Tabernacle Baptist Church

Genesis 1:1 is the most well-known verse in the Bible. Here we see the God Code for humanity, where, God, the Creator of the whole universe presents Himself as the Intelligent Designer who designed the entire universe.

God shows us in Psalm 1 that the person who delights in the Lord will be given a life of joy, delight, happiness, and a full soul. The life of blessing is the life lived in the Word of God and in the Presence of God.

Trust God and delight in the Word and you will have His blessings lavished on your life. Trust yourself and the council of the wicked and you will receive the punishment and wrath of God.

This morning, Carlos Oliveira talked about Heaven:

1. What is Heaven?2. What will life be like in Heaven?3. What happens next?

Many Christians don’t exercise the spiritual discipline of reading God’s word, so what can you do to have such a hunger for the Word of God to the point that you couldn’t imagine living a day without feeding on it?

In 1 Peter 2:1-3, the Apostle Peter is equating a hunger or longing for the Word of God with a newborn infant hungering for milk.

Using that analogy, if you want to hunger for the Word of God, you have to:1) Experience God – taste and see that He is good! Confess Christ as Lord and Savior.2) Eliminate Congestion – confess and repent of those things that keep you from God’s Word.3) Eat Healthy – change your diet and begin to feed on God’s Word.4) Expect Growth - when you do the three previous points, growth will be a natural result.

Would you wish your life in Christ on anyone else? In other words, is your life in Christ so exhilarating and fulfilling to the point where you would want EVERYONE to know about it and have the opportunity to experience it? Or do you see your Christian life as a burden, to where you wouldn’t wish it on ANYONE?

Consistency and persistence are two crucial characteristics we need to have when we pray.

Being consistent means that prayer has become a part of your life. It means constantly adhering to the same course or form. Being consistent in prayer is the idea of having regular time with God on a daily basis. If we are going to emulate the character of Christ in our lives, and see God do amazing things, there is no way that can be accomplished if we’re not consistently abiding in Him.

Being consistent means that you are constant and continuous. Now, being persistent means that you endure tenaciously, even against great odds or obstacles.

George Mueller once said: “The great fault of the children of God is, they do not continue in prayer; they do not go on praying; they do not persevere. If they desire anything for God’s glory, they should pray until they get it.” That’s the idea of persistence: always praying and not losing heart regardless of any obstacles or delays.

So keep asking. Keep seeking. Keep knocking. Be consistent. Be persistent in prayer.

Some people are hopeless all the time, more than hopeless, they are complainers. However, most people are not necessarily without hope all the time. Instead, when they go through some tough seasons in their lives, they feel hopeless and feel like nothing is ever going to change.

Hopelessness is difficult especially because it is always related to pain and hardship. It is like a part of the package. Hopelessness, pain, and hardship.

When we feel hopeless we can only focus on the negative things that are going wrong in the moment. We only focus on the here and now. We get tunnel vision and we cannot look past our hardship.

However, Paul says in Romans 8:18, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is going to be revealed to us.”

The struggle and the hard times are nothing compared to the reward in the end. Just like Paul did, you also should do the same in your life when it comes to your understanding of going to heaven! You can have hope again because these troubles are nothing in comparison to what is to come!

We wonder why the church is powerless in our day against society. It’s because we try to keep one foot in society and one foot in the Gospel, however, the Gospel is a radical call for commitment and selflessness.

We are all full-time missionaries and stewards of the Gospel. Don’t fall asleep because that’s the reason why we were created, to live for God 24/7  and to be like Jesus Christ in our daily lives.

When it comes to the discipline of prayer, the conversation we find in Luke 11 is fascinating. Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples."

The disciples didn’t ask Jesus to show them how to perform miracles. They asked Him to show them how to pray. Why? They already KNEW how to pray. Every Jew knew how to pray. Maybe because something always happened on the heels of Jesus praying. Perhaps they saw this as a source of power, so, they said, “Jesus, teach us to pray.”

Take time and trouble to stay spiritually fit. Learn how to pray and how to practice all the other spiritual disciplines as well. The disciplines of Scripture engagement and Prayer are paramount to your spiritual growth, those are the two on which we are going to focus the most. So start to practice them as soon as possible. A year from now you are going to wish you started today.

In Matthew 11:28-30 we see the gentleness and kindness of Christ towards us. Jesus gives us the invitation to come to Him and the promise that if we come to Him, we will find rest. 

In the kindness of Christ, our souls can find rest and enjoy the life God has set before us because we are no longer burdened by things we cannot control. Free from the anxious worry and burden of the eternal resting place of our souls we can enjoy the life set before us and have true happiness and peace.

The world operates on a principle of unforgiveness and retribution.  We see this play out constantly on the news where people are assaulted or killed for something they said or did.  Then follows the cycle of unforgiveness, hatred, and revenge. We see the devastating results of unforgiveness all the time.  One gang at war with another gang.  One race hating another race. Former friends who now can’t stand to be in the same room.  A family who once shared sweet fellowship is now divided.  Such is the way of the world, and this should not surprise us since they have not known the forgiveness of God.

However, for the believer, this is not the case.  We respond differently to insult and hurt because we are different.  We understand forgiveness because we have been forgiven, and because we have been forgiven, we have a platform to forgive others when they wrong us. Furthermore, we have the supreme example of forgiveness in Christ and we follow his example.  In other words, Christians are forgivers because God is a forgiver and we emulate him.

Forgiveness is hard. Though, arguably, one of the most challenging parts of the Christian life, it is liberating!  If we will commit to doing the hard work of forgiveness, we will reap rich rewards.