Seasons

1-12-2020

Sunday PM

1 Chronicles 12:32

Every Tribe brought something different to the table. This group had understanding of the times. Which enabled them to know what to do. If you know what season you’re in, you know what to do, and you know what not to do. 

Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8 [28 seasons]

If you knew what season you were in, not only would you know what to do and what not to do, you’d, know what’s coming next. And you could prepare for it.  If you’re in a mourning season, then you know the next season is laughing. You could prepare for it, you’re looking for it, you’re expecting it. With that expectancy, you can turn things quicker than you realize.  You can get so bogged down that a season can last longer than its meant to last.   You need to find out which season you’re in.  

People perceive and hear you through the season that they’re in. 

 If you go by natural feelings, it can be disheartening. But the word teaches us this, you walk by faith and not be feeling. That’s easier said than done and it’s got to be learned in time. 

When you seek God, you will go through purging times, and it can be difficult to explain because its different for everybody. Everyone who presses into God expects good, big things. That’s just the way it is. And if you don’t see things you THINK you should be seeing; you feel like you’re not accomplishing anything. But if God is purging, and rending things out of your life, if you stay with it, on the other side, there’s healing and mending.  God knows what we need.  It would be easier to quit, but just because you have those thoughts and feelings doesn’t mean they came from within you.  It’s the enemy.  He will use things and people around you. You can’t depend on others in this season. We all have expectations of people, and when you’re in a tight place, people won’t act like you think they should in that season.  What the enemy does, is try to convince you that it’s not worth it, and others don’t care. If you put your confidence in other people and they don’t measure up, the enemy will use that against you.  That’s when you really have to depend on God.  

When you pray in the spirit, you have to know this, it’s a spiritual thing. It’s not an emotional thing and it’s not a physical thing. It can be very boring physically, mentally, and emotionally. When you incorporate worship, you get over into the realm of feelings and emotions. It will balance you out emotionally.  When you start worshiping God, a literal baptism starts to take place from the inside out. If you give it time, it will stabilize your emotions. Things that used to bother you, won’t bother you. God gave you that and he gave it to you for a reason. If we walked half full of the spirit nothing would touch us.  You have to give these things time. 

When you’re in a winter season, and you’re not producing anything, it doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It just means you’re in that season. But if you keep doing what you’re supposed to be doing in the season you’re in, that forces change. That’s the importance of knowing the season you’re in. 

God put gifts in his body [apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers] Its very good to have prophetic people around you in those times. They’re like the sons of Issachar (1 Chron. 12) They interpret seasons and times. That’s a gifting from God. God wants you to know what season and time you’re in, in your life.  Even in the natural you have different seasons and times. Times in elementary, high school, college, marriage, children etc. In each one of those seasons, it’s a change in your life. It’s very important in these times, to have people around you that can help you identify the season you’re in. Your pastor, or leader can fulfill this role at times, but there has to be a pull from the people. 

In the difficult seasons, it’s never God’s plan that you be attacked by the enemy without God warning you first. Just like a parent would warn they’re child of a difficult time ahead, God wants to warn you ahead of time too, but he can’t when you’re so busy doing other things. You have to have times where you personally get close to God.  It’s important to pray in the spirit and focus on him so that you can pick up on things he’s trying to show you in the spirit.  

Philippians 4:6-7

God always has the solution. He’s never withholding anything from us.  You don’t have to be special for God to talk to you. He has a way of getting things over to you, if you will go to him. He knows your language. He knows the language you hear. God talks every language. He will talk to you in a way that you understand what he is trying to get across to you.

God don’t move until it’s his turn.  If you don’t see God moving or doing anything in your life, It’s not his turn.  The enemy will mess with your head in these times. Saying things like,” there’s something wrong with you, you’re not measuring up, you’re not good enough. “But the reality is this, you need to move toward God, and when you move toward him, he will move toward you.  Verse 6 is your move. Verse 7 is God’s move.  What do you do when you’re anxious, concerned of fretting? Pray. Why? Cause God has the answer, and God WANTS to help me. When you pray, balance your prayer with thanksgiving. 

If you walk with God, He will sustain you through a winter season. Be thankful a lot. You can take yourself into a depressed season, by not being thankful. You can’t be depressed and thankful at the same time. 

The benefits only come to the blessers. They belong to everybody. But won’t be delivered if you don’t bless.  

1 Thessaloninas 5:18

Ephesians 5:20

Psalm 107:1-2

Colossians 3:17

Philippians 2:14

Compassion - Gods Love in Action

Luke 7:11-14 //   Jesus raises the boy at Nain from the dead. 

You live in a busy world. All kinds of stuff going on. You can’t lose sight of what’s most important. God don’t lose sight of what’s most important. What’s most important to God is people. Because when you get to the end of your life, be it you go by way of the grave, or if he comes back, all that will matter then, will be people.   The world is different now than the world we grew up in. When I grew up as a little boy, life was a play pen. Life was a happy, peaceful time. But now, you’re in a war. It’s all around you. You’re in a consumer culture now. Everything’s about you, everything’s about what you want, your ambitions, you’re desires.  Jesus is going along here and when He looks at this situation, this woman has lost her husband, and her only son, and when Jesus looks and surveys the situation, He sees the woman. The person. 

“…. and when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.”

Compassion - To twist the gut, to cause the bowels to yearn. It’s not human pity. It’s not feeling sorry for someone. Many of us went to funerals before and we say, “I’m so sorry.”  This is not that. It’s not wrong to have human sorrow, it’s honorable in that situation. But the reality is this, human sorrow and human pity can’t change the situation. It can do some things which we’re grateful for, but this is the love of God in action. 

Jesus didn’t raise the son from the dead because he was God.  Jesus laid aside his divine privileges. Everything Jesus done on the earth he did as a man. He didn’t do it to bring glory to God - Although it did bring glory to God. He didn’t do it to be seen. He did it for one reason and one reason only, and that was to stop that mothers’ hurting.  That’s what love does. This compassion was the love of God in manifestation. 

God clearly was able to express his yearning, his eagerness to help and bless people. In other words, God had a vessel that he could flow through to fix the problem at hand. Everything in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and the picture of Jesus, it’s an image that God provided us with, that every born-again person is to be conformed into.  You will never, I don’t care who you are, touch God’s divinity. 

Romans 5:1-5

Every person that has been justified (just as if you had never sinned) at that moment when you were born again, the love came into you.  The Love of God. The love of god is not like human love, it’s not even in the same category. We’re talking about divine love.  When you got born again, God put his love in you.  The love that was shown through compassion in the situation of raising the boy at Nain, is the same love that’s in you.  When Adam fell in the garden he died spiritually.  He lost the capacity to love, but when you got born again, God put his love in you, and you have the capacity in you to love just like God loves. And compassion is a fruit of the love of God. And fruit has to be developed. 

God is Love. You can’t confuse it with human love. He raised that boy from the dead because of his Love for the mother and for the boy. He wanted to stop the suffering. Can you imagine? She’s lost her husband and all she’s got is her son. God is known by his love. What are you known for?  There would be no greater honor than for people to remember you by Love. If you’re going to be a person whose known by love, you’re going to have to be intentional about it.  You live in a world and a culture where everyone lives for themselves. Humankind is selfish. You live in a culture and time right now where demons are ministering hate to people.  I’m talking about vicious hate! We as gods people, we are to be known as a people of Love. 

Ephesians 1:3 “Blessed be the GOD + FATHER of your Lord Jesus Christ…”

People know God as God. Very few know him as Father. Father is his nature.  We know a lot about God, but we don’t really know God. There’s a difference. You don’t know about someone because you hear about them. You know someone because you talk to them personally.  You can go to church and hear them tell you about God and you never really know him like he wants you know him. He wants you to know him as your own personal Father.  Jesus came presenting the father. The religious culture in that day knew him as God.  The church in America know a God. But how many of us know a father that cares about us personally. To the degree that I can trust him and believe what he says TO me and ABOUT me. There is a difference. Every person can live and die, be born again, have the capacity to love in them, and die an angry, bitter, unforgiving, full of malice, person.  That was NEVER the will of God for them. They will never be a benefit to humankind nor themselves and those around them because of what they’ve allowed to go on in their hearts.  Love is a choice. You can be a person of love or you can be a person of hate.  You can be any kind of person you want to be. 

2 Timothy 1: 12

It’s the will of God that you know him to the degree that you can trust him. If you could ever find God, you’d be happy. The reason people are not happy in life, is because you’re not happy with yourself. The reason you’re angry and negative about things is because that’s how you are with yourself.  The reason you lash out and blame other people is because you’re not happy with yourself. You’ve made choices that made you that way.  Or, others have treated you unfairly. But even if people do you wrong, you still have a choice how you respond to it. You can’t play the blame game. That don’t Go over with God. You start running after him and he’ll deal with stuff like that.  To be happy you have to be happy with yourself. And to be happy with yourself, you can’t put your happiness in the hand of any other person, or they’ll control you.

God wants you to know him to the degree that you can trust him to take care of you no matter what situation you’re in.  One of the things I like about God, Is I can get in trouble and even if it’s my own fault God will rescue me, and he won’t hold it against me. Aren’t you glad God don’t hold things against us? If you’re a Christian and you’re walking in love you won’t hold anything against people either.  You won’t label them as “that person” either.  

You can know God through the book. But there is a difference between the letter and the spirit.  There are people who can quote this book, even some atheists. Isn’t it mind boggling to think you have the capacity to love like God loves? What would change in the church world, or in your world, if you saw everything and everybody through Gods love?  If you could see people, the way God sees them? If God could use you to do things for people that he wanted to do? That can only come through love.   Love would never hurt a person. It is a big stretch to have you up here raising the dead. Some of you can’t even go there in your thinking. You never know what love could do in you and through you. Because Love knows no impossibilities. It has no limitations.  A boy in a coffin is a big one. Love looks at that as nothing. And people go through their whole life hunting love, hunting somebody to love them.  And here’s this God who has a love that’s beyond anything you can imagine and his arms are open and he’s inviting you to come and receive all the love that you can handle, and get so full of his love that you spill over onto other people and just wreck their world.  I’ve never seen the way people are behaving now. People who should have better sense. That’s the difference between God’s love and human love.  Cause human love can turn in a moment. Into this other person. Jesus at the last supper, said “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another the way I have loved you, by this will all men know that you are my disciples. You’re my followers.”  God is known by Love. His people should be known by love. The love side is the better side. The love side is the blessing side. 

God is love. You are what you choose. If you’re going to Love like God loves and develop that in you, there’s only one way you can get it. You’ve got to go get with him. And when you go get with him, He’ll start melting all that anger and inner agitation out of you.  All the inferior feelings and wrong image of yourself, he’ll melt that out of you. That’s why you’re not happy because you have a wrong image of yourself.  When that anger starts being purged and that need for someone else to affirm you starts leaving, His peace will start coming into your heart.  Fear and torment will leave your life. 

Psalm 91

1 He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High,Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
2 I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress;
My God, in Him I will trust.”

3 Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler
And from the perilous pestilence.
4 He shall cover you with His feathers,
And under His wings you shall take refuge;
His truth shall be your shield and buckler.
5 You shall not be afraid of the terror by night,
Nor of the arrow that flies by day,
6 Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness,
Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.

7 A thousand may fall at your side,
And ten thousand at your right hand;
But it shall not come near you.
8 Only with your eyes shall you look,
And see the reward of the wicked.

9 Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge,
Even the Most High, your dwelling place,
10 No evil shall befall you,
Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling;
11 For He shall give His angels charge over you,
To keep you in all your ways.
12 In their hands they shall bear you up,
Lest you dash your foot against a stone.
13 You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra,
The young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot.

14 “Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him;
I will set him on high, because he has known My name.
15 He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble;
I will deliver him and honor him.
16 With long life I will satisfy him,
And show him My salvation.”

You can’t trust God, if you don’t know him. 

The one that sets his love upon God gets all the benefits and relationship mentioned in this chapter. You’re loving somebody or something right now today with everything in you. You’re made that way. Every person is. The only way you can do this, is to get up every day and say, “I set my love upon you today”. You lift your hands and say “Father I love you. Father I love you. Father I love you. “And you do it and you do it and you do it until all the fear inside you starts running out on the floor. You keep doing it. You don’t need to know all the scriptures. You need to know three words.  “I love you.  I love you. I love you.”  Say, “I set my love upon you today. I choose to love you today. You’ll be my God, I’ll follow you, I’ll serve you, I’ll love you with all of my heart, all of my soul, and all of my strength.”Your mind starts obeying, your soul comes into line, and your body comes into line. This will get easier with time. If you keep doing it, and stay with it, all of a sudden, his love will come on you. And you’ll recognize this: God loves me. And if God loves me, I don’t need need to fear. Some people live and die and know all ABOUT God, but they don’t KNOW him. Because they’ve not sat down and given Him their love. You can’t do it with your human love. So, God gave you HIS love to love him with. But he can’t come to you and get His love in you and love Himself with it. Only you can do that.  You’ll see this, fear will start melting out of you. And the peace will come to you so that when people around you act out, it doesn’t move you.  Because you’ve got peace in your heart.  19 bills can show up tomorrow all due on the same day, but it doesn’t move you because you’ve got something bigger in you.  When are you going to get intentional? When you get God working in your heart, it takes out all the insecurities in you because God gives you security.  Everything He is, is in His love. His love will come alive in you. Your heart is not IN what your mind is not ON.  What do you think about all the time? Yourself. The reason you think about yourself all the time is because you haven’t developed the love of God.  You can tell when Gods love is starting to develop in you, your love for other people will start to increase. Why? Because the same love you love God with is the same love you love people with.  You can’t love God and not love people. It’s impossible because it’s the SAME LOVE. So, when I see my love for people is increasing, I know my love for God is increasing. When I start thinking of myself less and thinking of other people more, his love is increasing.  And when his love is increasing, I can forgive people so much easier. I don’t carry them around all aggravated in my heart. You give the devil a place in you when you let wrath get in your heart. For wrath to stay in your heart, you have to nurse it. It can be really strong sometimes but, the Love of God is greater. This love will run out of you and when it does, peace will come to your life. Fear will go out the door and you can start living a content, happy, life. Set your love upon God before the trouble comes! And be ready for it when it comes. You can walk around with the consciousness of God. And It’s not just for preachers. It’s for any member of the body of Christ that knows God as their father.