Revelations 4 and 5
Jesus alone is Worthy
“Finney stated, “This inconsistency, the fact that they prayed so much and were not answered, was a sad stumbling block to me.” Please take note, one of the great witnesses to our being people of faith is that we have answers to prayers. In fact, I like to challenge our people with this charge: You owe God answers to your prayers, and you owe people answers to your prayers. I know it sounds like a wrong statement to make. But consider this. We tend to think statements like that are wrong because we think our unanswered prayers are God’s fault, which we call “God’s sovereignty.” I say it isn’t. We must come to the realization that the lack of answers to prayers is not on God’s end of the equation. It is on ours. God’s covenant and promise are more than adequate for us to have a lifestyle filled with answered prayers. The adjustment is up to us.” —Bill Johnson
Discussion Question - Share a moment where you were
“Worldliness is what any particular culture does to make sin to seem
, and seem strange. The normalization of sin is what happens in cultural . Worldliness puts pressure on the church to to IT’S image.” —Jon Tyson
Insistent, Consistent, Persistent
INSISTENCE: Intensity (assertiveness)of one’s values, actions, and demands. Strong conviction. MUST. (“When I pray, I’m going to believe God and I’m not going to doubt.” “I’ll be treated with respect “and “Me and my house will serve the Lord.”) It’s a strength of will for a value or virtue. What are you values, your virtues, what would you write down?
CONSISTENCE: Maintaining a quality of pattern or behavior over time. Habitual. Your insistency turns into an established behavior. Reliability. “I’m a man of my word.” You become known for your insistence, your convictions, your values, your holiness. Creating integrity.
PERSISTENCE: In living in the face of obstacles or difficulties, I continue in my values and behaviors. (there will be resistance)
“In other words, the insistency of one’s
Discussion Question - What’s a value or virtue that you
“Jesus said some people hear the word of God, and a desire for God is awakened in their hearts. But then, “as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life” (Luke 8:14). In another place he said, “The desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful” (Mark 4:19). “The pleasures of life” and “the desires for other things” —these are not evil in themselves. These are not vices. These are gifts of God. They are your basic meat and potatoes and coffee and gardening and reading and decorating and traveling and investing and TV-watching and Internet-surfing and shopping and exercising and collecting and talking, And all of them can become deadly substitutes for God….The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night.” —John Piper’
A man by his sin may waste himself, which is to waste that which on earth (himself) is most like God. This is man’s greatest tragedy and God’s heaviest grief.” —AW Tozer
“The best means of resisting the devil is, to destroy whatever of the world remains in us, in order to raise for God, upon its ruins, a building all of love. Then shall we begin, in this fleeting life, to love God as we shall love him in eternity”. —John Wesley
Be doers of the word, and not hearers only. Otherwise, you are deceiving yourselves. —James 1:22