Steve Fry Podcast

We will only know joy in prayer when we really believe that God is sovereign. If we are in Christ, then our prayer does not come from our attempts to persevere, but our enjoyment of his presence.

Obedience is meant to be motivated by the joy of God’s closeness, rather than an obligation to comply with God’s commands.  Yielding to His Spirit results in the rhythms of contentment: a life of joy and peace. We yielded to God’s initiative when we were first saved; now we just keep yielding to the Holy Spirit’s initiative in us as we continue to be saved!

When we see our purpose as joining The Father in bringing everything under The Headship of Christ, we enter into the current of God’s love and discover the most fulfilling life possible.  We bring things under the headship of Christ by making everything an expression of intimacy to Jesus.  If God’s purpose and mission becomes our purpose and mission we will have strong, sustainable joy. 

We know that we love God because He first loved us but we also chose God, because He first chose us.  To be chosen is to live perpetually in and under God’s favor. Living truly under God’s favor is not a free pass to disregard sin; but it does transform the motivation of why we confess and repent of sin.

“In-Christ-Intimacy” is a new identity- your old condition was insecurity, your new condition is SECURITY. Your old condition was lost, your new condition is FOUND.  Intimacy begins with security. We need to understand our union with Christ to truly grasp the security we are meant to know in our relationship with God.

Intimacy is our greatest need- a relationship where we can be vulnerable, honest, and transparent. Our ‘in-Christ-intimacy’ is the key to living a blessed life, staying obedient, experiencing healthy church, and engaging the mission of The Gospel with joy. Sermon by Steve Fry. 

The aim of the Holy Spirit is to make us like Jesus. We need to take a good long look at God’s original design and decide if we will allow the Holy Spirit to align us to that. When we give place to the life of Jesus within us we are living out our purpose! 

Our life is no longer our own, we belong to Christ. Putting the past behind us we press on toward the prize which is experiencing Christ living His life through us. This fulfills our greatest longing; intimacy with God. 

Prayer is the doorway to encouraging yourself, it’s your escape hatch from the prison of impossibility. Prayer is the evidence you have joyously abandoned your life to Christ. God wants us to know how to persevere with Him, so that we can persevere through every hardship and we do this by bringing everything to Him in prayer.

Christ’s body is an ecosystem of Jesus followers who function as a community together. Being in the Body of Christ is why love is a starting point, not just a character goal. Being the body of Jesus is our core mission.

As a new creation in Christ, we have a new heart. That new heart operates from an environment of love - Jesus in us! Love is your new condition; you don't work at it, but instead receive it. Rather than seeing loving others as an outcome of our efforts, see love as our permanent starting point, our source. Love in this sense is not a discipline, it is freedom from self - it's all from our source - Jesus, and that sets us free to experience joy in loving others! 

We gather together to be renewed in Christ’s love, we experience that love together in community, and this results in a joy that frees us to reach out to people far from God and invite them in. Mission is meant to flow from the joy of loving one another. John 13:35- “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Sermon by Steve Fry.

One of life's biggest challenges is dealing with people. especially when they have attitudes and behaviors that are irritating and obnoxious. But Jesus gives us a model of how to handle relationships when they are difficult. Knowing how to yield to the Spirit when faced with "people stuff" is one of the most practical ways we experience the Holy Spirit's power. 

One of the most truly revolutionary principles for a fulfilling spiritual life is learning the freedom of daily yielding to the Holy Spirit. One key way we yield is to sow to the Spirit as Paul taught in Galatians 6:8. When we discover how to sow to the Spirit, we will actually live in genuine victory as Christ's disciples. 

In a seasons of such cultural and political turmoil, how do we as believers walk in the Spirit and know what to fight - and more importantly, how to fight? This talk centers on how we as kingdom culture should live in an increasingly pagan society. When we understand the kingdom perspective, we will know how to contend for freedom and justice in a way that glorifies Christ. 

There was a joy before creation, before there were promises to be fulfilled, before there were battles to be won. It was the joy that the father and the son I've known for all eternity. Their joy came from perfectly knowing each other, giving themselves completely to each other and resting that nothing was beyond their control.  Likewise our primary pleasure is knowing God, emptying ourselves in humility, and resting in his complete sovereignty. This joy can be ours as we continually yield to the Spirit. 

The way we as Jesus followers were meant to live life, is to live under the control of the Holy Spirit. What we discover when we are under His rule is that He rules through joy. Joy is much more than a feeling; it is a mindset, a state of being that can be ours on a daily basis. 

The day of Pentecost was the day that God sealed his covenant with his Church by empowering them with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit dwelled in them, but from this day on he flowed through them. And the greatest power they received was the fulfillment of God's promise of the New Covenant: that he would put the Holy Spirit in people to move them to obey his commands. When we understand the freedom that comes as we allow the Holy Spirit to move us to obey, it will truly revolutionize our lives. 

Jesus promises that his followers will experience rivers of living waters flowing out of their innermost being. This message focuses on how we give place to the Holy Spirit to spring up inside of us, transforming our mind and emotions. And the first truth of giving place to the Holy Spirit is starting with the covenant faithfulness of God. There is a security in God's faithfulness that motivates us to daily surrender to the Holy Spirit. 

Four timeless truths that flow from Christ's resurrection that enable us to find joy in the midst of pain.