Join us beginning January 9th, for 21 days of consecration.  The Church of Champions will be in a season of consecration and preparation for 2011.  To celebrate all that God has for us in this new decade, we will be giving Him the first month as a consecration of prayer and fasting.  Corporate prayer and fasting is an essential part of our discipleship and growth in Christ. To help you, we've created a guide to facilitate your focused prayer during this season of consecration.  Click on the link below to download the Church of Champions 21 Day Prayer & Fasting Guide.  

  21-days-prayer-fasting.pdf (86.26 KB, 2010-12-31 09:41)

Have you ever held a newborn baby boy? That baby is a bundle of joy for its parents, but in reality he is also a bundle of something else. He is a bundle of perfectly formed, highly intricate systems that are already at work keeping him alive. Thanks to the systems God created him with such as the circulatory system, digestive system, respiratory system, nervous system, skeletal system, muscular system, integumentary system, Endocrine system and the Excretory system; this child is fully functioning and ready to grow as he starts his journey into life. 

God is into systems. He organized the universe with systems. He created our bodies with systems. The Apostle Paul acknowledged this as a parallel to the Church in 1 Corinthians 12:25 when he said, “The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church.”  The Apostle Paul was helping us wrap our minds around the “how” of Church life and its function in our daily lives.  Not only must the Church be real and relevant, it must also be the body of Jesus Christ, its Head!  The Church must function just as our own human body functions. 

Join us Nov. 7th for the kickoff of our newest message series Anatomy 101 and discover how the health of our “systems” reflect the “health” of our Body, the Church!

Faith receives.

“Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.” Mark 11:24.

Not only must we believe the word of God, we must receive it. Imagine your friend wanting to pay the bill after a nice dinner. You tell him, “No, no. I’ve got it.”, and you pay for dinner. You just declined to receive his gift of a wonderful meal. Or imagine your parents wanting to give you a brand new Mercedes, and you say, “No thanks. I’ll keep my old clunker.” You just declined to receive their gift of a beautiful car. You know your friend is able to pay for dinner, but you don’t receive it. You know your parents are able to give you that Mercedes, but you don’t receive it. It is the same with us and God. We know He is able to do all things, anything He wants, but a lot of us don’t receive His gifts. He wants to bless us, His children, with His good gifts!

“Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” I Corinthians 2:12-14.

Faith believes and does not doubt.

“So Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, “Be removed and be cast into the sea,” and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.’” Mark 11:22-23.

“Have faith in God.” Believe in God! Know that “God is able to make all grace abound toward you.” II Corinthians 9:8. And know that “[God] is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think” Ephesians 3:20. “God is able.” Yes He is! Notice the word ‘all’. All means each, every, any, all, the whole, whatsoever, whosoever, all things, everything. He is able to make all and do all. Believe it!

"Whoever says to this mountain."  Speak to the mountain, whatever the mountain may be:  sickness, lack, anything under the curse of the law (Deuteronomy 28:15-68) from which we have been redeemed (Galatians 3:13).

“And does not doubt.” There is no doubting with faith. Faith knows. When you know something is true, there is no doubt about it. It is truth. Just as there is no doubt the sky is blue and the grass is green, there is no doubt that what you say to the mountain has come to pass, no matter what the circumstances look like. Know that what you say to the mountain in the name of Jesus has come to pass.

Now the whole world had one language… Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth…”The LORD said… Come, let us go down and confuse their language...” So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building… (Genesis 11:1-8 – NIV).

I’ve been frustrated lately over an inconsistency in a spiritual discipline in my life.  For months, I’d been regularly engaging a sacred habit that was helping me grow; then I fell off the wagon.

A pattern soon developed: I’d intend to do the discipline; fail to do it; and then feel guilty about not doing it.  Intend; fail; feel guilty…  Intend; fail; feel guilty…

Ever experienced that?