New Bridge Church - Pastors Jeff Lyle & Dustin Pennington

There are patterns in the Bible which reveal how God operates when He determines to get something done in His kingdom. He often chooses a person, reveals to that person what He wants to do, and then gives that person action items to accomplish. Success is all but guaranteed…as long as the person trusts and obeys God. Jonah was not that type of person. The beginning of his story takes us on a very wild ride.

Some have taken the beautiful doctrine of God’s sovereignty and have turned it into a celestial shrug. They wrongly believe that, since God is sovereign, He will do what He will, regardless of how His people choose to live. Instead of being motivated toward righteousness and honor by God’s sovereignty, they choose instead a fatalistic attitude, as if everything that will happen in their lives is predetermined by the master puppeteer in the heavens. This message reveals that God has chosen to PARTNER with His people, not control them. A huge amount of our living flows from, not God’s sovereignty but, instead, our own choices. Watch what happens when God’s people re-commit to Him. Watch how He responds to them. Watch how an incredible amount of blessing which had been withheld from them suddenly begins to be poured out…after they committed to move ahead with their God.

We do not know what it is like to be physically with Jesus. We have not touched Him. We have not spent three years with Him physically walking next to Him as we learn His ways. We have not heard His accent in our ears. The Apostle John had all of those experiences and so many more. John’s firsthand testimony of Jesus is something that opens us up to the treasure of just who this Savior really is. This message explores the wonder of God becoming man and the powerful impact that this event had upon the world. It’s much more than a Christmas-time sermon. It’s a lift-up-your-hands and revel in joy and wonder kind of message.

Somewhere along the line in America, the message of Jesus’ birth became more like a Hallmark card than the revelation of Scripture. We easily forget that the incarnation of God the Son was a wholly supernatural event. Joseph, the unsuspecting fiancée of Mary, encountered head-on much of the supernatural elements of Jesus’ birth. This message focuses on him, as he was entrusted with no fewer than three dreams/visitations from Heaven in order to preserve the plan that God began when He sent His Son to become the Savior of humankind. Dream with Joseph, and see what God births in your own life.

Spiritual warfare may be one of the most misunderstood and misinformed components of the Christian life. Some people pretend that Satan and his demons are a non-issue. Other people seem to think that there is a demon behind every shrub. The reality is that there is still a war being waged against the people of God by the forces of darkness. All believers are called to engage in this fight. Most are not equipped to soundly win it, however. Jesus has defeated Satan, for sure. Yet he is not yet extinct, therefore he fights. This message shows us how NOT to approach the battle.

There are few passages of Scripture that are so packed tightly together in order to drive home a point than the verses covered in this message. The point is this: Jesus is completely different than human religion. The Holy Spirit utilizes less than 25 consecutive verses in Matthew’s Gospel to remove all doubt from our minds that Jesus offers something far superior than the rules and regulations of human religion. We will see how Jesus is open while religion is closed. We will be convinced that religion focuses on the outward while Jesus goes after the inward. Finally, we will see the difference between Jesus freeing people and religion enslaving people. This is a message all Christians need to hear and understand.

Merge Q&A by New Bridge Church

Our curtain will fall one day. The Scripture is clear that each of us has an appointment with death. Amazingly, what we do with our lives here on earth determines our capacity to experience the fulness of living in the coming Kingdom. As we study the last chapter of Elisha’s life, we discover that he possessed such an anointing that, even when he was dead and buried, his power was still making a difference. This message calls on us to intensify our commitments in the Kingdom while we are still alive. We too can posses an anointing that actually outlives us here on earth.

It has been my observation that many, if not most, Christians do not seem to thoroughly enjoy their relationship with God. They have accepted Christ, they have a hope for Heaven when they die, they have modified some of their behaviors to fit the expectation of the Church…but they seem to have a disconnect from the very One whose heart is full of love and joy. The difference between this type of Christian and the one who is excited and enjoying their walk with God may be found in the gap between viewing yourself as a servant or as a son. This message from an ancient letter by the Apostle Paul calls us to move further into the awareness of who we are in Jesus. Knowing your identity in Christ shapes your enjoyment of Christ. In our Kingdom awareness, we may begin as servants, but we must arrive at sonship.

Dustin Pennington

Dustin Pennington

There is a mythological view of Christianity that goes something like this: you ask Jesus into your heart, He forgives all your sins, He makes your problems go away, He immunizes you from pain, sorrow and loss, He blesses you indiscriminately with all sorts of goodies, and then you go to Heaven when you die. Because so many people have their expectations aligned with this fairy-tale version of Christianity, they stumble when reality pounces upon them. Our faith requires long-distance, all-terrain, faith. This message takes us back to familiar person in the life of Elisha and shows, once again, how she models for us what it means to walk radically with God through challenges and into breakthrough.

The Lord loves to surprise us. Most of the time, the Father is eager to do more than anything we could ask or imagine. Sometimes, we just need our eyes open to all that He has in waiting for us. Resources, opportunities, spiritual gifts, open doors… He has everything we need to win our battles. This message reveals how there is often much more than meets the eye when we find ourselves seemingly outmatched. It is when we are in over our heads that we often experience the eye-opening power of God’s amazing goodness.

It seems that most Christians love to traffic in dogmatic beliefs. We are convinced that Jesus is God. We are convinced that Heaven and Hell are real. We are convinced that there is hope beyond the grave. We are convinced that God is good and Satan is bad. Our deep convictions are framed by what the Bible says. Yet, many Christians do not feel they can be dogmatic concerning the question of whether or not God wants to bless their finances. Suddenly the dogmatic beliefs come to a grinding halt when the topic of money is brought up. This message spotlights why all believers can be confident that God will bless their finances, and how they can position themselves for that forthcoming blessing.

Hearing from God is an immeasurable privilege. To walk in such intimacy with the Almighty that you can personally hear His voice - what an amazing occurrence! Yet we are accountable for what we hear, and He sometimes calls us to share it with others. In this message, Elisha is given three distinct words of knowledge. One is a joy to share. The other two? They would be difficult. Like Elisha, we must not only share the happy words, but also the heavy.

You know what they say about death and taxes: these are the only two certainties in life. While we may have no legitimate hope in escaping taxes, death is clearly able to be defeated. In many places throughout Scripture, God reminds us that the power of life in Him is greater than the power of death in us. Jesus emerged from the grave in victory, and so will all people who trust in Him. Before Jesus walked the earth, the power of God to beat death was still active. This message takes us into one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the bible. In the end, our tears are replaced with joy as we see what it is like when the dead are raised by the power of God.

In the New Testament there is this mention of a particular gift from the Holy Spirit called “a word of knowledge” (1 Cor. 12:8). While we are given very little by way of explaining this gift, we can see it in play throughout the scripture. A word of knowledge is the supernatural ability to clearly know something specific which cannot be known via natural means. Elisha’s life and ministry was marked by this gift – possibly more so than any other ability God gave him. This message shows in an extremely dramatic circumstance how helpful this gift is to believers. Amazingly, it is available today for Christians and we can be enriched by both offering words of knowledge and by receiving them from others.

A treasure in God’s Kingdom is to be ushered into the amazing cycle of blessing and being blessed. What does this mean? When we release, God ensures that we will receive. God declares it in the Old Testament. Jesus promises it in the Gospels. The Apostles teach it in their New Testament letters. Yet, many believers struggle to embrace the clear reality that God enriches them when they live a life of pouring into the Kingdom. There is a woman in Elisha’s life who made it her mission to bless God’s prophet. What she received on the back-end of the relationship was far more than she ever invested. As we release what God has entrusted to us back into the Kingdom, we should all expect some similar outcome in our own lives. The old adage is still true: we cannot out-give God.

Dustin Pennington

When modern Christians hear the word miracle, we almost exclusively think of healings in the physical body. While physical healing is certainly a type of miracle which God works today, the term miracles is not limited to these types of things. In this message, we intersect with three miracles performed by the prophet Elisha which are centered in the transformation of the natures of three elements: water, plants and iron. It may not sound too inviting, but what surrounds these miracles, and what results from them, leave the listener with a volume of help for his or her own life. The bottom line is that we must increase in our confidence that some things that are impossible according to natural means can be transformed in a moment by the power of God.