Love, Respect, Surrender & Trust towards God

Posted on January 11, 2026January 14, 2026 by Pastor Mark

This week we picked up where we ended last week, using both a trail that came into my life, to attack the word I taught two weeks ago as well as the words of Jesus and Moses regarding loving the Lord our God!

In the end we saw a “general pattern” which begins with love for God, which naturally leads to RESPECT for God, which promotes SURRENDER towards God which gives way to TRUST in God.

While this is a somewhat “mechanical” progression, it is also deeply relational.

I hope this teaching blesses you as it not only illustrates how faith develops in the heart but also how we express this trust in the person of the Holy Spirit as He carries out His mission of revealing Christ TO us, forming Christ IN us and revealing Christ THROUGH us!

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Meddling in someone else’s argument is like…

Posted on January 7, 2026January 8, 2026 by Pastor Mark

This chapter offers guidance on very practical matters, includes a few nice little proverbial puzzles to solve as well as a comical illustration of a stone and a sling.

One of the puzzles deal with silver being used as a glaze on some cheap clay pots and another regards two paradoxical statements regarding whether to and how to answer a fool. This last one employs some rich combinations of parallelism which adds both to the intrigue and the mystery of the verse’s wisdom.

I hope you enjoy the teaching as much as I enjoyed studying it out.

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Encounters with the Author leads to Relational Trust

Posted on January 4, 2026January 7, 2026 by Pastor Mark

Adoration leads to seeking. Seeking to encounters with God. Encounters with God to loving surrender to Him, which leads to trust!

This IS relationship – it is ETERNAL LIFE. Knowing Him and being intimately known by Him. But in the revelations which come from these encounters with God, we still need to…

⦁ Choose to reject other thoughts
⦁ Choose to not be anxious
⦁ Choose to respect the God of the words – value the words because of WHO spoke them
⦁ Relinquish control (surrender)

All of this facilitates faith!

Even after hearing from God you have to make the decision to trust what you heard.

There will always be competing voices and not all of them are from the enemy directly. For some, we need look no further than our own minds which have been trained towards unbelief, towards protecting self, towards guarding self against failed hope or disappointment.

So it is that we have to be intentional to believe with ALL the heart, rather than ration out our trust in small segments to avoid the devastation of our hopes being let down.

Faith, real faith is ALL IN. There is no back door, there is no backup plan, there is no protection of the heart against the possibility of failure! NONE of these things are consistent with real, genuine relational trust!

You either know God in the area of your trust or you do not. There is no fudging on this!

IF you know Him, you WILL trust Him WITHOUT ANY reservations!!!

Key concepts covered in this teaching are – worship, fear, encounters with God and surrender leading to trust!

In a nutshell, adoration for God provokes surrender leading to faith!

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A New Year’s Resolution of Trust

Posted on December 29, 2025December 29, 2025 by Pastor Mark

New Years 2026

Today, in our series on Faith, we taught on knowing and trusting the Holy Spirit Who has been given to all believers.

As we have learned, Faith provides a foundational support for those things God has revealed to us about His nature, character and person. Some of these reveal Him as Lord, Savior, Healer, Counselor or Comforter… and many more. It is in these areas of revelation that we faith will work. Being mentally convinced of a thing is NOT faith. Faith… true biblical faith, is relational trust. This means it is ALWAYS IN GOD, not FOR a thing or desired outcome.

So in order for us to walk in union with the Holy Spirit, we must first come to know by revelation Who He is and What He has been promised to do and provide in our lives. THAT is what we spent time on today!

The intended result is know Him better and as a result trust Him. Our trust will support what we expect of Him, IF what we expect is what God said He would do.

Walking by faith with our Helper is a matter of tremendous importance to all believers and so we hope that this lesson will aid you in your pursuit of knowing the Spirit better, trusting Him more completely and walking in partnership with Him in the work of the Kingdom!

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The Living Bread in the House of Bread

Posted on December 21, 2025December 22, 2025 by Pastor Mark

Christmas 2025

We have been on a series about faith and this week being the last Sunday before Christmas I thought we’d bring some of the facts about the coming of Christ and our lessons about faith together.

We spent a lot of time in review, and then worked through the way God has made great use of Bread as a teaching metaphor throughout scripture ending in Jesus.

So with this in mind we examined how God cursed the eating of bread (food) with sorrow at the fall of Adam. Then we moved on to the Manna God provided in the wilderness. Then on to Passover bread. Then to the Showbread. Then to the bread of communion and finally to where Jesus called Himself the TRUE bread from heaven.

Of course, being the Bread from Heaven and being born in Beth lehem, which means “house of bread” all conspired together to paint a picture of our Lord and our union with Him.

We then partook of Communion!

I truly hope this message will be of great aid to you in your walk with the Lord and in celebrating Christmas – when God came down as the Bread of Heaven broken and given to the nations!

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