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In this podcast, we share our sermons and teaching from our Sunday Celebrations + some other additional teaching content.
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Now I'm going to share with you a passage from, two Corinthians this morning. but just before I share that particular passage, I just wanted to give a little bit of context to it because, I love context and you are a captive audience, so. two Corinthians is written by a guy called Paul.
Paul, was a follower of Jesus, 2000 years ago. and Paul started off his kind of interaction with other Christians by persecuting them quite severely to the point of death. But there's a there's a story that is is written about a guy called Stephen who is the first Christian martyr, and Paul was there as a witness to that, and in fact was the coat bearer of those that killed Stephen.
so that's how he started his life. But then he had a profound encounter with Jesus, and he ended up, realizing that Jesus was indeed the Son of God and laid everything down. And then committed his life to to not just following Jesus, but to leading other people into life with Jesus and seeing God's kingdom come and his will down on earth as it is in heaven.
And he, when I say he dedicated his life, he really laid down everything and was willing to to suffer in poverty and suffering persecution and to suffer from trial and trial and challenge, just to see that vision of God's kingdom come into his world and into his into his arena and, one of the places that he went to was a place called Corinth.
You can read about it in the book of acts in chapter 18. And he goes there and he starts a community of Jesus followers there. And, he, also, during the course of his life, writes two letters to this church in Corinth. Actually, he writes more than two letters, at least three, probably four that we that we know of, and two of them we have handed down to us.
And they are in the Bible today. They're called one Corinthians and two Corinthians. Now one Corinthians is, was written because Paul had heard of a really negative report of the church in Corinth. the church, was just all over the place. It was a mess. there was, reports of of sexual immorality. There were reports of negative attitudes between people.
People were getting drunk in a church meeting. I mean, it was it was really quite remarkable that Paul considered this place a church, I think. And so he writes this letter to correct and to rebuke and to challenge and to exalt them into a better life. And, and they receive this letter. And what ends up happening is that the people in Corinth, they rebelled against Paul's authority.
And what we what we later find out is that, other other apostles of the teachers of the ministers of God's Word had come along to Corinth, and they didn't press the people of Corinth. They really had Paul comes and he's he's unimpressive. it says that he wasn't a very good speaker. he was Paul always suffering trial and persecution.
He was in jail. And for the Corinthians, in that culture, in that society that brought shame on them. And so in their minds, they didn't want to be associated with Paul anymore. They wanted to be associated with these other speakers that came that were very impressive speakers that were much more wealthy and didn't go to prison for Jesus.
They were good, respectable people. And Paul comes and he and and it just he comes in to visit. And he says that in this visit it was the the difficult to visit, the hard visit that he had. And in it he he found the the rebellion was in full. And it was a really difficult time for him that that's really kind of all that we know.
And he comes away and we also read, Paul says that he he wrote another letter in anguish and in tears. This is the letter that we don't have. but what we find that from that particular letter that most of the church in Corinth are led to a place of repentance, and they apologize, for what they've done for their rebellion.
And they want to be reconciled with Paul. They want to to live in that life again. And they they realize that, that their values of the world had been distorted and they weren't actually kingdom values, but they were their own cultural values. And so two Corinthians is the letter of reconciliation. Isn't that great? A letter where the relationship is restored?
And in this letter, Paul confirms his forgiveness. He confirms the restoration of that relationship. And in it he also encourages those people that are still in this place of rebellion to live a life that is better for them. So makes sense just to set a better context, because I love a bit of context, but I think it brings quite a lot of illumination to what we're going to say.
So I'm just going to read from two Corinthians three, and I'm going to read the whole chapter. If you want to turn in your Bibles to that. And Paul comes with this. He's starting off where he's he's addressing this, this request of letters of recommendation. And you'll read that Paul just thinks this is ridiculous. He's like, I flippin started the church.
Why should I have to write a letter of recommendation to you? You are my letter of recommendation and this is where it starts. So, are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need is some letters of commendation to you or from you? You are a letter written in our hearts, known and read by all people, revealing yourselves that you are a letter of Christ delivered by us, written not with ink, but with a spirit of the living God.
Not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts such as the confidence we have toward God through Christ. Not that we are adequate in ourselves so as to consider anything as having come from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate to servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit.
For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. But if the ministry of death, engraved in letters on stones, came with glory, so that sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses, because of the glory of his face fading as it was. How will the ministry of the spirit fail to be even more with glory?
For indeed, what had glory in this place case has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it. For if that which fades away was with glory, much more, that which remains is in glory. Therefore, having such a hope, we use great boldness in our speech, and we are not like Moses. He used to put a veil over his face to the sons of Israel, would not stare at the end of what was fading away, but their minds were hardened.
For until this very day the reading of the old covenant, the same veil remains and lifted, because it is removed in Christ. But to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts. But whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
But we all, with unveiled faces looking, is in a mirror at the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord. The spirit.
Amen. There's so much in that passage. You'll be glad to hear that I'm not planning on exposing all of it. but there's a there's one verse in particular that is just kind of been resounding with me for the last few weeks, and it's that last verse, but we all, with unveiled faces looking, is in a mirror at the glory of God, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as the Lord from the spirit.
And that's what I really want to plug down into. We've been doing a series on about us reaching out into the world and seeing our community changed and transformed, and seeing Jesus coming and breaking into people's lives. And that that breaking in and of of Jesus into people's lives. It's not like some tyrannical thing. It's not some kind of oppressive authoritarian thing.
This is something that comes and and release is freedom. We've just read where the spirit of the Lord is. There is freedom. And Paul, in this passage to the church in Corinth, he he's really trying to illustrate to them that that you've been in a place where you've been living a life that is subject to the law and subject of the way that you think about yourselves.
And you've you've ultimately been in a place of bondage. And in here he's just saying, guys, there's so much more, because if you really believed that you were set free by the Spirit of God, you would be a people living in total freedom and the messes of the world that you are facing in your own context, in your own situation, you would simply not be facing that.
I was thinking about this, and it's a little bit like, and forgive the football analogy. but if you don't know, during the summer and the, the winter transfer periods, you can you can approach a different football coach. I say you can approach football clubs, approach other football clubs, and they will offer an amounts of money, often an extortionate amounts of money, to have one of their players.
And and it would be a bit like, say Chelsea, the greatest football club in the world, coming and buying and buying a player from any, any other club. But it doesn't matter. And there's the contract there. They set the money there. And it's in the terms they've paid the millions of pounds or whatever, and that player comes across.
But that player still insists on wearing the colors. If the other team still insists on on living by the vision and the values of that previous team, still insists on trying to come back to the old contract and to get everything they need from the old contract, it's gone. It's dead. It yields nothing because they've been bought with a price and brought into a new club, with new vision, with new values.
And and Paul is saying, hey guys, there's so much more for you. Why are you wearing the old shirt? Why are you living by the old life? There is a new freedom, a new team to play for. And just like Chelsea, you're going to be in the best team in the world.
We could end our friendship, Jeff, if you're not careful.
That the church in Corinth and Corinth was one of the prime cities in the western world at that time, in terms of where you would think there'd be a church that had great success, you would put Corinth at the forefront of your mind. It was one of the biggest cities, one of the wealthiest, wealthiest cities, a city of great culture.
People would flow in from all across the Western world. And yet this church, which seems to have everything at its door, is failing and floundering.
Paul talks about how there's these these attitudes towards poor and wealthy and negative attitudes towards the poor and and in a way, a negative attitude toward the wealthy. In the case where they're wanting to draw them in, where they're breaking bread together and finding that there's preference going on between one another, there's drunkenness that is taking place in the meeting.
The sexual immorality that's going on, this there's there's issues where people are going to the courts against each other and not forgiving and not reconciling. And there is just this big break in covenant and covenant is this, this agreement that you have to, technically speaking, lawfully speaking, it's an agreement that you have between two parties. There's a marriage covenant.
I have a contractual arrangement with my wife, a way to take the romance out of the relationship, by the way, by saying that you can have it within, within a tenancy, you can have it with your, your employer, you have it with maybe within society, with Rousseau, when the social contract and all of that kind of thing, we all live by covenant.
But Jesus's covenant is the best way to live on earth. It is the covenant of of all covenants. And Paul is saying you'll you'll your community is breaking down because you're covenant is breaking with one another. The late, great Bryn Jones said that the only way we can make sure that the kingdom emerges and is permanent is if we learn to live in covenant.
You've discovered this as well as I do. You can build with power. You can build with authority, but it won't build to permanence. If the people fall apart because of lack of covenants.
What would a community of people look like if they lived wholly in covenant with each other? You know this. This isn't about sweeping things under the carpet. This isn't about ignoring and being a doorstep or a doormat. That's that's the word a doormat where people come in, they they trample all over you. Covenant is where we come, and we encourage and we challenge and we we help and we love and we care and we comfort and we come alongside.
One of my favorite books of all time is Lord of the rings, and a Lord of the rings quote will always make a sermon better. It is known.
But towards the end of the book, spoiler alert Frodo, who is the main protagonist in the story. He is the carrier of the ring, and the ring represents, all of evil, all of malice in the world, and it needs to be destroyed in the in the fires of Mount Doom. It's so epic. It's wonderful. If you've not read it, you should.
Immediately after I finished, go have you lunch and then go and read Lord of the rings. But as as Frodo gets closer to Mordor on this pilgrimage, as he gets closer and closer, the weight of the ring and the temptation of the ring gets greater. And, in the films. And there's a really good imagery because it it shows the marks and the pain of the burden of just carrying this ring, power of evil and the harm that it does to him and the effects of that temptation has upon his soul.
And as he as he's climbing up mount doom, he he it collapses, not exhausted, but just under the weight of the ring. And Samwise Gamgee, who I think is the the real hero of the Lord of the rings, he says, come, Mr. Frodo, I'm doing my best hobbit action for you. Come, Mr. Frodo, I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you.
I know he picks up Frodo and he carries him, fires up to the fires of Mount T, and together unified as one in covenant. Together they lead the charge that brings about the vanquishing of evil in that age. I am heard the story of Arthur Wallace. Many of you probably have never heard of Arthur Wallace. Arthur Wallace was the the father to a band of people that led to a renewal and restoration in the church, not just in this country, but across the world.
Thousands of churches, thousands, millions of people have come to Christ because of the ministry and the ripple effects of this one man, this one man, and this church is part of that. And, I, I heard the story where Arthur, was with, this group of men, and, they were they were just together. And Arthur cries out, let us play croquet.
I'm going to teach you croquet together. And, reluctantly, the whole band of brothers decided to allow Arthur to teach them how to play croquet. What they all knew was that Arthur was incredibly competitive, and with him being the only person that knew croquet, they knew that he was inevitably going to win. There's no beginner's luck in croquet.
And so Arthur, he teaches them and he shows them how to hit the hammer on the ball, and the ball goes through the hoop and they're all playing. And after amounts of time, it's Arthur's go, and he's on the last hoop, and he hits the ball, and the ball goes straight through the hoop and they all declare author's done it.
He has won. He has finished. And so, they talk of looking and seeing Arthur with his hands in the air and he said, I must return to my brothers to help them finish. Those were his last words. He died of an immediate heart attack after saying those words, and he fell down. I didn't think I'd get serious.
He fell down. And behind him was a wooden cross. And he fell down at the feet of this cross. His last words were, let me go to my brothers and help them to finish. A man of covenant who helped to release and equip and empower a new generation of people to see things done for God in this area, in this culture that God had purposed way back in the halls of eternity.
Imagine a community of people that look like that.
This last verse that I quoted to you before. But we all, with unveiled faces looking is in a mirror. At the glory of the Lord. Are being transformed into the same image. From glory to glory, justice from the Lord. The spirit. I've got two points. I just want to kind of draw out from this.
I think it's interesting how Paul encourages us to look at God as if looking in a mirror. I don't know about you. I don't particularly enjoy looking at myself in the mirror. you will also have noticed, that, with having so little hair, I don't have to spend much time looking in the mirror as well.
there's no no bad hair that I have to solve. It's actually quite, quite good. but Paul encourages us to behold God as looking in the mirror intimate the. You don't. You don't look far off. You're not standing meters and meters away checking yourself out in the mirror. In today's selfie age, you can have it right on your face and you can behold yourself.
Your coming us, your beauty.
But we with unveiled faces. Paul is referring to a time with with Moses back in, the the book of Exodus where Moses, because of his is closeness and his intimacy with God. He would he would literally be physically changed, physically changed such that his face shone and it shone so much that he had to veil himself before the people because they were afraid of him, and rightly so.
I think I would be afraid if somebody emerged shining in front of me. Then I'd probably go, oh, maybe there's something. Oh, Jeff is like, that's me, that's me.
But Paul says, this is the life that we live now in the spiritual realms because of what Jesus has done. We are all like Moses, because Jesus has come and torn the veil so that we can come into the most intimate place with God and into the most holy place with God. And if only we could see and open our eyes to the spiritual realms and the spiritual realities, so we would all see ourselves shining with brightness in a way that would make the spiritual principalities and powers quake in the boots.
If only we understood truly what Jesus had done for us the inheritance that he had given us, the power that he had brought into us. But we all, with unveiled faces, looking as in a mirror at the glory of God, being transformed. And we've been looking at this idea of, of solitude within, young adults. It's been a very challenging time, I think, for a lot of people.
Certainly for me, I find it very, very challenging. and we've been really looking at how Jesus has, in his life had this rhythm of just going to be alone and intimate with God and that the flow of everything that he did in community came from this intimacy that he had with God. And.
What we've found, certainly in the conversations that I've had with people, is that it's just been incredibly, challenging. It's been very difficult because, by and large, this idea of us just being present with God has been lost in this generation. we we, we live in an age of distraction, John, that talks about how how we have this stream and this flow of consciousness and what we do in today's ages in, in terms of managing our thoughts, in terms of managing our feelings and our emotions, we distract them away.
In comes the phone, the great idol of the age, and the Doom Scroll becomes the greatest sin of the generation. But for hours and hours you could just scroll being entertained. The, the plethora of choice that you have in Netflix and Amazon Prime and Disney Plus, BBC iPlayer and all of that stuff. And it takes longer to choose what you're going to watch than the thing that you're actually going to watch.
And so we end up contracting out the managing of those thoughts, the managing of those emotions, and it's just not dealt with. I've shared before the first time that I really kind of sat and was alone with the Lord, I found emotions coming up that I didn't realize I could feel like sat in my chair. And I started to shake and I started to tremble.
Because there was just this stuff. And for me, I don't like social media. I don't do the doomscrolling. My thing is busyness. Busyness for the Lord.
One of the things that God said to me, this isn't the my. It's one of the things God said to me a few years ago was I needed to learn to rule my time. And I thought, oh, right. God, I feel that that's that means I've got to put a death to procrastination. And so I then went on this kind of productivity mania, trying to figure out how I could be the most productive person that I could within a limited amount of hours and all of that kind of thing.
And, I only very, very recently guys, said to me and I felt like I cracked it. I felt like, yes, I'm very unproductive with my time. I can manage it effectively. And I felt so good. And, and God said to me, Harry, you've got it all wrong. All wrong. Because in and through it all, I haven't prioritized just being with God, just sitting and being with him.
Why? I truthfully, I tell you why. Because I felt like it was a waste of time. It wasn't the interceding. It wasn't the being in the scriptures. It wasn't anything. It was just sat being with God.
I thought it was just a waste of time. God said.
You don't want to be with me. Oh, but look at this prayer time that I've had where I've. I've come and I've talked to you, and I've read this book about you, and I've heard your voice in it. So just just come and be with me. Something that I found really helpful was a quote by Desmond Tutu. And he said, he said, I think I'm just trying to grow in being there, being presence with God.
So like when he sits in front of a fire in winter, you're just there in front of the fire. You don't have to be smart or anything like that, but the fire, it warms you. It transforms you. And just being in the presence of God, just beholding him, just looking at him, being together with him is like sitting by the fire where the warmth just comes and raises your temperature.
So it is like being with God and it brings a transformation from glory to glory.
What on earth is glory to glory look like? I find it really interesting when we think about this, because when I think of glory, I think of resplendent majesty. I think the coronation on steroids, the word glory. it's this Hebrew word covered, and it means heaviness. It means weightiness. Now, if you had met me when I was a 14 year old, I could have introduced you to my glory.
If you'd come into my bedroom, you would have seen my my pictures on the wall. You would have seen my books on my bookshelf with The Philosopher's Stone, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in Latin, in prime place. There. I would have shown you two that I had this. I had this massive stereo platform from my dad, and it was it was huge.
It was like from the 90s and it had six CDs that I could put in CDs or like a little disc that had music on it that you could put in. And it was loud. So loud. And I remember my friends coming over and I'd show off this stereo player after it showed off Harry Potter in Latin to them.
First, of course, I'd show off the stereo player to them. My glory, my weightiness. And so what on earth does Paul mean when he's talking about us going from glory to glory? Well, when you look at the next few chapters, you see Paul talking about what this glory looks like, and it looks like Jesus dying and suffering on a cross, and it's completely reversing the cultural perspective of what glory looks like.
Jesus is gloriously exalted through his suffering death. It shows God's amazing salvation. It shows God's character of self-giving love, and it brings us to this new cruciform way of life. And this is the way of life that Paul was trying to live and to demonstrate and to live by example, by. Laying down his life for this for the sake of Jesus Christ.
He had no desire to be impressive for people. His desire was to point people to the only impressive one, Jesus.
And when I when I look at this. Oh, this. There's so much that you can impact out of this. But when I look at this, the one thing that really kind of stands out is how just Paul just keeps on going. If this list of how he's beaten up and persecuted and lashed and starved and having no money, and then Paul, give it a rest.
And why don't you just, like, chill out? It's quite intense. Why don't you just take a breather? But he'd seen something. And he had this perseverance. And we I think with perseverance, we can often. And for me, I don't know what it is for you, but for me, it's like this, this nitty gritty resilience that we, we find in people that kind of relentlessly pursue, pursue a dream.
Like you might think of the Elon Musk of this world where he's come from nothing and established Tesla and all of the other incredible companies that he's built up. You might think of, any other kind of thing. I, I was recently in a spin class. My dad invited me to go to spin class. No spin classes.
It's like, a cycling thing where you've got an instructor bellowing at you when you should cycle and when you can rest. And the rest thing is a lot less than the cycling. And and I went with, with that. And I didn't realize that David Oliver was going to be there as well. for those of you that don't know, David Oliver, David Oliver is like, like a machine.
He's like a machine. And he's there on the spin class, and I'm there. I'm five minutes in and I literally am thinking, I don't know if I'm going to survive here. I really I don't know. And and David Oliver is only like, you know, and I think he's going to like, break the machine or take off or something like that.
And like that lady's bellowing these instructions and he's like, yeah, give me more, give me more like David. And I was just like, I don't know if I'm, I can I can do it in five minutes, 10 to 10 and ten, 10 to 20. And after 45 minutes, 45 minutes, I finished. How amazing is that? I was I was kind of expecting a round of applause, but that.
That's okay. Oh thank you, thank you, thank you. I finished my first ever spin class. were to, anyone that's interested in doing it. If you've never done it before, take a cushion with you. It's very, very, very slow.
And. But it's more than just this dog it going forward. And of course, that's part of it. It's not just being the big dreamer. It's not all about this positive thinking out. I watched Dave Chappelle's latest show on Netflix, and he he finishes on this thing where he's talking about the powerful dreamers that are in the room, and how the powerful dreamers are the one that sees their dreams come to be.
But there is no eternal dream that is going to be other than anything that is from the Lord. So, you know, there might be some psychological benefits for positive thinking, but but Jesus has something greater and something more. And in this world, this a, there's a there's a spirit that is trying to break a posture of perseverance in the church, in the global church.
And one of the the seven deadly sins is sloth. And we can immediately go on the lazy and all of that kind of thing. But but it's soft. This it comes from this word acedia in acedia. Thomas Aquinas describes it is is sorrow about spiritual good?
It's an indifference, a lack of feeling about other stuff, about yourself, about other people. It's a it's a spiritual malaise. It's a it's a lack of emotion. And it's in part caused by this, this age of distraction that I was talking about before. It's a, a world where we're we're exploring and wanting and striving for the life hacks and the shortcuts, and we no longer know how to persevere.
And there's this vision of life, of human flourishing that that just increasingly gets smaller and smaller and smaller. But for people where in their hearts eternity has been set.
And I think when we look at perseverance, there's the, you know, there's some people that are incredibly disciplined and some people that have this amazing willpower to go out and do this stuff. But what is the dream behind it? What is the vision behind it?
Hebrews tells us that that faith is the certainty of the things that are hoped for. What is it that you hope for?
And are the things that you hope for, the things that God hopes for?
Hebrews in Hebrews 11, where it's talking about the heroes of faith, it it talks about Abraham and the life that he led. And it said that that he was pursuing the city he was looking forward to the city whose architect and builder was God. I remember, meeting a missionary friends when I was in the Philippines, and he was telling the story of these two Nepalese people.
And they they just been captured by the vision of God. This desire to see God's good news come that you are loved for who you are and that there is healing in communities and there is there is so much more to life as we know it. And in that they faced incredible persecution, incredible suffering. Their families were under a lot of pressure.
They could never get work. And this friend, he asked them and he said, why do you keep going? And they just said, we've seen the city. We've seen the city. What? What else are we to chase after?
A broken world that is healed. The lost saved generations equipped and empowered and released lives transformed into the likeness of Jesus. Communities of people all over the world whose beating pulse is like the self-giving love of Jesus. A world in which the pinnacle of human creativity in civilization comes and joins together in perfect unity with the heavenly city.
That's what God sees. There you go. Well, that that's so big for me in my world.
How can that be for me? I can't, I can't see that. How can I be a part of that? But this is part of the the unrelenting power of the kingdom, because we each have hands and feet of Jesus.
And are you desperate to see that brokenness in your workplace healed and restored, that that family member that has turned their back on Jesus for so long? The the longing to help, to help nurture and encourage and challenge those around us to radically pursue the calling of Jesus, willing to have a heart wrenching to, as Jesus did, for to help those in need in our own individual worlds?
Or is it that ease of life and comforts the creature, comforts that promotion at work, the desire for others to fail so that we can seem like we're succeeding all the more?
The forlorn hope that Chelsea will finally sort themselves out.
And it's not that those things are a bad in and of themselves looking for that promotion at work, but what is it rooted in? What is it rooted in? Is it rooted in to see part of God's vision for the reconciliation and restoration of the world, and that you can play your part as a follower of Jesus to come and change and transform that organization that you were a part of?
Or is it I just want to be promoted because it makes me look great and there's more money in it.
What is it? What is it that you hope for? What is it that you longed for?
I, to the great privilege and pleasure of spending a day with Jeff. The other day. And we were talking about these things. And one of the things that he said, and I really hope you don't mind me quoting you, Jeff, if I'm wrong, please stand up and correct me. I give you permission to do it. is that, not that I need to give Jeff any permission to do it.
He says, I don't lay any claims who have done great things for God, but if there is anything that has been built because of my life and my work, it is because of this. I persevered.
I persevered. I was, listening to a preacher a few weeks ago, a guy that I really like, somebody called John Tyson. He leads a church in New York, and he was talking about the devastation that he experienced when, when it was Covid time, he said more than a third of his church either died or left or moved.
And how it was just an incredibly difficult time for him in New York City. I don't know if you know, but it was really the epicenter of what was taking place nationally across America, where where people were just dying by the tens of thousands. And it was it was chaos. It was fear, anxiety, and and John said that as he was walking the streets and as he was trying to pray, he could only pray this one prayer on the corner that he went.
And in the squares that he went and went in, he said, here I stand. So he could say, and you go down to another street. Here I stand the prevailing forces of the world. Here I stand.
And I want you to know that we are here today, standing on the shoulders of giants. And particularly those that have pioneered and led this church for 40 years. Jeff and Pam, John and Julia, David and Gwen McGee. Maureen and Alan. Ray. Nannie. Helen. Jones, Stephen, Miriam, David, Sue, Mike and Ali. We are stood and in the case of Dave, Greg on the literal shoulders of giants.
And for 40 years we've been through much and more good times and really bad times. Times of joy and times of incredible challenge. And yet, here we stand.
But for us, church, the call is to go from glory to glory together, to push through and break through the gates of hell. God's kingdom is an ever increasing kingdom, and it's one that reaches down into a very dense and one that extends into all the world. It's a time of great change in our culture, and many, speaking of the time being, being pregnant for an outpouring of the spirit like we've never seen in our time.
For an awakening in society and a revival in the church. And we as a church, we're going through a time of change and a time of transition, a time of increase. That's what the word is. Come to us. A time of increase. And this comes from a relentless pursuit of Jesus. It comes from a yielding of our spirits to be transformed by God.
And it comes from a posture of perseverance. Do you see it? Do you want it? We work for the day of our King Jesus's return. We behold God to see his glory, and in that we're transformed by his very presence, by his very presence, and that freedom that we experience, we can come and we bring into the world from glory to glory.
And I just really felt that to encourage you guys. Great times ahead, hard times ahead. But God is with us. And if God is for us, who can stand against us? If you're willing, if you're part of this, if you want to be standing in that posture of perseverance, I just invite you to stand as we pray together.
Yeah.
If you could, if you're able to just. Just speak in tongues to yourself. If you can't speak in tongues, just pray your own prayer came in and God breathed and and got that? Yeah. And that I see. Man, I gotta an angle. Nanggala. Yeah. I'm gonna go. She meant that I see, yeah. Nanggala. Yeah, I see my nanggala Yama nanggala bro.
And that I see, you know? My God came on, Kimura nanggala.
And, father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the promises that we can come. We can stand by that we can live by father. That empowers us and fuel us to be able to live the life that you have called us to live. We thank you for the gift of your spirit, the spirit that not only comes and gives us incredible good gifts, but comes and takes residence inside of us that lives closer than anything possible and seeks to see us transformed and changed into your very likeness.
A glorious image.
And father, I just pray for those for those of us that are here that, maybe in some ways just just wearing the same old football strip.
And, father, that you would come and just speak into our hearts, that we would know that we can take it off and we can put on the new glorious football strip.
Father, for those of us that are growing through real time of challenge, real time of.
Problem.
I just pray that covenant would come alive afresh in us.
That there would be a spirit of Samwise Gamgee. Spirit of Arthur Wallace upon us all.
Where we want to go and help our brothers. Help our sisters. Lord, where we would want to lift them up and carry them where needed.
Father, I pray that there's anything in our hearts that is that is holding us against from each other, Lord, that you would come and reveal that to us, and Lord, that we would not leave this place today until we have gone, and at least resolved in our hearts that we are going to come up with a way of talking with people and and reconciling the Lord, that there would be no space for division or disunity, but that we would be a unified people.
Where your blessing comes in is commanded.
Lord, I pray that that we would see an an increase in transformation. And as we see that transformation take place in our lives, as we see that transformation take place in our community, that that we would find a compelling community created where people are just drawn to be with us because of Jesus in us.
And, Lord, this word of increase that we have over this church, this time of increase.
Father, I pray that that we would see that heaven's doors are open wide for us.
And that we have in our hands and at our disposal everything that we need to do. The job that you have called us to do.
And, father, that we would find that our hearts are like your very heart. And as we go amongst our family, as we go amongst our friends, in our workplaces, on the streets, in our neighborhoods, at university and schools, wherever it may be, father, that our hearts would burn like yours.
And that where we go we would be your hands and your feet. To see your kingdom come and your will done on earth, just as it is in heaven.
Father, we thank you. We pray this all in the mighty, glorious name of Jesus. Amen, Amen.