Resurrection Life Church

Our genetic code is what makes us who we are.  In the Garden, Adam & Eve allowed Satan, through their disobedience, to change our code and thus change who we were and that in turn affected our relationship with God.

But God had a plan as to how He was going to not just change our code but to create a brand new code that would change the world forever.

In order to understand where we are going you have to know where you are at.  In order to do that we need to look at three models that have affected religion for 3 to 5 millennia and how those models play into our Genetic Code.

In the Temple Model man had to come to God.  In the Relational Model God bridged the gap and came to man and in the Servant Model God came in the flesh to serve.  The Temple Model was made of no affective by Jesus and His revolutionary model but over the years The Temple Model’s ways, ideologies and thoughts have crept back into Christianity diluting, denuding and polluting the true message of Jesus.

Jesus eradicated the Temple Model and made us a royal priesthood allowing all men and women to come freely into the presence of Almighty God without fear of rejection.

Our father God has always wanted a relationship with us.  Even after Adam and Eve messed it up in the garden He still had a plan to redeem us and make things right so we could have intimacy with Him.  It is in His presence we get the strength, comfort, knowledge and power to not only live for Him but to change the world.

Many people are either afraid of being in His presences or feel they have no right to be in His presence.  Both attitudes are somewhat right.   By that I mean that yes, it is an amazing and fearsome thing to come into the awesome presence of the God of all creation.  And yes, we don’t deserve to come into His presence because we are guilty.  But because our Father God loves us so much He has made a way for us to come into His presence even though we don’t deserve it.  But because we have been “born again” and now have His nature in us it is in our genetic code to be in His presence.  We now have the right by birth to be there.

Intimacy with the Father will result in a myriad of amazing outcomes.  One being definite direction for our life.  Peace that will transcend our understanding.  A peace that guards our heart and mind.  A confidence that defies the worlds standard of arrogance with a humble and gentle power that is magnetic making others want what you have.

Pastor Allen continues the series about how important and vital intimacy with our Father God is to our spiritual and natural journey.

DNA stores all information that makes up any organism. That’s quite a lot of information but what’s interesting about DNA is that it is made of just four building blocks, which are – cytosine (C), thymine (T), guanine (G) and adenine (A).  1 single gram of DNA is capable of holding an amazing 700 terabytes of data! (terabytes = 1 trillion bits of data).  If someone manages to unwind all DNA molecules in a human body and place them end to end, the total length that can be covered is 10 billion miles! That’s the distance covered in a trip from Earth to Pluto and back to Earth.  If you could type 60 words per minute, eight hours a day, it would take approximately 50 years to type the human genome. A parent and child share 99.5% of the same DNA.

Our genetic code as believers, comes straight from our Father God.  In order to know who we are we need to know what we are made of.  Once we know and understand our genetic code it makes living for God a joy.  One of the first codes that are embedded in us as Christians is we love people.  We love them because God loves them.  It is His love in us that gives us strength and power.  

There are four basic ways our genetic code enables us to love.  First we tell people about the good news of Jesus.  Second we build a relationship with them and pour into them the love God has given us.  Third we love people in the Power of the Holy Spirit and lastly we give people the same value and dignity our Father does.

Pastor Allen begins this series about our genetic code with a powerful and enlightening message that culminates with a video from the Passion of the Christ as to why Jesus did what He did for all of mankind.      

“Go big or go home.”  “It’s all or nothing.”  These are phrases that are synonymous with extravagant and lavish living and thinking.  The United States culture is known through out the world as a people who do everything big.  We are indulgent in just about everything, from food, to entertainment, to houses.  But what about our relationships?  What about how we treat each other?  Do we go big with our love?  Do we go big with our commitments?

 

God has call us to love big just as He has.  It has always been “all or nothing” with God.  He is “all in” with us and expect us to be the same with Him and with our relationships.  Some might say, “I don’t have what it takes to love big like He does.”  That is okay because God has that covered.  According to Romans 5:5 God has given us the ability for “Big Love” by giving us His Holy Spirit to empowers us to love big.  It does not rest on our shoulders but on His.

 

There are a few things we have to understand though if we are going to have big love.  We have to choose to be “all in”.  Give it everything we’ve got and leave the rest up to God.  Second realize it all “hangs” on God and we simply submit ourselves to Him.  If we don’t have this mind-set, the things God ask of us, become nothing more than a set of rules.  Third, we have to receive God’s love ourselves.  We cannot give away what we don’t have.  And lastly, give it away.  God’s love will only grow when we give it away.  So yes we say “go big or go home.  God’s love is a Big Love!

On this journey to wholeness we have a powerful gift at our disposal, the gift of memory.  “How is that a gift?” you might ask.  Well, it can be a gift or a curse, it’s all in how you use it.  It can be a place that inspire greatness as you remember what God has done in and through your life.  It can be a place of joy and courage as you recall all the times God was faithful and was there for you.  But it can also be a place where the enemy comes in and torments you with past mistakes, failures and sins.

None of us are perfect and neither is our past.  We all have bad memories.  How do we deal with bad memories?  First of all learn to release by forgiving.  Forgive yourself and forgive others. Second reduce the garbage in your life.  Get rid of the excess baggage. Lastly replace those bad memories with God’s destiny for your life.  Refuse to be defined by your past.

Once your get past the memories of yesterday that haunt you, you will need to “sanctify” your memories by testifying of the goodness of God.  Also by not being lazy with your thought life.  Be disciplined in what you think about especially about your past.

Then finally remember it is about Jesus, it’s always been about Him and it will always be about Jesus.

Growth doesn’t just happen unless some certain elements are put in place and into motion.  In order for a plant to grow there must soil, water, sunlight and air.  All these play a part in the growth of the plant.  It doesn’t just happen without all the elements in place at the right time with the right amount.  Growth will not happen and the plant will begin to wither and eventually die.   It is the same way spiritually.  There are certain elements that must be put into play in order for us to grow spiritually.  

Once we begin to grow we come into three basic levels of growth or maturity.  The first being our elementary stage.  We are “little children” as the Apostle John refers to us.  We are learning and growing in the basic of spiritual life.  Then we mature to a place of “young men” or young adulthood where we are actually walking out the spiritual life God intended us to live.  We are growing and advancing as we “flesh” out the things we learned as “little children”.  Thirdly, we beginning to pass down and give away the things we’ve learned and grown in to others.  In this third phase John calls us “fathers”.  “Fathers” implies that we have reproduced and are growing others in the “faith”.  It means we don’t live for ourselves but for the glory of our Father God and the “little children” and “young men.”

Pastor Dan Finley humorously and with precision shares what we need to do to initiate spiritual growth and how to grow in the three levels of maturity.

This journey we are all on called life is a journey that is fraught with danger and peril.  It doesn’t have to be.  It should be a journey that is full of peace, hope and joy.  Why?  Because the outcome is not dependent upon us it is dependent upon God.  He is in control, not us.  When we assume control of our life the stress and pressure of the outcome rest on your shoulders.  The peace, hope and joy now come from the results of our own efforts and not God.   It will also result in us believing that we are the master of our own destiny.  

It was once said “if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans for your life.”  God has one plan and one plan only.  There is no plan B with God.  His plan is the perfect plan He has no contingent plan.  We may but He doesn’t.

If we are going to get to a place of wholeness we are going to have to do a few things.  First, take on the yoke Jesus give us, second, walk in meekness and live in humility.  The yoke Jesus give is not burdensome.  His yoke leads to peace and rest.  Meekness is understanding the power that we have comes from our trust and hope in God’s plan for our life.  To live humble means that we realize we aren’t in control but He is.  It means to give complete total control of your life to God.  He is in charge and the burden of the outcome rest on His shoulders.  The one thing that validates our faith is obedience not the outcome that’s God’s job.

The journey that we are on has several levels and different road that we may have to travel.  Some levels are difficult and some roads are rocky and curvy and hard to traverse. God has given us a few things that we must learn how to manage.  Manage through His rules, regulations and precepts.  Many think that we have it all figured out and our lives deny that we do.  That is why we must depend and count on our creator and listen to His ways.

There are three things that we must learn how to manage God’s way or we run the risk of getting side tracked and lost on our journey to wholeness.  We must learn to manage our expectations, of others, God and ourself.  Remember people are not perfect, God is not going to do it your way and newsflash; you are not perfect either. On this journey the road of your words is a precarious and dangerous one.  Our words are powerful.  We must learn to speak positive, generous and carefully so that we do not steal peoples faith or their hope.   We are emotional people.  Some are driven and ruled by the emotions.  If we do not manage our emotions we will derail our journey and ending up crashing and burning.

If we do not manage those three things we will have a hard and arduous life.  God has given us what we need to manage those things so we can thrive as His children and affect positive change in our world. 

The Journey that we are on with Jesus is not only a spiritual journey but a journey of the soul.  A journey of our thought life.  Our spirit, soul and body should be lived in concert with one another, in harmony, in tune with each other.  God has told us how to live in our thought life by putting it in His word.  We must learn how to take our thoughts captive and the way we do that is by doing three basis things.  

First we must recognizing bad thought by dwelling on the truth of God's word.  Second we have to restriction some thoughts from coming in and lastly we must replace those old ungodly thoughts with whatever is true, noble, just and pure.   It's hard to do that when what we are putting in us is in direct opposition to what God wants for our life.  We must learn to pay attention to what we don't pay attention to.  

Once we start down the road on our journey with God, He puts thoughts in us that can and will change the world.  We will start thinking big when we start thinking like God.  Our ways may not be His ways, but His ways can become ours.  When they do our world will be changed for the better.  We then bring life to all those around us because we are thinking on His thoughts and then there is joy in the journey.

We are all on a journey.  Some of us are further down the road than others, some have learned along the way.  Some have not, some have given up on making sense of the journey, and others have found peace and joy in the journey.  Mankind, since the fall, has been searching for significance.  That significance and wholeness can only be found in a true and intimate relationship with God the Father through His son Jesus.  

In order have true joy in the journey to completeness and wholeness we have to learn how to align somethings in our life.  Actually, we must allow God by His Holy Spirit’s power to re-align our whole man in the order God originally created us; in His image.

We were created in His image in that we are a triune being; spirit, soul and body.  Before the fall of man in the garden we worshiped God in spirit, soul and body, in that order.  The fall rearranged somethings and we started to live body, soul and spirit.  For the most part mankind lives in the two dimensional, body and soul only.  However, that was not God’s original intent according to His Word.

Jesus said that those who worship God must do so in “spirit and in truth” thus engaging the whole man.  Pastor Allen begins the series on what order we should live and how that will affect the lives of those around us.