When I first started preaching I talked about obedience in every third sentence which proceeded from my mouth. As a former rebel I was convinced that the most important thing for the believer was to obey. While I would never back off my assertion that obedience is a key component of the Christian life, I do not speak of it as often now as I did back then. Why not, you ask? Because obedience apart from trust and love has little to no value in the Kingdom. We can teach dogs, doves and dolphins to obey… but we cannot teach them to love, and Christ has called us to love God with everything that we are and have. This message infuses the call to obey with the power to love. Transformation is the work of the Holy Spirit and the fruit of this is loving obedience unto Christ. Listen and be stretched, empowered and encouraged.
The Sustaining God
2 Thessalonians 1:1-12
May 17, 2015 • Jeff Lyle
The Finisher
Jeff Lyle
One of the easiest things for us to forget is that everything we have ever seen, heard or touched will cease to be in its current form. Christ is making all things new – even those things which have embedded themselves in our minds as being permanent. The work of redemption is not limited to the individual soul of a human. God is redeeming everything that He ever created and bringing it into the state it will remain in for all eternity. Jesus Christ provided the foundation for redemption in His sacrifice on Calvary. The fullness of that redemption will occur sometime after His return to earth when He finishes all that the Father began. This message goes to great lengths to help the listener see why the Second Coming of Jesus is near. There are no dates set, no spans of time marked off – but there is plenty of indication in the world today that the time of Christ’s return is at hand. The glorious news is that all believers will share in this victory. The sobering news is that many have been deceived into thinking that all is well between them and God. May the Holy Spirit grant discernment to all of us as we listen to Jesus’ prophecy about His own return.
The God of Unity
June 7, 2015 • Jeff Lyle
Father, Son & Spirit have a Trinitarian agenda for the children of God: to bring us into a relational oneness with each other. We have been made one with God through the offering of Jesus and that spiritual reality is also to become a functional reality among all believers. This message reveals how important it is for the Body of Christ to achieve the desire of God in this area. We are commanded to make unity a priority. If this will ever become the paradigm for each Christian, he or she will need to proactively lay self aside and begin to prioritize others. This message is especially helpful for local assemblies who are carrying out Christ's mission. We must endeavor together to maintain what the enemy seeks to destroy. Only those Christians who are committed to fostering and maintaining unity will be used for the glory of Christ. May the listener of this message consider how he or she is going to be an active part of this high calling from God.
Counterintuitive God
May 31, 2015 • Jeff Lyle
The strategies of God… are very odd. There is not a place in Scripture to where we might run for shelter if we are seeking to believe that God’s ways always make sense. Truthfully, the general tone of the Bible leads us to believe that God will usually act in ways that are counterintuitive to human thought and reason. He does things quite differently than we do. Repeatedly, we find in the Bible that, because God does not desire for humans to trust in anything less than Himself, He sets up circumstances to demand that we have no other means of aid than Him alone. He chooses unqualified people to do impossible tasks against insurmountable odds. This is just the way God operates. You should expect this to be true not only in your bible, but also in your present moment.