Dawn Is Coming : week 5

Levi + Jennie Lusko - Fresh Life Church

Where Beauty Comes From

1 Peter 3:1-7

In the same way

Repetition reveals importance.

Cultivate your inner beauty.

Don't neglect your heart and soul when getting ready for the day.

The daily practice is what makes your soul THRIVE.

Marriage takes intentionality.

1. God cares about marriage!

God created marriage so go to Him if there's a problem.

2. God cares about OUR marriage!

God loves the world, but He loves you uniquely to you.

God loves marriages, but He loves our marriage uniquely to us.

3. God has a plan for OUR marriage!

Look to Jesus.

In the same way, means look to Jesus!

To get to FRESH : submit + serve + study.

The basis is Jesus.

Warren Wiersby joy and triumph in the home.

Jesus first, spouse second. 

Study myself so I can be a better wife.

Ephesians 5:21 submit to one another in the fear of God.

Seven things that will help make your life and marriage fresh:

1. Act life you're on the same team.

2. Don't retaliate, compensate.

3. Try on each other's shoes (sympathize).

4. Bite your tongue.

5. Stay tender.

6. Look for beauty.

7. Consider yourself.

1 Peter 3:8-12 MSG

If we're focusing on negative that's what you'll see.

For every speck in my spouse's life, consider the plank in my own.

Dawn Is Coming : week 4

Levi Lusko - Fresh Life Church

For God's Sake

1 Peter 2:14-25

Beginning with authority.

We love leadership, as long as we're the one in charge.

1. The problem is we're under leaders who are inept.

We vastly overestimate what we would do with more authority.

We underestimate what we can do with our current authority.

Peter had to learn the hard way that he was doing things only for Pete's sake. When we're mindful of the things of God, we'll do things for heaven's sake.

The problem is at times we're put under leaders who we don't want to listen to.

We don't want to submit because we're prideful.

We often act like not Thy will be done, but my will be done.

We're not capable of seeing the bigger picture.

2. The posture we demonstrate.

The posture will have us submitting to authority.

You're not doing it because you know it's right, you're doing it for God's sake.

Choose to rank yourself under.

God is the Author of authority.

Romans 13:1-2

Submission is not weakness. 

Rebellion causes you to lose your freedom.

3. Promise that God will use your response to authority for good.

Promises from these scriptures:

1. You honor God

2. Impact other people

3. You develop your character.

God smiles upon those who are humble.

When we do things for God's sake we end up getting blessed as well.

There is strength in surrender.

You can't lead if you can't be led.

You can't be trusted later if you can't be tested right now.

4. Pattern

We're given a design.

"Leaving you an example."

Jesus is the example of how to submit to authority.

5. Power

The power comes from what Jesus did on the cross!

Dawn Is Coming : week 3

Levi Lusko - Fresh Life Church

Home Away From Home

1 Peter 2:1-5, 9-12

In Philippians Paul says our citizenship is in heaven.

Sojourners or pilgrims of the earth.

Home is heaven!

Church is not something you come to, it's built out of you!

We Provide:

1. A place to belong

"We look for lonely people."

Our greatest fear is invisibility.

Does anyone see me?

Ephesians 2:19-20

He's referencing Hosea and how just because they weren't blood he still accepts those children as his own. God said tell the world it's the same with Me.

2. A place to grow up

There are things you have set aside, selfish sins, in order to grow up.

In order to set things aside you have to sit beside.

The people in your life are either immoral or moral support.

3. A place to be a part of something bigger than yourself.

You cannot be a nation by yourself.

There is nothing in the Bible that points to a solitary relationship with Christ. 

4. Experience a place to make sense of rejection.

It's a job of idolatry : stone gods

A stone is used as a metaphor for not living, stone cold heart.

5. A place to welcome others

Kyle Dougdale : Genesis 3 onward we started constructing buildings.

Dawn Is Coming : week 2

Levi Lusko - Fresh Life Church

Love While You Can

1 Peter 1:13-25

Vs 22 Love one another deeply from the heart.

Don't get used to your salvation...it is mind-blowing!

"Therefore"

Whenever you see therefore stop and ask what it's there for.

Because that's true, here's what you do...

They wanted to be coddled they needed to be reminded of their calling.

Grow in your salvation.

Ready. Set. Grow.

4 Places We Should Seek To Grow In:

1. Mentally Strong

Vs 14 - prepare your minds for action, be self-controlled.

You can't live right if you don't think right.

What are you allowing to show up in your mind?

NKJ says - Gird up the loins of your mind.

They were wearing tunics and robes. If you needed to run you'd grab the bottom and tuck it into your belt.

If we're going to have a strong mental game we need to tuck in things so they don't get in the way.

Be aware of your environment.

Behavior we're allowing in our lives.

We're often bringing upon things just by patterns we allow in our lives.

2. We need to choose to be realistically hopeful.

Hope based in reality.

There is so much tension in the Bible.

Inevitably hope points us to heaven.

We understand it's going to hurt, seek to bless other people.

3. Intentionally formed

Heaven is glorification.

Santification is spiritual formation.

TPT vs 14-15

Be holy because I Am holy.

The goals is holiness.

Holiness is happiness not haughtiness.

4. We need to be reverently ambitious.

Reverence is deep respect.

When God really speaks to you, you feel reverence.

What areas should I be ambitious in? LOVE

The challenging people in your life are there for a reason. Sacrificial love.

We can only love while we can.

"We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons." Jim Rohn

"You have a journey to take, a race to run, a warfare to accomplish, and a great work to do." Matthew Henry

Dawn Is Coming

Levi Lusko - Fresh Life Church

1 Peter 1:3-12 

Peter the apostle hung out with Jesus for 3.5 years.

A.W. Tozer described him as "a bundle of contradictions."

The audience is Christians living in 5 different places (modern day Turkey).

And then those who are scattered, suffering, strangers.

You are the salt of the world, but you have to be scattered.

But don't forget the gathering as well.

Stranger - an exile living far from home.

Your true Home is heaven.

He spoke to them of triumph!

The inevitability of the sunrise!

The wonders of Jesus coming!

Into your circumstances of Him being a part of your life.

He saw Paul the apostle be put to death.

Difficult days are coming.

God used ordinary fisherman who ended up preaching to the ends of the empire.

Don't ever let anyone laugh you out of the dreams God has put in your heart.

Trials are temporary but triumph is forever!!

Trials come for a reason or a season.

Triumphs mentioned::

1. New life (centered on new Hope)

2. In the Will (our inheritance)

3. Access to the Father through praise (joy inexpressible)

4. Deepened (what you're producing in me I will keep...refining me into gold)

DAWN

New state of mind.

When something dawns upon you, you understand things differently.

Yes, celebrate Jesus is coming! But also believing for bright colors in our life as we face things right now.

Fueled by Hope and flamed by Grace!

You've been given that pressure for a purpose!

Morning, Noon, Night : week 4

Jennie and Levi sat down with Debra Fileta 

Debra is a licensed counselor and author of the book True Love Dates and Choosing Marriage

We have to be working on a healthy soul.

We’re giving ourselves a life without quiet or solitude. 

We ARE made for community, but if we don’t make any time for solitude then we don’t have any time for Jesus because He speaks during rest.

How much more could God do without burnout.

Counseling is typically a last ditch effort.

God is in it all, and He wants us to align to Him in all those areas.

Sometimes the emotional manifests as physical.

Identify emotions, express, and walk through emotions.

Our past can affect our present.

Bring someone else’s eyes into it.

You can get so used to your junk that you don’t see it anymore.

You can put so much of your best face foreword that you forget your real face.

How healthy are your 

Thoughts

Physical Health

Interactions with others

Behaviors (what are you doing in your free time)

The power of “no.”

Difference between selflessness and passivity.

Put to death your sinful nature.

God has called us to do a few things well.

Everything I’m saying yes to means I’m saying no to other things.

Flesh and blood people who keep us accountable, and iron sharpening iron, and calling us out on our junk.

The choices you’re making today, the daily choices/disciplines/patterns affect the stonework of your future.

We is greater than me.

There has to be healthy me before healthy we.

The natural trajectory of marriage is “drift.”

The natural human nature is sin.

Have a time of confession and check-in.

We all are a work in progress.

I picked up her book after service and here are my notes from it...

Choosing Marriage by Debra Fileta

“At some point we all want out because we’re human, and there’s no one human being on earth who will give us everything we need.”

Who am I?

Where did I come from?

What has shaped me and which parts of my life need healing?

Where am I headed and what is God’s calling on my life?

In what ways am I allowing my relationship with Jesus to change me and fill me up?

“You can’t hold someone responsible for something you never told them they were responsible for.”

Selflessness is never about convenience; it’s always about sacrifice.

The enemy is on high alert because he sees the potential our marriages have to become great. He knows the great blessing a marriage can be.

God wants to strengthen us for the unseen spiritual and emotional battles we will face in marriage, but the only way we can prepare is by exchanging our emptiness for God’s fullness.

Receive it. Only through the love of our God can you be filled.

Filled enough to give.

Filled enough to serve.

Filled enough to sacrifice.

Filled enough to move from selfishness to holiness. 

Filled enough to choose marriage.

The realization that we are just as capable of wrongdoing as everyone else has the power to not only increase our love for God, but heighten our grace for others.

You can’t experience real love with a person until you’ve experienced the entirety of a person — the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful.

We are often attracted to people who add something to our life. So yes, opposites do attract. But then as I like to go on and say, “Opposites attract, but then they attack.” The very same personality traits that draw you to someone initially are the exact traits that can cause conflict and strife later on in your relationship.

Interdependence 

Marry someone who will make you better.

Morning, Noon, Night

Levi Lusko

#nodaysoff

Genesis 2:1

God saw everything He made, and saw that it was GOOD!

He takes a 7th day to catch His breath...to take a break.

Constantly going causing a disconnect.

"If the devil can't make us bad, he'll just make us busy." Corrie Ten Boom

God modeled for us and then required of us...

4th Commandemnt

REMEMBER the Sabbath

Sabbath is a Person

More than a day, but not less!

Prayer

and then

singing

What God did in this part of Genesis was done before the law and before the fall.

This was His plan and purpose for us in the VERY beginning!

Romans 2:9

If you go against the grain you'll get splinters.

1. You were made to work

What comes before the day off?

Six days you should work.

Genesis 2:15

Work it and keep it

Work and keep what God has called you too.

To rest :: Shabbat :: means to stop with admiration flowing

You can't stop and appreciate anything if you haven't done anything.

Colossians says you can do any task to the glory of God.

There is tired in a good way.

The enemy finds an easy target for temptation when you're being lazy.

The good feeling of a day well spent. 

Find that satisfaction. To the glory of God!

2. You were made to rest

Rest is a weapon!

It's challenging to tempt a healthy person.

If you don't rest where you should you'll look for it where you shouldn't!

You rest, because of what I've done.

Adam was made. His first task was to rest.

When we're resting we're not trying to numb ourselves with dull stuff.

No days off because we're going to be on at work and on on our days off.

"Today going I'm to pamper my soul!" A rabbi

Replenish your soul that's withered from work.

Mark 2:23-27

The Sabbath was made for man.

A gift that was given.

Do you need more than you have?

Matthew 11:28

Are you tired? Are you worn out? Come to Me!