Gus Harter speaks from Ephesians 6:10-20, outlining the warfare set before the Christian, the armor provided by God against the battle, and the nature and necessity of prayer in the daily course of the war.

First, the apostle Paul describes a spiritual warfare in which we are soldiers. Our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against Satan and his emissaries. Battling against brethren with whom we disagree is not under consideration.

God provides us with six types of armor for the fight. They are:

1. Girding of the loins with truth, as found in God’s word
2. The breastplate of righteousness, protecting the heart–the seat of thought and purpose, and the source of such righteousness as we are blessed to have
3. Feet shod with the gospel of peace, peace with God that we obtain by conforming our lives to Christ and following Him
4. The shield of faith, confidence that the battle is the Lord’s
5. The helmet of salvation, keeping sin from gaining its hold in the mind
6. The sword of the Spirit, the word of God; the Bible is our source of defense and indeed our entire armory

How is the fully-armed Christian to hold position and advance the battle? Verses 18-20 provide marching orders for the saints: pray always, with all prayer. Prayer comes in many forms, and we are to practice all of them. Elder Harter identifies 5 distinct ways we can pray to God.

1. Adoration and praise for God’s power, holiness, and love
2. Thanksgiving for God’s blessings in our lives and all around us
3. Confession and requests for forgiveness of our sins
4. Intercession, asking help and blessing for others
5. Petition, asking that our own needs be met

May we, as Paul directs us, pray to God with all prayer for the gain and glory of His kingdom, that it may be in earth as it is in heaven.

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Ben Mozingo turns to Matthew 5:11-16, part of a longer discourse delivered by Jesus Christ to His disciples. In this passage, Jesus exhorts His disciples to be salt and light. Like salt, we are to flavor and preserve this world. Flavoring, or “savor,” indicates our lives are to be noticeably different from the lives of those who do not follow Christ, creating spectacle and altering the normal course of worldliness around us. Preservation comes because God is pleased by the faithfulness of His servants, and blesses the just and the unjust alike for the sake of the faithful.

Our lives and examples are to shine as lights in a dark world. Our choices in life should be informed by God’s will as recorded in scripture, and should shine in contrast to the darkness of worldly wisdom common to man apart from God.

In John 15, Christ is likened to a vine, and we as His followers are described as fruit-bearing branches. God has called us to live in such a way that God’s Spirit within us will be evident through the lives we live by faith.

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In his letter to the Ephesians, the apostle Paul dealt with several problems troubling the peace of the church at Ephesus. Jonathan Harter examines the subject of bitterness. Bitterness is a sinful reaction to sorrow, particularly when the sorrow is caused by someone close to us.

Sorrow is not sinful. It is the unavoidable experience of an emotional wound; scripture tells us Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Yet Christ was not bitter, whereas we all too often are. All sorrow confronts us with a choice between two divergent responses: lay the cause and the pain at God’s feet, or become embittered.

Bitterness can easily become habitual. Max Lucado said, “Resentment is the cocaine of emotions.” Resentment, a contemporary label for bitterness, has a powerful, physical impact. Bitterness can and does ensnare many of God’s people in all-consuming preoccupation with the injury or offense that occasioned it, sapping energy, vitality, and joy.

In his first recorded public utterance in the temple, Christ read Isaiah’s prophecy of His coming to bring “deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised…” (Luke 4:18). Jesus Christ came to save us from the bondage of bitterness. That salvation is one that we must know of, and must act to receive. We must “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Gal 5:1). Christ is the cure for bitterness.

We must not fail to seek that cure. Bitterness is a root (Heb 12:15). Left to grow and mature, it bears evil fruit: anger, wrath, malice. It ruins health and destroys relationships. We must choose not to be bitter, and follow the scriptural course to root it out. Uncover the offense hidden in the heart; face the cause honestly. Forgive the offense for Christ’s sake, leaving it at the feet of Christ in prayer. Lay hold on the freedom Christ purchased for all His children, and serve Him with joy restored.

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The apostle John commends to us in 3 John the gift and discipline of hospitality. Not only is hospitality a virtue among early church members, but its absence draws a stern condemnation from John, the apostle of love. In verses 9 and 10 John specifically rebukes a man named Diotrephes for his lack of humility and failure to serve.

In his reading of this letter, Gus Harter pauses here to draw out the core principle of his lesson: hospitality comes from a servant’s heart. Christ humbled Himself to serve and calls us to do likewise. Elder Harter applies the principle by offering many practical examples of hospitality in the church today. The church grows when its members show love and hearts of service to the community and all who visit.

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The service of God, when understood rightly, is not a burden to His children, but joy. The Bible is the source of that understanding. Through scripture, we can understand the attributes of God through the person of Christ Jesus. Through scripture we learn how to enter into a personal relationship with Christ. Gus Harter reads from 1 John, a loving letter from the aged apostle, written “that your joy may be full.” In chapter 1, John emphasizes the pure and holy nature of Christ, our Savior, coupled with his eminent approachability in prayer and personal communion.

Note: Our apologies for the poor audio quality.

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Brent Coleman expounds upon the Lord’s prayers in Matthew 6 and Matthew 21, encouraging us to pray daily for those things we are in need of. God has promised to give us everything we request, believing, in accordance with His will. In this message, Brent illustrates the power of prayer with testimony from his own life at a time when he prayed to meet a woman he could marry.

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“God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” -John 4:24

Jonathan Harter focuses upon the phrase “in spirit and in truth.” His thesis: we must worship God as a spiritual being as revealed in His word, not as we imagine Him to be.

The children of Israel often turned from worshiping God as God instructed them, turning instead to idols. We as God’s children today are no less prone to idolatry. Now our idols are seldom statues or figures carved from wood or stone, but are just as offensive to God. When we break God’s law knowingly but seek to justify our actions in our own minds, we have built an idol.

Pushing aside Jesus, the God of the Bible, we construct an image of Jesus who approves or winks at our sin, and enshrine this false god as our savior. What cosmic irony: made in God’s image, we spend our lives making God in our own. Commanded to glorify and magnify our creator, we instead belittle Him, ignoring the clarity of revelation in His word and substituting the wicked and vain imaginations of our own hearts.

Having covered the thought of truth in this passage, Jonathan next studies what it means to worship God in spirit. Scriptures teach that man is made of body, soul, and spirit, but it is the spirit that is to lead us in worship. The body would demand objects of worship that can be perceived by the senses, as in materialism and paganism. The soul would seek stimulation of the intellect or of the emotions, both empty without the leading of the indwelling spirit of God, for which we must pray. Galations 5:22 record the marks, or fruit, that assure us when that spirit is present.

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These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly:

But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.

And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.

1 Timothy 3:14-16

Gus Harter points us to Jesus Christ in this inspiring study. The church is to be the pillar and ground of the truth, and Jesus Christ is that truth. Yet Christ was a mystery during Old Testament times. He was revealed to the saints of the early church in the New Testament. Elder Harter examines the unraveling of the mystery through the gospels as Christ revealed Himself to His disciples. Our Savior is wholly man and wholly God, and the truth of His identity is preserved in His word and upheld by His church to this day.

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Mike Farrin shares how his hope in the Lord’s goodness and salvation gives us him confidence and patience to endure trials. Each of us can trust in the Lord when we are tried. Even if the things on earth we hope for do not come to pass, God’s salvation will not fail, and He has promised to give us strength if we look to Him.

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Turning to Isaiah 6, Gus Harter examines the encounter of the prophet Isaiah with the thrice-holy God of Israel. When confronted with God’s holiness, Isaiah recognizes his own sin and imperfection. In that realization is fear and awe, mirroring that of every child of God who gets a glimpse of God’s holiness and comprehends the gulf that exists between God and man. The turning point of the encounter is the purging of Isaiah’s sin with a burning coal from the altar of God. In Christ, each of God’s children has likewise been made clean enough to stand before God unashamed. After being purified by fire, Isaiah is both motivated and acceptable to serve as a messenger of God’s glory and power. May we also have a vision of God’s holiness and our need of cleansing. When we can see God as holy, holy, holy, then life in His service will never seem dull and boring.

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