Peter's letter to the persecuted church in Asia Minor continues with an important note on love and the power that goes with it. Love (genuine, authentic, self-sacrificial) will be a distinctive mark between you and other people. When Christ came, love became so much more than was perviously known or acted on. It became a revolutionary power that drew people to Him. Because of Christ, we have the ability to love people in a profound new way that hasn't been and cannot be done without Him. When you have Christ and love people, they will notice that there is something different about you. It is also profound to consider that the architect of love will also be your judge.
King Solomon once observed "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10). And in a world that is immersed in fear towards many other things besides God, it creates an uneasiness and instability in the minds of so many people. In this message, Living Faith's own Thom Espinos teaches us how God, whom we need to have a reverent fear of, can help us take on and overcome the kind of fear that so often takes away our peace of mind and causes anxiety and instability. Join us as Thom teaches us why it is important to depend on God the next time you catch yourself in a situation involving the fear that so ails the rest of this world.
How will we spend our days? How will we spend our time? God is always focused on where we will spend eternity. By his grace and mercy, Christ redeemed us through His blood. And so, we respond to these things by how seriously or unseriously we act towards God and how we treat Him. As angels and demons fear Him by his very name, we are called to be set apart from the rest of the world (living as "foreigners") and in reverent fear (respecting who He is and knowing that what He says is relevant, important, and critical for you) as you belong to Him. How does He shape the lives of those who spend their time with Him? What can we learn about God by what is revealed to us in times where He reveals grace and mercy to us in hopes to change us for the better when we take Him and His Word seriously? Find out in this powerful & convicting message.
Ephesus was a city in Ancient Greece that was pagan, rough, and heavy in demonic activity. Today you could say that Ephesus was like a rough area in the city of Chicago. However there was a church planted right at the heart of this culture in the first century. Paul preached there for years, and people wanted to kill him because he "disrupted business" by casting out demons that assisted in one particular person's livelihood. Paul even wrote to Timothy, giving him the apostolic authority to preach the Word of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ in this area. As the power of God's Word changed people during Paul's ministry, some people in Ephesus were so affected that they burned their occult scrolls. By the end of the century, years after Paul's death, Jesus has a beef with the church in Ephesus, appears to John, and has him write a letter to that church. What can we learn about the Church of Ephesus today, and how is God calling us to "fight the good fight" in the last days? Pastor John Billow brings the message.
When Peter addresses the persecuted church in Asia Minor, He emphasizes setting one's hope on the second coming of Christ. In this, Peter quotes a command that occurs five times in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, where it says "Be Holy because I am holy." What does holiness mean, especially in today's world? Only with Christ can you stop conforming to evil desires that you constantly gave into when you were disobedient. Only with Christ can you be different from this world, and subdue your selfish nature. It is when you trust Christ to help you live holy, you can be most sober-minded (i.e. alert) and set your hope on Him. It is only with this His help one can live holy (and in a peaceable state of mind) in an immoral society that is consistently breaking down and causing panic, unease, instability, and anxiety.
In this message, Pastor Troy Billow explains the reason behind animal sacrifices in the Old Testament, which became a means to restore righteousness to sinners temporarily, and why Jesus came to be that sacrifice for those who receive Him permanently. Why did Christ go through what He went through and suffer like He did for us? Since God does not tolerate sin in His presence, He picked His most precious "lamb", the one He wouldn't want to give up, to provide a way out of the punishment we deserve due to our unrighteousness. This act of love would also open the lines of communication between sinners saved through Christ's blood and God Himself, restoring a relationship that was cut off when we chose to go our own way.
Peter once had trouble grasping his faith. He denied Christ, was uncertain of the resurrection, and went back to fishing. Jesus Himself had to come and find Peter and talk to Him. So He met Peter where he was. Now, Peter is an old man, and he traveled from Jerusalem to Rome because he wanted to take the Gospel there. One of the things Peter was awestruck about, was that when He encountered many believers, He saw the love that they had for Jesus, even though they never physically encountered Him. When you realize how much God loves you, it changes you. "What?" you may say. "He loves me like that????" Love is engaging, investing, making time, spending time, and is proven by showing up. Since God loves us, He asks us to do the same with each other.
Special Guest Michael Imhof (U.S. Navy Seal Commander RET.) answers the question, "should elections and government matter to Christians". All too often people are way too ignorant and passive towards political matters, go with the party that their parents and grandparents belonged to, or believe that God is going to just make everything happen the way it's supposed to go with no involvement. Michael Imhof PROVES in this message that change can only begin with action and involvement. Michael backs his message up with mounds of historical examples from the Bible where men of God confronted their Kings, spoke truth to power with stern conviction, warned them even if they hated what was said and had them thrown into shackles because of it. In other words, when this question comes up again, it will serve as the end of all arguments on that question.
Peter tells the persecuted church in I Peter 1:6-7, "6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.'"
Pastor Troy Billow illustrates the meaning of these passages both from being a former goldsmith himself, and from his experience in walking with the Lord. Hardships and trials are strenuous and burdensome to go through, however since God cares more about our character than He does our comfort, He will use these things like a torch that will melt us down to refine us. God allows trials and hardships because He wants to prove your faith more real, genuine, and legitimate, so that it has the substance and the backbone to have an impact (in an encouraging way) to influence others.
Pastor Troy Billow expounds on what it means to have a living hope. When Peter wrote his letter to the persecuted church in Asia Minor, he really wanted to encourage Christians about what Jesus Christ did for them. In doing that, Peter used important truths from the Old Testament to provide the background and show the fulfillment of what Christ did to reveal the depth, meaning, and seriousness of the components involved to infuse a hope that would encourage them to keep going strong. Today we have access to the same power Peter wrote about. We walk and live in a hope that is alive and real. New birth breathes life in spiritual hope. And to really understand the depth of this, we need to understand the Old Testament to understand (and fully appreciate) the New. In this understanding, we can realize why hope is such an important part of having a living faith.