Wednesday Night Services

Many people understand spiritual warfare as us coming against principalities and powers, but if so, when did this happen to give us a demonstration? If I can’t find examples of what I think takes place, then maybe I come to a wrong understand, and if I understand wrong, then my battles won’t be what they should be. Tonight, we will spend most of our time understanding this word "against" by looking at what words were not used, so we can better understand the word used and the message that gives us for spiritual warfare. It will all come together and you will see a better flow in Ephesians 6:10-13. After that, we will look at where this kind of spiritual warfare took place in the word of God.

Why does Paul start off telling us what we don’t fight against instead of what we do fight? Is Paul just telling us that when we fight it’s not a flesh and blood battle so just forget about flesh and blood? How many of you can describe some battles that were very much in the flesh or a battle with yours or others natural side? What does it mean to wrestle flesh and blood? We won’t get very far in the chapter in this one, spending all our time in Ephesians 6:12, but I want us (myself included) to fully understand what the battle is, so I looked in the Word of God for examples of these kind of battles, because nothing helps us to understand a spiritual truth better than to see it demonstrated to us.

Paul's introduction to the armor of God begins his final section and by his own wording, the most important of all the things he has to teach. If everything you know about the word of God doesn’t help you defeat the enemy in battle, what God is what you know? In this lesson from Ephesians 6:10-11, we look to understand why what comes next is so very important.

What is a bondservant? We take a deep look at this word and how it is used in scripture. It is a word Jesus used to describe the servants in His parables, It is the word many used to describe themselves (like James, Jude, Paul, and others) and it is a word that can describe our work situations. Most importantly, it is a word that should describe our relationship to Jesus... Does it describe yours?

If you are not a child, what would Ephesians 6:1 have to teach you? A good bit actually! You see this word for “obey” is fascinating in it’s use and especially when you compare it to the other word that could have been used. Learning this word will teach you why Jesus did some of the things He did and why we have had less success when we have battled the enemy of our faith.

We are finishing up Ephesians 5 with the part of "Husbands love your wives" and in learning this we will see many things beyond the husband / wife relationship that will help you in your daily walk. Even if you are unmarried, this chapter will help you.

Our lack of understanding of Biblical submission is why we have such a bad taste about submission in the church and marriage. The example Paul gives us as a baseline is the church submitting to Jesus Christ, so first we need to get a good understanding of it in order to understand how to apply it elsewhere. Understanding this will affect how we pray, believe, make confessions, and see what we state in faith to have positive changes in our lives. Without true Biblical submission Christians make vain declarations of faith, faithless prayers, and have useless daily confessions to change their situations, but see no fruit. How can we change this?

Can you be filled with the spirit and not be fruity, flaky, unstable, or unapproachable? YES!

One of the biggest keys to understanding the will of God is to make sure you are hearing the words of God before you come to any actions or conclusions. In tonight’s service you will see from a well known person in the word how to absolutely tell if a word is from God, your flesh, or the enemy. People mistaking a word from the latter two for a word from God will always fail in their understanding of the will of God. No matter how spiritual you think you are or are not, you can do this!

In the first chapters covering Abraham's life we see how he floundered and then flourished in the will of God. This week we pick up the later part of his life where he advanced in the will of God.

How does Abraham go from believing what God says and leaving his home for an unknown land, to laughing as God speaks His will and plan to him? Learning how Abraham got there will show us how we too went from believing in God for healing a condition or overcoming a financial problem, to despair that we just won’t ever be victorious. The good news in these chapters (Genesis 17-18) is that God put Abraham on a path to overcome his doubts and we can follow it to overcome ours. Abraham thought he understood God’s plan when he started, but found that understanding wasn’t quite working out. His problem began when the understanding he walked in was not the one God needed him to see, and the further he went down that path, the harder it was for him to get back. Do we need to fully understand the plan of God from the beginning? What can we do if we understood something errantly?

We all know what it's like to go against public opinion, or what is the popular and acceptable thing to do or think. On this day in the life of Jesus you can imagine not everyone felt the same way as the crowd around them! Is it ever Okay to go along? To not change your beliefs, but also not speak up? Are we expected to be vocal when our God, His Son, or His word are spoken against? In tonight's Good Friday service we will be looking at a lesser examined person involved in the day our Lord was crucified. Were they bold or timid, courageous or fearful? What can we learn from their life and what they did on Jesus behalf that day, when standing with Jesus identified you with a wrong group by societies definition.

How can you know the difference between something God speaks to you to guide into His will, and something that comes from man or the kingdom of darkness to steer you away from it? We look at this and other questions as we look to know and understand the will of God for our life. Looking at the life of Abram and Sarai we can learn a great deal on this topic.

Last Wednesday we looked at three reasons why Christians don’t see or understand the will of God for their lives (immaturity, flawed knowledge, and undeveloped faith) and there was interest in going further into this topic to see how we grow and get beyond these road blocks in our understanding and seeing the God’s will and plan for us. In preparing for this, the easiest way to go was to look at more examples of how people who failed overcame, and we will do that. But I also looked at a few examples of people who didn’t fail, but rose to the occasion when God disclosed His will for them. For each, what was asked stretched them, but they didn’t falter. I noticed a pattern that we will do good to study first, as that pattern was lacking in the ones who failed initially. This is a pattern you can expect to repeat when you encounter something in the will of God that stretches you.

A prevailing thought among Christians is that submission to the will of God does not always require a knowledge of it. People end a statement of their plans with “if it be the will of God” and think this is part of being submitted to God’s will that is unknown to them, or at least accepting whatever God wants for them that they don’t know about. The concept seems innocent enough but the more I say and think this, the more expectant I become to not knowing what God wants for me. But the word of God teaches us otherwise and here in Ephesians 5 Paul says to not understand the will of God is on par with being unwise. In tonight’s mid-week service we look at the pit falls of not knowing the will of God, what doors this opens for the enemy, and what expectation we should have to “understand what the will of the Lord is.”

We are to walk in the light, as children of light, but what about those in darkness that we know? What kind of connection can we have with them?

If you, as a child of light, walk in darkness, what are the repercussions? Paul has spent a number of verses looking at the difference between light and darkness and now he exhorts us to order our behavior in the light, not in the darkness as we once did. What can we expect to happen to us if we ignore the warning and pick up habitual and lifestyle sins? To get the answer we will look at some people in the Word who once walked in the light, but went back to walking in darkness. Let’s see why Paul is so passionate about people of the light keeping their walk in the light.

What does Paul mean when he states “the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband” in 1 Corinthians 7:14? Tonight, as we continue to study the letter of Ephesians, we come across a word that will shed some light on what Paul’s thought here in 1 Corinthians is. Also, Paul exhorts us to imitate God. How are we supposed to do that when we don’t actually see God? Why not just say “become imitators of Jesus?”

Paul gives the reader examples of how to tell if you have put the old man back on again. See how you do!

How does Paul expect us to learn Christ? He has a definite way in mind here and in starting Ephesians 4:20 out with "But you have not..." indicates it is different in at least some ways from the process of being darkened he described in the verses before. So how do you learn Christ? If you are not following the way Paul is encouraging, can you really expect the results of learning the right thing? Is this why so may Christians have some very wierd and even unbiblical beliefs?