Wednesday Night Services

We come to the place of the first dream’s fulfillment and can begin to understand the purpose they were given to Joseph for.

In Genesis 42, Joseph’s brothers arrive and bow at his feet. The word says in Vs. 9 that Joseph remembered his dreams and you can certainly see why. So tonight we begin to see what these dreams meant and what they showed Joseph about what was to come. If you have been curious as to what his dreams actually meant, this is the first look at discovering it.

How do you respond when it seems like your dream is coming to pass? You know you are here for more than you’ve realized and now it seems to be changing? Do you stop being who you were and become what you think you need to be? Many have done this but Joseph needs to be who he has been. Being who he is not what has kept him from being who he was called to be. What he was prepared for was not yet ready for him yet, but now it is.

You have probably been in a situation waiting for a promise of God to manifest, be it healing, financial, employment, or as with Joseph a calling to a higher position and purpose than what he had at the time. When we continually wait and time passes by it can be difficult to keep your faith, hope, and joy up. At times, you may feel like you are putting on a false face for others so they see you as you know or think you should be in these areas. In this state we are so susceptible to go after something that it seems Joseph did here in Genesis 40. What was it, how could it be harmful, and how do we guard against it?

Joseph was forced into slavery, forced into serving a man not of his choosing, and then his wife tried to force him into doing things that were wrong, possibly even using her position of authority over him as he was just a slave. How many situations are forced upon us? Situations in which we think we have few or no choices? A tactic of the enemy is to put you in situations where you seem to have no choice but to do what you know is wrong or at least compromised, and many fall. Let’s see what happens to Joseph and how he handles this.

What can we learn about Joseph’s dream to help with our own life or involvement with dreams? Tonight we look at the dream and what it shows us about Joseph and those around him.

I had a three places in mind as our next series, but settled on this one for a few reasons. One, it’s been 16 years since we last did a close look at this Bible hero and all the stories surrounding him. Second, there is a secondary study we will take up that has had people’s interest of late. And third, I’ve been getting a lot more insight just in contemplating the scriptures around this hero of faith, more so than the other two areas. So tonight we begin a series looking at the life of Joseph with a side study of dreams, their potential significance, how we can know if they have any significance at all, and where to go to learn their meaning. Part of tonight’s first look will be to go over 4 levels of understanding we can walk in and some signs that can tell us where we are. That level can be different for each aspect of our lives.

How does a person who wonders from the truth become restored? How did they wonder to begin with? This is how James ends his epistle. No goodby sign off or closing prayer, just his words to this topic of restoring one who wondered from the truth. James speaks highly of the ministry of restoring, but we will see that this ministry is very close to something that is not spoken very highly about. How can you make sure you are doing the good ministry and not the look alike?

What kinds of prayers fit in to what the word of God calls "Fervent Prayer?" Some of the questions I've heard seem to indicate I haven't given a sufficient handle of this for people to really get a hold of it, so I'm going to spend another week on this. We will look at some other examples of fervent prayer that are different from the ones we went over last time.

What is an effective fervent prayer? If we can avail much with such praying, it would certainly help us to know just what James is referring to, so tonight we will be spending most of our time looking at this kind of prayer. We will also look at the confessing he brings up in the beginning of the verse. So we won’t be finishing the book of James tonight, but I think it will be worth our time to just focus on these three verses, and to answer this question: Is it more important to have faith or to be fervent in prayer? Our full text is James 5:16-18.

As we walk by faith in God and His word it seems like we are taught more to respond apart from our feelings than with them, but In these verses in James he teaches us how to respond when our feelings are engaged. Those that are suffering, those that are cheerful, and those that are sick are told to have three different responses. Much can be learned from what James and the rest of the Word of God teach us, and we will be spending a large part of the time on the third one, sickness. There are some things here to learn from the text that will help us better understand these verses and others like it. Our full text is James 5:13-15.

What is James saying about rich people? This is the second time he brought them into this letter. Are we better off being poor? How does the patience James has in mind help us in the things he is exhorting his church about? The last verse in our passage tonight talks about not swearing by things like heaven or earth. Does that mean we should not be sworn in to tell the truth?

How is James telling us to live and think about our lives and the plans we make? Are we in line with this teaching when we say “if the Lords wills” to the things we plan for tomorrow? James has a flow to what he is teaching and if we understand the flow, we understand the meaning. Besides the plans we make we also look at what James teaches about boasting and ignoring.

What is speaking evil against our brothers or sisters, and what are we not to judge? There is a ditch on both sides of the road to fall into when looking to keep your walk on the road God wants you to, so we will spend time tonight identifying the ditches and the road we are to be on. As always we will look to other parts of the Word to help us understand what James is teaching here in chapter 4:11-12.

The world is always trying to pull us away from God, and tonight we look at the ways it does and what we look like when we take on both a friend of God and a friend of the world. It wouldn't be worthwhile if we didn't also look at how to extract the world from us and become immune to it's influence.

Speaking foolish words will harm you; speaking wise words will help you! When we have control of our tongue or the words we express, we must ensure they are sourced only by the wisdom of God. This wisdom is easy to discern from any other, and James tells us how. Want to know if you have been pulled in by a source of wisdom that brings evil things into your life?

Is there a guard on your mouth? Maybe there should be! All things that are valuable or important have a guard and the word tells us to have one on our mouth. This seems to indicate that the words we let out of it have great value or importance. I look forward to finishing James 3 and sharing the things I have written down about it, but we are going back over verses 1-12 again to cover some important principles I don’t want to leave uncovered.

In tonight's midweek service we look at James teaching on taming the tongue. He starts out with a warning that not many should become teachers and we will compare that to Paul's teaching that seems to say something different. James then goes on to show how the tongue sets the direction for our life, and that just as our faith should not be tossed about, neither should our tongue. Best of all, we will see how to bring our tongue into submission to our spirit.

Is dead faith undeveloped faith (ignored and never developed), ineffective faith (never risen to a challenge and seldom seeing results), inconsistent faith (it sometimes wins and other times loses), insincere (faith that isn’t genuine), or something else? If we misunderstand the type of faith James is speaking of we will not understand or correctly apply the fix. So in tomorrow’s midweek service, we will look at what dead faith is and how to fix it. We might even look into how to fix the problems James doesn’t.

Wednesday Night services