Welcome to the podcast of the White Church in Adelaide, South
Australia. We're going to hear from Hilary,
I believe first this morning just from her time in the Global
Equip. Global Equip recordings are
actually available online as well.
So I think there's a QR code that will flash up on the screen
later. We'd encourage you to go listen
to those as well because you can catch Revelation, the beauty of
recordings, the beauty of technology.
Hey, though you don't actually, we would love everyone to go
there because you catch something from the atmosphere,
but you can still catch Revelation from what has been
shared through recordings. So head online, the video to the
YouTube and stuff. So I'd encourage you to go
listen to those. We're going to hear from Hillary
this morning around some of the stuff that she got for us and
she got personally. So somebody want to pray for
Hillary as she comes and shares? OK, Craig's going to come.
Father, thank you for the gift that you've laid on Hillary,
Lord, and thank you for who you made our Lord.
Father, you hold a special place in your heart for her as you
hold a special place for us all. Father, this morning just pour
out that blessing. Pour out that love through her
and honor Lord and Lord, open our ears and our hearts to hear
what you've got to say through her.
Your humble servant. Lord, we thank you for in Jesus
name, Amen. Oh, you want that?
Yep. We'll need that.
Thank you. Awesome.
Thank you. Cool.
Well, thank you for having me. Speaking in front of people
doesn't like scare me, but I don't do it very often.
So lucky you all love me. Hey, and as I mentioned this
morning, there was a point this morning where I'm like, I don't
even think I should be sharing because my heart is just all
sorts of wrong right now. But I've applied some of the
things that I'm talking about this morning and here we are.
So yes, so we went to the Global Equip before we left, we
expressed that we had a bit of trepidation against about doing
it with the family. And what I've been saying to
people since we got home was that it was equal parts
beautiful and crazy hard all at the same time.
Many of you would know our flight from Perth to
Johannesburg got cancelled. And so we had 24 hours in Perth,
which was fun. And we got to catch up with a
girl that we used to know closely at Kingdom Life.
She's living in Perth now and that was a real treat.
But young kids, hotel rooms, late nights, hotel food, it was
just, it was a bit of a rocky start to the trip.
And then we landed in Johannesburg and Dave Progress
proceeded to get sick. And so it was just it was a
great first 48 hours was like I went to one of the other moms at
the Equip and I think the first thing that came out of me was
like, what have we done? But thankfully it got better
from there and I've come home and I would do it all again.
All things taken into account and part of the beautiful part
of it was yes, travelling as a family, like our cellular
family, but then travelling as a family.
I got to watch my kids press into Chantelle and Daniel and
Justin and and build those friendships.
You know, Chantelle held Aiden for ages.
She fell asleep on her. She, you know, it was just one
of those things where the the family of the white church that
was there, I feel grouped closer together in the process.
And it was really, really lovely.
And it's a part of the reason why us spending time together
meaningfully. And it's substantially knits us
together. Yeah.
And then throughout the equip, throughout the sessions, there
was just this constant through the prophetic words and through
the worship and through the messages, just this constant
encouragement just to keep on persevering, which I really felt
for us as a church. I can remember at one point
looking to Chantel and just being like everyone today has
been speaking into our context. It was just constant, like, you
know, keep on building, keep on persevering it, you know, it
might not look the way you expected it to at this point,
but keep going, don't lose, lose heart.
Just keep on keeping on, which was awesome.
I've just really felt so encouraged in that.
And then of course, it is personal things as well, one of
the things that grabbed my attention and has left me
pondering for myself personally and for us as a local church and
beyond. One of the speakers spoke about
being captivated by Jesus. I realized because I listened to
it again, I've been waiting for the podcast to come up so I
could catch up. And I realized that I actually
missed the first half of his message because I was out with
the baby realities. And the whole message is really,
really good. I would encourage you.
It was session 12 if you want to go and listen to the whole
thing. It was really, really good.
And then I sort of got a bit derailed because I was just
like, oh, I'm emphasizing something was emphasized to me
that wasn't his emphasis. And then I sort of felt God to
say, like, I knew I knew you weren't going to catch the first
half of it. I knew what you were going to
catch and you caught what you needed to catch.
So here we are. And So what he said was that he
was talking about being captivated by Jesus.
And he said he referred to the scripture where John says, if
you love me, you will keep my commandments.
And then he said, we've reduced love to obedience.
Do we have a lot of good obeyers in the room?
And I was like, oh, and you know, obedience is good.
And this is what he said. But we cannot forget that God
commands obedience, but he also commands our affection and our
love. And so I've spent a lot of time
pondering this for myself, and I can see that I do have a
tendency towards doing what I'm told in the word versus loving
and walking with my Heavenly Father who wants to know me and
for me to know him. So I, I think that I flip this
scripture in my brain and I say, if I obey Jesus, then I love him
or I prove my love for for Jesus by obeying him.
But The thing is this is that Jesus, God born of a woman to
live a life on earth, a sinless life, to take the the sins of
the world to the cross and and in doing so pay the price for us
that we could come back into relationship with God, that we
may have eternal life. But The thing is with eternal
life is that it's not about, it's not all about heaven.
It is about heaven. But God defines eternal life.
In John 17 he says eternal life is this, that we would know the
Father and Jesus Christ his Son. And so when we forget that part
of the gospel that what he paid for was that we could come back
into the presence of God and enjoy him and know him and walk
relationally with him, we're just missing the beauty of the
gospel. And we can't share the gospel
correctly if we don't have that revelation of relationship with
God. So we we can get to enjoy a part
of eternity right here in our day-to-day lives.
Paul says in Philippians 3, he says, indeed, I count everything
as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing
Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake.
I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish
in order that I may gain Christ. So our first fundamental goal in
our faith is to know and love our Saviour.
Jesus says in Matthew 22 that the greatest commandment is to
love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul, and
then love others as yourself. So Jesus does command our
obedience, and he also commands our love and affection.
And being mindful of the fact that I have a tendency towards
obedience, I've been reading the word a bit differently and
trying to swing myself the other way.
But what I've noticed is, is that love and obedience are
closely intertwined all the time.
So practically then, how do we grow in our love for God?
Well, first of all, I think that we need to have faith.
We have faith even just to proclaim that Jesus is our Lord
and Savior. But we have to have faith that
knowing God, loving God, him loving us, that it's even a
possibility and that it's available to us.
In Hebrews 11, it says without faith it is impossible to please
God because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists
and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
So we've got to have faith that this is even a possibility for
us. So the second thing that I think
we need to do is to delight in his word and his ways.
See, we come to know someone truly when we see what they do.
And that presents a bit of a problem when we Jesus is not
physically in front of us, but we have his word and we can see
his life in the in the New Testament, but we can also see
the nature of God throughout the Old Testament.
And so we can see in there what he loves, what he hates, what
hurts his heart, the things that makes him happy, the things that
makes him angry. And so through all of that, when
we switch our lens and say, God, I want to see you Jesus, I want
to see who you are throughout the whole scripture, then we
understand that we have an opportunity to come to know him
better. And, and, and the question is as
well, because sometimes when I'm reading the word, I go, I don't
understand that at all or God that doesn't match in my head
with who you are. Like I can't compute that.
And those things aren't contradictions.
They're opportunities for us to ask God questions and to grow in
our understanding and love for him.
I love Psalm 119. I feel like it's just, it's, I
think the biggest Psalm in the in the Bible.
And it, it goes on and on and on and, and the heartbeat of it is,
is really beautiful. And so I just want to pull out.
I mean, honestly, it's impossible.
You could read the whole thing and it would just drive this
point home. But I've just picked out a few
verses from the beginning. In verse 10 of Psalm 119, it
says with my whole heart I seek you.
In verse 11 it says, I have stored up your word in my heart
that I might not sin against you.
Blessed are you. Lord, teach me your statutes.
It's such a relational Psalm and it's amazing because it's Old
Testament in the ways of your testimonies.
I delight as much as in all riches to we delight in, in
God's ways his testimonies more so than the riches of this
world. It's challenging.
I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.
How much time do we spend meditating on who God is and His
ways and how it affects us because we're created in His
image, My soul. This is verse 20.
My soul is consumed with longing for Your rules at all times.
Verse 24. Your testimonies are my delight.
They are my counsellors. And so I would encourage you to
go on. I mean that Psalm.
You can pull out a section of it and pray it over yourself.
Because if this isn't in our heart, Lord, let it be My heart.
Lord, transform me into Your image.
This is how I want to long for You.
It's so beautiful. Psalm 37 says delight yourself
in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.
We like that one. I think that it's a whole.
It has a whole different meaning.
I believe that when we delight ourselves in Lord, then He
shifts out the desires of our hearts so that His desires are
our desires and then He can pull them out.
He can pull them out. Goes on to say commit your way
to the Lord, trust in Him and He will act.
I caught this when I was preparing he will bring forth
your righteousness as the light and the just and your justice as
the noonday. I just I realized that when you
commit your way to the Lord, this is committing to obey him
and this is what I'm when we trust in him, he will bring
forth our righteousness that I mean that's just incredible.
That's to me, that's saying when you trust me and you point your
path towards my ways, I will transform you.
I will make you like me incredible.
And so that leads me to my next point is that we do need to obey
love and obedience. They go hand in hand.
And so you know, I could have walked away from the trick from
the equipped going, Oh, stop being so obsessed with obeying
God and just love him. But but they're not you can't
have one without the other. They go hand in hand.
So it's a part of our process of growing in our love for God that
we obey him. In Colossians one verse 9, it
says for this reason, we also since the day we heard it, do
not cease to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with
the knowledge, filled with the knowledge of his will in all
wisdom and spiritual understanding that you may work
walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him, being fruitful in
every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.
So every good work increasing in knowledge, it's just they go
hand in hand. And so we cannot emphasize one
over the other. It's got to be both always.
And so I'm a pretty practical person.
I know lots of you in this room are very well versed in this,
but we've got a lot of young believers along the way with us
and we're trusting for more. And so we've got to understand
that when we're talking about obedience to God, some people
might just be like, what are you actually talking about?
And so I just wanted to bring some really practical examples
that we've that we've applied, I guess throughout our lives.
We will have heard Dave speak about some of these in the past,
so I'm not going to repeat some of them.
But when we first came back to God, there were major things in
our lives that we had to shift. One of them was the choice to
come to church. And that might seem pretty
obvious. Most people go like, I'm
pursuing God and church goes hand in hand with that.
But I was working at the time at at a service station and my boss
had just rosted me on the coffee shift for Sunday mornings.
And so, you know, I'm like, I've gone to my boss.
I'm like, I'm really sorry, but those shifts that I said that I
can do, I can't do anymore. And, and I explained to him why
and thankfully he was very gracious and he was like, that's
important, that's fine. And I'll make adjustments.
But the point is, is that when we're convicted in our hearts,
sometimes we have to make sacrifices.
And so, and for us and for me personally, that was one thing
that I had to sacrifice and God honoured me and and I was well
looked after, but that was just a reality.
Sometimes, you know, there are things that are important to us,
whether it be important to us because of God and we have to be
willing to go, this is your way. And God, if I have to sacrifice
something to be a part of this, then I'm going to trust you to
honor me and and provide for me because I'm honoring you first.
Another thing that's this is an ongoing work in progress, but
was just the understanding of love and any one of you who
knows me knows that first Corinthians 13 is like a life
scripture for me, but it's constant throughout my
relationship with my husband, with my kids, with the people
around me that I love. The constant reminder.
See the 1st Corinthians 13 isn't a commandment, but it is a
definition of who God is. And so when we read, when we're
reading, love is patient, love is kind, love bears no record or
wrongs, love endures. These are things that we, when
we're as we're reading the word, we align ourselves to them.
And so when I'm dealing with my husband, sorry, babe, all my
kids am, am I being patient? You know, am I being kind?
Am I keeping record? Am I keeping score?
It and, and again, it's not that's an easy relationship for,
for you to apply it to, but it actually applies to all
relationships. And so, and this is just I'm
trying to bring examples of how we align ourselves with God's
word throughout our daily lives. Another one for us was our
finances. We've been following God since
2015 and probably about 18 months ago we finally got on
board with His way of doing our money.
And now I'm not talking about giving.
Giving was something that we started way back from the
beginning and we've consistently done that for as long as we've.
That was one of the things that we changed in the beginning.
But I'm talking about breaking up with the idea that credit
cards are OK, breaking up with the idea that that debt is a
part of our life. We still have a mortgage, but we
have eliminated all other debt from our life.
We don't. I don't do after pay.
We don't do credit cards. We don't do personal loans.
If we don't have the cash for something, we don't do it.
And that is one of God's ways. In Deuteronomy, God lays out all
the blessings and all the curses for his people.
They will borrow, they will lend, but they will not borrow
is a blessing and a curse is that they will borrow and not
lend. And so when we understand that
this is God's way and I want to do life God's way, then we align
ourselves to things. And it's a process.
It's a growing process. As we read the Word, we might
change one thing today and then we come back to that same
scripture and we change another thing.
But God speaks to us and we submit our lives to him and we
put him first and we trust him with all the details and and as
I said before, when we commit our way to the Lord, trust him,
he will bring forth our righteousness.
Amazing. So as I close, I kind of walked
away from what I was feeling to share.
And I'm just like God. We've spoken about obedience so
much over the last few years. Like, is it just me that's not
getting this? Like, do I need to share this to
the whole church? And the thing that stuck out to
me was that this was emphasized message after message at the
Global Equip. And so it makes me wonder, maybe
God's bride needs to grow in her love and obedience.
God's ways are radical in today's culture.
Like fancy telling anyone that you don't do after pay.
Fancy telling anyone that I won't borrow money to buy a car,
or whatever the case may be. People will look at you like
you've got 2 heads. Fancy telling people that I
choose not to bear any record of wrong?
God's ways are radical, and when we submit ourselves to the ways
of the world around us, we lose our saltiness, we lose our
light, we lose the thing that sets us apart from everything
else around us. And so we need to come back to
loving God, loving His ways, and being obedient to them.
But it's got to be from a place of love.
If you are coming to God's word like a rule book of things that
you have to do, you're not living in joy and peace and
freedom, you're bound. So we've got to love God 1st and
obey him freely and cheerfully. And yeah.
And so my final question, well statement I guess is in Matthew
6, Jesus said where your treasure is, there your heart
will be also. And so can I encourage us.
Let us treasure Jesus and let us love him and follow him, and
from that place change the world around us.
Good job. I'll give you a kiss later.
Oh, so good. Yeah.
Like I feel like I've been talking about obedience for, you
know, I talk about it all the time, but then you hear someone
else talk about it and you're just like, oh, I just got to
start reapplying some of these things, you know, like we need
to hear other voices. We need to, you know, if we hear
the same thing over and over from the same person, we get
dull of hearing. And so, yeah, it's it's good to
have other voices speaking. And I'm not going to take a
whole lot of time here. You know, we're just going to go
over the same ground. But you know, some of the things
that we've, we've spoken about, we've heard in the last couple
of weeks, our takeaways from, from, you know, me personally
from being away. You know what Hillary shared
this morning about, you know, coming back and, and just, you
know, manning the the wall again and just continue to build and,
and keep pushing in and don't be discouraged.
And all of those things like I've come back, you know, just
with a, with a new, new, another freshness, just a ready to go
for another season. And so, you know, where we're
building it, We're still building, we're still pushing
in. We're still trusting that God is
faithful. And you know, obedience and
fruitfulness huge, just, you know, huge themes in all of the,
the equip, all of the meetings and fruitfulness for us is
something that we, we, we're dreaming of seeing.
We are pushing in. We are trusting God for we are
seeing, you know, we're seeing a little bit of it.
And we're like, Lord, come on, show us.
Show us your mighty hand. Lord, show us your mighty hand
to save. And so expecting into this
coming season that we're going to see more and more
fruitfulness. We're going to see more and more
people coming to know him. Like I've said this before, we
want this church, we want to see this church grow through
salvations. We don't want to see this church
just grow through Christians coming from other places.
We want to see the gospel do its thing.
We want to see the Lord do he sing.
And that's what we're hungry for, that people would come to
know him and how good he is and know his ways and step into his
ways and sacrifice and, and give it all up for him and for his
Kingdom. Amen.
This is a king and the Kingdom that we're a part of, that we
celebrate, that we lift higher. You know, So one of the things
that Ty had said during one of these meetings, and he said it
before, I've taken note of it before.
He said something about, I'm not going to quote him word for
word, but it's just like God works in you to work through you
and it as he works through you. So it's all happening at the
same time. It's not this one first and then
that first. God doesn't just, you know, you
have to work and work and work and work so that you can be
used. It's like someone that is saved
is equipped to be able to share what they just received and, and
what saved them with the next person in the moment.
You know, you don't have to go through the the course to become
this and that to be able to be effective in sharing the gospel.
You know the gospel, you receive the gospel, the gospel saved
you. You've got something to share.
Now it's the gospel that saves it not it's not, you know your
testimony, it's not your the way that you're walking in and out.
It's none of those things. It's the gospel, the gospel that
saves. So we're all equipped to share
the gospel and God's working in US so that he can work through
US. And the in US is, is
sanctification. You know, this is this is like
the being obedient. This is like The Walking this
thing out. This is like taking on God's
ways and allowing your own ways to wash away.
So, you know, we might have to continue to talk about
sanctification because we do have new believers in our midst
now. And we're going to have to teach
them how to walk this thing out. But all of us need a good
reminder of that we're being sanctified and that we haven't
made it. You know, I certainly need to
hear that, but Jesus, like, why, you know, why did Jesus come?
Can I ask the question of you guys, why did Jesus come anyone?
Because this is what we would say, right?
For salvation, for restoration, that we would be saved.
But that's not necessarily why why Jesus came.
It's one of the reasons Jesus came.
It's certainly what the gospel is about.
Jesus came to reveal the Father. He came to reveal God so that we
would know who God was, so that we could be reconnected with
God. That's what salvation is.
It's the reconnecting with God. Jesus came to reveal the Father.
Jesus restores us and puts His Spirit in US.
Why? Why does God save us, put his
spirit of in US and leave us here on the planet to reveal the
Father, to reveal Jesus? That's the reason, you know that
that's huge. It's why Jesus came.
It's why we're here. It's why we're being conformed
into his image, All of those things.
Jesus doesn't just conform his US into his image so that we
become good again, so that others can see him.
God is Jesus is all about revealing God.
And so This is why we gather. This is why we're here today,
that Jesus would be revealed in US and through us.
This is why we come together in our homes.
This is why we share the gospel that Jesus would be revealed.
All of those things. I love that.
It's a pretty simple truth, isn't it?
Like Lord, I just want to reveal you.
I, I don't want to be obedient for the sake of just following
the law. I want people to see you.
I want people to know who you are, you know, and that's why we
can get excited about being obedient and following his ways,
because when we follow his ways, people see his ways.
It's pretty cool. I love how, you know, we come
together, the global equip, we come together.
You know, our time of worship and praise is a special thing
when there's thousands of people in a room.
But can I say that it's not just because of the number of the
amount of people in the room, There is a commitment to
praising him in that room. And I was pondering that over
over the last week or even at our time there.
Why is it that when we come together for the global equip,
when we come together in a larger context, you know, our
national elders time when we come together for our national
equips and stuff like that. Why is it that it seems like
when we stand together and we worship, it just seems like the
presence of God is there in a really powerful way.
Why is that? And I was thinking about that
and I think, you know, I you know, I think part of the reason
that that is manifest in those places is because we have
sacrificed something to be there.
And I was reminded of two Samuel 24, verse 24.
It says the king said to Ara Nana, I did not pronounce that
right. Anyway, this is David.
King David says this. He says nor will Ioffer burnt
offerings to the Lord my God, that which did not cost me
anything. So we're talking about this,
this place where the Temple Mount's going to be.
And King David says I will buy it.
I will buy the oxen. I will buy the things for the
temple because this guy was going to just going to give it.
He was just like, oh, you, you God take it.
It's for the Lord, you take it. And this is what David says.
He says I will not offer anything to the Lord that
doesn't cost me anything. And there is a really cool
glimpse into the heart of not only David, but the heart of God
because we know that this is 1 after my own heart in David.
So we wouldn't want to offer God anything that doesn't cost us
anything. And so when we get on a plane
and when we travel over to the other side of the earth and when
we give up finances, when we give up time, when we take time
off of our jobs, when we load all the kids up and take them in
a plane, all of these things, you know, it costs us something.
It costs us something. And, and it's a very special
thing because when it costs us something, it means something to
us. We are there to offer something
to him because he's worthy. We are willing to take the take
the hit. We're willing to pay the price.
You know, the value, there's value when we worship him.
You know, you can measure the how much you worship God in your
life by how much it costs you. That's a that's a real truth
glass. If you coming to be church to at
church if you coming to be a part of the family of God, if
you you know, sacrificing to to follow the Lord cost you
something that is demonstrating his value to you.
But you know who sees that? Everyone, right?
The people that you're witnessing to at each other in
this room. When we look at the sacrifices
you and I are willing to make, we see that God is worthy.
It's a powerful thing. And so This is why people are
looking at our lives. You know, it says that, you
know, like people read our lives, especially the unsaved
people. They're looking at you and I and
they're trying to work out whether what we say is true or
not. And it's not just through the
words that we speak. It's not through quoting the
scripture that we know is true. Mate, let me just read you this
scripture because it's the Word of God.
It's true. They don't know that.
So how are they measuring whether what you say is true or
not? Through your willingness to
sacrifice, through your willingness to walk this thing
out, right? Isn't that cool?
My gosh. So I don't have too much more to
say other than that, but we got things coming up guys.
You know, there's there's there's a together night that is
going to be a time for us to come together at Kingdom Life.
We're going to come together as different churches, NCMI
partnering churches in our city. We're going to come together.
We're going to come together and worship.
It's going to take some sacrifice for us to get down
there and do that. I think it's going to be a
Sunday night, Sunday PM. You know, we're going to be
potentially, we're going to be tied from from our day and all
of those things we might have to sacrifice together.
Why is it important to be there? Because we want to be a part of
what God's doing in our city. We're this church is a global
church. We're partnered with churches
all around the world, but we're partnered with churches in our
city. And it's important for us to
come together as the church in our city and hear what God's
saying and worship the Lord together, be a part of the
bigness and national elders. Time is in Adelaide.
Wow, that's a relief, isn't it? We don't need to get in a plane
and go somewhere like you don't, But there's an opportunity to
come and serve at this thing, you know, because like this,
that's quite a big event. There's passes and and stuff
from all over our country. They're going to come together.
There's got to be opportunities for us to sacrifice and to and
to serve and and to play our part.
You know, these, I'm just, I'm highlighting some of the ways
that we can get, get, you know, involved in the bigger church.
There is opportunities for us. Obviously there's later next
year, there's going to be our, our national equip, our
Australia equip, you know, in Sydney, a bunch of us.
I'm sure we're going to get on a plane.
We're going to go over there. I would encourage everyone.
Tony's going, Tony's nodding. Tony's going.
Good on you, Tony. Tony's coming along, you know,
Christian, his son's going. He's so you're excited about
that, right? It's going to be a good time.
There is an opportunity for us to to come and, and, and go
somewhere together. Even like Hillary was sharing
today. It's like when we go away
together and when we, like, you know, live our lives in another
place and have to look after each other and take care of each
other, we grow. We grow in our friendship, we
grow in our relationship. It's very special.
Such an opportunity to be a part of that.
OK, the, the final thing that I'll just say is that, you know,
I was thinking about our, you know, our community groups and,
you know, quite often I think about, you know, we, we have
this understanding that we go for ourselves.
Like I go to the community group because you know, like we're
going to, it's just like what I can get, you know, like I can
grow in that place. You know, we're going to unpack
the word together. We're going to pray together.
I can get a lot out of that. And it's true, I get a lot out
of our time together at the community, right?
But it's bigger than that. And it's getting bigger than
that because we're seeing people that are unsaved coming and
sitting in these rooms. And that means that we're
required to be there, not for your sake, for their sake.
You know, I've really enjoyed like seeing us interact with
these people and sharing and, and speaking about what God's
doing in our lives and stuff like that.
And that's not coming through the leadership, that's coming
through us as a people. And so put AI just I'm trying to
stir us up to know that you've got something inside of you that
the Lord has put something in each and every one of us that he
wants to come out. He wants to reveal himself in US
and through us. So we have to come together.
We have to be together so that what God's put in US can flow in
US and through us because you know, when we're when we are,
when we're the words just left my brain.
When you use what God's given you, God gives you more.
When you're faithful with a little, God gives you more.
This is the principle when you hold back what the Lord's put in
you because you know, for various reasons, some are real,
you might be tired and all of the busy week, whatever, when
you hold back from going and pouring out, you're missing an
opportunity for God to put more in.
We are being conformed into the image of our God and that just
doesn't happen. You know, that just doesn't
happen through just time, you know, like, you know, if, if
there's just a lot of time, then I'll become like him.
That just doesn't happen like that.
You know what it reminds me of when when they say, you know,
evolution and stuff like that. Yeah, if we can just say that it
took a really long time, then it can make sense.
Things just don't happen, right. It's going to take us being
actually diligent and pushing in and doing the things that God's
calling us to do and, and using the muscle, you know, using the
muscle that God's put in US. And then and then he is formed
in US and through US. Amen.
So I'm just going to hand over
to Justin and hopefully you can land this thing and thank you,
bro. Yeah, but we give him give both
of them a round of applause. Hey, I was thinking just like
how how do we respond to what these guys have shared and Dave
sharing on sacrifice. So I was just thinking about
what you were sharing, Hillary, around love and obedience.
And you know that both take sacrifice.
Yeah. It it cost me something to buy
flowers for my wife. It cost me my preferences when I
want to spend time with her, when I want to show an interest
in her, it cost me something and also cost me something to show
obedience to God. And so both love and obedience
cost us something. And the reward it's is amazing.
But in the moment, it cost us something.
I'll just we're just going to respond just to one of those two
camps. I just feel even in me just God
has highlighted to us as individuals, whether it's your
love for him or whether it's your obedience to him, his and
God just threw what Hillary was sharing is just kind of going
hey, like love, love me, love me, love me.
Or maybe you're in the camp where God is just pinpointed an
area, or even as some of the practical areas that Hillary was
mentioning or some of the areas that Dave was mentioning where
God's kind of going, hey, this, this needs some obedience.
This needs to just line up again with my word.
So if we take a moment just to bow our heads and just to honor
the work of the Holy Spirit in this place, Father, we come
before you, we offer our hearts on the back of these words.
As Dave said, you're working in us as you work through us.
And so we just open our hearts to you, Lord, if there's an area
where our affection has waned, where we haven't put you first,
where we're not sacrificing to show you a love for you, we pray
would you show us that area? And we repent and we said, Lord,
we will make you our first love again.
We make you our first love again.
And Lord, that area that you've highlighted in our life that
doesn't quite line up with your words, with your commands, we
surrender it to you. And we've just asked, would your
Holy Spirit come and center us again?
Would your Holy Spirit come and realign and cause us to obey?
And so we lay our hearts before you, we lay our thoughts before
you and we pray, Holy Spirit, would you do a work in us as we
go out from this place in Jesus name, God's people said Amen.
Awesome guys. Thank you again Dave and Hillary
for sharing. That was great.
Thank you for joining us for today's message.
For more information about The Way Church, please visit
ourwebsite@thewaychurch.com dot AU.
Have a blessed day.