Power of Sunday Series

What I mean when I say Living In Friday With A Sunday Power is that we as a whole, the body of the Church, and the Bride of Christ, have let the problems in our lives…that for the context of this message I’m calling Friday, overshadow the Power Of Sunday that each one of us who are saved has.

Romans 8:11 says “The Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you!” And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, He will give life to your mortal bodies by the same Spirit living within you!

So Christians, this verse is telling you that you have the Spirit Of The Resurrection living inside you; the Spirit That Conquered The Grave, the Spirit That Defeated Death And Sin And Satan, the Spirit That Introduced Grace, Justification And Redemption Of Man, and He lives within you allowing and enabling you to have the power to overcome anything the enemy throws at you. But if you do not tap into the Spirit, you are wasting the best gift in the universe, literally!

And as a result most believers are living in the Fear Of Friday and the Silence Of Saturday, but all the time having access to the Power Of Sunday!

When the Scripture talks about life, it is referring to eternal life so what this verse is saying is that I want to give you life on earth as it is in heaven!

See there is no sin in heaven because God and the Spirit of God cannot live in a sinful place, or temple, or mortal body, so we get the Spirit living in us but we had to die to our old selves in order for Jesus to come in. The Spirit of Jesus reigns in us and lives out his salvation throughout mortal bodies which is the resurrection at work in us!

I know we just read Romans 8:11, but I want to jump back a couple verses and dig deeper. Let’s go back to Romans 8, and look at verses 9-13 together.

Romans 8:9-13 9You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him. 10 Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit[a] gives life[b] because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will also bring your mortal bodies to life through[c] his Spirit who lives in you.

The Holy Spirit’s Ministries

12 So then, brothers and sisters, we are not obligated to the flesh to live according to the flesh, 13 because if you live according to the flesh, you are going to die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

So here in verse 9 Scripture says if you are a Blood-Bought Son-Of-God Born-Again Believer, then you are not in the flesh, you are In The Spirit.

Prior to your salvation, you don’t have the spirit of god living in you, so you are bound by the flesh of this carnal world until you get saved and you receive the Holy Spirit rendering you dead to the flesh and alive in the Spirit. That Spirit Has The Power And Ability To Overcome Problems Of The Flesh Of This World.

Every Christian has the Holy Spirit living in them that is more powerful than the flesh, which is the best news you can ever hear, other than someone gave their life to Jesus.

See that’s why there is always talk about dying to self and a progressive Spiritual change once you get saved, because you are not governed or ruled by your human nature anymore. Your Spirit is now one with the Spirit of God and you are walking in the Spirit.

That being said, we as a whole are not tapping into the Spirit and The Power The Spirit Has…And it has To Change The Church!

We are being ate up with depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, addiction, just to name a few, and we’ll try everything in the carnal, fleshly world to fix these problems, EXCEPT Seek The Face Of God In Prayer, Seek The Face Of God By The Holy Living Life-Transforming Word Of God.

I’ll tell you the truth… if You Commit To Reading The Bible At Least Once A Day, For One Month, and during that month you Commit To Coming To Church On Sunday And Wednesday Night, and you Commit To Praying Once A Day also, you will see a Change In Your Life and in the problems you were having and you will continue with your commitment after that month!

WEEK 2/ DEFINING CARNALITY

So let’ take a deeper look at what we mean when we say Living In The Flesh or sometimes it is called Living Carnally. I think we as pastors use these words and terms and we think everyone knows what they mean, but I want to explain it clearly. So let me use a couple of verses from God’s Word that explains Living In The Flesh.

So let’s jump back up to Romans 8:5. [Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires!] 5 For those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit have their minds set on the things of the Spirit.

That’s only half of verse 5, we’ll get to the second half when we talk about the Spirit and the power. See our minds are so, so important and this is why I keep saying Read The Bible because when you read the Word you are filling your mind with Spiritual things! Now when it says your mind is set on what the flesh desires, that’s not saying you are always thinking on crazy out-broken sin.

Let’s look at an example in Matthew 16:21-23. From then on Jesus began to point out to his disciples that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes, be killed, and be raised the third day. 22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, “Oh no, Lord! This will never happen to you!” 23 Jesus turned and told Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me because you’re not thinking about God’s concerns but human concerns.”

Jesus is telling his disciples what is about to happen to Him and Peter with his mind in the flesh or on things of men, as Jesus puts it, begins to rebuke Jesus!

Peter wanted Jesus to do all kinds of things because Peter’s ego wanted fame and power and whatever else his carnal mind could think up.

See Peter had his mind set on the Messiah conquering the world and doing all these things that he wanted, but what Peter said didn’t line up with Scripture and so Jesus cut him off and says, “Get behind me Satan!”

Think about this Christ called Peter Satan for thinking like a mere man, that’s exactly how important it is for us to deny ourselves daily, pick up our cross and follow Jesus. Jesus didn’t say deny Satan or sin, he said deny self, deny your carnal, fleshly human self-centered self, because I is a bigger stumbling block than Satan. If you can die to self and walk in the Spirit and not in the flesh, you will understand and enjoy the power of Sunday.

Jesus then exposes why and how Peter came into the satanic way of thinking. See Peter didn’t make a deliberate change to reject God and embrace Satan. That’s why it is so important for us to Guard Our Minds because Peter simply let his mind settle on the things of men, the things of the flesh. He began to think like a carnal man instead of Thinking On Things Of God, Things Of The Spirit and Satan took advantage of it.

That’s a great example of how we must be guarding our minds and keeping the worldly spirit of the flesh away, because four verses before Jesus is calling Peter Satan, Peter is speaking a word of the Lord saying, “You are the Christ the Son of the living God!” And Jesus said you didn’t think that all on your own, you got a word from the Lord.

So when you are living in the flesh, the flesh draws you to its desire. The devil is waiting for you to let your mind settle on Worldly, Carnal, Fleshly thoughts and once he has you thinking carnally, he knows your actions will follow.

James 1:14 But each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desires and enticed. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin and sin when it is full-gown gives birth to death.

So living in the Flesh or Carnally or Worldly means your mind is focused on things that have nothing to do with God. Paul said in I Corinthians 3:1 “Brothers and Sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly, mere infants in Christ!”

I’ve spent all this time talking about what the term Carnal, which in the Greek is the word sarkikosm, which literally means Fleshly, because I feel like I can say the words and people automatically think well I’m not that way because I don’t live in outbroken sin and I come to church every Sunday, but that’s not what it means; It Means You Live Your Everyday Lives Just Like Non-Christians. The only difference is you go to church and you have the Holy Spirit living in you, but you are not connected to the Spirit, you are not growing in the Spirit or in relationship with Jesus. You are living in the Fear of Friday, but you have the amazing Power of Sunday.

Paul knows the spiritual maturity of a church by how worldly they are! So now that we have defined the meaning of living in the flesh, let’s talk about how we can live in the Spirit and we can live victoriously as a Christian every single day with the Power Of Resurrection Sunday!

So, number one we saw that a big part of living carnally had to do with your MINDSET, so lets look at a few verses about our minds.

Philippians 2:5 “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” So Paul says let this mind, meaning it is something we have a choice about. Something we must choose to enter into and imitate. So not only do we have the Spirit of Christ, but we have The Mind Of Christ.

But let this mind show us it’s something we must choose to walk in, just like we choose to walk in the Spirit and not the flesh. The choice is not an okay I’m going to walk in the Spirit and I choose to have the mind of Christ, the choice is Psalm 1:1 “Blessed Is The One Who Meditates On His Law Day And Night And Finds Delight In It.”

The more we meditate on God and the Scripture, the more our minds are conformed to His mind, our thoughts conformed to His thoughts, and then we are living like God created us to live, and then His Life Becomes Our Life, His Mind Is Our Mind, His Heart Is Our Heart, His Desires Become Our Desires, His Love Is Our Love and all the sudden the emptiness and despair of Friday is the testimony of the Power And Victory Of Sunday… The Death And Loss Of Friday’s Setback Is The Glory, Praise And Honor Of Sunday’s Comeback.

So church you can choose to let His mind be your mind and live with the power of the Resurrected Jesus or you can come to church on Sunday and live for yourself the rest of the week, and just like Ground Hog’s Day, relive Friday everyday but at the time having Sunday’s victory at your fingertips and literally living inside you.

In order to live in the Power of Sunday, you’ve got to stop living in the flesh… and to stop living in the flesh, you must let the mind of the Lord be your mind…and for that to happen you’ve got to Guard Your Mind And Meditate on the Word of God and then you will Begin To Live In The Spirit.

WEEK 3 SUBMIT/ COMMIT /AND FEEL THE POWER

So let’s look deeper at what the Bible says about the mind and how to renew it and what will happen when you renew it!

Colossians 3:2 is pretty plain and simple. It says “Set your mind on things that are above; not on things of the earth. So this is basically the exact opposite of the definition for carnal thinking. I would say the first thing in becoming a person that sets your mind on things above is submission. If you have not fully submitted to God, it is going to be hard to commit to God. So we have to submit in order to commit.

James 4:7 Submit yourselves then to God. resist the devil and he will flee from you.

One of the main reasons Christians aren’t successfully living in the Freedom and Power of Sunday is because the devil keeps them thinking on carnal things…but this verse just told us how to combat the devil. You first Submit to God, by the action of submission you are in the same motion committing.

Committing to what?

To living with your mind on things above. When you commit to living with your mind on things above, then you are resisting the devil, causing him to flee from you and allowing you to continue to think on things above.

So, we have covered what thinking and living carnal means and then we’ve talked about how we have to renew our mind and think and live spiritually.

WHAT IS RESURRECTION POWER

Now let’s look at what the Resurrection Power Experience is. So in order for us to Live With, Experience, and Understand the Power of Sunday, we must first embrace the cross! We Have To Die To Rise. We have to Die To Self, in order to have the Power Of The Resurrection Sunday, we have to embrace a Personal Crucifixion Friday!

We’ve talked about the flesh and living carnally because we have to understand that, that is the worldly person with selfish worldly desires who live like we read in the first half of Romans 8:5 lives according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires.

It is that side of each one of us that after we get saved… that person must be crucified and then once that old version is dead, the second half of Romans 8:5 comes in saying But These Who Live In Accordance With The Spirit Have Their Minds Set On What The Spirit Desires! Verse 6 The mind Governed By The Flesh Is Death, but the Mind Governed By The Spirit Is Life And Peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law nor can it do so.

You know what that means? What it means is once you die to the flesh and embrace the Spirit of God you then, through the Power of Resurrection Sunday are enabled to live victoriously as a Christian. Then you can focus solely on striving to live out Holiness And Righteousness because once you are doing the things that make you Hungry For God, that makes you Thirst To Be More Like God; you then see the Power of the Resurrection… because the More You Hunger And Thirst For Righteousness the More Righteous You Become, the more Righteous You Become the More Everything Else Falls Into Place.

Take Abraham for example. When he was told to sacrifice Isaac, we often miss the fact that Abraham is the one who died that day. His personal ideas and affections as a father had to die, to be poured out, so that the larger purpose of God could flow into his heart. Because Abraham died to self, God could trust him to carry the seed that would bless the whole earth for all time…the more we sell out to God the more God fills us… and the more we are filled, the more of Sunday’s power we see working in our lives.

You don’t have to work on your language, seek God and holiness and the Power of the Holy Spirit will take care of the bad language, you don’t have to work on lusting, gossiping, envy…Seek God And Holiness and the Power of the Holy Spirit will take care of these things for us.

As long as we try to work on our problems, we will never see the power God has truly given us. When we seek to be Holy because God is Holy, these things like language will take care of its self because the Holy Spirit is changing you from the inside out.

(My language testimony)

Ephesians 3:20 says Now all Glory to God, who is able through His mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.

Just think about that! The same power that shattered death and resurrected Jesus sets us free from all that binds us.

The very Spirit of God lives in us to empower us for the ministry of the Kingdom of God. Resurrection power is for us in us and at work through us. We live as God’s ministers, filled with His resurrection power, extending His kingdom into every part of our lives.

That being said, when we get depressed instead of running to the doctor and getting him to prescribe a pill, ask yourself if you are feeding the Holy Spirit and tapping into the power of God that is in us. If not, read the Bible and study it daily and set aside time to pray every day and give God a chance to stop that depression. Give God a chance to end your anxiety. We must tap into the power to live victoriously.

You see the resurrection and the power of it wasn’t just to show us Jesus conquered death and that we have hope in eternal life after death it was also to show us that we can life life with the power of the resurrection living in us giving us the power to overcome on earth!

We die to self so that we are sold out to God while we are living on earth. We renew our mind so we are thinking with the mind of Christ so that we can live with the power of God on earth. We walk in the Spirit so we can live righteously on earth. We die to self, we renew our mind. We walk in the Spirit because of the knowledge we have in Christ and the power to overcome on earth so that we are not weighed down by the problems life on earth brings. So that someone who doesn’t have the knowledge of the Savior will look at our life and say what do I have to do to live in the joy and love and power you live in.

2 Peter 1:3 says His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through out knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness.

And we also know that John 10:10 says the thief came to steal and destroy. I care that they may have life and have it abundantly. So Christians, church, it’s time we claim what the Word of God is telling us. We have to love and seek righteousness, seek out holiness, seek out the overcoming power of the resurrection that lives in us and enjoy the life Christ meant for us to have.