Matthew Study

Hey Pastor John,

Today I was cleaning out and organizing my desk and ran across some notes I had taken when we we’re doing the Matthew study.  I know it’s long but it is so good.  It encouraged and blessed me today so I wanted to pass it on.

I feel very loved and overwhelmed with thankfulness!  He has been so, so good to us!

Michelle

Notes from Matthew study

• Nobody knew God.  Nobody knows God.  He chose you!  It’s by the spirit He is revealed.
• Jesus died for us!  What love!
• You are blessed!  You are happy!  To you it has been given! What is that worth to you?
• Stop carrying your gift around!  Open it up and play with it.  God wants you to know yourself in Christ.
• You have the key to open the doors of the rich chambers of God!
• The knowledge of God is in your gut; it’s not in your head.  It’s something that rises up out of your belly like a river flowing.  That’s the kingdom of God – that’s the knowledge of God.
• The knowledge of God is to feel the truth!  It senses what God wants and what He’s thinking!  You know the truth only when you feel it!
• If you feel it and it’s a part of your bones, who’s going to talk you out of being you?
• If we are in Christ, we have been made new creatures!  Old things are gone!
• Your past is harder for you to get over than it is for God to get over.  Get over your old self, that thing is dead!  You can be happy if you’re really you in Christ!
• You are not a product of that union anymore!
• God doesn’t want you to just have the Holy Ghost, he wants you to have it abundantly!  That is when he is saving you!
• Let’s humble ourselves and be blessed!  Give in and be happy!
• What we are reading is true!  God did something!  Know what God has done for you!
• God is alive!  He is doing things!
• The most precious thing in life is fellowship in the light!  It’s more precious than gold!
• God has thought about you!  He wrote your name in the Book of Life before the world began!  Then He made the world for you!
• We messed it up.  Then He sent His Son to fix us up, and one of these days, he’s going  to catch us up and get us all out of here together!
• That’s what we celebrate; that’s what we’re here for!
• If you’ve got the holy Ghost, you’ve got something to shout about!
• No matter what happens, compared to the holy Ghost and the promises of God, everything is “so what”!
• That promise gives you joy that’s beyond everything this world has to offer because it gives you a hope beyond what this world can offer, that hope is sure!

PJ prays- “Save us from everything this world has to offer”

• Mercy rejoices against judgment
• Goodness is having a heart like God.
• The whole world is deceived by esteeming rightness above holiness.
• Everybody needs the holy Ghost and to be full of it.  That’s the only relief from rightness and wrongness.
• Jesus said to me, “Go ahead and try to make a mess I can’t fix!”
• Many of God’s children have been talked out of righteousness through logic and human reasoning.
• There is no amount of logic that is going to get you full of the holy Ghost.  You’re going to do the will of God; you’re going to repent and walk uprightly.
• And then God, against all human logic, is going to fill you up!
• Jesus only did what His Father said.  We want to do what our Father wants.  By the grace of God, just do what our Father wants us to do without regard of the judgments or the misunderstandings and the sympathy of our relatives – and the slander of our brothers and sisters.  Let’s just do what God wants done.
• The wisdom of God is foolishness to men.  The wisdom of men is foolishness to God.  Now whose wisdom do you want?
• Learning to walk after the spirit makes you a real child of God.
• It’s not having the holy Ghost that’s going to save any of us if we don’t follow it!  Following it is what gets us home!
• The cloud will take you home if you follow it!  God is our home!
• We have much to be thankful for!  Jesus has found us and claimed us!  Let’s stay in his fold!
• If you want to serve the Lord, you will pay a price.  There is a cost.
• “All who are willing to live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.”
• Everybody who walks uprightly before God is going to suffer.

*It matters to God how you feel*

• Knowing that “the trying of your faith produces patience” teaches you to wait on God because He’s got a good idea.  He’s got a plan for your life.  “But let patience have its perfect work that you might be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”
• Jesus is not the light of the world, we are!
• Love is the fulfillment of the law.
• Your can force people to be a Christian; you can be talked into it, bribed into it, manipulated into it and persuaded into it, but this is you and God!
• I can tell you about it, but I can’t touch your heart.  If Jesus touches your heart, THANK HIM!  If the Father chooses you to be forgiven, THANK HIM!
• Your will is not worth damnation.
• The fear of God is good, is clean, is precious!
• The holy Ghost is your ticket home.  Hold on to it!  Live by that ticket.  Have it in your hand when the train comes.  “I’ll be standing at the station with my ticket in my hand.”  The train is coming!  The ticket is real!  Don’t miss that train!
• God’s righteousness is internal and eternal; it’s communication, it’s fellowship, it’s a kinship with God’s feelings and thoughts.  It’s what the Spirit brings in.
• When you entered into a covenant with God you made a deal:
  What God agrees to do:

1. Forgive and blot out all of your sin so that it is though they never existed
2. He gives you a new past
3. The holy men in the scriptures are your family tree.
4. He engrafts you into His family.
5. He recreates you as wise and holy sons and daughters of God!  Brothers and sisters of Jesus!
6. He cares for you throughout this life and then forever.
7. He gives you a new past, a new future, and a new present.
8. He’s prepared a new earth for you so that you might live forever in perfect health and peace.

You agree to your part:

1. Be your new, clean, happy self!

• He gives you a whole new being and all you have to do is be!
• If you keep your part of the bargain and be your new, clean, happy self, you’ll live forever.
• If you know who you are, then you live without fear and condemnation by those who think you ought to be something else.
• We honor Jesus by NOT following in man’s footsteps.
• The Spirit is sincere; it came so we don’t have to act anymore.
• In this covenant ceremonies are not accepted; acting is not accepted.  He sent His Son down here to suffer and die to stop the act and give us the reality of it, and that is precious to Him.
• Get out of the act; get out of the symbol and get into life!  The Spirit is life!
• No ceremony is going to raise you from the dead!  It has no power!
• If you have the holy Ghost, you’ve got life with Christ and God.  That’s the big deal!  That’s the important thing.  It’s up to God if you have life or not, and if you’ve got life you’ve got something to be thankful for!
• We are a mystery to every person in the world who doesn’t have the mind of Christ.  But we’re not supposed to be mysteries to ourselves.
• We’re living under a new covenant!  We are supposed to understand what God has done for us!  We are supposed to know ourselves.
• The Son has been revealed to us; we’re supposed to know Him.  To know what He’s done for us!
• Growing up in Christ means growing in the knowledge of God, and that includes coming to understand yourself, your new self!
• Your soul is on the line!
• If anyone worships the Father only in spirit and truth, as Jesus said, he is condemned as a false worshipper.
• If anyone teaches Paul’s gospel, he is condemned as a heretic.
• If anyone is moved by the holy Ghost, he is scorned as being “under a spell”.
• If anyone does the will of God from the heart, he is condemned as an evildoer.
• If anyone truly confesses Christ, he is cast out and ostracized by Christians as unworthy of their company.
• We may have to suffer a little for Christ in this world, but we know what to do – just keep doing good!
• If you follow Jesus, somewhere along the way, he’s going to amaze and frighten you!  You just keep following him and somewhere down the road, you will start to see what he’s seeing and feel what he’s feeling, and then you will amaze and frighten somebody else!
• Jesus was happy!
• We can be filled with joy!  Persecution comes with the package.  “My father said, persecution is like a tail on a kite, it keeps you steady so you can go higher.”  We all need the tail on our kites.
• All that persecution can do is help us go higher in Jesus.
• Suffering comes with the package.  Don’t take the gift then hide it.  Confess it!
• Let’s go to Him!
• Suffering here is nothing compared to the glory that awaits us!