I have the humbling privilege of teaching the Bible at Wheeler Mission to the homeless, the broken, the down-trodden and to the struggling. It is challenging and rewarding to hold forth the Word of Life. Here my notes for my last teaching. They are not as detailed as most posts on the blog, but are truly notes in an outline form, but I thought they would bless you.
The God of hope. Romans 15:13. He is the expectation of future good. No hope in temporal things, people, self-abilities or philosophies of the world.
Never one ounce in disappointment in God. He will never let you down or let go of you. Romans 10:11: The Scripture says, No man who believes in Him [who adheres to, relies on, and trusts in Him] will [ever] be put to shame or be disappointed. God cannot lie. Either this is truth and you can stake your life on it or it is not.
No distinction between race, poor, nationality, or gender. God does not discriminate. Romans 10:12: For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. 13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Psalm 18:2ff: The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold and my refuge, my savior; you save me from violence. I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies. “In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I called. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry came to his ears. He sent from on high, he took me; he drew me out of many waters. He rescued me from my strong enemy, from those who hated me, for they were too mighty for me. They confronted me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my support. He brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me, because he delighted in me.
Man is born spiritually blind. He is unable therefore to assess the relative values of the things of time when compared with the things of eternity. As a result, he spends his time and energies in seeking the wealth, the honor and the pleasures that this world can give him. Little does he realize that ” the things that are seen are (all of them) temporal,” whereas ” the things that are not seen (and they alone) are eternal ” (2 Cor. 4:18). Jesus challenged the wrong sense of values held by even religious people of His day when He told them that a man would profit nothing who gained the whole world if in doing so he lost his soul. If a man is not rightly related to God through Jesus Christ then he will discover, in the day that he stands before his Creator, that all he has achieved and acquired on earth is utterly valueless.
Life is more than the temporal. We must come to our Creator to truly live.
Genesis 2:7: Where it began face to face, eye to eye, and breath to breath. This intimate moment with God is where life began and we must return to the fountainhead of life.
Do you know the grandness of what it means to be a Christian? Do you understand who you are and your position as a son or daughter of God in the kingdom of God? We need to have an awakening of our soul to the magnificence of the gospel and the power, the glory and the strength of God that we can live in on this earth when we are in Christ. The picture has faded into gray and we have not seen the absolute triumph and victory that is supposed to be the norm in Christianity. We have not experienced the exchanged life where our mighty Lord Jesus Christ lives his life, his very existence, in and through our lives. We need to have the rock of the living God as the cornerstone of our soul. We need a serious tutoring about the life of triumph in Jesus Christ. Are we tired of a Christianity that does not work? Are we tired of the futility of trying to live as a Christian? The Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to redeem us and to restore us to our true humanity and function, to restore us to the Life that was lost in Adam, so that we can be in Him and He can be in us.
Ravenhill: We are not saved to stagnate. Conversion is not a goal; it is a gateway. We are to progress from strength to strength, from glory to glory.
Psalm 118:5-9: Out of my distress I called on the Lord; the Lord answered me and set me free. 6 The Lord is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me? 7 The Lord is on my side as my helper; I shall look in triumph on those who hate me. 8 It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man.9 It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.
Romans 8:31-39: Nothing can separate us from God’s love. He has freely given us all things in Christ. No one can lay anything to our charge or condemn us. God is on our side.
Hebrews 13:5,6: He will never, never leave us or never never, never forsake us. He is our helper. He wants to let help but we must have faith that He will.
When the gospel it truly received it costs you everything, your life, your old ways, your old mannerisms, your old self. This is a cost that comes in knowing God and the Lord Jesus Christ. You cannot hold on to a scrap of the old you. The problem is us. We have a born disposition that is in rebellion against the most High God. I want my life on my terms. You can have all that Jesus Christ is, but there is a little caveat: He gets all that you are. Oh the glow, the soul satisfaction, the radiance that comes from giving our all, our entire lives, EVERYTHING to Him. Few want to live Christianity like this. Can you look God square in face and say you made me, you fashioned me for a purpose and a destiny, you gave your Son to set me free, and I now give you my life and will do what you require me to do. I don’t want my way. I want your way.
Do you know you have a thousand moments in every day that you need to be rescued and delivered? From what? From YOU, from the problem of you. You have a desire; you have an esteem for that very throne in your life. You want to be in control; you want it to be your way. You are a problem; you are a rebel against the kingdom agenda. But God has a better plan.
Is God able to take care of you?
Psalms 78:24-25
He rained down manna upon them to eat and gave them food from heaven. Man did eat the bread of angels; He sent them food in abundance.
Manna and Moses: 3 ½ Million people in Exodus from Egypt into the wilderness. 1500 tons of food a day. Fill two freight trains a mile long. 4000 tons of firewood to cook. 11,000 gallons of water every day to drink. Every day for 40 years God provided manna and water. Can we trust our God to do any less?
Tozer in The Divine Conquest says,
“The experience with men that walked with God in olden time agree to teach that the Lord cannot bless a man until He has first conquered Him. The degree of blessing enjoyed by any man will correspond exactly with the completeness of God’s victory over him…Only the conquered can know true blessedness…For life we are wholly and continually dependent upon God, the Source and Fountain of life. Only by full dependence upon Him are the hidden potentials of our natures realized. Apart from this we are but half-men, malformed and unbeautiful members of a noble race once made to wear the image of its Creator…It was to save Jacob from deceptive hope that God confronted him that night on the bank of the river. To save him from self-trust it was necessary for God to conquer him, to wrest control away from him, to take his great power and rule with a rod of love…We might pray well for God to invade and conquer us, for until he does, we remain in peril from a thousand foes. We bear within us the seeds of our own disintegration. The strength of our flesh is an ever present danger to our souls. Deliverance can only come to us by the defeat of our old life…Real faith must always mean more than passive acceptance. It dare mean nothing less than surrender of our doomed Adam like nature to a merciful end upon the cross…There begins the divine conquest of our lives.”
O GOD BUILD YOURSELF IN ME!
Major Ian Thomas in The Indwelling Life of Christ: All of Him in All of Me states:
God so engineered you and me that His presence is indispensable to our humanity, teaching our minds, controlling our emotions, directing our wills, and governing our behavior. Your new birth put God into action in you…If you decide genuinely that Christ be everything and have everything in your life…then He is ready to lead you into discoveries that can completely revolutionize your whole humanity for time and eternity…The resurrected Christ now lives, to continue His Life in you.
Psalm 31:14, 15a (Amplified):
But I trusted, relied on, and was confident in You O Lord; I said, you are my God. My times are in thine hands…
The very difficulties that surround our lives today are but opportunities for God to show Himself to us as El·Shaddai-God Almighty who is more than enough and all we need. Our sufficiency.
Parable of invited wedding guests. Every one of the first invited made excuses why they would not come. So the poor, crippled, lame and blind were invited. Luke 14.
David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father’s house heard it, they went down there to him. And everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul, gathered to him. And he became commander over them. And there were with him about four hundred men. (1 Samuel 22:1, 2 ESV). David’s mighty men was made up of the world’s rejected. He is a prototype of Jesus Christ and not many mighty, noble or wise or called, but the weak.
Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head” (Luke 9:58). Jesus Christ was homeless.
Revelation 5:9: Worthy art thou to take the book, and to break its seals, for thou was slain, and did purchase for God with thy blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.
God had more in mind than simply man’s forgiveness. He was putting claim of ownership on our lives. Redemption. How valuable must you be to God for Him to pay such a high price to purchase you.
John 10:9ff: I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. 11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd…27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me,[a] is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.
He will take care of you if you only let Him.
Matthew 6:25ff Jesus had to first teach his disciples not to fear or worry or be anxious but to trust in God. If he can take care of the birds and lilies of the field, surely He can take care of us.
I Peter 5:7 We cast everything, every burden, fear, problem and care on His shoulders for He cares for us.
Trusting God means looking beyond what we see to what God sees. God sees all of our tomorrows. He gives us hope. We can rest on Him. Not be afraid of tomorrow. No matter how impossible it may seem. God knows what is in the future and He can deal with it. 2 Kings 6:15-17,: When the servant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was all around the city. And the servant said, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” 16 He said, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”17 Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
Psalm 145:13-18: Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations.[The Lord is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works.] 14 The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down.15 The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season.16 You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing.17 The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works.18 The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.
Romans 8:1: No condemnation in Christ. No matter what in past. Never let your sin or past prevent you from coming to God. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. John 3:16 verse of this mission.
Colossians 1:13: Delivery from the kingdom of darkness and citizenship in His kingdom.
For you are my lamp, O Lord, and my God lightens my darkness. For by you I can run against a troop, and by my God I can leap over a wall. This God—his way is perfect; the word of the Lord proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him. “For who is God, but the Lord? And who is a rock, except our God? This God is my strong refuge and has made my way blameless. He made my feet like the feet of a deer and set me secure on the height. 2 Samuel 22
2 Chronicles 14:11: And Asa cried to the Lord his God, “O Lord, there is none like you to help, between the mighty and the weak. Help us, O Lord our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this multitude. O Lord, you are our God; let not man prevail against you.”
Who is controlling your life? Who calls the shots? Do you accept the authority of Scriptures to speak into our lives?
Whatever we acquire outside of God’s will eventually turns to ashes. Wages of sin is death. There is a pay day coming. That is why we so desperately need Christ and his atonement for our sins. He paid the price for every single one of our sins if we will only accept it. Romans 10:9-10.
God is big enough and cares enough to meet every one of your needs.
Matthew 4:4: What our we feeding our souls? Are we starving spiritually?
Childlike faith-Heavenly Father. What are characteristics of a good father? Ask them. Million times more with our Heavenly Father.
Let me ask you another question. Have you ever thought about eternal life? Life that never ends. Have you ever thought about heaven? What it must be like? A place like no other.
Revelation 21:1-6: Is this your future? An invitation from the King of Kings is waiting for you.
Matthew 4:19: “Come and follow me said Jesus….”Who are we following? Who has charge of our lives? What or who are we serving? Where do we derive our identity?
John 16:33: I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
Do you have peace? It only comes with the prince of peace.
2 Chronicles 13: O sons of Israel, do not fight against the Lord, the God of your fathers, for you cannot succeed.”
2 Chronicles 20: For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” And the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jahaziel the son of Zechariah, son of Benaiah, son of Jeiel, son of Mattaniah, a Levite of the sons of Asaph, in the midst of the assembly. And he said, “Listen, all Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem and King Jehoshaphat: Thus says the Lord to you, ‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s. You will not need to fight in this battle. Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem.’ Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed. Tomorrow go out against them, and the Lord will be with you.”
Let God fight every battle, every problem, and every circumstance. Stand still and see the salvation of God.
Ecclesiastes 5:7: Many words are meaningless. Stand in awe of God
Isaiah 43:18, 19: Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
Nothing is impossible with God. He makes a way in the wilderness of our lives and rivers of water in the dry desserts of our heart.
Psalm 73:23-26 Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand.24 You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory.25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Psalm 91:14: 14 “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. 15 When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him.
16 With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.”
Psalm 37:4: Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.5 Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act.
6 He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.7 Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; fret not…
Psalm 34:4: I sought the Lord, and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. David chooses megurot. The root is gur which means “great dread, terror, horror.” This is more than worrying about tomorrow’s weather. This is a nightmare turned into a daylight trauma. Your worst fears. Maybe you can handle the ordinary worries of life. That’s why David turns these things over to God. He will deliver us from all those nightmares. But I suspect that the worst of all terrors come from deep inside of us. We are powerless over them because they reside in the darkest corners of our lives. They are megurot—and God is the only deliverer. Terrors that arise from deep inside. Mental bondage of guilt and condemnation. Prisons in mind. God delivers us from all of them in Christ. Sweet freedom from every prison that holds us captive.
Psalm 42:5, 6a: Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation 6 and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you
If you come to Christ and give your life to him He will make you lovely and acceptable. Accepted in the beloved. You are the beloved of God. Don’t you want to be accepted? Beloved? Cared for? Treasured? The world beats us up and tells us that we don’t measure up. God says we are His beloved masterpiece and gives us rest and assurance of our true identity that no person can steal, mar or change. He is, therefore we are.
Luke 4:18ff: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed,19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Now is the time of your salvation. Today God can heal your broken heart, give you liberty from every captivity, open your eyes to see again, set you free from every oppression, deliver you from every addiction and give you a new life. Won’t you accept his invitation to begin your life anew with Him today, tomorrow and throughout all eternity? He paid the price for you, all He asks you to do is to come at the foot of the cross and accept Him into your life as Lord, Savior and Redeemer.
