York Alliance Church Message Podcast

Despite disagreements, cultural barriers, and apparent setbacks, the gospel advances and the church is strengthened.

The early church proved that humans tend to add prerequisites to God’s grace. The Jerusalem Council recognized this and determined that the door was open for all people everywhere to follow Jesus no matter their starting point.

On their first missionary journey, Paul and Barnabas found a deeply divided response to the Gospel. Instead of being stopped by confusion and persecution, they pushed through and found an open door to the Gentiles.

Paul and Barnabas were sent out by the church in Antioch and immediately faced push-back from those to whom they were sent. This missionary movement is marked by Spirit-empowered resilience and simple obedience.

We can approach the sovereign God in a variety of ways. We can be confused, religious, or rebellious, but He calls us to expectant faith.

While Paul is the leading character in the second half ot Acts, Barnabas was the vessel that God used to platform Paul. Every part of the body of Christ is needed for the gospel to go forward.

Throughout time, humanity has strongly leaned towards division and polarization. Creating a new kind of society, the Holy Spirit bridges that gap and invites us into it.

Jesus is constantly reaching out to the least likely of us and inviting us to follow Him. When we realize that we are the least likely, that's when we're the most likely to follow.

The God of the Bible doesn't just rule over us and manage the world around us--He is also deeply personal. God speaks to us in surprising and powerful ways, and He uses us to speak powerfully to one another and to the world around us.

Our truest worship is living before others the life that Jesus invites us into. We are empowered by the Spirit and sent out to those Jesus calls "the least of these." As we demonstrate the Gospel through our lives, we should expect to experience the same results as Jesus did.

Like Jesus, we as His apprentices are anointed by the Spirit and minister throughout our lives in the power of the spirit. The question we must ask is: What is standing in the way of the Spirit's power in my life?

The breath of God filled our first parents in the Garden of Eden, and He also breathes life into us as His people. Through birth and re-birth, we experience the grace of the Spirit breathing life into us. This same thing is true for us as a church. We are reliant on the Spirit of God giving us life as we demonstrate the Gospel to the world around us.

Water is one of the Scriptural motifs that often represented the presence of the Spirit. His presence means a loss of control, but He is also the only true source of life. When we dwell in His presence, we experience real life. (Choice)

It is to our benefit that Jesus left because, then, the Holy Spirit was sent to fill us with His very presence and love. This enables us carry out His mission with the power He intends us to have.

We each receive a unique calling and gifting from God. This gifting must be expressed in community for our mutual benefit and the fulfillment of His mission.

Paul invites all followers of Jesus to pursue the stuff of the Spirit. As we seek Him and move from spectators to participants, we receive what we need for the building up of each other.

When we recognize that we're invited into the Trinitarian community of love, following Jesus in community becomes the natural outflow of our lives.

Dancing requires partners submitting to one another. The Trinitarian community of love is a dance where the persons of God submit to one another. As apprentices of Jesus, we've been called to reflect this dance in our love for one another.

The doctrine of the Trinity can be incredibly confusing and can quickly seem irrelevant to our lives as apprentices of Jesus. However, the last extended teaching of Jesus with His disciples was rich with Trinitarian language. Through Jesus we have somehow been invited into the glory of the Trinitarian God, and the fact that we can't exactly understand that shouldn't eliminate the joy and wonder it...

When declared faithfully, the gospel is a counter-cultural message to a world that is moving in a different direction. While we should never seek out persecution, we should be prepared for the fact that not everyone will be receptive to the counter-cultural message of the gospel. However, for those who will receive it, the gospel is the only news that can bring hope.

In some of Jesus' final words, He told the disciples that they would do even greater things than He did. Demonstrating the gospel through our actions is a vital component to preaching the gospel. Love, justice, compassion and the supernatural work of the Spirit should regularly animate our day-to-day living.

Jesus referred to life in the Kingdom of God as the "abundant life." As we increasingly live life in the Kingdom as apprentices of Jesus, we are also inviting those around us into that life. The nature of our lives should beg the question from others: How do we live with hope?

While the essential nature of the gospel never changes regardless of time and place, the way that we present the gospel must change. Our current cultural context presents unique challenges and opportunities for declaring the message of Jesus. Understanding our context is a vital component to proclaiming the gospel clearly and effectively.

Salvation and discipleship are always works of God, not man. While we have a part, it's vital for us to recognize where God is already working and to join Him in His work. Like Jesus, we are called to join the Father in the work that He is already doing in the lives of those in the world around us.

While Jesus never sinned, he was known as a "glutton" and a "drunkard" by the religious elites of His day. If Jesus had a particular strategy of evangelism, it seemed it was regularly eating and drinking with people who were far from God. As apprentices of Jesus, we are called to follow His example and open our tables and lives up to those in the world around us.