No Limits with Pastor Delman Dr. Delman Coates

Every child of God needs to know and needs to hear that they are forgiven, for when you come into fellowship and communion with Jesus, and begin cultivating and nurturing your relationship with Him, the Lord’s forgiveness means that no matter what you have done, no matter how horrible your past, and regardless of your moral transcript and profile, the good news today is that “you are forgiven.” You are officially pardoned from your past, and the devil and no one else can hold you hostage to what you’ve done. From today’s text, we’re going to see Mary Magdalene show us what it looks like to walk in that assurance.

Light is the first entity that God created. This suggests that the darkness we are in should not cause us to feel resigned to futility; it should not cause us to throw up our hands in surrender. For when things are at their darkest, God is just starting to move. When things are at their worst, God is just beginning to turn things around. We can trust that there is something on the other side of darkness, and what’s on the other side is going to be better, brighter, and bigger than what existed before. 

When Jesus called His followers “salt,” He actually bestowed upon us a badge of honor. He was giving them then and us now a sense of our identity, purpose, and function in the Kingdom. He was saying that when people ask who you are as a believer, you should be able to tell them, “I’m salty.” Being salty is not something bad, it’s something good. When we’re salty, we’re living the way Jesus commanded us to in His Word. But how do you know if you’re living a salty life? Well, that’s what we’re going to look at in this message. 

Jesus Christ orchestrated the greatest comeback in the history of the world. And there is no event in history more memorable and none more life-changing. And as we read the story of His comeback, we can learn so much about what it will take for Him to help us with the comeback we’ve been waiting for in our own lives. So in light of that, we are going to look at three things that need to happen if we want to experience a God-sized comeback. 

Simeon was a man who received a promise from God that he would not see death without seeing the birth of the Lord’s Messiah. And it was that promise that moved him to get his life in order. That promise led him to get in the right position, to get to a place of peace, and to develop and maintain the right spiritual and moral posture to see Jesus. Take note of those three things I just mentioned: He had a promise, he gets in position, and he maintains the right posture. He hears God’s voice, he puts himself in an environment where there is peace and not confusion, and he is active in developing himself spiritually and in being a man of integrity. And by getting his life aligned with God, he’s able to see what God wants him to see. The same can happen for you too. If you open your heart and mind to hear God’s voice, if you position yourself in places and with people that produce peace, and if you order your steps to get in line with what God says, then you can see what God wants you to see, go where God wants you to go, be what God wants you to be, and do what God wants you to do. 

I am fully confident that God wants each of us to experience the joy that comes from having our hopes realized. God wants us to experience the fulfillment that comes from having our dreams actualized. God wants us to experience the satisfaction of having our ambitions fulfilled and our aspirations achieved, and to express that joy by breaking out in spontaneous praise to God for all He has done. Simeon has that exact experience in today’s key text because his soul’s desire was to see Israel’s Messiah for himself, and it finally happened. He did not know when the Messiah was coming. He did not know how He would appear, and quite frankly he didn’t know exactly where, but his heart’s desire was to see the Messiah for himself. Every step he takes in this text epitomizes what he did and what we all should do if we want to have our dreams fulfilled and our hopes come to pass.