The Epic Life - Bob Hallman

1 Corinthians chapter 12. Now, about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. You know that when you were pagan somehow or other, you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. Therefore, I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, "Jesus be cursed," and no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit. There are different kinds of gifts, but...

A particular type of gift, the elitist gift, is that if you don't have it, somehow, you're not really a believer, somehow, you're not really a Christian. Of course, those things aren't true, we know that. But as we watch that kind of abuse, the rest of us who believe in the gifts because they're scriptural,  they're laid out for us repeatedly in the Bible, the rest of us acknowledge them, but then...

Something's just not quite right when it's being abused, and we know that. And you can see the self -centeredness of that kind of usage of the gifts. And then what happens to a lot of us, I would say the larger part of the Christian church, because of that abuse, we've tended to kind of be like, off from the gifts. And we assent to them, we acknowledge them, we declare them biblical because they a...

 If we abuse the gifts, then we're doing damage to the body of Christ and certainly not using them for the purpose for which Christ gave them. them through the Holy Spirit. And so, I talked about that last week and we're building kind of a foundation from which we can understand the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And I talked about the fact that the foundation of the gifts is love. And we looked at the...

There's lots of abuse when it comes to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and almost always it results from a lack of love, a misunderstanding about the foundational truth of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And I'm going to get to that in a few minutes, so I'll explain that. It's almost always emphasizing the individual rather than the corporate body, where it's drawing a lot of attention to that person....

The Bible starts out in the book of John with John speaking of Jesus Christ.  He's the Messiah He was pre -existent. He is distinct from the father and the and the Holy Spirit and at the same time He is deity. He is God and so John starts out with his grandiose beginning of explaining who Jesus Christ is. Today we're going to be looking at John the Baptist, and an introduction to his life, also lo...

Very specifically, through Christ, to a certain lifestyle and to follow Him and to make disciples, we're going to go over some of this. But in the face of discouragement and Peter's own failure, he went back to what he was most comfortable with in the past, and he went fishing, and we talked about that life. last week. But, as Romans 11, 29 tells us, God's calling and gifts are irrevocable. And Go...

I've entitled the teaching today "Absent Without Leave." For those of you in the military with any military background, and most of you that don't have military background, you know what? What absent without leave means, it means a situation where a soldier commissioned to do a certain post or a certain responsibility leaves without the authorization of his commanding officer. There are actually a...

For Christ, it's not sightings, it's appearances. Why? Because Christ made himself absolutely visible. You know, he wasn't hiding. He wasn't transporting us up into heaven and dissecting our brain and switching parts and then putting us back and trying to to erase our memories so that we couldn't recall what happened to us. No, I mean it's like Jesus came right down and he said, "Here I am. Feel m...

You know, over the years and over the millennia, there have been a number of men who have claimed to be enlightened and to have the word of truth. I think about Muhammad, Siddhartha Gautama, who was Buddha. We have Confucius and, of course, Jesus Christ. Each of these men, men died and was buried.  But only one rose from the dead, never to die again, and his name was Jesus Christ   Enjoy the rest...

This is a pretty powerful passage.   There's an awful lot happening in a very condensed period of time. The hours are short before Jesus' death. He is about to give up everything for you and for me. He's going to pay the ultimate price for our sin that we can be reconciled to God. But before that happens, there are some final catastrophic disappointments that Jesus is going to face in his final ho...

Last message we talked about Jesus' commissioning prayer, and if you recall, the first three things that Jesus prayed for his disciples, for the growth and expansion of the kingdom, was protection. And we need it. We need protection from sin and the world, but we also need protection from the onslaught of the enemy.   So, Jesus prays right away for protection. Jesus is leaving. He protected them d...

"So with you, now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. In that day, you will no longer ask me anything.   I tell you the truth, my father will give you whatever you ask him in mind. my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive and your joy will be complete."   Enjoy the rest of the messa...

This is Jesus speaking with his disciples. And if you recall, he's in this upper room discourse with his disciples.   It's one of the longest stretches in Scripture of Jesus speaking. speaking and the most intimate of all his communication with his disciples. And it's going to go on for quite a while through this book. And we're going to be finishing up and probably in a couple of months. But he's...

You do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you. No servant is greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.   If they obeyed my teaching, they would obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me.   Enjoy the rest of...

And so we have an opportunity to kind of be participants in that very private time with his disciples, and it's been made very public so that we can participate in it through the Word of God.    Beginning in verse 1, Jesus is speaking. He says, "I am the true vine, and my father is the gardener." He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes...

The final chapters of John comprised primarily this very intimate conversation that Jesus is having with his disciples in the upper room and last week we looked at the fact that there is no other way except through Christ and Jesus.  We finished up that section talking about prayer and how we can know with certainty that our prayers will be answered if we're praying according to God's will and wit...

Trust also in me. In my Father's house or in many rooms, if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me so that you also may be with me. be where I am. You know the way to the place where I'm going. Thomas said to him, "Lord we don't know where you're going so how can we kno...

"My children, I will be with you only a little longer. "You will look for me." and just as I told the Jews, "so I tell you now where I am going, you cannot come. "A new command I give you, love one another. "As I have loved you, so you must love one another. "By this, all men will know that you are my disciples, "if you love one another."    Today we're talking about a number of things that are im...

In this message, Pastor Bob talks about a speaker named the Reverend Larry Jackson. He was speaking at this even and he talked about serving his wife. And he talked about encouraging the men who were there to be excelling in service to their families. Not just reciprocating service, but to excel far beyond the service of their wives. Not to compete, nothing along that line, but just to lay down th...

Costly Christianity is rarely lived out in the Christian community. It doesn't happen very often. I wish it happened more. It's costly because it means that it costs everything. It requires everything of us. Many people, even in the Christian community, live their Christian lives in such a way that they kind of have a foot in both worlds. They're living their lives. life and still pursuing all of...

As we touch on this passage today about Jesus being anointed by Mary, you have to remember what brought this occasion to pass in the first place. It was the resurrection of Lazarus. And we talked about how incredibly miraculous this was. Four days in the grave isn't a pretty sight. We kind of sanitized it in our American thinking.   But in reality, it was bad. It was very, very, very bad and very...

 Remember as we study today that God's primary purpose through Christ not only was to die on the cross but was to reveal the Father. That's what John tells us right in the beginning of the book is that he wanted to reveal the Father, make the Father known. And as I've shared with you over the last few weeks, the Holy Spirit's job at this point is to make Jesus known. He doesn't draw attention to h...

In life, scripture and teaching of the Bible, God is absolutely determined that he gets all the glory for everything.   He wants all the glory. He doesn't want to share it with us. He doesn't want to get pieces of it. He doesn't want portions of it. He wants every bit of it. He wants all of it. And for him to get the maximum glory, the situation most often has to be beyond human possibility.   Whe...

"I tell you the truth, the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way is a thief and a robber. The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep." is the shepherd of his sheep.   The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on a...