First Church Charlotte

May 6, 2020, | Pastor Nathan Elms

May 3, 2020, | Pastor Nathan Elms 1st Church CLT What is the nature of divine blessing? • Week 1, we tried to see blessings from the perspective of God. What is in it for God? • Week 2, we saw how a limited view of blessing puts us at each other’s throats. Esau and Jacob. Issac will only bless one. Jacob blesses everyone. • This week, I want to go deeper into Divine blessing. Why? Because it isn’t as simple as I Have More Than My Neighbor. Remember, Jacob, tricked his father Issac, but had to flee for his life. Who inherited the wealth of Issac? The herds. The servants. It could not have been Jacob. Jacob ran for his life and didn’t return until Genesis 33. -And when he returns, Jacob is the one bowing and asking to be accepted. -Jacob is the one telling his family to call Esau, my lord. And telling them to refer to him, Jacob, as Esau’s servant. -Jacob is the one bringing gifts. Esau gives Jacob nothing but forgiveness. God’s blessing is about transformation. But let's go one step further. The name "Israe

April 29, 2020, | Pastor Nathan Elms 40 is an important number in the Bible and shows us a difficult thing to do. That is to wait. It may feel like nothing is happening from our perspective, it is also difficult for us to see what God is doing around us.

April 26, 2020, | Pastor Nathan Elms The blessings of God are more understood when we perceive that God will bless us to make us a blessing for others.

April 22, 2020, | Bishop David Elms

April 19, 2020 | Pastor Nathan Elms Concerning our relationship with God, perhaps we should ask, what is in it for God?

April 15, 2020, | Pastor Nathan Elms

April 12, 2020, | Pastor Nathan Elms The resurrection of Jesus Christ is more than a story of power, but instead, it is a love story that God has with the world people that He created. For God so loved the world, He was willing to be born as a man and give himself to save those in the world that would return that love.

April 8 2020 | Pastor Nathan Elms Every person who is willing to partner with God for a work to be done, has to sometime or another, go through a wilderness experience. The wilderness experience isn't there to destroy us, but we grow spiritually and become who we are meant to become. Our God as our Father, helps guide us through every difficulty and teaches us to trust in Him.

April 5, 2020, | Pastor Nathan Elms When we praise the Lord, it gives us a true perspective of the Creator and our human relationship with our Creator. When we lose the true perspective of who our God is, we tend to worship ourselves instead. The Lord inhabits our praise and it is the easiest way to enter into God's presence.

March 29, 2020, | Pastor Nathan Elms 1st Church CLT Those of us who walk with Jesus Christ and call Him Lord, are known as kings and priests for God. The Bible shows how God will use things that happen in our lives as ways to help make us into whom He has called us to be. As long as we are not the stars of our own stories, the Lord makes everything that happens turn to our good. The stories of the kings, Saul and David show us two outcomes of kings who were built by God.

March 25 2020 | Pastor Nathan Elms

March 22, 2020, | Pastor Nathan Elms The four Biblical examples of love shows us about God, Who identifies himself as being love and not simply showing us what love is or how to attain it. Family love shows us God in a way that only being a part of a family can show us, as does brotherly love, love between friends and romantic love. By understanding a walk with God as a love story and not a quid-pro-quo relationship, we then understand that the Lord waits patiently for us to choose Him. God isn't watching over us to punish when we go astray, instead He longs for a relationship with us.

March 18, 2020 | Pastor Nathan Elms It is better to pass our test the first time, instead of having to re-take it.

March 15, 2020, | Pastor Nathan Elms There are two parts to sanctification: 1. What Jesus the Messiah did for us; which we could not do for ourselves. 2. We do our best to live a life that exemplifies and glorifies what the Lord did for us and live this way as worship and love for our Savior.

March 11, 2020, | Bishop David Elms • Our Lord God loves you more than you know and wants to make your life less burdensome. His yoke is easy and His burden is light, literally, this means that the commands are easy and the workload is light. • Learn of the Lord Jesus by reading the Gospels. The more His mind is directing our steps, the better our lives will be.

March 8, 2020, | Pastor Nathan Elms Covenant   1 Thes. 5:23 May God himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together - spirit, soul, and body - and keep you fit for the coming of our Master, Jesus Christ.   God is love… there is theological consequences to God's self-defining as love… not “teach” you love, the “source” of love, the “ideal” of love. But love as a noun. As a state of existence, not activity.   Love requires commitment or covenant.   Three things you need to understand about covenants in the bible:   1. Covenants are the backbone of the biblical story.  2. Covenant can be defined as follows: a covenant is a chosen relationship in which individuals make binding promises or commitments to each other.  3. Covenant in a spiritual sense is deeper than a contract.     It is for this reason that the Church itself is called a family or household in the New Testament.   A family without trust, without safety, without loyalty, is the greatest source of pain

March 4, 2020, | Pastor Nathan Elms “Repent,” urged Peter, “and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). These divinely inspired words, spoken on the Day of Pentecost, the annual holy day that became the “birthday” of the New Testament church, show that repentance is the first prerequisite for receiving the Holy Spirit. “Repent” was the first command issued on the day the church was “born,” the first word used to answer the all-important question, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” (2:37). The writer of the book of Hebrews places “repentance from acts that lead to death” (Hebrews 6:1, NIV) at the head of a list of six “elementary truths of God’s word” (5:12, NIV). Repentance is a part of the very “foundation” (6:1) of the true Christian faith, so is much too important to be glossed over or neglected to any degree. The importance of this essential doctrine is underscored by the fact that New T

March 01, 2020, | Pastor Nathan Elms 1 Thes 5:23 23 May God himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together - spirit, soul, and body - and keep you fit for the coming of our Master, Jesus Christ. Progress only begins when we perceive our incompleteness… The Greek philosophers gave us five loves, the bible only accepts four of them: • Storge: Affection Love • Phileo: Friendship Love (today) • Agape: Divine Love. • Eros: Romantic Love. What is false love? • Epithumia: lust, desire. (the bible does not accept this as love) As individuals, we emerge from chaos into order… we become who we are… This is true individually… This is true spiritually… The first five years of a child's life are fundamentally important. They are the foundation that shapes children's future health, happiness, growth, development and learning achievement at school, in the family and community, and in life in general. Recent research confirms that the first five years are particularly

February 23, 2020, | Pastor Nathan Elms 1st Church CLT Progress only begins when we perceive our incompleteness… The Greek philosophers gave us five loves, the bible only accepts four of them: • Storge: Affection Love • Phileo: Friendship Love (today) • Eros: Romantic Love. • Agape: Divine Love. What is the fifth? Epithumia: lust, desire. (the bible does not accept this as love) In this series we are going to talk about Phileo… We need real friendship … which is much more meaningful than common interests. We need real friendship … which is much more meaningful than common interests. Beautiful picture of spiritual friendship: When the apostle Paul was writing his last letter, just before his execution in Rome, he described his situation to Timothy. “Only Luke is with me” (2 Timothy 4:11). (Luke probably cared for Paul in prison since ancient prisons usually did not really feed inmates.) That statement hints at the close friendship between Luke and Paul. Luke was born a Greek in Antioch and became a physi