Celebration And Relationships Part 10 – Ps John Bendixen

Every time the Word of God is declared, it contains the power to do a miracle in you.

Romans 10:8-10 (NLT); Ecclesiastes 3:11 (AMPC)

Every human being is born with eternity in their heart (an eternal inkling and the desire to know Him) – that can only be satisfied by God. But they start questioning that maybe there is a different purpose, and they struggle between the reality in their life and the power of what is happening in their heart. They search the philosophies of men with intellect to answer the hole God put in their hearts. Belief in God is what fills the hole and God ignites your choice to pursue Him with faith. You get saved when your faith and desire go together to confess out of your mouth.

Pastor John shared about a friend he grew up with who was extremely talented and lacked nothing but rebelled against religion and ultimately against God. How would one advise someone like that, what to do with all that talent? Is it to satisfy your own desires or to rather ask, “What is God in you”? God is the only One that can fill the hole in your heart, it is not the achievement of your talent or the achievement of your self-imposed goals or results. It is just God. It is only Jesus. 

In a system of performance, your talent will fail you. God is after relationship. 

Pastor John, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus. I owe Him everything. My life is a testament to His Word living in my spirit. I live with Him; I live in Him; He has made my life significant”.

 John 6:33 (AMPC); John 17:23-26 (AMPC)It is a heart thing. We are a gift from the Father to Jesus. Do you think a gift can do whatever they want to in life, or do you think a gift is at the call of the Creator? We live in a world that doesn’t want to acknowledge God because they want to serve their self-interest.

 Proverbs 1:7 (AMPC, NKJV, TPT, MSG)

The reverent and worshipful fear of the Lord is the beginning (of everything). We cross the threshold of true knowledge when we live in obedient devotion to God (that is desire). People in the world pride themselves in achievement through discipline and hard work in worldly knowledge but they refuse to take that same discipline and apply it to an intimate relationship with Jesus. Discipleship is not a set of rules – it is a relationship from the heart that wants to live in Him.  If it is really in your heart and you believe it, it is something you must keep in your mind and your mouth all day long – then you are seeking Him. 

How do you teach someone to live by those choices and not by a set of rules? They will watch you and they will see you putting God first. What we are saying about God and what we are doing about God should not be two different things. When we live like God then people say, “That’s the God I want, because I see you doing it”. Your walk with God is not what you say, it is what you do. Live your life as a Christian wanting more of Jesus. Let His Word be alive and powerful in you. Live in a community of people who talk the same language, and love Jesus more than anything. That is salt and light.

Pastor John as a spiritual leader is a living example – living the Word of God, the same at home as in the pulpit; not pursuing his own plans; following God’s plan; obeying the Word of God first in his marriage, etc.

 I wonder if the Apostle Paul (and others) were just authentically living in Jesus and wherever they went they just took Jesus with them. When Jesus manifested Himself through them, He showed up everywhere and became irresistible through them.  When you live for Jesus, you have a desire to be like Him. When you are living by a set of rules you don’t know exactly what you desire, but you have to focus on results because you don’t have anything else. We can’t afford to marginalize Jesus to a time slot and put Him just into a little space in our day and say we are being Christians.

God has made our desire so strong to be filled completely by Him. Let that desire grow, let it flow, and let it burst out of your spirit man, and let it drive your entire future. 

 Psalm 40:5-8 (AMPC)

Say, “Sacrifice and offering You do not desire. You have given me the capacity to hear and obey. I delight to do Your will, O my God.”

This should be liberating to your future because you know that God will give you all the resources you need to accomplish what He designed you to be – no matter where you are in your life stage. A disciple is the highest office you can have in the church because you can’t become anything else until you are a disciple. You have to follow Jesus and become a disciple of the Lord Jesus. Where you see Jesus in me or someone else (in kindness, generosity, serving) – follow that. According to the world, serving is being subservient. I am not subservient and neither are you subservient to me or the church. We serve each other.

There is this misconception that unless you are preaching the Gospel to the world you are not doing the right thing. I do not put my whole life into the few times that I share Jesus with someone. My whole life is living the Gospel (I do not only speak words I also demonstrate life). The way I conduct myself, and the conversations I’m having – tell a story.    

When we get caught up in a value-cost thing, then it is all about ‘my money’ and we see giving as a cost and not a seed.  Life is not about a value-based exercise, it is an eternity-based exercise. How much money do you want to give away to someone who is serving you? Is your walk with Jesus measured? This is something we are all challenged with and not something that you fix in church. You fix it every time you’ve got to give the next tip and make the same decision. People have got just one little tract that they want to say that’s what Christians should be. But Jesus said when you gave it to that one you gave it to Me. When you’re giving to the poor you are giving/loaning to the Lord. Who knows what and how He will pay you back?  We want to put desire on a high platform of purpose, lofty ideologies, and how we brand ourselves in the world –  but desire is when you start breaking down how you live your life and whether Jesus is seen in you. When you’ve got Jesus in you and His desire is filling you so much that you are responsive to Him all the time, then you can say I am following Him.

Say, (like the Psalmist), “I hear and obey. I fill my life with Your Words that I hear. It is a miracle creation that Your Spirit and Your Life grows in my spirit.  As it grows, my desire gets overwhelmed by Your desires in me. My natural desires get weaker and my spiritual desires get stronger – they lead and guide me. Your gifts, Your blessings, and all Your wonders will be evidence and witness of Who You are in my spirit, in my life, and how You consume me. 

I feel like I am God’s favourite. He puts desires in my heart to believe, so that I can speak it, so that He can bring it. God can do miracles for us that we can’t comprehend. All we have to do is not have a mindset that we have to do it the way the world says we have to do it. God will break that mold all the time. Believing is not a thing that happens one time, it is a thing that happens all the time. Every word that I speak is in the presence of someone and it is targeted to someone – it just happens to be the most High God.

Say, I believe in You. Fill me with all of Your life. I receive all Your desires for me, and I believe in You and I trust You, that You make them all come to pass in Jesus’ name. Thank You, Lord, that You give me the strength to follow through with everything that You put in my heart, in Jesus’ name. Hallelujah.

God’s supernatural power lives inside of me to have every physical disability overcome by the life of His Word, right now. Healing, restoring health power, comes into my body right now in the name of Jesus. His supernatural ability, His life force comes into me and restores everything that has been broken because of whatever decisions. Right now, life is restored to my physical body. 

That same life floods into my relationships wherever they might be broken or dismantled. I pray that in Jesus’ name, they will be restored and recovered. Jesus will be part of every relationship because in that is the restoration. 

Wherever there has been a financial deficit and an implosion, or some kind of thing that has happened to me financially, I pray that the life force of Jesus floods me, and my desire, and my mouth, and my mind. He begins to bring things into my world to undo all of that devastation and bring restoration to me in Jesus’ name.  

I will achieve and do the things that God birthed me to achieve, what He designed me for, and the purpose He built me for. I am beginning that journey right now.

 Pastor John, “I love you all dearly. I love you enough to live for Jesus.”