Petra Podcast

This is week five of our All-IN Teaching Series. The gospel of Jesus is a radical re-alteration of our lifestyles. If you start following Jesus you quickly realize “I can’t go on with life as usual.”
To help you evaluate your own life and commitment to Jesus we wanted to give you a set of questions.
The questions we asked so far have been:
➢ Week 1: Am I living to please God, or myself? (Heart Attitudes)
➢ Week 2: Have I given all to God, or am I holding something back? (Practical)
➢ Week 3: Am I living by faith in what God can do, or in fear of what I might lose?
(Intensity & audacity of faith)
➢ Week 4: Am I using what I have to glorify God? (Practicality & Devotion)
➢ Week 5: Am I generous in life, or reluctant in giving? (Generosity & joy of faith)
The shape of the gospel is the shape of generosity. If you want to know what generosity looks like look at Jesus. He had mad talent. But he chose to give himself constantly to the needs and the development of the people around him.
“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” 1 John 3:16. If we’re becoming like God then we’re becoming generous people like Jesus.

Pastor Patrick Thuo, leader of the Hopewell Network in Kenya, brings us Part 4 of our All In Series with the message entitled "Use What You Have".

We are in the midst of a series called ALL IN. We are exploring what it means to live a life that is sold out to God. Full abandonment. Full surrender. Going All In. We are not trying to create a cookie cutter Christian because going ALL IN will look differently for each person, however, there are some basic truths that we can all grab a hold of.
We are using a set of questions to help us define the idea of going ALL IN.
Today’s question is: Am I living by faith in what God can do, or in fear of what I might lose? The title of today’s message is PLAYING OFFENSE. A lot of Christians play defense instead of going on the offense. They circle the wagons to keep the devil out instead of fully engaging the culture and taking the fight to the enemy’s camp.
A sports team can have good defensive players and have a great defensive strategy but if they don’t have a strong offense they aren’t going to win any games. God didn’t put us on the earth to play it safe but to be dangerous. To take ground. To advance the ball downfield. To attack the gates of hell. To take risks.
The Christian life is not a spectator sport. Actually, We have been born on a battle field right in the middle of a cosmic war. A war between good and evil and evil advances when good people do nothing. There are those who are satisfied sitting on the sidelines and there are those ready to charge the gates of hell and take back what the enemy has stolen from us.

This is the second week in our series ALL IN. Last week Pastor Lester began the series by preparing our hearts to go ALL IN as we follow Jesus. We defined going all in last week as surrendering completely to
Gods purpose.
We want to get your mind thinking and your hearts ready last week. There weren't multiple action points from the sermon. There was one really, to simply put our hearts in place of surrender before the Lord. I want to warn you that going ALL IN does require action steps, it requires change, it requires choosing, not necessarily in some dramatic emotional fashion either. Sometimes it’s a quiet resolve, followed by consistent action.

As Pastors, we have been looking forward to this ALL IN Series. It’s going to be both challenging and fun. This is a great follow up to the Acts 29 series where we looked at the lives of the believers in the early church and how they lived their lives with this sense of total abandonment to God.
We believe by the end of this series, as we go ALL IN in a fresh new way, we will be transformed one again – from glory to glory he is changing us to be more like Jesus.
• As we together, explore what a fully surrendered life looks like I believe we will experience God’s pleasure on our lives in a new way.
• In this series, the purposes of God will become more clear and active in your life.
• You will become bolder and more daring in pursuing God’s call on your life.
• You will find your life increasingly centering more around Jesus then yourself.
• We will discover what some people call radical is really normal New Testament Christianity.
• You will become more extravagant like your Heavenly Father.
• And - You will find the Christian life is anything but boring when you are ALL IN with God.

Pastor Brian Coles brings us the final message in our Acts 29 series, The Holy Spirit still speaks and guides. Several weeks ago Pastor Lester began this journey reminding us that the things that the Holy Spirit was doing in the book of Acts he is still doing today.
We have learned that the…
- The Holy Spirit Still Empowers
- The Holy Spirit Still Strengthens
- The Holy Spirit Still Saves
- The Holy Spirit Still Sends and Delivers

Pastor Brian Flewelling brings us Part 4 in our Sermon Series Acts 29.
What was started in the book of Acts is being completed through us. The resources in the first church are still available to this church. Wake up Church! The Holy Spirit is still sending us out in a thousand directions to have a thousand conversations under a thousand rooftops. Every believer is a full-time missionary. Every conversation is a kingdom opportunity. Everyone is a disciple maker.

We are presently studying the book of Acts and giving a special focus to the ministry and acts of the Holy Spirit in the early church. Even though there are only 28 chapters to the book of Acts we have entitled this series Acts 29 because the empowering work of the Holy Spirit continues through God’s people today.
The works of the Holy Spirit did not stop or decline as the book of Acts closes in chapter 28. The Holy Spirit is still doing his amazing work in the earth through God’s people. We are now living in the days of Acts 29.
• The Holy Spirit still empowers people like he did in the book of Acts
• The Holy Spirit still gives supernatural courage and makes people brave
• And - The Holy Spirit is still saving people all over the earth
Today we are looking at Acts chapters 9 thru 11. These chapter reveal the deep struggle the Jewish people had in accepting Jesus as the Messiah and then also accepting the fact that the gentiles could be saved without converting to Judaism and observing their laws.
Powerful testimony by Ryan Forbes.

Kenneth Scott Latorette, history Prof at Yale, said this:
“Never in so short a time has any other religious faith–or for that matter any other set of ideas, religious, political or economic–ever achieved so commanding a position in such an important culture without the aid of physical force, or social or cultural prestige.”
In other words, Christianity should NOT have spread. Islam was spread through force and conquest, especially in its early years. Not only did Christianity not have support to help it spread, there was also great persecution set against them. To be a Christian in the early church could cost you everything.
Only the Holy Spirit could make a following of a carpenter’s son grow.
Only the Holy Spirit can make us spiritually brave. The same God that stood behind the gospel in the early church still stands behind you today!

Today we begin a five-part series on the book of Acts. The book is called Acts because it refers to the Acts of the Holy Spirit through God’s people in the early church.
Acts begins with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the beginning of the book and ends with the Apostle Paul still preaching in the power of the Holy Spirit at the end of the book. In between are amazing stories of the Holy Spirit working through God’s people.
The book of Acts gives the history of the Christian church and the spread of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as well as the mounting opposition to it.
Acts is written by Luke who is a doctor and a disciple of the Apostle Paul. He also wrote the gospel of Luke.
There are 28 chapters to the book of Acts but we have entitled this series Acts 29 because the empowering work of the Holy Spirit continues through God’s people. It did not end in Chapter 28. The works of the Holy Spirit continues throughout the generations. The Church of Jesus Christ continues to advance and his Kingdom on earth continues to expand.
We are now living in the days of Acts 29. The Holy Spirit is still empowering God’s people and doing amazing things.
The practical message in this series is that God does amazing things through ordinary people who are empowered by the Holy Spirit.