Restoration Christian Fellowship, 61 Overton Street, Sayville, NY (2026)

09/04/2026

Stay In Your Lane 8-30-26
Pastor Roy Esposito

-Last week we spoke of a “treasure” that God has placed in every follower of Jesus Christ. (2Cor 4:6-7)

- Scripture describes thetresure as a knowledge of the glory of God that brings light into the darkness.

- The “treasure” is already in us; but we still have to contend against a very real enemy to access and then apply it in our lives.

-1Corinthians 2:9-10 - Says that the things God has prepared for us are beyond anything we’ve experienced or could even conceive of, but that God has revealed them to us through His Spirit.

-Vrs 12 - So, ”... that we may know the things given to us freely by God, as the Spirit teaches us through comparisons.”

-I used the story of Hezekiah, King of Judah, as an example of how the Holy Spirit teaches us spiritual things.

-2Kings 18:3-7 – Hezekiah did the right thing in God’s sight by tearing down all the elements of idol worship and, most importantly, he trusted in God.
-This speaks to us to:
1. Get rid of anything in our lives (besides God) that we have ceded power to.
2. Don’t trust in the voice of unbelief.

-2Kings 18:5-7 - Hezekiah trusted the Lord, held fast to His commandments, and thus prospered.
- It seems that he could just go merrily on his way from there, right? But that’s not what actually happened.

-At this time, Israel and Judah were under the rule of the Assyrians.

-Hezekiah was so filled with confidence that he refused to pay tribute to the King of Assyria.

-In biblical typology, the King of Assyria represents Satan.

- Vrs 8: “He subdued the Philistines…” who were the natural enemies of Judah and Israel.

-The Philistines in biblical typology represent our natural enemies: Disease, death, and the works of the flesh. (Gal 5:19-21)

-Theoretically and positionally, Hezekiah gained a victory because God had prospered him.

-But the King of Assyria didn’t just lay down and give up!

-He attacked Samaria, the capital of Israel at the time, and after 3 years of battle, took the city.

-Many were taken captive and taken to a place called Halah (“painful anguish”), and by the Habor, the River of Gozan ( “passing away” - death!), and to the cities of the Medes (“my measured garment”), where he clothed them with pain and anguish. (Vrs 11)

– Seven years later, he took the fortified cities of Judah, and Hezekiah tried to make a deal. (Vrs 13-14)

-Hezekiah emptied the treasuries and stripped the gold from the temple of God.

-But you know you can never make a fair deal with the devil.

-The King of Assyria didn’t even come to the negotiation. Instead, he sent a commander-in-chief, a chief officer, and a chief of staff.

- Vrs 19 -20- “What confidence is this in which you trust? You speak of having plans and power for war; but they are but mere words. And in whom do you trust, that you rebel against me?”

-Vrs 22 -” But if you say to me, ‘We trust in the Lord our God,’ is it not He whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away…”
-Then they mocked Israel and God and tried to undermine Hezekiah’s authority by speaking directly to the people, telling them that if they paid tribute to Assyria, they could keep what they already had.

-They told them, Don’t listen to Hezekiah and all that God stuff. Nobody can beat us. What makes you think your God will deliver Jerusalem?

– Vrs 36 -” But the people held their peace and answered not a word.”

-The people “held onto their peace” because arguing with demons is always fruitless.

–Chapter 19 - Hezekiah humbled himself before the Lord and sought a word from Isaiah. (2Kings 19:5)

-Vrs 6-7 - “Thus says the Lord, Do not be afraid of the words which you have heard, which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed Me. Surely, I will send a spirit upon him, and he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land, and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.”

-Vrs 20 - God assures Hezekiah that his prayer has been heard.

-Vrs 35 - On a certain night, God sent an angel of death into the camp of the Assyrians, killing 185,000.

– The King of Assyria returned to Nineveh and, as he worshiped in the temple of his god, he was killed by the sword, by his two sons.
-Recap:
1. Did right in the Lord's sight by casting off all places of idol worship.
2. He prospered through his obedience, and gained courage to confront the enemy.
3. By presumption, he lost ground, then tried to make concessions but failed
4. The enemy mocked him and God
5. Became deeply discouraged in hearing of the enemy’s increasing victories
6. Cried out to God once again and received God's assurances
7. God spiritually intervened to defeat the enemy
8. Enemy murdered in his own land by his children
9. This took ten years, and much suffering before victory was gained.

-When we do the right thing before God and obey His commandments, we will undoubtedly prosper.

-But we must always be careful not to allow the courage and confidence we gain in our prosperity to lead us into the sin of presumption.
-Sometimes we will be placed under the jurisdiction of the ungodly.

-Remember Jesus’ response when asked about paying taxes to Rome:

-Matt 22:21 -” Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and to God the things that are God’s.”

-In this statement, Jesus was emphasizing the distinction between civil responsibilities and spiritual obligations.

-At the time, Israel and Judah were ruled by the ungodly Assyrians.

-Rom 13:1-2 (NKJ) - “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.
Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.”

-Many people don’t like what this scripture says, and they – as Hezekiah did- rebel against it.

-1Sam 15:23(NKJ) - “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as inequity and idolatry.”

–It doesn’t seem fair to have to accept the dictates of the ungodly, right?

-Hezekiah had taken care of Judah and Israel’s spiritual obligation to God by removing the high places of pagan worship.

-Then, presumptuously went past his spiritual authority concerning civil matters.
-As a result, “... he brought 10 years of judgment on himself”- (and God’s people).

-Rebelling against an unjust system could seem to be the righteous thing to do, but in reality, it’s usually about trying to bend it to one’s own personal agenda. We must, in faith, trust God's integrity to deal with all injustice in His time and in His way.

-This isn’t to say we should just keep silent when we see injustice, but to follow the lawful procedures put in place by God, while still making our opposition known.

-After all this, Hezekiah became ill unto death, sought out Isaiah for a prophetic word, as he cried out to God for help.

-Psalm 34:17 - “The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears, and delivers them from all their troubles.”

-And before Isaiah could walk across the courtyard, he got a word for Hezekiah and returned with the grace for his healing.

- 2Kings 20:5-6 (NKJ) -” Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; surely I will heal you. I will add to your days 15 years. I will deliver you from the hand of the King of Assyria; and I will defend this city for My own sake and for the sake of My servant, David.”

-The message: “Stay in your lane. Avoid presumptions
Take care of your own personal spiritual obligations and leave the rest to Me.
I got this!

08/29/2026

It’s All About The Treasure 8-23-26
Pastor Roy Esposito

– Times of change are usually accompanied by some uncertainty for the future.

– I was thinking of this when I felt the Lord urge me to look back through my past journals to see what He spoke to me in the past when I felt unsteady, and then to consider what the outcome was when I trusted Him.

– I found that although the circumstances may change. He remained the same, and my relationship with Him did too.

– He was still my peace, my provision, and my Savior. He didn’t love me less or more because of my circumstances. He just loved me, period!!!

– Rom 8:35 (TPT) - “Who could ever separate us from the endless love of God’s Anointed One? Absolutely no one! For nothing in the universe has the power to diminish His love for us. Troubles, pressures, and problems are unable to come between us and heaven's love. What about persecutions, deprivations, dangers, and death threats? No, for they are all impotent to hinder omnipotent love!

– His Peace: Calmness, Balance, and Harmony became the basis for my thinking and subsequent movement.
– You could say that – Peace gives balance to thought! – PR

– Important because: Our thoughts are the rudders that steer our lives.

– Simply put: Our lives will go as our thoughts go!

– Col 3:2-3 (TPT) - “Yes, feast on all the treasures of the heavenly realm and fill your thoughts with heavenly realities, and not with the distractions of the natural realm.”

– If my life is steered by peace, my thought process will be orderly, insightful, and productive.

– Conversely, if it’s steered by chaos, I will be confused, anxious, fearful, and destructive.

– When I can sit in His peace, it reminds me of my true identity as God’s beloved son.

– And as a son, I can have an audience with Him anytime I need one.

– I’d like to be able to say that I walk in His peace all the time, but fear and anxiety invariably creep in, leaving me contending for my peace.

-As is probably the case for most, heaven doesn’t automatically fill my thoughts.

- So, I turn to God’s Word for help: Ps 34:7 - “The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears and delivers them from all their trouble.”

-But how does He deliver us?

– We believe that Jesus’ blood washes away our sins and His grace saves us through faith.

– But even with this knowledge, we often get swept away by our feelings, forgetting that true faith needs to be more theoretical.

– It needs to be a combination of contemplation and action!

– Action births experience. When inspired by the Holy Spirit, action brings fresh revelation of truth.

– “Truth experienced is never forgotten.” – PR

– We need to continue to ask God for fresh revelations of Himself experientially.

– 1Corinthians 2:9-10 (NKJ) - “... Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of man the things God has prepared for those who love Him. But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.”

– Vrs 12-“... that we may know the things given to us freely by God,” as the Spirit teaches us through comparisons. (Vrs 13)

–John 16:13-14 (NKJ) – “However, when the Spirit of truth has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.
He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is mine, and declare it to you.”

- Let me share a comparison with you shown to me by the Spirit.

– 2Kings 18:3-7(NKJ) - Hezekiah did the right thing in the sight of God:
He removed the high places of pagan worship
Broke down their altars and pillars
Cut down wooden images
Even broke apart the bronze serpent Moses had made because Israel had made it a god and burned incense to it.
Most importantly, (vs 5) he trusted God!

-The instruction I felt I received from God out of this was:
Get rid of ANYTHING in my life that I had previously ceded power to besides God.

- This includes anything other than God that I had put my trust in – a self-image, an idea, a person, an expectation, etc.

Anything exalted above the knowledge of God must be cast down to clear my mind and focus my attention only on Him.

These other things have a way of translating themselves into “sins of presumption”.

- Let’s pray as David did that God will help us with this.

-Ps 19:13 -Lord, keep me from presumptuous sins.”

-We’ll need God’s help because some of these things are tricky to identify and could be seen as positive things: Natural giftings, talent, or special abilities.

– They can easily translate into “trusting in yourself”.

-Another is “trusting in unbelief” - the whisper of doom telling you some nefarious thing is in the bushes, waiting to jump out at you and grab you for an ill-begotten purpose.

– Even some things that God has used for our good in the past must be surrendered as well, as they may take on new meaning, our minds building myths around them.

-God requires “brokenness” in those whom He will trust with His fresh words of instruction.

-Remember: His declarations create new things, so the old things need to be removed first to make room for the new.

-God will not compete with other gods for our attention, nor will He “shout you down.”

-He requires that we “Come” to Him to receive the fresh manna.

-Brokenness can sound like defeat, but it is really a permanent sense of needing God.

- Moses spent 40 years in the back of the desert because he was not sure of his calling. He was looking at and trusting in things he couldn’t do: his own abilities, or lack thereof.

-God said, ”What’s in your hand? –A staff
Looked down – a serpent
Up again - a staff again

-Put hand in bosom - Leprous
Out of bosom – Clean again

-God showed Moses that it’s not what you have, it’s who you have that grants you authority.

-Brokenness is proactive surrender.

– To be clear, brokenness is not the same as woundedness.

-Woundedness is unhealthy, as wounded people tend to wound others.

-Brokenness is the realization that I was created to be one with God and not independent and separated and apart from Him.

-It’s a revelation of our need to continuously press into God to achieve that end.

-2Corinthians 4:7 - “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not us.”

-The Treasure is God who has made His abode in us.

-Our talents, education, and abilities are all subservient to the “treasure.”

-2Kings 18:5-7 - Hezekiah trusted the Lord and held fast to His commandments, and thus prospered.

-Church, it’s all about the treasure – uncovering it, trusting in it, and allowing ourselves to have it be the primary thing in our lives.

-Ps 12:1 –”Help, Lord…”

08/18/2026

The Law of Love and Grace 8-16-26
Pastor Roy Esposito

– The entire universe is governed by laws, ranging from physical laws:
(“ For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, gravity, etc.“) to emotional and intellectual laws.

– A Law is a binding custom or practice.

– On Earth, men live their lives acting or reacting to these laws, which in turn influence their perception of truth and reality, which creates a “state or condition” through which further behavior patterns emerge.

– Gen 1:1-2 - Tells us that in the beginning the world was without any form. That it was a void.

– Void -(Toh-hoo) - A formless, chaotic mess; a world of disorder, confusion, and lack of arrangement.

– The Holy Spirit hovered or brooded over the face of the deep.

– Hovered means to overshadow (as the Spirit hovered over the Virgin Mary preceding Christ’s birth)

– Brooded means to think deeply about something that’s making you unhappy.
– God put into place a law which brought order, balance, and proper arrangement to the void.

– After man was created, sin entered the world because of an act of man’s will, and the “law of sin and death” took root.

– Sin began as an act of will but soon expanded to be a state or condition, producing further acts of sin or a “course of sin”, which all mankind found itself caught up in.

– The course of sin made the minds of men more confused, defensive, and fractured.

– Fortunately for us, because we were created from the divine substance of God’s love, the Holy Spirit has never stopped hovering over us!

– But although the law of sin and death has had predominance on earth since Adam’s regretful choice, there exists an even greater, more powerful law enacted and empowered by Jesus Christ:
“The Law of Love and Grace”

]– God is love (1John 4:8, 4:16), love is “ONE” - (Deut 6:4) The Shema Yisrael!

– ONE is united – ONE is a unit that can be made up of many, and is never fractured.

–God is Spirit and supernatural: He is ONE!

– We, on the other hand, are many, separate, and exist in a chaotic state of reality; separated from God and each other: a “state of sin”.

– The counter-point to sin is Grace, a gift of the unmeritorious favor of God, and holding supernatural power.

– A Law – is a principle that, when followed, leads to a culminating point of experience; the result associated with that principle.

– Example: Rom 6:23 - “For the wages (the associated result of the principle) of sin is death, but the gift of God (the charism/grace) of God is eternal life IN Christ Jesus our Lord.”

- Rom 6:14- “Sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”

– The key to receiving the associated results of the grace afforded to us is to be IN Christ Jesus.

– This principle is basically what Mark 1:1 called “The gospel” of Jesus Christ.

– The New Testament understanding of the Gospel:
It is both the promise of salvation and deliverance from the natural law of chaos (the state of sin), and finding its fulfillment through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.

-John came preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sin. (Mark 1:4 NKJ).

– Mark 1:7-8 (NKJ) -” And he preached, saying, There comes One after me who is mightier than I, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to stoop down and loose. I, indeed, baptize you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit”.

– When we are “IN Christ” we are baptized with the Holy Spirit, who, as He did in the beginning, starts the process of bringing us into unity; within ourselves, with others and with the ONE who is God.

– We also need to be willing to take an active part in the process of our deliverance from the law of sin and death, and not just remain satisfied with the salvation granted to us by God.

– Consider what Paul urged the Philippian Church to do:
Phil 4:3-7

Be willing to help all those who work to further the Gospel.
Give action to your unity!
Rejoice in the Lord – always!
Don’t live in the house of your circumstances. In difficult times, run for safety into the “High Tower” who is the Lord.
3. Let your gentleness be known.

Gentleness doesn’t mean being weak or passive, but gracious and forbearing.

– Forbearance - Patient – Tolerant – Restraint in the face of provocation.

– Why should we do these things?
Verse 5 - ... because “the Lord is at hand”.

– Doing these things as acts of your will, will allow you to enter the flow of grace that enables you to – “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God; and (receive) the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, (which in turn) will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 4:6-7

– Our part, of course, is to first accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

-Rom 6:11 - Says we are also to, “... reckon (consider) yourself to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

– Meaning:
1. To allow the Holy Spirit to form within yourself a new state or condition of being.
2. Be open to receive the flow of grace from God’s Kingdom that is far greater than the natural law of sin and death.

– This is how we become “alive to God.”

– Rom 6:13 - Now we can, “...present ourselves to God as being alive from the dead,” and present our members as instruments of righteousness.

– A Prayer to “Spiritually Soak” in:
“Father, I ask you, as an act of my will, to come alive in me, especially in any area of darkness that may still exist within.”
-” Lord, I want to present myself alive to the effects of the grace associated with Your Kingdom.”

-I encourage you to be easy on yourself as you do this.

-Your enemy, the devil, doesn’t want this for you.

– He wants you to become tired, stressed, condemned, frustrated, losing heart and discouraged -
to get “...weary in well-doing” - (Gal 6:9)

–Even Paul, who had powerful experiences in God, said that he learned to be content in whatever state he found himself in. (Phil 4:11-12)

– But if you stay the course and remain following the principles of the Gospel’s message, His grace will create a new state and condition of being for you, and overcome the effects of the law of sin and death, through a superior law: The Law of Love and Grace.

– If you follow it to its culminating point, you’ll be able to say, believe, and experience, as Paul did, ”I can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Phil 4:13)

08/15/2026

Jesus Cares 8-9-26
Pastor Roy Esposito

- John 13:34-5 (NKJ) - ”A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

– God’s love in Christ for us has always been at the center of the Gospel’s message, and is to be the primary motivation for the actions of all who would follow Jesus.

– Jesus’ love has saved us, healed us, restored and transformed us into spirit- focused beings, who can carry and impart His love to all who would receive it.

– We are presently being “made ready” to be able to fulfill this calling.

– Almost every time that I’ve sat with the Lord this week, I heard Him say to me, “Cast your cares (distractions, burdens, worries and anxieties) on Me; I will care for you. (1Peter 5:7, Ps 55:22-23 TPT)

– “Casting our cares…” speaks of releasing the “right” to be independent of God’s oversight, and submitting ourselves totally to His authority, trusting in Him to equip us with the spiritual tools we will need to complete and prosper in our calling.
– By our submission to His authority, we will experience a depth of His love that will release us from carrying the weight of self-dependence.

– Jesus was the human expression of the Father’s love for creation that “passes human understanding”.

– Let’s look at some of the ways that Jesus expressed that love.

– The first thing that I saw was that He was always attentive to people and listened to them. This included His enemies!

– He didn’t have a prepared, one-size-fits-all answer ready. He listened and responded thoughtfully.

– He was patient with His disciples even when they totally missed the point of His teachings.

– He saw people as lost sheep who were lost and confused, and in need of help, so His answers always offered hope and a way to wholeness.

– He also had some confrontations, and that is true.

– But His confrontations were always motivated by His love for those whom He knew were missing the mark. A “caring confrontation”.

– He challenged people to think first, and then act with love.

– When He confronted evil, it was with a wisdom that contained no malice.
– He was a “generational thinker”, always looking to expand the Kingdom of God by passing down divine wisdom and power to those who would follow Him.

– Even though Peter denied Jesus 3x, He had him express his love for Him 3x: Agape - total love? Peter answered, Philos - affection, which was all Peter had to give at the time.

– Note: Jesus will take what we actually have at any given moment and use it!
– He took Peter’s limited ability to love (affection), and, after the Holy Spirit was imparted, He changed Peter’s understanding of love to agape.

-He took Peter’s current ability to love – restored him – and then gave him both the authority and responsibility over the church.

– Divine authority became the muscle in the arms of divine love.

– Jesus also loved people by celebrating their lives.

– He dismissed no one, as He saw them as important gifts.

– This is something that I think we need to work on more today.

-We are so impressed by people's stature, social position, wealth, and fame that we tend to overlook the people who live on the margins of society: the poor, the mentally or physically lame, the elderly.
– Many today see them as “throw-aways " or worse, don’t see them at all.

– But Jesus celebrated ALL lives and was grateful to the Father for all of them.

– Although many depictions of Jesus are sober and sometimes somber, it was said that Jesus possessed a great sense of humor.

– Many biblical scholars have written of the “mirth” in His answers in the context of the society in which He lived.

– He approached people with joy, and not heaviness! Acceptance and love, and not judgment.
– In His book, “The Humor of Christ”, Elton Trueblood noted that children liked being around Jesus because they sensed the light-hearted joy of His being.

– Jesus loved people through His unique creativity, which helped to break the chains of religious propriety off them and free them through His many improvisational parables and stories.

– He got them to think outside the box and see how the supernatural tenets of the Kingdom of God were applicable to their present lives by using familiar contexts for His lessons.

– Jesus showed His love through His reverence, certainly for the Father, but also in His universal respect for life.
– One of the most impressive ways, I think, that Jesus loved us was in His unbending loyalty to His mission on earth, but also to us individually as well.

– There was never a person that Jesus didn’t affirm His loyalty to, whether it be a beggar, a l***r, the maimed, women, or the generally downtrodden.
– I keep envisioning Him weeping over Jerusalem (Matt 23:37) even as He was rejected by them.

– He always forgave people because He knew they were lost.

-Forgiveness and the avoidance of judgment were the basic tenets of His teachings about the Kingdom of God.

– Breaking it down, Jesus has compassion for people.
Jesus cared for us then, and still does!

– We are called to impart Jesus’ love to others on the earth until His return: We are called to care for others as He did.

– *** Remember: John 13:34 – “... to love each other as I have loved you.”

– In today’s understanding of what it means to “care”, the strong bends toward the weak; the “haves” toward the “have-nots”.

-We generally feel uncomfortable entering someone’s pain unless and until we can do something to make it better.

–But Jesus entered into the reality of their suffering. He could just be present for them.

– If you stop to think about who the most important people were to you when you were suffering.

- It probably wasn’t the people who offered advice, but those who were willing to share our pain by just being there and standing with us.

– These are people who can be silent with us in our grief and confusion; those who can take not knowing what to do – unable to heal us, but willing and able to stand with us in our powerlessness.

–I guess to care means to be present for each other.

– Many in the church-world want to be known as “healers”, but I think God’s plan for us is first to become “carers”.

-It makes sense because a “cure” without “care” would only make us more narcissistic than we already are.
– It would make us controllers and manipulators, sustained by supernatural abilities.

– Cure without care will keep us preoccupied with quick change and immediate results, causing us to become detached, impatient, and unwilling to share in each other's burdens.

– I believe the healing gift of the Spirit to the church will be attached to the capacity we develop to care for others as Jesus did.

– Jesus could cure all who came to Him because He cared for all who came to Him. His love motivated all His actions!

-His Actions and Behavior:
1. Listened attentively
2. Confronted with no malice
3. Thought Generationally
4. Celebrated people as gifts from the Father
5. Displayed humor, creativity, reverence, loyalty, forgiveness, and forbearance.
6. He cared

-Isa.12:58-59 – RCF - “Repairers of the breach- Restorers of Communities”

07/27/2026

The Fire Within 7-19-26
Pastor Roy Esposito

- Last week: 3 Greek words for “light,” but we focused on one:

Phos - A constant and self-generated light, not kindled by another, so not able to be extinguished.

-James described the Father as Phos (James 1:17 NKJ), with no variation and no shadows.

- John refers to Jesus Christ as the “True Light”.

John 1:9-10 (NKJ) - “That was the True light which gives light to every man coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.”

– The True Light, Jesus Christ, the living, pulsating, eternal, life-giving presence of God, came into the world and was not recognized.

-He was in the world and is still in the world!

-His light is still active, continually enabling life to exist.

-As natural life continues to exist by the Light, so does spiritual life.

-Some people don’t believe that a spiritual life exists at all.
-To many, spirituality is a concept that sits on the fringes of logic and science; a quirky and peculiar viewpoint that’s not really intellectually viable.

-Spirituality, however, is vital and non-negotiable. It lies at the heart of all existence.

-None of us have a choice. Everyone has to have a spiritual life and indeed does.

-Our spirituality will be either a life-giving one or a destructive one.

-Plato: “We are all fired into life with a madness that comes from the gods…”

No one has ever had the luxury to choose to be born into this life.

-We were all “fired” into this life with a certain “madness” - a Dis-Ease of spirit and soul, as our souls are born with an innate sense of a detachment from the source of life due to Adam’s disobedience.

– We emerge into the world crying, on fire with a madness churning in the pit of our stomachs, and seeking at a very primal level to fulfill our desire for oneness.

– How we choose to deal with the“madness” and desire is what our spirituality will become.

-Living a spiritual life, then, is not rationally picking and choosing certain spiritual activities to participate in, like going to church, meditating, or reading spiritual books.

- It’s much more about finding a place where our souls can sleep peacefully at night.

-Long before we do anything explicitly religious, we have to do something about the fire burning within us.

-We can either choose to become integrated into God’s community of peace, love and joy or go our own way into loneliness and separation.

– Irrespective of any explicit religious ideas, we will then act in ways that will leave us either healthy or unhealthy; loving or bitter - in harmony with God and all creation or alienated and alone.

– When we asked Jesus to come into our lives, He afforded us an alternative to the fire of “madness” raging within us.

– The “mad fire” we were born into can now be transformed into the “Holy Fire” of God through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

– This Holy Fire then becomes a “Light” within: He instructs us, directs us, comforts us, and heals us by uncovering the darkness of sin that may remain in us.

-The Greek word for darkness is Skotos. It is the principle of sin and sin’s inevitable results. (Strong's 4655)
–John 8:12 - “I am the Light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”

– PR Translation: “ I am the Phos (the eternal light) of life, which can never be extinguished. He that follows Me shall never walk in Skotos- the Darkness (the misery and ruin of sin), but shall also have the Phos, the eternal light of life.”

– John 1:4 (NKJ) - “In Him was life and the life was the Phos- the eternally existing Light of men.”

– Jesus is the source of all life (Zoe: the principle of life) in the new covenant of God.

– He is the Light that shines in the darkness; the Light which the darkness can’t even understand, let alone overcome! (John 1:5)

– The Light of Christ empowers us to escape from the clutches of darkness and overcome the death it will inevitably bring.

– Jesus bathes our “madness” in the sacred light of life ( in the “Water of the Living Word”), calming the raging fire within us, and providing an ointment for our peace.

– Eph 5:13-14 (AMP) – “But when anything is exposed to the Light and reproved by the Light, it is made visible and clear, and where everything is visible and clear – there is Light.
“Therefore, He says ‘Awake O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall shine (make the day dawn) upon you and give you Light.”

-If we want to have inner peace for our souls, we have to choose to walk in the Light.

– Dis-ease and death are the direct result of the darkness's influence over life. They are only capable of reproducing more of themselves. They are destructive, non-creative forces.

– **Note: We will become what we behold and magnify that which we have become! – PR

– If we choose to walk in the Light, we will magnify life.

-1Corinthians 15:45 - “So it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being. The last Adam, a life-giving spirit.”
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-If we magnify the Light, we will become children of the Light: Spirit-Men and Women!

– I want to tell you about some very unique gemstones, Rubies.

-Rubies have many “refractive indices.”

Refraction - Refers to the change in direction of the light.

-Refractive Indices - Refer to the amount of change in direction the light will undergo.

– In a Ruby, the light bounces back and forth, trying to get through.

-Every time it bounces, the power of the light is magnified.

-With the right equipment, the light can be directed to one side of the Ruby and come out the other side as a powerful laser beam, having much more power than when it first went into the stone.

-I was reflecting on the similarity to God’s Light coming into us.

-The many trials we experience in life are like the “refractions” going through the Ruby. Each time there is a refraction, the Light becomes more powerful!

-A laser's power builds with each bounce within the Ruby and then comes out the other side in a demonstration of power.

-It’s probably what Jesus was referring to when He told His followers (John 14:12) that they would do even greater works than He did.

-The red tint of the Ruby symbolizes the Blood of Christ, which covers us completely. There’s great power in the Blood!

-When believers are clothed in Christ’s Blood, the PHOS shines into them, soothing the desires of the“mad-fire” and transforming it to the life-giving, creative Fire of the Holy Spirit.

Restoration Christian Fellowship

09/04/2026

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