Pastor Jim Cymbala shares at the EXPECT 2014 Church Leadership Conference about Asa. When he became king, he led a spiritual reformation and was an outstanding leader. About 30 years later, he totally turned his back on God—depending on strategy and human effort rather than God.
Pastor Carter Conlon exhorts pastors and church leaders at the EXPECT 2014 Church Leadership Conference not to settle for a warm ministry. In these last days a casual Christianity will not cut it. People are deeply wounded, fearful and Jesus is their last hope. We must have a burden for the struggles of people, as Jesus did. This burden only comes from prayer. God help us to pray!
Several times in his letter to the Corinthian church, Paul asks, "Do you not know...?" What you know about God and who you are in Christ will greatly affect your life and how you treat others. It goes beyond head knowledge and must be heart revelation. You are a saint with weapons of righteousness in your left and right hands. You are the temple of the Holy Spirit. You are God's beloved child with whom he is well pleased.
The last spoken words of Jesus on the cross were, "Into thy hands I commit my spirit." Jesus never stopped obeying the Father even on the cross—he lived in perfect submission to his last breath. In total faith he gave his life into the hands of God. Through the cross Jesus brought man back into full fellowship with the Father, so we can return to the place of faith and confidence in God. We can go anywhere in the world for God, knowing he will keep us, provide for us, and supply all we will ever need to accomplish his will in the earth.
"It is finished!" Jesus cried triumphantly from the cross. He was proclaiming to his father that everything that was required to complete the new covenant was accomplished. Jesus, through his unblemished life and total obedience to the father, completed all the requirements given to him, and so declared his part finished. The father would demonstrate that he accepted Christ's sacrifice for all sin by raising him from the dead. God fully accepted his son's sacrifice and established the covenant for all eternity.
Eve got it exactly right when she said she was deceived and then she sinned. So many for so long have focused on the sin, or the fruit, rather than the root, which is a deception that comes from Satan. We have been misled to believe that God has separated himself from us, is angry and distant. God loves you and desires fellowship with you. He sent his Son to die so that he could spend eternity with you. God is nicer than you think.
In great pain and agony hanging on the cross, Jesus cried out his fifth statement, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Many have interpreted this statement as Jesus receiving the sin of mankind on himself, and therefore God could not look upon his son. However, did God really forsake his son, or was Jesus pointing us to Psalm 22 as being the fulfillment of this psalm? At this time the psalms did not have numbers, so Jesus was quoting the first verse of this particular psalm in order to point out that his death was not a haphazard decision but a fulfillment of the Word of God. The Bible establishes Christ as the supreme sacrifice for sin; he was found without sin, and therefore, the right to become the sacrifice for the sin of the world. Jesus took on the penalty of death for the sins of the world.
Jesus, after being brutally beaten and finally nailed to the cross, cries out, "I thirst!" In his state of dehydration the Roman soldier responded by giving him a sponge of vinegar and gall. If all the statements Jesus made on the cross are covenantal, then Jesus must also be pointing us to something deeper. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled." On the cross Jesus was pointing us to his ardent desire to establish true righteousness once again, and then declare those who believed in him as righteous.
Looking down at his mother, Jesus says, "Woman, behold thy son! Behold thy mother!" Naturally, we know that John took Mary in to his household and took care of her the rest of her life. However, if we are looking at all the statements as covenantal then is there something deeper Jesus wanted to communicate to us. We have to look back at the first promise God made regarding the Messiah. God told Eve that Satan's defeat would come from her seed, referring to Jesus. Mary was the end of a long line of woman that God used to bring forth this seed. Therefore, Mary, at the end of the line of promise, brought forth the Messiah, and from the Messiah would come new birth for all who believed in Jesus. This statement is symbolic of what God does for those who believe: we are born in the spirit.