The Father we never knew

The Gospel is not a message about what will be, if you…. It is the message of what is, because He…..

A St Patricks day message about the liberty that the gospel brought to the nation of Ireland.

When men reason, apart from the Spirit of God, religion is always the result, because religion (self-effort) to the natural earthly man, is the only reasonable way by which he can obtain the blessings of the life of God. Multitudes of Christians have been blinded by a reasonable gospel. The only gospel with the power to open eyes to the eternal realm, to resurrection life today, is the one that sounds utter foolishness to the reasonable man; In Christ, all things are already yours!

Patrick understood the gospel; not as good advice about how you can lift yourself, but as good news about how we have been lifted, by God Himself

There is no higher life a person can live, than to live believing that God is their Father.

The only life the Father is looking for us to live, is the one He has freely given to us; the life of a blessed Son. He is not looking for us to produce a life of our own, a righteousness of our own, or a love of our own. Here is the good news, the Gospel; Apart from Him you can do nothing. That’s good news because it reveals to people that far from being really ticked off at them for doing nothing godly, God in fact never intended that anyone would be able to be like Him, apart from Him, because even He cannot be like Him, apart from Him, because God is not an individual, a self, but a communion of loving persons.

The Holy Spirit helps us and teaches us, in our prayer and worship, to rise out of our souls and to begin to pray and worship in the Spirit, in the truth, and here is the truth that leads the mind into peace; all we need for life and godliness has been prepared beforehand, in Christ!

Throughout the old Covenant, eternal callings were announced by angels, but since the appearance of Christ, immortality is now revealed through the Gospel! (2Tim.1:9,10

Some worship from River City's 'Let the River flow' prophetic worship ministry meeting.

Many of us as Christians have spent years waiting, abiding for Christ, rather than abiding in Christ. We have spent years thinking of ourselves as apart from Christ and we have discovered that Jesus was correct, “apart from me you can do nothing!”

"The greatest paradigm shift in the mind of believers, what transforms our lives most, is when our thinking is enlightened by the Holy Spirit, to begin to see that everything earthly-minded religion tells you that you need to do, Christ already did on the Cross!"

If you are asking for fresh move of God's Spirit, then be prepared to be perplexed and amazed, to have your theology ruined and your vision restored.

No matter how often a potted plant is fed or moved, it can never grow beyond the size of its roots. This message was a declaration of how the Gospel of Christ's finished work removes the small pot (Law mindset), that has hindered the roots of the church from being established in the liberty of the soil of God's unlimited love.

“I know for certain, that before I was humbled, I was like a stone lying in deep mire, and he that is mighty came and in his mercy raised me up and indeed, lifted me high up and placed me on top of the wall. And from there I ought to shout out in gratitude to the Lord for his great favours in this world and for ever, that the mind of man cannot measure.” St Patrick. (385--493 AD) A Christian is someone who can live from the top of the wall, not the mud at the bottom, someone who can present themselves to God as ALIVE FROM THE DEAD.

There is no shame in a supernatural union." It may surprise you to know that there is something that God desires in this nation more than bigger churches; bigger Christians! The two aren’t mutually exclusive, but we can’t build one at the expense of the other. The Holy Spirit persuades the believer that they are of the God kind, of His nature, His Spirit. Ungodliness is not our father. Grace teaches us that ungodliness is not our father (Titus 2:12)

We cannot speak to believers as if the blood of Jesus has done nothing and they are still separated from God by their sin.

A personal testimony of disappointment with God, leading to a fresh revelation of the grace of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. This talk was given by Phelim Doherty in 2013 to the staff conference of the Apostolic Church, UK. The theme of that year's conference was the grace of God.

God wants the Church to have a level of conversation with Him that is a true reflection of the level of communion we now enjoy through Christ. The Holy Spirit is teaching us to speak the language of heaven, the language of union rather than the language of the earth, the language of separation. Learning to speak

It is not what you do, but what you believe, that is making you the person you are. No amount of rejection in your life, can hold a candle to the acceptance you have in Christ. So live in Christ, not in the hurt of what they did to you. Live in the light, not in the dark.

If many people in this nation are living as if God’s presence is in heaven, but not here, then they are living as if God is effectively dead. This is the great danger in preaching a gospel that only talks about the presence of God being in heaven one day; You leave people living today apart from God’s presence. Religion blinds people to the presence of God.

To only know about God is to know Him as if He is dead and that is the reason why this nation is in such a state, because too many people have been raised in churches, (catholic and protestant), to know God as if He is dead. Their experience of God has never been founded on being right WITH Him, but rather on doing right FOR Him because the foundation they received growing up in their church was Old Covenant. This causes them to they live as a people trying to do right for God and when you live like that, the focus of your life is not Christ, it is you and so you will always preach the gospel as doing rather than being. Such a gospel, whose hope is in you saving yourself by your piety, does not bring life, but death. Moses writes this about the righteousness that is by the law: “The person who does these things will live by them.” (Romans 10:5)

This message from River City Church was a celebration of the enduring power of the Gospel to open the eyes of men and women to see what God has seen from before time began; you and I in the light of His purpose and grace.

The English come from England, the Irish from Ireland. Christians come from a country called "In Christ". In this message is asked a question; How did the Church become so religious that many of us have never walked in the liberty and blessing of this new state?

"The highest quality of life there is, is the life of a person who believes that God is their Father."

It was always God’s intention that living waters will flow and that they will flow from His temple, His Church, into the earth. This morning's message from River City was the second part of a teaching on how the words of the Spirit are opening the eyes of the Church. The extraordinary supernatural testimony of Jesus, (the Spirit of prophecy), the declaration of the scandalous extent of God's grace, is enabling the Church to see what the Spirit sees about us, that we may see and speak in the Spirit to this generation, words that no man has ever spoken over them.

"At last. Spirit of my Spirit!" In God’s eyes, every Christian is a very good Christian, because in God’s eyes …..no-one ever made or makes themselves a Christian! This morning's message in River City was a declaration of who we are in God's eyes and how the Holy Spirit gives us God's eyes.

The Holy Spirit, through the apostle Paul, pleaded with Christians that they have been given not the spirit of the world (spirit of NOT YET) but they have been given the Spirit that comes from God that they may know the things that have been freely given, the things that are already theirs, NOW. Look at what the Spirit is saying to the church in Paul’s generation and tell me that this is not what the Spirit is saying NOW to the Church in our generation. "....we plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain. 2 For He says: “In an acceptable time I have heard you, And in the day of salvation I have helped you.”[a] Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation. (2Cor.6:1,2)

The language of the Spirit is from the country/Kingdom He sees us to be in: Christ! This is the language He speak to us in. He speak to us as people "in Christ". In fact the Holy Spirit addresses the Church in this language throughout the epistles to every church, no matter what the state of their behaviour, no matter what the direction or exhortation or teaching given, it is spoken in the same language, the language of a place called “in Christ”. Most of us as believers have not grown to see ourselves as in Christ because the language we have been taught to speak throughout most of our church life, is not the language of In Christ, the language of union, but rather the language of separation. That’s the language that man-made religion speaks in, for it is the language of our feelings, the language of the natural man who only sees this world through his natural senses and to whom the realities of the Spirit are foolishness.

My self alone, my self apart from God, has always lived a selfish life. That is what selves do. Dogs bark, Cats meow and selves live selfish lives. Religion’s answer to the self-life, is to exhort it to try harder to reach the heights of the Spirit. Religion points men to themselves and that is why religion doesn’t work, for your self can never be your hope, for your self is your problem. As a self, you can never be good as God is good, for God is not a self. He doesn’t have a self-life. He has never been alone. Right from the beginning, life to God has always been communion. God did not say, “I am going to make man in my image.” He said, “Come let us make man in our image.” Through the body of Christ, God has reconciled the selfish world to Himself, so that all who will accept God’s way of life, Christ (God’s Way, God’s Truth, God’s Life), no longer have to live alone, but can begin to live from and live in communion with God.

The subject of this message is the fundamental difference between man's idea of holiness and God's. If its not good news....it ain't the gospel! This message was given by pastor Phelim Doherty at River City Apostolic Church in Derry, Northern Ireland on May 21st 2017. Other such messages can be heard at www.graceriver.org/church-podcasts This message was podcast originally under the title "Self-righteousness: a bridge too short!"

A talk given by Phelim Doherty on the subject of grace, faith and revival during the 2017 'The Father we never' knew teaching day at River City Church in Derry.