Introduction
Let me begin with a discipleship question: how will you follow Jesus in prayer and dependence on God this week?
Main Points
In this lesson shaped by Calvary Boise's teaching on BREAKTHROUGH: Triumph in Christ, Christ invites us to receive truth with humility, practice repentance, and walk in faithful obedience.
Prayer and Dependence
We're calling this series breakthrough for a couple of reasons one it is this time of year and it's especially sweet this year because. We are entering into a brand new year and also a new decade and that comes with a certain sense of freshness excitement a.
- Time to look at the blank slate of a new year and see that you can set some goals and really have a fresh.
- Start into those and even in the new decade hopefully leaving some things behind and join what God gave you in the last 10.
- Years and looking forward ahead so we pray and we hope that when we do all those things that there's breakthrough in that we're.
- Not just putting random things as goals and expectations and hopes for the year but we hope that God would bring us to a.
Place of completion or a place of accomplishment and we do that at this time of year and we also do that when we. Study God's Word and this particular book of the Bible is a great book for the theme of breakthrough this is really a sequel.
Prayer and Dependence
2nd Corinthians chapter 2 starting in verse 14 it says this now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ. And through us diffuses the fragrance of his knowledge in every place now this is one of those promises of God that we all.
- Must remember for me I underlined it and circled it because wherever there's a promise of God there is a temptation to doubt the.
- Promise and when we read something as powerful as the promise of God that wherever God is leading you he is leading you always.
- Into triumph or victory some of you don't feel that as you enter into a new year and you think about the challenges of.
- Life and the things that bring you to church with the desire to maybe find some healing or reconciliation or some growth you realize.
That life doesn't always feel victorious but if you are a believer in God if you have the Spirit of Christ in you here. Is a promise to cling to and never lose hold of always triumph in Christ wherever God has called you whatever God has started.
Prayer and Dependence
Believe that you always have triumph in God and wherever you don't experience the immediate victory and immediate triumph God is somehow in the. Circumstance or he has let you down or he is calling you away from something because you don't see it you don't feel it.
- And the circumstance feels defeating but how does the Apostle Paul bring us to this passage of Scripture how does he say we always.
- Have triumph in Christ how is he confidently saying that in Christ there will be victory in your life well it's sometimes in fact.
- It's always different than what we expect or sometimes hope so to get to the how I want you to now turn back to.
- Chapter 1 to get to chapter 2 we got to go through chapter 1 and as we prepare to read the beginning of chapter.
1 to answer the question how can we have this always in every circumstance victory when we have the Spirit of Christ in us. We first remember that wherever there is a spiritual lesson of how God operates we find there to be physical examples other examples in.
Hope in Suffering
Too much sugars and sweets now let's find a way to get back on track to healthy eating and healthy you how do that. Well you have just signed up for if that's one of your goals to get back into your plane weight or to get ready.
- For your Beachbody you've signed up to suffer you've signed up to absolutely suffer against the temptation of those delectables that we love to.
- Eat I had that version of that suffering because my eldest daughter just turned six and my wife made way more cupcakes than a.
- Family of six could consume and I had to look at those and I looked him right in the eye and I said no.
- I can't do you right now because I'm sacrificing I'm suffering against things that I love for something that's better and it's true of.
Your financial goals some of you think about the new year and you realize you're carrying in some 2019 financial burdens you realize that. In 2020 you want to do a little bit better with your budget or maybe set a budget or get back on track from.
Prayer and Dependence
Amazing promise that we started with in chapter 2 is the God design on how victory in Christ works it is not through the. Magic spiritual pill but it is through the challenge and the struggle of growing through pain to get to glory look what he says.
- Starting in verse 3 we go through the of verse 1 and 2 he's greeting the same church that we studied in first Corinthians.
- The first book and now verse three says this blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ the father of mercies.
- And the God of all comfort now the beginning of this you may think okay this is gonna be a comfortable year the God.
- Of all comforts gonna bless us and give us the desires of our heart and we can live within that comfortable zone of knowing.
The God of all comfort but how do we experience the comfort of God the comfort of God is given to us on the. Road to victory through as it says in verse 4 trouble look what it says who comforts us in all of our tribulation in.
Identity in Christ
In 2020 and there's versions of that in your own life there will be trouble don't be surprised but as Jesus says in this. Life you will have trouble but take heart because I have overcome he's essentially saying yes of course in this fallen world you'll have.
- You'll have challenging times but let me for you in all of your trouble we believe in a God who has overcome and gives.
- Us the courage and the comfort to join him towards the victory of glory with him how does that work now we're gonna look.
- At a couple examples I'm gonna give three examples of how this model plays out that we would walk through this fallen world and.
- Experience trouble so that we would know the comfort of God leading to the glory of God or the victory of Christ and along.
The way equipping us to comfort one another and I find that happening as we study this example in three powerful ways that will. Actually lead to breakthrough in your life there will be three breakthroughs that come under the ordained and sovereign plan and design of God.
Faith and Obedience
But they want to skip right to heaven and avoid the cross and that is a theology that will not work in fact this. This has never been a unique time in church history it happened in the first century Church in Corinth it's true of our day.
- It was true of the day that Martin Luther the reform of the Protestant Reformation lived and he studied this passage of Scripture and.
- He said there are essentially two theologies that are pulling at the seams of the church one of them is the theology of the.
- Cross meaning Jesus says to anyone who wants to follow him that you cannot follow him without you yourself picking up your own cross.
- To die to yourself and to live to him that's the theology of the cross but there are some who want to preach a.
Theology of glory and this is actually the context of the letter that were reading this morning because Paul is writing this in a. Way to his own critics in this church he remember planted the church in Corinth and then he passed it off and in his.
Conclusion
We return to the opening teaching: discipleship is not just information, it is transformation through faith and obedience to Jesus. If we receive His Word and walk it out, He will shape us into people who endure and bear fruit.
Lord Jesus, help me hear Your Word, obey it with faith, and grow as Your disciple. Amen.
Conclusion
We return to the opening teaching: discipleship is not just information, it is transformation through faith and obedience to Jesus. If we receive His Word and walk it out, He will shape us into people who endure and bear fruit.
Closing Prayer
Lord Jesus, help me hear Your Word, obey it with faith, and grow as Your disciple. Amen.