SERMON NOTES: ALTAR’D #4

04: THE ALTAR AT MOUNT CARMEL

Special Focus:

• Next week we are having our First Fruits Offering. The heart of this is that we give a special offering, on top of our regular giving, to sow a seed into what God is going to do in 2019.

Throughout the Fall our focus was “Heart Check”

• “God wants to work in us so he can work with us and through us”
• We need to continue to allow the Lord to work in our hearts but He is working in us with a purpose
• As we come into 2019 my heart is stirred that we will individually and corporately go after the callings and purposes of God in our lives. IT’S TIME!

Romans 12:1 (TPT)  – 1 Beloved friends, what should be our proper response to God’s marvelous mercies? I encourage you to surrender yourselves to God to be his sacred, living sacrifices. And live in holiness, experiencing all that delights his heart. For this becomes your genuine expression of worship.

The key: I encourage you to surrender yourselves to God to be his sacred, living sacrifice! 

ALTAR’D is about building an altar to the Lord where we offer ourselves as sacred, living sacrifices and thus being ‘altered’ or changed and transformed.

For the past several weeks we have been talking about Abraham and the altars that he built – today in the closing message of this series I want to talk about Elijah and the altar he built at Mount Carmel.

Advertisement

SERMON NOTES: HEART CHECK – A HEART OF HONOUR

1 Corinthians 16:9 (ESV) –  for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.

• We are in a season where great and effective doors are going to be opening… 
• I’m sensing a double focus – stepping through doors but also preparing for doors that are about to open
• …but there will also be many adversaries

If we are going to walk through these doors… (and even beyond that… simply because God is our heavenly Father and He wants us to mature and grow) each one of us needs to allow the Lord to do work in our hearts.

• We need allow God to work in us so He can work with us and through us
• The degree to which will allow the Lord to work in our hearts is directly proportionate to the degree to which we will walk in our destiny/purpose
• In this season each one of us needs to allow the Lord to work in our hearts.

Psalm 139:23-24 (TPT) – 23 God, I invite your searching gaze into my heart. Examine me through and through; find out everything that may be hidden within me. Put me to the test and sift through all my anxious cares. 24 See if there is any path of pain I’m walking on, and lead me back to your glorious, everlasting ways—the path that brings me back to you.

SERMON NOTES: HEART CHECK

09: HEALING THE WOUNDS OF A SHATTERED HEART

1 Corinthians 16:9 (ESV) –  for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.

• We are in a season where great and effective doors are going to be opening…
• I’m sensing a double focus – stepping through doors but also preparing for doors that are about to open
• …but there will also be many adversaries

If we are going to walk through these doors… (and even beyond that… simply because God is our heavenly Father and He wants us to mature and grow) each one of us needs to allow the Lord to do work in our hearts.

• We need allow God to work in us so He can work with us and through us
• The degree to which will allow the Lord to work in our hearts is directly proportionate to the degree to which we will walk in our destiny/purpose
• In this season each one of us needs to allow the Lord to work in our hearts.

Message Notes: HEART CHECK #3

03: A HEART FOR GOD

1 Corinthians 16:9 (ESV) –  for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.

• We are in a season where great and effective doors are going to be opening…
• I’m sensing a double focus – stepping through doors but also preparing for doors that are about to open …but there will also be many adversaries

If we are going to walk through these doors… (and even beyond that… simply because God is our heavenly Father and He wants us to mature and grow) each one of us needs to allow the Lord to do work in our hearts.

• We need allow God to work in us so He can work with us and through us
• The degree to which will allow the Lord to work in our hearts is directly proportionate to the degree to which we will walk in our destiny/purpose
• In this season each one of us needs to allow the Lord to work in our hearts.

Psalm 139:23-24 (TPT) – 23 God, I invite your searching gaze into my heart. Examine me through and through; find out everything that may be hidden within me. Put me to the test and sift through all my anxious cares. 24 See if there is any path of pain I’m walking on, and lead me back to your glorious, everlasting ways—the path that brings me back to you.

OUR FOCUS: HAVING A HEART FOR GOD

Matthew 22:37-40 – 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

TPT – 37 Jesus answered him, “‘Love the Lord your God with every passion of your heart, with all the energy of your being, and with every thought that is within you.’[b] 38 This is the great and supreme commandment.

STORY: ICA Meeting

• Psalm 27
• Psalm 63
• Psalm 84

Key Indicators of a “Healthy Appetite”:

1. Heart for Jesus
2. Heart for the Word
3. Heart for Prayer
4. Heart for Worship
5. Heart to Give
6. Heart to Serve
7. Heart for Souls
8. Heart for Purity

Luke 24:32 (ESV) –  They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”

Hebrews 12:28-29 (TPT) – 28 Since we are receiving our rights to an unshakeable kingdom we should be extremely thankful and offer God the purest worship that delights his heart as we lay down our lives in absolute surrender, filled with awe. 29 For our God is a holy, devouring fire 

Want to get more plugged into Toronto City Church? Here’s 3 simple ways:

• Attend our monthly TCC Family Night (First Friday)
• Join a Connexion Group
• Start serving in a Ministry

Message Notes: HEART CHECK #2

02: HEART ATTACK

1 Corinthians 16:9 (ESV) –  for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.

• We are in a season where great and effective doors are going to be opening…
• I’m sensing a double focus – stepping through doors but also preparing for doors that are about to open… but there will also be many adversaries

If we are going to walk through these doors… (and even beyond that… simply because God is our heavenly Father and He wants us to mature and grow) each one of us needs to allow the Lord to do work in our hearts.

• We need allow God to work in us so He can work with us and through us
• The degree to which will allow the Lord to work in our hearts is directly proportionate to the degree to which we will walk in our destiny/purpose]
• In this season each one of us needs to allow the Lord to work in our hearts.

Acts 8:21 – You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God…

 SOME AREAS WE NEED TO CHECK OUR HEARTS:

1)    A SINFUL Heart 

Acts 8:21-22 (NIV)  …21 You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. 22 Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord in the hope that he may forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. 23 For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin.

• Sin in our heart disqualifies us from purpose/destiny.
• The antidote for a sinful heart is repentance (1 John 1:9)

2)    A WOUNDED Heart

Psalm 147:3 (ESV) – He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

• Everyone of us is hurt/wounded in our lives and this often hinders of from running the way God has called us to.
• The antidote for a wounded heart is healing

3)    A CAPTIVE Heart

Luke 4:18-19 (ESV) – 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

1 John 3:8 (NKJV) – He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from thE beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.

• The Greek word for ‘destroy’ actually means to untie our to unbind
• The antidote for a captive heart is deliverance

4)    An OFFENDED Heart

Matthew 13:54-58 (ESV) – and coming to his hometown he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished… 57 And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household.” 58 And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.

• When we hold unforgivness we put ourselves in a prison, we open up ourselves to demonic torment and we actually limit what God can do in our lives
• “Unforgivness is like drinking poison and expecting it to hurt someone else”
• The antidote for an offended heart is forgiveness

5)    A DULL Heart

Matthew 13:15 (ESV)  – For this people’s heart has grown dull…

Hebrews 6:12 (ESV) – 12 so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

• The antidote for a dull heart is a fresh encounter with the love/presence/power of God

Romans 12:11 (TPT) – Be enthusiastic to serve the Lord, keeping your passion toward him boiling hot! Radiate with the glow of the Holy Spirit and let him fill you with excitement as you serve him.

The Solution: Do A Heart Check!

Psalm 139:23-24 (TPT) – 23 God, I invite your searching gaze into my heart. Examine me through and through; find out everything that may be hidden within me. Put me to the test and sift through all my anxious cares. 24 See if there is any path of pain I’m walking on, and lead me back to your glorious, everlasting ways—the path that brings me back to you.

1. Invitation – in a moment but also day by day in a season
2. Examination – God and you…
3. Testing and Sifting
4. Opening up our areas of Pain
5. Change

Want to get more plugged into Toronto City Church? Here’s 3 simple ways:

1. Attend our monthly TCC Family Night (First Friday)
2. Join a Connexion Group
3. Start serving in a Ministry