Fifteen minute presentation give during evangelistic campaign

<p>Fifteen minute presentation give during evangelistic campaign</p>

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The Home Place

Paul Rayne

The Real Super-Power

If you don't choose to jump off those rocks at Tally Lake, you're never gonna have the fun of flying through the air. And if you don't choose to do many things in life, you're not gonna experience the joy that God's got in store for us. But we went on and we looked at the fact that that choice power is not just enough when it comes down to it and you try to choose and self wants to have its way, self wins. And you cannot live a victorious Christian life just with choice power. We learned that we have to use our will that God has given us. We have to use our will to connect with God so that his power can flow into us. It's not by might. Remember that verse, not by our mighty efforts, not by power, not by willpower, but by my spirit says the Lord of hosts. That's Zacharia four verse six. Tonight we're gonna look at the real superpower. I enjoyed Lowell's presentation last night. How many of you enjoyed that America is indeed the superpower on this planet, and it is predicted there in the scriptures, but America is not the superpower of the universe. Just this planet. There is another superpower. And that superpower is Jesus Christ. Amen. Nothing is more powerful than Jesus and his love. Not the devil. Not all the evil in the world is more powerful than Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the winning team. Are you on the winning team? He will win in the end. You know, before you were even born, before any of us in this room were born, Jesus died so that you would have the opportunity to be on the winning team. Before you did anything wrong, Jesus died for you. It says, whilst we were yet sinners, Christ died for who? For us. Since you've been born, God has been doing everything he can to get your attention. He has your attention now, praise the Lord. But since you were born, as you were growing up as a child, as you went through the teenage years, maybe you went through rebellion like a lot of teenagers do. Whatever it was, Jesus was trying to get your attention. He wanted to win you. He was chasing after you. He was ordering your life to get your attention and to get you on his side. How's he doing? Has he got you? Has he got all of you? He never gives up. He's pursuing you. He's after you not to harm you, but because he wants you to learn how to plug into his power. Because when his power flows out of him and into us, it produces something in the human. When his spirit flows into a human being, do you know what that produces? Produces the fruit of the spirit. You know what that is? Love, joy, peace, patience. That's why God is after you, because he wants you to be filled with those things. He doesn't want us to be floundering around as we often do. You know, self driven on by the devil. The enemy of our souls has been trying to pull us away. Pull us away. There's been a war, a kind of another war in a way, but it's very similar. It's a war over you. God is trying to get you and the enemy is trying to get you, and it's you who chooses, who lives in your heart. You know, we looked last night at the will choosing Jesus, right? At that point, when temptation comes right in the face of temptation, and that's one ingredient, I would say that's the main ingredient in living a Christian life. But it's not the only ingredient. You know, my wife, she makes gorgeous cookies. I mean, they are great. But you know, if I sat down at the table and she gave me a, a plate of flour and oats and a, a glass of milk and some honey and whatever else goes into cookies, I don't know, it just wouldn't be the same. So we can't just go on one ingredient. If we want a well-rounded Christian life, then we need two more basic ingredients to add to the choice to add choosing to God. They are basic ingredients and you've all heard of them before. The first one is prayer. How many of you pray here? Wow, that's nearly all of us. If you don't, now's a great time to start prayer and the study of God's word, those two basic ingredients added to the power of choice, makes a winning recipe for a Christian life. You know, prayer is much more, prayer is kind of degenerated in this age. Prayer is much more than reading out of a book, the back of a hymnal or whatever. Prayer is much more than reciting the Lord's prayer. It's good to recite the Lord's prayer, but real communion with God is more than that. You know, I went to school in England. They start you at age four, don't they, Frank four. They start you at four and you finish at about 18 and every day from age four to 18, I recited the Lord's Prayer. I was not a Christian and it didn't mean a thing to me. Prayer is more than just saying words. Prayer is communication with God. You know, in my prayer time now, I talk to God. I ask him about things that are gonna happen in that very day. Things I know are coming my way. I ask him to lead me. And I even ask God to talk to me. I mean, I don't mean I, I'm gonna hear his voice, but just pricking my conscience. Let me illustrate this to you. Its a couple of winters ago and a friend of mine was plowing his driveway and his plow broke. Now I have a a 10 horsepower walk behind snowblower. And so he said, could he borrow it? I says, no trouble, I'll bring it over. So my utility trailers, one of those Costco trailers, you know, flat snowmobile type trailers, but I put sides on it, about 18 inches high and it's a tip trailer. So I pulled the pin back the car up to it. I pulled the pin, it sloped down. I got the snowblower. It's self-driven up. It went and then it went. So now it's in there and I'm thinking, should I tie it down? I thought, well, the sides are pretty high. And that snowblower weighs about, I don't know, two or three, 400 pounds. I won't go very fast. It'll be all right. But you know, I had a thought, fill it up with gas. Now, that morning I had asked God in my prayer time, I had asked God to direct me, talk to me. And now he was. And I didn't hardly recognize it, fill it up with gas. I thought it's got plenty of gas in it. You know what I'm doing now. I'm actually talking to, I'm arguing with God. What a terrible thing to do. So I put the back on. So now this snowblower has got all four sides and it's hooked up to the car and I think I'm gonna go. And I had the thought again, put some gas in it and finally praise the Lord. Finally, I realized that could be the Lord telling me to put gas in it. So I go back to the garage to get the gas can. The garage is empty now the car and the trailer, utility trailer is out on the driveway. I walk into the garage and there right in the middle of the floor, all on its own is the pin that would stop the trailer doing that. When I got to about 50 mile an hour, oh my God. And immediately I thought my snowblower, my $1,000 snowblower could have just been a heap of scrap metal if I hadn't, if heated the cord of the Lord, does the Lord talk to you? Don't answer that. I'll answer that. The Lord is ever sending messages to every single one of us every day. Do you listen? If you ask him Him prayer to tune you in. That's the real purpose of prayer, to connect us with God. It's not just something we do. And then say our amen. And then we say, see you tomorrow. God, he can go with us through the day. We can talk to him as we go. He will save you for many a scrape, snowblower. Whatever the situation you fill in your situation, real prayer, real communion with God about your actual day ahead is a way of connecting us with heaven's power. The other basic ingredient was prayer and study. What should we study? What are we studying at this seminar? Man's philosoph philosophies or God's word? God's word. It's the only book left, I think, on planet earth that you can trust entirely. There's so much stuff out there. I have got into the habit over the last 10 years or so of every morning before I eat, before I do anything in the day, I get up early and I open God's word and I sit down, have a lazy boy chair at home. I pull that lever up, go my feet, and I sit there and I read. Sometimes I'll just read a chapter. Sometimes I'll just read a couple of verses. What does this mean to me? You read the story of Jesus in Gethsemane and just try and take each point and imagine it. You hardly even need a movie. You can imagine what was going on. You got God's word. Open your heart's open. That is communion with God. You know the Bible, it tells us, John 6 63 says The words that I speak to you, they are spirit. They are life. God's word is very powerful. But if it just sits closed on the shelf or back at church on the pew, is he doing his any good? What if your husband or your father or your mother or your children are reading the Bible? Does that do you any good? Who has to read the Bible for it to do? You good? You do. I do. Open the word for yourself. That's one of the beauties of a seminar like this. Do you know how many verses we looked up last night? I don't know how many. Must have been about 40. I'm was telling my family it was just all over the place. Line upon line, precept upon precept. Hear a little there a little. Study it for yourselves. You know, in Acts 17, 11, the bells got a a vote of confidence from the Bible writer, the berean. They'd listened to the Apostle Paul, the people who have lived in Berea. They'd listened to him with readiness of mind. The Bible tells us, but then they did something else. It says they searched the scriptures daily. How often? Daily. Daily, to see whether these things were. So they were checking up on the Apostle Paul to see if he was preaching the truth. Do you think you need to check up on Pastor Hargraves? Amen. Yes. He says, amen. I say Amen. Check it out. Read the handout. Go to those verses yourself. There's nothing fallible. Man is fallible. God is infallible. Amen. Trust in the Lord, the arm of flesh, the Bible tells us will fail us. Preachers will let us down. Maybe you've experienced that already, but God's word will never fail. Matthew four, four says, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that precedes out of the mouth of God. We can know more live in this sin polluted world without prayer and study than we could go scuba diving without tanks. You understand? It's just not possible. And if you are trying, you're just gonna get blown around by the currents and the winds of doctrine. You know our theme song? Do you like our theme song? Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face, and the things of this earth will grow strangely dim. Your family won't be able to understand it. You might not even be able to understand it yourself. In the light of his glory and grace, his glory and His grace is found in communication with him. We talk to him in prayer. He talks to us in his word, two-way communication. Real open-hearted communication. That's how we connect with heaven. This media was brought to you by Audio verse, a website dedicated to spreading God's word through free sermon, audio, and much more. If you would like to know more about Audio verse or if you would like to listen to more sermons, please visit www.audio verse.org.

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The Real Super-Power

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Sound Doctrine