04.03.2024
Brian & Jennifer Parke
Explore this week's collection of sermon notes, memes, and thought-provoking questions, perfect for sparking discussions with friends, family, and neighbors. Feel inspired? Share these insights on social media, or pass them along through text or email.
YOU ARE LOVED by God the Father, Jesus Christ His son, and the Holy Spirit. You are loved by the Church of the Living God leadership team, and you are loved by your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. We pray you had a blessed weekend celebrating the RESURRECTION OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST!
How life is treating you does not dictate God's love for you.
Satan is called the god of this world. It is he who brought pain, sickness, death and destruction, so why do you keep blaming God for those things? God clearly gave Adam dominion over the Earth, who handed it over to Satan through the fall, and when sin entered in to the world, death came with it. One of the Devil’s greatest deceptions is to bring pain and suffering your way, and then for you to blame God’s sovereignty for it. Any time you interpret God’s love by how life is treating you, you will live in a place of bitterness and not understand what God is doing in the midst of it all. Don’t fall for that.
Are you blaming God for pain and suffering in your life?
The resurrection of Jesus unlocked reconciliation and restoration with the Father.
You were never created to live for yourself, you were created in the image of God to be unconditional love to this world. The opposite of unconditional love isn’t hate, it’s selfishness. It began in the garden, when fear came in after the fall, it says that Adam and Eve were naked and afraid, and that the fear of death turned into selfishness. It is that selfish overlay that separates us from God, but the resurrection of Jesus unlocked our reconciliation and restoration with the Father.
Is your selfishness keeping you from God, or have you been reconciled to Him through Jesus?
We can partake of the divine nature of God.
Theosis: we can partake of the divine nature of God. Theosis is a transformative process whose aim is likeness to and union with God. We are called to look like Him and be like Him. “This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.” 1 John 4:17
How have you experienced theosis in your relationship with God?
They will do greater works than these.
Kenosis: Jesus emptied himself of his divinity so that we could partake in it. When he came and walked on this earth, he laid down his rights, privileges, and access to his divinity. When He healed people, He was not healing people as God, He was healing people as a man fully and divinely empowered by the Holy Spirit. Why is that so exciting? If he does it as God, I stand in awe. If He does it as man empowered by the Holy Spirit, I can wonder “How can I walk in that?” Isn’t this why He says in John 14:12: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father”. If you read it in context, he is talking about the Holy Spirit empowering you to cast out devils, heal the sick, and raise the dead.
Are you filled with the Holy Spirit and doing great works?
Jesus is our High Priest in Heaven.
We see in scripture that Jesus went around doing good and destroying the works of the devil after he was baptized in the Jordan River. All of his recorded miracles were done after He had been filled with the Holy Spirit at His baptism. Since He walked fully as a man on Earth, He could be a faithful High Priest in Heaven to intercede for us after His death. Hebrews 2:14-18: “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”
Do you have a relationship with Jesus the High Priest?
You are not here for yourself. You are here for His great name.
Jesus came to change your why. What if he came to change something on the inside so that you can live a selfless life and be who He created you to be in the beginning? What if it’s not about saying a prayer to get to Heaven, but instead Heaven being inside of you? The fear of death gone. Bondage gone. You can love without reservations, you can be free, you can forgive, you can live openhanded. This is a new way to live: it’s freedom, it’s truth that will set you free. This changes how you live. The reason you are here is not for yourself, rather it’s for His great name. When you wake up with that as your existence, it changes how you walk this earth. The power of death no longer has a sting on your life.
Are you living for yourself or for HIS GREAT NAME?
Transformation, not just repentance.
It is time to start viewing Resurrection Sunday not as a holiday, but as the story of the resurrected Lord. There is a real resurrected Jesus inviting you in to a resurrected life. It is more than just repenting and saying a prayer to get to heaven-it is a transformation.
Have you been transformed by Jesus to live a resurrected life?
Disclaimer: Sermon notes, memes, and ideas presented are curated, designed and repackaged by Jennifer Parke, and while the ideas, message, and notes resonate with the intent and meaning of the sermon, they may not fully reflect the speaker's underlying beliefs. Questions or Comments, email: info@colg.org
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