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Vintage message from May 21, 1989, recorded at Calvary Chapel of Mira Mesa, San Diego, California.
Jesus is telling us here what it’s like when we have Him as the foundation. The foundation is taking what we hear and applying it to our lives, practicing what we know Jesus has taught us. If we don’t have that foundation, if we don’t have Jesus Christ in our life and living the life that we know in Him, then we don’t have a foundation at all. If we’re out living our life still as the world lives, we’ve not laid a foundation in Jesus Christ. When the storms come, we fall apart… You can read this Bible a hundred times, learn every word of it, be able to go out in the streets and impress everybody with your great memory, but unless you’ve spent the time with the Lord,…if you’re not leaning on Him, reading the Bible does not help. Your foundation is not this Bible. Your foundation is Jesus Christ. Your foundation is leaning on the Lord, not your own understanding.
Vintage message from June 4, 1989, recorded at Calvary Chapel of Mira Mesa, San Diego, California.
“Have we searched our hearts? Do we have pride in our lives? Are we sinning? …God allows for Satan, when we fall into sin, to bring pain to us so we come to a point of having to turn back to God and say, ‘Lord, I’m sorry. I am being tormented, I am being destroyed, I am being hurt, and I realize now that it is only You that can stop this pain. It is only You that can stop Satan from tormenting me.’”
Vintage message from July 9, 1989; a review of 1 Corinthians, chapters 1 through 8, recorded at Calvary Chapel of Mira Mesa, San Diego, California.
“Sometimes we allow what people say to us in judgement to burden us, to condemn us, to depress us, and we walk through our lives completely defeated all the time. Paul is saying a spiritual man makes judgement. He will decide what’s right and wrong in life, but he will not allow what other people are saying to him to tear him down. He’s not subject to that judgement. He’s subject to one judgement — that’s the judgement of God, the judgement of the Lord in his life. If you have Jesus is your life, the judgement is going to be, ‘Enter into my kingdom.’ If you don’t have the Lord in your life, the judgement is going to be, ‘Depart from me you workers of iniquity.’ And those are the judgements we need to be worrying about the most. We don’t need to worry about if someone looks at you and says, ‘You’re the ugliest person I ever met and I think you’re slime.’ What is that to me? They can call me names all they want. Sticks and stones, you know. But it’s what God believes about me and knows about me that counts really…We need to look at each other as part of God’s temple and not try to destroy it, but to bless each other and to build each other up.”
Vintage message from July 30, 1989, recorded at Calvary Chapel of Mira Mesa, San Diego, California.
“Our major temptation is selfishness…God is saying, ‘Turn away from your selfishness. Turn away from looking to yourself. Look to Me. I’ve met all your needs.’ …”Sometimes it’s not good to insist on your rights, because when you insist on your rights, many time you are insisting on your own selfishness…He’s telling us to put aside our selfishness…The selfishness in our lives needs to be put aside, and we need to start thinking of others…We need to have Christ. If we’re going to live a selfless life, we need to do it in Christ. We can not do anything of ourselves.”
Vintage message from August 6, 1989, recorded at Calvary Chapel of Mira Mesa, San Diego, California.
“Let’s start setting a standard in our marriages. Let’s start showing those around us that we’re going to love each other, we’re going to consider each other in Christ…Let’s show the rest of the world that we’re going to be set apart. We’re going to be different than they are. We’re not going to worry about the petty things that go on in a family. We’re going to work through them…How many times have we said, ‘That’s okay, I will give up my rights for you’?”
Vintage message from August 13, 1989, recorded at Calvary Chapel of Mira Mesa, San Diego, California. (Poor recording.)
“There’s so much confusion about the gifts…I believe every one of the gifts that are mentioned…are valid and useful for the church today simply because He tells us that it is for the edifying, the building up and the equipping of the body, for the growth of the church. God isn’t going to change that…”
Vintage Message from August 27, 1989, recorded at Calvary Chapel of Mira Mesa, San Diego, California.
“Do you realize you are very special to God? …When you accept His love, when you ask Jesus into your life, He put you in the body. He gives you the gifts that He wants you to have. He equips you for what you are supposed to do for Him in this body…God has put each one of us in the body to fulfill the working of His church against the enemy.”
Vintage message from September 3, 1989, recorded at Calvary Chapel of Mira Mesa, San Diego, California.
“We have people who have hurt us desperately. We have people who have said things to us that really cut us right to the heart, and we want to strangle those people. We never want to talk to those people again. Do you want to conquer over that? Pray for that person. When that person hurts you, if you see that person who has hurt you, pray for them. Tell the Lord,’Pour Your love into that person’s life.’ And all of a sudden, that makes a great difference. It makes a great difference in your life. All of a sudden, you’re learning how to love. You’re learning how to forgive…He knows that we’re going to make the mistakes, but He’s asked us to start trying, to start putting His love into our life, to start gaining the strength.”
Vintage message from September 10, 1989, recorded at Calvary Chapel of Mira Mesa, San Diego, California.
“Love is not just a term, it’s not just something we say, it’s not an emotion we have. It’s a commitment we make to one another. If you’re going to say you love someone, think about this the next time before you say you love someone. Am I committed to this person to be patient and kind to that person? How about not boasting of myself?…If we’re loving someone, we don’t have to boast. We don’t have to be proud of ourselves because, in the loving, we realize that we love because God is in us, and as long as God is in us, what need do we really have of anybody else’s love or acceptance back to us? I don’t see this as Paul is saying this is a two-way street: I’ll love you if you’ll love me…Love isn’t something that falls on you or you wander into. It’s not a natural part of your life — not this love. The flesh is a natural part of your life, and we’ll live in our flesh all too often. But this love comes from making a commitment. A commitment to Jesus. A daily commitment to Jesus. And then a commitment to each other.”
Vintage message from October 8, 1989, recorded at Calvary Chapel of Mira Mesa, San Diego, California.
“What are we believing in? Are we believing in our ability to live good lives? Are we believing in our ability and our knowledge of the name of Jesus Christ? Do we live day by day in depression because really we do not go back and look at the gospel and what the gospel is?…There’s only one thing you can depend on; one thing that you have to hold fast to, and that is the gospel itself, the cross and the resurrection…The gospel is Jesus Christ crucified, raised again from the dead in victory for our sin…There’s nothing else that we can live by. If we lose sight of that gospel, then all of our works, all that we’ve done is in vain.”
Vintage message from October 15, 1989, recorded at Calvary Chapel of Mira Mesa, San Diego, California.
“If the Holy Spirit isn’t in control of your life and you would like for Him to be, start by being obedient to the Word. Read, pray, and you’ll grow. Your growth doesn’t come by seeing me week after week…hearing [me] preach the gospel to you. Your growth comes through obedience. First, to the little things. Get in the Word. If you haven’t read your Bible this week, you haven’t grown this week. If you haven’t prayed this week, you haven’t grown this week…Why not get into the Word and grow in it? Why not allow the Lord to take that control of your life to cause you to grow?”