Resurrection Life Church

050116 | Moving Forward | Mark Jobe

God is always moving forward.  There is no going backwards with God.  Many people in the worldwide church have given up on moving forward because it’s too hard, they’ve lost sight of the goal and a myriad of other reasons.  But the Holy Spirit is calling us to move forward in the momentum that God is working in His Church.  When God moves forward we must allow our sails to catch the wind of His Spirit and propel us to higher heights and deeper depths.  It is easy to settle with what God has done and what God is going to do.  But the question begs to be asked of the church, “What is God doing NOW in His church?”

Long-time friend and Gateway campus pastor Mark Jobe shares a few thoughts about what God is up to in the church and what He see God doing in the future and how we must position ourselves for a mighty move of God.  If we are ever going to move in the momentum God is producing we are going to have to prepare ourselves and be on the mark ready at all times.

042416 | Overwhelmed | Allen Hickman

Life can get a little overwhelming at times, even for Christians.  But how do you stand firm when life gets so overwhelming?  The first thing we need to do in order to answer that question is look at three things that lead to a place of being overwhelmed.

Most people’s lives are full of activity and busyness.  So much so that they sacrifice their rest in order to “live their lives”.  In actuality they are not living but simply existing.   Rest is very vital to our life and when we are worn out physically we are susceptible to becoming overwhelmed which makes us a prime target for the enemy.

When there is unresolved tension in our relationships Satan pin points different areas in our life to capitalize on and begins his assault on us.  When that happens it’s easy to become overwhelmed with other things in life.  The apostle Paul encouraged us to live at peace with all people as much as it depends on us.

Lastly we get overwhelmed because of  “fears on the inside.”  Many people think the opposite of love is hate when actually it is fear.  Fear that we won’t be accept, loved, nurtured, etc...  And when we are fearful it opens us up to the lies of the enemy and he is quick to plant all kinds of thought that are detrimental to our relationship with God. 

It is when we are secure in the fact that God loves us far beyond our understanding and our deserving that we stand secure and firmly established in our faith in God.

041716 | The Collision | When truth and facts collide | Jacob Hickman

What is truth? 

Pilate asked this of Jesus before He was sentenced to death by crucifixion.  Mankind has been asking this question since the beginning of time as we know it.  Truth is more than a set of statements that have been verified by evidence.  According to the Bible truth is a person, Jesus.  Jesus said of Himself that, “I am the way, the TRUTH and the life.”  Those are some pretty amazing and monumental statements.  But His life, the miracles that surrounded Him, His teachings and His followers were not the evidence that confirmed His claim.  It was His death, burial and resurrection that validated the veracity of His statement.  The fact was that Jesus was crucified, buried and was completely and irrevocably dead with no hope of that every being changed.  However the truth said “I will rise again.”  And He did.
 
We as flawed and blemished humans can’t see past the facts many times to see the truth.  It’s hard to believe and hope in face of the facts that scream back at us.  Truth many times seem to contradict the facts and our brains find it difficult to resolve such conflict.  But our spirits that have been redeemed and made new scream back to the facts, “but God said…”  And with that we have a hope that the world chokes on and find it hard to accept.  What do you do when the truth and facts collide?  Do you have to choose a side?

Young adult pastor Jacob Hickman addresses these question and more when he speaks about “The Collision” and how we are to find hope and life amidst the questions.

041016 | The Sacrifice of Love | Allen Hickman

The old song asked the question “what’s love got to do with it?” God’s answer is “everything.”  Why would someone serve someone else who does not deserve their service?  Why give to others when they are nothing more than consumers and will never give anything back to you or society?  Why would you be kind to someone who is mean and hateful?  Love, Love, Love.  

Jesus, the creator of the world made himself like His own creation and subjected Himself to the ridicule and contempt of mankind.  Why?  Because of love.  Love is more than a feeling and more than a choice.  It is the all consuming and motivating factor in Christianity.  No other religion on the face of the earth touts the fact that we should love all mankind other than Christianity.  

Jesus took it all the way to the point of giving His life for all of mankind because He loves.  His commitment was fueled by love not by sheer discipline or simple obedience.  In the current condition of the American Church we don’t have a commitment problem we have a love problem.

 May the love of God that has be shed abroad in our hearts constrain us, push us, and motivate us to give, serve, work, and love the world in which we live.

040316 | The Power of a Lie Believed | Allen Hickman

The affects and effect of the tongue is more powerful that most people realize.  Whether we are telling a bedtime story to our impressionable small children or talking to a potential client at work trying to make a sale.  Words can be either life-giving or death bringing the choice is yours. 

 

God desire honesty in our hearts and the words that we speak always reveal the condition of our hearts.  Honesty is a lost virtue in our modern and “advancing” American society.  We have allowed lying and dishonesty to become a common commodity in our culture.  God detest a “lying tongue” according to Proverbs. 

 

When we lie we are hanging ourselves with our own words.  Lying allows the enemy power over our life.  We may not think it does but that because the enemy is lying to us.  That’s what he does because he is the father of lies.  The only way we are ever going to have honesty with God is to be honest with ourselves and we can’t do that in our own power.  We must surrender our will to Him and allow the Holy Spirit the room to work and produce honesty in our hearts.

032716 | These Hands | Easter Production | Allen Hickman

Everything hung on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  If He stayed in the grave and never resurrected then the last 3 1/2 years of their lives were spent for nothing.  But it He did rise from the dead that meant everything would change.  Not just for His followers but the entire world. 
The disciples, Peter, James, John, Mary, Martha, all saw Him die on the cross.  Hundreds of people were there when He said, "it is finished."  The soldiers put Him in the tomb.  They roll the stone in front of the tomb.  They heard and saw nothing for three days.  Nobody expect to find nobody in the tomb on that fateful and miraculous day.
It was there hands that nail Jesus to the cross.  It was there hands that held the spear that pierced His side.  It was their hands that held the whip that ripped open His flesh with every lash from the "cat of nine tails."  But it was Jesus' hands that healed the blind man, the leper, the sick.  It was His hands that welcome the children to sit on His lap as they listen intently to His stories.  It was His hands that comforted the woman caught in the very act of adultery.
Even today our hands are the ones that have been involved in pain, hurt, idolatry, mischief, wickedness, adultery, and more.  But because of the Resurrection it is now His hands that wash away the sin of our pain past and point us to a glorious future.
Watch as RLM musicians, actors and dances us storytelling, videography, acting, music, dance and more to tell the story of our hands of shame and sin being redeemed by the loving hands of God.  "These Hands" drama is presented in a powerful and life changing musical production.

032016 | The Genetic Code | Part Five | Allen Hickman

The church of Jesus Christ has so isolated herself from the rest of the world that as a whole she has become impotent, powerless and irrelevant to and in the world she exist.  God has called her to be the change agent in the world.  God has downloaded His Holy Spirit into us to give us the power to be that change agent.  The world should be looking to us, the church, for the answers.  Why, because we have the answer, Jesus Christ.  Not religion, not spiritualism nor ethereal mystical answers but real life-changing answers.

We can change the world!  We are suppose to change the world, we were born to.  We change the world incrementally.  One person at a time, one family at a time, one town, one city at a time, one country at a time, etcetera.  That is why it is so important for us as follower of Jesus Christ to live a life worth imitating.  God is simply asking us to be available and He will give us what we need when we need it.   

We must give away what God has placed in our hands.  If we do that and not make the assumption that what we have is for our own consumption we will change the world and all that we need God will make sure it is there, when we need it.

031316 | The Genetic Code | Part Four | Allen Hickman

There are certain genetic codes that are passed down to us from our ancestors and there are certain things that we must pass down to our family and the next generation.   Part of Resurrection Life’s genetic code is we believe in marriage, the family and the next generation.  We have a responsibility to pass on to the next generation the spiritual genetic code that was passed down to us from our godly ancestors.  But we will never be able to do that if we do not have strong marriages and stable families.

 

We get strong marriages and stable families by allowing the Spirit of God to teach us and empower us as husbands and wives and fathers and mothers how He wants us to create godly marriages and families.  We must not build our marriages and families on the fleeting whims of a constantly changing culture.  There are bedrock, foundational, biblical principles that must be embedded in every marriage and family in order for them to be successful, thrive and bring glory to God.

 

Pastor Allen deals with what creates a successful marriage, how to establish a strong family and what we are to sow into the next generation in part four of a five part series about our Genetic Code.

030616 | The Genetic Code | Part Three | Todd Goodwin

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.

022816 | The Genetic Code | Part Two | Allen Hickman

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.