Day 2 (2011)

Approach by Faith

1:20 - Approach Him by faith - It doesn't depend on how you feel - When you pray open up your heart to God - love on God and let Him love on you. Remember you live by faith. It doesn’t have anything to do with how you feel in the beginning - sometimes you have to just go to Him in faith.

Righteousness

➡ 7:00 - TODAY: You have right standing with God - Righteousness - Free from sin - this will lead us onto the subject of communion and fellowship with God. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. - Mt. 6:33 His righteousness (the expression of His nature, His character) He wants to be yours - His nature - His character - the expression of His heart - His ways. And He made us right through Jesus Christ. Today, I want to show you through the Bible how right you are - how free from sin you are. I don't care what anyone says. The Bible says that you are free from sin.

7:45 - His gift of righteousness is not an excuse for us to sin and get away with it - Some pastors keep the church sin conscious - afraid to preach what is found in the Bible - afraid that it will give people the excuse to sin, when actually it does the total opposite. I did not find a way to sin and get away with it. I found a way to be free from sin forever. That’s why I’m a happy man.

8:45 - This gift of righteousness is good tidings of great joy - Don't let things other than truth define your life - It’s truth that makes you free. If you understand the good tidings, it’s great joy. If we’re not having joy, we don’t really understand the good tidings. We’re letting other things determine our lives. We are giving ourselves to a lot of other things - our minds - our emotions - what people say, etc. We're making other things bigger than they really are. Sometimes one little thing that an important person says can rock your world because we don't have this established.

9:35 - Story of Dan's former pastor - "Hey man, I think you’re awesome. I don’t care what the devil says about you." "Man of God" - Shows that we don't have confidence in who we've become through Christ.

Identity

10:25 - You find your true identity through Christ - Who He sees you to be - These stories show that we aren’t really confident in who we’ve become through Christ. We all want to experience a great life - love, joy, friendship. But you can’t find yourself through anything other than Christ - nothing was made that wasn’t made through Him. Your roots are Him. Your identity is in Him. You can't find yourself except through Him.

11:00 - The world resists finding identity through Christ - And that makes the world mad. They want universal peace and for everybody to get along. I can get along with anybody and have peace. I'm not trying to compel them to pray my prayer. I can love people and have peace. But for me to have security and true identity, it's going to come through Christ Jesus

11:25 - We have tried to find identity from the way life is going - Rat race - I find myself through Him or else I am in this rat race, trying to find myself through life - trying to get everything to go the way I need it to be so that I can be ok. That's the most miserable way to live. And you won't just grow out of it. You change because you change your perspective - your mindset.

12:00 - Who God is and how He sees me is everything - that’s what makes me who I am - identity. And He doesn’t change His mind - He loves me.

12:35 - Sincerity is key - Sincerely seek to know God - I'm not playing games with my conscience - my heart. I want to know God. I want God reality. I want to understand who I am because of the Gospel. We're not trying to find a way to sin and still be ok.

13:10 - Temptations are not who you are - Even if you get those passing pulls and tugs, I don't believe that they are coming out of your heart. They can but in most cases they are not. The fact that you don’t want sin in your life shows that something in you changed somewhere along the line through Jesus. You care now - at a level you didn't care before. But when we are secure in our identity, when those thoughts come into our minds we can know that those thoughts are not who we are. That's the last thing I want.

14:15 - Our innocence has been violated along the way. And things that used to own you come back and check in on you - things that used to walk you around like a puppy.

14:30 - Picture: Satan had me on strings like a puppet. Never again. Don't be unaware of the devil's devices. Give the devil no place.

Die to Live

15:15 - Make a firm decision to follow Him - Reject the passing pleasure of sin - Draw a line in your heart: I'm either for Him or against Him. That's not leagalism or over militant. It's the truth that will spare your conscience and your heart from a lot of grief. When you are not sure - one foot in and one foot out - you want the gospel but you want other stuff... It's the passing pleasure of sin... It seems exciting. It can't be in the long run, even if it seems exciting. Moses, when he came of age...

16:15 - Hebrews 11 - Moses - rejecting the passing pleasure of sin.

17:15 - v.23-24 - By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child; and they were not afraid of the king's commandment. By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; - Faith is more than, "Oh God, I hope you pull through!"

by faith Moses… refused to be called son of Pharaoh's daughter. He began to realize some things - more of a developed conscience. There is a time where you come of age - it varies.

46:00 - All of the sudden I knew I loved my wife. Calling wife after born again experience. Wife's reaction - tries to catch Dan messing up. Reconciliation.

52:00 - A sincere heart is met with supernatural change - When you are sincere in your relationship with God, God will do things to change your heart that you were never formally taught. It comes with the package. Sometimes we try to understand it first and then walk it out. The sincerity of your heart to God is huge. Getting sincere with God will transform your life. Keep it constantly squeaky clean and clear.

If We Stumble

52:25 - If you stumble - Don't miss a beat in relationship - Even if we stumble, you go, "That is so not who I am..." Instead of, "Oh, Look at who I am." That's what we do. "I can't believe I just did that. I've been saved 2 years. I should know better. You dummy. If I haven't gotten it by now I probably won't get it. I wonder if I am even saved. I wonder if my heart is really pure." That's what we do. But the reason you are frustrated is because you don't want to do that. So why do we wear that now? Instead of going...

56:30 - Don't return to self-consciousness - Adam & Eve ran and lost identity. Why do we do what they did? Ashamed. Self-conscious with fig leaves trying to cover up. All of that is a sign of "self-consciousness" - what Adam and Eve became after they sinned. Before sinning they were God-conscious - God in them. Sin makes you self-conscious. God destroyed sin and its power - makes you free from it.

The Muck & Mire of Sin

57:25 - v.25 - Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; -

57:30 - Reject the passing pleasures of sin - Moses chose to suffer affliction than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin. He said, "I am not missing out on anything. It's all passing - coming to nothing anyway." There is a luster to it. But it's all self-serving. It's at the cost of people. Worldly comedy - at the expense of people, their identity, bashing one another.

58:15 - Criticism: "You don't even have any fun." I'm having more fun than the person who is living deepest in sin because I have peace in my heart. When you are living in sin, you are constantly trying to fill something inside that only Christ can fill. It's like an addiction. It drives you. It owns you. You have to do it more to stay OK. Drug addiction. Alcohol addiction. Sexual addiction.

104:45 - Muck and mire - making bricks in Egypt - symbolic of sin - captivity of sin - building the kingdom of another - Pharaoh symbolic of satan. That's what sin is: actions that build the kingdom of another - that you weren't created to build. You were created for the kingdom of God. God saved me from the muck and mire of sin. I'm not treading in the mud any more to make bricks for Pharaoh so he can build his monuments. They were laboring to build the kingdom of another when they were created to be the children of God. Do you see the paradox? Do you see how wretched even the ignorance of a life of sin is?

106:20 - Conviction is a good thing - You want it - The gospel enlightens you - good, sound preaching. It puts conviction in you. "Conviction" means to shine light on. I want conviction. When I was young I didn't want conviction.

106:35 - Two young men at the mall - One didn’t want the light of truth because of what it would mean for his belief system - back pain - knees. Heaven is already in position. It's just waiting to land.

Healing

112:15 - Do you need to teach the person a lot before you pray for them? No, signs follow believers. Sometimes I think we teach because it builds our own faith up. And we are trying to get stirred up and feel in position. We do a lot of stuff because we are self-conscious.

113:30 - Man with the withered hand was not taught and yet was healed - Different examples of Jesus healing. Man with the withered hand. Jesus didn't pay attention to reasons why men can't be healed. Unbelief in the atmosphere. He's not intimidated by that. He is the truth. He's the Son of God. We are sons and daughters of God and the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives in us. So if we can get the same eye, we can do the same thing. If you believe like I believe - If you see like I see, you will do what I do. Mt. 17.

115:45 - He didn't teach him - get him to nod his head in agreement - He just said, "Stretch forth your hand."

116:00 - Excuses for healing not happening. I don't believe in God. I don't believe in healing. etc. But none of those excuses stop God.

116:30 - Fun approaches with Todd. He likes when they say they don't believe. Now what do say to that?

117:10 - We can't let their unbelief dictate our faith. Our faith should be dictated by Christ crucified.

117:20 - Keep your thinking on healing simple - We just need to keep growing in this love relationship (and not be self-conscious) and realize that we are representing Christ on the earth. We have the green light and God loves everybody. What would happen if we kept it that simple?

117:40 - Throw away your list of reasons why healing can't happen - Don't allow yourself to fall back on these excuses - And throw away all of the books on why healing won't happen. Because you can't believe how that stuff infiltrates your mind and sets up little camps of strongholds... And then when you are praying for something and it seems like it's not happening, then you fall back on those little things that you were taught. "They must have unforgiveness. They must have hidden sin." And all of the sudden this whole list is active in you.

118:05 - We only have those lists because we are trying to explain our experience - Jesus never had a list of reasons why healing can't happen because it was never His experience. The only reason we have those lists is because we are trying to explain our experience. But in explaining it (lack of healing) that way, we continue to allow that to be our experience. We probably ought to follow Jesus on this.

➡ 118:30 - We try to comfort ourselves with false explanations of why we are not seeing healing - We will spend a lot of time on healing later in the school. Difficulties in 2010 school on this topic - We couldn't hear because of our experience (lack of healing) and what we have been taught. We've built doctrine based on what we've been through instead of what he's been through. The book (Bible) is already written. Why are we writing other ones?

121:00 - Look to the life of Jesus - If you can't find your theology in the life of Jesus then throw it out. We say a lot in the area of healing that Jesus never said. We came up with it because it's the way that seems right. And it gives us a false sense of comfort but no increase of power. And it puts a ceiling over us when we embrace any of those reasons as to why men can't be healed. That one reason will pop up in your mind (when it appears nothing is happening) and you will attribute lack of healing to that reason. It will give you an excuse to take a step back in faith.

121:45 - We are not under the pressure of failing - failure avoidance goes back to the fall - I am privileged to go for it (healing). I am not carrying the weight of the world (the weight of failure) on my shoulders. Jesus did that. I'm not carrying the weight of potential failure.

122:30 - If you are trying not to have the feeling of failure you are really just protecting yourSELF. It's still all about you. It's not about you at all. It's about Christ in you, the hope of glory. It's not about protecting yourself ever. That's what happened through sin - self-protecting, self-preservation, self-conscious (fig leaves). Adam and Eve went from God-conscious to self-conscious because of sin.

123:20 - v.27 - Don't fear the devil - Keep your eyes on Jesus - So he is not looking over my shoulder for the devil. "I just ministered. Now the devil is out to get me now." Keep your eyes on Jesus. If the devil does show up he'll get exposed by the light that you are walking in. Don't fear him. Remember yesterday? "...not in any way fearing your adversary."

Faith & Feelings

124:00 - Live by faith not by feelings - When you start living by faith you will realize how awful it was to live by feelings. Living by feelings is like a wave being blown by the wind - constantly changing. You're not created to live by feelings. You are created to live by truth. Truth has nothing to do with sensuality. If God loves you what does it matter that you don't feel like He does? What does it matter if it doesn't feel like He does? He does. You have to start there and let that truth overtake the rest of your life. Get alone and talk to Him as if He is sitting on the bed beside you. When you do that by faith all of the sudden Truth is right there with you.

125:40 - By faith going into pray. Opening the bedroom door. I'm here. It's just us. Tangible presence of God.

126:35 - Sometimes we are "30 day money back guarantee" Christians - just trying out something to see if it "works." No, we live by faith. Faith isn’t something you try. It’s something you become.

127:00 - Feelings can be fun but you don't live by them - When you’re living by faith and not by feelings, He can begin to give you physical manifestations of love without you depending on feelings to know that you are loved. If I'm not depending on feelings I can't be deceived by feelings or the lack of them. "It doesn't feel like He loves me." Believe first and He gives stewardship of fun feelings. If I don't feel the fun feelings He is still here. That's why He can do that because I know that He is here regardless of whether I feel Him or not.

127:50 - Various manifestations - raining - crying - laughing - overwhelmed - tornado. You have the privilege of loving with my love. I've put my heart inside of you. I had been saying, "I want your heart."

130:45 - Heart change comes, not through striving, but through relationship with Him - Faith takes you there - You can't just bite your lip and try to love. I just get alone and want Him. He shapes you and molds you in that place of "want to." But faith is the only thing that is going to take you there. That's a good thing, not a hard thing. Because faith separates you from living by feelings - "living sensual." The church has been trapped living sensual.

131:15 - You don't have to feel good to be doing good - "Living sensual" - You’ve got to feel good to be doing good. But, "I feel… all alone, no peace" puts you on a quest to feel peace instead of to know God. Ministry to feelings. The Bible says you have peace with God. It's just a failure to stand up (in the midst of not feeling peace) and believe truth - faith. You get there by faith.

BREAK

Perspective of Truth

135:10 - Colossians 1 - How right you are with God through the blood of Jesus. Whenever you tell people that they are right with God their minds kick off and say, "Well, you don't know me." But the only reason you say that is because you are missing what we are getting ready to talk about...

135:40 - How you see yourself determines what fruit you produce - Sin consciousness will produce more sin. Righteous consciousness will produce righteous fruit. Remember yesterday? Become a good tree to bear good fruit (Mt.12:33). It sounds so simple but it can make a huge difference. Being a good tree is way different than trying to do good. Accept how He sees you - what's been done for you. "Well, I'm just trying to get back..." Be there now. Your perspective can keep you trapped there. Your perspective can be a blessing or a detriment.

137:00 - The eye is the lamp of your body - Adversity not seen as adversity - if your eye is single, healthy, your body is flooded with light. (Mt. 6:22) That scripture is so big to me. Eye - your view - your perspective. If God can change your perspective into truth, He can change your whole life. You’ll handle adversity differently. You will see adversity differently. You won’t even see it as adversity.

138:00 - Don't give your flesh permission to react - "But you don’t know what I’m going through." Giving the flesh permission to react. Your eye allows that - your perspective. Even though they are saying that they want to be ok, their perspective is guaranteeing that they are not going to be ok.

139:00 - Don't see yourself as a victim - Victim mentality - People who see themselves as victims want you to be sympathetic and sensitive and agree with them. "But you don’t understand what I’m going through." We accommodate that and allow people to feel victimized. Love is way stronger than that. I won't back down but will go straight into truth.

139:45 - Man hated Dan for 2 years - seeking agreement about how wrong their spouse had been - even Pastor Dan says you're wrong - sensitivity to flesh - live-in girlfriend - God spoke to him.

142:20 - You want to be secure with regard to someones hard feelings toward you but not hardhearted. "I don't care what he thinks." That just reveals that you do care.

142:40 - Motives - Let your motive be love - The why of your life - your motive - the wellspring of where you live from is what determines your life. You’ll never rise above your motive, ever. Your motive has to become love. The goal of our instruction is love. Grace is on that kind of counsel.

146:40 - Relationships and sexuality - Teach them their value - We make people more sin-conscious. Sin consciousness - young couples - you shouldn’t do that... - leads to sin. We legalistically tell them they shouldn't but we don't explain why. We don't give them understanding so they are just driven by feelings. It leads to a continual pattern of sin. Teenage boys and girls. They don’t understand the value of their lives. Young men don't understand what it means to honor a woman in true love instead of need a woman and fulfill his desire. Young women don't understand what it means to stand in honor and draw Christ up and out of a man and know that they are a prize to be won and that they are worth that.

148:45 - It's more than just about being wanted. That's so shallow. It's such a lie. We need to see the honor of covenant love. Self-centered desire.

149:50 - We seek identity through relationships - We try to find identity through relationships. So when I say it's love. It's actually at the expense of that person. It's still all about me. Guys learn how to play that. And girls because of insecurity become easy prey when you don't know who you are. You want to believe that he loves you. You want to believe that it's real. It's a lie from hell. That's why it never feels good later.

150:40 - Counseling young people. Repetitive sexual sin.

152:00 - This is something so valuable that satan wants to exploit it. Holy root there - something so pure and beautiful there.

152:25 - Porn magazine on the railroad dock. Me, me, me at the expense of others in the name of love.

153:30 - The only reason we have the capacity to live that way and get thrown around like that, is because we fail to see who we are in Him - receive righteous identity and have God reality. We're still searching. We’re in identity crisis - trying to find ourselves through life and people - through surface words and expressions. The world will do its best to keep you captured - movies etc. And for some reason we keep feeding on that stuff.

Righteousness

➡ Switching gears back to: Righteousness

154:25 - Colossians 1 - v.21 - And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled -

Our minds were twisted at the fall - Love became selfishness - once alienated and enemies through twisted mind - became selfish. Satan came and corrupted the mind of man. He got them self-centered, self-desiring, selfish. When man ate from the tree, that thing called love got contorted and twisted and became selfish, loveless. Love went to selfishness. There is no selfishness in love and no love in selfishness. It's impossible to have both. See it and call it for what it is, thank God that it is not who you are and grow in relationship with God so that selfishness gets cut out of you.

155:40 - Stop blaming others for your selfishness - No permission for being less - Stop blaming your selfishness on other people's deficits. You are excusing it away and giving it permission. You are continuing to flow in selfishness. Don’t blameshift. Give yourself no permission to live for your flesh. I don't care how you are treating me. I don't have any permission to live from my flesh. You are not my barometer or standard. I love you. I am called to love you. You are not my reason for being less than who He is. And if I am making you that, I am way deceived. "Well I wouldn't feel this way if they hadn't said that." That shows that you that you do feel this way. It shows that there is a place for you to grow. Why does that move you so much? They are not Lord. They are just another person looking for attention. And if they knew Jesus, they wouldn't have said what they said. So why are they becoming your barometer (of how life is going)? -->[Extended discussion].

158:30 - v.22 - In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight: -

200:00 - Everybody needs to be born again - even nicest people - even children. Everyone was born into Adam's nature. Behavior of children - stuff not taught - already in them - selfishness. We need a change of nature. ---> [Extended discussion of the behavior of kids and the need to be born again one day]. You are an enemy and alienated because of the wickedness that's going through your mind.

202:50 - We are valuable to God - He paid an extravagant price to get us back - But God had a plan for our redemption... He put His own Son on a cross and put our sin on Him to show that we are more than what we have been living. That's what God was trying to say. Unfortunately we don't preach it that way.

203:15 - The cross reveals your value. It doesn’t point out your sin. The cross removes your sin. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. John 1:29.

203:30 - Sin is not the issue now - Sonship is the issue - Sin is not the issue now. Sonship / right standing with God / righteousness / being restored and redeemed back to the Father is the issue now. If you’ll start there and understand that in the beginning of your Christian life, you’ll run well. It’s your place to accept that. That's where you come in and live by faith despite whatever - temptations, flashbacks etc.

204:30 - Thank You for righteousness - I am so much more than what just went through my mind. Father, I thank You for the love that You are building in my heart. And I thank You for holiness. And I thank You for loving me and receiving me. Thank You for teaching me to live set apart and sanctified. Your divine nature is ruling me. I am escaped from the world which is ruled through lust. I thank you for love... You've got to stay in that place and cast everything down that rises above Him.

Stand by Faith in Truth - Ministry Crazed

204:50 - Stand in sonship - Don't take on the identity of what the devil is proposing - Then stay in that place and cast down everything that tries to rise above Him. How do you do that? "I bind you. I rebuke you?" No, you would be doing that all day. When something tries to rock you - something that you keep thinking, but you don't want to think it... You can't turn it off. Those seasons have made me know God more and be more sure of who I am. Don't take on the identity of what you are thinking. Take on the identity of what He said. First, you are pure in your heart - you care. The enemy attacks the mind to get you believing wrong. Thinking wrong. Seeing wrong. The mind is the only place the enemy can attack to try to get you to believe wrong.

206:10 - Pound the strongholds of wrong believing with truth - (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) - 2 Cor 10:4 - Your enemies are not flesh and blood (Eph. 6:12) - but fortresses and castles of wrong believing that have been built up for years - arguments, presumptions - thinking - Truth comes and devastates arguments at their foundation. Jericho points to destruction of wrong thinking. Keep marching in truth.

207:20 - It's not a ministry issue - It's a truth issue - [Extended discussion of ministering truth to people.] Start in faith somewhere. Start with something they can believe. If you rely on manifestations you’ll need more eventually. Live from the foundation of faith.

208:00 - Be founded on faith in truth - Not how you feel - Watching what God builds through faith v. experiences, feelings, ministry. It's not a ministry issue. It's a foundation of faith issue. You don't need as much ministry as you think. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is amazing if you will enter into Him by faith. Stop waiting to feel delivered. Start thanking Him that you are delivered. If you will thank Him that you have peace with God, you will experience that peace - instead of running to the altar to get an impartation of peace. If you don't have a foundation of faith, life will shake you and you'll need another manifestation.

209:30 - I'm not against the way that the Holy Spirit can miraculously minister but He still wants you to live from a foundation of faith. If you don't life will rock you.

210:30 - Don't fight thoughts or the devil - Thank God for the truth of the situation - Strongholds: you cast them down. You hold them captive. What does that mean? Don’t fight the thought and battle the devil. You yield to truth.

210:50 - When bad thoughts pass through your mind, you don't have a problem. You already have an answer. You have truth. You have a covenant. - God I so thank You that You love me and I am clean in Your sight. And that Lord my heart is never to sin but Lord I am for You and I just love You. And Lord I thank You for building me into the things of the Spirit. And I thank You that my life is so worth living and I am clean and pure in You... More whispers from the enemy... And Father I just want to let you know that I am so glad for the day you came and changed my life forever. That old man has so died. And I am alive and new. And my life is worth living in you. Christians often take to heart what the enemy whispers to them and grey out. And go to ask for prayer because the have sold short - (come into agreement with what the enemy has whispered). They ask for prayers just because of what they are thinking.

212:00 - It's not in you. It's outside trying to get back in - Overcome lies with truth - The church accommodates that and says, "It must be some lingering thing in you." But it's not in you. It’s outside trying to get back in. We try to get things out of each other and in the process all we are doing is saying that it is in us. By submitting to fear I open myself up to it to have a home. If I am feeling fear, I don't need you to cast it out of me. I need you to build me up in who I am. You overcome lies with truth.

213:15 - Hearing curse words towards Holy Spirit - Deliverance ministers said to me, "If you had come to us, you wouldn't have had to suffer" - arrogance - got closer to God through that time. Every time you hear the curses, tell Holy Spirit how you really feel about Him. The ministers would have told me that I was only partially saved and that I had something lingering in me from before. I would have had to give up my identity to get ministry. Not happening. It's the truth that makes you free. It's not - going on a witch hunt and rolling away stones to see what's under them and opening doors to see what's behind them - that makes you free. Continue in His word and you'll know the truth and truth will set you free. Not continue in your feelings... "I don't feel clean." But are you clean? It doesn't matter to me that you don't feel clean. I can look you in the eyes and tell you that you are clean.

214:30 - Continue in the truth of His word - Not feelings - not how you feel - believe the word - don’t accommodate unbelief - call folks to rise up in faith - you can be free right now starting by faith. You can have joy right now. You can know that you are clean right now. You are called to believe that. You don't have to believe it. That's your privilege but you are called to believe it.

215:35 - "But not every person can believe that." Yes, you can. Don't accommodate the weakness of flesh. Drive out the weakness. Here's the good news. You can be free right now, starting by faith.

216:20 - Don’t let experiences define God or your life. What His word says is who you are. Become the living product of His finished work.

217:00 - v.22 - holy, blameless and above reproach - through Jesus - your position right now. He loves you.

218:20 - v.23 - If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister; -

Many have never heard the truth that is worthy of standing on - And we often don't stand - If you continue in the faith - Unfortunately many of us have never heard this gospel. Some of us have only heard that we are sinners and always will be sinners. But thank goodness there is a way for us to go to heaven. Just make sure you repent for your sin.

219:05 - Sin and the devil are two things that I don't think about at all ever. I think about Jesus.