Will Davis Jr.'s Blog, page 19

Serve Our City This Weekend! – March 2015

 

Hello friends!

I pray that you are well and enjoying this awesome spring weather in Austin, TX!

There is a lot going on around ACF and I want to share these opportunities and events with you:

Serve Our City is this weekend…March 28/29. Remember that we will not hold services at any of our communities, but will be serving all over the city. You can contact Chelsea@acfellowship.org or your respective community pastor for more information.

Baptism! Spring is the time of new life, and there is no better representation of new life for believers than baptism. Do you need to be baptized? Don’t put it off any longer. God will honor your obedience. Contact your respective community pastor for more information about your community’s next baptism.

Easter! We’re just ONE WEEK away from Easter 2015! Can you believe it? Here’s what the weekend schedule looks like:

Friday, April 3

Noon Communion and Worship service at ACF | four points
Serve our City Good Friday Worship at the Long Center, 1:30, 4 and 6:30.  Check out this short video for more info:  

Click here to view the embedded video.

Saturday, April 4

4 Points services at 4 and 6 PM

Sunday, April 5

Regular service times at all communities

Coming soon, Unafraid by Susie Davis. Susie Davis’ new book Unafraid: Trusting God in an Unsafe World is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com. It will be officially released April 21. Unafraid is the story of Susie’s struggle with the stronghold of fear and God’s miraculous delivery of her. It offers wisdom, guidance and hope to fear-ers of all ages.

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The Pecking Order

 

So that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. Ephesians 3:10

As I write this, I am sitting in a 5th floor room of a hotel in Edmonton, Alberta. I am looking out over a snow-filled parking lot. I am alone in my room, but I am fully aware that I am being watched.

I have spent the last hour in prayer, worship and study. It has been a sweet time with the Lord. As I turned to start my daily writing, this verse is where I landed.

I love this verse. It’s crazy. What it says is absolutely breathtaking and even, for us as humans, a little freaky. Like I said, I am being watched.

Through the revelation of the Spirit, Paul tells us the order by which God communicates the truth and power of the Gospel. Note the order–God to us to angels and demons. Uh…wow.

Don’t miss what the text says. Those rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places are none other than the angelic and demonic ranks that make up the spiritual realm. They work for God and Satan (respectively), are innately good or evil, are eternal and quite powerful.

Now, if I were writing the script, I would think that God would work through them to reveal to us the power of the Gospel. After all, they appear to outrank us.

But that is not the wisdom of God. In his wisdom, he wants to teach the spiritual world the truth about his Gospel by what he accomplishes through us humans. He wants to show the demonic realm the power of his Son’s blood and Name by how those things enable us.

He bet the Kingdom farm on humans. He basically said, “Hey demons, sit down, shut up and watch me work through my people.”

Like I said, I’m being watched . . . and so are you.

The way you live, love, give, pray, worship, serve and treat others is an example of God’s wisdom. Spiritual beings are watching. Don’t mess it up.

Oh God, may how we live today as your Church demonstrate the wisdom and power of your Gospel. In Jesus’ name . . .

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Dear Sons, How You Shake Hands Matters

It’s scary how much your handshake actually says about you. Here’s my latest entry from Davis Letters. Click the image to read the full post.

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Don’t Wait for Heaven

 

I shall walk before the LORD In the land of the living. Psalm 116:9

I love how David added the phrase “in the land of the living” at the end of this verse. It’s like David wanted to make sure that he was clear about his purposes. He had no intention of waiting until he was in Heaven to “walk before the Lord.” He had every intention of walking with God “in the land of the living,” where those around him could see his devotion to the Lord.

We would do well to apply David’s thinking to how we live today. Far too many of us (and I myself have been guilty of this) have an “I’ll do it later” mindset when it comes to Kingdom living. We somehow have the impression that there is a delay option in regards to living a godly life.

And many of us delay so much that our Kingdom living will not happen until we get to Heaven. That, my friends, is missing the point.

Kingdom living is designed for the here and now. It is intended to give seekers of purpose, meaning and truth an up-close and personal look at what loving and living for God is. And if we all delay our holy living until it is convenient or easy, we will never live holy lives and those seekers will never get their firsthand look.

Beyond that, delayed Kingdom living means no fruit, no rewards, no crowns to cast at Jesus’ feet. Bummer.

Will you commit today to walk before your God in the land of the living? If God wanted you walking in Heaven, you would be there. The fact that you are reading this is proof that there are some people down here that need to see you live out your faith.

Holy God, by your grace we will walk with you and for you today. Please honor our efforts. In Jesus name . . .

 

 

 

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Spring is Here!!!!!

Hello friends! I pray you are well.

Spring is here and that means several things for ACF.

Our Serve Our City weekend is March 28/29. Remember that we will not hold services at any of our communities, but rather will serving all over the city. You can contact Chelsea@acfellowship.org or your respective community pastor for more information.

Baptism! Spring is the time of new life, and there is no better representation of new life for believers than baptism. Do you need to be baptized? Don’t put it off any longer. God will honor your obedience. Contact your respective community pastor for more information about your community’s next baptism.

Easter! We’re just two weeks out from Easter 2015. Can you believe it? Here’s what the weekend schedule looks like:

Friday, April 3

Noon Communion and Worship service at Four Points
Serve our City Good Friday Worship at the Long Center, 1:30, 4 and 6:30.

Saturday, April 4

4 Points services at 4 and 6 PM

Sunday, April 5

Regular service times at all communities

Coming soon, Unafraid by Susie Davis. Susie Davis’ new book Unafraid: Trusting God in an Unsafe World is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com. It will be officially released April 21. Unafraid is the story of Susie’s struggle with the stronghold of fear and God’s miraculously delivery of her. It offers wisdom, guidance and hope to fear-ers of all ages.

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Very Hostile

 

When He left there, the scribes and the Pharisees began to be very hostile and to question Him closely on many subjects, plotting against Him to catch Him in something He might say.

Luke 11:53-54

It’s one thing for a man or a woman to resist the pull of Jesus. That’s a serious and dangerous business indeed, as resisting God’s calling hardens one’s heart and implies that God’s Word isn’t true.

But there is a level that moves beyond resistance, and it’s what is described here in this verse. It’s hostility. It’s where people move from ambivalence or resistance to the Gospel to opposing to it.

The words translated very hostile speak of a deep and terrible grudge. They picture a man or woman who isn’t just annoyed by Jesus, but rather is opposed to him. The people described in this verse would consider themselves enemies of Jesus and his message.

They’re not just hostile; they’re very hostile.

I wonder if you know anyone like that. I do. I certainly doubt that very hostile would describe you, otherwise you probably wouldn’t be reading this. But I know plenty of people who are, and I can assure you that none of them came into the world very hostile toward Jesus.

Such hostility toward the Good News can only be arrived at over time. It results from a person’s chronic resisting of the Spirit’s convictions, or a person being deeply wounded at the hands of other Christians, or a person believing that God has repeatedly failed him.

Regardless of the reasons, such hostility is very real and needs to be taken very seriously by believers. We need to pray and fast for people that are very hostile toward God. We need to beg God to intervene in their lives and to heal their hearts and set them free from the stronghold of spiritual hostility. And, we need to not be offended by them. Rather, we must love them with the love of Jesus.

Do you know someone who is very hostile toward God? You’re in his or her life for a reason. Determine today to be one of the tools God uses to bring him into peace with the Savior.

Oh God, help us to go to war on behalf of those who are very hostile toward you. In Jesus” name . . . .

 

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Meet a Kingdom Couple

 

I met two old friends recently. I say “met” because it was the first time we had ever been together physically. I say “old friends” because the minute we sat down, I felt like I had known them all my life.

Meet Angela and Mike Sansone.

Angela reached out to me online a few years ago. She has a heart for prayer and felt led to support Susie and me in our ministry in Austin. And by “support” I mean prayer.

Thus, we have been corresponding now for three years but didn’t meet until last week. It was a sweet time.

To say this is an unusual couple would be an understatement. Mike is both a minister and businessman. He sees his job as supporting Angela in her ministry.

Angela was content to never marry. Her calling to intercede is very much like that of Anna (See Luke 2:36-38), who lived in the Temple and spent every waking minute praying for her nation. Angela’s call to pray was so consuming that she simply did not have the time to add anything else–like a marriage—to it. But God had other plans, and he sent a mighty man to cover her, provide for her, protect her and support her in her intercessory work.

I mentioned above that this couple is unusual. Perhaps I should explain. They don’t seem to fit in. They seem to be very much out of place in our culture.

Angela, interceding from a rooftop in India

Mike has a job that he can do from anywhere, and thus stands ready to hop in a car or on a plane to go wherever the Lord might lead them. And Angela’s calling to pray is no light or casual assignment. She understands (as do all who spend long hours in prayer) that eternity weighs in the balance of prayer. Angela has to pray. It is her job. She could no more stop praying than she could stop breathing. And she knows that if she did, the eternal consequences would be huge.

Thus, Angela lives to pray and Mike lives to support her. And if I called them tomorrow and said “I’m on a plane to Uganda, can you go with me,” they would literally drop everything to go. That’s how serious they are.

That is why I say they are unusual. They are just not enamored with culture or shiny things. They are not on a career track. I doubt seriously that they have a well thought-out retirement plan.

They live for God’s Kingdom, and my time with them made me want to do more Kingdom living myself.

Sitting there with those two godly people, I felt like I was on holy ground. I was watching this married couple, who are also brother and sister in Jesus, celebrate that the calling of God trumps all our earthly wishes and longings, and that the love of God is better than anything life down here can offer.

They were completely surrendered to the way and will of God. It was humbling to see…and inspiring.

I want to live more openhandedly. I want to live with fewer attachments to this world. I want to be on call with my resources and time and passions and be ready to go wherever and do whatever as God leads.

And I want to do it without a moment’s hesitation.

If you would like to know more about Angela’s Ministry, you can read more here. Here’s a link to Angela’s book on intercession. I read it and gladly endorsed it.

So here’s my closing thought: What are you doing with your life that matters for eternity? Think about it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Heather

 

I met Heather yesterday in a restaurant. She was a waitress working the slow afternoon shift at a local watering hole. Heather is only twenty-one, but the weariness in her eyes makes her look much older.

I asked Heather about her story. She is in her second year at a local community college trying to complete her associate degree in nursing. Good for her.

She had a few bumpy years after her high school graduation. Her vague description of those bumps betrayed her pain. I could tell she had been through a lot in a short amount of time.

And then, of course, there were the eyes. They were haunting.

I asked Heather the question I have asked people on countless occasions when I want to cut to the chase and see what is really going on with a person:

What is your dad like?

Heather smiled and cocked her head back a bit. She was thinking about how to answer. Her hesitation told me all I needed to know, but eventually she spoke:

Well, I was adopted. My biological dad died when I was five. My mom lives in another state and I don’t really have a relationship with her.

I pressed her a bit: What about your adopted dad?

“Well,” the smile and cocked head again, “I love him, but he’s a bit of an *$%#@^*! (I’ll let you fill in the blank.)

Hmmm. Now we were getting somewhere.

As I talked to Heather, I learned that while she believed in God, “religion” wasn’t really part of her life. Her faith had no real bearing on how she lived…no street value.

Friends, Heather is Exhibit A of what I call Post Traumatic Dad Disorder. And Heather is not unique…every human on the planet suffers from some level of PTDD.

For good or for ill, we draw our earliest conclusions about God from our own father. We tend to project onto God the image of our earthy dad, and we tend to expect our relationship with God to parallel our relationship with our dad.

And unless we rethink God in light of the Bible, we will never grow into the intimacy and fullness of a relationship with God that we are designed to have. PTDD limits our God capacity until we get to know the God who is also the perfect father.

By the way, the next time you meet an atheist or an agnostic, ask him about his dad. You’ll be amazed at how many of them (try 99.9%) have tough dad stories.

I wonder if you have done any thinking about your own PTDD. Even really great dads give us limited pictures of God. So maybe you should think about some of these things:

How did the way I grow up impact my view of God and religion?
How did my dad’s strengths and weaknesses help form my own view of God?
What limits do I have with faith, intimacy with God, trusting God and obedience that may be leftover baggage from my relationship with my father?
How do I need to rethink God in light of how he is portrayed in the Scriptures…as the eternal heavenly Father?

I shared all of this with Heather and, needless to say, left her with a lot to think about.

It is not a sin to have a limited picture of God and you are not throwing your dad under the bus if you come to terms with your own. But with the revelation that there is more to God than your dad could show you is also the call to get to know God for who he really is.

Today, Heather is thinking about some changes she might need to make to how she lives, and how God might need to play a greater role in her life.

I wonder if you need to do the same.

 

 

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Persistence

 

I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will get up and give him as much as he needs. Luke 11:8

I’m writing this from booth in a restaurant in Tulsa, OK. I’m here all weekend teaching a church about prayer. Thus, it’s appropriate that this verse is about persistence in praying.

This is a story of opposites. Jesus used the example of the sleepy and irritated friend as a picture of what God isn’t like:

The friend was asleep in bed. God never rests.
The friend wasn’t concerned about his neighbor. God is always concerned about you.
The friend tried to ignore his neighbor. God never ignores you.
The friend only answered the door because of the irritating persistence of his neighbor. God doesn’t get irritated. It honors him when we pray until he answers.

Today after one of the services a woman asked me if she was bothering God by asking so much. Based on Jesus’ teaching here, how would you answer her?

Remember, we are not God’s burdensome neighbors. We are not bothersome to him. And, God isn’t a grumpy and irritated neighbor who wants us to leave him alone.

We are his children and when we pray, when we ask, and when he knock on his door, we are doing exactly what he commanded us to do.

Never give up on a prayer. Never stop praying. The God of heaven stands poised to come through just for you. Ask and keep asking. Knock and keep knocking. Seek and keep seeking.

He will answer.

 

 

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A Good Understanding

 

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; a good understanding have all those who do His commandments; His praise endures forever. Psalm 111:10

As I continued to meditate on this verse, the power of obedience again became clear to me.

If you know me well, you know that I am fond of saying that God honors obedience. This verse gives us yet another benefit of doing what God says.

It is understanding; or specifically, good understanding.

The word understanding is akin to wisdom. It refers to insight, knowledge and good judgment. It speaks of the life-lessons learned that only come from walking with God. And those are the kind of lessons, dear friend, that are only learned in the school of obedience.

There are just some lessons that God cannot teach you other than through obedience. You can learn truths and concepts from reading God’s Word and from the teaching and insights of others, but you cannot learn the street value of those lessons until you have lived them out yourself.

That means that obedience plays a direct role in your everyday spiritual development, and disobedience plays an equally powerful role in your spiritual stagnation.

What has God asked you to do that you are stalling on? What is that step of obedience that you are hesitant to take? Please know that there are lessons you cannot and will not learn until you obey in that area. God is quite content to leave you where you are in your development (and in unanswered prayer and withheld blessing) until you do what he is calling you to do.

That explains why so many of us stall out in our growth. We simply stop obeying God.

Today, you have the opportunity to do what God is calling or has called you to do. Don’t delay. There are places he wants to take you and things he wants to show you that he won’t until you obey.

Holy Father, for our own sake, make us instantly obedient.

In Jesus’ name . . .

 

 

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