Lessons for Living (Audio)

Many times we don’t turn to God until we have a crisis in our lives. At such times it can be really hard to hear what God may be trying to say to us. The main reason we don’t hear God so well then is because we don’t have much, if any, practice listening to God’s voice when times are going well. Pastor Mark is teaching about the fact that God does want to speak to us. There are many scripture verses that indicate God’s desire to tell us how He wants us to live. Until we break down and admit that we can’t do this life on our own, we won’t be in the frame of mind to hear His voice.

Sometimes as we look around, we ask ourselves why there seems to be no difference in behavior between us in the church and those who have no relationship with Jesus. For much of ancient Israel’s history they had the same problem. Pastor Mark will be teaching about the core difficulty – although God is trying to speak words of life to us, we aren’t listening. Jesus had the same trouble in His time. In fact, because the Jewish leadership didn’t want to hear what God had to say, they killed Jesus. If we want to live God’s way, we have to begin to listen to and obey Him.

American society has become focused on having so-called experts who say they can help us with whatever problem we might have. It’s good, for example, to have a medical expert examine you and possibly determine if you’re sick and what form that illness takes. The problem comes when we in the church believe that we need a spiritual expert to hear from God for us. Pastor Mark in his teaching will make it clear that unlike the Old Testament days, God has made Himself available to every single believer through both His word and the Holy Spirit – we only need to be listening.

What does your salvation mean to you? Is it “fire insurance”? Do you think it matters whether or not you pursue God beyond your salvation experience? If you don’t know the answers to these questions you need to listen to this teaching. Pastor Mark will be sharing from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi. Paul was trying to encourage the Philippian believers to deepen their relationship with Jesus, and was sending them instructions on how to do so. The information he shared with them totally applies to us, too. If you want to know Jesus better, Pastor Mark will be teaching us how to do that.

When we hear about Jesus’ plan to enable us, His disciples, to live like He lived, we sometimes think He must not quite have known what He was talking about. It’s easy to imagine the eleven disciples thinking much the same thing when He said He was leaving His work on earth to them. In Pastor Mark’s teaching he will remind us that Jesus planned things this way all along. The challenge for us is to set aside our fear and begin to trust God to mold us into Christ’s likeness. As that happens and we live our lives trusting God, He will work in us and then work through us for His glory.

It’s always inspiring to watch people compete at events like the Olympics. Seeing folks trying to attain their dream makes us a little warm inside, too. Finding out about the challenges many of them overcame sometimes makes our lives seem a little easier. Pastor Mark is teaching about the same kind of exertion for us but on a spiritual level. He is telling us about the Apostle Paul’s life and the hardships he faced as he was writing these letters. In them we get no indication of the horrible things he was suffering physically, because his focus was on something he considered greater.

Memories can be dangerous things. They compel us to look backward and to look with regret at things done that can’t be remedied. They are difficult to let go of because the emotional pull can be so strong. Pastor Mark is teaching that we can overcome this situation through the power of Jesus. Since He came to free us from all of the things that have weighed us down, that naturally includes memories of the past and their negative effect on us. We will be learning the importance of weakening the emotions brought up when we recall our past, and how to diminish their power over our lives.

We are told in many ways that the only things that are important are the physical: what we can see, hear, taste and touch. Anything else is either non-existent or unimportant. When we choose to follow Christ, our eyes become open to another reality. We find out that there is an unseen world where God dwells as well as our enemy. Pastor Mark is teaching that when we become servants of God we’re automatically enlisted in a war with forces unseen but effective. We’ll be learning exactly who our opposition is and how to live our lives in such a way that we can be victorious over them.

It’s fun to look back at positive accomplishments in our lives, to reminisce about the past. In the same way, remembering failures isn’t quite so pleasant. The danger for us in either of these situations is in spending so much time focusing on the past that it keeps us from living where we are and planning for the future. Pastor Mark, using the example of the apostle Paul, is teaching us about the importance of living in the present. We need to learn to put the events of the past, both good and bad, in their proper perspective. When we do that, we can become useful people for God.

There’s a famous movie series where many of the characters are told to “search their feelings” to determine the truth of a matter. Some actual people try to live their lives and make decisions based on whether the choice makes them feel good or not. There are even so-called Christian preachers whose main appeal is to the emotions, such as “God doesn’t want you to feel bad.” Pastor Mark is teaching what the Bible says, which is that the truth of God’s word trumps any feelings we might have. Feelings can get us off track in our walk with Jesus; knowing what God says will keep us on the right course.