Jeff And Amy Address Peace And Spiritual Mothering
Jeff & Amy Lyle
Endurance
Jeff Lyle
The Christian life was never designed by God in a way that you and I could live it out apart from His power. That’s right, God designs the lives of Jesus-followers to be impossible without His supernatural strength. We are promised, trouble, suffering and tribulation. Most modern Gospel preachers will not tell you that. But it is true. In this famous passage from Hebrews 12, we are given the greatest example of endurance found anywhere in the Bible. Jesus Christ not only empowers our ability to press on in life, He actually shows us how to do it by example. This message will remind all of us that it is always too soon to quit. We must press on for the glory of Jesus in our lives. When we do, we will find that He is our very present help when trouble finds us.
The Glory Of Decrease
Jeff Lyle
We have heard since childhood that God loves us and has a great plan for our lives. While those words are factual, they are certainly incomplete. The modern, American view of God having “a great plan” for our lives somewhat lends itself to us believing that God is committed to our lives being easy, prosperous, unhindered and free of trouble. Nothing could be further from the truth. From the life of the Prophet Elijah, we see how God works in the lives of those people whom He intends to use for His own glory. Elijah would eventually become known as the greatest prophet in Israel’s history. That was God’s great plan for his life! But for that plan to become reality, Elijah had to experience the painful, difficult process of the glory of decrease. We should expect the same in our own lives.
Will You Trust Me?
Jeff Lyle
God is always working to strengthen our trust-muscle. As in the physical realm, heavy weights are used to stretch and break down muscle each time we workout. When those broken down muscles repair themselves per God’s design, they are tighter, bigger and stronger. The fact of the matter is that physical muscles do not grow bigger without weight, resistance and breaking down. This is also true in the spiritual realm. God intentionally uses heavily weighted circumstances to strengthen our trust. Resistance makes our trust-muscle larger. He breaks us down from where we were in order to build us up to where He has appointed us. The stretching and heaviness are the methods He employs to build our ongoing trust in Him. Right now, there are plenty of heavy forces working to break us down. God wants to use those forces to build us up. This message reminds us that God is not working on us from a distance, but that He is actually as close to us in the Spirit as any personal trainer would be to us in the gym. He calls us to deeper levels of trust and empowers us to respond to Him by promising to always be by our side.