Trinity Evangelical Presbyterian Church

Our commitment is that we will seek the face of the Lord sufficiently enough to discern which of those potential risks are from the Lord and which are from our imaginations.  When we have clearly discerned the Lord is in a thing, we will be able to stand up with confidence before you as our congregation and declare, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit….and to us…that we should do….”  We believe this to be the call of God on our lives for this season.  

To help us facilitate this concept I want to look at a passage from 1 John.  The Apostle John was one of Jesus’ original twelve followers and closest friends on the earth.  He was the last of the Twelve Apostles to die and is nearing the end of his life as he writes this letter to the community he had been pastoring for some time.  

In the book of Acts chapter 15, verse 28, James says, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us….”  In other words, the method for making their decision is clarified.  Yes, they listened to both sides.  Yes, they debated the impact that those things would have on the church.  But most importantly, they prayed.  And the result of their prayers was a clear indication of what pleased the Holy Spirit.  And when that was discovered, they were pleased as well and enacted the Spirit’s pleasure over the situation.  

Did you catch that?  James had the authority to make the decision but it was really the Holy Spirit who made the call.  The focus of the leadership and James in particular was to find out what pleased the Holy Spirit more than any other group of people.  

If the Enemy is going to be giving his best to destroy the Kingdom; shouldn’t we be willing to give our best to build it?  Shouldn’t It get our best thoughts, our best plans, our best efforts, our greatest resources, and our full attention?  This is why we have to take risks!  Desperate enemies take risks to accomplish their goals.  We should be willing to risk to counter them!  No risk it!  No Biscuit!

Leaders need our support.  The enemy is constantly trying to harm the Church of Jesus Christ.  One of his most frequent attacks is to seek to discourage those who lead the Church.  If he can discourage them, then he can take their focus off of equipping and mobilizing the people of God.  That leaves those under their care ill-equipped and without direction in the work of the Kingdom.

God has a plan for our lives when He saves us and that plan leverages all the pieces of our life to accomplish it.

Each and every time one of the Holy Spirit’s grace gifts manifests itself through you it is because the Holy Spirit shows up.  He manifests Himself through you in that moment to accomplish His will. 

Failing to recognize this is why we can sometimes become prideful when those grace gifts operate through us and people recognize their effectiveness.  We delude ourselves that those gifts are taking place because we’ve been endowed with a particular amount of the Spirit’s power and it feeds our ego.  It deceives us into believing that there is something special about us when in reality it is something powerful about Him. 

Each and every human being longs for significance and meaning in life and where we seek to find that meaning will set the very trajectory of our lives.

Instead of focusing on methods or techniques to repel the Enemy’s attacks, we’ve set out to lay a solid foundation of understanding regarding the spiritual realities around us.  Techniques don’t matter if our fundamental understanding of God, the Enemy, and ourselves is flawed.

Jesus described the Devil as one who does not hold to the truth and has no truth in him.  Falsehood is tied to his very existence.

Every single human being who has ever lived apart from Christ has followed the lies of the Devil.  It’s our default setting as human beings.  We are born into sin, we know nothing but sin, and we naturally follow the ways of the world and the ruler of the earth which is Satan himself.  

Our level of freedom from deception will be directly proportional to the depth of our relationship with Jesus! 

The goal is to eliminate as much deception from our lives as possible by living as closely connected to Jesus as possible.  As we walk closely to Him and live in obedience to Him we are susceptible to less and less deception in our lives.  Only in heaven will we know the truth completely but we can live lives of freedom on this side of eternity as well!

Sermon preached Sunday October 15th 2023

Sermon preached October 8th. 2023

Sermon preached by Pastor Glenn on Sunday, October 1st. 2023

Easter Sunday marks the culmination of all our hopes and dreams as followers of Christ.  It is the day that we celebrate the Resurrection of Christ and the effect it has had on all those who have submitted to Christ as Lord.  The Resurrection is proof that Christ was exactly who He claimed to be.  It was the ultimate victory over sin, death and the Devil and heralded our final victory to come at Christ’s return.  It secured our eternity but offers so much more to us if we will understand its power.  But the road to resurrection is not an easy one.  For Christ, the road to resurrection was death; marked by pain, humiliation, and powerlessness.  For us, it requires dying to self, sin, and control of our lives.  But resurrection is worth the pain of dying.  Let’s see how this played out for Christ so that we might be encouraged to embrace our spiritual death and receive the resurrection extended to us.

I’ve found that one of the greatest obstacles to pursuing a depth of relationship with Jesus is a sense that Christ can’t relate to what we are going through.  We have heard that Jesus was the God/Man who came down to earth and lived among us but we struggle to believe that He was actually like us.  Of course we know that He faced difficulties but we tell ourselves that He had all the power of God at His disposal so His struggles are not like ours.  Besides, He lived hundreds of years ago and can’t possibly understand what it’s like to live in modern times.  

If we don’t believe that Jesus has experienced what we’ve experienced we’ll never bring our experiences to Him.  In fact, we can actually push away from Christ in our woundedness, our misunderstanding and our pain.  Which is why Isaiah 53 is such a valuable passage of Scripture.  

You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times. 2 For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. 3 They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good. 4 They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. 5 They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. Stay away from people like that!

Last week we began our series on knowing the Lord.  We saw how the Lord has moved heaven and earth so that we might know Him and we saw that He took the first step but the next step is ours.

This week I want to put a bit of a fine point on why it is critical for us to know the Lord.  Knowing the Lord gives us the power to Thrive in life; not just get by.  

Let’s look at some Scriptures together.

Take Away Truths:

1. God made the first move; the next move is yours.

2. God did all the work; we simply respond to His gift.

3. Every time we exert even the least effort to know Him more the Lord leverages all His resources to aid us.

4. The more effort we exert, the deeper He’ll take us.

Hebrews 11:13–16

1. They did not receive what was promised.
2. They welcomed it from a distance.
3. They were foreigners and strangers on earth.

Moses was tasked with leading somewhere between 1.5 and 2.4 million people in a harsh wilderness with limited resources. Even with all the miraculous provision God had made for His people along the way, such leadership would have taken an astounding amount of faith and trust in the Lord.

-In order to stay as focused on the Lord as possible in his leadership, Moses did something that was not commanded of him. He pitched a tent outside of the camp where he could seek the Lord. He called it the “Tent of Meeting” because the Lord would descend on the tent when Moses entered and meet with him there.

What are some of the thoughts that come to mind when you hear the challenge that we should set up a Tent of Meeting where we can meet regularly meet with the Lord?

Think about your average day. Think about the problems that you face each day. How much time do you estimate that you spend thinking about those problems, worrying about them, strategizing how to solve them, or worrying about the outcomes of your efforts to solve them? Don’t include the time you spend on actually trying to solve the problems.

What are some of the things that you might need to say ‘no’ to in order to set up a Tent of Meeting for yourself?

Discerning the voice of the Lord consistently and accurately is much more about being the right kind of person than having the right method.

-If you use all the right techniques but are not the right kind of person you’ll never accurately discern the will of the Lord. The power does not lie in the techniques; it lies in the unhindered ability of the Holy Spirit to speak to us and to work through us.

In this episode we are going to center our attention on the Word of God.

If we are not committed to keeping the Word of God central to our experience with God we will not consistently or accurately discern the voice of God.

What is so unique about the Word of God that warrants its centrality in our lives?

The Uniqueness of the Word:

1. It’s eternal.

-1 Peter 1:22-25

2. It’s perfect.

-Proverbs 30:5-6

-Psalm 12:6

3. It’s powerful.

-Hebrews 4:12

4. It’s corrective.

-Psalm 19:7-13

Memory Verse for the Week:

2 Timothy 3:16-17

Take Away Truths:

1. God always speaks first.

2. God wants us to discern and understand His voice even more than we do.

3. Though God speaks in a variety of ways to each of His children, He always speaks in a way that we can know it is Him speaking.

4. Discerning the voice of God is a path to be walked; not a destination to arrive at.

5. The Lord speaks most clearly and consistently to those who are most willing to obey His voice.

6. God speaks to those who prioritize listening to Him.

Romans 8:26-27

“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.”

1. At this very moment, The Holy Spirit is praying for each of us with perfect knowledge and understanding.

2. Jesus is also interceding for us right now, seated at the right hand of God the Father.

3. Jesus’ intercession for us is part of His process of saving us.

4. For every born-again believer, our spirit is one with the Holy Spirit.

5. Our responsibility is to set aside our human foolishness and submit to the Holy Spirit’s work through us to reveal God’s will to us.

A Simple Definition of Prayer: Quieting our souls to the point that we can discern what God is praying and responding to that revelation.