Speaker: Ivan

Online meeting. Information about the Gospel is easy to find today, and even YouTube can summarize a video, but the mind is selective and powerless. God must place His seed in our spirit, and the Spirit of Christ must unite with ours.

Speaker: Mikhail

• Prophecy. Everyone should covet to prophesy (1 Cor 14:1). Prophecy is when God speaks in you and you pass it on to people. If God says "be healed" about Edik or Viktor, you simply speak that word. That is "the faith of God" (Mark 11:22): not belief that God can, but the word He has spoken.

• God can use a child or a new believer, so the one passing it on must be humble. The word may go unnoticed by people, but it "shall not return unto me void" (Isa 55:11). Don't be afraid of mistakes: how often have we spoken without God, and He spared us. Speak boldly and simply, without regard for others' opinions.

• "The love of Christ constraineth us" (2 Cor 5:14–15): many say "all died" two thousand years ago and leave it there. But He died "that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves". Whoever "died" but lives for himself has not really died.

• Rom 6:1–11: "reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin". In his view the interlinear has the word "to be", which the translation leaves out, and then the meaning changes: not "consider yourselves" but be dead. Baptism into death is not only water baptism but the "baptism of fire", the cup of Golgotha (Luke 12:50). Christ walked this path first and showed every step of it.

• Arguments over secondary things (Calvin and Luther on predestination; in his youth, caps, socks and jeans) hide the main thing: what it means to be born again and to love God. You can give your body to be burned without love (1 Cor 13:3). You can love God only by seeing His Spirit, while "the love of an egotist" sees only how good God is to us.

Speaker: Igor

John 17:19, 26: "for their sakes I sanctify myself… that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them". Sanctification means giving yourself as a sacrifice; the same love in us will make our lives given to others.

Speaker: Mikhail

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13): you must lay down your life for your enemies too, to win them as friends in Christ. What you must love is not how God loves you ("buy a dog, it will love you") but His Spirit.

Speaker: Ivan

"That they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves" (John 17:13; 1 John 1:4): this is not joy over events but the joy of a person who no longer lives for himself.

Speaker: Igor (Argentina)

Acts 1:12–14: after the ascension the disciples hurried to the upper room and prayed with one accord. We too need to hurry "before dark" and gather the revelations that will shape us for action. Even simple selfless love, when no one thanks you, gives a taste of where we are going.

Speaker: Ivan

Prayer for God's seal on His servants (Rev 7:3), and for patience and help for Edik and Viktor.