OK, so the reading today is from Acts chapter 14, verses 1 to 20.
That's on page 1109. In the newish green Bibles at
Iconium, Paul and Barnabas went as usual into the Jewish
synagogue. There they spoke so effectively
that a great number of Jews and Greeks believed.
But the Jews who refused to believe stirred up the other
Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers.
So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there,
speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of His
grace by enabling them to perform signs and wonders.
The people of the city were divided.
Some sided with the Jews, others with the apostles.
There was a plotter for among both Jews and Gentiles, together
with their leaders to I'll treat them and stone them.
But they found out about it and fled to the Lyconian cities of
Lystra and Derby and to the surrounding country, where they
continue to preach the gospel. In Lystra there sat a man who
was lame. He had been that way from birth
and had never walked. He listened to Paul as he was
speaking. Paul looked directly at him so
that he had faith to be healed, and called out.
Stand up on your feet. At that the man jumped up and
began to walk. When the crowd saw what Paul had
done, they shouted in the Laconian language.
The gods have come down to us in human form.
Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes because
he was the chief speaker. The priestess Use, whose temple
was just outside the city, brought balls and wreaths to the
city gates because he and the crowd wanted to offer sacrifices
to them. When the apostles Barnabas and
Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out
into the crowd, shouting, Friends, why are you doing this?
We too are only human like you. We are bringing you good news,
telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living
God who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything
in them. In the past He let all nations
go their own way, and He has not left himself without testimony.
He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops
in their seasons. He provides you with plenty of
food and fills your hearts with joy.
Even with these words, their difficulty keeping the crowd
from sacrificing to them. Then some Jews came from Antioch
and Iconium and won the crowd over.
They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, thinking he
was dead, but after the disciples had gathered around
him, he got up and went back into the city.
The next day, he and Barnabas left for Derby.
Thank you so much. Fabulous.
We have a clicker. Do we have a clicker that works?
We'll find out in a minute. Hello.
It's so good to be here. Yeah, it works.
You've got question cheats as well.
So if you want a question sheet, sorry, put your hand up and I
will do it. He comes to say preach, and then
he interrupts me at the first opportunity.
Unbelievable. Yeah.
So please keep your Bibles open. We're going to, we're going to
particularly focus on the kind of middle portion of, of Acts
14. But as Richard said, I've been,
I've been meeting with Richard for about 5 years and praying
with him. And which means I pray for you
all of the time. I'm regularly praying for you.
And so it's really, it's a real privilege to be here.
But I, even though I've been praying for you, I've never,
I've been here 15 years and I've never come to Ave.
And so it's great to be here. And so that's kind of the first
thing I say. I, I, you're, I want to tell
you, you're weird. You're really, do you know how
weird you are? Do you know how strange this is?
You are on a Sunday morning in church.
Do you know what everyone else is doing right now?
They are maybe sleeping. They might be taking their kids
to football. They might be reading.
They might be doing the gardening, doing a tip run.
They might be going for run. They are not in church.
And that is weird. And, and in church, you are
singing in public with other people who can hear you.
And you might not even be very good at singing, but you're
singing anyway. Like, that is really, really
weird. And it's not just on a Sunday.
Is it midweek? Many of you give up.
You put the kids up, you wrestle them into bed and instead of
doing what everyone else does, I'm told, and you sit down with
a nice glass of wine and watch the next episode of The Night
Manager. You are going out to a small
group to study a 2000 year old book, talk about your feelings,
and pray for one another to an invisible God.
That is weird. OK, It's really, really strange.
Many of you or some of you will be involved in helping and
teaching nought to a teams the Bible.
That's weird. OK.
And when you get your pay cheques at the end of the month,
you take 10%, don't you? You take a chunk of your money,
let's say, and you give it away. That is weird.
Do you know how weird you are? Yes.
OK, good. We're all and it's not just you,
it's Christians. It's me.
Why are you weird? Because Acts 18 says that you
have been sent into a culture that is different from your own.
As Christians, this shapes our culture and we've been sent into
a world that does not have this culture and increasingly is
being removed from it. And, and you know this from the
book of Acts. It starts off in Jerusalem, it
starts off with the gospel in Jerusalem and then moves to
Judea and Samaria, the surrounding area, and then to
the ends of the earth. That is why we're here today,
because the gospel went out to the ends of the earth.
That is why we are here. And so we're weird because we're
in a culture that is different to the culture that God has
called us to live in. And what we're seeing in this
bit of the book of Acts, as I know that, you know, is the kind
of first engagement with Gentile culture.
It started as a Jewish thing and it's moved into the Gentile
world. And today we get the first
sermon given to a Gentile people group.
And so the question is how, how are Paul and Barnabas going to
act among a people that are totally foreign to them?
And therefore, how should we act among a people that have a
different culture to us? And I want us to see two.
There we go. There's a map.
OK, cool. I want to see two dangers as we
take the message of Jesus out. Holy Spirit, you're here.
This is your words. These are your people.
And so, Spirit of God, would you just work in us this morning as
we come with humility and fear and trembling to your word in
Jesus name, Amen. Two dangers.
The first danger is this compromising with culture.
I'm going to come back to the first 7 verses a little bit
later, but just to kind of summarize where we've got to the
start off at Iconium. Wait, then the map is important.
OK, Iconium, it's in Galatia. We're in Sat next to Noah and
we're going, how do you pronounce the DERBE 1?
Is it Derby? Because then you've got kind of
Leicester and Derby there, haven't you?
We're not quite sure, but Lystra and Derby we're going with, I
don't know, but we start off in in Iconium in verse one and
well, it, it starts off really, really good.
There's salvation in the synagogue.
Things are going really well, but there's Jewish unbelief and
that causes them to stir up the people.
And there's a plot to kill Paul and Barnabas.
Verse 5. And then so they run away.
They run away from Iconium to Derby.
And, and that's where we're going to pick things in
Leicester, not Derby. We're going to pick things up in
Lystra in verse 8. I'm confusing myself, OK.
Verse 8IN Lystra, there's a man who was lame.
He'd been that way from birth. He'd never walked.
He listened to Paul as he was speaking.
Paul looked directly at him and he saw the faith he had to be
healed and called out. Stand up on your feet.
At that, the man jumped up and began to walk.
If you're planting a church in a new area and it starts off like
this. And he got a pretty good start,
right? Like I know you guys have
planted off into Esmon. So like anyone who's planting a
church or doing a ministry in a new area, this is like the dream
start basically. They absolutely smashed it.
And what's fascinating, we don't have time, but if you go back to
Acts 3, when Peter goes to the temple gate, beautiful and sees
a man, that is a lot of the same language going on here.
Peter looks directly at the man and all there's there's you can
have a look at it in your own time.
But I think what's happening is Luke is pointing out to us what
God has done in Jerusalem, he's now doing among the Gentiles.
Like this is a really, really good start.
And then it turns sideways slightly.
Verse 11. When the crowd saw what Paul had
done, they shouted in the Likeeonian language.
The gods have come down to us in human form, which is how I think
they sound. Barnabas called Zeus and Paul
and they called her and Paul. They called Hermes because he
was the chief speaker. The priest of Zeus, whose temple
was just outside the city, bought balls and wreaths to the
city gates because he and the crowd wants to offer sacrifices
to them. Less than ideal.
Like that's not how they anticipated this going.
And this feels really weird. Why Zeus and Hermes, like, why
do they presume these guys? I was asking that question and
it turns out that there was like a, a cultural myth in this
particular specific city that a few 100 years before Zeus and
Hermes had visited them. There was this understanding
that's what happened. But nobody had recognised them
and nobody had shown them hospitality.
So Zeus and Hermes, disguised as humans, rocked up.
Nobody cared that they were there apart from one couple.
And this couple welcomed them into the home.
And then eventually, over the meal, I think, the cups kept
magically refilling. And they realised, oh, it's the
gods, they're here. But Zeus and Hermes were so
angry. They said, we are going to flood
the city, We're going to destroy it totally.
And so this couple, they go to high ground, the city is
destroyed. And the legend had it that this
couple's house became the temple.
And when they, instead of dying, they became trees outside the
temple. And so this is in the cultural
mindset of this city. That's fascinating, isn't it?
And so when we read Zeus and Hermes, this isn't just random
things written by a guy who's making up a story.
There's real cultural accuracy in this.
It makes sense that Zeus and Hermes are the ones they think
it is. And so when Paul and Barnabas
rock up and go and start healing fools like they go, what on
earth is it must be Zeus and Barnabas return.
They don't want to be wiped out again.
They don't want another flood to come.
So they go. We're going to worship them and
welcome them properly. And so that's what they do.
But I don't know about you, but if this was me, I've got a
slight temptation here. It's just to let them get on
with it. Do you know what I mean?
Like they've just been almost stoned, like they've been almost
executed for preaching. And now Can you imagine that
there's a slight bit of fear for them?
If we correct them, if we tell them what they're doing is
wrong, what are they going to do to us?
And they might stay silent. But probably more likely for me
is they've had a hard journey. Like it's been, it's been a
tough Rd. It's been a they've been away
from home for a while and now there's some people and they are
showing them some real hospitality.
Like these guys are amazing. Let's worship them as God.
Is there not a slight part of you that would go, ah, we'll let
it slide. We'll just, we'll just let them
get on with it. This is quite nice, really.
It's been a long time. You know, they're massaging my
feet. They're putting crowds on my
hair. Like, let's just go with it.
Is it not a small? Is that just me?
I don't know. It's OK.
Sorry. Just me.
My bad. I won't be invited back.
But what do they do? They're not motivated by fear.
They're not motivated by comfort.
But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of this, they
tore their clothes, rushed out of the crowd, shouting, Friends,
why are you doing this? We too are only human like you.
We're bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these
worthless idols to the the living God who made the heavens
and the earth and the sea and everything in them.
In the past. He let all the nations go their
own way. Yet He has not left himself
without testimony. He has shown kindness by giving
you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons.
He provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with
joy. They don't stay quiet.
What do they do? They do three things.
Firstly, they correct their error.
We're not gods. Sorry.
This is lovely, but we're not gods.
They challenge false thinking. Your idols are worthless.
They're not Zeus and Hermes. Wonderful.
They're not real gods and they point to the truth.
Zeus, go to the air, lightning, all that kind of stuff.
We saw Percy Jackson at the Curve last night.
Wonderful. Brilliant.
Your your God is the God of the air.
Our God is the God of the land and the sea and the earth and
the air and everything in it. The challenge?
False thinking. Basically, they're saying
something that our culture hates.
Not all religions are equal. There is the truth that is found
in Jesus and there are false religions and they don't know
what's going to happen to them when they say this, but they say
it anyway. And I think about my own life
and I think about the opportunities I have had to
share my faith that I've just totally missed.
I was speaking to someone earlier this week and he was
telling me his experience of how when he hangs out with
Christians or he sees Christians, that they will say
one thing and live another way. And yet his experience was that
when he spends time with Muslims, there's a real
integrity to them. And inside I'm dying.
And what do I say? Nothing.
Which means the impression he gets as he leaves that
conversation is that I'm in agreement with him and the glory
which should go to God goes to Allah.
Because of my silence as a church, because I was afraid.
I was afraid. Let's just be honest, I was
afraid that if I challenged if I go actually that's not my
perception at all that that I see totally differently to that
that I would lose some relational capital with him.
He might get crossed him. It might I might look weird to
him. As a church, we we do loads of
stuff in our community. I've already said that and that
means people in the community think quite highly of us, which
is wonderful. It's lovely.
And people say things like, you know, when I come in the church
building, I just feel the sense of peace and it's wonderful.
And everyone I meet from your church is, is so kind and lovely
and generous with their time and and wonderful and, and the
temptation and, and what I have done many times is just go.
That's so nice to hear. Where does the glory go there?
To us? Because we're great, aren't we?
We're great, lovely people. But what?
What do? What do we do in that situation?
Because the reality is, anything good in US, it doesn't come from
us, does it? It comes from God who is at work
in US. What an opportunity to go.
I'm so pleased you've noticed. Can I tell you?
Can I tell you that actually we're not any better than anyone
else, or any worse, actually, God has worked in US and he's
making us more like Jesus. That's what I could say.
But so often by my silence I deny God glory.
And yet these guys, they can't stay silent, can they?
They tear their clothes, they rush into the crowd.
Do you, do you see their zeal for the glory of the Lord?
There are other gods getting glory.
They're getting glory, and they're having none of it.
And I just go, where's my zeal for the Lords?
Where's my desire for his name and his renown that overrides my
comfort or my fear of, of telling people about my faith?
Where's my brokenness at the lostness in the world around me?
So often we just go through just plod through life and the zeal
just runs dim and we we stop seeing how lost people really
are. The danger is that we compromise
with culture. That's all the same.
Doesn't really matter what I believe you believe.
We might not say that, but we sometimes act like it.
The second danger is that we ignore culture.
There are loads of sermons in the book of Acts.
You'll know this if you've read it.
And they're all different, but they all got similarities up
until this point. So this is the sermon in Acts 2
on the day of Pentecost that Peter gives.
And I've highlighted all of the times that Peter refers to the
Old Testament. So this is Acts 2.
Those are all the Old Testament references.
This is Acts 3. These are all the Old Testament
references. So it's maybe slightly less, but
there we go. This is, you know, when Stephen
was martyred. This is his speech and all the
it's basically all Old Testament like this dude know knew his
stuff. This is actually Paul last
chapter when he's preaching in the synagogue again, loads of
Old Testament. Let me show you the Old
Testament references in Acts 14, this little sermon.
There we go. Nothing.
He doesn't quote the Bible once. Is it even a sermon?
Like what's what's going on here?
Well, he's not speaking to Jews anymore.
He's speaking to Gentiles, isn't he?
And so he does look slightly different.
He speaks about what they know, idols.
Verse 15 a He speaks about what they have seen in the world, the
earth, the natural order of things.
Verse 17 he speaks about what they have experienced, what they
know, what they see, and what they experience.
In other words, he starts with where they're at.
He starts by stepping into their culture before he brings them
into his culture. He brings the timeless truths of
the gospel in a language the culture can understand.
Timeless truths of the gospel and a language the culture can
understand. Imagine we're going on a journey
to, well, Derby, let's say Derby.
And that's what you look like. If you're in a car with me, they
are stairs of terror. And if I'm going to take you on
this journey, what's the first thing I do is I go to your house
and I pick you up, right? I pick you up and then we go to
Derby. If I just go straight to Derby,
I've missed you, right? I've totally missed you.
But so often in our mission, in our evangelism, we do that.
We we don't go to where people are.
We just go straight to where we want to take them and we miss
them. But that's not what Paul and
Barnabas do. They step into their culture.
They go to their house before they take them to the gospel.
They use their culture and see where does it intersect with the
good news of Jesus. And there is a danger for the
evangelical church. As culture, it feels like
culture removes further and further away from where the
Bible is. You saw the votes this last week
in the House of Lords and I know complicated, all that kind of
stuff. It feels like culture is
constantly moving further away from where the Bible causes us
to live. The danger from that is we we
stop. Well, the, the danger is that
actually the, the biblical understanding, the biblical
framework that culture has had in previous generations, it no
longer does. Many of the people we're working
with and many of the people who have come to faith in the last
few years have never been to church before.
They don't know any of the Bible stories.
It's like it's brand new to them.
And so if we start with how we might have articulated the
gospel or what we might have expected of people in terms of
biblical literacy, we're going to miss the mark totally.
It'd be like Paul going into into Lystra and going and
talking about the Messiah and talking about the prophets and
talking about the old. They wouldn't have a clue.
They've got no framework for it. And so there is a danger that we
ghettoize as culture moves away, that we just form this Christian
culture and we just look inward because it's safe here.
When they call the gospel is always look out.
But the the problem is in order to understand the culture, in
order to understand how the gospel intersects with culture,
we need to be in culture. We work with Christian vision
for men quite a lot and they have a four point evangelistic
strategy. And the first point is get some
mates. And if you don't have mates,
borrow someone else's. And it's really hard, actually,
the older you get to maintain relationships with people who
aren't followers of Jesus. Do you have people that you're
doing life with who aren't followers of Jesus, who aren't
in this church or other churches?
I know it's difficult to life is busy, right?
Do you have about ability to understand what makes people
tick? Because the reality is our
culture, I think, is driven by three things.
Justice. That's what cancel culture is
all about. It's about justice and identity.
Who am I and hope or lack of? We live in a hopeless world.
And friends, the gospel intersects with those three in
beautiful places. But are we with people who don't
know Jesus to listen to what their hopes and dreams are, to
listen to how they shape and form their identity, to be able
to speak into these things and go actually, as a Christian,
this is what I believe. And we're we're frightened
because because we don't want to come across as weird.
But I think we've already established, haven't we?
You're weird. OK.
So it's OK. Let's get over that together.
We can have these conversations. It's OK to communicate the
timeless truth of the gospel and the language culture can
understand. To do that, we need to be in
culture. And when we do this, I think we
can expect to see two things from our passage.
Firstly, we can expect to see fruit.
Verse one, they spoke so effectively that a great number
of Jews and Greeks believed. Verse three, they were speaking
boldly and the Lord confirmed His message of grace by enabling
them to perform signs and wonders.
Lord, do it again in our day. Verse 10 stand up on your feet.
And the man jumped up and was healed and began to walk.
When we go out with the gospel of Jesus, the good news of
Jesus, when we engage with culture, we can expect to see
fruit. And you know what, we are living
in a time where the fruit is ripe.
So long in the evangelical church, it's been, come on, give
it a go and it's going to be really hard and you might see
odds and ends. But we are moving into a
different season. We are starting to see a greater
openness to the gospel of Jesus. And what I think is happening is
as cultures moved away from the Bible, there is now a curiosity
about it. Do you know the Bible sales went
up by record amounts last year. People are just buying the Bible
and reading it. We've just, we're going to next
term, we're going to do Alpha, not alpha.
We're going to do the Bible course.
We run alpha regularly for non believers.
We're going to run the Bible course for non believers.
Well, I'll let you know how it goes.
But we're going to have, if you started reading the Bible in the
last year, do you want to come and let us explain it to you?
I don't know. We'll see what happens, but
we'll, we'll give it a go. I think there's an increased
curiosity. We've you've probably heard
about the quiet revival more than you'd like to.
I don't know this and people are starting to go.
Is it really happening? What about the major
denominations? But the reality is whenever I
speak to church leaders, they are all saying there is
something different going on at the moment.
There are people coming into church who've never come to
church before. There's an increased openness,
an increased curiosity. We're seeing it all over the
place and we're seeing it at Hope.
This week. I spoke to a guy who works for a
shop in Wigston, so I know him in that.
I go into his shop that he works in and he sent an e-mail to the
church and he said, can I please speak to Matt?
I need to speak to Matt. And so we met him on Monday and
I'd no idea. I'd no idea what's coming in,
what I was kind of stepping into.
And, and he, he, we did the pre, you know, the weather, we did
the weather chat and that and did the preamble.
And he said, Matt, I have as much money as I want.
I have a great job. I have a family who I love and
who love me. I have a great hobby.
He does battle reenactments. So I I love my life and yet
there is a hole and there is something missing and I'm not
happy. What am I missing?
What, what? And I just got to share the
gospel with him. Let me tell you about the hole
that you're missing. You know, the scary thing I said
to him isn't that you feel this way.
The scary thing is that more people don't because you were
made for more than just family and work and money.
You were made for G And of course, I had this sermon in my
mind as I was doing it. Like I've got to intersect with
culture somehow here, haven't I? Wow.
He took away a gospel. He's going to come to church.
We're going to meet up again. Wonderful.
I I run an Instagram channel, which Richard has been on,
haven't you? And a few months ago, walk with
the word if you want to. It's just daily summaries of
Bible passages. It's, it's simple.
And I had a message from someone a little while ago saying I'm a,
I'm brand new to this faith thing.
I don't really know what I believe, but can you help me
find a church roundabout? I used to be in the army, so not
like your typical bloke who would normally expect to rock up
to a church. He, he lives in Chichester, so
miles away. And I found a couple of churches
that might be interesting to him.
I got a message this week and he said thank you so much for
recommending this church. My kids love it.
And I'm getting baptized on Easter Sunday.
How cool is that? That's wonderful.
And this is just two things from this week.
God is doing stuff. As we go out, we can expect to
see fruit. We're so used to having the red
light in evangelism. We have moved, I think even
beyond the amber light into the green light.
I think people are ready to hear your friends may not be as
closed off to the gospel as you think.
The people on your streets may not be as closed off to the
gospel as you think. The people in your college, in
your school, may not be as closed off to the gospel as you
think. Your colleagues may not be.
You know, the stats of the quiet revival gave out.
About one in three people would come to church if they're
invited. We put that to test over
Christmas and we gave people 3 invitations to our Christmas
Carol service and one couple took it to heart and they've
been praying that year for 35 friends in their in,
particularly in their neighborhood and praying by name
for them. They invited every single one of
them to the Carol service. 18 of them came to the Carol service
and they had so many conversations with them
afterwards. I think you're running alpha in
their road for their neighbors because they, they, they see
their life and they're intrigued by what they see because there's
something different. Your friends may not be as close
off as you think. You see fruit, but you'll also
see opposition. Verse 2, the Jews who refuse to
believe. That's interesting, isn't it?
Refuse to believe. Stirred up the minds, stirred up
the other Gentiles, and poisoned their minds against the
brothers. Verse 5A Plot among both Jews
and Gentiles to I'll treat them and stone them.
Verse 19. They stoned Paul and dragged him
outside the city, thinking he was dead.
There will be fruit if you go out with confidence and courage,
but there will be opposition. And there'll be opposition not
because people don't like it, but because Satan doesn't like
it. And when the God's people step
out, the enemy will step up. If you want to live this kind of
life, if you want to be bold for the Kingdom of God, it is going
to cost you. It may cost you relationally,
may cost you financially in that cost you promotions at work, but
the reality is we often want the fruit of mission without the
cost. How many of us would love to see
this church rammed full on a Sunday morning of new believers
having to run discipleship courses for people who who are
coming to faith and you're having dozens of baptisms
multiple times a year. We would love that, wouldn't we?
Yeah, we'd love that, wouldn't we?
I think we want the fruit. I don't know if we're willing to
pay the cost. I don't know if I'm willing to
pay the cost of stepping out of feeling uncomfortable where I
am, but look what we see here. Verse 5.
Again, there's a plot afoot among both Jews, Gentiles and
Jews together with their leaders to I'll treat them and stone
them. But they found out about it and
fled to the Likeeonian cities of Lystra and Derby into the
surrounding areas where they continue to preach the gospel.
They've just almost been killed and they go, OK, we'll just go
to the next place and do the same thing.
Verse 19 And Jews came from Antioch and Iconium and won the
crowd over. They stone.
Paul dragged him out the city thinking he was dead.
But after the disciples had gathered around him, he got back
up and went into the city that they just taken him from to try
and kill him. And then the next day he travels
60 miles. What state is he in having just
been stoned to the point where they think he's dead and he goes
60 miles to the next place to do the same thing.
He's relentless, these guys and I don't know if a healing
miracle or a resurrection miracle.
I don't know what has gone on there, but he is single minded.
How can he do this? How can and, and, and let's take
even just evangelism out. When you do ministry in any
length of time in any form, you will get knocks and you'll get
pushed back and you'll get hard at times.
You go, do I want to do this anymore?
How does he just get up and go again?
Well, Acts 18, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes
on you. They're not doing it by
themselves. The Spirit of the living God is
in them and pushing them into greater and further ministry.
And it might be where they are and it might be somewhere else,
but the point is they are sent Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and
the ends of the earth. They are the filled and scent
people of God. And so they are going to filled
with the Holy Spirit. Go.
And I believe and the challenge for me this week and the
challenge for my church in this season is that in this season of
renewed fruit in this nation, I believe the church is being
called to recover its sentness by Jesus in the power of the
Holy Spirit into the world that God loves for the Kingdom of the
Sun Avenue. You are the sent people of gods.
You are sent into Clarendon Park.
It's not just because there's a school here that you're hits
because God has planned for you to be here.
You are sent into your neighborhoods.
You are sent into your workplaces as ambassadors for
Christ with the good news of Jesus.
Let's get our going shoes on so very quickly.
How do we live out identity as a sent people of God just from
this passage? Three things.
There you go. Go where the need is.
So often they go where there is brokenness and hurt and struggle
and that's where they see the fruit.
Initially. Here it's a man who couldn't
walk. In Wigston, it's often isolated
and vulnerable people, people with mental health challenges,
people with financial poverty. They're the people that we see
most fruit among Go with Anitas. Secondly, go with the
opennesses. They go to one place, they have
some fruit, door closes and move on.
Same happens here and then again and again.
Wherever there's welcome, whether there's openness, that's
where they go. They're asking the question,
God, where are you already at work?
So we can jump in. And I would encourage you as a
church to ask that same question, where, where do you
see God at work already? And how do we go there?
But then as an individual, as families, where do we see God at
work in our neighborhoods, in our communities?
Where are the people of peace? Where are the people who are
open to these conversations already?
Maybe, maybe you've never even thought of that question, but
why don't you prayer walk your Rd. with your family once a
week, take 10 minutes to do it and just say, God, this is your
place. Would you show us?
Would you give us eyes to see where you're at work already?
You'd be really surprised about the conversations that come out
of that and the dreams that he puts in your heart.
Thirdly, go together. Paul and Barnabas, they go
together. Now you can't necessarily take
your mate from church into work with you.
They might ask questions, bring your mate to bring a Christian
to work day. Although if you're a boss, maybe
that's a great day to have. But you know what you can do?
I love community groups. I have small groups, home
groups, whatever you call them here.
What do you call them here? Home groups love home groups.
And they're, they're so good and it's so good to pray together.
And it's really important to pray for your financial
situation and it's really important to pray for the
diagnosis that you've just received.
And it's really important to pray for Aunt Muriel's cat.
And it is, these are, these are valuable things to pray for.
But why don't we make time to pray for one another, for Person
X who you work with? Because I'd love to share the
gospel with them this week and the next time you can go, How
did that go? Can you pray?
Can we back one another in prayer, missionly as well as
pastorally in these groups as we do life together?
The problem with preaching the Bible is the Lord convicts you
first. And then the Lord's been
breaking me this week for my lack of zeal for his name and
His glory and for my lack of care for the lostness and I,
when it comes down to it, but also just kind of a point where
you're tired and the call to go again.
And I just wonder if there's folk here and any of that sticks
for you, that call to go again. Maybe you got out of the habit
of sharing your faith. Maybe you've been disappointed
or you've faced opposition and the call is to go again and to
ask the Holy Spirit to fill us afresh with his power and with
his courage. It is conviction to go.
And so I'd just love to take a moment of quiet.
There's often so much noise and so much talking in our services.
We're just a moment of quiet. And I'd love for us to pray the
ancient prayer of the church, which is come Holy Spirit, He's
here, but it's just an invitation to come and apply to
our hearts what He said to us generally today through His
word. So you might want to close your
eyes. I find it helpful just to put my
hands out in front of me. It's like, it's just like a
physical posture of receiving, just like an outward expression
of what's going on in your heart.
You may want to do that. No pressure too at all.
Just close our eyes and let's just invite the Holy Spirit to
come. Holy Spirit, please, would you
just come, and would you minister among us now?
Where there's hurt, would you bring healing, Where there's
fear, would you bring courage? Lord, like a rod up a spine,
help us stand straight for you. Where there's disappointment,
would we bring renewed hope? And spirit of the living Gods, I
pray that you would even now just drop names of people into
our minds that you're already at work in and you're calling us to
go to. And if you, if you just have a
name or since he's just impressing something on your
heart, just I'd encourage you in your heart just to say yes, I'll
go like Isaiah, here I am. Send me yes, I'll do it.
But I need your help, Lord.