Truth Matters

Guest (Male): Today, on Truth Matters with Dr. Cheryl Davis.

Dr. Cheryl Davis: The Bible says that we cannot serve two masters. You will love the one and hate the other. As a church, we cannot walk in the spirit and the flesh at the same time and expect to accomplish the Great Commission. All the while, we are diluting the gospel and losing our power as a church. It is time to level up. In order for the church to level up in power, we must walk in the spirit.

Guest (Male): Each day provides us with the opportunity to look deeply at our relationship with the Lord God, who made us and sent his son in power to redeem us from destruction. We don't earn God's merciful love, but we must seek to understand what is expected of us, to recognize the Lord's holy authority over us and to be obedient to his word in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Dr. Cheryl Davis: The Lord is calling us to walk in the spirit in complete obedience to his word in these last days. Apart from the dunamis power of the Holy Spirit, apart from him, we can do nothing. The dunamis power of the Lord is never going to flow through our plans. It's never going to flow through our might. It's only going to flow through genuine obedience to the Holy Spirit.

Guest (Male): Welcome to Truth Matters, empowering men and women in the Christian faith to teach biblical truth in the culture and the marketplace of ideas, using the Bible as a sacred trust of truth in sharing the message of Jesus. Our program host is Dr. Cheryl Davis. Dr. Davis is a wife, mom, speaker, and Bible teacher. She is a graduate with a doctor of medicine degree from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. She is married to Thad Davis, pastor of Faith Assembly in Saint Paul's, North Carolina. On today's edition of Truth Matters, Dr. Cheryl Davis shares what Scripture says about the power of God and how this power is tied to our redemption and our obedience to him.

And she points out why this power is missing from many churches today. Today's message is titled The Last Days Church, Part 2. Let's listen.

Dr. Cheryl Davis: With the recent events of this nation, the church needs to be the source of truth, not the media or the government. In these last days, we need to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit in order to advance the cause of Christ against a darkening backdrop of evil. Paul describes the times that we are living in as the last days. Paul says in 2 Timothy chapter 3 verses 1 through 5, This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of that that are good, traitors, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, denying the power thereof.

From such turn away. What kind of power do I mean? I'm talking about dunamis power. The Greek word dunamis is used 120 times in the New Testament. It means strength, power, or ability. From dunamis we get our English words dynamite or dynamic. Dunamis refers to inherent power, power residing in a thing by virtue of its nature or which a person or things exerts or puts forth. We find this power many times in the New Testament. Here are a few examples. In Matthew chapter 22 verse 29, Jesus tells the Sadducees, you are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.

Dunamis is part of the inherent nature of God. It is miraculous power that produces marvelous works. Luke chapter 1 verse 35, The angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee. This dunamis power produced the virgin birth of the Messiah. Luke chapter 4 verse 36, And they were all amazed and spake among themselves, saying, What a word is this? For with authority and power he commanded the unclean spirits, and they came out. Dunamis power gave Jesus dominion over Satan. Acts chapter 1 verse 8, But we shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.

I call this the power of the Peter paradox. By this power Peter was changed from the moment he denied Jesus. To within 50 days he preached and 3,000 people were converted in one instance. 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 7, But we have treasures in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power be of God and not us. This tells us that apart from the dunamis power of the Holy Spirit, apart from him, we can do nothing. Ephesians chapter 3 verse 20, Now unto him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.

God's power, his dunamis power is beyond our comprehension. It's beyond even those things that we can imagine. The same miraculous power that overshadowed Mary in Luke 1 and cast out demons in Luke 4 is the same power that lives within us today. By way of the Holy Spirit, the Lord's power can be released into our lives and we can be forever changed. So for those of us that are saved, my question is, what's the hold up? Are we walking in the power of the Holy Spirit or are we operating in ministry in the power of our own might or in the power of our own mind?

When you look at the moral crisis of this nation, really we should have been walking in the power of the Holy Spirit yesterday and even decades ago. Some of this could have been prevented if this nation could have been redeemed or if the church would have had even more power decades ago. So how can the church level up in power? How can the church unleash the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish the will of God in the spirit? Honestly, it is not a matter of if the power is there. The power is there because the Holy Spirit lives within each and every one of us.

Really it is a matter of walking in the spirit. And walking in the spirit is a matter of obedience. I personally believe that we are struggling with complete obedience as a church. And really not even as a church, but individually, I know that there are times in my own life I have only partially obeyed the Lord in things that he has asked of me. And even partial obedience is still disobedience. So if we are struggling as a church, that really means that we are struggling individually in complete obedience to the voice of God. And someone else who has a great name known as the father of faith, he suffered from the same thing.

An example is the case of Abraham and his wife Sarah and the two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. We find this story, Paul writes about them in Galatians chapter 4 verses 28 through 31. Galatians says, Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of the promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the spirit. Even so it is now. Nevertheless, what saith the Scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.

The Lord made a covenant with Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. The Lord told Abraham three things, which is known as the Abrahamic covenant. I will make you a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse and all the peoples of the earth will be blessed by you. In Genesis chapter 15, God promised him a son from his own body. His descendants will be as countless as the stars. But there was a minor issue.

Abraham's wife was barren. She was well advanced in age. Her name was Sarah and she suffered from a human form of impatience. So she gave Abraham her handmaiden Hagar according to the law, but not by God's design. And Hagar bore him a son in the natural way or what I like to call the way of the flesh or the fleshly way. His name was Ishmael. Basically at the root of this, Sarah resigned herself to the natural and did not hold out for the supernatural promise of God. She took matters into her own hands and produced a male heir.

But Ishmael was by Sarah's design, not God's. In Genesis chapter 17 verses 15 through 18, we see this. And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. And I will bless her and give thee a son also of her. Yes, I will bless her and she will be a mother of nations. Kings of people shall be of her. In this story, the Lord is trying to impart dunamis power upon Abraham. Only dunamis power, the power that we mentioned before, can cause a man who is 100 years old and a woman whose womb is dead at 90 to birth a son whose descendant is going to be Jesus and he will be a spiritual blessing to all nations.

Redemption came out of barrenness. Abraham laughs and says, If only Ishmael can live under your blessing. Really the church is in the same condition as Abraham. The church wants the Lord to bless our mess much like Abraham wanted to substitute Ishmael for Isaac. Sarah usurped the will of God and produced a male heir of Abraham's, but outside of the promise. He was related to Abraham, but in the manner of the natural and of the law, not in the manner of the spirit. Opposite outside God's power. God's power operates in the spirit. There's nothing natural about it.

Ishmael was of natural birth. He represented the covenant for the Israelites on Mount Sinai that was incomplete to atone for the soul of man, what we know as the law. That is why Isaac was necessary. That is why Isaac was of the promise, so that Jesus could be born as the atonement and the ultimate sacrifice for the souls of man. In the church today, we want God to bless deeds done in the flesh just like Abraham. But the flesh is out of the will of God. The flesh will only lead to misery, death, and destruction.

We want God to work and to bless in a sin-laden sacrifice. We want God to work on our terms and not his terms and not his perfect plan, not his sovereign will. We think our ways are higher than his, when actually and opposite the ways of the Lord are higher than ours. We want God to work and bless outside of his will. We are appointing leaders in the church based on talent and not anointing. Sarah's story goes on in Genesis chapter 21, And the Lord visited Sarah as he said, And the Lord did unto Sarah as he had spoken.

Isaac was born by the promise. Now the Lord was gracious with Sarah and did as he promised. Time goes by and in in verse 9 of chapter 21 it says, But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had born to Abraham was mocking. The flesh will always war against the spirit of God. We have proof of this today. You can easily access video of modern-day descendants of Ishmael known as ISIS murdering Christians. When you are imbued with dunamis power of the Holy Spirit, the flesh will always rise against. We know that church has dunamis power because the word of God says, Upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

This was the case with Ishmael and Isaac. The natural warring against the spirit. Paul says in Galatians 4 29, it is the same now. This country has waged an attack against the church since the mid 1960s. Minority atheist groups in this country have been allowed to change their rules for the majority because of the minority opinion in the name of inclusiveness. Many key decisions at the Supreme Court level have changed the landscape of America. To this day we are guilty of aborting 65 million babies since 1980 in the US. The Obama administration redefined the definition of marriage and celebrated it, even though the majority of Americans are not homosexual.

The truth is being assassinated in the public square. All of these are examples of the spiritual warfare going on for the territory of the US in a war for the dominion of Satan. And an important question is, where is the church in all this? I'll tell you where we are and where we have been over the last numerous decades. Our pulpits preach prosperity gospels and tolerance. We are persecuted and called super religious because we call out infidelity as being unbiblical. Therefore we stop preaching about it because our numbers decline. When we start preaching biblical values, there's a mass exodus out of our churches to churches down the road that preach more loosely.

We are not taking a stand on the word of God. The word of God is the only thing that will last and stand forever and we treat the word of God as a historical text that has no relevance for today. We don't want to ruffle the feathers. We don't want to be labeled as bigots. All the while, we are diluting the gospel and losing our power as a church. It is time to level up. It is time to level up our churches in power and we can do that in love. It's not that it has to be divisive.

It doesn't have to be hate speech or come across as bitterness. It can be done in love, but power does divide because the power is the truth and it does divide naturally because there are going to be disagreement. There's going to be rebellion. But how do we level up in power? Actually how do we do that? In Genesis 21 verses 10 through 11, we find Abraham doing just this. Sarah tells him, You need to get rid of the slave woman and her son for that slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.

The dunamis power of the Lord is never going to flow through our plans. It's never going to flow through our might. It's only going to flow through genuine obedience to the Holy Spirit. The Bible says that we cannot serve two masters. You will love the one and hate the other. As a church, we cannot walk in the spirit and the flesh at the same time and expect to accomplish the Great Commission. In order for the church to level up in power, we must walk in the spirit. The problem is we are holding on to our Ishmaels and not casting them out.

In the church, our Ishmaels can be status, material possessions, people, relationships, jobs, feelings, inappropriate relationships. But a lot of times they are immoral behaviors that are oppressing us and keeping us bound up in sin that goes unconfessed. Then we are separated from God and this keeps us from our destiny in him. Also it is pastors that are leading churches because they are educated. And it is a job for them, not a calling or an anointing or a spiritual gift. I know this firsthand. Pulpit search committees of churches are unable to find pastors that say, God has called me to this ministry.

What they find is pastors that are looking for an upgrade in salary and an upgrade in the size of the congregation for their next church. Pastors are looking for advancement, but God is looking for shepherds for his sheep. We must cast out the Ishmaels of our lives and our churches because they are draining us of our power. We cannot operate in the flesh and expect the dunamis power type results that we see in the Bible and the type results that this nation needs. Sin separates us from God. We must walk in the spirit if we are going to evangelize this nation.

Remember I said before, it is not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord. If we as a church do not heed the word of God and walk in complete obedience, we will continue to rob God of his glory. We are but an imitation of what God intends for us to be. We are weak and vulnerable to the attack of the enemy because we are holding on to our own will and asking God to bless our detours and our deportations from his will. And the last time I checked and the last time the Lord explained this to me, that is just outright disobedience.

And even if we're partially fulfilling his will and not completely giving all of our selves, still it is disobedience. And some of us are living there. Some of us are living in disobedience, which is sin and leading churches. I know of some that have left churches because they could not be the pastor and establish other fellowships, knowing that was not the will of God leading churches, but they're in outright disobedience. It's still sin. We cannot get a hold of God for ourselves if we're living in sin because we're blind to our own sin, much less lead a congregation to repentance or lead them into true righteousness.

That's why the Bible says there's a highway of holiness and only few are going to walk therein. Our blindness to our own sin, our own situation, or our lack of obedience, or frank disobedience leads us to a false sense of security because we outwardly appear like we have salvation compared to our neighbor, but inwardly we have no power. The problem is is that our standard for comparison is our neighbor. It's not Jesus Christ. When the standard for comparison is Jesus Christ, we're going to see that we're far from him. When we read the Bible and intake the word for what it really is, I find myself oftentimes saying, Here I am, Lord, standing in the need of prayer.

Here I am, Lord, with a broken and contrite spirit because the closer I get to the Lord, I realize how holy he is and how unholy my flesh can be and how much I need a savior and how I fall down sometimes on a daily basis. But that's how I know that his mercies are new every morning because some days I have to consume them. Actually every day I consume them. Every day I need his mercy. I don't want to get into a false sense of security because many of us are going to find ourselves there because when we're comparing ourselves to our neighbor, we need to be comparing ourselves to Jesus and when we do that inwardly we have no power.

Because how do you know your neighbor even has power? What we have and what we suffer from is a form of godliness denying the power thereof and we're teaching our children the same form of godliness. Our children learn what they live. And I've seen that in our church just last week as we worship, we are teaching how to worship and going through what the Bible says about worship. And as you see the adults worship, you see the children follow along suit and they follow and come to the altar and worship just like their parents and just like the adults.

So if they learn worship, they're going to learn righteousness or unrighteousness from us. So we're teaching our children the same false sense of security that we have. But in these last days the Lord is calling us to walk in the spirit in complete obedience to his word in these last days. That's all it's going to take. There's nothing else that is out there that is going to help this nation for its problems, that's going to redeem it from its spiritual condition. Is the authentic word of Jesus Christ and the authentic love and salvation that only Jesus Christ can provide.

The Bible says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. Everyone out there that has been born or will ever be born is born with a God-shaped hole inside of them. It is their search for ultimate transcendence. And we will never have complete peace deep down in our souls until we have a right relationship with God, until we are abiding in the vine and we're constantly washing ourselves with the water of the word to keep us clean in him is the only time that we will have true peace.

Otherwise we are without peace and we are searching on every corner looking to fulfill this deep longing that the Lord has placed within us that he talks about in the book of Ecclesiastes. In these last days the Lord is calling us to walk in the spirit in complete obedience to his word. So my question is for you and only you know this deep down, what is your Ishmael that you need to cast out today? You know a lot of us think because we're outwardly made whole, inwardly there's still some work. There are many Ishmaels on the throne of our hearts that we need to cast out and only you know after a deep search of your own heart what those are.

My question to you today is, what is holding you back from the dunamis power of the Holy Spirit working in your life? And the only time that we'll see the dunamis power work in the Holy Spirit in our life is through complete obedience. And honestly I can say this, I I hadn't planned to really say this, but I feel impressed to share it that you know my husband and I have been married for 19 years and I was thinking and talking to him the other day, you know the Lord has us so far out on faith that we can't see land.

You know sometimes I feel that we're in a boat without an oar and we're having to depend on him because we can't see land. We don't know whether to go left or right or up or down. But in our obedience, even though it makes us feel vulnerable, even though we're uncomfortable, we are living the best life, the most fulfilled life that we've ever lived in our lives. And that is how the Lord does it. And he can do exceedingly above more abundantly than we can ever ask or think. And we were talking about that the other day that he has done things for us that we asked for years ago that we may have forgotten that we asked him for.

But he reminds us of how faithful he is and how he does not forget even the small details of our life and the small things that we need. Of course he can handle the big things. Of course he can handle the small things. He can handle everything. But in obedience we have access to all of that. All of that is out there for us because it's already been willed to us by him. But we are not possessing it because we are not being obedient. So I'm going to ask you again, what are those Ishmaels that you need to cast out of your life today?

For us it was a season that we needed to move from. If we stay in seasons too long, that's still disobedience. There was a season of our life that my husband and I needed to move out of into the next season and it was so hard. It was so scary. It was not something we ever thought that we would be or do. But when we stepped out in faith as I was preparing for this today, the Lord shows me that in the previous season I could have never have done what I'm doing now had I remained back there.

So the Lord knows better than we do. He's well ahead of us on the pathway that he has for us called life. But these Ishmaels hold us back. And when it holds us back, therefore we're holding our local church body back. And if the local church party's being held back, then the overall church is being held back. We need to release the power, the dunamis power of the Holy Spirit into our lives so that this nation can benefit because this nation needs redemption and the only answer to its redemption is the church of the living God.

Will you cast out your Ishmael today? Will you release the power of the Holy Spirit in your life today?

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Truth Matters with Dr. Cheryl Davis and today's message titled The Last Days Church, Part 2. In these changing times there has been one thing that has never changed, the message in the Bible. The truth in God's word stands stronger than ever. Read it for yourself so that you may know and discern what is true, holy, and acceptable in the eyes of God. Friend, if you're searching or confused in what to believe in this ever changing modern culture, Dr. Davis would like to help you discover and understand what is true and genuine.

You can reach her by email at Cheryl Davis at projecttruthmatters.com. Cheryl is spelled c h e r y l Davis at projecttruthmatters.com. You can also write to her at PO Box 159 Saint Paul's, North Carolina 28384. Or you can connect on Facebook at Truth Matters with Dr. Cheryl Davis. And lastly, if you'd like to hear more of Dr. Davis's messages, the Truth Matters with Dr. Cheryl Davis podcast is available on Spotify, Apple, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Google Podcast, Pandora, and Castbox. Our website is projecttruthmatters.com. Truth Matters is made possible thanks to the prayers and financial contributions of friends like you and is a production of The Truth Project.