Isaiah 55:11 reminds us that nothing is ever wasted with God. His Word always accomplishes its divinely-ordained purpose. Our job is to sow the seed, his job is to bring in the harvest. If we do our part, God cannot fail to do his.

I am to be filled with the Spirit—but I am not to be filled alone. When the Holy Spirit fills us one by one, our corporate life will be transformed. Perhaps this one factor accounts for the difference between a church that is “alive” & a church that is “dead.”

Rules & formulas & experience have their place. But taken alone, they lead to a sub-standard Christian life because they tend to lead you away from the most important thing. God has given us something better than rules, better than a formula, better than experience. God has given us the Holy Spirit. If you want to know where the Christian life is found, how to live in victory, then you must learn how to live in, by & through the Holy Spirit of God.

Pentecost is not just about the birthday of the Christian church. It’s way more than that. It is not just about the descent of the Holy Spirit from heaven. It’s way more than that. The day of Pentecost was just the beginning of God’s great worldwide harvest.

Does the fact that you struggle make you a failure? No. Does it make you a bad person? No. Does it make you a loser? No. Does it make you a sub-standard Christian? No. Do you know what it makes you? It makes you an excellent candidate for the grace of God!

Build a foundation of knowledge about what you believe. Does this mean that you should wait until you know it all before you talk to someone else? No. But it does mean that the more you know about what you believe, the more effective you will be in witnessing.

The whole gospel boils down to this truth. Because our sins have separated us from God, we need a “mediator” to bring us back to God. Because the “sin gap” is eternally wide, we need someone from heaven who is himself eternal to bridge the gap for us.

Jesus is the only one who could bridge that gap. By his death, he paid for our sins & bridged the gap that separates us from God. By his resurrection, he proved he is the Son of God. So we say & believe that no other mediator is necessary & no other mediator is possible.

Sunday by Sunday I do my best to be faithful to the biblical narrative. I do my best to proclaim the gospel of Jesus the Christ as the leaders of the early church proclaimed it. But I can't do it all by myself. We're a team. We work together. We preach every day of the week, 24 hours a day. What is our message?

We all live somewhere between Good Friday & Easter Sunday. We are on the long Emmaus Road journey together. There are times when we feel alone & overwhelmed & doubts creep in & our heart gives way & we feel like we can’t go on. Then Jesus comes to us & says, “You are not alone. You never were alone. Even when you thought were alone, I was with you every step of the way.”

Habakkuk is unlike the other prophetic books in that it records a dialogue between one man & God. Whereas Isaiah contains a message from God, Habakkuk records a conversation with God. If you’ve ever felt like you had a few questions for God, this is the book for you.