Wednesday Night June 20, 2012
scriptures: Revelations 1, Revelations 2
audio file: click to open in a new window or right-click to download
Notes
Living as a Christian is about faith, but that faith will speak through your works.
Some of these people were on track. Some had gotten off track. What we will see is that people’s work is what is spoken of.
What do people see in our lives.
Revelation 1:1-8, 10-11
Time is short. Don’t delay getting things correct in God. The time is at hand.
Consider all that you have heard in the word over the days and years. Ask, how much of it do I keep?
Talking about Jesus and what He did. He came and died so that we can be clean. In sin, we are dirty, but Jesus came to wash and clean us up.
God is here to bring us life and a great ever after.
God is coming back. We have to be ready. A lot of people are not prepared.
Everything starts and ends with God.
Revelation 2:1-7
God is talking to people that are in church. Know that He knows your works. What can God say that He knows that you’ve done?
Many people cannot live up to these descriptions.
Can’t bear evil – are you cool with letting evil or hatefulness hanging around you? Trying to hang around bad and prove how strong you are.
vs 3 People who have been laboring and not quitting for God.
God wants you to be better, to be right. If there is something that is not right, it can make everything go bad. He hasn’t forgotten our labors, but He still wants to make sure that we are corrected, so we can be right. He loves us. We cannot make it on our own without God!
It is good to say that you love God, but it can’t be all talk.
Let your game speak for itself. Many people have no game in God.
Do you study the plays in God, get advice, seek for answers to make sure you are right?
Sometimes people get so focused on something that they forget God.
When you first get saved, you want to talk to God and talk about Him.
God instructed them that they had to get back to seeking God as their first love, even though He has listed what they have been doing for Him.
They need to get right and get right quickly, or else life would end.
What do you think He is telling you and you don’t even have a list that long?
To get right with God you have to repent.
You don’t get older and feeble in God. You may have physical limitations, but your faith doesn’t get weaker. You need to think about how you were and ask are you stronger, wiser or are you burned out on God?
You have to keep looking forward to win in God. Are you trying to get the victory in God or aiming for an honorable mention?
If you strive and overcome, you will see the good things that God has in
store for us in heaven.
vs 8 – 11 Smyrna
This message is from God who controls life –
A Christian life is not glamorous or popular. If you are trying to get that kind of recognition, that is not what this life is about.
This life requires sacrifice, maybe giving up your dreams.
He told them that even though He knows their tribulation and suffering, they are rich in Him. He’s got all of you covered. Nothing is lacking.
Some of the church will go to prison, being tried and tested because of their faith in the Lord.
Imagine if you were in the state penitentiary for Christ, would you be alright?
Are you willing to live for God only if you don’t have to give up comfort or something you want or value.
Living for God is so serious that denying Christ is worse than dying. You don’t want to turn your back on God.
Are you being faithful through what you are going through? Some of the stuff that we go through is really small in the eyesight of God. It may look big to us and to our neighbors, but to God it is small.
It may be th case that what you think is life and living is not living. If you are not in Christ, all you have to look for is death.
You want to be an overcomer in Christ. Someone God can count on and trust in. You’ve gotta have game in God, someone He will put into the game.
Don’t close up your ear, do take heed to the word. Then you won’t fall into the second death.
Think of the works and the things you are trying to accomplish in God.
Are you that serious that you would rather be strong and faithful than to turn back on God?
God doesn’t want you to be without Him and without hope.