Author Archive: Pastor Mark

Encounters with the Author leads to Relational Trust

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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

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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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Living Bread Bethlehem

The Living Bread in the House of Bread

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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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God Conceal King Reveal Proverbs 25

It’s God’s glory to conceal & a King’s glory to search out

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This begins the 3rd section within the greater book of Proverbs which ranges from chapter 25-29.

This chapter covers many topics but the three which drew us deeper into them were…

• About it being the glory of God to conceal matters and the glory of Kings to search them out.
• Giving bread and water to your enemy because it will heap coals of fire on his head and God will reward you for it.
• Being careful about bringing your neighbor to court.

The proverb about concealing and searching revealed some interesting insights, placing one more puzzle piece in the great mosaic of God’s purposes in this life.

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Nuts bolts basics faith

The Nuts & Bolts of Faith

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We worked our way through Romans 10 this morning, learning and discovering faith from another angel – expectations! Regarding Faith, hope is a favorable expectation in the heart due to a revelation of Christ. In fact, it is THIS very expectation that Faith is the foundation of.

In Romans 10, Paul addresses his deep desire of Israel to be saved, but he explains that such requires that they change their expectations of Who Messiah is and how to obtain righteousness. It is NOT by works of the law, but by the hearing of faith and this provided both the meat and backdrop for our lesson on faith this morning.

The details uncovered in this teaching truly are foundational, which is why we called this “The Nuts & Bolts of Faith”.

I have already prayed that anyone who listens to this message and/or reads it accompanying article on our website will be blessed with a greater understanding of faith – what it is, how it comes, how it works and how to be purposeful in your pursuit of God by relational trust (faith)

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