Wednesday Night Services

What is the significance of the 7 feasts of Israel and what does each speak to prophetically? The 4 spring feasts have been fulfilled, but the 3 fall feasts are not. As the fulfilled feasts give us details on what did occur at the crucifixion, so too the unfulfilled feasts will give us insight on what is yet to come. It has been a long time since we really looked into the feasts of Israel, and as we take on Ezra 3 we see the feasts are reinstated. We will take a close look at these feast, beginning with the 4 fulfilled Spring feasts tonight, and the 3 unfulfilled Fall feasts next week.

Why does the Bible include genealogies? It’s not all that interesting to just read the names of people and not know their stories, so why not just skip over them? In Ezra chapter 2 we have quite a list of the people who made the trip to return to Judah and begin the rebuilding process. Is there something we can learn from this long list of names? I think this is the first time I’ve ever used this text for any teaching before, but I’ve seen some things that can be a real help in our spiritual walk.

Redemption is instantaneous but restoration is a process. In spending time figuring out the theme for this new series that begins in the book of Ezra, Judah is being restored into the land that God had given them. There was a decree that set everything in motion in an instant, but that was only the beginning of the process of restoring them to the land, and the land as well. When we expect instant restoration, we can get discouraged when it is taking some time. What is restoration for the New Testament believer, when is it needed, and how do we come into it? Tonight we take on a few topics from Chapter 1, like how was God able to use a heathen king to accomplish His will? What is meant by “all whose spirits God had moved, arose to go up and build the house of the LORD?” Did God not want all the Jewish people to go home? Why would some people not feel led to leave a land of idolatry to return to their homeland? There is more we will get into tonight and I hope you can join in as we begin

Wrapping up the series on Ephesians we look at Paul's request of prayer for "utterance" and "boldness." What does "utterance" mean, and how does what Paul is facing affect his prayer request? We know Paul's request is a very scriptural one, but how many times have we been asked to pray for things we don't see as founded in scripture? What should a Christian do?

How did the armor of God work for the Apostle Paul himself? We have gone through his teaching, now lets see how it was at work in Paul's life and ministry. Last week we looked at how Joshua (an Old Testament saint) walked in the whole armor of God in his calling to lead Israel, so this Wednesday we switch to the New Testament. We look at the life of Paul through the book of Acts to see the armor in use in his life.

After having examined each of the pieces of our spiritual armor as Paul described, we look to see the whole armor of God in action, starting with Joshua as he takes on the God given spiritual purpose of conquering the promised land for Israel.

As we continue to look at how to pray when we are in difficult situations, we examine two other people who interacted with Jesus to help them with the hard time they were in. We learn 4 ways to get (or give) help when people encounter difficult times in their lives.

Spiritual warfare can certainly make our lives challenging, but sometimes we are just involved in a difficult time. Do prayers that we make during such differ in any way to the ones we have seen made where spiritual warfare was engaged? In tomorrow’s Wednesday night service we will be looking at two examples in the Bible of people who went through a difficult time, but there seems to be no evidence of spiritual warfare. How was prayer involved and what can we learn from their difficult times? In some of these passages we will be studying over the next few weeks, we have no record of any prayer. I think you will see the evidence of it as we get through them. I can’t say I ever studied these particular narratives looking for prayers made, but this time through I did.

What is the difference between a spiritual battle and a difficult time? We also look at three different spiritual battles and the prayers made in the battle. There is a pattern of 4 things we can see in each prayer. These are 4 aspects of this kind of prayer that should be in our own prayers as we encounter spiritual warfare.

What is spiritual warfare prayer? Paul brings “all prayer and supplication” into the teaching on the believer's armor, but what does he have in mind here? What is the “all prayer and supplication” with regard to spiritual warfare, since that is Paul’s topic. Not all prayer is used in warfare. Some grow us spiritually like prayers of worship, thanksgiving, submission, and are not so much in the spiritual battle realm. I do not remember going in this direction before, but as I study and find examples, I can see the benefits. Many have done things in the past, calling it prayer warfare, but usually there is no foundation in scripture and seem to just be flesh trying to do spiritual things. We look at two examples of prayer (one before and one after a spiritual battle) too understand the kind of prayer involved.

There are 6 tactics I see that the enemy uses to keep us from turning what God has spoken, or will speak to us, into a sword of the Spirit. We took on the first five in the previous weeks and here we take on the last one. This one is very drastic, but amazing how quickly believers in the Bible see this rapidly unfold in their lives. We will see what it is, where it occurred, how it materialized in their lives (and potentially even ours,) and how to keep it from affecting your sword.

With all the prophetic words spoken about the end times, do you get discouraged about what’s ahead? How should we view our time as a part of the last days church? We may know that God can cause His people to flourish in dire times, but it can sure help to see how God has done it before! There was a time when terrible things were prophesied and came about, but what God did to help those who were His was astonishing! There are six things that I have seen in the Bible that the enemy uses to neutralize this weapon, and these are things that Christians do pretty regularly today. No matter how much teaching you receive on the power of your words, if you don’t understand and remove these things from your life, your sword will not be useful in battle.

There are 6 tactics I see that the enemy uses to keep us from turning what God has spoken to us into a sword of the Spirit. We take on 3 of those tonight and the next three the following Wednesday. After that we look at how to combat these tactics and turn what God has revealed or spoken to us into a sword.

Is speaking the word of God always the sword of the Spirit? Why does it seem that sometimes are more effective than others? Can we tell what Paul has in mind as the sword of the Spirit and how has it been used in the scripture. As I look at the examples of its use in the Bible and compare it to how people say they use it now, I can see why it’s lacking it’s effectiveness. We will start out this service with a short review of each piece covered so far to fully understand its uniqueness and place in our spiritual battle.

The helmet of salvation covers our head and that leads many to see it as a guard for our mind. That would seem to replicate some of the uses of the other pieces of our armor, especially the shield of faith quenching the fiery darts. I do believe that each piece of armor in Paul’s God given understanding has a unique operation in the field of battle as we make our stand, so what is it and how was it used as those who are our examples wrestled against principalities and powers?

What is the shield of faith and the fiery darts it extinguishes? How and by whom was this spiritual armor used in the word of God? If we see how others used it, we can better understand how we are to make our stand with it. What does Paul mean when he starts out say "Above all taking the shield of faith..." Is this the most important piece of our armor? Even more than the belt of truth?

What are the shoes of peace in the scope of the armor of God, and how can we see this piece used in the Bible? I've heard teaching in the past and even went over some current teachings on them, but those seem to put them as a duplicate in purpose to either the breastplate of righteousness, or the shield of faith. That never sat well with me, as each piece should have its unique operation in our spiritual battles.

How do we take the breastplate of righteousness into our spiritual battles? It's not good enough to know what a breastplate is and what righteousness is, we also must know how it is used (or unused) in battle. To do this we are going to look at several places where it was in place to protect, or defeat came because it was not in place.

As you fight the spiritual battles in your life, are the pieces of the armor in your eyes just swords and shields, or can you see them as God intended in the fight against the forces against us? If you don't get past the nature picture Paul gives to our armor, how will you use them in the supernatural warfare we combat? In this Midweek service we begin to look at each piece to not only see what it is, but how it was used (or not used) in spiritual conflict. To do this we will go to the biblical accounts of spiritual battles, successful and unsuccessful, and see how they were deployed, or how the enemy neutralized them. In this service we look at the first in Paul's list - The belt of truth.

How do you know that you have done all you need to do in the area of spiritual warfare? Paul says “having done all, to stand” in Ephesians 6:13 and this is our focus tonight. To understand it we will look at four main words... Take up, withstand, having done, and the word stand. The whole verse reads “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” There is more in the rest of the words too, and we will look at the whole verse, as well as what came before, so we can know what kind of stand is being called for here? Is this a stand before the battle, in the battle, or after the battle? Is this a stand we take when we have done all we know to do and the victory isn’t our yet?