Pastor Bob’s Blog

The Rev. Van Crouch preached at the church last Saturday night and Sunday morning.  He made a point that resonated with me.  Where you go to church can mean the difference between life and death.  He declared that Abundant Life Church is one of those places where you’ll find life and not death.

Why does it make a difference?  How your life goes will depend on your position with the Lord.  If you’re built up in the Word of God and prayer, your faith is maturing and developing, you have a vibrant life of worship, you’re spending time with God, you’re walking in love, you’re living right, and you’re surrounded by people who will love you and stand in faith with you, then you’re going to live an overcoming life.  It’s a spiritual fact.

If you barely give God the time of day, you’re not reading your Bible, if you think God’s making you sick, taking your money, breaking up your truck, leading you out of your marriage, and wreaking havoc in your life to teach you something, and you’re surrounded by people who look at life that same way, then your prayers will be powerless and your life will be a wreck.  It’s a spiritual fact.

It matters where you go to church.  Go where the Word of God is preached – and believed.  Go where faith is preached, and people will pray in faith, expecting their prayers to be answered.  Go where the pastor preaches that God is a good God, and that He wants you to prosper and be in health even as your soul prospers (3 John 2).  Go where love is practiced, and joy is abounding and not sorrow.  Go where God is lifted up, and worship is an integral part of church life.  Go where the life of God is manifest.

I’m honored to pastor Abundant Life Church.  Rev. Crouch is right.  We ARE the kind of church where you’ll find life and not death.  We’re a Spirit-filled, word of faith church, regional in scope, international in reach.  And we’d love to see you some Sunday morning at our 10:00 service and our 7:00 Wednesday evening Bible study.  You’ll find people who will love you and stand in faith for you.  You’ll find intense praise and worship, and you’ll find God present in the church.  I hope to see you soon!!

On April 15, while taping the Believer’s Voice of Victory broadcast with his guest David Barton, Brother Kenneth Copeland received this word from the Lord:

This is the time that has been prophesied about, and at stake here is not only your welfare in the land, but also My move in the end times of a ‘Great Awakening,’” saith the Lord. “And it is that awakening that will save this land and others like it. For it is the time of the coming of the Lord, and you will rise up and you will be My name and you will be My power and I will manifest Myself through you, and many shall come and say, “Surely He is the God of all good.”

Sister Billye Brim had delivered a similar word a few months ago.  Both words bear witness in my spirit.

We must pray for our leaders as we are admonished to do in 1 Timothy 2:1-8.  But political leaders are not the salvation of the United States.  The Lord is the salvation of this nation.  More than anything else, we need people here and around the earth to be convicted of sin and righteousness, to be awakened to the Lord, and to turn to the Lord for salvation.

We in the body of Christ need to be praying and standing in faith for a Great Awakening!  Don’t be moved by what you see.  Pray, believe you receive, and stand in faith for this great end-time move of God!

I’ve been preaching a series drawn from the church’s foundation scripture, John 10:10:  The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.  I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.  (NKJV)  Part of that abundant life is divine health.

Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ should not be afraid of the “Swine Flu.”  Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law.  (Galatians 3:13 NKJV).  Every sickness and every plague is under the curse of the law.  (Deuteronomy 28:61 NKJV).  Logically, then, Christ has redeemed us from every sickness and plague – including the Swine Flu.  It’s part of why He came.  Isaiah, forseeing what Jesus would do, prophesied:

Yet it was our sickness he was bearing, our suffering that he endured.  We accounted him plagued, smitten and afflicted by God; But he was wounded because of our sins, crushed because of our iniquities.  He bore the chastisement that made us whole, and by his bruises we were healed.  (Isaiah 53:4-5 JPS).

Don’t be like Job.  A hedge was around him, but he lowered it by fear.  “For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me.”  (Job 3:25 NKJV).  We have not been given a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind.  (2 Timothy 1:7).  So keep the faith hedge up.

I recommended to my congregation that they just turn off the TV and close the newspaper stories that sow seeds of fear about the Swine Flu.  Yes get your rest.  Yes drink plenty of water.  Yes get your exercise and eat right.  But spend more time reading the Word, meditating on it, and confessing it over yourself than you do fretting and worrying about Swine Flu.  Christ has redeemed you from it.  So at night, turn off your light, roll over, and fall asleep safe in the Lord.