God

A supernatural manifestation of the power of God is something outside the natural course of things or the way things usually happen. As we go through life, there are going to be times when we are in special need. At those times we are a candidate for a miracle. If you believe in God, you must believe in miracles. God is a supernatural being and when He supernaturally intervenes in our lives, a miracle happens. Now that’s not to say that God is not involved in the normal course of events, He is, but miracles are when something out of the ordinary happens.

One of the areas of need that we all have from time to time is the need for healing. You and I need healing when something in our lives is damaged or cannot function properly. We need God to restore whatever it is that is sick to health. Actually there are many areas in our lives that need healing, areas that have been damaged by sin, either our own or the sin of other people or the effects of sin in the world as a whole.

Our greatest need is spiritual healing healing from the terminal disease of sin. That disease will result in an eternity spent without God, if it is not healed by Jesus. God doesn’t heal everyone. Why? One reason is that physical healing is not His highest priority, spiritual healing is. He decides how best to bring spiritual healing about. Two of my wife’s grandparents received the Lord on their deathbeds. They had to get close of the end of their lives in order to receive spiritual healing, then it was time for them to be with Jesus.

Yet, God wants to heal the physically sick much more than we have seen. NLT James 5:15 Prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make them well. Two conditions for healing are in this verse. First we need to pray for the sick person, secondly, the prayer needs to be made in faith. Although medicine has greatly advanced and God works through doctors and drugs to bring about healing, they are many times when doctors do not have the answers or the prognosis is poor. At those times we need a supernatural healing from God. When I talk about healing, some of you may think about strange television evangelists or faith healers that pull people out of wheelchairs or push people over. For any spiritual truth, there will be those who take it to an excess but here at Life Church we want God’s best, in His way, in His timing. If you read your Bible, you will see that it is full of examples of God, of Jesus, of believers, bringing about healing of sick people through prayer. Those examples are there for us to learn from, for our faith to grow and for us to understand how God works so that we can experience supernatural healing in our lives.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my April 10, 2005 message entitled Experience Supernatural Healing

The United States is the most technically advanced country in the world, filled with educated and rational people Yet our entertainment, whether books or movies is filled with the supernatural. Haunted houses, ghosts, communicating with the dead, witches, reincarnation, angels and the list could go on and on. Belief in paranormal or supernatural experiences has increased significantly in the last 15 years. Kids continue to devour Harry Potter novels. Adults continue to read and watch supernatural thrillers. 84% of Americans believe in miracles.

Why the interest in the supernatural? God has placed something within every person that senses there is something more to life than what we can see with our eyes and touch with our hands. Not only do we sense that there is something more, we want to experience that something more. We want to fill our desire for mystery and excitement. We need help with problems and situations that are beyond our power to deal with. The desire to experience the supernatural was put in our hearts by a supernatural being, God our creator.

What is the supernatural? The supernatural is a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces. The Bible teaches that there are two types of supernatural power. The first type is from the dark side. It’s power comes from Satan and the forces under his control. It’s interesting that most of the supernatural in entertainment comes from the dark side, things like witchcraft, astrology, ghosts, demon possession, tarot cards, Ouija boards and fortune telling. None of that is new. NLT Deuteronomy 18:10-11 Do not let your people practice fortune-telling or sorcery, or allow them to interpret omens, or engage in witchcraft, or cast spells, or function as mediums or psychics, or call forth the spirits of the dead. The Bible forbids participation in the supernatural of the dark side. Why? Because it connects you to Satan and his forces and the end result is always destructive in your life. It draws you away from God.

The good news is that there is a second type of supernatural power the power that comes from God. God’s supernatural power is good. God’s supernatural power helps people, it brings out the best in them and it draws them closer to God. The Bible is filled with accounts of the supernatural power of God, not just to describe ancient history but to show us how God operates and how we can experience His supernatural power in our lives.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my April 3, 2005 message entitled Experience Supernatural Provision

Easter is a wonderful time of year! Trees are budding, flowers are blooming, the grass is beginning to grow. Winter is over, spring has come. We see new life in nature all around us. What is Easter all about? For many people, the first things that come to mind at the mention of Easter are eggs and bunnies. Eggs and bunnies symbolize new life, but Easter is about more than just a spring celebration.

There once was an 8-year old boy named Philip. Philip attended a Sunday School class at church with other children his age. Now Philip was a bit slower than the other children and sometimes they would make fun of him. On Easter, the teacher of the class brought plastic eggs and instructed the children to go outside and fill the eggs with symbols of new life. So the children did just that and returned to the class to show what they had found. They opened their eggs to reveal flowers, butterflies, leaves and buds, but when it came to Philip’s turn to show his egg, there was nothing inside. The children began to laugh at him, Philip had done it wrong again. Finally, after the laughter had died down, Philip spoke in a soft voice, “I did do it right, I did. It’s empty because the tomb is empty!” Philip had it right, there is something more to Easter than eggs, bunnies and springtime. Easter has to do with an empty tomb, it has to do with the resurrection of Jesus.

Jesus Christ came to this earth 2000 years ago, born of a virgin, fully human, fully divine and lived a sinless life. Then at the young age of 33, He was condemned to death for blasphemy, claiming to be God, and He was put to death by crucifixion. But the story doesn’t end there. Something remarkable happened three days after Jesus died. Some women went to His tomb on Easter morning and saw an angel who spoke to them. NLT Matthew 28:5-6 Then the angel spoke to the women. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He isn’t here! He has been raised from the dead, just as he said would happen. Come, see where his body was lying.” Jesus was alive again.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the best documented events in history. Jesus predicted His resurrection. Hundreds of people saw Jesus after He rose from the dead. Multiple eyewitnesses wrote accounts of seeing Jesus. The message of the resurrection was the core of the early Christian message. The rapid growth of the early church is powerful evidence of the truth of the resurrection. Those who dispute the resurrection of Jesus Christ have not examined the evidence, which is overwhelmingly convincing. If the resurrection really happened, which it did, why does it matter to someone living in 2005?

To hear more about this topic, listen to my March 27, 2005 message entitled Why The Resurrection Matters

A Japanese soldier named Shoichi Yokoi was stationed on Guam in WWII. When the Americans began to get the upper hand in the war in 1944, Shoichi fled to an isolated jungle cave to avoid being captured. He stayed in the cave during the day and came out during the night to gather food. His diet consisted of frogs, rats, snails, nuts and mangoes. He avoided all contact with anyone and lived alone in that dark cave for 26 years. Finally, two hunters found Shoichi in 1972 and brought him out to civilization. He found out that the war was over and his life was not in danger. He was finally free, after 25 years of unnecessary self-imposed captivity in a cave.

Many people today live like Shoichi in a spiritual sense. They live in captivity to fears, worries, habits and sins, living as if imprisoned in a cave, not able to enjoy life, separated from a life with God and the people of God. In fact, everyone has at one time lived in captivity to sin. Because everyone of us has done wrong things, which the Bible calls sin. NLT Romans 3:23 For all have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious standard.

God’s glorious standard of living was shown to us in the life of Jesus Christ. None of us measures up to Jesus who lived a sinless life, we fall short. Children don’t have to learn how to sin, it comes naturally to them. It’s been programmed into their lives since the time of Adam’s fall. NLT John 8:34 Jesus replied, “I assure you that everyone who sins is a slave of sin.” Everyone who sins, which includes everyone, is imprisoned by sin. They are in captivity, living as it were in a cave, venturing out in spiritual darkness, stumbling around in the night, not able to see where they are going.

This is the problem of sin, a problem that every person who has ever lived must deal with. The sin problem is not just in this life, but it extends into eternity. Death doesn’t solve anything for the sinner, death is merely the doorway from the frying pan into the fire. NLT Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death. That means that sin will result in spiritual death, eternal separation from God in a place called hell in the life to come.

Sin is a huge problem. Sin is the biggest problem any of us will ever face. It’s such an enormous problem that we can’t get around it. No matter what we do, no matter what we try on our own, we can’t overcome it.

But God did something about our sin problem. God did something in history that defeated an enemy named Satan who used your sin against you as his weapon. The battle was won some 2000 years ago. Yet people still live in caves of sin, locked up in habits of depravity, injuring themselves and others, miserable and unfulfilled. God won the battle through the person of Jesus Christ, the most courageous human being who ever walked this planet.

Jesus came to this earth with a mission, a mission to set the captives of sin free. He lived a sinless life on earth, and then at the young age of 33, He willingly allowed Himself to be crucified on a cross to set us free. Jesus’ death was not an accident, it was not something that was out of God’s control. No, Jesus choose to die, because He loved you and me, He wanted to set us free. NLT John 10:18 No one can take my life from me. I lay down my life voluntarily.

Why did Jesus give up His life? What difference does Jesus’ death make for us today? How does Jesus’ death deal with our sin problem?

To hear more about this topic, listen to my March 20, 2005 message entitled Why Jesus’ Death Matters

Some 2000 years after He died, Jesus is still a very newsworthy person. Google news on the internet has over 12000 links to Jesus as a keyword in the last 30 days. Mel Gibson just released a new version of his movie called “The Passion: Recut” this past Friday, praised by some, condemned by others. Jesus is controversial, different people have diametrically opposed views on him. Who was this Jesus? How should we think about Him? How can we sort out the conflicting opinions that people have of Him?

Many people think that Jesus was a good teacher, but he never claimed to be God. They think that he is just one of many religious leaders that point us toward the truth about God. Where does that kind of thinking come from? Well, it comes from thinking without accurately considering the evidence.

The classic example of this in the last few years is illustrated by the Jesus Seminar. The Jesus Seminar is a small group of biblical scholars who joined together to discover who the historical Jesus really was and what the historical Jesus actually said. The scholars got together and went through the historical accounts of Jesus, the four Gospels plus the gospel of Thomas, and voted on whether the things that Jesus said were actually spoken by Jesus. At the conclusion of the voting, only 20% of Jesus’ sayings remained. What was the scholar’s criterion for voting? Simply their opinions, what they thought Jesus would say.

Just this month, March 2-5, the Jesus Seminar held their yearly conference in Santa Rosa, CA. The keynote speaker was the Rev. Jerry Stinson. Here’s a quote from Rev. Stinson:

“I think that the life of the historical Jesus, in which Jesus is a very human figure, points us in the direction of God. I don’t think Jesus was God, but I think that when we look at the life of the historical Jesus we can get some incredible insights into the nature of the divine … I think Jesus is one of a number of lights that illuminate the divine for us.”

What stands out for me in that quote is that Rev. Stinson uses the phrase “I think” four times in the space of a couple of sentences. Truth is not the matter of opinion, truth is what is real, truth is determined by evidence. Our understanding of who Jesus was and what He said is not a matter of opinion, we can know what Jesus said by reading the historical documents that record what He said. Those documents are the four Gospels, reliably translated in your Bibles.

In my message “Why Jesus’ Words Matter,” we’ll answer the questions: Why do the words that Jesus spoke thousands of years ago matter? How are they relevant to our lives? What can we learn from them? Did Jesus claim to be God or not?

To hear more about this topic, listen to my March 13, 2005 message entitled Why Jesus’ Words Matter

What was your most boring subject in high school? Well, mine was history, with apologies to any history teachers who might be reading this. History just seemed like an endless list of dates and names of people who were long gone. In high school, I just didn’t see the point of it all. It seemed irrelevant to my life. How could people who had died thousands of years ago affect my life today? It didn’t seem possible, it didn’t seem worth my time.

Many people today feel the same way about Jesus, a historical person who lived on the other side of the world some 2000 years ago and died at the early age of 33. That’s ancient history. The college textbook “Western Civilization” has this to say about Jesus:

“Jesus’ message was basically simple. He reassured his fellow Jews that he did not plan to undermine their traditional religion. … Jesus found himself denounced on many sides and … Pilate ordered his crucifixion. … A few loyal followers of Jesus spread the story that Jesus had overcome death and had been resurrected. He was then … hailed as the savior-God.”

If you’re a college student studying history, you wouldn’t think too much of Jesus would you? Just a Jew who had a few new ideas, didn’t amount to much or gain much of a following until some deluded followers became convinced he rose from the dead. The problem is, the things you’re learning about Jesus in school, whether high school or college are simply not true. There is more wrong in the quotes I’ve read you from that respected college text than is right. But with education like this, it’s not surprising that many people think that Jesus doesn’t matter to them, to their lives or to their families.

If you’d like to further your education about the most important person who ever lived in the history of this planet, listen up to my message series entitled “Why Jesus Matters.” In it, we’re going to be looking at why someone who lived and died 2000 years ago matters today, in 2005, for you and your family. Why should Jesus affect our lives? What is the big deal about Jesus? Isn’t He just like countless other religious leaders who have come and gone? Can Jesus really make a difference in your life, everyday, every hour, every minute? This series will help you deal with some of your own questions about Jesus, as well as prepare you to talk to others about why Jesus matters.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my March 6, 2005 message entitled Why Jesus’ Life Matters