Severance
Message Summary: “I thought” statements can lead us into missing what God has for us. Your thoughts or your expectations of God can stand between you and what God’s will is for you. We need to release those thoughts and let God do His work in our lives.
We’re to be salt and light in this world as Jesus’ representatives. We need to show Christ’s love to others. Surround yourself with other believers who are showing Christ’s love in this world.
We can’t live our old lives and expect to get a new life. God sent His son, Jesus, and gave Him the power through the Holy Spirit to help you stand up and have faith. Your identity comes through Christ who died for you. You aren’t your mistakes or your pain or your illnesses. Father God has changed your identity to be favored, blessed and victorious.
- How many times has “I thought,” or expectations, kept you away from joy?
- Do you really want to get better – Are you more interested in your situation changing or your heart changing?
- What false identity have you given to yourself based off of your past, or your illnesses, or pain?
- Who does God say you are?
This week, ask God to give you the strength to stand up and have faith against whatever is holding you back from the identity He says about you.
2 Kings 5:11 – But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy.”
John 5: 1-8 – Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”
Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”
