Reformation Roundtable

God wants you to be happy. God wants you to possess a joy that no-one and no-thing can take from you (John 16:22). And that indestructible gladness and joy is found exclusively in God. It says in Psalm 43:4, “I will go unto the altar of God, Unto God my exceeding joy.” 

The test for all of us is: Do you trust God’s Word and that His ways are better and more just than your ways? Do you trust the Lord Jesus to use this process to purify His Bride and glorify His Name? Do you fear the Holy Ghost and His power among us?

When Ananias and Sapphira dropped dead for lying to the Holy Spirit, it says in Acts 5, “And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things… And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women.”
Discipline is how God grows His church. It is how our Father raises us up from foolish children into wise kings and queens. So trust your Father, who loves you and knows what is best.

Christ Covenant Church (CCC), is a local reformed church in Centralia WA. We are a gathering of saints who love the Lord Jesus Christ because He first loved us. We are a thoroughly Trinitarian, Biblically devoted, and Historically Reformed church founded within the CREC denomination in 2021 in Centralia, WA. Learn more at ChristCovenantCentralia.com

Jesus Christ offered Himself on the cross for the life of the world. He loved His Father, and He loved you, even unto death. And so what is two mites, or what is all your possessions, compared to so great a love?
Become like Abraham, become like the poor widow, and choose God as your shield and as your exceedingly great reward, for that is a reward that can never be taken from you.

Christ Covenant Church (CCC), is a local reformed church in Centralia WA. We are a gathering of saints who love the Lord Jesus Christ because He first loved us. We are a thoroughly Trinitarian, Biblically devoted, and Historically Reformed church founded within the CREC denomination in 2021 in Centralia, WA. Learn more at ChristCovenantCentralia.com

Tonight, I am finally going to tell you the true and actual way that God is present inside the believer. So we are not talking about God’s common presence (as efficient cause) in that He makes us to live and move and have our being, we are talking now about God’s special presence in the saints by grace.

Christ Covenant Church (CCC), is a local reformed church in Centralia WA. We are a gathering of saints who love the Lord Jesus Christ because He first loved us. We are a thoroughly Trinitarian, Biblically devoted, and Historically Reformed church founded within the CREC denomination in 2021 in Centralia, WA. Learn more at ChristCovenantCentralia.com

Proverbs 13:12 says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.”
Our land is filled with hopeless people who think they can treat a sickness of the heart, a sickness of the soul, with medication, with prescription drugs, with surgery, with money, with things that promise to make us happy but cannot actually touch that spiritual part of us that needs healing.
Well Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life. And it is He alone who can touch our soul and heal us. Only the God who never changes and who is infinitely happy in Himself can give us a new heart, with new desires, that shall be fulfilled and make us into trees of life.

Christ Covenant Church (CCC), is a local reformed church in Centralia WA. We are a gathering of saints who love the Lord Jesus Christ because He first loved us. We are a thoroughly Trinitarian, Biblically devoted, and Historically Reformed church founded within the CREC denomination in 2021 in Centralia, WA. Learn more at ChristCovenantCentralia.com

I don’t know about you, but I do not expect 2024 to be a peaceful year in our nation. Primarily because there can be no peace until all our ways please the Lord. So while I do not expect much political peace, and much of that is outside my control, I do intend to pursue peace with God and peace in the church, by seeking to please Him, come what may. And it is that peace that I invite you all to zealously pursue as well, so that God will make even our enemies to be at peace with us.

Christ Covenant Church (CCC), is a local reformed church in Centralia WA. We are a gathering of saints who love the Lord Jesus Christ because He first loved us. We are a thoroughly Trinitarian, Biblically devoted, and Historically Reformed church founded within the CREC denomination in 2021 in Centralia, WA. Learn more at ChristCovenantCentralia.com

Colossians 1:27 says, “To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
So we know based on these passages and many others that God/Christ/Holy Spirit dwells in us, but how should we understand God’s presence within us?

In order to answer this question, I want to proceed by way of a process of elimination, and so tonight we are going to look at all the ways in which God being inside of us cannot be true. And my hope is that by eliminating some of these false notions, it will help us better grasp the true sense/mode in which God indwells the saints.

Christ Covenant Church (CCC), is a local reformed church in Centralia WA. We are a gathering of saints who love the Lord Jesus Christ because He first loved us. We are a thoroughly Trinitarian, Biblically devoted, and Historically Reformed church founded within the CREC denomination in 2021 in Centralia, WA. Learn more at ChristCovenantCentralia.com

Jesus Christ suffered and died and rose again, so that the image of God in you, could be renewed and transformed into the image of Christ. As Paul says in Romans 8:28-29, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. 29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son…”
The life of a Christian, whether under Caesar or under any other authority, is one in which if you love God, He will make all things conspire for your good. And what is that good? That you are conformed into the image of Christ.
There is no higher good or higher reward than to know God and be made more like Him. So render to your Creator the life He has given, and He will give it back to you immortal and resurrected and far more glorious than before.

Christ Covenant Church (CCC), is a local reformed church in Centralia WA. We are a gathering of saints who love the Lord Jesus Christ because He first loved us. We are a thoroughly Trinitarian, Biblically devoted, and Historically Reformed church founded within the CREC denomination in 2021 in Centralia, WA. Learn more at ChristCovenantCentralia.com

Imagine you owned a property on the other side of the country. And you hired someone to manage it for you, and had not received a single dollar of rent money in 15 years.

You had sent letters, you had sent employees to go and collect what was owed to you. But instead the manager you hired killed those employees of yours and is now claiming your property as his own. How would you feel? What would you do?

First of all, none of us is that patient. None of us would allow 15 years to go by without getting paid from our property. Our patience would have been spent after the first year we were not paid and after the first servant got killed. And the last thing we would do is send what is most precious to us, our own child, to go and collect what is owed from such a wicked manager.

And yet, this is what God has done for the human race. He has been exceedingly and painfully patient with us and our sins. When he tells us his name, He calls himself “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Ps.103:8).

How many years have you not given to God the fruit that He deserves? How long will you go on sowing to your flesh and reaping corruption? God sent Christ to give you a fresh start. So take it! Receive forgiveness. Repent and keep covenant. If you do this, you will be saved.

Christ Covenant Church (CCC), is a local reformed church in Centralia WA. We are a gathering of saints who love the Lord Jesus Christ because He first loved us. We are a thoroughly Trinitarian, Biblically devoted, and Historically Reformed church founded within the CREC denomination in 2021 in Centralia, WA. Learn more at ChristCovenantCentralia.com

Do you believe that Jesus Christ is God? Do you receive from Him forgiveness for your sins? Do you love Him and embrace Him as your ruler, king, and master?
If so, then the final coming of Christ, will be your victory. It will be the day of your resurrection unto glory, it will be a day of crowning, and entrance into an ever-increasing enjoyment of His kingdom.
But if you refuse this Christ, if you do not repent of your sins. Then this life is as close to heaven as you’ll ever get. And that’s pretty sad. So do not choose the lake of fire, do not choose the second death. Choose Christ today, and know that this time when he comes, he will not keep silent.

Christ Covenant Church (CCC), is a local reformed church in Centralia WA. We are a gathering of saints who love the Lord Jesus Christ because He first loved us. We are a thoroughly Trinitarian, Biblically devoted, and Historically Reformed church founded within the CREC denomination in 2021 in Centralia, WA. Learn more at ChristCovenantCentralia.com