Hi, Every. Hi, Becca.
Love it. Ready to go?
Yeah, yeah. Eyeballs.
OK. Welcome back, everyone.
Welcome, Dave. Should we all say hi, Dave?
Hi, Dave. Lovely to see you.
It is genuinely lovely to see you.
We are spending a year once a month on on Wednesday evenings,
once a month on Wednesday evenings.
Isn't that better? Going through something called
the Introduction to the Trinitarian Faith course with a
real emphasis on really understanding this extraordinary
mystery that the nature of God is for the Son and Spirit, one
substance, three persons. And we want to emphasise we are
not. This doesn't mean we're Tri
deist. We don't believe in three gods
and we're not monotheists. We don't believe in one God that
exists with only one person within that God.
We believe in Father, Son and Spirit, 3 persons in one God.
And that belief was wrestled through after the collection of
the Old Testament came together and then people lived in the
light of that and then the there was a then Jesus comes in the
flesh. He lives and dies and is
physically risen from the dead and and people know that changes
everything. Somehow in what we call the
Christ event, something changes. And then for three centuries,
people wrestled with the implications of how we
understand God and the nature of the collection of texts.
We call the Old Testament, then the witness to Jesus that we
call the New Testament. They're a collection of
witnesses to the person of Jesus, either passed down
through all tradition, through memories, and then through
through scribes, writing, or personal revelation.
That collection of witnesses to Jesus through looking at all of
that which we now call the Bible.
For three centuries, people wrestled with what does this say
about the nature of God? We believe, all of us know that
we live according to what we really believe is true about
reality. All of us know, all humans know
that we what we actually believe is how we live.
So if a storm comes and we don't believe God's got our back,
we'll be scared. And what these things do is they
form and invite us into a depth of revelation of God's love for
us that he has got our back. So sometimes the language might
feel a bit complicated or convoluted.
Don't worry about that. As Origen said, God is simple.
What that means is there isn't a bit of him that's Father, a bit
of him that's Son, and a bit of Him that's Spirit.
He is not mixed. It's not like oil and vinegar.
He is 1 God in three persons, and we are invited into the
Godhead in union with the sun. We are in the Godhead, in union
with the sun, and what we want is for that to go from something
we might think about and be quite interested in to have a
breakthrough revelation in the way we live our lives.
Because what we really want to do is share good news that's
actually good news. When we've had an amazing
experience or we've achieved something incredible, we are
overflowing to tell that to someone else.
We know we have something good to share, but I think if our
understanding of God isn't good news, we don't really want to
share it. We're apologetic, we're
embarrassed, we're ashamed. So we need to understand what it
is that God has done for us in Christ, who we are in Christ,
what God is like in order that we are overflowing with good
news. So what we're doing this year is
we're wrestling through questions about that.
There are lots of different perspectives, but I sometimes
listen to a podcast called by someone called NT Right and I've
noted the question people are asking.
The question above all the other ones like sexuality or politics,
is how we address these issues of if people haven't heard God,
if they haven't had an opportunity to hear God, if
people were born before Jesus, can they know God?
Issues of universalism, Christian universalism, all
these questions are being asked in online spaces and we want to
have the courage as a community to ask them amongst each other
and wrestle through it. As a community, what do we feel
the nature of God is like? Because we feel God reveals
reality in community. Reality is Trinity and we
operate in the image of God. Reality is forged in us as a
community, travelling together, wrestling this through.
No one has a revelation on their own in their bedroom.
That's the full revelation of God.
God reveals himself in the body and he reveals it in person.
So we are going on a journey this year to try to try and
explore and understand more of what we think the nature of God
is like. But not because we just want to
have interesting ideas in our head, but because we want to
know we're loved. We really want to know how loved
we are, deeply loved we are. And we also want to be good news
for other people. So there are things which will
resonate, things which don't resonate, Things we might go,
oh, that's liberating. Things we might push back on.
It does matter, but in some ways it doesn't matter.
The point is we're having this conversation together and we're
going to work through together what we think God is like and
what we think the good news is. And I'm so grateful for Paul and
Grace and the family being here and bringing this to us.
This is the first time I think you've run this course in an
actual community in person rather than online.
So it's a real privilege that we can wrestle with this content
together. So I'm going to pray for Paul
now. And we want to have time at the
end for people to receive a fresh revelation of Jesus and a
fresh revelation of God's love. Lord, I thank you so much for
Paul and I thank you for his story.
His story is 1 of breakthrough revelation of your love and a
change of mindset about what you're like and what and what
reality is. And I just thank you for that.
And we, we want to receive fresh revelation today as Paul says a
lot in the Bible. Paul in the Bible says
repeatedly in his letters, the biggest thing we pray for is for
revelation of what you're like, of your love, of what Jesus is
like and who Jesus is. That's why we pray.
We ask for revelation. We need our eyes to be opened.
We need the darkness to be overcome by the light.
We need the veil between US and you, the lies we believe about
you to be taken away and removed and for us to see you as you
really are. And so we cry out to you to do
that work amongst us today and in the days and weeks and months
ahead. May we see you as as you are.
May we be known and loved by you, and may we experience that.
And may we be good news as a result.
Amen. Thanks, Alice.
It was really well said. So I'm going to start looking at
John's gospel and on Sundays when I'm here, we'll probably be
dipping into John's gospel throughout the year.
What I'm going to do today, just a couple of points about the
gospel. Then I want to read the prologue
and see how we get on because of trying to keep it short and then
want everybody to have time to pray.
So John's gospel, I mean couple couple of background facts often
considered by most Bible scholars and historians to be
the last gospel written, possibly the last book written
in the New Testament, the the the latest.
There are a couple of outliers who argue for it being the first
one, but you know, nobody really knows.
But anyway, I like the the perspective of Clement of
Alexandria who is 2 generations on from John the Apostle.
He was kind of his spiritual grandson, discipled by Polycarp,
his discipled by John and Clement records the background
to the writing of the Gospel of John.
And he said that John was in Ephesus.
He had a whole community of disciples in Ephesus, in the
church there who sat under his teaching and his disciples.
He, John, was getting towards the end of his life.
He was very old. We don't know exactly how old,
but old. And he'd been exiled on Patmos
before it had the the Book of Revelation.
Then he was back in Ephesus, having come back from exile.
And his disciples basically said to him, John, you need to write
down some of the stuff that you're saying because we haven't
really got a good record of it. We need you to put something
together. Why don't you write a gospel?
And they kept hassling and hassling and hassling him until
he said, all right, yeah, let's do it.
And Clement said, but John sat down and proposed to compose a
spiritual gospel, is the way that he put it.
I think that the wedding is something, if I remember
something like seeing that the bodily facts had been laid down
in the other gospels, he sought to compose a spiritual gospel.
So in other words, according to Clement, who's pretty close to
the, you know, the original source here, this gospel assumes
you've got a bit of a handle on the facts from the other gospels
or other writings and stories that are around about, you know,
the the kind of material facts about what who Jesus was and
what he did and said. That what John sought to do was
present a gospel that communicated the spiritual truth
of what this was all about. So out of all the four gospels,
John's Gospel is the one that is most most developed, most multi
layered in terms of its theology.
It's complex and you can certainly read it.
And I know it's sort of with those tracts, lovers of bridge
tracts, you know, people used to give out a lot would have John's
Gospel in it thinking that this is a good thing to kind of give
people to begin with. I get that.
Like on one level it is, you know, it's you can sort of read
it as a as a story and get hit with the sort of headlines.
But it is definitely the most complex of the gospels, one of
the most complex, maybe the most complex of the New Testament
books and extremely multi layered and not without its
controversies over the years, you know, people have accused it
of being anti-Semitic or being gnostic magical, you know, all
kinds of things. And I'd say that if you want to
get into John, try listening to it in audio rather than trying
to try and go through quickly in one or two settings and just see
what what lands for you while you're reading it.
I think one of the risks we have in in sort of, we're so used to
close reading that you might think, I want to read that read
that book. And then you immediately you're
sort of starting to kind of pour over each word and each verse.
And I think this is a book that needs, it needs to kind of
overview first. Like you, you, you go through it
quickly, see what hits you and then go back and do kind of
close reading afterwards. Again, a couple of important
things. I, I think there's millions of,
of things. But to me anyway, what's been
important to me that the Gospel is not in chronological order.
John is not interested in in sequences of time.
It's not that there isn't an order to what comes.
There's very definitely an order to what comes in the in the
Gospel, but it's not in chronological order.
And that's deliberate. So you'll see in the other
gospels, there's the story of Jesus cleansing the temple.
In the other three gospels, he does it right at the end of his
ministry, before he's crucified. In fact, it's the triggering
event that gets everybody really ready to crucify him.
But in John's Gospel happens right at the beginning.
There's a reason for that. It's it's not because John's
trying to say, I mean, I've heard people say, well, Jesus
cleansed the temple twice, once at the beginning, once at the
end. Or I've heard people say, oh,
well, John was trying to correct the other, the other writers and
put it at the beginning. It's not those reasons at all.
John assumes, you know, that Jesus cleansed the temple at the
end of his life. This is common knowledge.
He's put it at the beginning because he's making a point.
So what is that point? How does it speak to us now?
And that's true for all of these things that as we see them come
out in, in the gospel, he's making very deliberate points by
what he has people say at certain times in certain places
and certain sequences. So the order is important, but
it's not chronological. So don't get confused about
that. The other thing is sometimes,
you know, in the if you've ever wondered or you've been in that
kind of apologetic space, people will say things like, well,
Jesus never claimed to be God. It was his followers who claimed
to be God. Well, that's a fundamental
misunderstanding of what's being said in the Gospels.
So Jesus repeatedly talks about being the Son of man in the
Gospel of John. Actually, the phrase Son of man
is, is what is the claim to be in God.
In fact, the Son of God is not a unique title.
Lots of people call themselves the Son of God.
Pharaohs and you know, Caesars and whatever would call
themselves sons of God and all the rest.
That was not a claim to divinity.
When Jesus says I'm the Son of man, he is laying, that's a
claim to divinity because that connects into the Jewish
tradition about this figure, this prophesied Messianic figure
that Daniel sees in a vision called the Son of Man.
So when Jesus says I'm the son of man, that's his claim to be
God. There are at least 7 instances
in across the gospel where Jesus uses the divine name.
Yahweh translates as I am. You know, it's the verb to be.
I am a taboo name that Jews weren't allowed to say.
You know, if that's you sometimes see people write G-D,
you know, to try and honour that tradition and Jesus uses that
name 7 times to refer to himself.
They're called the I am sayings. I am the bread of life.
I am the way, the truth and the life.
I am the the door to the sheepfold.
I am the light of the world before Abraham was I am 7/7
times at least maybe 8 depending on exactly how you categorise
it. But these are these are clear
statements by John showing us the divinity of Jesus.
So if anybody is, if you kind of come across any of those sorts
of arguments that they show that somebody doesn't really know
what they're talking about if they're asking that kind of
question, he's saying, well, Jesus didn't say he was God.
No, he absolutely did. You just didn't understand him.
It's right there. And John has that laid out for
us. So the emphasis on the divinity
of Jesus is very strong here. Lots of ways that comes out.
And this is central to John's gospel, The good news as told to
us by the apostle John. Why is it good news?
The essence of that is in who the person of Jesus is.
You have all the way through, you have a theme of light comes
out and life. We'll see that in the prologue
as well. And towards the end of the book,
you get some definitions begin to come in, such as what does it
mean to have eternal life or God's kind of life?
And John will say things like this is eternal life, that human
beings may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom
you've sent. So eternal life is an intimate
knowing and relationship with God.
So and then you see at the end of the gospel, John says, why
have I written all this stuff down?
I've written so that you may believe and continue to believe
and that in continuing to believe, you may continue to
have life. So the purpose of the book is
very well laid out. It's evangelistic.
It's there for whoever reads it, whoever hears it, to be inspired
in faith, in believing in who Jesus is and what he has done
and what he continues to do. And in that belief, engaging
with, enjoying, participating in and accessing God's kind of
life. Throughout the Gospel, we get
glimpses of what that kind of life looks like.
And all those things are there for us to have some sort of an
idea of what we're participating in, what we get to enjoy and
engage with. So all all of that is there in
the Gospel of John and tonnes more bonus thought for
consideration. I quite like the idea that the
Book of Revelation and the Gospel of John basically say the
same thing. The Book of Revelation is John's
kind of psychedelic unravelling on the Isle of Patmos.
And the Gospel of John is now he's, he's finally at the end of
his life, able to put something down that's systematic, having
worked through his experience with Jesus in the flesh, having
worked through after that, the resurrection, the moving of the
Spirit, and then this download that he gets on Patmos and then
afterwards through his ministry in Ephesus, now he's putting it
down. And then there's one part in the
Book of Revelation where there's a small scroll and the Angel
says to John, you have, you have written and you, you must write
again. And I quite like the idea and I
can't prove it, but I like the idea.
You can kind of consider it that when the Angel says you must
write again, that what the angels talking about is the
Gospel of John. So John's got that vision.
Okay, I know at some point in the future I'm gonna have to
write this. Now, that's not a scholarly
view. Most scholars don't think John
wrote Revelation anyway, for one reason or another.
But you can get into an argument with them.
To be perfectly honest, a lot of this, who wrote what and when,
it's extraordinarily speculative, frankly.
So I wouldn't place too much currency in that kind of
argument. Pay attention to it, but don't
place too much currency in it. The tradition of the church is
just as credible on this stuff, frankly, because we've got
unbroken records going back to people like Clement of
Alexandria, at least just two generations on from John who had
personal links, who are giving us this sort of info.
And I kind of trust them more than I trust, you know, 21st
century sort of or 20th century scholar kind of working on it
grammatically. But anyway, digressions.
Let me read. In the beginning was the Word.
The word was with God and the word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made.
Without him, nothing was made that has been made.
In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has
not overcome it. There was a man sent from John
from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify
concerning the light, so that through him all might believe He
himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the
light. By the way, if you've got a
Bible on the table, you can open it up and follow along.
We're on page 1063, John chapter 1.
The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the
world. He was in the world, and though
the world was made through Him, the world did not recognise Him.
He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive
Him. Yet to all who did receive Him,
to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to
become children of God, children born not of natural descent, nor
of human decision or husband's will, but born of God.
The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.
We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son
who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John testified concerning him. He cried out saying this is the
one I spoke about when I said He who comes after me has surpassed
me because He was before me out of His fullness.
We have all received grace in place of grace already given,
for the law was given through Moses.
Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
No one has ever seen God, but God the one and only Son, who is
Himself God and is in the closest relationship with the
Father has made Him known. The Prologue, in the prologue
you get the, the thematic starter for the whole book.
So the, the thing, most of the things we, the, the themes and
the threads we can pick up within the prologue.
These are things we'll see repeated over and over again
throughout the Gospel. So it again, it's, it's very
condensed, fantastic. Probably more written about the
prologue than anything else I'd have thought theologically over
the centuries. Couple of highlights from the
prologue when it says at the start, in the beginning was the
word. The Greek word for word is
logos, where we get the word logic or ology in English.
And the logos is basically the idea that this is like the mind
of God out of which he creates everything.
And I like to think about it like this.
In Genesis 1, it says in the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth. It tells you what God did in
John One. It tells you how God did.
It takes you behind the curtain, what was going on in the mind of
God out of which God created the world.
So John is revisiting Genesis 1 very deliberately right here at
the beginning of the prologue. And he says here's the logos,
this principle, this spiritual template, this matrix out of
which everything's made. But he says this thing is not
just a thing, it's actually a person.
And this person is in fact God, but is also face to face with
what we call God. The word with.
There the word was God and the Word was with God.
The word with actually means facing.
It's not just with in a neutral sense, it has a relational
flavour to it that there is a face to faceness between the Son
and the Father that is behind the curtain of creation.
And what John is telling us here is that look, everything that
you see, everything that's been created has come out of that
relationship, that face to face us.
And this is this theme of the face of Christ is something that
comes up in throughout John's Gospel, but also throughout the
whole New Testament, the the engaging with the face of
Christ, this relational knowing John is saying this isn't just
about salvation. This is actually what the
universe was created out of. So when we see Father, Son and
Spirit, before anything is made, the Father, Son and Spirit have
a way of being. They have a way of living, a way
of existing that is completely mysterious to us.
But Jesus has come to make that known.
What is that life? What is that way of being?
What is the quality of it? What is the character of it that
that is The Fountainhead of creation.
So John goes on, everything was made by him and he, he's really
wants you to understand this. He says it twice.
Everything was made by him. Everything you see, everything
that has been made has been made by him.
Everything has come by and through the person of Christ.
So it's not that God the Father is the creator and Christ is
doing something else. John is saying Christ is the
creator. He made the world and in him it
says in him was life. So all of the life, all of the
energy that animates everything has come from him and that life
is the light of all mankind. So, and again, this theme of
light and what what light is spiritually speaking is another
another thing that comes up in the Gospel.
Get some introductions to John, which is John the Baptist, not
John the Apostle. It's very confusing to say the
book of John and then this is John in the first few few verses
and they're two different Johns. You'd have thought that the
Bible compilers could have done a better job of making that
clear. But anyway, there are two Johns
here. They weren't, they weren't very
imaginative with names right in this.
So John was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.
The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the
world. So what what is being presented
to us in the Gospel is that the good news here, so the beginning
of Matthew, Mark and Luke, the good news is announced by the
angels in the birth of Jesus. We don't get that story here in
John's Gospel. We don't get the the nativity
scene. We just get the one in whom all
life and light finds its origin has come into the world.
That's just that's what we get. So he's trying to not get us
distracted by the material facts and circumstances around Jesus
birth. He assumes you know that and
he's trying to say you. Look, the important thing here
is the very life that is God's has come into the world, not
just in the way that it was before, but actually it has
become flesh and dwelt among us. So that life has come in as one
of us. It's not just come in in a
metaphysical or mechanical way. That life has come in as a human
being. So we see Christ fully divine
and fully human at the same time in ways that don't confuse the
2. So he is 100% as human as we are
and he is 100% as God as God can be, and those things exist
simultaneously in him. Now this is the good news.
This is a gospel, right? This is the good news.
The good news is God has come in the flesh.
That's good news. So again, if you're anything
like my come from anything like my background, good news is,
well, Jesus paid the price for your sin.
That's not here in the 1st chapter of Sean, but this is
John's summary of the good news. The good news is Christ has
taken on flesh. And by the way, the word flesh
there is the bad word for humanity.
It's not the good word. So when we talk about all the
flesh, I'm wrestling with the flesh.
That sort of language, that's the word that's being used here
in the Greek. It's sarks, not anthropos.
Anthropos is the word for human. Sarx is the word for flesh.
So in the mistranslations of the book of Romans, which use the
use the word sinful nature, which is not the right word
actually the the it's the word sarx in in Romans.
So, so John is saying to us everything that we are, Jesus
has taken on, has assumed every aspect of what it means to be
human. He hasn't just assumed the good
bits, He's assumed all of the bad bits as well, yet without
committing sin. So he, he does not fall short of
what it is to be human. In fact, he, he fully
exemplifies what it is to be human, but he does so sharing
fully in all of our hang ups and problems and issues and
difficulties, everything that makes us feel less than.
He takes it on in himself. He says he came to his own.
Now who are his own. It's not talking about the Jews
here. It includes the Jews, but it's
not just talking about the Jews. We know who it's talking about
because it says so immediately before the world.
The world has come into existence through him.
All things have come into existence through him.
All are his own, and he has come to his own and his own has not
received him. And that's all of us, Jew and
Gentile alike, all of us have not received him.
This is another theme that we get throughout the whole gospel,
which is you'll, you'll see Jesus says things like no one
knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son wields
to reveal him. Even here in the prologue, no
one has ever seen God. Nobody.
Anyone who claims to have seen God has not according to John
right here about who Jesus is the only one who can make known
to us what God is like is the one who is himself got very God
of very God in that oneness and the closest relationship with
the Father is the NIV puts it here that in the one who is face
to face with the Father, he's the only one who can let us know
what God is like. No one else can let us know that
and anyone who claims to can't. In fact, you'll see Jesus at one
point saying all who came before me are thieves and liars, which
is pretty inditing, particularly when all includes Elijah and
Isaiah and Moses and Abraham, David, all who came before me
are thieves and liars. They, if they claim to see God,
they didn't Phenomenal phenomenally provocative
language that that doesn't give us much wiggle room to get out
of out of the way of the person of Christ here.
Last point I want to make on this and then I'm going to try
something and then we're going to pray.
It says to all who did receive him, to those who believed in
his name, he gave the right to become children of God, children
born not of natural descent nor of human decision, but but born
of God. Some people have asked me about
this verse because I I maintained that all the children
of God right, independently of what you believe or decide, we
are all children of God on the basis of this chapter.
And some people have asked me, well, doesn't it say there that
only those who believe in him get the right to become?
And I just want to make a point on this, which is the word
become here is the same become that's used in is it in first
book of Corinthians, I think, where it says Christ became the
life giving spirit. Christ became the life giving
spirit. Nobody is saying that Christ
became a ghost became a spirit right that that would actually
violate Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever,
you know and his the understanding of his divinity.
When it says Christ became a life giving spirit, it means he
stepped up into the economic role of the life giving spirit.
That's that you can word study this become does not mean
something that was not becoming something that is it means it's
something that is steps up to engage the role of so this the
the the right to become means those who are by God's design
and God's grace called children of God by believing are able to
step up into their role as children of God.
So that's that's what become means here.
So don't, don't get confused in this sort of transactional sense
that, well, I wasn't a child of God and now I am.
There's the point here is up until that point, even here in
the, in the 1st chapter of John, he's trying to say, look, all
have come from him. Everything has come from him
that we are all of our origin is in the person of Christ.
We are all designed by him, known by him and with good, good
purpose and intention. You know, David says I was knit
together. You knit me together in my
mother's womb, right? All have their origin in him.
And that's a good definition of what it means to be a child of
God. But if you don't know that,
you're not going to live that way.
But those who believe realise Ah, now.
And in believing, that's all it takes to step up into begin to
assume the role that the way of your being begins to match the
truth of your being, which is what Alice was talking about.
How is it that this transforms the way that we live?
Because if it doesn't transform the way that we live, then
something's short circuited somewhere, right?
This has to transform everything.
It can't leave any part of life untouched.
So some some thoughts there from the prologue to get you started.
I'm going to try one thing, if you'll allow me, which was the
thought that came to me as Alice was praying.
And then we're going to pray, which is, as you know, some of
you, some of you know, I used to do a lot of St preaching back in
the day. And it's something I've, I
intend to do again. In fact, I'm waiting for, I'm
waiting for a setup to go and do it with some friends of mine up
in Birmingham. But I actually thought, I
haven't, I haven't tried this. But if you'll allow me to just
practise, what would it sound like to say this on the street
if I was there with a microphone with passersby in the, in the
centre of Broadmead or wherever? I'm just going to try it because
I have, I haven't, right. So I'm not going to do the
histrionics like the, the performance bit because I'm not
in the, I'm not in the mood. So I'm just going to say it Joe
had no, I'm not. I can't.
It's too, too, too, right. We haven't got enough time.
Call it my my microphone elevator pitch.
It'll go go something like this. We all we all know the world's
in a mess. Tonnes of problems.
We've all got on an individual level, national level.
It seems like it's going to hell and handbasket every other day.
And if you watch Satan sitcom the news, then you'll, you'll
definitely find all kinds of reasons to be hopeless, burnt
out, stressed, and all the rest. But I think all of us have an
intuition that this world hasn't just come from itself.
It's come from somewhere. It's come from a place.
We might call it spiritual, we might call it God, we might call
it a divine source. I don't know, people use all
kinds of words for it. But we all know we all have an
instinct within us that some things are good, some things are
beautiful, some things are are are worthy of paying our
attention to. And we all aspire to be more
than we are. But we're all basically just
trying to muddle through with the doing the best that we can.
Most of the time we feel like we're on our own and we're
trying to solve our own problems.
But there's some really good news here.
And the good news is that that that divine mind, that that
wonderful heavenly place that we see in movies and books and we
try and put it into words. And that people who've had
mystical experiences or they've dosed out on mushrooms and have
said, I've had, I've had something wonderful happen to
me. And they try and put it into
words, try and try and articulate this something that
is good and true about this world.
That is not what we see on an everyday basis.
That the the really good news and that the Christian message
has tried to hold on to is that what exists in that spiritual
world has actually come into our world.
It's met us as a human being. This is the story of Jesus
Christ who 2000 years ago came out of that divine reality and
became one of us. Everything that we are,
everything that we suffer. He experienced it and in even
going all the way to to suffer a horrendous death, horrendous
suffering which many people experience in this world today.
There's all sorts of horrible suffering and when we suffer, we
feel like we've been abandoned by God.
We feel like no one is looking out for us.
And you know, the world is not the way it should be, but Jesus
came and met us there by taking on what it is to be human.
It means whatever you have suffered and whatever suffering
you may have inflicted on others, he has been there in it,
forgiving, embracing, continuing to share his life and his love
with you. And the good news is that same
life and love that is his, you can experience it now.
Just believe. And you don't even need to work
that up yourself. We can pray and ask Jesus to
make himself known to us so that you can experience that life
too. Whatever you believe about all
of this, whatever background you've come from, is not what's
important. What's important is if something
in you right now is saying, yeah, I think I need to connect
with that. To know that I've been brought
home, to know that I have a heavenly family that has got my
back and that everything is going to work out.
All right, That's what we want to pray for.
Because I think if we really could connect with that and we
really could live from it, then that would also change the
world. So, and then I would do a little
altar call, right? Because you know, it's kind of
close to an altar call. Does that sound good?
So, so anyway, there you go. I just just evangelise this.
Let's pray and then I'll do a pray prayer like this.
So if you want a little revised sinner's prayer, I might get
everyone around and say or have my little prayer team go and
pray with people and say let me let me help you pray.
If you don't know how to pray, use whatever words you like God
source whatever Father God, mother God doesn't matter.
Something in me is telling me that I need you.
Jesus. Would you show me if this is
true? I don't want to carry the burden
of my life by myself anymore. I don't want to carry the burden
of guilt of things I've done before, and I don't want to
carry this cycle of bad decisions and judgement and
broken relationships and cynicism.
I want you to give me the life that you have.
I want you to share that with me.
So would you help me to see it? Please meet me now.
And so now we'll just going to take the next 15 minutes if you
want to just stay in that place yourself or or not.
Like we want to make space for everybody to pray for each other
if that's what they want to do. But again, if you don't want to,
if you just want to keep engaging where you are, that's
fine. Let's start round tables.
Just pray whatever you feel is coming up.
And if you don't know where to start, like Alice said, the
Apostle Paul in the Bible is always just praying that we
might be able to see and might be able to know who God is and
what he's doing. So if you're stuck, you can just
pray that. But otherwise, just listen and
ask Holy Spirit, what, what should we pray or how should we
pray? We've got 15 minutes.
Bless you. Yeah, I think just just one
thing I felt was there might be some people here who don't, who
don't really believe they're a child of God, that sort of
mindset that that really does change everything about who we
are and how we live. And so that might be something,
if that resonates with you, that that verse that we have the
right to live in the reality that we are children of God.
It would be good to get someone to say to pray with you about
that. Yeah.
So I'm just going to. I'm going to pray now.
And I invite you to pray with each other.
I'm going to pray Paul's prayer in Ephesians.
I pray that the eyes of our hearts are enlightened, that we
may get to know you better. I pray that we know how high and
wide and deep and long the Father's love is, and know that
love which surpasses knowledge. And Paul prays to the Father,
through whom every nation in heaven on earth, every family in
heaven on earth derives its name.
That's who Paul prays to in Ephesians.
And so we pray for breakthrough revelation for us as a community
that we know who we are, children of God.
Amen.