Living Water Community Church

We worked through the second half of Daniel 1. We see here how Daniel and his three friends remain faithful to God as they are carried off into Babylonian captivity. This story really echoes the story of Joseph in many ways. They are both sent to bear witness before kings and princes. They remain undefiled when they are faced with temptation and worldly solutions. They both depend on God in the midst of situations which could cost them their lives. They are both preserved by God and both come to interpret dreams through the power of God’s revelation. They are both exulted to positions of power next to the king. They both foreshadow Jesus who was sent from heaven to earth to bear witness of the one true God before kings and princes. Jesus entered into a fallen sin soaked world without ever defiling Himself. Like Daniel and Joseph He found favor with God and man. Teachers were amazed at His understanding even at 12 years old. Jesus is the manifestation of all the wisdom of God. He is the greater and better Dani

We really dove into the background of what happened to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. They were most likely from the royal family or from the nobility. They were also considered pleasing to look at and educated. These young men experienced a radically dramatic shift in their lives. They were taken from lives of privilege to the life of servitude in a foreign kings court. Daniel and his friends would never again see their families or their country. On top of the radical change the king had a plan to integrate the captured young leaders into the Babylonian culture. There was a three year reeducation program in place. They changed their names from God exulting Yahweh honoring names to names which pointed to Chaldean gods. 

We did an overview of the book of Daniel focusing on the historical context, some questions about the authorship, and the structure of the book. 

We will continue to explore this concept of how our whole life is to be lived to the glory of God. We strive to sacrifice for the glory of God. We strive to love others and the Lord. And these things will drive unity and fellowship in the body of Christ. These things are connected to being renewed in our minds. It starts in our head and heart and moves out into our actions. This is what presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice will start to look like. As our minds are renewed we will be able to test and discern what the will of God is. What is good and acceptable and perfect. 

Relying on God and His love for us is needed in our war against the powers of darkness. We cannot fight alone, and we are not alone. God, in His abundant love, will uphold and defend us as we get to learn to trust in Him. 

We ended on verse eighteen and this time we will be starting there. This verse wraps up the section we were exploring about the armor of God. The section on armor really sets a great final theme for wrapping up this letter. Paul encourages us to put on this armor to stand against the devil. We are not in a battle against flesh and blood. It may feel like it at times but everyone you encounter who is not a Christian is also hated by Satan. To the devil and all the spiritual forces at work in the world the very existence of man reminds them of their defeat at the cross through the work of Jesus. He was the new Adam and He did what Adam could not do. He conquered the fallen kingdom as the new and perfect representative of man. His favorite term for Himself was Son of Man. This is because His intention was not just to be the messiah of the Jews but to be the redeemer of all creation. Through His work on the cross He would make a way for all men who repent and put their faith in Jesus as Lord to be rescued from si

We explored the section where Paul addresses slaves and masters. It is interesting historically because the roles of slaves and masters at this point in Roman history was much closer to the modern roles of employees and employers. Because of the slave uprisings and because it is estimated that two-thirds of the population of Rome were slaves, they were treated generally pretty well. Slaves had more legal rights then free laborers did. So when Paul addresses  slaves and masters we should be thinking of employees and employers. In a nutshell the goal of Paul’s teaching is for slaves to serve their masters or employees to serve their employers as if they were serving Jesus. The opposite is also true employers should be treating their employees as if the employee was Jesus. Ultimately this approach to the relationship between employees and employers is going to be concerned with the relationship itself, and in this there is going to be a lot of depending on Jesus to help us. The hope for the Christian employer or

We are looking at what God calls us to consider as we think about worshipping Him. We have looked at the fact that all of life is really to be lived in worship of God. Yet how important do we hold worship to be? It is such a core element of seeking God that it would not be overstating it to say worship to the most crucial component of the Christian life. We fail to think properly about worship when we associate it with one element of our lives. When we identify worship as praise and adoration of God we are correct, but when worship is only thought of in relation to singing we have missed the broader picture painted for us in God’s word. 

As we considered the first four verses of Ephesians 6 we continued to deal with the topic of roles and responsibilities which was introduced with the topic of marriage in chapter 5. What Paul addressed in those 4 verses was the roles of children and parents. These roles are critical and important. Paul is laying a solid groundwork for what is the core unit of the church; the family. What he shows us in this passage is how Christianity is a faith for families. All members of the family are called to engage and to respond to the direction God has given. Children are addressed as being capable of engaging in a relationship with God which drives their actions. They are called to obey their parents in the Lord. They are also called to honor their father and mother. Children are promised their obedience and honor of their parents will result in a long life and things going well with them. Fathers and by extension mothers are called to not provoke their children to anger but to bring them up in the discipline and in

We worked through the last part of the section on the roles and responsibilities of husbands and wives. The picture the text paints is majestic in how it points us to the person and work of Jesus for the church, as the model for married couples to look to. Wives can think of their role as mirroring the role of the church in its relationship to Jesus. Men can think of their role as mirroring the role of Jesus in how He leads as a servant and lays down His life for the church. Paul even points us back to the creation of Eve for Adam as a foreshadowing or a picture of Jesus relationship to His bride. Paul goes so far as to say the mystery of marriage is it’s creation is a picture of Jesus and His bride. In other words the greater and better reality of marriage is found in Jesus and the church. One of the most beautiful pictures of this is found in how when Eve is created even her creation is a mirror of how the church will be created by God for Jesus through His work on the cross. God put Adam to sleep as if in

We began to work through the section dealing with the roles of husbands and wives in the context of marriage. What we discover in this section is a call for Christian husbands and wives to work at doing the things which are contrary to our fallen nature and the curse. We explored how the curse of God on Adam and Eve brought division and strife into their relationship. In looking at the things brought by the curse we see how the things laid out in this Ephesians passage counteract the curse. It calls women who are cursed with a desire which is contrary to their husbands to submit themselves to their husbands. It calls men who are cursed with a work oriented outlook, where they are consumed by their work, to work at overcoming this preoccupation with work by loving their wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. What we essentially see here is how our marriages are restored by the work of Jesus and through our restored marriages comes transformed families, churches and ultimately the world.

We examined verses 15-20 of chapter 5. Here we see Paul calling us to build up the body of Christ to be free standing moral agents in this world. The world needs to see people who are different and make a difference. People who stand for what is right according to God’s word and live it out. The opening verse calls us to walk in wisdom. The call is to follow the will of the Lord. In order to follow God’s will we need to know what God says and we need to cultivate a love and desire for God. In the context Paul gives us the example of not being drunk with wine but by contrast being filled with the Spirit. This example is one of many we could point to which demonstrates turning to God to find what we need rather than turning to something this world has to offer. Essentially Paul is calling on his readers to fined their fulfillment in God rather than making idols out of things which ultimately will not satisfy. The last two verses we looked at really call us to center our lives on living out a life of thanksgivin

The worship of God matters to God. While all of life is worship there are certainly things which God finds unacceptable. Understanding how to worship in the right way is the duty of every Christian. We all need the ultimate and only sacrifice found in Jesus death, burial and resurrection. Jesus is our only hope and the best possible hope. Any man centered method of gaining salvation is intolerable to God. We look at 4 different intolerable forms of worship of God. May we worship God in Spirit and Truth.

Today we turn our attention to how Paul is calling us here to be agents who call people out of the world of sin.We see a foreshadowing of God’s plan of salvation being heralded in the opening verses of Genesis.  This passage we are in contrast again and again light and darkness.  Philippians 4:8 teaches us to set our minds on, "Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”We should remember how we dwelt in darkness and where we came from.

We worked through the beginning of chapter 5. The chapter really began the time before last as Paul laid out the reasons to be motivated to be imitators of God. Namely, the great love God has shown us in Jesus and His work on the cross for us, which brings us into His family as beloved children. This foundation is the basis for Paul to address how the people he is writing to, face enormous temptations to all kinds of sexual sins. He lays out first how sexual immorality, impurity or covetousness shouldn’t be found anywhere in their community. He goes on to point out how even crude joking, foolish talk and filthiness should be replaced with thanksgiving. He also lays out how being made new in Jesus makes being connected to these things a contradiction. Meaning you cannot live a life devoted to intentionally sinning in these ways and expect to gain eternity with Jesus in heaven. Being devoted to these things is fundamentally idolatry and you are declaring by participating in these things where your heart really

We explored the end of chapter four and the first two verses of chapter five. Keep in mind Paul is addressing the city of Ephesus and probably the cities in the region. We know by the time John wrote Revelation the Ephesians were diligent about their faith and defending it in the midst of a perverse culture. But the one problem they had was a loss of their first love for the Lord. These things Paul is writing about in the last half of this book are really relevant for this issue. If we consider the first half of this epistle we will see it is very focused on the work of God in and through Jesus and the impact of salvation in saving and transforming us. The last half is laser focused on what we should expect this transformation to look like. One of the things we have seen and will continue to see is how the way we should be living in relationship with each other is tied to the relationship God has established with us. The reason we bridged the chapter last time was because of this very thing. Paul wraps chapte

For some time the subject of worship has been recurring in my life and study. It has been increasingly grabbing my attention and has come up in multiple conversations with different people. It seems like this is a good time to explore this topic and see what the word of God has to say about it. Today I want to try and lay out from scripture what it tells us worship is. Since our main point of gathering as a community of believers is worship it would appear we should understand what this word means. Yet I find myself over and over combating what I believe to be bad ideas about worship. For many worship is so narrowly defined it often ends up being identified with music. Certainly music is powerful and it is a means of worship but it is not the only way we are called to worship by the word of God. Because we are exploring this topic over the coming months on the first Sunday of the month we will certainly look in depth at the role music plays and consider what scripture tells us about it but today I want to tak

We are called as Christians to fight for each other. This is where we turn our attention. We are not called to do work on being transformed in isolation but rather in community. We seek to build each other up and turn the focus of one another toward Christ (Who alone brings lasting transformation). 

We learned from Paul how we must have a different walk from the world. Meaning our lives need to look different from the world. But this difference in our lives needs to be rooted in the life of God and not in simply following a set of rules for living. Paul’s main contention is if we have come to know Jesus we have received the light which comes along with knowing Him. This illumination comes along with a heart of flesh which has replaced the hard heart we once had. The light of God and the heart of flesh come together to create in us a new man shaped by the work of God in us. As a new creation in Christ we are called to put off the deceitful desires and corruption which was part of our former manner of life. The idea is to stop doing the things which we used to do and to replace those former things with things which renew the spirit of our minds. Clearly Paul is talking about what we think about and dwell on. The goal should be a focus on God and His true righteousness and holiness. As people who are coming

Chapter 4 began with a call to walk in a manner which is worthy of the calling we have received. Part of this calling is to bear with one another and to seek unity and peace. After giving this call to unity in Christ and rooting it in the unity found in God Himself Paul moves on to talk about how this unity plays out in the church. The church is one body. To begin with each of the members of the body has been uniquely gifted by God. The reason we have been gifted and set apart is firmly rooted in the person and work of Jesus. We explored how when Paul talks about Jesus descending to the lower regions of the earth he is really talking about the role Jesus plays as the new Adam. His descent is linked in the passage to His ascent which should point us to His death and resurrection. These are pivotal to Jesus role as the messiah and the new Adam. It is in this role He fulfills God’s command to Adam to subdue and to rule. He currently rules at God’s right hand and God is bringing everything into subjection to Him.