Covenant Life Church

Last week, we started a new series called “Three Funerals from Revival,” which explores the idea that some things have to die in our lives before we can truly live a life in pursuit of God’s glory. Last week’s message was about how everything in the Kingdom of God happens through humility. Arrogance and self-centered living will never lead you to the glory of God. Together, we learned that pride m...

The Lord has been teaching us to draw near to Him, to climb higher up the mountain and get in the jet stream of spiritual effectiveness. There are many accounts in the Bible that describe the glory of God and its effect on people, but before we can start talking about God’s glory, we have to remember the “replacement doctrine.” As we’ve learned, it’s not enough to stop doing the wrong thing, you h...

As we close out the year, a lot of people are preparing resolutions for the new year, coming up with things they’d like to do more or less often over the next 12 months. The sad reality, however, is that most people give up on their resolutions by the end of January. Could it be that these changes — many of which are positive or admirable — don’t stick because we’ve failed to include God in the de...

So much about the Christmas account is miraculous and supernatural that it gets hard to keep track of every thing. We are all familiar with the miracle of the virgin birth, the divine communication with Joseph through dreams, the angelic appearance to the shepherds and the miracle of the Christmas star. However, there is one miracle that we might have overlooked. Although it is not typically the b...

The first prophecy about the coming of Jesus was in Genesis 3 when God tells the serpent that Eve’s Offspring will bruise the head of the serpent’s offspring. That was thousands of years before the birth of Christ. There were many more prophecies over hundreds of years, and for the previous 400 years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the Jewish people had heard absolutely nothing from heaven. Th...

This week, we’re ending our four-part series called Covenant Living. The series has been based on three requests Moses makes while talking to God in Exodus: revelation, habitation and manifestation. These three components form the foundation of what it looks like to live in covenant with Him. As we’ve learned, a covenant is a holy agreement between God and His people. Those of us who have surrende...

In Exodus 33, we see Moses having a conversation with God after the children of Israel enter into a covenant — or holy agreement — with Him. Two weeks ago, we focused on the first part of this conversation and the first request that Moses made, which demonstrated a desire for a life-changing revelation. This is a key element to covenant living; we have to understand the ways of God, which were sho...

Last week, we started a series called the Covenant Living Series. We talked about how Jesus fulfilled the old covenant and established a new covenant, in which He was the sacrifice and His blood paid the price. As we learned, a covenant is a holy agreement between God and His people, and in Exodus 33, we read about what happened following the covenant that God entered into with the people of Israe...

Our church was established in 1943 as the Bremen Church of God. Pastor Rone Norton had been preaching in an old brush arbor, and they finally got the money to build a building right around the corner. Around 1968, they built what we call the Coley Building and relocated their church. When the pastor left about 30 years later, John Butler and the pastor he was serving at the time decided to come to...

Pilots prefer to take off in a headwind because it allows them to climb better. As a matter of fact, naval aircraft carriers turn into the wind when they are getting ready to launch their planes. Headwinds don’t scare an experienced pilot, but once they get off the ground, they need to move from a headwind to a tailwind. They have to move from one air mass — or one river of air — to another. The p...

John 15:1-8, which has been used as the primary scripture or a supporting passage multiple times this year, is all about being IN Jesus. These verses talk about the importance of abiding, dwelling, lingering and getting into lock-step with Jesus. It’s all about losing yourself in His character, nature, calling and empowerment. It’s more than being around Him, knowing about Him or being acquainted...

Healthy things grow, and growing things change. However, change requires intention, and too often, we respond to these changes with fear. When we’re afraid, we put up walls and push back from other people, but growing deeper with God requires us to put ourselves in difficult and uncomfortable situations. This week, Pastor John delivers an honest call to authenticity and embracing change in our rel...

If there is one thing that hangs heavy in the minds of believers, it’s the will of God. We want God’s will to shine out like a lighthouse, so we will know when there’s danger. We want to hear the course corrections clearly and precisely. People are often terrified they’re going to miss the will of God, and sometimes, they’re terrified to find it. There is a way for us to find the will of God shini...

People tend to think of vision as something exclusive to churches, businesses or organizations, but you can apply the same principles to your ministry, family or personal life. How do you find a God-pleasing direction for your life? Start by asking right questions. Pastor John consistently prays about God’s vision for Covenant Life and what we should do as a church. In response to these prayers, h...

In Mark 2, we see Jesus going back to His ministry headquarters in a place called Capernaum. The people of the town found out He was there, and soon, there was standing room only at the house He was in. Jesus was teaching the people when four men walked up, carrying a paralyzed friend of theirs on a mat. They wanted to take him to Jesus, but there was a crowd of people around Him. As a result, the...

For about a year and a half, God has been steadily sending our church messages that challenge us to get healed. We’ve talked about what it means to get healthy, forgive ourselves and those in our past, get strong in the Lord and tap into Him and the Holy Spirit as our power source. This week, we’re talking about the purpose for all that healing, strength and power by talking about the “main thing....

Last week, we started talking about the connection between prayer and peace. The foundational truth of this message was that you can pray or worry, but you can’t do both. We discovered that prayer isn’t about persuasion; it’s about permission. It’s not about convincing God to move on your behalf; it’s about surrendering control of it to Him. Additionally, we found out that God wants us to pray abo...

Throughout the Bible, God talks a lot about peace, and it makes sense. He identifies Himself as a God of peace, and Jesus is called the Prince of Peace. The Bible also talks about worry and anxiety a lot because they are the enemies of peace. God loves us, and He wants us to walk in peace. During our last series, we talked about the replacement doctrine, which means that we have to replace our neg...

Over the past six weeks, we’ve been in the “Prescription for the Promise” Series, exploring the three, two-word imperatives that the Lord gave us in a prophetic word a few months ago: Get Healthy, Get Strong and Get Ready. There were great promises contained in that prophecy, but it was clear that they were contingent upon us carrying out the commands — or prescriptions — God provided. We spent a...

We’ve been in a series called “Prescription for the Promise,” in which we’ve been talking about getting healthy and getting strong. This week, we’re continuing to focus on what it means to Get Strong. The central idea is to get strong in the Lord’s power, and we’ve explored many aspects of spiritual strength — all of them important, valid and backed up by multiple scriptures. In Ephesians 3:19, Pa...

Covenant Life received a prophetic word a few months ago, in which the Lord told us to do three thingsL Get Healthy, Get Strong and Get Ready. We have been referring to these as prescriptions that we need to fill in order to see the promises that God said were coming, and we’ve been looking at each one throughout our current series, “Prescription for the Promise.” We have to actually do what He te...

This week, we are continuing our series called “Prescription for the Promise.” The Lord spoke a word to Covenant Life a few months ago that included some wonderful promises He has in store for us, but it also includes three things that we need to do. The fulfillment of the promises is contingent upon our willingness to do the three prescriptions He gave us: Get Healthy, Get Strong and Get Ready. T...

This week, we’re continuing our series called “Prescription for the Promise,” exploring the prophetic word about our church that the Lord gave to Pastor John a few months ago. Within this prophecy, there are three kinds of statements. There are descriptions that tell us what’s happening and predictions about things to come in the future, but there are also three commands we must do to see the prom...

Last week, we began a brand new series called “Prescription for the Promise,” which seeks to unpack three commands within the prophecy that God spoke to and about Covenant Life a few months ago. He said that we need to get healthy, get strong and get ready. By doing these things, we will be prepared for the promises that He also spoke to us: victory, growth, freedom and repentance. With Get Health...

A few weeks ago, Pastor John released a prophetic word for Covenant Life. Part of that message is descriptive; it describes the breaking and shaking of strongholds many people in our church are experiencing right now. Some of it is predictive; it predicts that the result of the sharking and breaking will be resolution, freedom, repentance, victory, revival and growth. Another part of the word is p...