In our last session we looked at the concept of meditating in the Scriptures. Join us as we now explore the beautiful discipline of praying God’s Word. Have you ever prayed God's Word?

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We’re taking a couple of sessions now to share about our devotional life in God’s Word. That may not strike you as having a strong connection to “life in the Spirit,” but we want to be responsible builders in Christ. If you know anything about construction, then you know you can't go high if you haven’t gone deep. Plenty of people go high – but they don't stay high. If you want to walk on a higher level, you need to keep going deeper as well.

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Pursuing Christ is about living out, in an ever-increasing way, the First Commandment. Jesus said: “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment” (Mark 12:29-30).

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Tonight we are kicking things off and kicking off the year with a look at fasting. Fasting has always been a powerful spiritual discipline for believers. Many can testify to its benefits, but in my opinion the most important reason to fast is to strengthen our relationship with the Lord! There’s nothing wrong with fasting to seek God’s help, but we should learn to see fasting as a way to connect with Him. We should see it as something that changes me, rather than something that causes God to do things for me.

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We wrap up “Life in the Spirit Course One” with a look at what it means to be spiritual and how we can be “edified” for the long haul. Life in the Spirit will return next month with a second course that covers new topics and goes deeper into topics we’ve already looked at.

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EXCERPT: The more you love, the more you will be like Christ, because God is love. When you don’t know what to do, love reveals the best strategy; love is the best strategy. The way of love is the highest wisdom. Paul says if we don’t have love, then, no matter how great our gifts, we’re just noisy gongs. Love will make you strong in faith. The Bible says faith works by love – and the great work of the Spirit is to produce the love of God within us.

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As our “Life in the Spirit” series draws to a close, we look behind the veil at the reality of the spirit world, and discuss the race of spirits that God has made called angels.

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EXCERPT: The Bible presents a universe in which there is not only a Supreme Being but also many non-material beings of different types. These beings are neither tangible nor visible, nor can they be communicated with, at least in the ordinary course of events.

The Bible also presents a universe in which there is active evil, not just evil as the absence of good, but evil that is actively working. This is also offensive idea to many people. In modern society people will allow you to speak of psychological defects but not moral defects!

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Continuing on with our “Life in the Spirit” series, you’ll enjoy this longer session in which we dig deeper into the ministry of prophecy today. How can we begin to move in prophecy and, if God speaks apart from His Word, how will I know it’s Him?

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EXCERPT: We can define New Testament prophecy as simply reporting something that God has spontaneously brought to your mind. It has its origin in the mind of God, not the mind of man. It’s not the same thing as preaching or teaching, which can certainly be anointed by the Spirit, but which results mostly from human preparation. The word “propheteia” in the Greek simply means speaking on behalf of another. In the New Covenant, prophecy is not equivalent to Scripture. They are not on the same level. Prophecy doesn’t carry the same authority as God’s Word. In fact, Scripture warns us that we know in part, and prophesy in part (1 Corinthians 13:9).In spite of how we commonly use the word prophecy in modern English, prophecy is not necessarily about foretelling things, but about “forthtelling”. That means speaking forth what God tells us, regardless of whether the message is predicting anything.

The Bible says, “…he who prophesies speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men” (1 Corinthians 14:3). These are the three ordinary and customary purposes of prophecy in the Church: to edify (build up or strengthen); to exhort (encourage); and to comfort – not necessarily to predict the future.

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In this session, we begin to explore the prophetic, with a look at discerning of spirits, and the variety of way in which God speaks to His people. Our God is a speaking God! Join us for this key session.

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EXCERPT: Discerning of spirits alerts us to the activity of the enemy in Christian settings. In the past generation, we’ve seen a tremendous upsurge in occult activity in the Western world. We need to guard against it making further inroads into the Church. We need to be obedient to the Scriptures and be wise, giving no place to the devil.

The fact that a particular spiritual practice “works” is irrelevant. Instead, we need to ask: “Why does it work?” And, “Who is making it work?” Remember, just because something is supernatural doesn’t mean it’s from God.

After all, Satan and his messengers can also perform supernatural signs. Jesus said that at the end of the age, false Christs and false prophets would arise and do great signs and wonders (see Matthew 24). Because false miracles are a possibility, the Bible commands us to test the spirits to see whether they are from God (1 John 4:1)!

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In this session, we give an introduction to the ministry of deliverance and possible gateways to demonic harassment, as well as how to identify and deal with demonic harassment in people.

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EXCERPT: Few people discuss this, but for hundreds of years after Christ, Christian leaders spoke boldly and publicly about the ability of ordinary Christians to cast out demons and do miraculous signs.

The Early Church Father Tertullian, who died in the year 220 A.D., said that the greatest proof of Christianity was the truth of God’s Word. But he said that the second greatest proof of our faith was the testimony of the demons who have been conquered by Jesus!

Tertullian wrote, “Let a demoniac therefore be brought into court, and the spirit which possesses him be commanded by any Christian to declare what he is, he shall confess himself as truly to be a devil as he did falsely before profess himself a god” (Apologia, ch. 23 [Reeve, trans.]) .

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In this session, we talk about the power of Jesus' Name, the privilege we have to use it, and much more. Join us for this key teaching!

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EXCERPT: You can see in the passages we read that people in Jesus’ day not only understood that one person could use another person’s name, but that names could carry another person’s spiritual power. This is why the religious leaders asked Peter and John that unusual question in Acts chapter 4: "By what power, or by what name, have you done this?"

As I said earlier, they might have been asking: By what kind of power or what kind of name have you healed this man? In other words, you are using a kind of power or a kind of name that is different, and unfamiliar to us. (And, by the way, they were shocked to see ordinary men wielding such power. In the Greek it was emphatic; they said, “By what kind of name have you people done this?” Remember that religious people will always be shocked to see God using regular people like you.)

But pay close attention to what these leaders believed. They believed that when somebody got healed, there were two ways it could have happened. One way was by the exercise of power. The other way was using a name. They believed that you could be healed by the authority that was carried in someone’s name. That may sound strange to us, but for them it was normal. And, by the way… it’s also correct!

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