GIG246 This Is the Day
Growing In God with Gary Hargrave
Growing In God Podcast Web Description: The book of Zechariah records the specific day on which Zechariah’s prophecy was voiced. This emphasizes the significance of this prophecy and how much we should be expecting God to fulfill His Word in our day. We look eagerly for the fulfillment of these promises of God’s blessings on Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem. This is the day they come to pass. Show Notes: The prophecy of Zechariah is one of the greatest messianic prophecies that we have. And in Zechariah 1:7, we are given the exact day when that prophecy came. The significance...
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GIG245 I Stand at the Door and Knock
Growing In God with Gary Hargrave
Growing In God Podcast Web Description: The Lord begged the church in Laodicea to open the door to Him, so He could dine with them. This need to dine with God does not make sense to our Christian thinking. But it makes total sense in the Hebraic context of making a covenant over a meal. God is knocking on the door of the Church in this day. And regardless of how far removed we are from Him, if we open the door, He will make a covenant with us to bring us into everything He has promised. Show Notes: The Laodicean church was a lost church, having fallen away from God. Yet...
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GIG244 The Difficulties of Deliverance
Growing In God with Gary Hargrave
Web Description: At the Passover God delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt to bring them into the land He had promised their fathers. But their focus was on the difficulties that this deliverance meant to the life they had adapted to. Moving from our present age into God’s Kingdom can also feel like a disruption to the life we are comfortable with in this world. Our focus must be on His Kingdom and not on the difficulties of deliverance. Show Notes: Passover celebrates the deliverance of Israel from their slavery in Egypt. When they first heard that the Lord had come...
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GIG243 Christian Persecution
Growing In God with Gary Hargrave
Web Description: Christianity is suffering tribulation today even if we as individuals feel unaffected by it. We need to be one with our fellow Christians who are suffering and be praying for them. Let us not be fearful of what satan might do to us because Christ defeated him at the cross. Even if we must face death ourselves, we overcome satan by simply exercising Christ’s victory. Show Notes: The Lord said to the church in Smyrna, “I know your tribulation and your poverty.” Just as God knew then what the Christians in Smyrna were suffering, He is aware of what Christians...
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GIG242 Religion or Relationship?
Growing In God with Gary Hargrave
Web Description: The religion of their day prevented many from receiving Christ when He appeared in the flesh. Religion is no different in our day. Religion tends to establish orthodox interpretations about God rather than lead us into a relationship with God. However, the promise is that we will all know the Lord. And we need to honestly deal with that which prevents us from knowing Him, even if it is our own religious thinking. Show Notes: It is important to understand the degree to which our lack of awareness is based on our religious upbringing. Religious orthodoxy encourages...
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GIG241 Will You Be Aware?
Growing In God with Gary Hargrave
Web Description: The Scriptures warn us that just as we are unaware of a thief at night, we could be unaware of the Lord’s appearing. Perhaps the greatest problem we face is not the circumstances in the world but our own unawareness of God. It is imperative that we seek the Lord for a greater awareness and understanding of what He is saying and doing today. Show Notes: A characteristic of the end-time is the unawareness on people. We see this in the flood of anti-Semitism that is moving through the world today and even sweeping through many churches. What enables the anti-Semitism...
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GIG240 Purim—How God Works Deliverance
Growing In God with Gary Hargrave
Growing In God Podcast Web Description: In the story of Esther, the king was not personally involved in delivering the Jews from the destruction imposed by Haman. However, his signet ring in the hand of Mordecai gave Mordecai all the king’s authority and power to deliver the Jews as if he were the king himself. Likewise through the name of Yeshua (Jesus), we have been given the signet ring of God Himself. Let us accept who we are as His instruments and use His authority and power to bring Christ’s deliverance to the earth. Show Notes: In the story of Esther, King Ahasuerus gave...
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GIG239 You Are Born by the Will of God
Growing In God with Gary Hargrave
Web Description: Get out of your mind that you are here on the earth by happenstance, wondering, “Why am I here? What is my purpose?” Instead of spending a lifetime trying to answer those questions, simply know that you were brought to birth by the will of God to be on earth at this time. And God is working in you and through you to accomplish exactly what He wants to accomplish. Show Notes: There is so much confusion in this age that it can be overwhelming. This level of confusion can lead people to feel ineffective in their lives and even develop a sense of uselessness or...
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GIG238 Appropriate All His Provisions
Growing In God with Gary Hargrave
Web Description: The parable of the king who invited guests to his wedding feast is something we want to apply to our hearts today. God has made a great provision of salvation through the sacrifice of His Son on the cross. It is His free gift to us by His grace, but we still must show up before Him and appropriate all that He has made available. This means we need to get rid of any excuses and everything that we would value more than God’s great provision. Lord, help us to come before You with prepared hearts, worshipping You with thankfulness for all You have given us. Show...
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GIG237 God’s Word Is for Now
Growing In God with Gary Hargrave
Web Description: If God put us in this world by His will, then we accept that He has enabled us to do His will. That means whatever He makes real to us in His Word is not something only for the past or waiting for the future. His Word is something He wants us to walk in now. Therefore, we ask God’s help to end our double-mindedness by making our conscious and subconscious minds a united force to manifest His Word in the present. Show Notes: As Christians we believe that the Scriptures are the Word of God. But we need to change our conditioning that relegates everything in the...
info_outlineGrowing In God Podcast
Web Description: Is God a gentleman? Yes. When we invite Him out of the room, just like a gentleman He leaves. As we watch all the systems we trust in fall apart, we can despair and feel like there are no answers. Well, God has all the answers but we have excluded Him. We need to invite Him back in. We need to end our dependence on what we have created and put all our trust in our Creator.
Show Notes: Elijah learned an important lesson when he fled for his life to Mount Horeb. There he saw a strong wind, but God was not in the wind. Then he saw a powerful earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake. Then he saw a great fire, but God was not in the fire. In the world today we are seeing great destruction from hurricanes, earthquakes, and fires. And of course we often interpret those events as God’s judgments. But what if God is not in any of those things? Maybe we should stop blaming God for them and acknowledge that they are the result of how we as humans have lived.
In this country, as in many countries, we have taken the Lord out of our lives. We have removed Him from every aspect of our society. We have spent years putting our faith and trust in everything but the Lord. We build systems and pour money into programs to meet our needs, and before we know it, we are dependent on those things instead of on God. When those systems fail we are utterly devastated, as we saw in recent fires in California. And that was only one of many catastrophes in the world.
Our concept of the end-time is that God is directly engaged in judging people. A better understanding might be that we suffer the consequences of a lifestyle that excludes God. All the man-made systems we have put our trust in will continue to come tumbling down until we return to trusting, honoring, and glorifying God. Let us return to Him with all our hearts. Let us believe the promise that if we humble ourselves and ask the Lord’s forgiveness, He will hear from heaven and heal our land.
Key Verses:
• Proverbs 3:5–6. “Trust in the LORD … do not lean on your own understanding.”
• 2 Chronicles 7:13–14. “If … My people … humble themselves … I will hear from heaven.”
• James 4:13–15. “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.”
• 1 Corinthians 4:7. “What do you have that you did not receive?”
• John 6:53. “You have no life in yourselves.”
• 1 Kings 19:9–10. “I alone am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.”
• 1 Kings 19:11–18. “The LORD was not in the wind … not in the earthquake … not in the fire.”
• Isaiah 31:1. “Woe to those who … trust in chariots … but they do not … seek the LORD.”
Quotes:
• “Idolatry is just trusting in anything except God. And I think we do that all the time every day.”
• “We all need to humble ourselves and come before Him and say, ‘We repent of our wicked ways.’ You say, ‘Well, what's my wicked way?’ That we don't trust in Him, that we're not giving our lives to Him, that we're not honoring Him for all that He is.”
• “Whatever we've built, it's only because He's given us the ability to build. Whatever we've done, it's only because of His enabling, His wisdom, His blessing of intelligence.”
Takeaways:
1. We have grown increasingly dependent on systems that we have built ourselves. Consequently our security comes from things other than the Lord. We have worked the Lord out of our lives, out of our national institutions, out of our marketplace, out of our schools, and out of every aspect of our society.
2. When it comes to the devastating events such hurricanes, earthquakes, and fires around the world, people declare, “God is doing this. God is doing that.” The truth is that God might not be in any of those things and we are simply experiencing the results of our own lifestyle without God.
3. Like the tower of Babel, many systems among the nations will come tumbling down until humanity itself turns back to the Lord and says, “You Lord are our only God. You are the Creator of the universe and we glorify You. We honor You. We start trusting in You only, and we humbly repent where we have gone astray.