Covenant Life Church

For a couple of months now, we have been in a series called “Patriarchs, Prophets and Priests.” In this series, we’re looking at the men and women of the Old Testament to see the lessons we can take from their lives that will help us as we live our lives and follow Jesus. Last week, we started talking about Abraham, the ultimate patriarch of the Jewish people.

Almost every time Abraham is mentioned in the Bible, the word that is associated with him is faith, and in Hebrews 11, what we call the Hall of Fame of faith, he is certainly the star of the show. Over and over, it says, “By faith, Abraham did this or that.” Although he was not a perfect man, he was a great man of faith, so today, we’re continuing last week’s message with Part 2 of “Abraham: Living by Faith.”

We are continuing the series called Patriarchs, Prophets and Priests and today, we are focusing on the person who best fits the profile. The book of Genesis declares that he was a prophet, but he is also the best candidate for patriarch. Abraham is considered the patriarch of the Jews; he is the beginning of the family tree for the Jewish people.

Abraham heard the voice of the Lord speaking to him and got two verbs: leave and go. Leave family, nation and security — and go. Go where? Just leave and go, and I’ll show you the rest. There seemed to be an easy response: I’m not going, at least not until I get more information. Except for one thing: faith. Abraham was a man of faith, and the funny thing about faith in God is that, even when it’s all you’ve got, it’s also all you need.

In this short but powerful message, Pastor Mark Stroud from Kingdom Rock Family Worship Center uses Isaiah 60 to remind us that God is calling us to arise and shine our lights in the darkness around us. To do this, we must give Him our painful past and trust Him with our future.

As we continue our series called “Patriarchs, Prophets and Priests” this week, we get the privilege of looking at some of the women of God in the Old Testament who were respected, revered and admired. They were used by God to bring about victories in war and politics; they fought racism and oppression and made the worlds in which they operated safer.

Throughout this series, we’ve talked a lot about the call of God on the lives of believers and the fact that God has a plan and purpose for each one of us. It’s easy to hear about Daniel, Jeremiah and Joseph and get kind of overwhelmed about the call of God, but today, we’re bringing the topic into sharper focus by centering our discussion around this question: what if the call of God for your life is not an office but an opportunity?

Prayer is difficult for a variety of reasons. Maybe, you’re busy and don’t have as much to pray as you would like. Perhaps, your thoughts go into overdrive when you attempt to pray, you get overwhelmed by all the situations and people should pray about or you start to feel guilty for not praying as fervently or as long as you could have.

We’ve learned a lot of life lessons from the people that we’ve examined in this series called “Patriarchs, Prophets and Priests.” One of those people is Daniel. We’ve already talked about Daniel in a two-part message about his character, but it’s hard to talk about Daniel and not talk about the lion’s den and — more specifically — what it is that got him thrown into that den of famished and ferocious felines in the first place. This week, we’re going to talk about Daniel’s Prayer Life and see what practices we can imitate in our own lives.

One of the most frequent ways God is identified in the Bible is as the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. They are three of the main patriarchs of the Jewish faith. Joseph is Jacob’s son, and he is — as much as anyone — responsible for the formation of the nation of Israel.

The actions of Joseph set the stage for Moses to rise and lead the massive and powerful nation of Israel into its destiny in the promised land, so it’s not a stretch to consider Joseph one of the patriarchs. This week, we're going to talk about him as we continue our series called Patriarchs, Prophets and Priests.

For the past five weeks, we have been in a series called Patriarchs, Prophets, and Priests, in which we’ve looked at the lives of people from the Old Testament to discover the lessons that their lives can teach us. Today is the second part of a message we started last week about Daniel called Character Counts.

Daniel was operating in a culture that valued politics and pandering, but he didn’t do that. He was a man of character who let the quality and ethic of his work speak for themselves. Last week, we talked about clarity, one of the ways that Daniel’s character expressed itself, and this week, we’re going to talk about two more aspects: commitment and courage.

We’re continuing our “Patriarchs, Prophets and Priests” series this week, exploring the lives of the Old Testament saints of God who helped to form the foundation of our faith and applying important lessons to our lives. This week, we’re going to look at Daniel. He is likely best known for not being eaten by lions, but there is a lot more to learn from Daniel’s life.

As we zoom in a little further, we’re going to talk about Daniel’s character. We have become a society that is more interested in charisma than character, and we have developed social media tools that allow people with charisma to promote themselves to consumers of their content who have no ability — or even interest — to verify their character. For believers, we should be focused on deepening our character and developing wisdom.

In our “Patriarchs, Prophets and Priests” series, we’re looking at the Old Testament heroes of the faith and finding the lessons we can learn from their lives. So far, we’ve talked about Noah and Jeremiah, and this week, we’re looking at the life of Job, a man who is famous for suffering with grace and patience. Job was respected and loved, but as a result of a conversation between God and Satan, he went through a terrible trial that tested his faith and integrity.

Most of us will never go through anything even approaching what Job went through, but each of us has gone through — and will go through again — difficult trials that test our resolve in ways we never thought possible. This week, we are exploring three common temptations that we may face in addition to the trial, making it more difficult and more dangerous to our faith and future. As we do, we’ll also see how we can stand strong against temptation and stay true to the Lord.

We’re continuing our “Patriarchs, Prophets and Priests” series this week, looking at the lives of Old Testament heroes of the faith to learn the lessons we can learn from them. Last week, we talked about Jeremiah’s unqualified calling and explored the fact that he was very young when God called him. As expected, he was scared to death, but God assured Jeremiah that He would with him.

This week, we are looking at Jeremiah’s unrelenting faithfulness. Once Jeremiah accepted the call of God, he had to be faithful to carry it out. He challenged priests and kings to their faces, telling them things that they did not want to hear, and there is not a single recorded instance that shows him failing to do everything God told him to do. The same is true for us. As we step out and step up to answer God’s calling on our lives, we must be faithful to do it — even when it gets tough.