First Church Charlotte

August 7, 2019, | Pastor Ed Hodge

August 4, 2019, | Pastor Nathan Elms • Ministry is not from the platform of a church, but instead the church is the ministers for their communities. • Part of our job is to see God's people as God sees them and not only as we see ourselves. • When God sees us, He sees His blood covering us. The moment that we see our church brothers and sisters as God sees us, that is the time that we can encourage and help each other. • There is a victory for you that the enemy, (devil) doesn't want you to have and there are times that the enemy wants to take what you have already accomplished. • Goliath is an example of how we are intimidated by fear and illusion and sometimes defeated by our own expectations of what we can or can't do. Giants will always poster for you. • If you want to know what God can do, get your eyes off of what you can do and get your eyes on what God has already done. Don't worry about the giants in your life; which is done by keeping your focus on how much bigger God is. • The problem of giants is

July 28, 2019, | Pastor Nathan Elms

July 24, 2019, | Pastor Nathan Elms

July 21, 2019, | Pastor Nathan Elms Luke 4:17-19 • The Holy Spirit is referred to as rain, as wind, as fire, & as wine. • One anointing is for our atonement for entering the family of God. • The second anointing is our worship to & for the Lord. We are all worshippers because we, as humans are organized emptiness & are only made whole by worshipping the Lord. Many see the wrong things to worship such as sports, celebrities, fame, money, etc., but all of these lead to the emptiness in our souls. • The third anointing is ministering to and helping other people. • We are God's plan for our world. • To find out where God is moving, look for where someone is hurting. God came to fix broken people. The Lord has placed us in our world to continue the work of changing the atmosphere around us. • The average cloud contains about a million pounds of water in it. • Although there can be many clouds present, it takes a change in the atmosphere before the cloud can release its water as rain for parched earth. • We as an

July 17, 2019, | Pastor Nathan Elms • If we are going to understand our role in the Kingdom of God, we also have to discuss our purpose. • With no purpose, we will serve ourselves. • The two pillars of direction given by God, Love God with all of yourself and love your neighbor as you love yourself. The second is to go and make disciples of all nations and baptize them in Jesus name and disciple them to follow the teachings of the Lord. • There are five purposes or activities that the church has to do to be the church. • Worship, Ministry, Evangelism, Fellowship, and Discipleship. This is the coupling of the great commandment and the great commission. • Five in many ways shows God's favor and generosity to us. • The church has become God's gift to the world even though the church may not look attractive to our world. • Although we in this modern time are tremendously blessed, many today are struggling with finding meaning. • Without meaning, nothing matters. • People need a purpose to live for, hope to live

July 14, 2019, | Pastor Nathan Elms 1st John 2:18 • Sometimes we busy, modern people need to do better with making a place for a relationship with God. • The 1st anointing is the covering of spiritual atonement. (Salvation) This allows access to God and takes away the belief that we are not worthy to be a part of what God is doing. • The 2nd anointing is service & ministering directly unto the Lord. Much like the Old Testament priests were set apart for service unto God, we also have that opportunity to be in the Lord's service. • We should all celebrate the beauty of the redemption of the Lord. It is truly a wonderful thing that Jesus Christ has done for us. • The 3rd anointing is the ministering & service to other people. • The cross itself shows how we minister vertically as well as horizontally. • In the New Testament, the church body is the ministers of God for this world. • We sometimes bind ourselves in our anointing. • If we can believe that we are anointed, we can then change our world. • We also ne

July 10, 2019, | Pastor Nathan Elms Joshua 24:14 • Mercy is not receiving what we deserve, grace is giving to people what they don't deserve. • We should give freely give grace to others because we have freely received, so we should freely give. • We must live lives of worship as a way of being, and not something we do at church. • We must be people of service. • Although we can be resolute about anything, being resolute for a relationship with the Lord must take precedence. • Real leadership is being resolute about you. This means being an example for others. • The experience that others have and experience with your witness for Jesus Christ should help them find their way to the Lord. There is something great about being resolute for being kind, considerate, loving and exemplifying the Fruit of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

Rev Omar Jolly Mark 6:1-6 • In the day that Jesus walked the earth, carpenters were very skilled. Because the wood was scarce in Israel, they had to be very skilled to not waste wood. • At that time, it was taught, "If you didn't teach your children how to work, you taught them to be a thief." • Although people were overwhelmed by what Jesus taught, they were offended that He was only a carpenter. At that point, they rejected Him. • The Jews expected that their Messiah would be a military leader and rid Israel of the Roman oppression as the time. • Jesus served longer as a carpenter longer than He served as a preacher. Jesus chose to identify common people and blue-collar workers. • When we were low down and dirty and not thinking about God, Jesus was and is willing to identify Himself with us and then sacrifice Himself for us. • A carpenter repairs things and builds things from scratch. If we are broken, Jesus can fix us. Anyone that has broken dreams and aspirations, the Lord wants to fix things for us. Wh

June 30, 2019, | Student Pastor Da'waun McCall Ps 51:17 • One of the greatest blessings & curses for humanity is the ability of pointing out problems. • Some may discard broken things but some find a way to restore what is broken. • God is in the business of restoring broken lives & actively pursues people who are broken. • Sometimes we have be stripped down, like furniture that is being restored. • It doesn't take a physician to replace something, but it does take a physician to restore it. • We have become good at hiding our brokenness, even to ourselves. • We can sometimes hide in plain sight. • We celebrate God Who searches for broken lives. • Every mistake is a testimony when we place it in God's hands. • When we are weak but depend on God, that is when we are truly strong. God's strength is made perfect on our weakness. • There has never been someone broken and asking for the Lord's help, that God hasn't restored. Although we are all flawed, not everyone is truly broken realizing their need for restor

June 23, 2019, | Pastor Nathan Elms First Church CLT\ John 4 • The Apostle John effectively explained Who Jesus is, and not just what happened in history or in His human lineage. • It becomes a toxic environment when we begin comparing ourselves with other people. • Instead, our focus & hearts need to be on God. • If we try to be like someone else, we never learn who we are in God. • Out of understanding of God comes faith in God. • God gives the opportunity to speak the truth in every circumstance if we want to. If we want to progress in God, we must speak the truth to not only God but to ourselves. • God is looking for people who will worship in spirit & in truth. • Wisdom, truth & understanding should be sought in this life, but they aren't enough. Although it is good to be orderly & practical, this can still lead us to mistakes & errors because of our humanity. • We can either be prone to excitement & passion or to truth and knowledge, but by themselves, each is not enough. • We need both spirit & truth

June 19, 2019, | Pastor Nathan Elms Mark 3:14 • God cares enough for you to get involved in your life, pay the debt for your sins, and to also give you His victory! • The law of love gives us motivation for working for the good of others, and not harming them. • The whole purpose of creation is for having fellowship with us. It was for empowering divine communion. • The highest meaning for our lives is being able to commune with our Creator. • The miraculous and glorious supernatural is easy for God. What is difficult for God is finding people that He has created, to choose Him instead of themselves. People who would rather be a doorkeeper in the House of the Lord, than live for themselves. • The slower middle zones give time for us to catch up to what God is doing. • Our testimonies are usually not the miracles, but instead the steadfastness and faithfulness of our lives. • There is a danger of being an adrenaline junkie, only looking for the exciting and dramatic. The gift of the Holy Spirit isn't dramatic

June 16, 2019, | Pastor Nathan Elms • Our flesh & the Spirit of God have different goals. • How we live our lives is the evidence of the presence of the Kingdom of God manifested to others. This is because we are God's voice in our present world. • To be led by the Spirit of God is to be available to God's purpose in our world, & be willing to be sensitive to the leading of the Lord. • We are called to manifest the Kingdom of God in a Spiritual walk. • Imagine ourselves at peak joy, faith & thanksgiving; telling others in our world about our experiences and testimonies with our Savior. The Spirituality in our life is manifested by our human enthusiasm for Jesus Christ. • When are not genuine, we live a lie & cannot live in peace with God, nor with others. • We have been called, anointed & empowered to represent God & this becomes the walk of the Spirit. • Our world is searching for completeness & wholeness but still, feel the fractures deep within. We must be in the presence of God for completeness. • Spirit

June 9, 2019, | Pastor Nathan Elms 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 • Why should we care about spiritual warfare? • The Spirit of God & the flesh is incompatible with each other. • We first need to be transformed before we can help change the world. • Next, to be a part of the Lord's mission needs us to partner with him to give hope to this world. • The original design of God was to commune with mankind in our love for Him. • To be a love story, the option to walk away also has to be there. • Instead of communing with God, we chose to compete with God. • The deception of hell was to offer us something that we already had. • We will either lust for what we want or fear retribution from God. • Once we are transformed, we no longer live in fear and lust, but instead, we live in love & mission for the Kingdom. • Nothing makes sense with the Kingdom of God looking through fear & lust. • We do not receive transformation through our will and grit, instead, it is by the surrender of our will & accept our own powerlessness. • E

June 5, 2019, | Pastor Nathan Elms • We should strive for effective ministry and be about our Father's business. • Children can have an advantage in matters of faith because they are not as concerned about what others think about them. • The point of the cross of Jesus the Messiah was that He died for the purpose of the salvation of others. • We should avoid religious consumerism which leads to people wanting a religion that serves them instead of others. • Jesus didn't come to be served, but to serve and gave Himself for others. Because of love, Jesus would rather die for us, than be alone. • The two questions that God asked were: 1. Where are you? 2. What have you done? • These two questions are also for us today. • Salvation is the gift of God and we cannot be good enough for salvation. • If we are primarily motivated by the fear of being saved or lost, we lose the purpose of the church of reaching others with the love of God. • The invitation of God is to be a part of the Heavenly Kingdom that He made fo

June 2, 2019, | Pastor Nathan Elms •We need thanksgiving to perceive what God has done in the past; faith to see what God will do in the future, and trust to live in the current moment. • Trust is sometimes more difficult than faith. • Some people cannot survive the gap between what we expect from God and what we get from God. • It is easy to see God when we get what we want – can we see God in the reality of where we are. • It is essential to live in trust, no matter where we are. • If we cannot trust God, we cannot live in hope. We should always cultivate and protect our hope. • If you find yourself wondering if God knows what He is doing. He has given us three things to stand on: 1. We have the Word of God 2. We have the presence of God 3. We have the people of God

May 26, 2019, | Pastor Nathan Elms 1 Kings 19:8-12 • The Biblical definition of the word prophet is, "one who speaks for another". • Elijah was pursuing a relationship with God in a nation that had turned away from God. • Elijah understood that the mission of God was for the hearts of the people, Elijah was a man of courage for acting on it • Elijah thought that he had won the hearts of the people after the showdown with the prophets of Bail, but Jezebel was not converted and vowed to kill him. • Elijah began running in fear for his life & lost his composure. He then believed that even though God has done the miraculous among the people, their hearts would instead follow the heart of the culture, as Jezebel did. • It is difficult to stay encouraged about our Godly mission when we see that the hearts of many people still follow the popular culture of the day. • We are not a good judge of our successes or failures, concerning the mission that we were given. • Although we have been chosen for a mission by God

May 22, 2019, | Pastor Nathan Elms Matthew 15:21 • It is easy to pretend that we are Spiritual, but not be. • Being Spiritual is not something that we can switch on, but is something that we must invest in throughout the day with the Lord. • We must be spiritually naked and vulnerable before the Lord. This is what it means to be authentic and transparent. • At the beginning of being authentic is when the Lord will take your hand. • We can't fake God out. There is no pretending with God because He truly knows us. We can only ask him. • It is not about God serving us, we serve God. The woman in the text may have wanted to present herself as a Jew, even though she wasn't. • The Lord knows everything about us and trying to posture and fake our way to a miracle, will not work with the Lord. • The shortest path to God is the path of surrender and spiritual authenticity. • Worship celebrates Who God is and is not about what God has done or can do. The Lord is still looking for worshipers. • Faith moves God. Faith i

May 19, 2019, | Pastor Nathan Elms 1 Kings 18:37 • In the days of Elijah, the people had turned to Baal for their blessings. • Elijah understood that the battle and the mission was for the hearts of the people. • Elijah called for a drought; which entered Israel into a trial. We all learn best in the the school of hardknocks. This trial is not purposeless, but helped the people understand that their blessings come from God. • Elijah calls for a showdown to move the hearts of the people from an idol to the one true God. • Flesh still has the temptation of looking for something else, besides the Lord, for fulfilment and blessing. • The Scripture speaks of a sacrifice of thanksgiving or of praise, but the Scripture never speaks of a sacrifice of worship. In true worship we become the sacrifice. • How do we find idols in our lives? Look for where we are bleeding. Our idols asks us to bleed for them. Idols will always ask more of us than we should give. • The beauty of the Gospel is that instead of us bleedin

May 15, 2019, | Pastor Nathan Elms Ps. 91 • If a child doubts parental protection, they will begin to feel like an orphan. • If we live in a state of low grade fear, we begin to take on a spirit of an orphan. • When we have gone through bad things in our lives, we can sometimes begin to expect bad things to happen to us. Although this is faith, it isn't faith in God. • When we live in fear, we lose more than just faith. Fear is a direct attack on Divine order, identity and when we are hurting and expecting bad things, we are no longer effective in our mission to share hope to our world. • The temptation that Satan brought against Jesus was to juxtapose what is seen versus and what is said in God's Word. The test is always in what we will choose. We should always choose the Word of promise instead of the evidence of flesh. • Our secret place is not an actual place, but is the Lord Himself. We find our protection in Jesus the Messiah. Our dwelling can be the victory that was purchased for us by the Lord Jesus C