Active Obedience: Engaging with God's Kingdom

"The only thing that prevents us from overwhelming our communities and our world with the glory of Christ and the power of God in righteousness is never that we do not have enough people, that we don't have enough money, that we don't have enough influence. There is more than enough in this room to do the job. The problem is that we do not do what Jesus told us to do." [00:01:50]

"It requires no special human resources. You don't have to have a budget. It requires no special human talents or human connections or advantages. It requires only the intention to obey based upon a vision of life in the kingdom of God. It requires persistence in learning how to be with Him in all of our activities and circumstances." [00:02:52]

"It is very important to understand that while what we're thinking about is spirit driven, we are not passive. We cannot be passive, and that gets into a lot of theology very fast. In the recent past of Christianity in the American context, the Armenian branch of the Christian church has been in disarray." [00:05:36]

"Your theology is what you really believe about God, not what you say you believe, what you really believe. See, when you look at the spectrum of Christian life, you have to distinguish knowledge from belief, belief from commitment, and commitment from profession, and then you have to apply that not only to yourself but to the situation in which you were working." [00:06:44]

"Knowledge is when you are able to represent or treat or deal with things as they are on an appropriate basis of thought and experience. Now that is the substance of eternal living, is knowledge, interactive relationship with the Trinity. Our lives are being taken up in what God is doing on earth." [00:07:55]

"You believe something if you're ready to act as if it were true. So to believe in the Trinity is to be ready to act as if the Trinity were real, as if it were true that there is a Trinity and that there is the relationship." [00:09:24]

"Belief involves your will, and your will may be set in a direction that rejects the knowledge you have. When that comes to a fever pitch, that's what we call conviction. You know the first part of the word conviction is convict, no, and you can become a convict of your knowledge." [00:11:04]

"Commitment is setting your will in a certain direction, and it may not involve knowledge and it may not involve belief. If you're lost in the woods, you might commit yourself to a direction even though you didn't have any belief or knowledge about whether it was the right one, but you say I got to do something." [00:13:28]

"Faith environment and knowledge will take care of commitment. See, commitment is invoked often in our circles when we have people who have no belief, and they are free of knowledge, and we're trying to get them to do things they don't want to do, and instead of fixing it by bringing knowledge and faith based on knowledge." [00:15:17]

"Your job is not to get people to do things. It is to bring knowledge, to bring knowledge of God, to present it as such. Don't stand in your community unless you are sure that you bring knowledge. Now that may mean some adjustment and work in your part, but the world hungers for knowledge of God." [00:18:17]

"The only hope they have, even if they don't know it, is that someone will bring them knowledge of God, knowledge of God. You remember the verse we started with in 2 Corinthians 4, talking about the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, God who spoke out of darkness, let there be light has spoken in our hearts to bring us the knowledge." [00:19:10]

"Now you don't have to make people know, but you present knowledge, and then they can respond to it as such, and God will move in and give them the reality that goes with the knowledge. Now thanks be to the mercy of God, that is what happens often, even when we are not clear in the message that we are giving." [00:19:54]