spirit – ThrivingBranch

How You Prosper in Christ (part 1)

November 29, 2020September 30, 2020Leave a Comment

Prosperity is quite a word in Christianity. There are Christians on both sides of the isle who will either embrace prosperity wholeheartedly, or denounce it completely. This kind of dichotomy is interesting since prosperity is mentioned and explained in the scriptures. However there is a certain caution that is latent regarding prosperity that the scriptures don’t demonstrate.

Prosperity is not evil. God is truly the most prosperous entity in all of existence! And furthermore, He is the giver of all good gifts, according to James 1:17.; which also includes prosperity.

And Jesus specifically stated that our Father in heaven will never give us dangerous or evil gifts, in Matthew 7:9-11.

Knowing this, we can therefore conclude that prosperity, as a gift and blessing from our divinely perfect and good Father God, cannot be wrong, evil, or bad.

How then does prosperity come to us? By what avenue does it travel? Many people need prosperity today, and because they haven’t been receiving, they erroneously conclude that God isn’t prospering anymore, or that His prosperity is only ethereal.

So we are going to explore this today, and get a better idea of how we prosper in Christ today.

Receiving Divine Power

June 23, 2019June 22, 2019Leave a Comment

Divine power. Supernatural ability. Going beyond human strength, human limits. Being something more. For years we have been infatuated with the idea of having power – even from the very beginning. It’s one of the reasons we like super-heroes… because they have strength and abilities beyond regular humans.

If we are being honest, “regular” human beings are rather weak on their own. Relying on devices and machines to accomplish most of our advanced tasks… not even the strongest among the animals when compared strength for strength and speed for speed.

Yet we have access to something that these others do not have, we have access to divine power which would actually put our favorite comic book heroes to shame – the kind of power that makes evil forces run and hide in terror. It has been given to us by God Himself.

This probably sounds to good to be true, and you’re doubting it in your mind right now… but I’m going to prove it in scripture, and by the end of this study today, you’re going to realize just how strong you truly are, and how to receive divine power; not just a nice thought or a warm fuzzy feeling – but real and effectual power that makes a difference.

Your Marriage to God (and what it means!)

June 9, 2019August 20, 2018Leave a Comment

If you have spent any time studying scripture, or even just listened to sermons preached over the years, the topic of marriage to God – being the bride of Christ – will eventually come up. And this is very interesting terminology, and can jump-start the imagination in a bunch of different ways. Countless pastors and theologians have gone in many different ways regarding this single idea of a marriage to God; and some have gotten into deep trouble with it as well. Yet since Jesus was the one who taught on this topic and used this terminology, and the Father even spoke along the very same lines back in the Old Covenant, we can make a couple of conclusions:

First, that it is not out-and-out wrong to think of our relationship with God in marital terms. It is not high-minded, or presumptuous.
And secondly, there is something very important about this perspective of our relationship with God, that He wants us to see and receive.

So today in this study, we will be examining our relationship with God, from the perspective of marriage, and what this means for us today in Christ as part of the New Covenant.

World Information vs. Spiritual Information

April 28, 2019July 11, 2018Leave a Comment

In a few of our past studies, I’ve alluded to the fact that faith is information. And I have received some messages from people since those studies, with questions regarding exactly what this means and how to apply it.

In those messages which people sent to me, it became immediately clear that they were not understanding the difference between world information and spiritual information. Indeed, those two things are very different. Not all information is faith. Faith is a very specific type of information; information that deals specifically with Christ, what He has accomplished, and who we are in Him today.

So today in this study, I would like to share with you, the very important difference between world information (information that comes from worldly circumstances and what the world presents to us) versus Spiritual information (information about Jesus Christ, what He has accomplished on the cross, and our identity in Him today) – that is the information which is properly identified as faith.

This is what we will be looking at today.

Psalm 51, Jesus, and Your Relationship

March 4, 2018March 4, 2018Leave a Comment

If you’ve read any of our previous studies, you know that I talk a lot about your identity in Christ, your foundation in Him, your Relationship with God. I talk about those things so often because without these things, you really have nothing but dead religion. Without these things: without your identity, without your relationship, without your foundation on Jesus Christ, it’s all just empty ritual, empty tradition, and ultimately an empty existence.

I had one person ask me once: Why don’t you teach something more relevant? And I had to respond and say that there is nothing more relevant than the finished work of Jesus Christ, and who you are in Him. I have discussions with people all of the time, who claim to be Christian’s, who say that they are believers, but they have no real relationship with God; they have no foundation, or realization of their identity… and these same people are living defeated lives… they are down all of the time, and they spend more time talking about how the enemy is beating them down rather than the victory that Jesus has won.

And please understand, I am not pointing fingers at those people, I’m not judging or ridiculing them at all – that’s not what Jesus called me to do… my purpose in mentioning their situation, is to highlight an issue that needs to be addressed… the lack of this foundation, identity and relationship in and through Jesus, is hurting people and destroying lives.

So what I want to share with you today, is more on this foundation. So that you will be able to live in the confidence, joy and peace of Jesus Christ every single day.

Giving Thanks to God

February 4, 2018February 4, 2018Leave a Comment

Have you ever given or received a Thank You note, or a card? It’s a simple way to express your gratitude and appreciation for something, or just someone being there for you. Maybe you just simply told someone face-to-face “Hey, thanks for being my friend.” or “Thanks for helping out.” A simple thank you can go a long way and mean a lot to someone. It can create a sense of closeness and strengthen the bonds of friendship, and simply let the person know that you value them.

There are many believers who want to thank God, genuinely, but they don’t know how to… or worse they have been taught the wrong ideas on how to thank Him (typically through legalism or a works-mindset), which leads the person into a deep pit of bondage, all stemming from a simple desire to express thankfulness. So the desire can be quite innocent, but can lead to great destruction.

The Spirit’s Role in Your Life

January 14, 2018January 14, 2018Leave a Comment

What role does the Holy Spirit of God have in your life? I have asked this question to a lot of people over the years, and I have heard a lot of different answers. Some people say that the Spirit of God tells us when we sin. Others say along a similar line, that the Spirit is our conscience, telling us wrong from right, good from evil. And of-course there are others still who just plain have no idea what the Spirit is for, or if the Spirit of God even exists today at all.

What I want to share with you today, is what the Bible says about the Spirit’s Role in our life today, and how the Spirit of God interacts with us. Jesus said that it would be better for us when He departed, because He would give us another Comforter, that being His Spirit – and He didn’t leave us guessing about who this Comforter was or what role the Spirit would have. So we shouldn’t be hesitant to look at it.

Your Eternal Choice

December 3, 2017December 3, 2017Leave a Comment

Choices, choices. We make hundreds of choices every single day: what to wear, what to eat, where to go, what to say, how to spend our free-time. Many choices, all ours to make as we see fit. Those choices have an effect, the choices we make result in certain things happening, and certain outcomes. Some with negligible differences, and some with larger and longer influences – such as a marriage.

All of these though, utterly pale in comparison to one choice… one eternal choice. One choice that will affect your eternal destination. One choice that will determine your future for all-time and beyond. What I want to share with you today, is exactly what this choice entails – it may surprise you to learn that many people aren’t as sure as they might have thought – and to also show you that this same choice has been available from the beginning of creation. This choice has not changed over the years, as some think that it has. It is an eternal choice, in every sense of the word; both in its existence and in its effect.

Your Identity as A Son of God

August 27, 2017August 27, 2017Leave a Comment

Do you know who you are? It sounds like a strange question at first, but I have conversations with people every day who are still confused about their spiritual identity… that’s why I teach so often on this very subject, because there are a great number of people in the church who still suffer from some sort of spiritual identity crisis. Not seeing who they are in Christ, but still identifying with their old nature. The part of them that is dead, they still see as alive, and they have bought into this lie that their still trying to become the new creation in Christ and they get stuck trying to fight a battle that is already won by Jesus Christ Himself.

God, of-course doesn’t want you to fall into this trap. He wants you to fully embrace the identity which He has given you. He wants you to walk in this identity every single moment of every day… It’s why He continually moves me to teach on this. I have been on a tangent for years now, because God’s heart is so strong for this, because so many of His children have bought into this lie that they are less than what they actually are in Him. So today we will be examining your identity in Christ Jesus – and even if you have been here for our previous studies on this subject, this will still be a good refresher for you, because faith comes by continually hearing, not just having heard one time.

Live in Love, Live in Jesus

August 20, 2017August 20, 2017Leave a Comment

There’s a lot of religious lingo in our culture today – and Christianity is no exception to that statement. Christians use phrases such as “being in Christ” a phrase that I use often as well, and even borrowed it for the title of today’s study. Some others are “saved” and “redeemed”,”sanctified / holy”, even “eternal life”. We use these words, but do we really have an understanding of what they truly mean?

If we don’t know the meaning of words, the message falls flat… if I’m speaking another language, one that you don’t know, the message of what I am saying will be lost to you.

Even the word “Gospel” has lost it’s meaning to people today. The word comes from the phrase “God Spel” meaning “good news”. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is indeed good news, even better than what we have come to make it out to be most of the time. God has done something greater than what we can even imagine. And it is the good news for us to receive; but many have not been receiving because the message has been lost. This is what what we will be studying today.