As a believer, you will go through different seasons. Some will be tougher than others. Therefore, you must make sure your head is screwed on straight. You need to correctly interpret the Word of God and know how to apply it to your life because there will always be issues that you will encounter. In light of this, I want us to look at today’s key passage in Acts and embrace and understand some key principles we can draw from this portion of Scripture and apply to our lives as we mature in our faith.

Advice To Maturing Believers

God is in the business of answering prayers in faith. Therefore, God wants each of us to know how to pray in faith. But sadly, many of us don’t know what it means or what it looks like to pray in faith. In this message, we are going to look at a passage of Scripture in the gospel of Mark that gives us some guidelines as believers on how to actually be involved in the lives of others through praying in faith. From this passage, we will learn several principles we can apply to our lives as we learn to pray in faith and watch God work as He answers our prayers according to His will and His timing.

How To Pray In Faith

Conflict is part of life. There’s no way around it. But it’s how we deal with conflict that is critical. We should not be afraid of conflict; instead, we should look forward to how God will use conflict in our lives. In this message, I want to look at the positive side of conflict. It is important that we learn how to handle conflict before we get into a conflict, and we do that by diving into Scripture and seeing what God has to say about handling conflict. This way, we can honor Him not just through the good times in life, but through the tougher, more uncomfortable times as well.

The Positive Side Of Conflict

Have you ever felt stuck in your faith before? It just feels like the flow of God is not happening in your life. There is nothing happening spiritually, and you are just going through the motions with your wheels spinning. In today’s key passage of Scripture, Jesus was talking to a group of people who were stuck. They were average people who wanted to know God. This Scripture passage is important for us because Jesus wants the flow of His Spirit to happen in our lives. He wants us to move forward and not stay where we are. If you are feeling stuck today, I want to share with you a few things that will help you get unstuck in your walk with Christ.

How To Get Unstuck

I want you to ask yourself this question: “Where are you serving?” There are all kinds of places to serve. You can serve in the ministry of discipleship. You can serve in the ministry of worship. However, one of the greatest places you can serve is out in the community. God wants His children to be involved in serving. I pray that your Christian life is not about receiving, but more about giving. This happens when we choose to serve. In this message, I want us to look at the key characteristics of someone who serves so we can begin to emulate these characteristics in our own lives if we aren’t already.

The Service Factor

The Christian life depends upon communion with God. It revolves around your prayer life. If it was important to Jesus, it should be important to us. In this message, we are going to look at a simple Scripture passage that will teach us how to pray like Jesus every day and give us steps we can follow to have a Christlike prayer life.

How To Pray Like Jesus Everyday

When it comes to “Simple Church,” we have to ask a very important question: Why do we actually believe the Bible? In many churches, their pulpits are filled with men who just tell stories, give pop psychology lessons, or create applications out of some story that they don't believe really happened. But that’s not the way we are. We believe the Bible from Genesis all the way through the book of Revelation. We believe the Bible is important because it is the manual for our lives. What we believe about the Bible is critical to our maturation and discipleship as believers. Therefore, we need to read the Bible (and not wait for the movie to come out). The Bible is really essential for joy, comfort, hope, direction, and clarity. With this in mind, I want to give you four reasons why we believe the Bible in hopes of encouraging you to read the Bible more and believe what it says.

Why We Believe In The Bible

As followers of Christ, we are commanded to live our lives like Jesus and to follow the example He set while He was here on earth. One of the ways Jesus set an example for us was by being baptized. And because Jesus was baptized, I believe it’s important that once you become a believer, you are baptized as well! Baptism matters, and today we’re going to look at what Scripture has to say about why it matters.

Baptism: Why It Matters

By diving into today’s key Scripture passage, I want to describe how to share your faith. I want to equip you and give you a tool on how to engage other people in a conversation about Jesus. As I say this, you might be thinking, “I am not that kind of person. I am not someone who can engage with someone. That's not my personality. It’s just not me. I would rather point them to a pamphlet or encourage them to go to church. I just have a hard time sharing.” If that is you, I would urge you to shift your mindset on sharing your faith because we have a direct command from the Father to do so. You became a believer because someone else shared their faith with you. And that’s how other people will become believers in Jesus, by hearing someone share their faith. Therefore, we need to take this responsibility of sharing our faith seriously.

How To Share Your Faith

We need to learn how to deal with giving because God wants it to make sense to us. As you read the Bible, you’ll notice that Jesus focused on giving quite a bit: 16 out of the 38 parables that Jesus spoke dealt with money. One out of every ten verses in the Gospels is about money. There are 500 verses on prayer and less than 500 verses on faith, but there are over 2,000 verses on money! So if the Lord valued how we handle our money this much, it’s clearly a topic we need to pay attention to and make sense of. For many people, they don't give because it doesn't make sense. However, today’s passage reveals why giving makes sense.

When Giving Makes Sense

There is a war going on inside of us all the time. We need to realize that this is part of the human condition. The Bible says very clearly that God is faithful. He will not allow you to go through any temptation that you can’t avoid, or that you don’t have the strength to endure. With that in mind, I want to share five basic principles concerning how to become triumphant over temptations. Some are geared more toward the flesh, while some are aimed at the desires in our hearts and lives. You and I need to embrace these principles because Jesus did, and He has given us that model.

Triumphant Over Temptation

Every church is different, but despite their differences, every church needs to practice the same things. Some churches might emphasize one doctrine over another doctrine, but the cardinal doctrines of the faith should be embraced by every evangelical church. we do church validates what we believe. We must be rooted in the proper doctrines. In today’s key passage of Scripture, we will read how Paul gives the church in Rome the “Ten Commandments for Doing Church.” As we learn more about these, let’s think about how we can apply them in our own lives, particularly when it comes to our involvement in church.

10 Commandments of Doing Church

Over the years, I have heard people use different excuses to justify why they are giving in a certain way, rather than doing what Scripture describes. This is a very personal and private thing. We give privately and yet collectively as the body of Christ. It is a personal decision and experience. We don't send bills to people; and we don't send notices that say you haven't been giving your tithe or offering. We don't send out letters like that. I know some congregations do that. I just want to teach you what the Bible says about your belongings, because this is part of the basics of living as a believer.

Bootcamp Basics For Believers - Part 6

The word “Ekklesia” is the Koine ́ Greek word for church. It is a compound word, “ek” (the preposition, which means “out of”) and “kaleo” (to call). The word “ekklesia” literally means “called out of ones.” In other words, we, as God's children, have been called out of the world to live for Christ. This is interesting: 90% of the time that the word “ekklesia” is used in the New Testament, it refers to the local church. Only 10% of the time, it refers to the body of Christ worldwide, the spiritual body of Christ. We are going to take a look at this word more closely in today’s message as we understand the importance of fellowship and community in the local church, and we’ll answer the question “Why do we need brotherhood in the church?”

Bootcamp Basics For Believers - Part 5

John wrote his three epistles so that you and I could know without a shadow of a doubt that we know Jesus, that we understand the gospel, and that we have a personal relationship with our Savior. If you read through first John, the author gives us seven questions to answer. The questions are there to challenge us but also to give us confidence that we really do belong to Christ as His followers.

Bootcamp Basics For Believers - Part 4

There are a lot of people who have already given their life to Christ. They are suited up. Many Christians have been trained up, but there is a problem. Many believers today need to get up. I want you to feel a little uncomfortable if you are not getting up. I want to talk to you who have been benchwarmers. You know Christ and you have been following Him for some time. You know the plays, but you are sitting on the bench; and you are not completely engaged. I don't know what is happening in your life right now, but I know that God doesn't have any benchwarmers! He doesn't want us to be sitting on the bench on the sidelines, talking to each other. He wants us to be ready to go. He wants us to either be on the field, or He wants us to be ready to get onto the field the moment he sends us into the game.

Bootcamp Basics For Believers - Part 3

Have you ever trained for something before? Maybe you trained to run a race, or to play a sport, or compete in an event. Whatever the case may be, the training most likely wasn’t easy. It was strenuous and difficult, possibly even painful. You had to push yourself further than you thought you could go for the sake of preparing your body and your mind for the upcoming challenge. As believers, we have training to do as well. We have to be prepared spiritually, mentally, and emotionally for all that we will face as we follow Christ. The Christian life is no cake walk. We will face difficulties and obstacles along the way, which is why we can’t skip out on training, learning, and becoming disciples if we want to walk out our faith well. There are several truths that apply to us as followers of Jesus when it comes to the tough times we will face in our lives, and I want us to look at a few of those today.

Bootcamp Basics For Believers - Part 2

Some of my most vivid memories from my childhood come from when I played football. I remember being so excited when I finally got the chance to suit up in junior high to play tackle football. But before the season began, I had to make sure I had all of the right equipment. I had to get cleats, shoulder pads, a helmet, a mouth guard. Each piece of equipment was important for success and protection as I played football. In a lot of ways, suiting up to play football is similar to suiting up as believers. The Bible talks about how as followers of Jesus, we are always in the midst of a spiritual battle. We are fighting against unseen forces every day to further the Kingdom of God and push back against the enemy. If we are going to be successful in this battle, it is important that we suit up. And to suit up correctly and effectively, we have to understand where we fit on God’s team. Let’s take a look at three things that are true of us as members of God’s army.

Bootcamp Basics For Believers - Part 1

Today, we wrap up our series on Revelation. The last chapter of the book of Revelation is about the final answer, God's final answer. It is His final invitation. So as we go through this final chapter today, I want to extend an invitation to you to respond to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Let’s dive in one last time to this incredible book in Scripture.

Revelation: The Final Answer - The Final Invitation

As we continue to look at the Book of Revelation, we are coming to the end. This is the next to the last sermon on the Book of Revelation series, and today we’re going to keep going in our conversation about heaven and all of the things we have to look forward to in eternity. May this message and this portion of Scripture we’re studying give you hope as you think about what comes after our time on earth is over.

Higher Aim with Dr. Curt Dodd

Higher Aim with Dr. Curt Dodd

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