Graceriver

The Gospel is not 'Behave' but 'Behold!' for to see how much has been given to you in Christ is to see what God sees. It is to see what God believes. It is to see the One faith, the only faith; the faith of God and to find that faith in you.

What greater awakening can come to the Church, than for us to awaken again to the reality that the Cross was not a failure, that Jesus' death and resurrection changed everything and that old things, like our life ruled by sin and death, have passed away and all things, like our lives before God have become new.

God is so big that unless God reveals Himself, we cannot know Him and unless He gives Himself to us, we cannot receive Him. Christmas is when we celebrate that He did both; He caused us to know Him by giving Himself to us, first by His Son and then by His Spirit.

In heaven the Kingdom is not a future hope but a present reality. And so to be filled with the Spirit of God, is to find yourself living/being in that eternally present Kingdom. It is by men and women living in the Spirit, seeing by the Spirit, speaking by the Spirit, that His Kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven.

In every generation of the Church, when God's people start to see as God sees; the abundance of His presence with them, they rise to be proclaimers of His praise and trumpeters of His Kingdom.

it was never the gospel; that God wanted us to live as if real life started sometime in the future, in a place called heaven and that this life was simply a waiting room until you discover whether you have done enough to get your name on the roll. He never wanted us to live a life becoming with Him, but a life being with Him.Eternal life is not getting to heaven one day. Eternal life is knowing the God who is with you today

The spirit of the world can only say “Could be” The Spirit that comes from God says “IS”. To live filled with “the spirit of this world”, is to live trying to be a Christian. To live filled with the Spirit that comes from God, is to live being a child of God, for the Spirit persuades our spirits that we are the children of God. Session 1 of 3 messages on the subject "Raised with Christ" given in Inverness in June 2024

“You cannot thrive in your marriage if you keep going out at weekends acting as if you are single. What would you say to a friend who got married recently but has decided that every weekend he is still going to go out on the town with all his single mates and do everything they do? That is what the Holy Spirit is saying to the Church, the New Creation. How can you reveal the new creation life, the married to God life to this generation, when every weekend you get together in church with people who speak to you as if you are single? “

River City Worship from Pentecost Sunday. "I heard a sound from heaven, like the sound of many waters"

A life-giving message contrasting the futility of self, with living from the life God breathes into us in Christ. "Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." John 12:24. This message was given in River City Church on Saturday May 28th 2024.

His words have such power, that by the time you hear them, everything He said is already accomplished.

To preach the Gospel in the power of the Spirit is to find yourself, much to your own surprise, speaking to what is not, as if it is. Of all the voices that are speaking to you in this world, the voice of God is the only one that does not speak to you according to your natural state.

Live reconciled. Live from the party, not from the field. Live from His acceptance, not for His acceptance. It is not your job to reconcile yourself to God. God has done that through the man Christ Jesus.

Let His life do the work. Let His life be done unto you according to His Word to you. Let the power of the Gospel call up in you, His life.

All who want a Saviour, have a Saviour; Jesus Christ

“You cannot carry the weight of trying to save yourself from death. That burden will crush you and steal from you your innocence; the joy and wonder at just being alive. What you need is a Father, who gives you a life greater than death, and so lifts from you the burden of trying to save yourself."

A conversation with Jeff and Roger Fields on the beauty and power of the Gospel and our journey in understanding that when we dilute down the generosity of God, we take the metanoia out of the message.

Here is the reckless scandalous gospel in all its glory…. God thinks you are worthy of giving His life to.... so He did! That's not advice. That's news and news on such a scale as to awaken those dead to God as He truly is, that they may see the true knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.

When you grow up in a world that doesn't believe in a Saviour, such a world can only teach you to be your own saviour.

If we don't grow to know Him as the God who loves His enemies, we will never love ours.

Only when your heart and mine is persuaded that the Father has not left us to save ourselves, will our attempts to save ourselves through our own piety be put to rest

The natural mind, apart from the Holy Spirit, does not have and cannot have a true image of the Father.

If Christ and His work is not laid as the foundation of our new life, we will continue to put far too much weight on our own performance/obedience as the foundation for our lives. Of course my obedience to God's direction is important, but what I want to show you this morning is that my obedience is not the foundation of my new life in Christ.

Right the way through the Bible, God's voice calls life into being. But that being, is not being an individual, it is being with God.

Everything that religion says God demands from you, He has already supplied in Christ.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ never leaves you in the shadow of your own performance.

In heaven, there is no one trying to become anyone, for all have found their being with God. The Kingdom of heaven is not the realm of becoming. It is the realm of being.

We have lost the wonder of the Gospel.

10 minute excerpt from a talk given to the Ascension Ministries Council of the Apostolic Church UK on "Shifting from Church-centric to Christ-centric discipleship.

In the first Adam our life fell, from being to becoming. In the last Adam our life rose, from becoming to being. In Christ our being is in God.

We preach the riches of God's mercy and grace and we will keep preaching that until we all are completely healed of grasping for life and see our lives rise, from becoming to being, for the mind of Christ is not a mind trying to become someone, but being someone.

The Gospel preached in the power of the Spirit does not to ask people to produce the Christian life, but calls and equips them to participate in the life of God.

I have spent enough years believing what people believe about me. Now I want to believe what God believes about me. The Gospel is the proclamation of what God believes about you and me and every person we will ever meet and it is good news because The Gospel preached in the power of the Spirit, does not ask men to produce the Christian life, but invites and equips them, to participate in the life already given; Christ.

The reason so many in the nations remain in darkness is that so many in the church live as light salesmen. We preach a gospel that makes promises to people of light, if only they will pay a price. But there is no power in preaching a gospel that points people to their behaviour as their hope of light. There is no power in a gospel that points people to themselves! There is no power of the Spirit in such a man-centred gospel to bring people out of darkness because we have not been given God's Spirit that we would be promisers of the light, but that we would be the light.

Singing the scriptures in River City this morning. John 15:13 "Greater love has no man than this, than he lay down his life for his friends.' and 1John 4:19 "We love Him because He first loved us." Thank you Nicola and Joshua.

God does not regard salvation as anything less than a living relationship with Him. Grace is not a gift that God gives, so that you can continue living by yourself, because Grace is not a thing, He is a person. Yes grace is a gift, but it is not a thing that you receive like a gift left on your doorstep. Such a gift that is a thing can be a blessing to you, but it cannot bring you into a living relationship. You can get a new car left at your door, that someone else has paid for and so is freely given to you, but that is not a true picture of grace because you can't have a living relationship with a car.

The gospel is not the news of what might be, if you. It is the news of what is, because He, Christ! • The Gospel is not the proclamation of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that people may partake of that knowledge and then do something about the evil in their lives. • The Gospel is the proclamation of a dream fulfilled, a tree of life, that God has done what you could never do, no matter how much you know about good and evil!

The gospel is not the promise of the dawn, it is the dawn rising on the darkness. It is not the promise of glory that dispels the darkness, it is the present glory in us, that dispels the present darkness in the world and that is why right now, when the world has never seemed such a dark place, has never been so blinded and deafened by man-made light and sound, this is not the hour for the Church to be captivated by earthly events, but to be setting her eyes above, where her real life is (Col.3:1-4) for from there, the heavenly realm, the realm of the Spirit, today, is being trumpeted the eternal call of the Spirit to the bride across the world "Arise, shine, for your light has come!"

Until you know your true worth to God, you cannot say you know who you are.

"I" can never be like God, because God is not an "I".

Countless believers have deferred their hope of salvation to a place one day, rather than a life today. Better days are always coming, but never seem to arrive. To know God as your father today, is to know today the life of His son, the life that is content in all situations, the life that no longer looks at circumstances to see if God is still my father or not.

Man-made religion can only present us with a god like us; a god who is never satisfied.

"God's not asking you to make your life new, by leaving your past behind, because in Christ, He has already left your past behind! "

"The best the voice of a manager can do, is tell you who you could become. Only the voice of a Father, can tell you who you are. We have 10,000 managers, but not many fathers!"

When you are full of the Spirit of Him who is no longer counting people's sins against them, you will no longer count their sins against them

"So then, no one is to be boasting in people. For all things belong to you, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come; all things belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.' 1Cor 3:21-23

f the Gospel your heart has believed has not astonished you, then it was not violent enough to shake the foundation of your old mindset; I. If the foundations of our captivity are not shaken, then there is no lasting freedom. The life you are believing in, is the life you are living.

Jesus lived in the IS of the eternal life of the Father, Son and Spirit and from there, He called men and women out of the darkness of religion, the world where everything is becoming but nothing is, into this eternal life, this eternal IS, where you are who you are by the grace of God. That is the Christian life, the Christ life.

He never had a plan to save the world through our obedience. His plan was to save the world through His love

God is not expecting people to come up with repentance and faith in Christ ‘by themselves’, because ‘by themselves’ is the very condition that they are perishing from.

What would that look like, if we gave the same grace to the stranger, as we do to our own children.