Hello AGC Family!

I am so excited about this upcoming weekend! I am excited about what God is doing and going to do in your life, and I am expecting great things for each one of you. Come expecting!

Did you get your pan greased yesterday? Did you spend time praying in the Holy Spirit over the requests you have for God? Good! I put my faith with your faith, and we believe we have already received!

That brings us to our next step in “baking the cake of faith.” Today, we are stirring in our ingredients. The Bible tells us Hebrews 4:2,

For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. 

God gives us His word to help us profit, but we must mix that word with faith for it to become profitable in our lives. So, one of our ingredients must be His word. On Monday, we put together all our scriptures to stand on. We wrote them down, and now we are going to “mix” those scriptures in with faith! These two ingredients must be mixed at the same time: hear the word, mix it with faith. Hear the word again, mix it with faith again. 

So far, we have the word and faith as our ingredients. Next, let’s add hope. Why hope? Because hope, according to the original Hebrew meaning, is a confident expectation of what we are believing for. Faith and hope go together. The definition of faith states, FAITH is the substance of things HOPED for the evidence of things not seen. They are two powerful forces that work together to bring forth the manifested results. So, stir in hope! It’s like when you add baking soda to flour and it makes a chemical reaction to help that cake bake. So, it is the same with faith and hope - they provide a “chemical reaction,” power, to bring forth the word you are standing on. 

Our final ingredient is love. Without love it is impossible to please God. Love is the ingredient that never fails. When the enemy is trying to get you to walk out of love this week, tell him, “No way, mister! I stir up the gift of love on the inside of me right now! I choose to walk in love.” The Bible says, “now faith, hope, and love but the greatest of these is love.” You absolutely cannot leave out the ingredient of love. 

Mix the word, faith, hope, and love to get yourself ready to bake the best cake you have ever tasted. Expect that cake to be the best! Add that oil of prayer through the Holy Spirit over that cake before you put it in the oven. Then, sit back and wait with confident expectation for this cake of faith. 

I am SO excited for you, church family! You are going to receive what you are believing for because you are mixing all of this with faith, hope, and love! 

-Pastor Candace

Good morning, AGC Family!

I hope you were able to read yesterday’s blog and put together the scriptures you are standing on this week. If you did not, it’s never too late to go back and read yesterday’s blog!

Today, we are going to continue to “bake a cake of faith.” Our next step is to grease the pan. What do we grease a pan with? Oil. All throughout the Bible, God has used oil as a type of the Holy Spirit. Psalms 23:5 says,

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

The moment you receive Jesus as your savior, God anoints you with the Holy Spirit. He comes to live within your spirit, and His greatest desire is to overflow in your life. God’s greatest desire is for your cup to run over with the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus told us that the Holy Spirit would teach us, guide us, and put us in remembrance. Jesus also called Him the Spirit of Truth. Therefore, it is the Holy Spirit’s responsibility to bring forth truth in your life. (IF we allow him to do so!) The word also tells us if we know the truth, the truth will set us free. Translate and meditate on that. If the Holy Spirit is the truth, then He is the source of freedom! Glory to God! The Source of freedom lives on the inside of us! He will help to set us free from our situation.

Now, back to the cake. We need to “grease the pan” with the power of the Holy Spirit! We place His anointing on it when we lift our voice in prayer - praying in the Holy Spirit. We are allowing the truth to set us free! “But Pastor Candace,” you might say, “I am not baptized in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues.” No worries! God knows exactly where you are, and He will take and do with whatever you bring. So, just lift your voice in prayer over the things you are believing for. Declare and decree (a form of prayer) from the word of God, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Once you have “decreed a thing,” then spend time praying in tongues over the situation. Allow the Holy Spirit to set you free from those situations. 

An example of this would be in believing for finances. Pray:

Father, I thank you that throughout your word you have made provision for my life. I stand on that word without wavering because I believe in it with all my heart, and I trust you! Now, Lord, I declare and decree by the power of the Holy Spirit that You are my provider! I call myself debt free! Angels go forth and bring forth the promises of God in my life! Lord, I thank you! At this point, I would pray in tongues; but if you haven’t received the gift of tongues yet, just spend time thanking God for hearing your prayer. 

Today, I encourage you to pray over the things you are believing God for. But, don’t just do it because I say so! Do it in faith in the power of the Holy Spirit! Let His anointing oil run over the situation. Allow the power of praying in tongues to flow through you today! The word says, it’s “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit!” Place your situation in the hands of the Holy Spirit!

-Pastor Candace

Hello Family!

As you know, we have a guest speaker this Sunday, and I felt led to send out a blog every day this week to help us prepare our hearts for this Sunday’s Service. All throughout God’s word, He tells us that He is our provider. He is our source in every area of our lives. Health, joy, prosperity, peace, etc. are all in His word, but our job is to find the scripture and stand on that word - believing that we receive from Him. So, throughout this week, we are going to prepare our hearts to receive from God as the guest speaker prepares to bring forth the message.

As I was meditating on this thought, I looked at a box of Betty Crocker cake mix sitting on my kitchen counter and heard the Holy Spirit say, “Let’s bake a Cake of Faith.” So, today (Happy Valentine’s Day!) let’s begin baking the cake! 

First, we heat the oven. In other words, we must “turn up the heat” on our bar of expectancy. The definition for expectancy in the Noah Webster Dictionary, is to anticipate and look forward to the coming or occurrence of. Whatever we expect to receive from God is what we will receive, and if we hold tight to that promise without wavering, we will receive it! The word of God tells us in Matthew 7:11 (ESV):

 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how MUCH MORE will your Father who is in heaven give good to those who ask him!

God loves us so much, and He desires to be our provider in all areas of our life! He wants to bestow on us gifts and provision, but we must receive the gift that He wants to give us. We must position ourselves to receive, and the first thing we need to do is to heat the oven. If the directions say, “heat the oven to 350 degrees” but you only heat the oven to 250 degrees, you are not going to have a fully cooked cake. Maybe parts of it will be cooked (the top and bottom), but the inside of that cake will not be finished. Who wants an uncooked cake? No one.  So, we must turn up the heat to get a fully cooked cake. 

We as believers must always have our “heat” turned up on what we are believing God for. The word says, “faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen.” Faith and hope are the tools that help us turn up our expectancy, and we use these tools when standing on the Word of God. We have faith and hope in His promises.

Your first assignment this week is to gather scriptures that line up with what you are believing for, and keep them before your eyes. Continually tell yourself, “I fully expect to receive what I am reading and confessing.” Push your expectancy bar higher. Raise your oven temperature from 250 degrees to 350 degrees! Keep your oven turned on! Don’t turn it off in the middle of the heating up process. Keep anticipating and looking forward to your breakthrough. Expect to receive!

Join us tomorrow as we continue preparing our hearts for this Sunday.

Love and Blessings!

-Pastor Candace

Good Afternoon, Church Family!

Over the last several weeks, we have heard a lot of the scripture, “You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.”

Let’s take a look at some very important words in this scripture: know, truth, set, and free. When you put them in this order, it reveals a very elementary truth (almost like a two-year-old is saying it to you): if you know truth, you will be set free. I know all of us want to be set free of certain things in our lives. As we look closer at these four words, we will be able to see how being set free is possible.

Let’s look at the first word, know. The Hebrew definition of know carries the idea that you are “coming to.” In other words, you are making an effort to come to the Word of God. Not only are you coming to this place, but in coming to it, you are perceiving, understanding, and gaining a knowledge of something. You aren’t coming to this knowledge in a casual way, but you are becoming acquainted with this knowledge in an intimate way.

One of the definitions of intimacy is a close familiarity. For example, look at the intimacy between a husband and wife: a wife knows her husband’s voice, strengths, weaknesses, desires etc. It’s the same with the husband. This intimacy only comes about by spending time with each other. It’s the same way with God! To truly know God and His word, we must spend time with Him and His word. In spending time with Him every day, we begin perceiving who He is and understanding (gaining knowledge) about Him and His ways.

The next word is truth. This word has been preached over and over by Pastor Chip. Truth is the Word of God and what that Word says about any given situation. Truth is Jesus, the mediator and intercessor of this Word. The word of God that we put forth when we pray, decree, and declare are the very things Jesus intercedes for us with. These are also the things the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, helps us to bring forth. Truth equals word, word equals truth. 

Let’s move on to the next word, set. One of the definitions for set is to place into position so that you can start running a race. I loved this definition because, spiritually, we are all in a race for God. We all have a race to run for Him, but if we are bound by things in our lives, we are not able to run our race effectively. But, if we are set free, we can run!

The last word I want to talk to you about is free. I love this word! This word free is Jesus’s whole desire for us! That is why He did what He did. We are free from the power of the enemy the moment we accept Him as our Lord and Savior. We will no longer taste death. When we die, we just move to heaven without the sting of death. There are many freedoms that occur when we accept Him, but we must learn to walk in them. The definition of free is liberty! The definition of liberty is when one has the ability and power to do as one chooses without physical, mental, emotional restraints. Glory to God! God wants us to move in Him, through His word, without physical, mental or emotional restraints.

You mean to tell me, when you know (perceive, understand, and gain a knowledge of) the truth (the Word of God) on a close familiar level (developing daily intimacy with God and His word), you will be free to run your race without physical, mental, and emotional restraints?  I am ALL IN! I am all in on knowing the truth and letting the truth set me free!

My prayer for you today is that you will develop a relationship with the Truth and that Truth will set you free! 

P. Candace