Imagebearer’s Weblog

Hillsville Youth Lead Worship @ Resurrection 2012

January 26, 2012 Posted by imagebearer | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Fruit of the Spirit and the loss of self-control…

Last night and for the past few weeks we have been looking at the Gifts of the Spirit in Out of the Box Youth. In previous weeks we did a spiritual gifts inventory and we found some really great things about where the youth are gifted. Some of them have the gift of a pastor and that excites me. Some of my strongest gift indicators are in Apostleship, Pastor, and Leadership. What are yours? Are you working within” your giftedness?

Last night though we looked at the “fruit of the spirit”. This is different from the Spiritual gifts, however in order to operate in the gifts God has given us we have to be walking in the Spirit, therefore we will manifest fruit, or grow fruit maybe.

Here is what Galatians 5 and Paul has to say, in 22-26, “²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. ²⁴ Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. ²⁵ Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. ²⁶ Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

I had each of the youth to write down the different fruit and then rank on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the strongest, how they felt they ranked in these fruit of the spirit.

The result was that many of them were reluctant to put a 5 in any of the fruit, I encouraged them that it wasn’t a prideful thing to know that you are bearing fruit.

The biggest revelation that came from this experiment what that many and probably most of them scored the lowest on “self-control.” I would venture to say that probably most people reading this struggle in the same fruit, “self-control.”

Here was my question to them and to you. What can you do to get the number to a 5 on self-control, or at least to move up the number scale?

Here are the answers they gave. Fasting, Prayer, Bible Study…They were naming off the Spiritual Disciplines. That’s it, they got it right…

When a person comes to know Christ then you receive the Holy Spirit of God who lives inside of you. There is no need to pray for the Holy Spirit, He is there. However, just because Holy Spirit lives inside of us, that does not mean that we are continually filled with the Holy Spirit, nor does it mean that we walk in the Spirit.

These things are accomplished through Seeking God, by Drawing Close To God, through the Spiritual Disciplines. Those who have ears to hear, listen. God is doing a new thing among us and those who are tuned into God will be the ones God uses during this new move of God.

Pastor Ronnie

January 26, 2012 Posted by imagebearer | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

How could I have forgotten?

How in the world could I have forgotten? This question is boggling my mind this morning and I share with you what God is doing. Lest me first start by sharing something that God is revealing to me in Scripture this morning.

It is found in Matthew 9:14-17 (TNIV) and reads as follows.

¹⁴ Then John’s disciples came and asked him, “How is it that we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?”

 ¹⁵ Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast.

   ¹⁶ “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. ¹⁷ Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”

This scripture has always eluded me until this morning. In this passage I know that Jesus is saying that when he ascends into heaven that his disciples will once again fast. At this moment they were feasting because Jesus was still with them. Fasting is a discipline that Gods people have done since early on in the Old Testament and it is carried out through the New Testament.

This is not what had me bound, it was verses 16 and 17, but not anymore.

Wine and oil represent the Holy Spirit throughout the scriptures in many instances and here the new wine represents a new thing that God wants to do and is going to do. As a matter of fact, he is getting ready to send the Holy Spirit into the lives of his disciples. In that day, they would pour wine into something called wineskins.

The material the wineskins were made of had to be new and pliable when new wine was poured into them because the new wine would expand. If the wineskins were old they became hard and would crack when the wine expanded.

Fasting is a tool (a spiritual discipline) that helps us have new room for Holy Spirit to work. God has already given us everything available to us in the spirit but we do not often walk in newness of life because the gunk of this world tends to get in and clog us up. (Not just spiritually but physically as well.

God wants to do a New Thing! In this passage of scripture, as soon as Jesus took His last breath on earth, He was sending the Holy Spirit, a New Thing.

God reminded me this morning that it was during my first 40 day fast that started in February 2010 that Out of the Box Worship Center became a REALITY.

The first meeting we had to discuss the possibility of a second site for 1st Hillsville UMC was in February 2010. I remember the meeting with Pastor Ty and Richard Edwards in O’ Charlies in Bristol at Exit 7 and I wasn’t eating. I remember how great the food looked to this day but now I see how AWESOME the BLESSING OF GOD IS. It is better than physical food, it is greater than our appetite, He is greater than anything in this world.

Wow, this is just what I needed from God this morning. How could I have forgotten? It is because we get so involved in the day-to-day struggles and we neglect to renew our old wineskins (our soul and spirit and our mind). Fasting cleans out the GUNK in our lives.

Pastor Ronnie

January 26, 2012 Posted by imagebearer | Uncategorized | 1 Comment