Elevate Life Church

Pastor Sergio brings us a word about the difference between power and authority. We are not orphans, God is our Heavenly Father. Because He is our Father, we have authority if we are truly submitted to Jesus. Jesus gave us all authority, He saw satan fall like lightning from Heaven. Power and authority are not the same thing. Authority has little to do with power and everything to do with who we represent. Authority is delegated right from a higher source to enforce a decision that has already been made from a higher realm. Once we learn the will of God, we understand the authority God gave us to enforce. A Word from God gives us authority to bring God's will into our circumstance. Authority only works when we understand God's will for our life. Jesus came to take back and give the authority Adam lost in the Garden of Eden. What should our life look like? When we refuse to treat Jesus like He's our King, our authority won't work. We have to get a Word from God!

Pastor Sergio wraps up this series talking about how the marriage bed is meant to be pure and sexual intimacy belongs within the marriage covenant. He tells us about how adultery violates the faithfulness promised to one's spouse. Husband and wife should protect their relationship from sexual impurities. Purity is not merely avoiding an affair, it is honoring the covenant we made with God! He also gives us five practical principles of purity in marriage.

Pastor Ryan Allen from Convoy Of Hope joins us and talks to us about how compassion is sympathy and action. Compassion is seeing the need, action is contributing to the solution. We've been called so we can see the problem and the Lord can use us to fix it. You'll never have compassion for what you don't see and what you're not willing to look at. Your heart for people will determine the opportunities and doors God opens for you. Our calling is to obedience! God uses us to change other people's lives. Every time God uses us it's for something bigger than we can do ourselves. People are never problems to be removed. The size of the gift doesn't dictate what God can do with it, God looks at our heart and attitude in giving that gift. God can do more with our obedience than we can do with our preference. Thanksgiving unlocks multiplication!

Pastor Sergio continues this series talking to us about The Foundational Laws Of Marriage. He shares about The Law Of Priority and why your spouse must come first, before anything else including our children, career, hobbies and even personal ministries. He also tells about The Law Of Pursuit and how we must work on our relationship with our spouse. Love is a perishable commodity, it has to be renewed every day! In order to prove our spouse is first we have to give sacrifice(what will we give up for them?), time(the currency of relationship), energy(does our spouse get our best or just our leftovers?) and attitude. We can't 'keep score' in marriage, it's not about what we did, it's about what we do.

Pastor Sergio continues this series telling us about how we live single in our single years matters. We cannot have things out of order. We can't make Christianity a form of religion and still live in sin! Without an unrenewed mind we pick our partners subconsciously. Our subconscious makes us gravitate to comfort. Our unhealed self leads us to comfort and not what is healthy. True compatibility is beliefs, values and characters. All of us are looking for a person who will walk us back to our past so we can heal subconsciously. God wraps up our healing in other people. Fights in marriage happen when we touch each other's wounds. We have to admit we're wounded! Pride blinds us and makes a fool. Anything we suppress can only be suppressed for a limited amount of time before we explode or do something explosive. We have to learn and unlearn unhealthy things we've learned in our past. We have to know what heals a man and what heals a woman in a marriage!

Pastor Sergio continues this series talking about what serving God as a married couple looks like. In a marriage we have to be tithing, serving, winning the lost and making disciples together as a married couple. He goes on to talk about the reasons how marriage loses its sacredness. Marriage is not designed for our own individual fulfillment!

Pastor Tina invites a panel of Elevate Life Church married couples on stage to share their marriage testimonies. They share about the breakthroughs and struggles they have experienced during their time together and how things like their own individual upbringings has effected their marriages as husbands, wives, fathers, mothers and how their walks with God has strengthened them during the course of their marriages.

Lead Pastor Jared Nieman from Abundant Church in El Paso, Texas brings us an incredible Word from God and how there are times we feel shattered from addiction and depression. We have to imagine that God can breathe life and light into our spirit! God can bring breathtaking recovery. He want to heal us spectacularly. Jesus paid on the cross for us simply to receive. It's not about us, it's about what He did for us! If we don't handle life's moments the right way, the moments become seasons. Your life is not what happens to you, it's about how you respond. We have to grab hold with both hands to Jesus! He comes into our lives even in our mess. We may be dealing with depression but we aren't depression. Bad things happen, none of us are exempt from persecution and trials. We have to be on guard so that weeping does not become grieving. In these moments it's the devil, because the devil wants us to live in darkness. David strengthened himself with his trust in God! David didn't join in what everybody around him was doing. David chose to be recovered! We have to get angry at the situation the devil is trying to tell us. Even before our recovery, we chose to be recovered!

Pastor Sergio concludes his series telling us in order to have a relationship with God, He has to be our Father & King and we have to be His sons & daughters. Relationship with Jesus is about getting to know Him! Important things have appointments, when we have a relationship with God we have to set aside time for Him. We can't be in a relationship with Jesus and still have a relationship with our past worldly life. Sin shatters our connection with God and will take our marriages, we cannot believe the lies of the serpent(the devil). Blame is always a mark of sin in our lives. Repentance is how we deal with sin. God doesn't mine us having money, just don't let our money have us! Adam & Eve had dominion together in their marriage in the Garden..

Pastor Sergio continues this series talking to us about how we need to stay away from things that will mess up our judgement. Until we make the sacrifice to have a constant daily relationship with God, He can't change our nature. Change happens through discipleship! We cannot run from those who correct us. We have to understand and respect the order of God's marriage. We also have to lay down our lives the way Christ laid down His life for us and His church! We won't get anything in our relationship with God if all we do is come to church. Nothing in us can be fixed by God if we're ungrateful. Submission is an attitude of the heart!