Living Waters of Grace for May 29th, 2026

This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark

Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,

County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he

continues teaching through God's Word.

I'm here again at this place of brokenness and repentance.

Revive me again, Lord, give me hope, give me victory, give me

strength. Keep me from doing the things

that I did last week that were unpleasing in your sight, making

my life a drag for people that have been around me.

You know, the Christian life is a life of being positive,

excited, joyful, overcoming, and that comes by the word of God

and confession of our sins to God and to one another.

The church is designed to be a hospital for sinners because

while the life of a Christian is supposed to be positive and

joyful, we can also admit that it's a life of complete

brokenness. We fully depend on God's grace

and forgiveness to be able to live a life of hope, victory,

and strength. Today, Pastor Clark teaches us

that the life of joy we live as believers only comes through

confession and forgiveness of one another, forgiveness that's

brought through grace and understanding of God's love.

Now here's Pastor Clark in Revelation Chapter 21 with

Revelation 21 · chapter mention

today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.

I trust the Holy Spirit is the one that's ministering to you

today through my life and that you're listening to the word of

God through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives and dwells

in you. But how often do we forget that

the Holy Spirit lives in us? We get up on Monday morning all

ready to go and we're thinking, oh man, I got to do this and do

that. And all this stuff's in front of

us and we're wondering how we're going to do it and how we're

going to make it. And somehow we get our weary

bodies up and chug a couple gallons of coffee down our

throat and we get in our car and we're starting to go and, and

man, you know, it's just not really working that well.

We don't feel real motivated and real excited and we're not

anticipating God doing anything because we think God's up there

somewhere. And the mystery is God is on his

throne. And it's the same time he's in

us. In him dwells the fullness of

the Godhead bodily. I love an ancient prayer.

It says, O heavenly King, O Comforter, the Spirit of truth

are in all places, and fill us all things.

Treasury of good things and giver of life, come and dwell in

US and cleanse us from every stain and save our souls.

O gracious Lord, you know the Holy Spirit resides in the body

of Christ. He doesn't depart like he did in

the Old Testament when David cried out to the Father.

Please do not take your Holy Spirit from me.

If you're in Christ and you belong to Christ, the Holy

Spirit is in you until the day you're taken to be with Him in

glory. But let's be honest this

morning, do you ever forget that the Holy Spirit lives in you?

Raise your hands. It's about every one of us.

Now, if we go out to our car after church and we see the gas

gauge on empty, we realize we have to go get fuel, right?

We're not going to drive around and think that gas gauge is

lying. It's not real.

I have faith I'm going to keep driving because eventually the

car is going to sputter and it's not going to have the capacity

to go forward anymore. That's the way it is with us as

Christians. But the good news is God, the

Spirit doesn't diminish in US ever.

He's the fullness of the Father dwelled and manifests in us.

But we leak and the way we leak is sin, pride, self will,

independence. And so all of a sudden we have

this sense that we don't have any empowerment in our life.

And that's when we have to repent and we just say, Lord,

I've gotten off track somehow and I want to come back and get

things right. And the way we get things right

is humbling ourselves again and again and again and again and

repenting again and again and again and again, and be restored

to the Lord so he can restore to us the joy of our salvation.

And as we humble ourselves, as we yield, as we repent, the

Spirit of God begins to well up within us and begin to take

control and begin to cause our senses to be under his

leadership. And our mind begins to be

renewed. And our heart has a joy and a

strength and a stability in and all of a sudden we realize, like

Paul, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens

us. Amen.

That's the good news. Now we have to realize that the

Christian life has not been designed to live without the

Spirit of God. It's foolishness.

But we're told in the Scriptures that we quench the Spirit of

God, we grieve the Spirit of God.

And when we quench the Spirit of God, it's basically saying, I

don't need your help. I can do this myself, which is

pride and will fall. We can grieve the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit's saying, don't do that, I don't want you to act

that way. I don't want you to do this or

think that. And we're blowing them off and

we're just going to do what we want to do.

And it breaks his heart. We grieve him.

And so all of a sudden, the sense of his presence is not

alive. We don't sense his nearness.

We don't sense his leading, his guidance, his blessing, and how

foolish that is to, to live in a way that the Holy Spirit is not

dominating our lives. And the purpose of the church,

you know, isn't like Sunday, OK, got to go to church.

You know, it's the right thing to do.

And I, I show up, I come to church and I hope you come to

church to be corrected and redirected all the time.

My mind is brought back to the main focus of where it needs to

be, and I get filled up with the presence of God, the Spirit of

God. I have a stability in my life if

I'm faithful in my study of God's Word and doing what God

says to me to do in His Word when I want to be with

believers, when I want to pray with Christians, when I want to

be in the Word, when I want to gather.

That's why Paul said don't forsake the assembling of

yourselves. And so many think they can take

church or leave it. I know what happened to my life

when I started blowing church off.

I mean, it messed my life up. It messed my marriage up.

It messed my kids up. I mean, you got to be

disciplined. You got to be focused.

You got to be committed to the things that the Lord says he

wants you to be committed to. He says these things to keep us

protected. He says if you forsake the

assembling of yourselves as a man, or some do, he says a root

of bitterness will spring up among you and you'll start to

get hard in your heart and you'll begin to start judging

people and you'll think everybody's hypocrites.

Why would I want to go to that church?

They're a bunch of hypocrites. Well, we come to church because

we know we're hypocrites, right? We repent of our hypocrisy.

We ask God to change us and to break us and to cleanse us and

to fill us so that we become more like Christ.

We don't come to church because we're perfect, do we?

The church is designed to be a hospital for sinners, not a

museum for the Saints. The early church understood that

the church was a place of restoration to heal broken lives

that have been destroyed through sin and have been ruined through

sin. That's why we have an altar call

here every week. It's not a tradition.

It's a place we're coming down lame spiritually.

We're coming down hobbling to the front.

Maybe we don't look like that physically, but inwardly we are.

We're saying, Lord, I'm here again at this place of love,

brokenness and repentance. Revive me again, Lord, give me

hope, give me victory, give me strength, keep me from doing the

things that I did last week that were unpleasing in your sight,

making my life a drag for people that have been around me.

You know, the Christian life is a life of being positive,

excited, joyful, overcoming, and that comes by the Word of God

and confession of our sins to God and to one another.

But even though the Spirit of God dwells within us, which we

all know, we don't grasp this like we will one day when we see

the Holy Trinity before our very eyes in the throne room of

heaven. Everything today that I'm

speaking about to you and you're listening.

You have to receive it by faith. I can't prove anything to you

other than my own life hopefully being somewhat of an example and

yours to me. I can look in your lies and see

Christ alive. And the Bible says we're living

epistles known and read of men. It isn't hard to to know when

you meet a Christian, is it? And you just know by the way

they act, the way they talk, the smile on their face, their

gratitude, their gratefulness, their thankfulness, their

humility, it just dawns on you that this person is a believer.

And you know what it's like when you're with someone who doesn't

have the Spirit of God in them. Matter of fact, Paul says their

spirit bears witness with our spirit that we're the sons and

the daughters of God. You know, when someone comes to

the church here the first time, I've never seen them before.

I feel immediate connection when I know that the Spirit of God's

in him. It's like I've known in my whole

life, they're my brothers, They're my sisters.

And I might not know where they live or what their names are yet

or what their interests are or what their likes or dislikes

are. But there's this fellowship in

this community of oneness that occurs by the Spirit of God that

tells us his Spirit bears witness with our Spirit that we

belong to Him. There's no division and the body

of Christ from God's perspective.

There's no caste system. It's all the oneness and the

fullness of God in Christ. Now Hebrews tells us, though,

that faith is a substance of things hoped for.

So today we're learning about what we're hoping for, what God

has promised to us. But it also tells us that faith

is the evidence of things not seen.

And as the apostle Paul said, I know whom I've believed in, and

I'm persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've committed

unto him against that day. Isn't that awesome?

The faith of that man in his example to us, where we too can

say, I know whom I've believed in, and I'm persuaded that he is

able to keep that which I've committed unto him against that

day. 2nd Corinthians 57 says we walk by faith, not sight.

If you turn over to 1st John chapter 2, first John chapter 2

John 2 · chapter mention 1 John 2:28

verse 28 and now little children abide in him, that when he

appears we may have confidence and not be ashamed before him.

It is coming. What a warning.

If you're in a situation right now you shouldn't be in and

you're living in a way you know you shouldn't, don't do it

anymore. He doesn't want you to be taken

by surprise. He wants you to have confidence

and not be ashamed when he comes.

If you know that he is righteous, you know that

everyone who practices righteousness is born of him.

And I love that illustration. Practicing righteousness.

If you're an athlete here today, in order to be a good athlete,

you have to practice. You just can't say I want to be

a good basketball player and, and go to the coach and say,

well, just call me. Tell me what time the game is

and I'll be here and I'll show up and I'll play.

You'll get out there. You'll be a fool.

You won't know the plays you'll mess up.

You'll your shots will you won't go in the net.

You'll everything will be wrong. You got to practice to get good

or proficient, hard practice, discipline, sacrifice, and

that's what it is in the Christian life.

Righteousness is sacrifice. Practicing righteousness is

forcing yourself to do the things that God says you're to

do, whether you want to do them or not, because they're good for

you. When he says pray without

ceasing, I don't really feel like praying.

Pray anyway because God's going to give you strength and bless

you because you're doing what He tells you to do.

Love your enemies. Pray for those who despite for

Lord, I don't want to love my enemies.

Do it anyway. Use your will to do what God

says even though you don't feel like it.

As you begin to pray for your enemies, you'll begin to love

your enemies. You know, perfect love casts out

fear. We were talking about that a

little bit last night. When God's love is manifested in

us the way He designed it to be, there's nothing we fear.

There's nothing we worry about. There's nothing that we should

be struggling with because we know God is greater than

anything we have to face. And then He tells us in first

1 John 3 · chapter mention

John chapter 3 verse one, behold what manner of love the Father

has bestowed on us that we should be called the children of

God. What a privilege.

Therefore, the world does not know us, because it did not know

Him. Beloved, now we are the children

of God. It has not yet been revealed

what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we

shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

One day we will see Him as He is, and it says in verse 3.

And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as

he is pure. It's like, man, guys, whenever

you were going to take your future bride out in your first

date, you didn't know you were going to marry that person at

the time. But boy, think about how

everything was perfect, right? The car was clean, the gas tank

was full. Unless you had ulterior motives,

right? You wanted to run out of gas and

then you had an excuse. So I guess we just got to talk

for a little while, right as you can move over to put get the

guts to put your arm around them.

But you know, our clothes were clean.

We made sure we had breath mints.

I mean, we had everything covered.

We made sure we had money in our wallet to go to the restaurant

or the movie. I mean, everything was thought

out before we had that date. Well, how much more we're the

bride of Christ, our our king is coming the opportunity we have

right now to purify ourself as he is pure take out of your

house what's in the house that shouldn't be there.

Go through the magazine rack and see if Jesus came today and he

saw these magazines, he would ask me what in the world of

these here? What's the get rid of them, the

books, the videos, anything in the house that isn't pleasing to

the Lord and more importantly, what's in your spiritual house,

whatever's in your heart, any sin, anything that's unclean,

allow the Lord to purify, but he's the one that purifies you.

You just submit to him and say, Lord, this has to go.

I want it to go. And each one of us should be

from week to week in this fellowship getting more holy and

more holy and more holy, right? More pure, more pure, more pure

by His grace, by the grace of God.

For now we see in a mirror. It says in First Corinthians 13

1 Corinthians 13:12

verse 12, dimly, but one day we will see face to face.

I love the song. It is well with my soul.

O Lord, haste today when my face shall be sight.

The clouds be rolled back as a scroll.

The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend.

Even so, it is well with my soul as we begin to conclude in this

wonderful glorious chapter of Revelation.

We see in verse 6 where Jesus has the one who claims this

about himself. He says also in Revelation 18

the same thing He said to me. It is done.

I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.

I will give of the fountains of the water of life freely to him

who thirsts. It says in verse 7, He who

overcome shall inherit all things, and I will be his God

and he shall be my Son. We studied about victory several

weeks ago. We're not going to lose as we

trust in Christ, because we overcome sin.

We overcome failings through the blood of the Lamb, as the

martyrs overcame, it says in Revelation.

They overcame by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our

testimony. When we stand before the Lord on

that glorious day, we stand not in our righteousness.

We stand because of his blood. Amen.

We stand because he has made us righteous.

Our righteous standing is because of Jesus Christ and him

alone. And what's the word of our

testimony? We won't be saying, well Lord, I

did this and I did that and I helped this and I did.

We won't need to say anything because all glory be to the

Lord, whatever privilege we had in this short life to live for

His purposes, our all because of his grace.

The unbeliever though will be the one that will be standing

there saying why I did this, I did that, I did this, and the

Bible says our righteousness, our good works are like filthy

rags. It tells us not by works of

righteousness, which we have done in Titus, but according to

his mercy, He has saved us. In verse 8, again, the reminder

of what happened in verse chapter 20, the eternal state of

the unbelieving reminding us this has already happened.

Of course, in the 20th chapter when it says in verse 15,

whoever was not found written in the book of life was cast in the

lake of fire. But these things are written

because we're still here and some of us have an opportunity

to still get saved. It says that cowardly, if you're

here today, unbelieving, abominable murders, sexually

immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, liars shall have their part in

the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the

second death. You all have an opportunity this

week wherever you go to bring to people in all walks of life the

ministry of reconciliation. And that's really the job of the

church in these last days is to call people to repentance.

The church is not a social organization.

It's a spiritual Organism designed by God to edify and

build us up in the strength and faith of the person of Jesus

Christ. And it's also instituted by

Christ to be the foundation and descending agency to send

believers like us out into the world to beg people to come to

Christ. And you might say, well,

begging, isn't that a little bit drastic?

If we could see the lake of fire before us today and see our

loved ones or our friends standing on the edge of it, we

would do everything in our power to pull them away from that.

Just like the firefighter when he hears the alarm and he goes

into the house and the burning building and the mother's

outside screaming, saying, my son's still in the house, My

son's still in the house. A firefighter doesn't have to

think, well, yeah, maybe I might risk my life or whatever he goes

in risking his life to find that child wherever he's hid and pull

him out to safety, risking his own life.

And that's what we should be like, risking our pride.

What if they think we're nuts? What if they think we're stupid?

What if they think we're overreacting?

Guys, we're not overreacting, are we?

Hell is real. It's forever.

And I got an e-mail from Gary and Kathy this morning.

We've been praying for them, their intercessors at Calvary

Chapel Chino Hills for our church.

We'll be moving out here soon. Her dad has been ill.

You've been reading about it, praying for her.

Not real sure of his salvation. They shared with him, prayed for

him and he passed away last night and they're broken hearted

that they just don't know. They don't have that assurance

that his soul was OK. My prayer is that somehow in the

times that they talked to him that they were used by the Lord

where Ray just said I believe and only eternity in heaven and

Christ will reveal that one day. But this is what Paul says in

conclusion as we begin to make our way to the altar and pray,

if you want to pray this morning, Second Corinthians

2 Corinthians 5:17

chapter 5 verse 17 says if anyone is in Christ, he's a new

creation. Old things are passed away.

Behold, all things have become new.

If you've been born again here today, you know this is true.

It's the greatest thing that could ever happen in a human

being's life. But now Paul begins to speak

about those who are still on the edge.

All things are of God who has reconciled us to himself through

Jesus Christ. He's given to us a ministry of

reconciliation. That's the good news of the

gospel, that Christ died for our sins according to the

Scriptures. That he was buried the third day

He rose again from the dead and to send us into heaven and

sitteth at the right hand of the Father.

That is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to

Himself, not imputing or holding the human race accountable for

their trespasses, but has committed to us a word of

reconciliation. So we have to go out and tell

people, hey, I got good news for you.

You're a Sinner. What do you mean?

That's good news? How dare you call me a Sinner?

No, listen to me. It's a good news.

You're a Sinner. But Christ isn't going to hold

your sin against you. He took it for you.

What? Yeah, He took your sin for you.

Well, anybody knows. How can that be true?

Someone would take all my guilt and all the things I've done

wrong in my life and take them on themselves for for me.

Well, that's what Jesus has done.

He shed his blood and he died on the cross for all those who will

believe it's finished. He said his sacrifice is

perfect. His sacrifice is complete and

his whole, as he said, for God so loved this world that he gave

his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him

should not perish, but have everlasting life.

The Philippian jailer said to Paul, What must I do to be

saved? Believe on the Lord Jesus

Christ, and thou shalt be saved. Now then, we are ambassadors for

Christ as though God were pleading through US and pleading

his begging, imploring. Today is a day of salvation.

If you hear his voice, don't hold off.

Don't keep living in a life that's going to destroy you and

those you love. Come to Christ and say, Lord,

I've been kidding myself. I've been thinking I'm a

Christian, but I'm not. There's no way because my life

doesn't represent. I'm a follower of you.

I live as a follower of the devil.

Lord, give me grace and humility to admit that before you this

day. And we beg, as Paul said today,

we plead, be reconciled to God. We implore you on Christ's

behalf, be reconciled to God. Be made right with God, be

saved. For it says in verse 21, For he

made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become

the righteousness of God in him. What a deal.

What a deal that God has made. He has made it possible because

He's the one that's never sin, to become the bearer of sin for

you and me, that we might become as He is, the righteousness of

God. This has been Living Waters of

Grace with Pastor Clark. We're going through the

challenging and also intriguing Book of Revelation.

Whether you're a fan of reading ahead in books of fiction,

there's such a benefit to reading ahead in the Bible to

read about how it all ends. But in an interesting turn of

events, the Book of Revelation is not really the end, but

rather the beginning. It's the end of life as we know

it here on earth, but there's so much to look forward to for what

comes after all the judgement of the earth and those who reject

God. There's a lot to work through,

and it can be heartbreaking to read through the intense

judgements and wrath that will come on those who hate God with

all their might. The thing is, God has given

chance upon chance to these people.

They don't want it. So the outcome is that there are

judgments and consequences for those who've rejected the good

news and the gift of salvation that's offered through Jesus's

death and resurrection. Are you one who has heard about

these things but doesn't really want it because you want to live

life on your terms? Trust me, living for Jesus is so

much better. That doesn't mean it will be

easy, but as you listen and read through Revelation with us,

you'll come to a stark realization that you don't want

to be on earth when the apocalypse happens.

So check out Calvary Chapel online.com to learn how to come

to a saving grace through faith that will allow you to be with

Jesus for eternity. We'd also love to meet you in

person at Calvary Chapel Westmoreland.

Come join us at 400 E Pittsburgh St.

Ste. 6B in Greensburg, PA 15601. This has been living waters of

Grace.