[button url=”http://faithapostolic.us/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/July-2014.pdf” target=”_blank” size=”Large” arrow=”right”]July 2013 Events [/button]
July 2014 Events Calendar
Summer 2014 – 1.2.3. Prayer
Jesus said, “My house shall be called a house of prayer.” Of all the things we do as God’s people and as a church, there really is nothing any more important than praying. Prayer changes things. Prayer changes situations. Prayer changes people. Prayer changes us. Prayer is the key that unlocks the door to revival in a church. Prayer invites the miraculous power of God into our lives.
Faith Apostolic Church is a church of prayer. We know, first-hand, the power of prayer. We are committed, as a congregation, to continuing steadfastly in prayer.
At the beginning of 2014, we committed to setting aside the first three days of each month for a special season of prayer called, “1-2-3 Prayer.” We believe that by offering to God a “first fruit” offering of prayer at the beginning of the month, we are inviting immeasurable blessings open the entire remainder of the month.
I know that summertime is busy. We have vacations, family reunions, camps, outings and all sorts of activities that can eat up a lot of our time. I want to encourage you, however, to keep our 1-2-3 Prayer a priority. Let’s not neglect our commitment to prayer. For some people, summer is a season that doesn’t seem very spiritual – just busy and chaotic. For others, summer can be a great season of personal revival and spiritual renewal. It all depends on our focus. Summer activities are important, but let’s keep our spiritual focus as well over the next few months.
Join us the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of June, July and August for a season of prayer at our Carmel campus. We’ll meet each night at 7pm. I hope to see you and your family each night!
Pastor Ball
June 2014 Events Calendar
[button url=”http://faithapostolic.us/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/June-2014.pdf” target=”_blank” size=”Large” arrow=”right”]June 2014 Events[/button]
May 2014 Events Calendar
[button url=”http://faithapostolic.us/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/May-2014.pdf” target=”_blank” size=”Large” arrow=”right”]May 2014 Events[/button]
An Infallible Proof of the Resurrection – Where is His Body?
The following is an earlier blog post from Pastor Ball:
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is a cornerstone of our Faith. The apostle Paul said if Christ is not risen from the dead, then our faith is vain and we are still in our sins.
Jesus showed Himself alive after His passion by many infallible proofs – proofs of His resurrection! There is not sufficient space in this short blog to discuss the enormous amount of evidence of Christ’s resurrection. If you’re interested in a thorough discussion of the subject, I recommend Josh McDowell’s book, “The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict.” http://www.josh.org/. I would, however, like to discuss just one fact that points to the Risen Savior: His enemies never found a body!
The Jewish religious leaders viciously opposed Jesus throughout His ministry. After His death they reminded Pilate that Jesus had spoken of a resurrection. They asked Pilate to place a guard at the tomb and seal the entrance so His disciples couldn’t come and steal His body then say He had resurrected. Pilate agreed to their request.
The Jewish leaders knew where the tomb was. Their watchful temple guard knew exactly where Jesus was laid. They were prepared to go to any lengths to suppress Christianity. All they had to do was produce a body! All they had to do to put an end to the Jesus movement was produce His body. All they had to do was put Jesus’ corpse on a cart and parade it through the streets of Jerusalem and Christianity would have died with its Christ.
But there was no body. The tomb was empty. He arose on the third day!
The Romans persecuted the Christians. They tried to rid them from their society. All the Romans had to do was show Jesus’ body in a tomb and that would have ended it. Are you telling me that the Emperors of Rome did not have the means to produce the corpse of Jesus if there was a corpse? Augustus? Tiberius? Claudius? Nero? The only thing these Caesars had to do to expunge Christianity was produce a body. Find His resting place. Find His body. Display His corpse in the public square with this inscription:
“Here lies Jesus of Nazareth – impostor who claimed to be God – who said He would RISE again. Here lies His body!”
That would have sealed the fate of Christianity.
But the Jews and Romans – enemies of the Church – are throughout all history strangely silent! They never claim a body. Why is that? There was no body. He got up! Jesus resurrected on the third day just as He had said.
Some skeptics say, “The disciples stole His body!” But what of the Roman guard? What of the watchful Jewish leaders and the temple guard? History makes it plain – an official Roman guard would number between ten and thirty trained soldiers. Due to the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ death, the number of the guard assigned to this tomb was undoubtedly larger!
The tomb was sealed with the imperial seal of Rome, which would have been a high crime to deface. Roman history is clear that the punishment for quitting a post was death! Fear of punishment produced faultless attention to duty – especially in the night watches.
And what about the stone? The stone was so enormous that it would require up to twenty men to move it. How could the disciples have stolen His body?
The greatest proof of the Resurrection is that the greatest enemies of Christ could never find His body. If Jesus had not risen, the Jews or the Romans would have found His body, paraded it through the streets and sealed the fate of Christianity. But they never found a body. The reason is simple. On the third day Jesus came out of the grave, victorious over death and hell, and is alive forevermore!
-Pastor Ball
Easter Season Activities
He’s Alive! His tomb is empty! Jesus died, was buried but rose again the third day. Celebrate Easter with us on Sunday, April 20th at Faith Apostolic Church! We will be reflecting on how the Resurrection of Jesus Christ brings us new life and hope. Our Easter services will be at 10:00 am at our Carmel campus and 2:42 pm at our Sheridan campus.
On Friday, April 18th, we will be remembering how Jesus gave His body and blood to be broken and shed for our healing and salvation. Our 7:30 pm Good Friday Communion Service is a highlight of the year. Don’t miss out on this deep, spiritual experience of observing the Lord’s Supper.
After our Sunday morning service on April 13th at our Carmel Campus, we will be having an Easter Egg Hunt for all the children 12 years old and under. There will be lots of candy and prizes for all the kids. Bring the whole family to our 10 am service and stick around for the Easter Egg Hunt!
April 2014 Events Calendar
[button url=”http://faithapostolic.us/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/April-20141.pdf” target=”_blank” size=”Large” arrow=”right”]April 2014 Events[/button]
When Grace Destroys Hope
Romans 3:23-24 (NLT) For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins
Let’s be honest here, we don’t deserve even one little part of what God gives us, including life itself, but His grace overlooks moral and spiritual blemish to consider us worth His favor.
It’s a concept that boggles the mind, but yet we, as mere mortals, could never be expected to understand the concept of grace in its entirety. After all, we don’t know a love like God’s; it’s literally incomprehensible. It’s exactly this inability to grasp the vastness of love that leads to misconceptions of grace and how it relates to our salvation.
While largely unintended, it’s common to equate God’s approval with an unblemished lifestyle, free of any sin at all – otherwise known as “merited grace.” Then one day in your youth comes your first conscious acknowledgement of personal failure, your first self-realized sin. The devil assaults your mind with condemnation to the point you think you might as well quit church now since you’ll never be ahead. Sadly, those problems still persist as adults. We have churches full of veteran Christians who, if asked, would still probably question their true probability of entering Heaven. For so long the church taught the concept of good deeds being what merited us Heaven; after all, being sinful relegated us to hell so why wouldn’t Heaven be the opposite? So as you can imagine, the collective amount of confusion revolving around salvation that stands predominant in the psyche of our congregation is staggering.
The problem is that grace is so simple and sin is so complex. The human mind seems drawn to complexity. This nature causes us to focus on the “What’s wrong?” rather than the overwhelmingly simple concept of grace. Ask a Christian any number of sin-related passages in the Bible and you’ll get dozens of answers from many scriptures. Yet ask those same people to quote passages about grace and your tally of scriptures will be embarrassingly lopsided to the former. It’s our nature. We know those scriptures because we’re defensive. We want to know what not to do in relation to our spiritual walk, and more importantly, Heaven.
So what does hope have to do with grace? Hope is not based in confidence. Hope is not factual. Hope is simply hope. It’s anticipating a positive outcome, not being sure, but being optimistic. Many times, hope is very effective and gives an enhanced quality of life. However, having hope doesn’t guarantee or assure of an outcome. For a person who hopes in regards to their salvation and eternity, hope is not enough. Hope, while fairly confident, leaves enough doubt that there isn’t total and resolute confidence. Give that kind of mentality to a person who already struggles with the concept of merited grace and you have all the makings of someone who unconfidently believes in their salvation. This person will ultimately wind up a worried and bound Christian or leave the church altogether citing their inability to resolve their spiritual and moral shortcomings.
Therein lies the reason that grace must destroy hope. Grace is confident. Grace abolishes hope and any doubt or dissatisfied reasoning that remains within hope. One could even make the argument that where there’s hope, grace is disregarded. While hope is being confident in an outcome, grace understands the outcome was already decided and hope is not needed. The shred of doubt that hope offers is the exact opposite of the resolute mentality that grace places in our mind. The devil will take even the most miniscule amount of doubt and magnify it to be larger than the confidence that hope was intended to offer. Grace replaces this misunderstanding. Grace states that no matter what we do we cannot do enough to enter Heaven. Grace eliminates the idea of the hope of salvation and causes us to realize we don’t need hope, we need grace. We need to accept grace in our lives to be at peace with our salvation. It is neither faith nor hope that people who are confident in their salvation possess; those people have accepted grace and understand its application in their lives. As Pastor said, peace is given by the confidence of grace, its understanding of its application to salvation in our lives, and the knowledge that when we have grace, we don’t have to hope anymore. Grace reminds us again and again that things between He and us were forever fixed when we were born again of water and Spirit. They are the rendezvous points where God declares to us concretely that the debt has been paid, the ledger put away, and that everything we need, in Christ for salvation we already possess. – Phillip Newby
Video Clips from Conference in Fond Blanc, Haiti
[vimeo 88537039 w=500&h=280]
[vimeo 88537040 w=500&h=280]
Don’t Get Sucked into the Facebook Fray
Guest Post by Pastor Jonathan Vazquez
I was raised in the Apostolic church. The very first scripture I remember memorizing was Matthew 5:44. This powerful scripture says, “But I say unto you, Love
your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” I have tried to live this scripture in my life.
This passage instructs Christians to handle those who mistreat us with kindness and grace regardless of how we are treated. If the Lord commands love, blessing, good and prayer for those who are enemies, curse us, hate us and despitefully use and persecute us, how much more does He demand grace and kindness to be shown to our fellow believers? Furthermore, if all Christians are instructed to comport themselves in such a manner, how much more should those who have received the sacred call of preaching the gospel hold themselves to a higher standard?
I have been distressed about the liberty of rudeness that so many believers, especially ministers, take in regards to how they communicate with each other – especially on social media. I cringe when fights are carried out in the public venue of Facebook, Twitter or whatever social media outlet is used. The church members we preach to and chastise for certain behaviors read posts that are obviously intended to incite anger or illicit a response.
So many pontificate on their pet doctrines and wait for those who disagree. Even if they are totally right in their point of view, it does not give them the right to carry the argument in a public forum. What do unbelievers think when they see preachers warring with each other in such a way? How does the drug addict who desperately needs God feel when he sees those who claim to have an answer for him fighting over some particular pet peeve? Carry on your discussions in private, face-to-face or on the phone, but don’t smear the ministry by descending into the gutters of arguments that no one will win on social media.
It appears some people just enjoy the battle. They seem to get some sense of satisfaction from “standing for truth” and then adopt a martyr complex if people disagree. A mentality that “I just have to say something” is narcissistic. To think that your argument is the one that will change everyone is foolhardy. The “I want everyone to know where I stand” argument reveals a low self-image or is just an excuse. If your life and ministry doesn’t stand on its own, a social media explanation probably won’t help you too much. Simply put – If you like to argue, you need an altar.
Launching personal attacks on social media reveals a weakness of character and integrity and is certainly not a sign of boldness. It is always easier to hide behind a keyboard than it is to address an issue face-to-face. Please note that I am not naïve enough to believe that there will never be misunderstandings in the realm of social media, but escalating it to personal and drawn-out conflict is never appropriate.
I think that some of the liberty we take on social media may be a result of some of the liberty we have allowed ourselves in the pulpit. Over the years, the most embarrassed I have been about my ministry is centered on times when I feel I have been rude or crude. However, Pentecost has created superstars out of ministers whose calling card is rudeness and bad manners. If certain behaviors are acceptable in the pulpit, then we lose our authority to chastise in private. We must hold ourselves to a higher standard of conduct.
Satan is as vile a creature as there could possibly be. Beside him, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Hussein and Bin Laden were mere amateurs. If there has ever been a being that deserved to be railed against, it is he. But notice how Michael the archangel handled his fellow, and fallen, archangel: “Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee (Jude 9).” The Complete Jewish Bible says that Michael would not bring “an insulting charge.” The New International Version says that he “did not dare bring a slanderous charge.” How, then, can we feel so free to treat fellow members of the ministry so rudely? Even if you feel a person doesn’t deserve to be in the ministry, he or she are certainly not on a level with Satan!
Jesus, in a conversation with His hand-picked preachers, said, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another (John 13:35).” We don’t prove our ministries by arguing and fighting with each other publicly; we prove it by showing love one to another. Regardless of who started it, we should take the initiative to finish it. How I am treated doesn’t give me the right to reciprocate. Jesus said, “For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same (Matthew 5:46)?”
Paul said, “I … beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:1-3).” We should walk worthy of our calling. Paul talks about traits which we should exhibit: lowliness, meekness and longsuffering. He declares that we should “forbear” one another in love. To forbear means to “put up with,” to endure and to “bear with.” The bottom line is that we will never agree with nor like everything about each other but that is where forbearing comes in. At times, we must simply endure, bear with and put up with each other’s idiosyncrasies and variations from our personal feelings. The Apostle finally instructs that we should be endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. The word “bond” in the Greek means “the uniting principle.” Our uniting principle is to keep peace among the brotherhood and, by doing so, we keep the unity of the Spirit. Notice that Spirit in this passage is capitalized not lower case indicating that it is talking about the Spirit of the Lord. You cannot be in unity with the Spirit of the Lord and be at war with your brother.
Notice how the Apostle John instructs the church: “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also (1 John 4:20-21).” According to the Bible, those who justify hate and bitterness are lying to themselves when they say they love God. We have a direct commandment from the Lord to love each other. For a good study of exactly what that means read 1 Corinthians chapter 13. Love suffers long, is kind; is not envious; does not boast, is not proud, is not rude, is not self-seeking, and is not easily angered. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. Any preacher who does not teach this chapter to his church is derelict in his duties. Every preacher needs to practice this passage in dealing with each other.
One thing that appears to be absent from many in our ranks is the idea of having compassion one for another. In our quest to prove our virtue, we often fail to think how what we say may be received by those around us. I am not talking about compromising the message or any facet of truth; if you know me, you know that. I am talking about “Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt (Colossians 4:6).” Sometimes how you say something matters as much as what you say. The Apostle Peter said, “Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous: not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing; knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a blessing (1 Peter 3:8-9).” If we would remember that our blessing is tied to how we treat each other, we would all raise our standard of conduct in person and on social media. Paul instructed us to be kind and tenderhearted to one and other (Ephesians 4:32) but then he took it one step further. He tied our own forgiveness to how we forgive each other. Nursing a grudge is tantamount to building a dam on the flow of forgiveness into your own life.
Brothers, let’s focus our fight on the devil not on one another. Let’s not cannibalize the ministry when there is a world to win. Understand that God cares how we treat each other and that He loved the worst of us enough to die for us. Furthermore, public battles on social media, or in any other forum, diminishes those who engage in them and rarely, if ever bring any value to the Kingdom of God. We are ambassadors for Christ and everything we do is a reflection of the One we represent.