Love , Bible Study 12/18/13

Posted on December 27, 2013 by growintheword

Faith, Hope, and love Part 3

“Love”

Synopsis of Bible Study 12/18/13

Delivered by Bishop Walker III

 

Earlier in this series, we talked about faith and why faith is important to tap into the things God has for our lives. We also talked about hope and how the enemy’s desire is to attack the word in us, so that our faith may be diminished and so our hope would be lost. Tonight we talk about love.

The bible says that these three remain, faith, hope, and love. God says the greatest of these is love. When we think about love, many of us are disillusioned by this idea called love. If we were to ask many of you to tell about your love experiences, some of you would have some real horror stories to tell. On the other hand, some of you would in fact have some interesting stories, because we all have a different idea about what love is and what we have experienced as a result of love. Love is complicated.

It is important for us understand that God gives us a blueprint for love. Vertical relationships are significant, because this is the relationship made up of us to God. Horizontal relationships involve man to man. The problem is our vertical relationships have not been strengthened. As a result , we try to draw strength from our horizontal relationships without examining the model in which God uses to demonstrate how we should be loved. This is why in the past, the horizontal relationships never stood!  So tonight we will find out what love really is.

Now let’s understand how we define it (love).

When you think about it, the New Testament was a Greek document. The Greek has 4 words for love.

4 Greek words for love

  1. The first is Eros – This is carnal, sexual love, properly reserved for marriage.  Hebrews 13: (NKJV) 4 Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge. – Whenever one enters a covenant of marriage, you can eros (love) as you want and how you want as long as both of partners consent and as long as it is inside the confines of marriage. (We know this might be uncomfortable discussing, because church folk usually don’t like about sex in the church). When you get married, you can do what you want concerning this love/sex as long as both partners agree. Actually this kind of love is a carnal expression.
  2. The second Greek word for love is Philia – This is love of a close friendship, such as brotherly love. This is drawn from the root word Philadelphia. We find this example particularly in John 11:3 (NKJV) 3 Therefore the sisters sent to Him, saying, “Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick.”- Remember when Lazarus was sick?
  3. Then there is storge which deals with family love – This kind of love goes with the phrase we use that says “blood is thicker than water” meaning despite our incredible dysfunction, we still love each other, because we are family. Unfortunately, you can’t pick your family, so you have to love them anyhow.
  4. Lastly, there is Agape – Agape is the highest form of love. This is the love which seeks the highest good of others. The is an unconditional love.

As we recap, we learned that there are four terms for love. They are eros, philia, storage, and then agape. Agape again is unconditional love.  A good Tweet- able for you is this; You will never be faithful to that in which you do not love. What you love you will be faithful too.

Love then is demanded

When you look at the love of God, you begin to realize that God gives us this command to love. Mark 12:30 (NKJV) says 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’[a] This is the first commandment.[b]  –  Here is a 4 part directive about how to love God, with your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

4 parts to loving God

  1. With your Heart– This is putting it into a human relationship.  God says, “I need you to love me like your heart is here, because I can tell when you disengage. I can sense when something isn’t right. I feel like you’re here, but your heart is disengaged. I need to feel like we are going in the same direction. We are trying to end up in the same place, destiny”
  2. Love him with your mind – In other words, God occupies mental space. You are really thinking about him and He is not an afterthought.
  3. Love him with your Strength– God needs to feel like no matter what has happened in your life, or how tired you are, no matter what you have experienced, one call from Him, and you will gather the strength to come and see about Him. Nothing will keep you from him, no matter how fatigued you are. You love Him so much that when God’s name is mentioned, you get strength you would never have had otherwise.

 

God says, do you love me like that (keeping these for directives in mind)? God says do you love me with your heart, because I can see you lifting up your hands and opening your mouth, but remember what Jesus said to the Pharisees. Jesus said, “You honor me with your lips, but your heart is far from me.” Jesus can sense when we are just going through the motion, but have disengaged from the heart. We know how to put on form and fashion, throw together theological phrases, and look sanctimonious. We also know how to play church, but if our heart isn’t there, God can sense it!

  1. God says to us, are we really trying with our soul to love him? Because that which we make every day is an indicator that we are really trying to make sure our soul ends up where He is. If you really love God, then you are thinking about your soul. You are loving with our soul. Your soul is so valuable, you will say to yourself, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose your soul.
  2. God is also saying, do you really love Him with your mind. When temptations and trials come, are these things blotted out because there is no space for them, because all day long we are thinking about him. All day long you have him in your mind and people can tell just by looking at you that you have God on your mind all day long and all night long. God wants to know, do you love him like this, that even in your strength, when you’ve been out all night long, you have the strength to get up on Sunday morning and say “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”. You have the kind of strength that you don’t lay up and make excuses as to why you can’t do what God has called you to do. God needs to know that you love him completely. This is commanded of God!

When you love God like this, you got to:

  1. Got to love our brethren: This means easily to translate to others. John 13:34-35 (NKJV)  34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35 By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” – We must develop the capacity, because we have been the benefactor of the love of God, we must love others as God has loved us. The issue is, we don’t realize how difficult it is to love us. You probably don’t realize that you are a mess. When you think about all of your dysfunctions, all of your issues, all of your hang-ups, all of your failures, and all of your flaws, then you begin to think about yourself and find out that you can’t even stand yourself. God loves you despite all of these imperfections and if God loves you like this, then this is the kind of love that you have been the benefactor of. Therefore, God needs to know that you can have this same kind of love for someone else.

You don’t love people based on their history, you love them based on their destiny. Our problem is, we want to go into people’s history and make a determination of whether they are lovable. The truth of the matter is, God did not decide to love us based on our history, he loved us because of our destiny. He love us because of what was in us. He loves us for where we are going, not where we have been.

We don’t have to know you to love you. We love you simply because you are God’s child. No matter where you are, we realize that we could have been in that same place. Because we know that we could have had this same struggle, we are not here to judge you, we are here to love you no matter what. You are forced because of your relationship with God, to love everybody. We don’t have to agree with you, but we do have to love you!

In Romans 12:10 (NKJV) 10 Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another;  – Be kind or affectionate to one another. Isn’t it interesting how we can be some of the kindest people at church, but some of the meanest people outside of church. It doesn’t hurt to be kind. One act of kindness can go a long way. Ex-Bishop tells of an encounter with a waitress in a Louisiana Cracker Barrel. This waitress was overwhelmed with the workload she had. It was very busy and people were pulling at her from every direction. Bishop and his family had only one hour to eat and she worked hard to try and make this happen, despite how busy it was. When she got time, she brought out the bill. Bishop gave her some money that he had found in his pocket that he had forgotten that he had. You could tell that this really made her day. Later Bishop and his family were on the plane and the airline had upgraded his seat to first class, because he travels by plane so much. The problem was, they did not upgrade Bishop’s family to first class. This meant Bishop would be riding first class while his family was seated in regular seats. Wanting to sit with his family, Bishop went to see if the attendants could get whoever had the seat beside his wife, to trade with him and they could take his First Class seat. Another passenger from first class over heard this and told them that he would give up his first class seat so that Bishops family could come up and join him. The point of this is this, when you are kind to others, kind things come back to you. When you are mean, mean comes back to you.

  1. Got to love our families: You have to be able to love the brethren. We got to love our families. We don’t choose our families. They choose us. We all have those family members that we wish we could give back, but unfortunately we can’t. In fact, we are commanded to love our families. There is a blueprint for this. According to Ephesians 5:25 (NKJV)25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, – Husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church. A husband should love his wife so well, she should looks loved. The glory of a man is on the face of his wife. She should looked so loved that when other men approach her, they retreat, because they don’t feel they have a chance.

A wife according Titus 2:4 to should love her husband and love her family .Titus 2:4 (NKJV) 4 that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, – We have to love our families because it sets an example and sets an atmosphere. When you don’t do this, what you do is create an atmosphere of anger and hate. Lots of issues we have with violence and anger comes out of the atmosphere of our homes. Your position of anger, unforgiveness, and trust often comes out of what you saw growing up. If you saw love and that was all you were around, then that is all you know. You got to love you neighbors and your enemies.

  1. Got to love you neighbors and enemies: In Mark 12:31 (NKJV) 31 And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’[a] There is no other commandment greater than these.”- Single people, this says you become the paradigm in which you love others. This means you can’t love someone else at a deficit to yourself. You can’t play yourself and love someone else. Love should not cause you to devalue yourself in order to love someone else. What happens to some of you is you give up your values and dreams, because you love the other. You remove yourself and give your dreams up, but you got to realize that you are the model at which you use to love others. If you want to know how I will love you, then  look at how I love myself. If you don’t even love yourself enough to be home by yourself, then what makes you think that someone else wants to be at home with you ?

Loving your enemies

Matthew 5:44 (NKJV) 44 But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,[a] – This is hard to do.

Things you must understand about people that hate you.

  1. They don’t know you. – All they know are assumptions about you. Most people that don’t like you, have never met you..
  2. They don’t realize their emotional environment and issues toward you is not going to make their lives any better. You have to learn to say what Jesus said when he said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” You have to in other words learn how to pray for them. You got to learn to do good for them that despitefully use you. Ex- Bishops explains how he loves blessing his haters. He tells of a time that he was in Starbucks and saw someone that he knew really hated him. He waited till this person got ready to checkout and Bishop snuck up and told the cashier to put it on his bill. The lesson here is, a person can only hate less the amount you love them. If you hate like them, you have taken on their venom and thus are becoming just like them. If you love a thing, you got to let your dislikes and hangups go.

1 John 4:9-10 (NKJV) 9 In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. – God loved us first. Love is not measured or determined by the lovee, rather it is determined by the lover. The lovee doesn’t have the capacity to understand the depth of the love of the lover. The lover must love the lovee until the lovee learns how to love them back. God loved me before I learned to love him back. He loved me when I didn’t know how to love. We shout because we know God loved us when we didn’t know how to love him. God protected us when we were out there uncovered and God waited on us to get our lives right. You are here, because God was patient enough to say, “You finally caught up with how much I love you.” While we were yet sinners, Christ died.

When we think of this kind of love, we see God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. He looked at humanity and said here are people I created to worship me. I gave them breathe, gifts , and destiny and they allowed Satan to turn them against me. God says, ” I sent prophet after prophet to call them back to me and they just laughed. They brought my prophets to places of depression”.  Jose kept covering Gomer the prostitute even though she kept going back out into the streets. Just like this love demonstrated, God sent his son, because he knew the only way to save his humanity (creation) was by the shedding of blood. God sent his son to pay this price.

Jesus paid for sins he did not commit. Even after being sent, the same people that cried Hosanna later cried “crucified him!” Though he had the power to come off the cross, Jesus stayed there and died. Jesus loved enough from the cross to still die! When Paul writes in 1 Cor 13:4-8, he says you can have all these gifts, but love suffers long. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (NKJV) 4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away.

  • Love does not tap out.
  • Love is kind. When we love, no matter what it looks like, we are consistent with the person who is kind to you.
  • Under love, we won’t make you responsible for what others did to us. One unkind act can turn people from church.
  • Love is not envy and love celebrates the house the neighbors get and the career jumps off for them. Love does not envy or parade itself.
  • Love doesn’t remind what you did.
  • Love does not behave rudely. Love won’t speak fowl .
  • Love is going to pause and think of the impact of word before it speaks.
  • Love is not unilateral and it isn’t all about one person.
  • Love is not seeking its own, or this is a leach.
  • Love is not, provoked.
  • Love can be on the job and walk it off instead of reacting when someone does something that is off. Love is isn’t easily provoked.
  • Love thinks no evil. It does not wish evil things to happen to you, despite what you did to them, for this would be revenge. Vengeance is mines says the Lord.
  • Love does not rejoice in iniquity.
  • Love will tell you that you are wrong , even if it costs a friendship. Out of love is our responsibility to tell you that this could happen. The wages of sin is death.
  • Love rejoices in truth. it believes all and hangs in there with me.
  • Love never fails.
  • Love will always remain.

God wants to know if we love him like we used to. Have we allowed life to separate us from the love of God? We have to be like what is taught in Revelation and get back to our first love. We have to love Him if he never does another thing for us. We are ready to let the Lord know particularly in this season that we love him. We want to ask the Lord to give us the love back . We want that love back  that made Him occupy our mind and that love that made where we could not get enough of Him.

 

 

 

 

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You got to go through it!, Sermon 04/24/13

Posted on April 29, 2013 by growintheword

You got to go through it!

Notes for sermon 4/24/13

Delivered by Bishop Walker

 

Text:  Psalm 42:5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.

We have gotten to a point where we want God to work everything out. We want a life of little trial or pain. We want a minimum amount of kick back, but we must know that there is no way around it. There is some things that you have to go through.

God knows what is necessary to prepare you for what is on the other side. God needs you to press your way through.

I. He gives us challenging circumstances

In the transparent book (Psalms), David says he is  like a deer panting after the water. Some of you are like the deer, you are not leaving until you get what you come for!

What is this about:

  1. You will have to deal with pain – No matter how spiritual you are, there is something that you will go through that will be painful  for you.

Types of pain:

  1. Acute pain – If you were to ask how bad the pain is on a scale of 1-10, you would answer “It’s a 12!”
  2. Associated pain – This is when you realize what caused your pain. You can simply have an encounter with someone and it triggers the old pain to come back.
  3. Ambiguous pain – This means that you can’t put your finger on what caused it or you don’t have  a specific answer  for it. You can’t put your finger on it, but all you know is that you are in pain.

Effects of pain:

  1. It will disorient you – It will cause you not to know which way is up!
  2. It comes to disconnect you- It will disconnect you from your church and your family.
  3. It comes to destroy you- No matter how much you are already hurting, it comes to destroy you.

 

What must we do?

  1. Guard your posture- Be careful not to let the enemy make you look like what you are going through. Pull yourself together and remember that you are a child of God.

i.            Based on how you look, people ask what is wrong with you? This gives you a platform to have a pitty party. Instead we will start asking what is right with you? This will force you to tap into God’s goodness and start to think praise report.

There are people around you and you have no idea what they have been going through.

II. Confidence in the Creator

We have come to a place where we know hope is confident expectation or a firm assurance regarding things that are unclear. Romans 8:24-25 says For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.

When God makes promises, they are translated into prophecies. People have a tendency not to keep their promises, making us skeptical of other people’s promises.

Numbers 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?

The reason why we haven’t went crazy is because we remember the promises of God. You can do all things through Christ that strengthens you. God will supply all our needs according to his riches and glory. That thing I started in you, I will perform …,  Be not weary of well doing … you shall reap if you faint not.  Weeping may endure for a night, but joy will come in the morning

Gods promises have been proven – In other words, there is nothing we are going through, that we can’t find examples for in the bible, that give us witnesses who can testify how God can handle our situations. Ask Job, who will testify that God will give you double for your trouble. Isaiah would say that they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. Nehemiah would say that the joy of the Lord is our strength.

III. I choose to celebrate

Anyone can speak well of God when all is going well, but can you speak well of God when things are going south?

You better learn to have:

  1. A protest praise – This means that we protest everything the devil is trying to throw in our life. We got a habit of accepting things as they are. We accept the fact that we are sick, we accept that fact that we are broke, and we just accept everything that life throws at us .
  2. The power of praise – You praise God for what is on the other side. We praise God even though we don’t have the breakthrough yet. Somebody is about to get their breakthrough!

 

Yet means at the same time or nevertheless. We praise God even though we are in it. Yet says if God doesn’t do it, nevertheless meaning we go through praising him, we come out praising him, and if he doesn’t deliver us, we praise him anyhow.

No matter what happens, we praise God, because we know that there is a reason for what we are going through.

 

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Mt Moriah, Sermon Notes 3/17/13

Posted on March 22, 2013 by growintheword

Mt Moriah

Sermon Notes 3/17/13

Delivered by Bishop Walker

Text:    Genesis 22:1-9

Abraham’s Faith Confirmed

1Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!”

And he said, “Here I am.”

2Then He said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”

3So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and he split the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. 4Then on the third day Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place afar off. 5And Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.”

6So Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife, and the two of them went together. 7But Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, “My father!”

And he said, “Here I am, my son.”

Then he said, “Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”

8And Abraham said, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” So the two of them went together.

9Then they came to the place of which God had told him. And Abraham built an altar there and placed the wood in order; and he bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. 10And Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.

11But the Angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!”

So he said, “Here I am.”

12And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”

13Then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up for a burnt offering instead of his son. 14And Abraham called the name of the place, The-Lord-Will-Provide; as it is said to this day, “In the Mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

 

We all go through test. We should not view this as something negative, but instead  we should view this as something that God sees necessary for our next level. It is the place where we sacrifice. It is the place where God gives us a litmus test.

Mt Moriah; it is here, where God finds out what you are made of. The testimony of Mt Moriah is about what is on the other side of it. In Genesis 12, God called Abraham and assured him that he would make a great nation through him. Abraham’s faith at Mount Moriah resulted in many blessings. There are many of you, right now, who are experiencing many situations.

If you can relate to this, know :

I. This is a test of the father

God tested Abraham and every now and then, just like Abraham, God will impose his sovereign will upon your life.

God’s test will:

  1. They are personal – Abraham would go through this test, because it was inevitable. God will tailor make your test. Many people will not understand your test, because it is a personal test.
  2. This is a test of your priorities – Remember Ishmael, the child that Abraham had when he got ahead of God. It is at Mount Moriah, the place of ultimate sacrifice, where you will see God. God don’t want that which did not cost you anything.
  3. If you are not careful, you will put your Isaac in a position that is greater than God. Ex: You got your car, but you hadn’t prayed since you got it. Is your career more important to you than God? God gives us tests to see if there is potential in us.
  4. See if there potential in us? God gives us test to see if there is potential inside of us. We therefore won’t whine about the test. Lord test me until i walk right! Lord test me till I talk right! Lord test me till I live right!

Everything in Genesis 22 is symbolic. The father (Abraham) is going up the mountain sad, but he comes back joyous. This mountain is representative of Calvary. When Abraham went to the land that God instructed him to go, he could not worship for 3 days. This is representative of Jesus rising on the third day.

The enemy will fight you most when you are the closest to hat God has promised you, so you have to have:

II. Tenacious faith

Abraham didn’t question the sanctity of God. Abraham got up and responded.

How did Abraham respond?

  1. Promptly– Abraham responded promptly to God. We have to move quickly when God says move. A delay could be detrimental to your destiny.
  2. People – They have arrived at Mount Moriah (vs 5) and Abraham tells the young men to stay at the foot of the mountain so that he and his son could worship. Be careful who goes up the mountain with you. You don’t need folk speaking against what God promised you.
  3. Prophecy– Come back to you. Abraham had the faith and his son came back to him. Just like this, you don’t know how this thing you are hoping for is going to, but know that it is going to happen.
  4. Abraham’s wood represents his humanity. It represents our weakness, the thing that God delivered us from. Don’t make fun of my wood. The wood represents where we come from.
  5. I bring my fire- Fire is a symbol of the Holy Ghost. When fire hits something, it changes its structure. Just like this, when you are hit by the Holy Ghost, you can’t be the same!
  6. Ignite – The fire was in his hand. This means we must come preheated.
  7. Come with a knife- The knife is used to cut away things. Sometimes we have to cut things away in order to get to our breakthrough.

III. We are coming back after worship

Abraham went up the mountain not knowing exactly how God was going to do it. Though he didn’t know how God was going to do it, he knew  enough about God to know that he was going to do it.

Moriah is the place of ultimate sacrifice. Verse 9 says Abraham reached back and prepared to slay his son.

In verse 11, God tells Abraham not to lay your hand on his son.  God is saying to Abraham, “Since the stuff I gave you (his son) is not more important than Him (God), God tells Abraham to look over his shoulder in verse 13. There was a sacrifice in the thicket. Abraham, called that place Jehovah Jireh? This was the place that The Lord provided.  Know that your next breakthrough will happen at the point of your next Abraham sacrifice!

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Baca, Sermon notes 3/10/13

Posted on March 15, 2013 by growintheword

Baca

Sermon Notes 3.10.13

Delivered by Bishop Walker

Text:

Psalms 84:5-7 Blessed is the man whose strength is in You, Whose heart is set on pilgrimage. As they pass through the Valley of Baca, They make it a spring; The rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength; Each one appears before God in Zion.

We understand God by a variety of experiences. We hold on to these things, because these things keeps us connected to God. God takes us through experiences and trials because it is necessary. How would you know God is a healer if you’ve never been sick? How would we know God is a provider, if we have never been broke? Through our rough situations, we found insight about our spiritual fortitude and this matured us and made us who we are while preparing us to get to our promise. It is through this process of Baca that you get to your there.

The valley of Baca was a passage way to the hills where Israel’s city of refuge was located. People would be weary when they traveled through Baca, but they came through seeking refuge. The refuge of God was the there. Baca was a dessert land with vipers, wild animals, and dessert conditions, but there were wells there too.

It was hard to go through this valley of Baca, without suffering. This is why it was also called the valley of tears. This place WOULD make you cry! Many of you may be in the valley of tears right now and you are trying to get to your there. Know that Baca is not your destiny, but your there is!

I. Inevitable Situation

Everyone must go through this valley. Though this area was, dreaded, it was necessary to get to where you were trying to go.

Conditions of Baca:

a. Dusty – This was a dusty place. Many of you right now, are in this tough place. Like the dust from the dessert like Baca, spirits try to attach to you while you go through this place.

b. Disorienting– It is a place difficult to navigate. Ex– You are almost out of debt and then you end up right back where you started. Just when you think you on your way out, you find yourself in the same situation.

c. Dry – Everything has dried up. Your wonderful relationship full of zeal has dried up. Some of you might not want to admit you’ve been to Baca, but know that if you are in Baca, you are in transient.

D. Transient– It won’t be here much longer. You are just passing through. This is not your place of destiny. the devil wants you to think you will stay there, but know that you are just passing through. Don’t send me mail in Baca, because by the time the package gets here, I will be gone! I almost gave up, but the hand of God pulled me through!

Since I have to go through Baca with the rough terrain, the wild animals, and vipers, what then am I supposed to do while I am in Baca?

II. Got to have the ingenuity to survive

You don’t have to stay there and accept things as they are. You have to move. There is a great amount of ingenuity in you.

Inside you is:

a. Thirst– Baca will make you thirsty. You making it out of Baca will depend on you getting your thirst quenched while you are in there. Like those that found themselves in Baca, many of us thirst for revelation, the word, and a breakthrough!

b. Transform– All the things you have gone through, even your Baca experience, was necessary to show you the power that you have. You can either whine or you can work! You can choose to be depressed or you can dig you a well. According to scripture, they dug wells while in Baca. We have to learn to make the best out of a bad situation in Baca. Stop complaining about how bad it is in Baca and learn to be creative.

III. Develop Good Resources

You got to develop good resources in Baca. The word is part of your resources. This is why you don’t have time to be entertained. The word that you receive is your life line. You came here (or you are reading this) because you need a word.

a. Ground – This is good ground. It might be rough in your finances or on your job or in your school, but know that you are digging in your faith. When you give God glory, if you dig your well, God will deal the rain.

IV. Delivers rain by grace

If you have faith to dig a well, the rain will come from God’s grace. God will supernaturally bring rain into your situation. God will give you the strength to get through the rest of the valley and through this rain. God is sending a rain to come and bless your life right now. He is about to fill your well.

Vs 7- In this verse, we see them going from strength to strength. Each one appears before God in Zion. Just like these people, God has a revelation for your life.

 

How did we go from strength to strength?

 

a. Baca increased my strength -The strength you got while going through Baca was for a reason. It is an indicator of where God is about to take you. In Baca, you were released to what God was preparing you for (or where He was about to take you).

God is getting you ready. Set your eyes on where God is taking you to. The devil made a mistake and let you get away and get this word today!

You go through Baca, a place of weeping and rough terrain and it is believed that this is the place that leads to the temple or place of refuge. The only way to get to your promise is to go through this dry place, with wild animals and vipers. God says he will not move until you move! God gave you ingenuity! Dig a well and God will do what you can’t do.

Now you dug a well and God sent the rain. vs 7- I thought I was strong before Baca, but in Baca, I was  convinced  show nuff that I am strong now! Each one appears before God in Zion. Everyone that made the pilgrimage through Baca, got to their destination. Everything God promised you, know that you will get. You will make it to where he promised you. Know that you will get married, know that you will graduate, and know that you will get that job! You will get what God promised when you get out of Baca!

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