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Love Builds Up: Love’s Freedom

By Central, Love Builds Up

In this message we consider the issue arising amongst the Corinthians about whether to eat meat which had been offered to idols in the pagan temples, but which was really about what they were to do with their newfound freedom in Christ. We consider the key differences between Love’s Freedom and the world’s freedom, and the implications for how we live out God’s Kingdom culture in this present age, to a watching world waiting for God’s children to be revealed (Ro 8:19).

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Love Builds Up: The Joy of Judgement

By Central, Love Builds Up

In this message we’ll talk about the joy of judgement. They don’t seem like two words that go together very well. When the Bible talks about judgement though, it’s clear, for those who know Jesus there is ultimately nothing to fear. God has given us authority to make judgements and if we do this well it will result in sin being defeated, lives saved and restoration for those that turn to God.

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Togetherness

By Central, Love Builds Up

Watch/listen again to this Sunday message from Patrick & Isobelle Stone in Stoney Stanton. You can find more messages and other videos at youtube.com/livingrockchurch. You can also follow our Sunday Messages podcast on your preferred podcast platform. For more information about Living Rock Church visit www.livingrock.church.

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Love Builds Up: The Body

By Central, Love Builds Up

Watch/listen again to this Sunday message from William Lyon in Stoney Stanton. You can find more messages and other videos at youtube.com/livingrockchurch. You can also follow our Sunday Messages podcast on your preferred podcast platform. For more information about Living Rock Church visit www.livingrock.church.

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This is Us! Pt. 5 – The Blueprint is Zion

By Central

The Old Testament shows us that “Zion” is synonymous with God’s glorious dwelling amongst His people, and in the New Testament we see that the fulfilment of this is found in “the city of the living God…the heavenly Jerusalem…the church” (Hebrews 12:22), described in more detail in Revelation 21-22. Jesus is building His church…and the blueprint is Zion! In this message we consider what this means for us in practice: what are the hallmarks of Zion? What did the Psalmists and the Prophets see? And how will these things be made known amongst us? This is Zion, and THIS IS US!  

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Love Builds Up: A Year of Growth

By Central, Love Builds Up

In the first half of Corinthians 3, Paul is exasperated about the lack of spiritual growth in the church. God wants His children and His Church to grow, for us to grow personally and corporately. Let’s take some time to consider when we’ve experienced spiritual growth, the evidence of growing spiritually, and how we can grow more than ever before this year!

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This is Us: 2024 – Reading Ephesians

By Central, This is Us!

Watch/listen again to this Sunday message from David Lyon in Central. You can find more messages and other videos at youtube.com/livingrockchurch. You can also follow our Sunday Messages podcast on your preferred podcast platform. For more information about Living Rock Church visit www.livingrock.church.

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Love Builds Up: His House PT.2

By Central, Love Builds Up

Part 2 of this 2 part message takes us back in to 1 Corinthians chapters 2 and 3 as we consider how the house of the Holy Spirit (that’s us!) is a Holy House and a Hospitable House. Will talks about some keys for us to build well and be a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit.

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Love Builds Up: Because of Him…

By Central, Love Builds Up

As we continue our journey into 1 Corinthians, we consider what the big deal was about Greeks and their wisdom, why this formed the basis for much of western culture today, and how it stands in complete contrast to the culture of God’s Kingdom. Fresh from intellectual debate with the Athenians (Ac 17), Paul came to Corinth (Ac 18) determined to show the Corinthians what God’s true wisdom was all about (1 Co 1:30).  

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Love Builds Up: Love Gives Out

By Central, Love Builds Up

Because we’re loved by God and because we love God, we love those around us. It’s love that is our motivation for giving. We demonstrate the love of God as we give. Samaritan’s purse are a fantastic organisation that give out the love of God in practical and life changing ways. In this message we hear from them about how we can partner with them to give out the love of God.

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Love Builds Up: Introduction

By Central, Love Builds Up

Launching our new focus for Autumn-Winter, we consider the background, context and purpose of Paul’s first epistle to the church in Corinth, before looking in a bit more detail at how the apostle begins his letter (1 Corinthians 1:1-9).  Here we see that he starts by reminding the church who they really are – “God’s church in Corinth” – men and women called-out of the culture of the city in order to live-out a radically different life and lifestyle.  They are God’s planting in that place – a charismatic Kingdom community, set in the midst of a culture that lives for itself.  With its many parallels to our 21st Century challenges and opportunities, we see that – like us – they really matter, and have all that they need as they stand-up for Jesus Christ and prepare the way for His return!  Paul’s great longing is to see this church grow strong and fulfil their destiny, and he has much to say that will help us do the same!…

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One Degree To Another

By Central

The best thing we can do to prepare ourselves to hear and receive what God wants to say to us is to live full of the Spirit. Here are 3 biblical principles and how I am applying them in my life to help us live lives in step with the Spirit of God.

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Introducing the Corinthians

By Central, Love Builds Up

In preparation for our new series, ‘Love Builds Up’, during which we’ll be exploring Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians together, we consider in this message the City of Corinth, the Church in Corinth, and (Paul’s) Correspondence with Corinth. Strategically located as a trading gateway between east and west, this city was a bustling metropolis, full of people from many different cultural backgrounds and ethnicities. Into this melting pot the church was established by Paul (Acts 18) and quickly grew in number and gift (1:7). But with growth came some significant challenges. As we look at the different sections in this letter, Paul deals with each issue in turn, identifying the underlying issue at work. He encourages them to embrace the ‘folly’ of the Cross instead of revering the ‘wisdom’ of this world (1:18), to see the church is a beautiful temple of the Holy Spirit and not a marketplace (3:16, 6:19), to embrace service instead self-interest (10:23-24), and to learn each time they gathered how to flow together as a body of many parts, not parties (11:18, 12:7). Paul was strengthening the Apostolic foundation which he had laid, encouraging the church to hold fast to the gospel they had received (15:1-2)! 

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Life Groups

By Central

Life Groups are integral and indispensable for our church family. Will talks about why we need Life Groups and what we expect when our Life Groups gather in this short message.

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Friends of Faith

By Central

We all need friends of faith. In this encouragement message, we focus on what the characteristics of friends of faith might be, how we can implement them in our church family and how we can be friends of faith to those who don’t yet know Jesus. We end with a checklist for consideration and challenge!

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The River Of Life

By Central

As we look at Ezekiel 47:1-12, we see how God has a ‘River of Life’ that comes from heaven to bring abundant blessing on earth. We can see this river being an image of: the life of Jesus poured out for us; and then at Pentecost a pouring out of the Holy Spirit; and then as a river of life in the Spirit that flows through believers from house-to-house. The pattern of God’s increasing purpose to fill the earth is seen in the different depths of the river, and shows us how we can be led by the Holy Spirit into greater depths of fellowship together and of reaching others with the power of the gospel. Finally, we see how being led by the Spirit and drawing upon our relationship with Him will cause us to be like the abundant trees who are fruitful every month and have leaves for healing.

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The Power of Partnership

By Central, Market Harborough

When God declared “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26) He was expressing not only His own ’three-in-one’ togetherness, but also His great purpose in creating men and women who would join together in unity and reproduce His image in all the earth! The story of the miraculous catch and the calling of the first disciples (Luke 5) is a powerful example of what can happen when we prepare for a new day, make ourselves wholly available, go deeper, join together, and help each other handle the great increase He wants to give us! This is the power and potential of churches working in partnership with one another…

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The Work of The Holy Spirit – Pt.2 ‘Revealing God’s Glory’

By Central, For Such a Time As This

In Part 1 we looked at the Holy’s Spirit’s work of Sanctification in our lives. In Part 2, we consider how the Holy Spirit uses the Word of God to show us who God has made us to be, and what aspects of our personalities are influenced by sin. We also look at what it means for us to be transformed from one degree of glory to another through a growing REVELATION of Jesus (2 Co 3:18), by REFLECTING His image, and REFRACTING His glory through our lives. The key to surrendering to the sanctifying work of the Spirit is VALIDATION and VULNERABILITY – drawing our value and worth from Him, and being willing to let the Holy Spirit strip away sin’s influence on our personalities. What remains is the true person, created and designed by God to individually refract His glorious light – a unique and precious Living Stone!

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