WIC Weekly April 16th 2023
Warsaw International Church
Mobile +48 601 331 032
Worship every Sunday at ul. Miodowa 21 (near Old Town) at 11:00 AM
Entrance from Schillera Street
Email: pastor@wic.org.pl
Website: http://www.wic.org.pl
WIC WEEKLY 16th APRIL 2023 FROM PASTOR HARRY
Spiritual Nourishment
Resurrection Power For You Today by Wesley L. Duewel
There is an experience of victory available to every Christian whereby he or she can praise God, saying with Paul, "But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ" (2 Cor. 2:14). There is a personal experience available for you so that you can say with Paul, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). There is an experience through which you can be holy in all you do (1 Peter 1:15). There is an experience whereby, having purified yourself by obeying the truth, you have sincere love for your brothers and love each other deeply, from the heart (1 Peter 1:22). There is an experience in which you can be clothed with power from on high (Luke 24:49), be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18), live in the Spirit, and continually manifest the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23).
It is the strategy of Satan to make you believe that the victorious, Spirit-filled, holy life that always overcomes was for God’s special saints of a previous age or generation. Perhaps he tells you it is only for a few spiritually gifted people but not for you. You know your weaknesses too well; you know your past failures too well. You are very conscious of defeats, and you are not really expecting a different spiritual experience in the near future.
Praise God, there is in Scripture the promise and picture of a life of spiritual victory and power. It is described in various biblical terms. It is the life of victory, the crucified life, the Spirit-filled life, the sanctified life, the holy life, the empowered life, the overcoming life. It is described as a life of spiritual freedom, spiritual rest, and perfect love. It is an experience of spiritual circumcision, of death to the carnal self, of resurrection power, of being baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire, of cleansing by the precious blood of Christ.
Great men of God have used various nonbiblical terms to describe this wonderful experience. It has been called the deeper life, the higher life, the victorious life, the life of absolute surrender, the quiet life, the life of Christian perfection, the life on the higher plane, the radiant life, the life of power. It matters little what you call it; what really matters is that you know it as a personal, present experience of your own....
The main proof of a Spirit-filled life is the presence of the Holy Spirit Himself in all His fullness within the heart of the believer, giving His constant rest, victory, love, and power. It is an invisible but wonderfully knowable experience in the believer’s inner nature that is soon manifest in his or her outer life.
The Spirit-filled person will have streams of living water flowing from within and blessing all around (John 7:38-39). The Spirit-filled person will have the love of God poured out in his heart by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5), and this love will manifest itself in the beautiful graces and the absence of carnal manifestations as shown in 1 Corinthians 13.
The proof of a life of victory is victory—constant victory through Christ. The proof of sanctification is sanctified living. The proof of being baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire is the constant empowering for daily living—not for spectacular miracles or occasional signs and wonders—but the power to live victoriously over defeats, to live humbly, lovingly, and radiantly in every situation in life.
Is this the experience you hunger for? Is not this the experience clearly portrayed in Scripture from many different angles? The Holy Spirit teaches us that no one Bible term or illustration is adequate to describe this glorious experience. By divine inspiration a full range of descriptive terms has been given to us. You will never rightly understand or explain this precious and most wonderfully real experience of God’s grace unless you take into account all that the Bible says, the entire Scripture.
Just as the new birth is described in many ways and by many terms in Scripture, so is the life of victory and holiness. Just as no human language is adequate to describe the wonders and joy of the forgiveness of sins, so no human language is adequate to describe the wonders and glory of the fullness of the Spirit—the sanctification the disciples still needed and for which Christ prayed in John 17. The promise is for you as much as for them (Acts 2:39). You can experience as complete a cleansing of heart and as radiant and powerful a daily spiritual living as they did. God is no respecter of persons or times. This is still the dispensation of the Holy Spirit.
The great need of the church today is for men and women, pastors and laymen, the youth and the aged, to be filled with the Spirit, to be clothed from on high with the power of the Holy Spirit, to live the life of daily, constant sanctified love, heart rest, and spiritual victory. The church can be set ablaze for God only when its members once more experience the reality of that for which Christ died and the Spirit was sent. "And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood" (Heb. 13:12).
When Jesus prayed, "Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth," He prayed for you (John 17:17,20). "I am going to send you what my Father has promised" (Luke 24:49). "The promise is for you…and…for all whom the Lord our God will call" (Acts 2:39). "If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Luke 13:11).
The promise, said Peter, is for you. This experience is for you. Resurrection power and life are for you. The fullness of the Spirit is for you. The victorious life is for you. All of God’s provision and power are available for you. The Holy Spirit is here today for you. He is waiting to do within your heart and life all that you long for and all that you need.
First, you must know that your sins are all forgiven and that you are a child of God. Then you must make a total surrender of yourself to God as a living sacrifice, giving up your own will and accepting His will for all your days and all your ways, and you must trust Him with a childlike trust to fulfil His promise (see Acts 26:18).
The Scripture’s description of this experience are not unattainable ideals. They are not there to make you hungry and leave you unsatisfied. God’s Word means what it says. This promise, this experience is for you. "Lord, may I experience all Your grace has provided for me!"
For You Today
You should be as triumphant over sin as Christ was over death. The Bible repeatedly associates Christ’s death and resurrection with what should be the normal Christian victory over spiritual death and the normal spiritual triumph in abundance of life. The Christian is to be a person crucified with Christ and raised with Christ in a new life of spiritual power and victory.
Paul realized that there was great danger that many Christians would not experience this fullness of resurrection power and would fail to realize the standard of Christian life to which God calls each of us. Therefore, he ceaselessly prayed for the Christians that the eyes of their heart would be enlightened so they would "know…his incomparably great power for [those] who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms" (Eph. 1:18-20; see also Eph. 2:6; Col. 3:1-10).
Do you understand Christ’s resurrection power as primarily a theory of what happened for you two thousand years ago? Is it only nominal in your life today? Or is it primarily a glorious reality in your everyday life? Are you only glorifying and praising God for what His resurrection power did for you at the resurrection of Christ, or are you daily rejoicing in the "incomparable" greatness of present resurrection power that gives you present triumph over the world, the flesh, and the Devil? Are you triumphing in a present-tense resurrection experience?
Satan’s great desire is to get Christians to put off to some future date the experience and life God wants us to enjoy today. Satan wants to make us content to be weak and powerless when God’s standard is for the power of the Holy Spirit to remain in us now. Satan wants us to excuse ourselves as being "weak human beings" when God wants us here and now to be children of God, purifying ourselves even as God Himself is pure (1 John 3:2-10). Satan wants us to be carnal Christians walking in the flesh instead of victorious believers walking in the Spirit (Gal. 5:16), carnally minded instead of spiritually minded, controlled by the flesh instead of controlled by the Spirit (Rom. 8:6-8).
God wants us to realize that He sent His Son to condemn all sinful defeats so that God’s righteousness will not merely be our theoretical goal but that it will be fulfilled in us as we walk in the Spirit (Rom. 8:3-5). It is the Spirit’s role to fulfil in us what Christ provided for us.
Paul testified that this resurrection power worked mightily in his own life (Eph. 3:20; Col. 1:29) and that he wanted his converts also to have their faith grounded in this mighty power of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 2:4-5). Quoting Isaiah 64:4, he pointed out a few verses later, "‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him,’ but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit" (vv. 9-10).
Satan tries to mislead people to think that this is a description of heaven. Paul says it is a description of what God wants to do for us here. But he adds that the natural man does not understand this (v. 14), and this was why the Corinthian Christians were failing—they were living carnal lives on the natural human plane (3:1-4).
Resurrection power is overcoming power available to every Christian every day of his life. Triumph should be the normal everyday experience of every Christian. Fellow believer, your eye has never seen and it has never begun to enter your mind what a wonderfully triumphant experience of God’s grace and power He wants you to enjoy daily.
Resurrection power for the Christian is not primarily spectacular power to do, it is God’s amazing power to enable you to be. God wants your life to be a demonstration of the very same power of the Holy Spirit that raised Christ from the dead. He doesn’t want your life to manifest spiritual defeat and to carry about the smell of death; He wants your life to manifest abundance of life, victory, and glory—to manifest the sweet fragrance and aroma of Christ wherever you go (2 Cor. 2:14-15). He wants your daily life to be a living demonstration of the world’s greatest miracle—resurrection power.
Lord, help me live in resurrection power today!
Our News
On Easter Sunday we were pleased to welcome many guests to the church service. They included two ladies from Canada; Anne from Vietnam; Hana from Ethiopia; Gabriel and Diana – a US and Romanian couple; Kingsley and Julie – a US and Ukrainian couple; Amana from India; Ted from China; Freddy from Lebanon; and Joseph from the USA.
Our Easter service was followed by a potluck dinner, in which most of the worshippers took part. There was plenty of food from different countries and, of course, an opportunity to get to know others better. Many thanks to those who were responsible for the organizing and laying out of tables and food, and to all who provided something to eat or drink!
PLEASE NOTE that our 11 am service this Sunday 16 April will exceptionally be held at a different location: the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) at ul. Rakowiecka 61 – ENTRANCE on ul. Boboli, 50 metres from the corner of Rakowiecka Street. It can be reached by catching tram 17 from Pole Mokotowskie metro station and getting off at the second stop. Then all you have to do is cross the road and continue along ul. Boboli for a few metres, and you will come to the place. In two weeks’ time we are back at our usual location.
We look forward to baptizing four worshippers by total immersion this Friday 14 April at 7:30 pm at the International Christian Fellowship at ul. Puławska 326. They are Sister Temwani from Zambia, Sister Loini from Namibia, Sister Oleksandra from Ukraine/Lebanon, and Brother Sean from Zimbabwe. There will be no prayer meeting on that day.
Christian Films
Watch wonderful free Christian films of hope and encouragement! They include films about the life of Jesus, testimonies of Christians who have suffered persecution, and excellent cartoon films for both children and adults on Christian spiritual reformers and missionaries. The link is: https://www.vm1.tv/
Prayer Requests
Please pray for people generally to have a deeper relationship with the Lord, grounded in Scripture. There is a movement among believers away from reading the Bible, many of whom are finding it increasingly laborious to read anything. Such people often have a superficial faith based on certain ideals rather than on what God’s word says. It is the same in worship, where modern songs are often preferred to older hymns that nevertheless have both more interesting melodies and a deeper, more reflective religious content. Consequently the great hymns of the past are slowly being forgotten – and are also, of course, increasingly hard to understand, given that many people hardly read. Is Satan trying to weaken the church in this way? Pray for a return to tried and trusted fundamentals.
We are also witnessing the rise of godlessness and false religions, despite warning signs that God will not hesitate to send catastrophes upon the world. The Israelites were constantly turning from God and being punished as a result, sometimes with terrible slaughter and suffering. Why should it be different with us? Please stand in the gap and pray for your nation, family, friends and church. Pray that the Lord may continue to save and protect His people from the surrounding darkness.
We continue to remember and pray for those oppressed by invading forces and cruel regimes. Here in Poland, our constant focus is on our next-door neighbour Ukraine. May the invaders’ aggression crumble as it sinks into the Russian people that their leader is the greatest possible disaster for Russia itself, not to mention Ukraine and the whole world. Every single strategy of his has failed, and this alone should encourage us to thank God for denying him any success, and to pray that he and his regime may soon collapse. At the same time, please pray for the people of Ukraine and Belarus to continue to be strong and to place their faith in the Lord even more. It is good to know that so many churches in Ukraine are now gaining multitudes of new worshippers as the general population turns to the Lord.
Last Sunday’s sermon was preached by Pastor Harry the resurrection of Jesus, and why we should read about it (Luke 23:50 – 24:12)
Readings and Hymns for the 16 April service
Verse for the week: “Their eyes were kept from recognizing Him” (Luke 24:16).
Theme: How Jesus reveals Himself to us
Psalm: 33:10-22
Reading: Luke 24:13-31
Offering verse: 1 John 3:18: “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth”.
Hymns:
(At the start) Jesus Is My Lord
[:Jesus is my Lord, my Master and Saviour:] x 3
Now and forever more, hallelujah,
Now and forever more.
[chorus] Praise You, Jesus, Son of God,
And the blood of the Lamb.
King of kings and Lord of lords,
God of Abraham, hallelujah,
God of Abraham.
[:Jesus is the one who delivers me every day:] x 3
From all my sin and shame, hallelujah,
From all my sin and shame.
Come Bless The Lord
Come bless the Lord, all ye servants of the Lord,
Who stand by night in the house of the Lord;
Lift up your hands in the holy place,
Come bless the Lord, come bless the Lord!
I Just Want To Praise You
I just want to praise You;
Lift my hands and say “I love You”;
You are everything to me,
And I exalt Your holy name on high.
I just want to praise You;
Lift my hands and say “I love You”;
You are everything to me,
And I exalt Your holy name;
I exalt Your holy name,
I exalt Your holy name on high.
Hide Me Now
Hide me now under Your wings,
Cover me within Your mighty hand.
[chorus] [:When the oceans rise and thunder roars,
I will soar with You above the storm.
Father, You are King over the flood;
I will be still and know You are God:]
Rest, my soul, in Christ alone,
Know His power in quietness and trust.
(After sermon) I Heard The Voice
I heard the voice of Jesus say,
“Come unto Me and rest;
Lay down, you weary one, lay down
Your head upon My breast”;
I came to Jesus as I was,
Weary, and worn, and sad;
I found in Him a resting place,
And He has made me glad.
I heard the voice of Jesus say,
“Behold, I freely give
The living water; thirsty one,
Stoop down and drink, and live”;
I came to Jesus, and I drank
Of that life-giving stream;
My thirst was quenched, my soul revived,
And now I live in Him.
I heard the voice of Jesus say,
“I am this dark world’s light;
Look unto Me, your morn shall rise,
And all your day be bright”;
I looked to Jesus and I found
In Him my star, my sun;
And in that light of life I’ll walk
Till travelling days are done.
(At end) Come Every Soul By Sin Oppressed
Come every soul by sin oppressed,
There’s mercy with the Lord;
And He will surely give you rest,
By trusting in His Word.
[chorus] Only trust Him, trust Him alone,
Only trust Him now.
And He will save you, save you He will,
And He will save you now.
For Jesus shed His precious blood,
Blessings to bestow;
So plunge now into the crimson flood
That washes bright as snow.
Yes, Jesus is the truth and the way
That leads you into rest;
Believe in Him without delay,
And you’ll be fully blessed.
Come then and join this holy band,
And onto glory go,
To dwell in that celestial land
Where joys immortal flow.
Services and Contributions
WIC is entirely self-supporting. Should you wish to make a contribution to WIC, our church's bank details are as follows:
Warsaw International Church
Santander Bank Polska S.A.
IV/Oddział w Warszawie
ul. Jana Pawła II 17
00-854 Warszawa
Polish złoty (PLN) account: PL 63 1090 1056 0000 0000 0600 9128
SWIFT CODE: WBKPPLPP
Contributions can now also be sent by PayPal. Just open the PayPal application and search for “Warsaw International Church”. You can also use this link for your PayPal payment: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=558F2VK2AJYPC
Our services are also livestreamed on YouTube (11 am CET). The link is: Warsaw International Church - Sunday Service
Recordings of our Sunday services are available on our wic.org.pl website or by googling "Warsaw International Church YouTube".