Part 10 in a series on the Upper Room Discourse and Jesus’ teaching on: Simple Faith
In the final part of this series, we look at what Jesus’ teaching on asking tells us about how to develop a life of prayer. Jesus tells us a lot about what our perspective on prayer ought to be, what to be asking for, and how to be asking that helps us enter into a continual, joy-filled life of asking and receiving.
Burning Hearts Gathering – 10/17/12 – Asking and a Life of Prayer (20.0MB 70min)
Part 9 in a series on the Upper Room Discourse and Jesus’ teaching on: Simple Faith
The final call of the Upper Room Discourse is to ask. Though never commanded, asking is the assumed response to believing, and Jesus promises that when we ask, He will answer. He will give us the Holy Spirit that we can abide in Him and will have power to love as He loves and even do greater works than He did.
Asking is not a command, it’s an inheritance. In love, God calls us to “ask and receive that your joy may be full.” The glory of love is to gaze upon the beauty of the One we love, to desire what we see, and to ask of Him to give us Himself, knowing confidently that He will because He loves us.
Burning Hearts Gathering – 10/10/12 – Asking (19.9MB 70min)
Part 8 in a series on the Upper Room Discourse and Jesus’ teaching on: Simple Faith
Jesus’ main command, although He doesn’t get to explaining it until late in the teaching, is to love. But not just any kind of love: to love as He has loved. In saying that, Jesus changes what the standard of love is, and where love comes from. No longer is it about basic human rights and common courtesy – it’s about living in the testimony of how God feels about human beings. It changes our approach to loving our neighbor to one that’s rooted and grounded in faith and in the testimony of Jesus, so that it’s Jesus loving them through us.
Burning Hearts Gathering – 10/3/12 – Loving as Jesus Loves (20.3MB 71min)
We’re continuing to look at the Upper Room Discourse and Jesus’ teaching on: Simple Faith
Continuing from last session, we’re talking about a life of abiding in Christ and how as a practical daily reality we walk in the truth of who He is and who we are in Him. Paul describes our life in this age as one of warfare against real spiritual enemies of Christ in the heavenly places whose weapons of warfare are continual lies and accusations against God and men. We, too, have been given weapons of warfare – mighty for tearing down strongholds and those things that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God.
Daily life as a believer requires taking up the armor of God which is the truth of the gospel and wielding it in a life of ceaseless prayer, taking captive every thought and making it obedient to Christ. This message is a look at what that lifestyle looks like in practice.
Burning Hearts Gathering – 9/26/12 – Abiding and a Life of Prayer (19.3MB 67min)
We’re continuing to look at the Upper Room Discourse and Jesus’ teaching on: Simple Faith
This session takes a practical look at a lifestyle of abiding in Christ. Remembering that it’s already done at the Cross – Christ is in us and we are in Him – we want a lifestyle that brings our heart and mind into agreement with and connection with that reality because often they are not.
This is a look at the process Jesus describes of the word of God growing and bearing fruit in our hearts, and how we can answer His charge to guard and take care of what we hear until it’s worked its work of transformation in us. Specifically, a model for meditating on the Word in a way that both gets it deep in our hearts and gets it flowing out of our hearts in our prayer life.
Burning Hearts Gathering – 9/19/12 – Abiding, the Word of God, and a Life of Prayer (19.8MB 70min)
We’re continuing to look at the Upper Room Discourse and Jesus’ teaching on: Simple Faith
We’re moving on to the second command of Jesus: abide. Jesus says abiding in Him is absolutely crucial. Those who do will bear much fruit; those who don’t cannot possibly bear any fruit and will be cast into the fire.
It’s both a mysterious and a simple command. The mystery is in what God has done in joining us to Him; the simplicity is in what we calls us to do in response – to abide literally just means “remain.” We are to know where we have been placed in Christ and we are to let nothing move us from living there by faith.
Burning Hearts Gathering – 9/12/12 – Abiding (20.0MB 70min)
We’re continuing to look at the Upper Room Discourse and Jesus’ teaching on: Simple Faith
In pursuing living a life of faith in God, there’s one place that journey reaches its peak: the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ. When God became a Person, faith became personal, worship became personal and devotion became personal. In the Person of Jesus of Nazareth, we get to really sit at the feet of God, hear His voice, see His face and know His heart. God goes from being concepts and ideals to being a Person, and that forever shifts what relating with Him is like.
This message is a look at the treasure of God becoming flesh in the Incarnation, and then an introduction to a practical way to meditate on the life of Jesus in the Gospels.
Burning Hearts Gathering – 9/5/12 – Believing and the Person of Christ (18.6MB 65min)
We’re continuing to look at the Upper Room Discourse and Jesus’ teaching on: Simple Faith
This message introduces a practical approach to the Word of God, based on a right understanding of the role God wants to play in our walk with Him, and therefore a right understanding of the role Scripture is meant to play in leading us to Him.
God revealing Himself to us in Scripture is a priceless treasure that we don’t want to neglect for fear of getting “religious” about it. We want a hunger and a thirst for His words because they lead us to HisPerson. With a simple shift to our approach to the words of God, they become more than words on a page; they become our escort into prayer-filled, worship-filled, awe-filled times of approaching the Word – the eternal Son of God.
Burning Hearts Gathering – 8/29/12 – Believing and the Word of God (18.6MB 65min)
We’re continuing to look at the Upper Room Discourse and Jesus’ teaching on: Simple Faith
This message zeroes in on Jesus’ foundational command: believe. Earlier in John 6, Jesus, when asked, told the Jews it was what they must do to please God: believe in He whom God had sent. Now Jesus teaches His disciples how belief is the only source of the love God desires.
Jesus makes two major points about belief in His teaching in the Upper Room: 1. it’s impossible to love rightly apart from belief, not just in the work of God in salvation, but in the Person of God. 2. it’s possible to believe because the Person of God is revealed to us through the Incarnate Son.
The implication of Jesus’ teaching is clear: every godly ambition must be thoroughly grounded in wholehearted pursuit of the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Burning Hearts Gathering – 8/22/12 – Believe (20.3MB 71min)
We’re starting a new series on: Simple Faith
In the Upper Room Discourse in John 13-17 Jesus teaches on what life looks like under the New Covenant. It’s beautiful in its simplicity, its loving nature and its accessibility. The Father, in love, has prepared for us a light yoke that is not out of our reach but belongs to little children.
We need to hear again and again Jesus’ message on the simplicity of believing and abiding, because our chief battleground in pursuing God is remaining in the simplicity of faith in and love for the Person of Christ, and not getting distracted and confused by adding to the simplicity of devotion that is in Christ.
Burning Hearts Gathering – 8/15/12 – The Upper Room Discourse (18.6MB 65min)
