the devil will try to duplicate
no one tries to duplicate $1 bills – if someone tries to counterfeit something it’s probably powerful (e.g. prophesy, mind reading, future telling, etc) – he does this in an effort to confuse the outpouring of God’s power

Just let Holy Spirit worry about it, don’t try to do it (mental telepathy, conjuring up the dead, etc.)
If I don’t realize that I have the ability to perceive someone’s thoughts, I can go to prophesy over them and perceive their thoughts without realizing it and read it back to them as a prophesy (bad news!)

The gift of discernment is the answer, determines the source of the spirit
Ask the Holy Spirit what He thinks about what you’re hearing in your spirit, and if you don’t get immediate confirmation then don’t release what you’re hearing in a prophesy over that person
Manipulation might get you the word you want, not the word you should have

Michael is tall, ripped, native American appearance, coal black hair, dark blue eyes, wears no shirt and black wrestling tights, and is always in a bad mood

Thursday, November 8

Speaker – Chris Overstreet, Outreach Pastor, Bethel Church:

The motivation of everything we do is love & honor

Our objective isn’t just to heal them, but to treat them like a real person

The last thing you want to do is try to intimidate someone

You have a few precious moments with them to build rapport and trust

Introduce yourself, engage them in conversation, ask permission to pray for them and ask if you can lay your hand on them while respecting their answer, don’t shout, keep your prayer simple and speak strength and restoration into that area, then ask them to test it out

The healing will open the door for them to receive Jesus, you won’t have to convince them, ask them if they know who just healed them & if they know Jesus

Commonly people approach those who need prayer are extremely nervous to do so
Every person is a person, and not everyone who needs prayer are saved

We need to use wisdom to lead these people into a love encounter with Jesus
We don’t want their encounter with us to ruin them for future encounters with God
Never point the finger at them if you don’t see the healing manifest
Encounters with believers typically leave people with two responses, it either brings them closer to Jesus or it pushes them away and they use it as evidence regarding their unbelief in God & Christianity

If you don’t see a healing manifest, admit that you don’t know why they weren’t just healed, then explain to them the difference between healing and a miracle, tell them you believe God is doing something in their body right then, and encourage them to focus on what God is doing and not what He isn’t doing
God is often still healing people’s bodies even after we leave and into the next days, weeks & months – big difference between a miracle & a healing
Our chief motivation must always be love & to lead them to a love encounter with God
Always sow positive seed toward their next encounter with believers and with God
There’s a tremendous difference between moving in power & authority
Gift of Faith – gift of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12)

Don’t wait for the gift of faith, step out in the measure of faith that you have
Every time you use the measure of faith that God has given you, your faith grows
Pray that God will help you to be faithful in using the faith He’s given you

Measure of Faith – what has been given to each of us by God (Romans 12:3)
You don’t have to get people’s attention, let God get their attention
As you’re out in the community, don’t get too serious about it – relax & have fun

This is a life-long adventure
Every time you approach someone, your faith muscles inside are developing

It’s not intimidating to approach people and pray for their healing when you really learn who you are in Jesus and who He is in you
Meditate on Mark 16, pray it all the time, see yourself healing people in your Secret Place – dream with God and allow Him to build these things inside of you

Part of becoming convinced in your heart that God’s Word is true

You can’t see the lame healed if you don’t pray for the lame, you can’t see the blind healed if you don’t pray for the blind
When you do it and it doesn’t work, you can get offended/angry/hurt and even establish doctrine why God doesn’t heal anymore, or you can press in & keep stepping out in faith
Tell them not to try to be a good Christian, but to just fall deeply in love with Jesus and allow the grace of the Holy Spirit to deliver them
Just love people where they’re at – some people might try pushing your buttons to see how much love you really have for them and how much is an act

Ask them what they would like Jesus to do for them – always bring them back to the solution
You’re goal in conversation isn’t to get one up on them, but to love them, honor them, and minister to them as a person
Allow the Holy Spirit to guide you and give you discernment

Always check in with the Holy Spirit – ask Him what He’s doing, where He’s at and to guide you in what to do & He will
There isn’t one right approach to people in different situations, just approach them in love and let the Holy Spirit lead the way
The prophetic is really powerful out in the world – hearing God’s voice and communicating that to people in the community is a very powerful tool in evangelism
Revelation – What is God saying?
Interpretation – What does it mean?

Sometimes when we don’t have the interpretation, we make it up
It is never a good thing to make up the interpretation – if you don’t have it don’t act like you do
Revelation does not guarantee the interpretation or even the application
Often times God will give revelation for you to pray about it, not talk about it

You aren’t supposed to say everything God is saying to you

Application – How do I deliver this word?
Prophetic ministry is for exhortation, edification & comfort – i.e. we aren’t supposed to say everything we see, but we must filter our screen with the help of Holy Spirit

Just because you see something dark doesn’t necessarily mean you’re to communicate it
Our true job is to look for the gold in people, not the dirt
It doesn’t take a prophetic gift to see the bad things in people, it takes a prophetic gift to see the gold in people and call it out of them

There is a big difference between good and bad words

Some people prophecy out of their soul and not their spirit, so they project how they feel inside over the person in front of them via prophecy

Make sure you always ask questions so that you don’t make them feel that you’re assuming that you know everything

It can be really scary sometimes when we walk in the prophetic and speak things about them we shouldn’t know
In short, a prophetic word is a word of encouragement from God
Always ask if the word means anything to them – will help spur dialogue

Google – William Branam (sp?)
Every thought that we can have can be God’s thoughts moving through us as we minister to people
When you’re first stepping out, approach people and say, “my name is so-and-so and I’m practicing hearing from God, and I feel like God wants to speak to you right now, would you mind if I pray for you?”

Get feedback, asks them if it makes sense to them
If it doesn’t make sense to them, they either are freaked out and not willing to be honest, or you just missed it and need to ask God how you missed it

When you’re nervous about approaching people, just stay in the love of God

The love of God takes the pressure off of you and brings a wave of the gifts of the Spirit on the scene
Don’t even try to bring a word of knowledge or a prophetic word to someone, focus on coming to them and sharing God’s love for them, and remain sensitive to how Holy Spirit is moving, He will show up

Ask God to show you in a dream or vision people that you’re going to meet that He wants you to minister to, then write down what He shows you and go walk it out
There is no formula to evangelism

Formula evangelism without the love of God is dangerous, destructive & hurtful to people
The goal with leading people to Jesus is not to see how many people you can lead to the Lord or to get people to repeat a prayer that isn’t even in the Bible
The goal is for them to have a radical encounter with Jesus

Holy Spirit is the great evangelist – He’s the one who brings conviction, not you

Ask them if they know what it means to have a living relationship with Jesus
People need to know what they’re being saved from and what they’re being saved into – it’s always been about relationship
Jesus didn’t just die for small sins but He died for big sins too – only He has the power to transform their lives

Week #10

Tuesday, November 13^th

Speaker – Kevin Dedmon:

Humanism, Me-ism, and Gnosticism are all principalities
Gnosticism is not a theology, it’s a philosophy – a way to describe the world in which we live, the spiritual realm & afterlife
Rooted in Plato-ism – grew out of His philosophic thinking patters

Logos was the epitome in Greek culture – the origin of all logic, reason, ideas, etc. & the pinnacle of all the gods that they had, key to enlightenment
Logos gave the task to the gods to create the world but they messed it up and the world became corrupted
This world is the anti-type, a facade or shadow of the spiritual realm, therefore all matter is evil – thus we have to escape this world to reach a place called heaven
This philosophy infiltrated Christianity when Gnostic philosophers became Christians and brought their Gnostic thinking into the church with them

The belief is that man is evil and will always be evil until we get free from this body and go to heaven
Perpetuates the idea that God and His Kingdom would never come to earth, so we have to find a way to reach heaven and the spiritual one, and that comes through enlightenment & wisdom
Gnostics claim that Jesus was the first Gnostic, born a man like any of us who, through knowledge encounters with the Father, became enlightened

Antinomianism – it is useless to fight the evil of the flesh, so as long as you have enlightened encounters with heaven, just let your flesh do whatever you want

The goal of life is not to manage one’s emotions but to completely eradicate emotions

We are thus stuck in perpetual repentance mode, because no matter what we do it can never be right because we are intrinsically evil
God would never want to come to earth because He wouldn’t want to contaminate Himself

The Logos is not the Bible, the Bible was elevated to God level during the Reformation as an answer to why there were no more miracles

The miracles in Scripture were not done to validate the church, but to validate Jesus
Jesus was not the enlightened one, He was the enlightener
The Bible is the Jaffe, Jesus is the Logos

Jesus was the light that shined into the darkness to rescue us (John 1) while Gnosticism says we must escape the darkness and get to heaven where the light is
The entire Gospel of John is written against Gnosticism (as were John’s letters)

The Logos became flesh and made His dwelling among us
The Logos is Theo (God)
Instead of Him being contaminated, He took away our wicked sin
If we don’t believe that Jesus is man and God, there is no way we could have atonement for sins

Hebrews 2:14

Jesus had to be man so that He could be tempted in every way as we are in order for His death to count
Because He was tempted He is able to help those who are being tempted

II John 7

Equates Gnosticism with a wicked work

We have the authority, what we need to walk in power is His anointing
We are not sinners saved by grace, we are saints saved by grace and anointed like Jesus, by Jesus, to do the same works He did and greater than He did
We have been commissioned to declare His Kingdom come, His will be done, here on earth right now in this situation
We are commissioned to bring Immanuel where ever we go
We have to make the transition from Theology to Theophany!

Are people encountering the deity of Christ through our lives?

This is a demonstration Gospel!

Speaker – Kris Vallotton, Associate Senior Leader, Bethel Church:

God only makes what He is

You can trace anything that God does back to His personhood
God doesn’t love, He is love
You can go to anything in creation and follow it back to an attribute of God
Science & God are congruent – you have to work hard to be an expert in the field of science and not be led to a creator
You can study creation and you’ll find the Creator

Sometimes God causes nature to speak for Him

If you live by the Law, you’ll die by the Law and the Law has no place in the Promised Land
You should ask Holy Spirit to reveal to you what’s in the Bible before you open it

The Scriptures are mostly closed to those who don’t have the Spirit, and you’ll be limited to first-tier revelation (which you can get from a commentary)

In the OT, if you prophesied and you got it wrong you were stoned (actually they stoned pretty much anyone who messed up)

OT prophets judged people, nations, etc.
Prophecy received from God – the prophecy was right or wrong, good or evil
Interestingly enough, practically all of the prophets stoned in the OT were God’s real prophets
The only way they had to judge the prophetic word was whether or not it happened – not filled with the Holy Spirit to have discernment
If someone prophesied and you didn’t do it, you were stoned (the prophesy wasn’t a suggestion – prophets had a lot of power)
Our born-again spirit has the divine nature of God, but the spirits of those in the OT were not alive but dead

In the NT,

NT prophets judge prophecy (immediately when it’s given)
What’s being judged is the source of the word – is it from God or isn’t it
Prophecy is perceived – our discernment is between good & God
The greatest challenge is, did that word come from my spirit or Holy Spirit, because our spirit & Holy Spirit are becoming very much alike
It’s only a prophetic word when God wrote the word and you deliver it
Don’t despise prophetic utterances, examine everything carefully and hold fast to what is good

It’s possible to get part of the word wrong, but still have heard from God and still get the word partly right

If you have a strong opinion about somebody (especially if you’re related), be careful how you prophecy to them

Don’t push people into your idea of what they should be doing
Be careful that your prophetic words for your children aren’t your dreams lived out through them
Don’t prophecy dates or mates
The worst feeling in the world is to be in a marriage relationship where you feel like you married the wrong person bc you didn’t listen to God

Acts 21 – Agabus prophesied to Paul, but His prophecy was not entirely accurate

He wasn’t a false prophet, He just didn’t get all the details right

Paul also prophesied about the impending loss of the ship, but first prophesied that everyone on the ship would die, but later changed to no one would die

When you don’t create a culture where people can make mistakes, you don’t give them the opportunity to step out & take risks in a safe environment (R&D, not quality control)

Once you know what it’s like to do it wrong, you’re really excited when you get it right

What God has said teaches us how God thinks, while what God’s saying teaches us what God’s thinking

The depth of your prophecies will be based on your knowledge of the Scriptures
You can prophecy extra-Biblical, but you can’t prophesy anti-Biblical – how will you know if it’s anti-Biblical if you don’t know the Bible?

The prophetic word given to you should bear witness with your spirit – it doesn’t have to bear witness with your mind!
Often, prophetic words will surpass your understanding – pay attention to your spirit

Some things are hard to explain, not difficult to experience

Prophetic words should bring you closer to God & His people

God is more interested in relationship with you than in giving you information

Once I receive the gift of prophecy, I can prophecy anytime I want because the gift never leaves me and Holy Spirit is always with me
The goal of everything in Scripture is relationship with God
False prophets are ultra-spiritual & they use flattery to draw people to themselves and away from the body of Christ

Once they get you to follow them, they will eat you alive

The goal of a prophet is to equip people to hear God, not to hear God for them
Run directional prophecies by your leaders and seek their input – whether you want the word to be true or not

Wednesday, November 14^th

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

The fundamental questions for studying Scriptures – what are they saying, and why are they saying it?
Declarations can lead to the imperatives (e.g. Ephesians)

Always lead with what God has done, not with what we should be doing, so that grace is released for an expectation of our ability to do what God is calling us to

Data mining – pulling things out of text that was not put there intentionally
It’s easy to judge & rule out things that you know little about – don’t do that!

Embrace expanding your horizons, so that you can gain an understanding of things that may not interest you (i.e. just because it’s ‘boring’ doesn’t mean it is without redeeming value)

Walk around as though you’re 10’ tall & bulletproof when it comes to the demonic

Speaker – Kris Vallotton, Associate Senior Leader, Bethel Church:

One of the ways we received gifts is by impartation
The gifts are contagious, if you have them you can give them away
All the gifts are available, so pursue them!
Read Ephesians 4:11-17

How do I know if I’m doing my job? I don’t have one
I move from father to grandfather
My main job is to equip the saints to take care of themselves, not to take care of everyone myself
E.g. a pastor’s main job is to lead the church, but to equip the saints to pastor themselves – same with apostle, prophet, evangelist & teachers

You don’t have to be profound to be powerful

The word of knowledge is awesome bc it opens up the door for word of prophecy
Word of knowledge has an “awe” factor, but they already know that – prophecy tells you what you don’t yet know

Jesus doesn’t give us more than we can handle

He isn’t upset that we can’t handle more, He is upset when we don’t use what we’ve been given (not in ignorance, but when we know what we’ve been given)

We have got to steward grace like we steward money

Grace is the operational power of God – we can impart it to others
There are a lot of Christians unemployed in the body of Christ
God has given gifts to everybody but their doing nothing with them
They’re jealous of everyone else but don’t do a thing with what they have
So employ your gift!

It’s very important to admit and apologize for wrong prophecies – humility is HUGE!

When you do that, it opens the door for them to come back and tell you when it comes to pass, perhaps years later
Stay low, stay humble, no one is above making mistakes
Creates credibility when you admit your mistakes, rather than defending yourself

False Prophets

There are two kinds of false prophets

those with the spirit of divination (ungodly heart w/ a gift from hell)
those with the gift of prophecy or calling of a prophet (wrong heart w/ a gift from God)

False prophets often have correct prophecies

Doesn’t mean they got it from the right spirit

Believers who are called as prophets or have the gift of prophecy, those callings are irrevocable, even if they walk away from the Lord
The anointing give you purpose, the calling gives you your identity, the gift give you your ability – it’s not just the Holy Spirit that anoints people

Your dad could build you a car, but someone can steal it – your dad gave you the gift, but the thief is driving it

You cannot determine the source of the prophecy by whether or not it’s accurate

The devil can tell you the truth as long as it’s twisted to his benefit – e.g. Satan will use the Scriptures to condemn you

Understand that the Spirit of God can give people who don’t know Him dreams, visions, gifts & callings
False prophets come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves – you will know them by their fruit

Accurate prophetic word does not equal ‘good fruit’
Good fruit comes from those who do the will of the Father in Jesus’ name
False prophets don’t look like wolves, they look like sheep
Good fruit is not based on performing the gifts
Bad fruit tries to justify itself by its gifting – WE ARE NOT JUSTIFIED BY OUR GIFTING, no matter how big or amazing
Jesus connects intimacy and obedience – He says you can only know Him intimately when you are walking in obedience
Lawless refers to those who hear the words of Jesus but don’t do anything about them – false prophets don’t listen to God

False prophets have pet doctrines built on a few obscure Scriptures (house built on the sand – sand is particles of rock)

Makes it hard for people to argue with them about their doctrine

False prophets:

Don’t believe Jesus came in the flesh
Don’t listen or do what they hear
Reject authority and can’t take direction from anyone, don’t allow anyone to have influence with them
Have a martyr’s complex – belief opposition is persecution which they draw validation from
Are hyper-spiritual – all think they’ve seen God
They ‘love God’ but can’t stand the church – they stand outside the church body and throw rocks at the church (they know all the answers)
Live in fear & create fear in others by threat of punishment/judgment
Have an uncanny ability to gather a crowd quickly & bring people w them

There’s a different between a false word & a bad word

If we will disobey God in order to get something or someone, then that thing or person takes the place of God in our lives

If you choose living lawlessly as a lifestyle, then you may have an affection for God, but if you love God it looks like something (i.e. obedience)

Are you trying to change your life or change the commandments to fit your lifestyle?

You can’t live under conviction forever because it will turn to condemnation

So you either have to change the rules so you won’t have to change or feel the pain anymore, or you can change your life to coincide with God’s will
There is a spirit of deception at work where people believe they are doing the right thing but they aren’t – they are deceived

The devil is not anti-Jesus, he loves a Jesus that has no power

The devil is anti-Christ, anti-Anointing, anti power of God

The whole independence thing is another gospel – there is a spirit of independence that resists any kind of authority

The word ‘disciple’ comes from the word discipline, which means you need some
How do we know if you’re following God if you don’t follow the people in your life He’s given authority over you?

Punishment says, “I’ll get you for that” while discipline says, “I love you too much to leave you this way”
Be careful not to misjudge someone who’s just made a mistake – keep the label of a ‘false prophet’ off of them until they leave

Deal with them redemptively so that the core of your being is love

Thursday, November 15^th

Speaker – Crystal Stiles:

The minute we stop being a student is the minute we lose the right to be a teacher
Ask God to take you to a deeper place of knowing Him and knowing who you are in Him
Sometimes we feel like there’s always something more we need to do to please God
Jesus is your biggest cheerleader, your biggest fan
Any phrase from the Father has layers & layers of revelation to it

He will unfold what He said for years

God says we can have as much fruit as we want
The place we feel most of all is the place He really wants us to be
We’re supposed to deny ourselves, pick up our cross & follow Him, but we cannot do this until we realize our identity in Him, or we will carry our cross in works & not inheritance

As a result, we try to earn our way with God instead of receive our way with God

If you take up your cross to earn a place for Him, you’re working out of religion
He takes care of the things that are most important to us
We can’t prove ourselves worthy to be with Him, but we can receive His Spirit freely
Being on a cross to get cleaned up so we can have a relationship with Father is religion, the Gospel is that he hung on a cross to give us relationship with Father so we can get cleaned up
Our sole purpose in life is to be the best branch we can be

Branches live in total dependence on someone else
Does a branch feel guilty because it can’t bear fruit on its own?
A branch is in constant ‘receive mode’
We must know how to receive and stay connected in order to bear fruit

How much time are you spending in ‘achieve mode’ rather than ‘receive mode’?

Achieving comes out of receiving, not the other way around

Mary chose the better part – relationship over works
The word ‘responsibility’ comes from the word ‘response’

You can’t have a response unless you receive something first
Trying to be responsible without first being in ‘receive mode’ won’t work

Many Christians are overly fruit-conscious

Your branch only remains healthy as you focus on Him in receive mode

Don’t worry about your fruit or being fruitful

It’s the gardener’s job to worry about our fruit, not ours
Lay down your gardening tools!
A branch isn’t worried about when the fruit is going to pop out, it just knows that as it hangs there in ‘receive mode’ eventually the fruit will come

In order to bear fruit in every season, you must have blossoms & buds in every season that will produce next season’s fruit

Are you okay with being in process?
Learn to celebrate what is happening while we look forward to what’s coming

Are you okay if God only wants you to “bloom” one week a year (e.g. Malaysian flower), or are you going to insist on how often you bear fruit and what it’s going to look like?
The gardener is very, very committed to your fruitfulness, more committed than you are

He will serve you so that you can bear greater and better fruit
He will go to great lengths for your fruitfulness

The Gardener isn’t chasing you around with pruning sheers, He’s looking for ways to make you more fruitful
Get to know your Gardener – it will change your life

There is nothing the branch can do to solve it’s own problems, it takes a gardener

When branches get too long without being trimmed, they can’t bear the weight of the fruit and end up breaking under the load

Growth must come in the right proportion
Are you okay with being in the season He has you in, that’s right for you?

The most natural connection for the branch is the Father

The branch carries the same DNA as the Father
The enemy tries to disconnect us from the Father by tempting us with things we already have

The belief that we aren’t running fast enough or working hard enough comes straight from the enemy

The accuser of the brethren does his job really well in our life
Often times we become so familiar with the accuser’s voice that we mistake him for the Father
The Father is our cheerleader – Jesus won the race, we’re running His victory lap!
If your Gospel isn’t good news it’s time to get a new Gospel!

It’s probably the accuser’s voice:

If it pulls you away from a sense of grace & His affection
If it makes you want to give up
If it doesn’t sound gracious

The voice of God’s affection will wash away the voice of the accuser
How do you remain in the vine?

We’re meant to live everyday in total dependence – God designed us that way
When we feel like we aren’t good enough, it’s a time to move into greater dependence, not show Him what you can do on your own
Let Him tell you what He loves about you
Don’t listen to the voice of the accuser
If you’ll just remain instead of run, you’ll win the victory
It’s really simple – love the one who’s in front of you

God celebrates process – it’s all a process & a journey
Some of us have fig leaves of performance & God is asking us to lay those down
Give yourself permission to be a branch

Speaker – Chris Overstreet, Outreach Pastor, Bethel Church:

God is changing the world inside of you to change the world around you
Pay attention to what Holy Spirit is speaking to you & what God is doing in your heart
Give yourself to the theme Holy Spirit is highlighting in your life
The field is ripe for harvest NOW!

Putting the harvest off until later doesn’t do anyone any good
It changes things when we think of harvest as happening right now
We don’t have to pray for people to be ready to be saved, they’re already ready

Evangelism in it’s purest form is communicating the heart of God for people

Is there anyone that Jesus cannot save?

Falsehood – I’m not an evangelist so I don’t evangelize

God never called Christians to stay in the church – God called the church to go to the world

Evangelism is on God’s heart because it is the last hour

There is an urgency in the Gospel

Let’s not create excuses for ourselves for not evangelizing
The most powerful thing that communicates that God lives inside us is our lifestyle
You can’t muster up a passion to bring people to Jesus, God turns that on in you
Allow God to embrace you with His love for people

WEEK #11

Monday, November 19^th

Speaker – Bernie Ooley, Bible Teacher, BSSM:

The word ‘thanks’ comes from the same route word in the Greek that means ‘grace’
In salvation, not only has our past been redeemed, but our future has been empowered
Everything the first Adam lost in the Garden of Eden, the second Adam restored to us

In order to know what we’ve been restored to, we must look at God’s original intent for mankind
Every root of grace is seen in Genesis, both in type and shadow

We were created to rule and reign with God as His regents in the earth

‘Agents’ are mean to rule and represent on behalf of the one who sent them

The real me is not my body, the real me is my spirit

My body is just an ‘earth suit’
We are made in the image of God – we look like our Daddy
We walk in power like our Father and walk in character like our Father
We are the pattern of God in the earth, acting as His points-of-contact in the earth

God isn’t interested in robots or slaves or another animal – He wanted people who could love Him freely and that meant giving them the power to choose

Without a choice, we don’t have the power to make the right choice

Satan will always call into question what God has said, then he will always put the focus on the restriction instead of on the abundance

He will always push your focus to what you don’t have over what God is doing
We often let our previous experience to become final authority over our life, and it becomes our reality

Choosing independence from our creator will always promote the advancement of death in our lives
The term ‘death’ doesn’t mean to cease from existence, it means separation
The test was in the ‘heart’ of the garden – the issue was in their heart

When Adam and Eve fell, they saw life apart from grace, and when they heard the footsteps of God in the garden (the footsteps of truth) they sought a substitute for grace, which was another covering

Isaiah 53 has been called Holy Spirit’s view of Calvary

Jesus’ death & resurrection was the turning point for creation where it stopped heading deeper into depravity and started down the path of restoration
Jesus was scourged because disease is the scourge of mankind

Healing & forgiveness are linked together – the same root of sin is the same root of sickness, so the same sacrifice takes both away

The earth will always respond to the spiritual condition of the people that inhabit it – but the land will also respond to the cry of the righteous and be healed
In Genesis, Satan went first to a woman in the garden – when Jesus rose from the dead, He appeared first to a woman in the garden

Restored woman from their 2^nd class spiritual citizenship

The born-again, like real babies, have no past

We get to chose purity and righteousness
Babies have all the potential in the world
We DO NOT have dual natures – that is a Gnostic lie! We are partakers of the divine nature!!
The old nature died the death of the cross, the new nature is all we are to know

Don’t go to the cemetery and raise your old man from the dead

The Kingdom is for NOW and for later – if you don’t have eternal life now, you won’t have it later
When you have a baby, you get what you get – but when you adopt, you get to chose who you want

We are both born into the family and we are chosen through adoption

‘Redeem’ literally means to ransom or to buy off the auction block of slavery
God will use even those bad choices we’ve made, if we give them to Him – He will also use His redemptive power to promote use beyond where we’d be otherwise, but now with a testimony of God’s redemptive power, wisdom and compassion for those in the same path we were in, & the anointing to break them free from that same bondage, and the devil will rue the day he messed with you
God says to those who were formerly slaves – call me ‘Daddy’

The term justified means to be fully acquitted, declared ‘not guilty’

We have to be justified because we have an accuser who comes against us

Righteousness refers to the judicial ability to be declared ‘not guilty’

By a live tree man fell, and by a dead tree man was restored to righteousness
We can only truly yield works of fruit and righteousness as we live from the inside out, living out of our true selves
Religion tries to reach God, the Kingdom is God coming down to us

We saved unto good works, not saved by them!

We’re going to be right on track, right on time
God isn’t looking for slaves or robots, but for people who will choose Him and love Him freely – takes participation on our part (not works, but a receiving of what He’s done already)

Faith is an important deal because we live by faith, not out of our gifts

We’re anointed because somebody else has a need
Living by faith is a privilege and an adventure
Faith brings into being that which has yet to be
The root of faith is the knowledge of God’s goodness, and the root of doubt is the knowledge of evil
Belief that God will do what He says He will because God is who He says He is
Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God
Trusting God’s reality to be our reality – faith is an action, not an emotion
Trusting in God’s report as the final authority of all that is seen

Mustard seed is pure mustard and it’s both a stimulant & an irritant

Your faith will stimulate some and irritate others
Give yourself permission to grow – feed your faith!
Hook up with people who are stronger in a certain area than you are
Faith is not blind, it’s look at a circumstance with a different set of eyes, from heaven’s perspective
It’s keeping your eyes on the prize!

We are going to the other side

We are to believe in our heart and speak it – we must believe & declare

We speak our own world into existence – we create our world around us by what we say
We believe what we hear ourselves say more than anyone else!
God wants us to agree with Him and declare with Him what He’s saying
The angels of God hearken to the voice of His word – speak it
God is looking for a point of agreement in the earth – we are it
We get in a habit of declaring where we’re at, so the result is we don’t go anywhere – we can be a thermometer or a thermostat

The thermometer declares the current conditions, but the thermostat sets a goal and holds it there until the conditions change

Repentance really means to change your mind resulting in an inward turning, the result is we begin to move in a different direction
Being saved is to affect the way we think – helmet of salvation

The mind is so key – it is the key that determines which way we will go
Getting saved is not intellectual suicide, it is then that your mind reaches it’s full potential in God

Your heart feeds your brain, so put the right stuff in your heart and it will change the way you think
Our spirit loves everything Kingdom, but our body left to itself is not so much into the things of God – it is in the mind where we make our decision which way we will go

Romans 6:11 – you have to know you are dead to sin, then live from that place

If we don’t know we’re dead to sin, we’ll live as though we aren’t

Knowing who we truly are & that we don’t have to sin, we no longer have to present ourselves as instruments of sin but now as instruments of righteousness

Speaker – Bill Johnson, Senior Leader, Bethel Church:

Jesus said you can’t serve both God and ‘mammon’ and that the love of money is the root of all evil

There is a spiritual being called mammon that influences the financials realms of this world
You will either love the one and hate the other, or you will hold to the one and despise (think little of) the other

If you are offended by offerings, you might want to check what you’re holding onto
What we once despise we become drawn to once the issue is settled

Those who despise finances in church or ministries don’t have the issue settled

Paul said don’t give out of compulsion – don’t let anyone manipulate you

He did NOT say don’t give

People will often use abuses as justification for using their money out of fear

That doesn’t stand in heaven’s court

Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell all he had and give it to the poor, but Jesus never told Lazarus or other people of means to do that – it’s not ‘one size fits all’

That direction came in response to the man’s heart condition

Jesus loved to talk about money

If you want to know where Jesus sits in church – He sits by the offering basket
When He saw the widow put in her mites, it wasn’t something on display, it was something He was in position to see

Parable of the Talents

God loves all of us the same, but we do not all have the same measure of ability or the same measure of favor – we all start at a different place
Faithful use of what God has given you is always what will cause you to increase
Those who start with little can be made the champion of those who have much by faithfully stewarding what God’s given them
When you’re a servant who is faithful with little, you are made a ruler over much

Servants rule other people’s things, rulers manage their own things
The church is either influenced by the world around us, or there is opposition to it
Helping the poor is always to be done in secret, not broadcast where everybody knows
People will easily judge you for what you have, not knowing what you’ve done – comes out of the spirit of jealousy
The joy of the Lord is linked to ruling

Reaction to error always creates another error

We are to prosper in every circle that we’re in

Promotion comes from the Lord – never manipulate or vie for a promotion, because if you get it you’ll have to keep working to keep it, while the blessing of the Lord adds no sorrow with it

We’ve all had prosperity with sorrow, and it’s no very much fun

It’s much easier to give than it is to manage
It’s important to realize that servanthood leads to rulership
Rulership in the Kingdom equals empowering leaders where you come under others and empower them to succeed – maintain the heart of a servant as you rule
When you take my money via taxes and give it to the poor, don’t call that compassion – you’ve actually robbed me of the privilege of investing in others
It’s great to receive supernatural provision, but it’s better to be able to give the supernatural provision
When we compare ourselves with each other, we’ll get jealous of those above us, unless we learn to rejoice with those who rejoice
God determines what you can handle by how well you steward someone else’s provisions – that’s what qualifies you to receive your own

It is just like the Lord to give a car to the person who already has 3 cars

Leave it up to the Lord to determine how much provision they should have

Sometimes our moment of stewardship comes by stewarding the moment of joy had by others, do we rejoice with them or criticize them
God puts us in school when we don’t know we’re in school – the easy tests are the ones you know about, the hardest tests are the ones you don’t know that you’re in
A passion-less leader costs everyone who follows

To everyone who has, more will be given and he will have abundance

Don’t let anyone talk you out of abundance ever
The problem isn’t abundance, the real question is this – are you eating your seed and planting your bread rather than planting your see and eating your bread?
Never apologize for the Lord’s blessing in your life

You can be broke and have materialism in your heart, and you can be wealthy and have no materialism in your heart

Materialism is not the accumulation of wealth but the emphasis of the physical realm over the spiritual

How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the Kingdom of God

A stronghold is anything we trust in instead of God
A wise man learns how to tear down the strongholds in which people trust

Sometimes we label people as materialistic when they are those who have received 100 fold

Being slandered by humble people will help keep you humble while you have much (via persecutions)

God will set our level of blessing to that which we can handle until we grow to a position where we can handle more
There’s something about those who live to invest in others that attracts wealth
God never asks us a question because He’s lacking information, it’s always for the purpose of bringing revelation
What can happen with what God has given you? It can bite you
God gives us resources and resources are power – we must hold onto them in God’s way or they can turn and bite us
If we’re faithful with the stuff that can kill us, God will give us more of it

It’s not about amounts of money, it’s about faithfulness brings increase

Monuments aren’t worshiped, they trigger memories of God’s supernatural supply

Don’t get pulled into apologizing for blessing

“I prefer peace, but if there must be war I prefer it would come now so that my children may live in peace” –Thomas Payne

The more visible you are, the more of a target you become
Work to lessen the difficulty for the next generation

Many Christians have never been trained in joy because they don’t know His face
God’s favor has to look like something – it doesn’t translate to the world that we’re going to heaven, somehow His hand on us has to look like something
We don’t earn anything – the Master gave His own possessions to be stewarded by servants and what the servants do with what they’ve been given entitle them to receive possessions of their own

Tuesday, November 20^th

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

As we interpret the word of God we will be regularly looking at the historical context and the literary context
We run our lives in context, we expect to be understood in context, and we should apply context to our interpretation of Scripture
Biblical authors a creating text under the ministry of the Holy Spirit – they did not set up rules to operate within, we have read their text and applied rules to their writings
It’s easy for us to give too much weight to pigeon holing texts to genres, missing pieces within those texts that could be classified under multiple genres
It’s good to take the literal parts of the Bible literally, but it may fail you to attempt to take the poetic parts of the Bible literally because it’s text slanted to promote imagery
Remember that you don’t need a sin nature to sin – Lucifer figured out a way to sin without a sin nature and so did Adam & Eve
Your first thought shouldn’t be how to apply the text to yourself, your first thought should be in regards to what context it’s written
We are content playing with sand castles when God desires to take us into real castles (CS Lewis)

Speaker – Bill Johnson, Senior Leader, Bethel Church:

When you eat the seed He’s given you, you’ve effectively ruined your tomorrow
When you plant your bread, not only have you sown a gift He meant to be used and enjoyed by us, but it won’t grow anything
Sometimes we give because it’s easier to give things away than it is to learn how to steward/manage them
Proverbs 22:29

He who does his work with excellence will stand before kings
Excellence give you access and influence where you would have none otherwise
If you want to influence influential people, become a person of excellence
Kings have a natural appetite for excellence around them

Proverbs 23:1

WHEN you sit down to eat with a ruler (as a person of excellence), you are being welcomed into the personal life of the ruler
There’s something about excellence that makes people want to know you on a more personal level
Consider carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are a man given (prone) to appetite
Put self-imposed restrictions in place and choose to hold yourself in check so that you don’t begin to long for what they have, because once you do you will lose your place of influence with the ruler

Why would Pharaoh trust his kingdom to a man he had to go to prison to find?

Joseph’s life of integrity and excellence, as displayed in slavery and imprisonment, caused a king to trust him regardless of his surroundings

The Lord is going to use your heart of servanthood to promote you, just don’t ever lose your heart for servanthood

The moment we gain an appetite to rule instead of serve, we lose our impact
Imagine where your sphere of influence will be in 20 years

A person of excellence gets to linger in a social structure they have not earned, nor do they have responsibility for it, but they get to taste of the rewards of it
Perfectionism is religion, excellence is Kingdom
People of excellence know how to take the mundane and make it sing
The Queen of Sheba didn’t give riches to Solomon because he had need, but because of who she was

Give others ‘gold coins’ because of who you are, not because of who they are

Giving out of honor is an untapped level of giving in the church, but it is coming
Giving comes out of a place of honor
Jesus is the person of wisdom

Wisdom is creative
Wisdom is emotional
Wisdom and excellence are cousins

When you stand before people, always let your interaction with them be to strengthen and encourage, not release your frustrations
Your breakthrough is tied to the level of risk you take
The secret to miracles is you cry out to God in a private place, and you take great risks in a public place
A lot of our pain comes from parts of us that are alive that should be dead
We don’t earn anything, everything is a result of the gift of grace God gave us
Perfectionists are self-critical, can never measure up and can never enjoy the moment because there’s always something that could’ve been done better
Don’t ever manipulate people
The principal is this – generosity breaks poverty

Only 10% is tithe, everything above that is an offering
Tithe always comes off the top so that you always have enough to give it

Giving is vital because it breaks the bondages we have in our thinking regarding Kingdom resources
Everyone has a limited number of days that they will live and they have a limited amount of strength to live those days, but we have access to unlimited resources

Most Christians spend was is limited to protect what is unlimited

Jesus was the Son of God and the servant of all

If your position as a son removes you from servanthood, you aren’t following the right Son

At the end of the day, everybody has to do the best they can with what they have
There’s something about honor that puts you in line for inheritance

Instead of focusing on what we don’t have, let us focus on managing and stewarding what we do have

Being a good son/daughter is what qualifies you to be a good father/mother

It doesn’t matter what your father was like or how close they are to you

WEEK #12

Monday, November 26^th

Speaker – Dann Farrelly, Dean/Bible Instructor, Bethel Church: Relationship Week

There are some general ideas, but there are no perfect set of rules about coming together and having a happy marriage

Pretty complex topic with a wide spectrum of results

Joy is a by-product of a supernatural relationship, of being rightly connected to the Lord
The fruit of the union of our spirit with Holy Spirit are the fruits of the Spirit

When we think joy comes from another person, we are setting ourselves up for difficult times
If you are looking for someone to fill you up instead of coming to them already filled up, you have a tough road ahead

God never intended for us to have all of our needs met by Him (see Garden of Eden)

God said that we need somebody else, at least in family if not in marriage

If you think that getting marriage will be the end of loneliness, you have a surprise in store for you – you can feel pretty alone or lonely in a marriage
“God help the man who thinks he’s found the perfect woman, but God help that woman more”
You spouse should be a best friend, but she shouldn’t even be your only best friend
The sole focus of Relationship Week – BECOME A GOOD FRIEND!

So often we look for romance instead of friendship, and so quickly
A skill set you should always be developing is to be a good friend, to develop good friends and to have good friends

Newsflash – perfect human relationships do not exist
There is no ‘cookie-cutter’ way that healthy romantic relationships happen
We tend not to have a Biblical view of marriage, but a ‘romance novel’ view or a ‘destiny’ view of marriage

Marriage is not a ‘reward’ for being ready, or a ‘destiny’ that awaits us, instead of a choice God gives us

First things first – develop the capacity to be an amazing friend, which will serve you for your entire life, whether married or single
Luke 20: 34-35

Marriage isn’t permanent (in eternity)

Matt. 19:8-12

The disciples – ‘If we can’t divorce, it is better then not to marry’
Jesus – ‘Some are eunuchs by choice, some are made eunuchs by men, and some have chosen not to marry for the sake of the Kingdom’

Ephesians 5

Paul – ‘Submit yourselves one to another’
Marriage is mutual submission
CS Lewis – ‘Marriage is the dance of obedience’
Loving your spouse with a sacrificial love – like making deposits in her bank acct

I Corinthians 7:1

Paul – ‘It is good for a man not to marry, but because there is so much immorality, let each man have a wife and each woman a husband…’
Paul had the gift of singleness, so he encouraged others to stay unmarried for the sake of the Kingdom, unless they are unable to bear it
Historical context – heavy persecution & earnest expectation of the Lord’s return

In the NT, marriage is clearly presented as a choice to be made before God, not a reward or a destiny

Sorting out whether or not you want to be married
If you have a sex drive, newsflash – you do NOT have the give of singleness
Understand that there are lots of people without a profound sex drive

There isn’t necessarily a ‘one’ person for us

We are not on our own, God is with us in this as He is in every single aspect of our life – God is a good God and He has good things for you
God, as a gracious dad, has many ‘bests’ for us that He desires to lavish on us with His love

Life sometimes is shaped around our options instead of what we’re building, so we keep our options open and miss out on building something that will last
Get the idea out of your head that you married the wrong person – the fact that you married them makes them the right one!
We need to realize and take responsibility for the fact that we can become someone in marriage that is no longer fun to be married to

In your marriage, joy is a by-product of my connection with the Lord, not the result of what my spouse is bringing to the table

Some of the Greek thinking of the time was that everything to do with the earth was dirty, including sex, so it was being abandoned in marriage in order to be more ‘spiritual’

Paul confronts that, saying spouses aren’t allowed to permanently abstain from sex

We aren’t trying to find the one, we’re trying to become the one for somebody else

Mature and developed people naturally attract others to them, including others who are mature and developed people

Many Christians don’t cultivate their sexuality in a healthy manner, so they suppress it and it ends up manifesting itself in some pretty destructive ways

Our sexuality is part of ourselves, but it is not our whole self
We can feel one way, and choose to act another way, and do it in a healthy way

Naturalistic / Materialistic

Sex is a mostly biological drive
Morality – there is none
Says ‘I want you’
Evolutionary Psychology - the #1 way to explain behavior if there is no God

Hedonism (See Audio File)
Western Media / Society

Sex is mostly money
Morality – Keep the agreed upon rules
Says ‘Spend, spend, spend’

Restrained Humanism

Sex is mostly special
Morality – Try not to hurt people or get hurt too badly
Says ‘I love you today’

False Religion

Sex is mostly a sin or a problem
Morality – God set sex apart for marriage
Says ‘Try to ignore it or hide it’

Christianity

Sex is sacred, joyful celebration
Morality – God se sex apart for marriage
Says ‘ I share this pare of me only with you’

Mutual respect and intimacy

Sexuality is a drive, and fun, and economic, and special – it can be a sin or a problem
God adds – sex is good, it’s a blessing, it creates and strengthens bonds that create families, society, and inevitably the future

Our sexuality creates the future – powerful reflection of God, not merely a natural biological drive

Bonds are the emotional, physical, spiritual and intellectual connections that energize us, motivate many of our actions, and create a sense of our identity

Typically you can boil all bonds down to two types – love bonds or fear bonds
A battered spouse or a gang member chooses a fear bond over no bond
If we don’t get our need for healthy bonds met, we will find unhealthy ones

Christians may choose to live as celibate sexual beings for a variety of reasons

They have a gift of self perception and self control (1 Cor. 7:5-7)
They experience sexual desire less intensely than those who choose marriage (1 Cor. 7:7-9)
To keep from the troubles of this life (1 Cor. 7:27)
To be free from concern (1 Cor. 7:32-34)
As a sacrificial gift to the Lord to be single minded in their focus of the kingdom (1 Cor. 7:32-35)

Our sexuality creates bonds
The body isn’t made for sexual immorality but for the Lord & the Lord for the body
We are not our own, we were bought at a price, honor God with your body
Our sexuality is a spiritual gift from the Lord, with that comes great responsibility
Every time we’ve been wounded, believed a lie, or embraced sin, the enemy is trying to pour demonic energy into that wound
Whenever there’s a compulsion to a behavior, there’s demonic influence pouring into that area of our lives
We need a power encounter to turn off the demonic energy flow, and then a learning encounter to realize how to move forward in freedom
Any sin in our lives that feels compulsory is driven by demonic energy flowing into a wound in your heart

‘Lust is broken sexuality that’s waiting to be liberated’ – CS Lewis

God can heal our sexuality, not with marriage, but for marriage
If God sends several ‘best’ choices our way, the devil sends a plethora of horribly bad choices our way
You really need to own the choice of who you’re going to marry
So often it seems the healthy people in our lives are content not to help us and let us find our own way, while others want to treat your love life like it’s their personal candy/gossip
Lean about friendship and set your goal to grow in your ability to be a good friend

Great marriages are often friendships that have caught ‘fire’
The best marriages are where people actually enjoy each others’ company

Practice the art of falling in ‘like’ before you fall in love

Socializing together or dating in groups helps keep the friendship growing before all the romance and commitment come in to play

Humans are bond building machines

If you spend a lot of time together, even if you say ‘we are just friends’ a bond is growing
We are wired to create bonds, and they will form without our permission
It’s defrauding to allow a bond to form beyond the boundaries of where you understand it to be – leads to unhealthy results

Key ideas for successfully pursuing marriage

Experience the power of a growing bond
We feel engaged and experience ‘chemistry’ when our partner affects us
Emotional connection creates affection
Mental connection which creates interest within us
Physical connection which creates desire in us
Spiritual connection which creates love in us

Though wonderful and important, physical chemistry alone cannot sustain the weight of a marriage alone because it has a limited capacity to grow
A successful marriage has not just eros, but fileo, agape, and stargay love as well
Building bonds towards marriage

Attraction (and eligibility)

Noticing some similarities between the person and your ‘list’
Godly (not just Christian) mutually givers/leaders, respect, trustworthiness, looks, etc.
Somebody who’s a victim has things to work out before they’ll be ready for marriage
Challenge – get an opportunity to share your attraction & see if it’s mutual

Uncertainty

This is normal but ewe often take it as a sign
It is a bit scary for some as we consider that this could be him/her and be permanent
Our freedom warning signs might be going off
He/she might hurt me – we could fail – this is risky
Often we don’t want to step through uncertainty, so we take it as a ‘sign from the Lord’
Challenge – men tend to drift and disengage here and women mistakenly pursue too hard

Exclusivity

An opportunity to give and receive love without competition
It is a boundary we agree to put around our attention and the attention of others
Challenge – to deeply feel love and keep working towards intimacy at the same pace, together
Women tend to jump to this stage unilaterally and too soon
Men tend to be comfortable here as they are getting most of their biggest needs me, they may not be naturally good at the next step and often stop trying to do the things that continue to build attraction and momentum
Men are most comfortable here

Intimacy

Become relaxed enough to let you guard down & take the risk of sharing your heart with each other
We begin to experience the real & whole person as our projections of who we thought they were begin to break down
An opportunity to experience one another without pretending to be somebody we aren’t
Celebrate the good & look squarely at who we thought we’d marry & who we thought we were
Are you willing to embrace this person for who they are & who they aren’t
You can’t hold it against them later
Challenge – open your heart to fell love & when some men experience and/or are learning increased intimacy they need to pull away briefly to settle what they are learning and how they are changing before they can move closer, to move at the same pace as the man, while still being authentic, to remain un-offended and not withdraw in hurt, to avoid doing ‘both sides’ of the relationship in order to experience the man’s real capacity for intimacy and if this meets her need

Engagement

This is a vital time to plan a marriage not just a wedding, set a date so you are moving toward a real goal
This keeps the relationship moving in order for you to face & defeat your final fears, disappointments and challenges & as well to celebrate how you are going to rock the world
Challenge – build the foundations of a healthy marriage & not just plan a wedding, to continue to trust God by setting apart our sexual expression for the wedding night, develop a habit of rebuke, repentance & forgiveness, allow your single friends the space to enjoy & grieve this transition with you

We want marriage partners with a desire and capacity to grow – in all things, but especially their love for us, and in their ability to receive our love

People who aren’t just Christians but godly
People who can lead and grow, ready to be a giver and not a taker

Men tend to bring this question into a relationship – ‘Can I be successful at this?’
Women tend to bring this question into a relationship – ‘How can I make sure I can get what I need – a loving, lasting relationship?’
‘Choosing to love our spouse is a decision we make in our hearts that feels like it was first made in heaven. It’s a promise we look forward to keeping that gives us a sense of purpose, joy and value.’
Great spouses aren’t necessarily perfect, but on many levels their perfect for us
Marriage needs to be more than a mental process of pros & cons, more than an emotional attachment to how they make you feel, not merely physical based on our attraction, and not even solely a spiritual process with a mutual love for God
Real relationship requires a commonality – both should be the ‘treasure’ and the ‘treasure keeper’ in the marriage
There should be a measure of challenge in which the other person can call out the greatness in you – not easy but necessary
Always push forward in building your intimacy – easy to overlook, but pays great dividends
Your hearts have to be open to love in order to experience if someone is an excellent partner for you

Makes it possible to discern whether or not we should get married
Being so scared of the future that you don’t open your heart to love will keep you from knowing for sure if this amazing person is the right person for you, or not
You can’t always keep your heart guarded while you’re dating, at some point you must open your heart up to love

Women tend to feel angry if a relationship they’ve invested in doesn’t pay off, men tend to feel guilty

As a result, good men can get stuck waiting, or they feel like they got picked without getting a say, all because they don’t want to upset their significant other

Obviously, this can be a messy process

Speaker – Jason Vallotton: Relationship Week

Relationships & who you’re going to marry is only the second, single-most important decision you’ll ever make in you life
Love is the commitment, passion is the exploration

You can’t fall into love, so it’s impossible to fall out of it
The crazy feeling (aka passion) comes and goes – you’ll get really jacked up when you mistake the passion for love

You should never lose the love OR the passion

Without passion you’re marriage starts to dwindle
You can’t stay at max passion all the time – it’s impossible

Intimacy is the life blood in the relationship

You can’t separate friendship & intimacy
Friendship overcomes so many issues in any intimate relationship

Most people buy into a beautiful myth that marriage is a magic box that contains all of their fulfillment, but marriage is actually an empty box (at first) that you must fill before you can take anything out – if you take out more than you put in the box will be empty
You must first put something inside of you before you can give it away

When you really want somebody to love you, but they don’t know how to love you, that’s painful
Some of you are hiding under God’s wing from other people & you need to come out

Intimacy is where we receive the highest level of love

When someone knows everything about me and loves me in spite of that (i.e. unconditional love), I know that I’m fully loved
If you never reach that level, you’re starving for love, you become sick, and you will begin to fill that void with unhealthy things

Our tendency is to be like Adam & Eve after we mess up, then we go into hiding

We say things like ‘if people really find out who I am, they won’t like me’

Our ‘Sunday best’ keeps all those without a ‘Sunday best’ out of our churches because they don’t have one

We use our ‘Sunday best’ as a façade to hide behind, as if we’re the only part of The Body that doesn’t need to be part of the rest of The Body
The problem is, unless you’re really bad at it, nobody else knows you’re hiding

Some of us come to God as we want Him to see us, instead of doing what He said and come to Him AS WE ARE – we do the same thing with our friends

It’s really hard for us to come to God like that, but we don’t see anybody else doing that or anybody accepting that, so we put on our ‘Sunday best’
‘God, I want what you have in exchange for what I have’
As humans we do whatever it takes to avoid the process and hold onto our façade
That fear/shame is what’s keeping us from becoming a new creation
We should be the most accepting people anywhere
Trusting God is not the absence of thought, it’s thinking through it knowing that He trumps whatever is opposing us, believe what He says

Pornography is a cheap imitation of intimacy in which you risk almost nothing

Often, we don’t have a pornography problem, we just need somebody to know us
We were never created to be all on our own
The truth is we’ll only be as free as the secrets that we keep
We’re the ones that get to decide how free and healthy we will live
James 1 will never be a lie – if you won’t give up, you’ll get there

Intimacy starts with yourself – you can’t be intimate with anyone else if you can’t be intimate with yourself first

Ask yourself – Do I know me?
You can only give as much as what you know you have, so if you don’t start with you
We’re not only supposed to know us, we’re supposed to love us unconditionally

So often we don’t love ourselves because we aren’t loving toward ourselves

Boundaries and needs allow you to let love come into your life
Boundaries aren’t about keeping people out, but setting up a structure for people to love you
We give people the opportunity to say ‘I love you’ and build trust with us by telling them what’s important to us
The only way to build trust is when boundaries are present, if we don’t set boundaries, there’s no way to build healthy trust
By knowing someone else and knowing their boundaries & needs, we have the opportunity to love them well
Boundaries and needs are really amazing things – hard to set up when we don’t believe we’re valuable as a person

We aren’t children, we can change what we believe

You need to have answers to these questions: What’s in my heart? What do I have to give? How do I feel about myself? What sets me off? What’s my pet peeve? Why do I wake up in the morning? What’s my purpose? What are your favorite foods
Confidence comes from giving ourselves permission to fail over and over and over again

Marriage shouldn’t be your ultimate destination
They say you become what you believe the most important person in your life thinks of you

They say that you’ve decided who you will be in this world by the time you are 12 or 13 years old
Time doesn’t heal, it just reveals who you are
You don’t have to go digging through all sorts of trash, Holy Spirit will bring it up, just ask Him to do that and He’ll walk you through it

When you really love yourself, you’ll talk to yourself the way God talks to you

Why do I think of myself less than God thinks of me? – that’s self hatred and a commentary on God and how He made you
How you behave lets others know how to love you because you show them how valuable you are
Decide who you want to be – ‘I hate what happened, but I don’t hate you’ – may not happen on day #1, but it can happen

Your heart and head … (get the rest of notes from audio file – last 20 minutes)

Tuesday, November 27^th

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

So often we come to marriage as takers when marriage is actually more like 24/7 giving
What you bring to the marriage is what you get out of it
Anything thinking that there may be somebody better needs to be killed prior to the engagement

that kind of thinking will do nothing but drive you crazy and destroy your marriage

I can’t control my spouse but I can control me – it’s my responsibility to continue to become the best spouse I can be for the rest of my life, whether married or not
If you aren’t able to be intimate with yourself and effectively manage the connection between your head and your heart, you aren’t ready to manage someone else’s
Fear bonds require an upping of the ante of fear / anxiety in order to feel more deeply in the relationship
Have it in your heart to maximize the other in the relationship, call out the gold in them
It’s the integrity, not the intensity, that gets stronger and stronger in love bonds
Have the confidence to bring the best you to the relationship which calls out the best in them – believe that you are ‘the best’ for them
It’s our responsibility to show unconditional love
Don’t ever let yourself make a really big decision when under the influence of passion

Hollywood lies to us by lumping love and passion together as one entity, then convinces us that we must chase after it now before it has a chance to run away

For men, 4 out of 5 of their core relational needs are met in the committed relationship phase, while for women, 4 out of 5 of their core relational needs are only met in marriage
You shouldn’t live in committed relationship until you’re ready to be married

You end up learning how to leave bonds rather than grow bonds
By ending dating relationships over and over, we teach ourselves that things don’t last

The essence of a good proposal is the desire to get married
Men must be ready to leave ‘Bachelor-ville’ and moved to ‘Married Town’
Cultivate a culture of celebrating each other within your relationship
The best thing is to walk through the dating and marriage process hand-in-hand with God

Sometimes the Father fathers us like we’re 6 (‘Get out of the street!’) and sometimes He fathers us like we’re 16 (‘I’m have some concerns. What do you think you should do?’)
The problem is that so often when we’re ‘crushing’ our brain in swimming in a vegetable soup and we tend to hear what we want to hear from the Lord

So often we want God to pick our spouse for us so that we will have a ‘perfect marriage’, but in the process we can blame Him when things aren’t going well

But God needs us to pick our spouse so that we will take the responsibility for our marriage and our future with them
Talk to go all the way through the process – be ready to be a giver

Women, make sure the man has a work ethic, you should not be His financial plan

Make sure he’s not taking things that should be hobbies and making them career plans (at least not pre-maturely)

Every culture is charged with sexual energy

Sometimes it can easily be confused with the anointing
It’s best to be authentic and talk to God about what you’re experiencing

Committing to a significant other requires you to disconnect from the sexual energy of everyone else

It can be so easy to get caught up in staying single while drawing on the sexual energy of other friends and/or of the group as a whole
We shouldn’t be embarrassed by it, but we should own it

Humor largely originates as a way to draw attention to ourselves in a group setting
‘Crushing’ is good because it gives us the courage to step beyond fear and engage in relationship, but it is also dangerous when we don’t realize the effects it can have on us

Like alcohol, it produces the illusion that we aren’t responsible, not in control
We must learn to keep our responsibility intact early in the process instead of abandoning it
Crushing = ‘A collapse of personal boundaries’ – lessening our boundaries is okay, but a complete collapsing of our boundaries is unhealthy
When you’re crushing it’s easy not to realize you’re crushing & get carried away – remember to get input from those closest to you
Makes it easy to put words in God’s mouth and attribute things to Him that He had absolutely no involvement in
We have a powerful ability to project a personality on someone for a rather significant period of time – we fall for the person we’ve projected them to be

You can’t know if you’ll have a healthy bond if your relationship is based on unhealthy bonds

‘I need them, I need them, I need them’ – treating somebody like a drug instead of a person (fear bond)

Dating a bunch of people is a really bad plan (typically involves stirring up romance very early) but getting to know a lot of people as friends is a really good plan
In-Class Assignment: How am I going to apply what I’ve learned?

I look back now at my past, all the mistakes I’ve made and where I went wrong. I realize I’ve never been as ready for healthy relationship as I thought I was at the time, and most of the time I didn’t even know what healthy relationships really were in the first place. The last few years I’ve really been pursuing the relational side of God, seeking to discover the man I want to be and how to be ‘the one’ for somebody rather than looking for ‘the one’ to give me everything I need. I have realized that for most of my life I’ve lived with only fear bonds. As a result, I have always been a taker, only giving when it seemed advantageous to me. I’ve hurt a lot of people. I was so blind to what relationship truly was that I did not even realize what I was doing. But… now I know. God is changing my heart, my mind, my emotions, my desires, and my dreams. I’ve lost so much of what I was given because I was not faithful with what He gave me. I never want to repeat that mistake. Ever. Going forward, I am fully committed to the faithful stewardship of my heart, and the hearts of others, and I seek to continue to learn and grow every day, one day at a time, how to bless others rather than use them to get my personal needs met. There’s been a lot of pain involved in the process, both personally and otherwise, and I’m sure there will be moments of pain to come, but all I can do is give the very best of what I have to God & to others, so that is what I will commit to do.

Speaker – Danny Silk, Bethel Church: Relationship Week

The Art of Self-Control – it’s an art so it gets messy!
Probably the biggest struggle we’re ever going to have is managing ourselves in relationship
Without realizing it, we take a whole lot of responsibility for getting other people to do things

Flattery & gifts only work for a certain amount of time, then it comes down to who you’ve really got
Then we try to see how well our ‘magic dust’ of manipulation will work

So many of our relationships become a practice in manipulation rather than an exchange of truth
It’s important that we learn how to tell the truth and how to manage ourselves, because we don’t really ever control any other human beings – you’ve never had & never will
If you can’t control an infant, who do you think you can control
Many relationship are founded with people based on manipulation used to get our own needs met

We treat other people in ways we wouldn’t want others to treat us, then we can’t figure out why they’re so upset

If you get really good at what you were born to do, but you can’t control yourself, you’re in big trouble
When you get really good at fixing broken things, there will be a line at your front door every morning of broken things
When people start to get good at something, those who need what it is you’re good at will find you – people are looking for the solution that you bring, but if you can’t control you, your very gift and that it works really well will destroy you
Other people do not care about relationship with you when they are desperately in need of what you have

They don’t care about what you need, only that you have the solution to what they need

Jesus is pretty good at fixing broken things – He’s actually the best in the world

Everybody who’s desperate, looking for a miracle, is looking for Jesus

‘Yes’ is powerful, because when you say ‘yes’ to one person, you just said ‘no’ to a whole group of people

If you don’t know how to say ‘no’, you cannot say ‘yes’ – you will be controlled by the presence of broken things
Eventually, if you cannot say ‘no’, you must run and hide from people, because the demands of broken things will drain you of every drop of life you have in you

We must know where our life stops and another person’s life starts
Honoring relationship calls for two powerful people

When we surround ourselves with powerful people, we have to stay powerful, and the only way to really stay powerful is to manage yourself everywhere that you go

Desperate people in desperate times desperately need what Jesus has for them

If you aren’t paying attention, your ‘savior complex’ will kick your butt
You want to be savior of the world, pay attention to the savior of the world

Jesus was not governed by the needs of the people

Jesus could only be governed by God if Jesus could tell Jesus what to do when Jesus was surrounded by people who need a miracle

As soon as you set a boundary with people, they will test it

People are not going to like it when they hit a boundary in a relationship with you – especially when people experience a boundary with you that is new to them

Each new level of intimacy exposes an increased level of vulnerability

Each time you cross a boundary, crossing from one level of intimacy to the next, more is required of you
Every healthy relationship has boundaries, and places where there is increased levels of intimacy and decreased levels of intimacy

Our relationships are designed to give a priority to a limited few

We allow people to enter realms in our lives that give them access to our time, energy & resources – but not everyone respects that place, managing themselves and protecting that place of vulnerability

There is no ‘trunk monkey’ – there’s no one who will come and rescue you from your disrespectful relationships

We must learn to live a life that has boundaries, and have the courage to deploy those boundaries (the ability to keep in your life what you want in your life)
Boundaries allow you to keep in your life what you want in your life
What keeps the good things in your life is the same boundary that will keep out those things that keep the things out of your life that you don’t want in your life
Boundaries help you protect your priorities – time, energy, resources & relationships
No one is going to give an account for the way you spent your time on earth but you
If you’re exhausted, or too busy or worn out, that’s you’re fault
We believe that we’re controlled by these external things, so we try to control external things because we feel like our life is out of control
It’s tempting to blame other things for how your life looks, but you have a ton of power to manage you
As you learn to manage you, all of a sudden you can order your priorities and tell your time, energy and resources what they’ll be doing
All of a sudden we’re operating from a place of power instead of powerlessness

The most intimate place in our existence is the place where it’s only us and God

Right outside of that is our most intimate human relationship
The less intimate the relationship, the more people you can have there
Healthy lives have levels of intimacy, and each level gives more or less access to my core

Boundaries communicate value

Things are only valued when it requires something to access it
When we live life with poor boundaries, we attract dishonorable and disrespectful people into our life in relationship – people come into our life and take whatever they want, and we are left with what they do not take
The enemy knows you were designed to be honored, valued, and live from a place of worth, and to be safe/protected in that place of worth
If the enemy can talk you out of your boundaries, he can orchestrate the deconstruction of your self-worth

A reaction is not a boundary, it is the result of feeling overwhelmed and hurt

When you set a boundary with your frustration and your anger, because as soon as your anger and frustration subside so does your boundary
You train people how to treat you
Leaving your frustration & anger doesn’t result in a boundary, it results in bitterness
Bitterness is not a boundary – when you become bitter you have been deceived and have given all your power away to some untrustworthy person and are now living in an unforgiving mode
When everyone has access to your core, there is no intimacy (e.g. a child who grew up in an abusive home)

Satan is stealing the priorities of our life, taking away our ability to tell us what to do

No prior generation has this much access to your time and your attention via modern technology

If you can’t tell yourself what to do, something else is dying to tell you what to do

Don’t blame your life on what those other things are telling you to do

You must pay attention – on purpose – to what you’re doing to cultivate priority relationships
Setting firm boundaries

You must value what’s inside you – you invite disrespect into your life by not valuing what’s in you
When we don’t value ourselves, we won’t say no to someone else
We must expect that who we are and what we need will be valuable to them – they must show they can handle the level of relationship we have given to them
We must get good at communicating what we’re doing, no longer trying to be good at manipulating the other
You decide how many disrespectful conversations you have, and how many disrespectful people you have in relationship in your life
When we refuse to be powerful, we are no longer a victim of disrespectful people, we have now become an accomplice
Words make appeals, but actions create requirements
People aren’t going to believe you when you set a limit, they will challenge you so be ready for that

If you don’t set boundaries in your life, those closest to you will feel dishonored and devalued by the place you give people who do not have intimacy with you

A gift without the ability to manage yourself will cause you to self-destruct
The #1 obstacle to setting boundaries is fear – the fear of man can begin to become our lord and master and we can be guided by a spirit of rejection
It’s not a challenge to impress strangers, it’s a challenge to impress those who know you intimately

Wednesday, November 28^th

Speaker – Barry & Lori Byrnes:

(See audio file)

Speaker – Bernie Ooley, Bible Instructor, BSSM:

What better way to spend life on this planet than to spend it with the One who created it
Holy Spirit
‘Spirit’ – Ruach (Hebrew) and Nooma (Greek)
‘Inspiration’ means filled with the Spirit, God breathed
God breathed His very Spirit into His Word

Make sure you’re worshiping God and not worshiping His book

Jesus was the ultimate fulfillment of the offices of ministry, and He’s equipped us to fulfill our calling as well as He fulfilled His
A priest is one who intercedes before God on the behalf of another, to represent God to man and represent man to God
We are not called to withdraw from the world to stay ‘holy’ as they were directed in the OT under the law without grace

In the NT, the influence is to flow the other way because greater is He that’s in us than He who’s in the world – Jesus sent us to the world!

Our high priest is familiar with our weaknesses (our inability to produce results), He knows what it’s like to be human
We actually have the privilege as priests to minister to God
Jesus was heard because of His ‘beautiful spirit of worship’
Our identity as a priest resides in Him and apart from Him (not ‘apart from the church’) we can do nothing

His voice and power flows through us out of our place of union with Him

Anytime we’re speaking and ministering, we should do it as though it is God Himself speaking and ministering
We’re the only Gospel some people will ever read – they’re watching us!

Just the way you live your life is prophetic – with passion, risk and abandon

Ambassadors are chosen, not self-appointed

They used to only be chosen from royalty
They never lose their citizenship in their homeland just because they’re residing in foreign land
Instructions come in written form in a diplomatic pouch from home
They are not representing themselves but a foreign government, so they don’t take things personally
The standard of life of the ambassador isn’t limited by the foreign land they’re in, but is based on the standard of their home land
As ambassadors we are on assignment and heaven knows how to finance it’s ambassadors

We get to have OJD – on the job training
He doesn’t hide revelation & wisdom from us but for us
Holy Spirit does what Jesus would do if He was here physically – assures continuity
The book of Acts is the only book of the Bible still being written because it’s not the acts of the Apostles, it’s the acts of Holy Spirit!
Holy Spirit takes hold with us against our inability to produce results

He doesn’t want to work in spite of us, or apart from us, but together with us

Jesus ever lives to make intercession for us – that’s the present day ministry of Jesus!

As He is (in heaven), so are we (now), in this world (here)

We are loved by the Father as much as He loves Jesus
Standby – to be relied on in emergency situations
Anything that is alive is not neatly compartmentalized, it’s more like spaghetti than waffles
Advocate – one who pleads another’s case, vocal supporter

We don’t have to defend ourselves, or promote ourselves either

Poverty mentality – if you get anything, that leaves less for me
A faithful man & woman will abound with blessings, He will exceed your expectations

It’s not the easiest route, it’s not the quickest route, but it’s the best route
When that door opens, you’re ready both in character and ability to stand in that place
Any door that you pry open you will have to keep propped open
Follow His lead and let Him promote you in due season

Condemnation will make you want to quit while conviction will make you want to change

Speaker – Jason Vallotton:

Every morning, ask your heart how it’s doing
Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart

When you have God in the ‘God spot’ He gives you the desires of your heart
The only reason you put something else in the God spot is that you’re trying to get a desire met
No one nor anything can give you your desires the way God can
When you put something else in the ‘God spot’ in one area of your life, it manifests as anxiety, worry, feeling out of control
If the Prince of Peace was sitting in your ‘God spot’ in that area of your life, you’d have what He has, which is peace!
If you find this to be the case, the first thing you do is repent – to change

Sometimes trust isn’t earned, it’s just a choice – choose to trust God
Something we have that the devil doesn’t is perseverance

In the end he just can’t compete because we can outlast him
Whatever you don’t feed will die

People are supposed to reflect back to you what God has already told you

People shouldn’t be your main source for affirmation, direction, etc., they should be confirmation of what you’ve already heard from God
If your only source of unconditional love is people you’ll become a performer
Love is performance-based to most people
We also reflect a certain side of God

We don’t just have a ‘God spot’ we have spots for people too

We have a ‘Best Friend Guy’ spot and a ‘Best Friend Girl’ spot
When we put a girl in our ‘Best Friend Guy’ spot, we start to create unhealthy relationships (e.g. ‘girl in the back pocket’)
When we find the woman we want to date, they go in our ‘Girlfriend’ spot
Will cause friction between your ‘Girlfriend’ spot and the girl in your ‘Best Friend Guy’ spot
When we put people in the wrong spots, it leads to unhealthy bonds that conflict with other healthy bonds in our life
We all want somebody in ‘the back pocket’ because it’s security – we take cheap, imitation intimacy at the expense of real, true intimacy
Produces unhealthy soul-ties that we’ll have to break before we can enter into a healthy intimate relationship

Masculinity is not something a man is born with, it’s something that gets poured into Him

As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another
Prov. 25:28 – like a city without walls is a person without self-control
When you don’t have boundaries, you de-value yourself because anybody can come in whenever they want and take whatever they like
When we mess up, repentance restores the standard
Keeping God in the ‘God spot’ keeps our boundaries in the right order

You aren’t going to get it right the first time, just don’t drive so fast that you drive off the cliff and die

You must be okay with failing in a way that doesn’t kill someone else or yourself

There is no one who will pull everything out of you
Your entire relationship is built on trust – if you never take the time to build trust, you don’t have a marriage, you have a roommate because you don’t do intimacy with someone you don’t know
Trust is not built by the absence of mistakes, trust is built by how you clean up a mess as well as consistency over time
If you push the relationship all you really know is that they will push the relationship
“The Ladder” – checks to get from trust to marriage

Never let your level of intimacy exceed your level of trust
‘Marriage’ = I give you my heart, ‘Trust’ = I might want to get to know you

1) I first know me, really well – if you don’t know you, what do you have to give to somebody else?

2) Do they want to know me?

3) Are they safe?

4) Can we have fun?

5) Can we be best friends?

6) Is God in their ‘God spot’ or is something else in their ‘God spot’? You can’t fix anybody, you can barely fix you on a good day

7) Do our core values line up?

8) Are we going the same place? Love overcomes, but we should be together on major things

9) Can we communicate? Any person who can use healthy communication regardless of what state they’re in is a good

10) Need and boundaries?

11) Can they handle conflict? No conflict = no boundaries or needs

12) Do they know how to take care of me?

13) Do they know how to do unconditional love? Only possible to discover if you let them see your failures

14) Do they know how to compromise? Either we do a win/win or we do nothing

15) Are we both powerful? One powerful person in a relationship is a ‘no go’, no real respect for the other person

16) Is forever not long enough?

17) They know how to do covenant?

Take your time and build your trust

Rushing is a result of being eager and shows insecurity and a lack of maturity
Don’t skip something that’s going to build your marriage
Don’t run right through to get to the finish line – in dating you aren’t trying to get to the finish line, you’re trying to figure out if this is the right person to go to the finish line with

Thursday, November 29^th

Speakers – Jason Vallotton & Abby:

(See audio file)

Speaker – Chris Overstreet, Outreach Pastor, Bethel Church:

The Holy Spirit is never on vacation – He’s always with you and ready to move
When you feel like you have lost your passion/fire, that may not be the case – Holy Spirit may just be doing some deep work within you right now

In order for us to be more effective in loving people and reaching out to people, He will typically call us to do the ‘boring’ and ‘mundane’ so He can do a work and a cleansing in your heart
Don’t get discouraged, give God the time/opportunity to do this thing in your heart – this season is to prepare you for your future
Holy Spirit likes to interrupt our plans sometimes, don’t fight Him, embrace Him

‘Father, if it’s your desire for me to do this specific thing, please put a desire for that thing in my heart”
Allow God to do what He wants to do in your heart without trying to rush the process or hiding from things He is highlighting in your life
You’re never going to have another first year of BSSM – allow God to do what He desires to do in your heart

WEEK #13

Monday, December 3^rd

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

In the Kingdom, there is a higher standard not a lower one, and we have the grace available to us to operate at that higher standard
We all read with some level of pre-understanding

It’s not that we should try not to have some level of pre-understanding (which to one degree or another isn’t really possible), but to understand that we read with some level of pre-understanding and to be aware of how that effects our view of the text

We have a propensity to like preachers who are funny, and can pull out the humor in Scripture

Thus, we hear with an innate desire to be entertained and sometimes we take that pre-understanding into our reading of Scripture – awareness is key

It’s dangerous to assume we understand the Bible before we read and make an effort to understand it (pride)
The Politics of Jesus by Yoder – interesting book which frames Jesus as a pacifist

Off the grid for many regarding the pre-understanding of violence in our culture

If we can only read the Bible through the lens of our culture then we prevent the Bible from being able to correct our culture

We must be willing to set our cultural framework aside when reading Scripture

We can’t come to Scripture as a blank slate every time, but it is important to evaluate our lens from time to time and to understand how it affects what we’re reading

Speaker – Jason Vallotton:

You can’t separate the natural from the spiritual, one impacts the other & vice versa
If you really want to know what your desires are, build a relationship of trust with your heart – key to self-awareness
Bad things can result from not paying attention to what’s going on inside of you
Emotional intelligence is one of the ways we get our needs met in a healthy way

Environment + Self + God
Culture + What do I really Need + What does God say

After a breakup, it’s best to spend some time focused on inner healing
The best way not to get into trouble is to know you’re jacked up when you’re jacked up

Don’t make important decisions when you’re ‘under the influence’
Take the time to process through everything with yourself & with God

Just be adults and have practical conversations – everyone should be able to handle that
Needy people = black hole that can never be filled

‘Needy’ people tend to feel sorry for themselves all the time, aren’t very understanding, think about themselves more than the other person, no matter how much you give them it’s never enough, tend to take rather than give

It’s important to figure out where to go to get your needs met in a healthy way because no one person can meet all your needs
Every time you go to a new level, you have to work through the same kinds of fears and insecurities at each new level

Fear not = Don’t let fear control you
To break that thing, you need your identity clearly fastened in God

How to deal with your past – if you have a testimony don’t be afraid to say it
Anything that you overcome builds trust
The role of a wife & husband is to lay down you life for one another, to put the other person’s needs ahead of your own, to help the other person’s dreams come alive

If you aren’t the kind of person that can make their dream come alive (and vice versa) then don’t marry them

God isn’t quiet, He will make Himself heard – it’s us who mistake His voice for something else
Don’t set a wedding date until you know you’re ready for each other

It’s a nightmare to try and do work on yourself & each other in the midst of battle

Always be working on your emotional intelligence

As soon as you get out of school, your need for IQ drops & your need for EQ spikes

There are certain things in your life that you’ll need to get feedback on that are going to be painful

Learn to take feedback so that you don’t fall into the trap of thinking everyone is rejecting you
You have a victim spirit if you can’t receive feedback without getting offended

It’s not shameful that we don’t know how to do relationships as long as we’re working on it

Ask for help – empower people to help you because you weren’t meant to do everything on your own

Tuesday, December 4^th

Speaker – Bernie Ooley, Bible Instructor, BSSM:

Holy Spirit always succeeds in His mission, and WE are His mission
Philippians 12
As the Father prepared a body for His son, Jesus prepared a body for Holy Spirit
Heaven becomes the model for life and ministry on the earth – we can pray ‘thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’ because heaven lives in us
We have now a down payment of everything we’re going to have in heaven

We don’t have to wait until we die, eternal life starts now
A down payment here on earth and more than we’ll ever need heading into eternity

When we’re born again we get a new birth right as a result of the Cross
We not only can get healed & get others healed, but we’re called to live in divine health
Heaven is our model, our standard of living

Healing, provision, power, access to the Father, etc.

The Kingdom is now AND later
There is no devil or demons in heaven, so we are to eradicate them now as light eradicates the darkness
Wells of salvation are to become rivers of living water
Special things cease to be special without the One who’s presence makes them special
Being baptized in the Spirit is like taking your cup and throw it in the ocean

We are called to wear God well

Ephesians 6:18 – be filled with the Spirit – in the Greek it is a CONTINUAL filling
You don’t HAVE to speak in tongues, you GET to!

Speaking in the Spirit is the perfect prayer, speaks into the fulfillment of our destiny and unlocks mysteries
Aligns our heart with God’s heart – helps us love others better
We should also ask God for the interpretation of what we’re praying in tongues
When you pray in the Spirit you are building yourself up (edifying yourself)
“One who prays in a tongue builds an edifice to house a revelation and an anointing to break through a barrier and a restraint”

“We owe the world a Gospel of power” –Bill Johnson

The Gospel isn’t fully preached without the power to back it up

‘Gifts of healings’ is plural – typically you will see specific anointings for healing of certain types of specific diseases and physical conditions
Certain gifts of the Spirit are more prominent in different ministry offices
The most important gift is the one that is most needed at the time
Evangelists – healings
Apostles – working of miracles (interrupting the course of nature), power gifts
Prophets – revelatory gifts
Gift of Faith – supernatural ability to believe God without any doubt

A download to believe for a miracle, and the commission for proclamation

The working of the gifts are not like waffles, they’re like spaghetti
Prophecy – for edification/exhortation/consolation

Interpretation of tongues becomes equal to prophecy

Discerning of Spirits isn’t sensing just demonic activity, it’s also sensing angelic activity – sensing the realm of the Spirit
Word of Knowledge – knowing knowable facts that were not previously known

A manifestation of the goodness of God

Word of Wisdom – seeing into the strategy / mind of God
The way that Holy Spirit moves speaks as loudly as what He articulates

There are seasons & times when He emphasizes certain gifts and manifestations
The way He moves gives us insight into what He’s emphasizing in that hour and season

Pentecost is a harvest festival that celebrates the giving of The Law
The ability to recognize God at work and the way He moves is a sign of maturity, and He’s calling us all to that

Wednesday, December 5^th

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

(See audio file)

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

Joy is a fruit of the Spirit – a manifestation of Holy Spirit working in our lives
Joy is the manna of the New Testament, given to us as a gift for the days we’re living in
The joy of the Lord is our strength
Romans 15:13
What we believe becomes truth to us, which can be bad when we believe the wrong things – pull out the tears with the wheat, allow God to use His scalpel on your heart
Contrary to popular belief, God is not always ‘orderly’ in the manner we define it to be
We may have bad moments, but there are no bad days in the Kingdom
Jesus was a happy person, and we’re supposed to represent Him to the world
The Cross gave you full rights to have joy

Jesus was able to endure the Cross because of the joy that was set before Him
He kept His focus off circumstances and stayed focused on joy

Joy is the antidote for hard times
James 1

Trials aren’t testing your character, they’re testing your faith
If you’re discouraged by the list of your problems, you haven’t added Jesus to the equation – you add Him to the equation through expressions of joy
Joy ends in perfection & completion, lacking nothing
Hard times without joy attract judgment, guilt & shame
Hard times with joy develop maturity, faith & Christ-likeness

Joy attracts heaven, gives us heaven’s perspective – joy to heaven looks like faith
Joy in the circumstance attracts provision like a lightning rod attracts lightning
Psalms 89
Joy opens you up to see the heart of God, to see what God’s really doing
History sets us up to receive our inheritance
Psalms 27

I will go offer sacrifices of joy WHEN I DO NOT FEEL LIKE IT
We are not like the world which says if I do when I don’t feel it I’m a hypocrite
God says do it then I’ll do it – don’t wait for me to show up, do it & I’ll show up

God gives us the oil of joy in exchange for our sorrow, but we must give up our sorrow
Being filled with the Spirit is not a one-time event, it is a continual filling
Psalms 2

God sits in the heavens and laughs – we are to do on earth as it’s done in heaven

Thursday, December 6^th

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

BSSM was built to equip & deploy revivalists into every realm of society to bring transformation there that the life of Christ would flow through ever individual there that society would be changed and Jesus would be glorified in every heart
There is a lot to live for – we’re meant to go out and take back all that has been lost, to spread the Kingdom of heaven over the face of the earth
Cultures reproduce culture by reproducing a belief system
Our belief system shapes our world around us – first by shaping us, then by shaping the culture around us
Our actions are just the manifestation of our beliefs
We should be assessing what we believe
The way you think manifests in how you act & how you live
Building Blocks of BSSM: (See audio file)

Connection in Community – where people honor one another in a Spirit of love
Identity – we must take ownership of what we allow to enter our mind, Jesus did it all at the Cross but we must take ownership of it for it to become yours
Supernatural – through worship & intimacy
Freedom – spirit, soul & body
Theology – stay true to God & His Word
Activation – we owe the world an encounter with God
Deployment – co-laboring with the Father to release the Kingdom

If you can’t do community, you’re missing out on the biggest piece of the puzzle
We’re not trying to just impact the people like us, we’re primarily trying to impact those who aren’t like us
At school, we’re given an overdose of the Holy Ghost, but when we go outside the walls of school we’re representing Him
School is not church, school is a safe place to fail
Teachable people have a willingness to learn, looking through the lens of humility which allows them to see and draw out the gold in those they come across
When you don’t submit under someone else’s leadership, you will reap what you sow when you’re in leadership over others
We get more by honoring what God is doing
Once we begin to level-off, we stop growing
God doesn’t measure love by what you do, He measures love by who you are
Anchor your life in the Father heart of God – doesn’t happen without establishing a Secret Place with God
Coming under His authority gives you access to His authority
No matter what your circumstances, if you know the love of God you will be successful
This can’t just be theology, it HAS to become reality – plant the seeds you’re given here and let them grow, grow, grow
If we want to enjoy life, we must take time for the most important thing in our lives
We should have a presence-driven life – His presence will always lead us to our purpose
You know when you’re being prideful because God starts to humble you – humble yourself!
II Cor. 3:18
Declarations over yourself what God has said helps bring results

Collect a list of prophetic words that have been given to you, read them every day

Sitting in God’s presence is pretty easy

Speaker – Chris Overstreet, Outreach Pastor, Bethel Church:

(See Audio File)

WEEK #14

Monday, December 10^th

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

Analyzing Scripture means asking questions
Dive into the text and come up with a list of questions you should want to know the answers to

Involves who, what, when, where, why and how questions
Think of the hidden answers behind the Scripture that will make it come alive

The important things get mentioned over and over

Highlight repeated words and dig deeper into their meaning and context

Once you complete your analysis, go through it a second time and re-evaluate your analysis, adding anything you may have overlooked and removing things you may decide you don’t really need
Spend time meditating on the Scripture, ask Holy Spirit to show you the hidden messages

David loved to meditate on Scripture, and he only had Genesis – Judges (maybe)

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

Psalm 27:13, 35:3
The goodness of God is based on focusing what God IS doing instead of what He isn’t doing

We are trained in our world to focus on bad news
The goodness of God leads us to repentance
In the OT, the fear of God protected you from sin, but in the NT, the grace of God gives us the victory over sin
In the OT, God was always trying to show how good He was to His people, but they wouldn’t see Him that way, so they were never able to stay in it

You can actually train yourself to be able to encounter God by focusing on the goodness of God – does something inside of you

Seeing God’s goodness through the eyes of thanksgiving brings amazing encounters with God – takes you straight into the Father’s embrace

Exodus 15

Jehovah Rapha – you can choose your bitter water (unforgiveness/offense) or you can choose my healing
Israelites still complained after God gave them water
‘The Testimony’ was the first name of the Ark of the Covenant

Just keep focusing on God’s goodness and it will lead you to the God you need

Through the lens of the goodness of God we begin to see that anything is possible
We must realize that God WANTS to encounter us, and until we get that we won’t get the rest of it

Philippians 4:4

Rejoice, be anxious for nothing, but by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving make your requests known
Meditate on the good things of God (Phil. 4:8)
The whole earth is full of the goodness of God

Col. 2:6

Beware so that no one may cheat you through philosophies and vain deceit
God reigns supreme and there is nothing that can overcome us
Whatever we talk about and look at is what will happen!
Do not fall into philosophies – don’t argue with people about what they believe, just demonstrate God
The world is full of hopelessness because people tend to focus on what they don’t have
There are disappointments that come in life, but we have to know how to live life out of the goodness of God
Thanksgiving mines the gold out of any given situation

Psalm 100

We enter His gates with thanksgiving
Beginning to look for the goodness of God will teach you to see the goodness of God in everything

By giving thanks for our food, it becomes sanctified
Giving thanks reminds us that God is a good God
You develop an atmosphere around you by planting that seed of thanksgiving 1^st, and when you’re around others they get caught up in it too

Start practicing not letting days of disappointment lead you into places of discouragement
Living a life of defeat and discouragement will not change the world, and it’s no fun at all
A heard founded in thanksgiving will lead us to a place of seeing into the supernatural – you start to see God in everything, then you start to see God
Go on a ‘negativity fast’ – you aren’t allowed to say anything negative, but you can eat anything that you want

Tuesday, December 11^th

Freedom Day

Wednesday, December 12^th

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

In Biblical times, most inns (in gentile nations) were actually quasi-brothels in that they offered prostitute services

Thus, staying with host families was a necessity for Christians

Often, the definition of the word is not as helpful as the context for determining the meaning of the text
Tool for Biblical word studies – www.BlueLetterBible.com
Don’t do all your Scriptural analysis in one sitting, come back to it two or three times and give Holy Spirit an opportunity to unearth more revelation about the text
In His goodness, for those who only speak the language of fear, He may speak fear to catch their attention
When you find a beautiful promises in Scripture, dialogue with Him and ask if you may have permission to receive that Scriptural promise as a promise for you
Don’t be an expert, be humble and naturally supernatural
Some Christians belief God is actively involved in our lives and the universe, and some do not

The Bible regularly demonstrates that when God’s involved, miracles are somewhat normal – when God’s involved, things happen
God has asked us to pray for His active involvement in our lives and universe
Miracles help establish God’s Kingdom here on earth

Jesus said we would do greater things than He did

‘Greater’ = refers to quality, not quantity
Jesus expected those who believe in Him to walk in miraculous power

Speaker – Kris Vallotton, Associate Senior Leader, Bethel Church:

Daniel 7:9

The Ancient of Days came and issued judgment in favor of the saints
The saints received glory, dominion and a kingdom

Colossians 2:8
Matthew 16:28, 24:14
Luke 4:43, 9:2, 10:9, 12:31, 12:32
John 3:3, 3:5
Acts 1:3, 8:12, 9:8, 20:25
Colossians 1:13
Hebrews 12:28
Why do we invent eschatology that re-arm and re-empower a disarmed and defeated devil?

The courts sat for judgment and his dominion was taken away, annihilated and destroyed forever
That dominion was then given to the saints of the highest one
We’re fighting a devil that has already been defeated
We aren’t fighting for victory, we’re fighting from victory

Romans 8

We are heirs of God

‘Perfect love casts out fear’ – if you’re afraid, you’re listening to the wrong kingdom
Genesis 1:24

God made everything after it’s kind, then He created man after God’s kind
When you’re acting like God you’re being yourself
All the kingdoms of the world are under us – including animal, marine, plant, biological, etc.
The reason why we’re on the same planet with the devil is it’s part of his punishment, not yours
God split Himself into two parts when He made man and woman, and by oppressing women you lose half the revelation of the God-head
When you don’t value the matriarchal side of creation, you dishonor the God of heaven
The devil hates women more than he hates men, so the first level of spiritual warfare isn’t against men, it’s against women
Part of the curse on the serpent was that the woman would be mad at it

The Son of God became the Son of Man so that the sons of man could become sons of God
When we were born, we were born below the angels, but when we were born-again, we were born into authority over the angels
God doesn’t send people to hell

Jesus said ‘Over my dead body will you go to hell,’ but people continue to step over His body and go to hell

No matter what, get all the Kingdom you can have right now

You don’t want to wait until the end of the age and then find out there was a lot more of the Kingdom available to you that you didn’t get

Why do we allow a defeated devil to ravage a planet that Jesus died to say
The devil has power but no authority, we have power AND authority

Satan has a bow and arrow, we have an atomic bomb
The devil has no authorization to use his weapons
He works in deception because he is no match for us
Jesus has all power and authority, and gave His name to us, so now we have all power and authority

We cannot let something we’re unsure of re-interpret those things that we know for sure
The conventional take on eschatology re-arms a disarmed devil
The Book of Revelation is a seer’s vision

How I perceive the end has everything with how I choose to do the middle
We cannot spend out life preparing for a 7 year tribulation
Are we supposed to watch for signs so we can know when to get really passionate about God?
Are you acting good because you really love God, or because you’re afraid He’s going to spank you?

The earth is travailing and waiting for the sons of God to take their rightful place
The reason Jesus is tarrying in His return is because He is merciful, because if He came back now, many people would go to hell
‘You better behave because Dad is coming back and He’s going to be mad’ is a terrible way to get people to love God

The lie that we’ve sold to the world is that if you enjoy something God’s mad at you for it

Thursday, December 13^th

Speaker – ‘Nicaragua Woman’:

God has made available to you the power to fulfill your dreams for the Kingdom
When you’re looking for somewhere to go, look for the place where there’s nothing to support your next step, and God has to show up to keep you from falling
Fear is your enemy, and you have the power to kill it!
God hasn’t only given us abundant life, but the power to eradicate the darkness
Step out in faith and God will take care of the rest
There are things on this planet that will never happen if you don’t get it done (with God)
We must allow ourselves to trust God to move out into the world & get it done ‘out there’
Jesus is the best guy to partner with to see glorious transformation everywhere
Where ever you are, look into people’s eyes and speak the truth
You don’t have to try hard to be yourself – it’s really easy to be yourself in the Kingdom
What the world needs to be changed is for you to be fully you

Speaker – Tracey Evans:

God moves you to the end of yourself, right up to the edge of the cliff, and then He pushes you over the edge

As you’re falling you cry out to Him and His wind comes under you and causes you to fly
This process brings you to a place of discontent with anything that does not require spiritual courage

We all like following Jesus when it’s easy, but who will follow Him into the valley of the shadow of death – who wants to follow God when it’s hard?
Was Jesus more pleased with Jesus who tried to walk on the water, or with the other 11 who wouldn’t get out of the boat?
So much of the Bible comes alive when you’re in difficult situations
You don’t realize that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have
God isn’t nearly as interested in our comfort as we are, but He is interested in conforming us to His image
God makes a way where there is no way
If God is Lord of all, then He is Lord of our mistakes too

He works all things together for good
It was Peter’s idea to step out of the boat

We have no excuse – we should be the boldest people on the planet
Faith is only mentioned twice in the OT (translated courage/trust), while it’s mentioned over 200 times in the NT
Some follow Jesus close, others follow from afar

The further someone is from you, the smaller they are & the easier it is

Jesus invites you into scary things because the things He wants to impart to you can only be inherited by faith
Jesus takes it very personally how we treat one another
We must count the cost to follow Jesus

If we want His resurrection power, we must die first

It’s about walking in obedience and not letting our personal experience become the standard but keeping the Word of God our standard
If you’re going to err, err on the side of grace and mercy

You cannot go wrong in giving to the Lord

Sometimes you step out & fall on your face, but that’s okay – bounce back up & go again
Keep your eyes & faith on Jesus, if you’re looking at the circumstances you’ll get scared
God promised to be with us in the hard times, not always to deliver us from it
When you experience some hardship, you come to appreciate Jesus a lot more because that’s exactly what He did for us
If you want to be close to Jesus, do not be surprised if you experience difficult things
Want to know the real Jesus

If I have a pretend Jesus, I have a pretend salvation

You share the deep secrets of your heart with your best friend – do you have that kind of relationship with Jesus that you share your heart with Him & He can share His with you?
Touching God’s children is the same as touching Him

When I was hungry you fed me, when I was thirsty you gave me something to drink, when I a stranger you invited me in, when I was naked you clothed me, when I was in prison you came to visit me

God blesses me so much, and I look for ways to bless Him back

There are many things we will never have a chance to do in heaven because they don’t exist there, they can only be done on earth because this is where they exist

We can’t be too generous, we can’t be too kind, we can’t love too much
Jesus’ body is covered with scars – when we really see the depths of His extravagant love, we want to lay something of value at His feet
We can easily adopt a cultural Christianity that’s very convenient

We want to have the best of Christianity and the best of the world simultaneously, but you can’t have both

We want to be among those who genuinely touch the heart of Jesus
It’s time we focus on what is truly valuable, to take inventory of where we’re storing up our treasure and whether or not it has truly significant value
www.iReachAfrica.org

Speaker – Chris Overstreet, Outreach Pastor, Bethel Church:

Ephesians 2:1 – He made you alive who was dead in sin
God looks at every individual the same

People we think are really different from us really aren’t that different from us

II Timothy 1:7 – He has not given you a spirit of fear, but of power, love & a sound mind
Isaiah 26:3 – a creative imagination

Thank God for who He says you are, and then begin to dream with Him
Will ignite faith in your heart that the dreams you’re having with God will begin to happen in reality
You must become convinced in your heart that what God has said He will fulfill

Compassion does something in your heart that allows you to do courageous things

Beyond Religion

1st Year Class Notes - Fall 2012

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