Imperial Valley Christian Center

This is the January 22, Sunday service. I hope I'm not starting to sound like a broken record but this is what has been on my heart for the past year or so. Preaching it helps me to understand it better. When I listen to these sermons they build my faith and confidence. Hopefully they build yours. The Great King has come to set us free from sickness and disease (Hey that's what he went around doing.) to set us free from poverty and lack to set us free from mental oppression and family destruction. The Great King has come. This is the gospel, the evangel, the great news. I'll give this one a 9 for content and a 6 for delivery on the Greg scale of 1-10.
Audio MP3 about 46 minutes and 41 mbs. (I'll post a smaller file later today. Here's the smaller file about 22 mbs)

Antes de que llego Cristo al mundo Satanás era el rey del mundo. ¿Como era el reino de Satanás? Era reino de enfermedad. Era reino de muerte.
Audio: MP3
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Jesus came to establish the Kingdom of God on the earth. I think we established that pretty clearly in the last couple programs. But what is the the Kingdom of God? Jesus taught his disciples to pray, "Our Father which art in heaven hallowed by the name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  God's kingdom is where God's will is done. When Jesus preached the good news of the Kingdom of God he was preaching the good news of God's will being done on the earth.
Audio: MP3
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I mentioned the Dilbert Mission Statement Generator in church the other day and said I would post a link. Here it is. Now you too can have a mission statement without having to go through all the trouble of  figuring out what you're all about. Here's an example:

Our mission is to continue to continually customize cutting edge services such that we may continue to completely leverage other's resource-leveling methods of empowerment to meet our customer's needs.

Now there's a candidate for most relevant pastor. Hat tip to Guy Kawasaki at his wonderful blog.

For most people Christianity is just about going to church on Sundays they're not even particularly sure why. For some Christianity is all about going to heaven when you die. But what is the true story of Christianity? The true story of Christianity is the story of the great adventure that God is calling us to participate in. The true story of Christianity starts at the beginning… This is the Sunday service from January 15th. It last about 50 minutes, and is about 24mbs.

I have to admit that I'm really pretty unfamiliar with Martin Luther King Jr's. life. Other than the things everyone knows, you know… the "I have a dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial; that he was assassinated in Montgomery at the age of 39, that he was a civil rights leader, I don't know that much about him.  Scott Johnson at Powerline has a really nice post excerpting some of MLK's speeches which really give a good sense of the courage and greatness of the man. Here's an excerpt from his letter from the Birmingham Jail responding to the white preachers of Birmingham who had counseled a slower approach:

I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people…

It's easy to look back on his life and assure ourselves that if we would have been there we would have been standing by his side. But I'm pretty sure it was hard even for him to stand there. That's what makes it courageous. Most of us are like the guys who missed the fight in the Henry V St. Crispins day speech:

And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

Marting Luther King Jr. wow what a man!

Jesus came to do something great, something wonderful, something awesome, something tremendous.  That something was to establish the Kingdom of God on earth, to take back the rule of the earth from Satan. We know this is what Jesus came to do because The Kingdom of God was the focus of his ministry, The Kingdom of God is what he preached. The Kingdom of God is what he taught his disciples to preach, The Kingdom of God is what he told his disciples they were to preach in all the world, the Kingdom of God is what he last spoke to his disciples about, it's what he told the Apostle Paul to preach, it's what his disciples preached, it's what Paul preached, Paul called his ministry working unto the Kingdom of God, Paul describes what Jesus did in Kingdom terms … whoooh…!  That's what this episode is about.

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What is church supposed to be?

Why should people go to church?

Church is supposed to be a center for the training of the Body of Christ to storm the gates of hell and to prevail against them. Christians are supposed to be helping to free people from the supernatural oppression of the Kingdom of Hell, which results in among other things sickness, poverty, mental depression and family destruction.

This is the Sunday service, from January 8, 2006, it lasts about 47 minutes and is 32mb. MP3

Us prosperity preachers have been attacked for years for saying that it pays to serve God. After having studied the subject for a number of years it seems almost ridiculous to me to suggest otherwise. Of course, God prospers those who serve him. Wow! What a concept. Here's just a couple of scriptures. There are many, many more. (In fact we have a little bookmark we've put together with over 50 references to prosperity scriptures. The front side of the bookmark is the image to the right. If you'd like one email us and we'll happily send it out.)

Deuteronomy 28:1-11 (NIV) "1 If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands that I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. 2 All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God:
…11 The LORD will grant you abundant prosperity--in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground--in the land he swore to your forefathers to give you."

Matthew 6:33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Anyway, now there's scientific proof that going to church causes you to prosper.

Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claims that regular religious participation leads to better education, higher income and a lower chance of divorce. His results* (based on data covering non-Hispanic white Americans of several Christian denominations, other faiths and none) imply that doubling church attendance raises someone's income by almost 10%.

So double up on going to church and increase your income by 10%. Wonder what happens when people halve their church going.

Another great article by Paul Graham this time about good and bad procrastination. He brakes procrastination down to 3 types: we procrastinate to do nothing, something less important or and here's the big OR, something more important. The upshot of the article is that procrastination is a good thing if we put off doing less important things and instead focus on more important things.