By: Andi Andrew

Gratitude is a lifestyle choice. We can choose to live our lives from a place of gratitude and thanksgiving or from a place of negativity, opinion, and circumstance. There is so much to be grateful for despite our personal situations or emotional state.

When my son 7-year-old son Jesse arrived back from Zimbabwe with Paul and me last year, he had a newfound gratitude for the food so bountifully placed on our family’s table. For him, being part of feeding programs for impoverished children while we were in Africa really opened his eyes. Many of these kids within the program only get one meal a day, and it’s a corn-based meal ground up into a porridge with peanut butter added for protein. When Jesse arrived home to hear his siblings complain about the food on the table, he immediately and innocently rebuked them.

“Guys, we should be grateful for any food that is placed before us to eat. Some kids in Africa—if they’re lucky—get one meal a day, and it’s not even that yummy. So we should be grateful no matter what, say thank you, and just eat.”

That silenced the kids from their complaining and they quietly began to eat. They’re still kids and at times don’t always love what we cook for dinner, but I’m no short order cook, so they get what they get. And when the whining and complaining sets in, we all look up to a photo framed on our wall of a little boy in Africa we met at “The Hideout,” an abandoned hotel where countless displaced families live. We remind ourselves and tell our “soul” once again to be grateful for what is placed before us!

Psalm 103:1–6 (NIV) says:

1 Praise the Lord, my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

2 Praise the Lord, my soul,
and forget not all his benefits—

3 who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,

4 who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,

5 who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

6 The Lord works righteousness
and justice for all the oppressed.

It’s so easy to forget the benefits that God has given to us, so we’ve got to remind our souls what to do when we become downcast or negative. We are forgiven, healed, and redeemed from the pits of darkness and disgrace we were found in. We are crowned with His love and compassion from heaven. And it doesn’t stop there: God satisfies us with good things and renews our youth like the eagle. He works out the path of righteousness for our lives and brings justice! Hello! That is worth being grateful for no matter what the circumstances are. We need to get good at telling our circumstance to line up with the word of God! And most of the time we have to tell our souls, our inmost being, to line up with the word of God and praise Him because He is worthy whether we feel like it or not.

Charles Spurgeon wrote a beautiful exposition on verse one of Psalm 103. If you weren’t convinced of our need to choose to praise and give gratitude to God with all of our lives, may his words go deep into your spirit. May they cause you to rise up and give God all that you are—heart and soul. To praise Him all the days of your life no matter how you feel or what you see. He is worthy of our love, adoration, and gratitude.

“Bless the Lord O my soul. Soul music is the very soul of music. The Psalmist strikes the best keymote when he begins with stirring up his inmost self to magnify the Lord. He soliloquizes, holds self-communion and exhorts himself, as though he felt that dulness would all too soon steal over his faculties, as, indeed, it will over us all, unless we are diligently on the watch. Jehovah is worthy to be praised by us in that highest style of adoration which is intended by the term bless—”All thy works praise thee, O God, but thy saints shall bless thee.” Our very life and essential self should be engrossed with this delightful service, and each one of us should arouse his own heart to the engagement. Let others forbear if they can: “Bless the Lord, O MY soul.” Let others murmur, but do thou bless. Let others bless themselves and their idols, but do thou bless the LORD. Let others use only their tongues, but as for me I will cry, “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” And all that is within me, bless his holy name. Many are our faculties, emotions, and capacities, but God has given them all to us, and they ought all to join in chorus to his praise. Half-hearted, ill-conceived, unintelligent praises are not such as we should render to our loving Lord. If the law of justice demanded all our heart and soul and mind for the Creator, much more may the law of gratitude put in a comprehensive claim for the homage of our whole being to the God of grace.”

Andi will be starting off our message series on Gratitude this Sunday. Let’s find ways to express a lifestyle of gratitude in our world—from Brooklyn to Bulawayo.

You started your business to make a difference, not just a profit. You earned your job and your degree because of your dream, not just your drive to succeed. You came to New York to build your career, but as a Christian in the workplace you desire to understand your calling. You don’t just show up to work, you go to war in an industry that lacks leadership.

Proverbs 20:18 says, “Make plans by seeking advice; make war by obtaining guidance.”

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This Wednesday, Liberty Church will gather as a whole for a night of unbridled worship and prayer. As the worship team rehearsed this week, they broke out in prayers that conveyed the passion they feel for people to connect with Jesus in new ways during these nights.

Worship Nights, which happen only four times a year, are transformational for individuals and have become important for our church body to seek the face of God together. Each Worship Night is always preceded by an excitement for the spiritual awakening of lives immersed in acts of worship and for the spiritual breakthrough for our growing church. But whenever a Worship Night approaches, no one carries more expectation than the team of musicians who prepare to lead the entire church.

• They pray that lives would be changed through newfound freedom, deliverance, and healings—physical, emotional, and spiritual.
• They pray for a revelation of God’s love to expand our hearts and vision and to grow our faith.
• They pray for people to be drawn in by a hunger for God, regardless of where they are coming from.
• They thank God for their talents—the gifts he has given to the church—and ask the Holy Spirit to breathe on their gifts to do what they cannot do.
• They pray for an environment where people are free to be authentic and seek him wholeheartedly without distraction or reservation.
• They pray that the church could walk into an atmosphere that is thick with God’s presence and love.
• They believe that the Holy Spirit will break out with freshness, renewal, and new depth and that God will show himself through the unexpected and the unrehearsed moments.

Knowing all that goes behind the scenes, they pray for an anointing on the team and for God “to smooth out the details” of the logistical aspects of the night, “so that we can focus more easily on you and your purposes and what the Spirit is asking us to do.” But they also pray that the level of excellence in performance would “come from an overwhelming sense of how much we love you, that things are done beautifully because we love you, not because we want to be excellent.”

And, as any worshipper who has found an intimacy with God that goes beyond words, they pray simple prayers, too: “We praise you just because. Just because.”

7:30pm at St Paul’s German Church, 315 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011

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In order to possess what God has already given us collectively and personally we need to know and be in agreement with God’s “now word” concerning our season.

Rhema Trayner preached this message, “Entering The Land” at our Soho service, on October 19th, 2014.

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Sunday Services-
Brooklyn – United Artists Cinema 9:30am
Soho – Scholastic Auditorium 11am
Union Square – Union Square Ballroom 5 & 7pm

SHE awakes. Opening her eyes, she does not see the life she dreamed of. This is not the place she imagined living when she was a little girl. New York City is her home. SHE lives here, but her bed is on the streets. When she awakes, SHE has no one to turn to, nowhere to go. SHE is trapped by her poverty, her lack of a marketable education, even trapped by the small faces that circle her, that prevent her from searching for a way to rise above her circumstances. Her physical needs only emphasize the urgency of her need for love. And her children, even though she loves them with a fierceness that surprises her at times, need more from her than she has to give. “How did I get here?” she pleads. “And how do I get out?”

A movement has begun among the women of Liberty Church that is calling us to walk in a revelation of the freedom that is ours in Jesus. We have been called to release the oppressed and to extend freedom to the individuals in our lives so that God’s work of restoration can ripple out across the Earth.

“ARISE [from the depression and prostration in which circumstances have kept you— rise to a new life]! Shine (be radiant with the glory of the Lord), for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you!” —Isaiah 60:1 AMP

As women empowered by this call to freedom, it’s too easy to turn toward all the heartbreak and troubles in the world and feel powerless to make a difference. But on November 7^th we will have the opportunity to make a practical difference and to pave a way for women to find freedom because of the freedom we’ve been given.

Because if it matters to God that the women of his church are free, then SHE matters too.

On Friday, November 7th, we will be gathering for the last Sisterhood of 2014 and partnering with Covenant House’s Mother and Child initiative to bring hope to mothers who feel trapped by their circumstances. Mother and Child provides counseling, parenting and childcare workshops, and free daycare to homeless mothers while they pursue work and further their education. Join us as we women fill Scholastic Theater with worship and prayer and hear an empowering message from Andi Andrew to the women of our church.

On that Friday in November, please bring a donation of either diapers, baby wipes, blankets, snowsuits, and plastic stroller covers. These are their greatest needs leading into the winter season. We believe that meeting their physical needs is placing value on them as women and whispering hope into their hearts again.

“There is a call and there is a cry for freedom—spirit, soul, and body. For us as women and men to not just quote Scripture but to live in it, for us to actually step into the freedom that God has for us, to not go through the motions of Christianity but to step into freedom and then to give that away to everyone we meet.” —Andi Andrew

Online registrations are closed, but registrations at the door are only $15, so come and bring a friend. We’ll see you there!

For more information, please contact [email protected].

7:30pm at Scholastic Theater, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012

By: Emily Rodriguez and Emily Kirkendoll

This year at Liberty we have witnessed an unprecedented explosion of creative arts through expressions of worship from the talented people of our church. If you are a dancer, we would love to invite you to upcoming gatherings for our dance team.

Be prepared to participate in a time of worship followed by a few movement exercises. Please wear appropriate clothing. No shoes are needed for these exercises.
Please RSVP to [email protected].

Friday, October 24, 7:30–9:30pm at the Balance Arts Center, 34 West 28th Street, New York, NY

If you weren’t at our October 2^nd Visionaries gathering, you missed the huge announcement of our third guest speaker at the 2014 Visionaries Retreat in Tarrytown, NY.

Brant Cryder—currently the president of luxury fashion house Saint Laurent—has been a fashion executive for brands including Prada, Armani, and Saks Fifth Avenue.

As a believer, Brant sees the role of Christians in business as “industrial prophets,” bringing God-centered leadership into the marketplace to shape culture. He is also a sought-after speaker with a heart to motivate people to understand their call and pursue their destiny.

He has famously used his platform for his other passions: philanthropy, mentorship, and music. He serves on the board of charities, contributes his expertise to organizations that advance and shape the arts, and is an acclaimed DJ, as well as the father of four children.

Brant is an example of the heart of leadership that drives our Visionaries ministry—to enable the business community of our church to partner with God and invite his presence into our careers. We believe that we are each called to make a difference, not just a living.

The Visionaries Retreat is open to anyone who is a part of Liberty Church. Each year, people from various career backgrounds gather for an impactful time to combine our passions, our experience, and our prayers to see his kingdom come in our different industries.

Along with Brant Cryder, we will hear from Scott Harrison of charity : water, Lead Pastor Paul Andrew, and our keynote speaker Kris Vallotton.

If you are interested in attending this year’s Visionaries Retreat, November 14th – 15th, you can register here. Space is very limited, so if you are unable to register, please
email [email protected].

Are you interested in being part of Visionaries? Contact us at [email protected].

Just over a year ago, Liberty Church sent out its first missionaries through our partner organization, Children’s Cup. Gethin and Bex Amoss are family, a part of our church that moved to Swaziland to support our flourishing community in Sauerstown, near Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. They are training to be part of the team on the ground at Liberty Church Zimbabwe, working with the community pastors and the Celebration Church Network under Pastor Dixon Changara.

As projects to develop the campus are underway and as we send another team from New York this week on a missions trip, Gethin and Bex are already witnessing how the vision of Liberty Church to be a catalyst locally is impacting a community on the other side of the globe. Having met with Liberty Church Zimbabwe’s leadership team, Gethin and Bex expressed excitement for the period of development that the church is entering. “Liberty is starting to inspire the community. There are adult discipleship classes and a whole team of volunteers that make the Sunday services happen.”

Visiting the United States for a family wedding, Gethin and Bex came home to Liberty Church in New York in August to reconnect with friends and those who were supporting them financially and as prayer partners. “Seeing old friends and faces was wonderful, but the real encouragement was the fact that we didn’t actually know a lot of the faces, as there has been such growth within the communities. It was great to finally get to see the Brooklyn community too as that was still in the planning stages when we left.”

In preparation for Zimbabwe, Gethin and Bex’s season in Swaziland is giving them insight into the work of Children’s Cup and how they are transforming neighborhoods through CarePoints, which offer feeding programs and free preschool education to thousands of children, a traveling medical unit that visits all 26 CarePoints, a child sponsorship department, skills training classes for high school students, and the Global Leadership Academy that trains dozens of local Africans each year.

Bex explains, “Right now, we’re in our initial stages, acclimatizing and just soaking everything in…The more we learn here, the more we can take with us to Zim.

As their dreams for Zimbabwe begin to take shape, the Amosses share their goals:

• To be the hands and feet of Jesus to the people we meet
• To uphold and develop the feeding programs and other projects of Children’s Cup
• To take the knowledge, experiences, and lessons learned in Swaziland to Sauerstown and Liberty Church Zimbabwe and help develop the CarePoint and surrounding community there
• To help foster positive attitudes and change towards people with disabilities and provide training where we can
• To train national staff so our knowledge, skills, and projects can provide a sustainable change.

They have already delivered their first training on disabilities to students at the Global Leadership Academy.

Both Gethin and Bex treasure the moments that make Africa irresistible—the friendly and uplifting people, the irrepressible smiles of the children, and the incredible beauty of the environment and climate. And through the changes and challenges, they cling to the promise in Joshua 1:9, “Be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

To receive more updates from Gethin and Bex, follow them at gethinandbex.com or request their monthly newsletter by emailing [email protected]. You can also support them financially through our giving page by selecting “Offering — Missionary Support (Amoss / Zimbabwe)” from the drop down menu.

Instagram: GethinandBexAmoss