If we've not met before, my name's Chris.
I'm one of the pastors here, and I'm going to be speaking this
morning. I've got into a new little habit
on a Sunday morning of I have a coffee to start with, and then I
refill it with hot water when it's just about finished.
So it's a sort of murky look. Can you see this?
It's really nice. It's one of those things you
know, sometimes you'd like. I only ever drink green tea if I
met A maybe like an Asian food place and it tastes brilliant in
that context, but I don't tend to have it elsewhere.
This is becoming a Sunday morning thing for me, kind of.
It's quite nice. Too much coffee gets me too
amped. So it's quite a nice, good day.
So my name's Chris. I've been speaking this morning.
Hi Tom, nice to see you. And my, the theme for this
morning is being led by the spirit.
And I'm conscious that often when I speak, I'm, I'm sort of
laying out plans and sort of strategies and sort of this is
where we're going. And, but actually some of the
talks that I like listening to the most are talks when you're
just kind of soaking in what is it like to know Jesus and what
is it like to follow? What is it like to follow God?
And so I'm, I'm trying, my aim is that this talk will be more
in that sort of space. It's not a kind of an action
plan, a kind of strategy for the city.
It's a really I wanted to speak into the just a life of walking
with Jesus, a life of following God.
And I'm hoping that as we do that we'll just, we'll just be
encouraged and different things will speak to different people
and, and it will be an encouraging time in being in the
kind of the world view, the mindset, the Spirit of God
together. We're doing a bit of a review
actually, as elders at the moment on we go through kind of
different areas of the church doing review different areas.
Maybe we're looking at our teaching and our, and our talks
and something that came out of our meeting on Wednesday was
the, the, the idea of a talk on on a Sunday.
It's not, it's not a sort of a it's not quite like a Ted talk
in terms of information, but the, the, the desire is it when
we get together as church like this is that I'm not just
winning you over with my clever ideas, but actually together.
We are sitting in the in the presence of God in the in the
Scriptures. And there's something of an
encounter with God that we are looking to have looking to, for
the life of Jesus to become real to us, the Spirit of God to be
speaking to us in our present time.
So inspired by that, I'd like to pray, Lord, that as we have this
time together now in your word and as, as I, as I speak, I want
to pray that for us as a, as a church family, visitors and,
and, and, and regulars alike, that this is a time when you,
you feed us, you encourage us, you inspire us, you deepen us,
you strengthen us. Pray that this is a moment of
encounter with you that brings us life in Jesus name, Amen.
So I'm going to share a few things and then I'd love to
finish. We'll finish, I'll finish
speaking at least by 12 at the latest, and then we'll have some
time to, to pray and love to have some time to pray together.
So the theme of this. Oh, thanks, Andrew.
It's a nice moment of quiet as we're going into the new year.
Or, you know, some of you just heard Charlie's news for the
first time and might be, might feel the weight of that.
And, and yeah, I, I certainly have, and I've been tracking
with him for some time. I found what he said this
morning about, did you hear what he said about when we're
triggered, it can be like a sort of, he talked about a bull's eye
on a dartboard. And, and, and we can kind of try
and avoid those, those pain points or those triggering
points or actually they're places that we can meet with God
in quite profound ways. And, and I think that's, that's
increasingly been my experience as I've been walking with Jesus
and I shared with shared with you as a church back in
November, Alice and I shared that we'd actually been quite
discouraged towards the instead of third, second-half of last
year. We were already we're battling
with discouragement personally in ways that we hadn't before.
And, and to kind of update on that, I, I think now I'm feeling
wonderfully strong in my faith in a, in a kind of a gentle and
a quiet way. And I think what I think what
that, what that time of there's some time of darkness.
Really for me, what that time did is it sent me into needing
God, seeking Jesus in a, in a kind of refresh and a more kind
of humble and a broken way, probably deconstructed some of
my pride and some of my self-reliance and just a sort of
simple coming back to Jesus, You know, he lived and he died and
he rose from the dead. And these things are true and
they carry me and they transform me.
So, so I, I coming into 2026 from in a kind of gentle and
sort of humble sort of, I've always even had a sort of weak
place of like of actually hopeful expectation of, of
walking this year with God and, and, and I'm excited about that.
And I'm and I'm and I'm really up for it and say I want to look
at a couple of passages that give us insight into what it's
like to be led by the Spirit of God, which is certainly my
desire, desire this year. And the first one is from the
Old Testament. It's from Zechariah chapter 4.
Yeah, chapter 4, verse 6. And I've got it, I've got it on
the screen here. You can find it in the Bibles on
the table if you'd like to as well.
So this is this is what's going on here.
Bit of context. Israel is in quite a broken down
state as a nation. They I wonder if I do, should I
do a really quick run through of the Bible creation?
So Adam and Eve well created Noah's flood.
Things go wrong. God speaks to Abraham and says
to Abraham, I'm going to make you into a mighty nation and
bless the whole world through you.
That's the start of Israel. Abraham has Isaac and Jacob and
and they're going to go on from there, the generations and then
Israel goes on and they say we want to have a king.
We want to have a king that the nations around us and so God
says, OK, I'll give you a king, but it's not ideal.
So it starts off Saul is Israel's first king and and he's
quite a a self self focused man does a lot of damage for Israel.
Then David is the second king and he's really a a king in the
spirit of or later see more fully realised than Jesus.
That's a man after God's own heart.
And Israel really flourishes through the time of David and
then his son Solomon. And that's the kind of the
golden age of Israel when it's people are coming from other
nations around the world to visit Israel.
But in the subsequent generations of kings, Israel
repeatedly turns away from worshipping God and it does
things as what it sees right in its own eyes.
And this is sort of self destruction that comes from a
nation doing things and according to their own wisdom
without worshipping God. And after time, after time, God
says, if you keep on doing this, you're destroying yourselves and
you're going to be taken away into exile.
And so that happens. So then Israel is then taken
away into exile. They're going to Babylon and,
and, and the, the wonderful city of Jerusalem is destroyed.
The temple is destroyed. But God's whispering through the
prophets all the time, I'm going to bring you back.
I'm going to bring back a greater restoration.
I'm going to deal with the problem of the human heart,
which is always the problem which was needed to be rectified
and these whispers that point towards Jesus.
And in the meantime, he also says, I'm going to bring you
back and I'm going to make another temple in Jerusalem and
I'm going to restore you. And this is all the precursor
before we get to to the end of the Old Testament.
And then Jesus comes and in this ultimate fulfilment, But in that
time of saying to Israel, you're going to come back and build a
second, another, another temple. The nation actually is in quite
a vulnerable and weak place, you know, very different to the time
of David and and Solomon when it was so powerful.
And it's into that context that this prophet Zechariah is
speaking and he's encouraging the people of Israel, saying,
saying, walk with me. And I'm going to I'm going to
restore you. I'm going to rebuild this
temple. And I'm also going to do
something fuller in humanity through the coming of Christ
that he's whispering about. So this is the context here.
There's a man called Zerubbabel. He's a priest who's leading the
building of the temple. And Zechariah says to him here,
he says, this is the word of the Lord to you, Zerubabbel, not by
might nor by power, but by my spirit says the Lord.
So with our question of like, what does it mean to be led by
the Spirit? I've been studying this passage
and looking at this passage and I think I've often looked at
this just sort of skim Reddit and thought, ah, it's not by our
own efforts that God does stuff, but it's this kind of cosmic
sort of ray gun by which the Holy Spirit will ZAP things and
sort everything out. And so that that's the, that's
the kind of key to the Christian life.
That's how. But actually, on a bit more sort
of a closer inspection of, of this passage, that's not really
what's going on. God's not saying I'm just going
to cosmically do it for you by this plasma gun of my spirit
sort of thing. But looking at the, the Hebrew
of these words. So this is originally written in
Hebrew and the word might, which is I think I can bring it up
here, the word might in Hebrew is hail.
Hail. And what might means is, is a
kind of military strength, wealth, social power,
institutional might. It was the kind of might that
that King David had that Solomon had in those days when they
could just, they could just they, they brought in treasures
from around the world to build the temple like the most
precious stone, the most precious timber and stuff came
from all over the place to to build this.
It was, it was a real it was an empire, you know, at its peak at
it was doing doing so. But but interesting there.
He's saying not by that. That's not the means by which
you're going to build this temple Zura bubble and the and
the second. So there's the there's the
military might in the form of a tank.
And then nor by power. And this word power is KOA in in
Hebrew. I'm sure that's how you
pronounce it. And it means it means kind of
the personal and to the political power and capacity and
strength and ability. So the sort of ability of an
individual to to sort of win you over.
So I've got like a little persuasive looking person as an
image as an image there. And and so he's saying not by
not by military might, not by the great power of this
incredible oratorial or charismatic leader or, or, or,
or crafty politician, but by my spirit says the Lord.
And what he goes on to say is that is that in in verse verse
8, then the word of the Lord came to me.
The hands of Zerah bubble have laid the foundation of this
temple. His hands will also complete it.
So how is the way the spirit is going to complete the building
of the temple? It's through this person Zerah
Bubble, who actually is is in quite a position of weakness and
he hasn't got this great army and great resource behind him
and he hasn't presumably got quite the same winsome
personalities maybe King David had.
I don't I don't know, but God is saying that the Spirit of God is
going to work through zero bubble to complete this building
of the temple. And I just, that's my first
passage that I wanted to look at is that, and I find real
encouragement that there's and the God, and we see this
throughout the Bible, don't we? God will often take people to
quite weak places of weak weakness in order to, and we see
that same many times in the stories in the Old Testament.
And we see it in the people that he chooses to use in the New
Testament. And the way he uses them is, is
that weakness is not a an absence of God, but it's a but
it's a place of opportunity for God.
And so I think part of being led by the spirit is and it, and it
also is everybody had to probably, you know, really crack
on with the kind of nuts and bolts of the difficult stuff.
It wasn't like, great, I'll just rack up this temple 2.0 easy
job. You know, we see there's a lot
of battling, there's a lot of discouragement to overcome.
And there's, there was a material drama, challenge,
effort, energy draft that was required in the building of the
temple. And, and, and sometimes we can
say that that can't be God. It was too difficult.
You know, we if, if it's the Holy Spirit, it must be easy.
There must be this sort of, you know, turbo charged.
But I find encouragement here that actually God works through
us in a, as in a place of weakness, often in a, in a
broken and challenging world being led by the Spirit.
And then the second passage I want to look at is in Acts
chapter 10, when Peter has this vision, that is the starting
point for the church expanding beyond just the Jewish world
into people like me. I'm not Jewish, probably most of
us here aren't Jewish, but Peter had this vision which propelled
the church into the rest of the world.
And it's, it's a cool, I like that.
That's one reason that I like this is because I've been to the
place where Peter had this vision and I've got some
pictures here. This is this is Tel Aviv beach
and Alice and I went with filming Biblios, her Bible
course in 2018. We had this brilliant time
buzzing around Israel, visiting all the different locations for
filming. And this is I think our last
day. Tel Aviv beach is just up the
road from Jaffa or, and this is, so this is probably like from
that beach view, I don't know, 20 minute walk, just sort of
South. And this is the altitude Jaffa.
And this is Simon the Tanner's house.
And Simon the Tanner, as we'll read about in a minute, was the
man who's where Peter was staying when he had this vision
of a net being let down with all these impure animals.
And God was saying to him through this vision that the
church, the message of Jesus that is no longer just, I'm not
confining it just to the Jewish community anymore, but it's for
that, but it's for everybody. And I found this to be one of
the most powerful places that I went to, went to the tomb where
they think Jesus might have been buried and, and lots of other
sites around and Israel. But I found this, I don't know,
maybe it's because it's the point where I get to be included
as a non Jewish person. But I found it a profound
impact. That roof, that flat roof up
there was the place where where this stuff happened.
There's Alice doing a talk just next to it.
Let me read. Let me read this.
Oh, actually to say So what I want to do as we, I'm just going
to read it, read the passage shortly, but I want to look at
it as we're looking at being led by the Spirit.
I find quite a helpful thing that these five WS of guidance.
And I want to just look at this passage through the lens of
these five WS of guidance. And so I think I've got them up
here. Here they are.
And I put them on here in the order that they come up.
I think in this passage, the first one is the working of
circumstances, Second one is the witness of the Holy Spirit.
The third one is the word of God, the Bible.
The 4th 1 is the way of peace. And then the last one is the
wisdom of the Saints. And so we'll look at how they
they come up. And another piece of context
before we go into this passage, which again I find really
encouraging, is that the point at which Peter has this vision,
has this revelation is he's no longer like a kind of a new
believer in Jesus. He's no longer he's not like
fresh from his fishing boat and just starting to followed Jesus
just starting out life as a Christian.
He's actually been a Christian for many years been a
significant he's he's one of the key leaders in the church in
Jerusalem at this point. He's preached on at Pentecost
and he's seen thousands of people become Christians.
He's healed that crippled beggar in in front of the temple in in
Acts chapter 3 amazing miracle. He's overseen a lot of a lot of
other various challenges. He's been in prison through his
faith and he's been miraculously freed from prison.
So he's been walking with God in this way, walking with Jesus for
many years. And, and still he hasn't got it
all right. Still he hasn't, He's still,
he's still learning. And I think this again, this is
a joy of being led by the Spirit of God, by a joy of following
Jesus that we're always, we're always growing.
I, I think Christie looking at Christie and Celebrate Recovery.
You know, I think you that that community does this so well.
It's a life of continually being transformed, continually being
changed. And, and, and we see that
happening to Peter here. So let's read the passage.
Let's read about this revelation that happened on this rooftop in
Jaffa. I'll read it out to us.
Acts chapter 10 from verse 9. About noon the following day, as
they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went
up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted
something to eat. And while the meal was being
prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened and
something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its
four corners. It contained all kinds of four
footed animals as well as reptiles and birds.
I'll just comment on this point that these are animals that are
historically they're unclean within the Jewish religion.
So within the Old Testament it was, it was wrong for Jewish
people to eat these. These are ceremonially unclean.
Verse 13. Then a voice told him, Get up
Peter, kill and eat. Surely not, Lord, Peter replied.
I've never eaten anything impure or unclean.
The voice spoke to him a second time.
Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.
This happened three times and immediately the sheet was taken
back to heaven. While Peter was wondering about
the meaning of the vision the men sent by Cornelius.
Cornelius was a Roman, he was not a Jewish man, and he came
sent by a vision from God to come and find Peter.
So verse 17, while Peter was wondering about the meaning of
the vision, the men sent by Cornelius found out where
Simon's house was and stopped at the gate.
They called out asking if Simon, who was known as Peter was
there. While Peter was still thinking
about the vision, the spirit said to him, Simon, three men
are looking for you, so get up and go downstairs.
Do not hesitate to go with them, for I've sent them.
Peter went down and said to the men, I'm the one you're looking
for, why have you come? The men replied, We've come from
Cornelius the centurion. He's a righteous and God fearing
man who is respected by all the Jewish people.
A holy Angel told him to ask you to come to his house so he could
hear what you have to say. Then Peter invited the invited
the men into the house to be his guests.
So looking at this passage, my murky coffee, it's really nice.
So looking at the passage with five WS of guidance, the first
one that comes up I think is the working of circumstances and
going back to this location where Peter's Peter is staying
there he was that on that roof and that house there that
there's. So this is probably maybe like I
can't remember, maybe like a 45 minute drive from Jerusalem.
So it's on the coast of Israel and, and interestingly, it's
quite a gentile area. So there'd been lots of people
around who weren't Jewish. And interestingly, Peter is
staying at the home of Simon the Tanner and the Tanner.
A Tanner is someone who prepared skins, like animal skins,
leather. And and again, for a Jewish
person that was really unclean. You don't go near the the the
processing of like dead bodies of leather because because you
would become ceremonially unclean.
So it would but interestingly, God's got and the other thing
about Jaffa is it's support that's on the edge and it's a
place of launch really into the rest of the world is the
Mediterranean. So so Peter is already
positioned in a place where he's connecting and closer to people
who aren't Jewish than than he normally would be.
And if for some reason he's staying in the House of this,
this, of this Tanner of this man who again, Ceremonia, it feels
like God is setting him up to be propelled out from just the
exclusiveness of the, the sort of Jewish context with which
he's in which he's grown up so faithfully and say, well, and
then we also see that, and I haven't read this bit just for
for time really, but that that, that and Cornelius, this, this
Roman centurion has already set out to come and find Peter to,
to ask him to, to, to tell him about tell them about Jesus and
reveal Jesus to them as a household.
So there's an interesting working of circumstances, our
first W that are going on there. Secondly is the second W is the
witness of the Spirit. And let's take a look at the way
that the Spirit speaks to Peter. So just looking back at our
passage here, about noon the following day, as they were on
their journey and approach the city, Peter went up onto his
onto the roof of his house to pray.
So he, Peter here is keeping the kind of Jewish rhythms of the
Jewish people would typically pray three times a day.
And this is his noon, his midday time of prayer.
So he's got this prayer rhythm and he goes up, goes up to pray.
And as he was praying, the Spirit speaks to him in a
vision. And I was interested in the way
that he kind of has a dialogue with God in this, in this, in
this vision. He's, he's, he's told get up,
kill and eat. And he kind of responds.
Surely not. I've never eaten anything impure
or unclean. It's, it's got a sort of, it's
got a sort of softness and a kind of an inquiring heart to
this. He's not, he doesn't shut it
down, doesn't kill it off immediately soft to the voice of
God. And I noticed that I can
sometimes I think just be quite hard to the voice of God.
And I can dismiss it as being, oh, that can't be God.
I think I was saying to Charlie and Meredith on Monday, I think,
I think this week just gone. Just I was praying in the
morning and I was, and I was saying to God, really, I'm just
quite disappointed with with, with how I've been as a as a
parent, as as a, as a father to my kids.
And I was just, I found a lot of life just in in just expressing
my emotions to God just quite freely and quite openly and just
like saying where I'm at. And so, and I was just kneeling,
kneeling on the floor in our bedroom, just saying God, I'm,
you know, there are things I'd like to have done differently
and I'd like to have. And, and as I was just there
kneeling on the floor in my bedroom, just praying, I felt
God's begin. The voice that I've come to
recognise as the voice of God just began to speak to me and
say and just encourage me about how I've been as a father.
And my instant reaction to that was go away.
That can't be, that can't be, that can't be God.
It must be myself just trying to sort of placate myself and, and,
and if and if I look at that, those things that I felt God was
saying are actually things that others who name me well have
said to me about my parenting. And actually I would agree with
them. And I think that they do make
sense. But I was interested in myself
how easily I could just swap that away and dismiss that as
being Oh no, that's just too nice.
And so I'm interested. I take that to this passage and
I think, you know, I wonder what Peter's level of sensitivity was
to this grown up is how old was he here?
Maybe I don't know, somewhere between, I don't know, 25 and 35
maybe. You know, he'd grown up never,
never eating anything impure or being around unclean stuff.
This is a whole change of worldview to him.
And yet he had this, he had this softness, softness to to him,
Word of God. So the third, the third W of
guidance, the word of God is that when we when we think we
might be hearing prophecy is it is it lines up with the lines up
with the teaching of the Bible, lines up with the revelation of
Jesus in the Bible. So it's a question here.
Peter's hearing this abstract thing, which is completely
contrary to his, to his upbringing and his religious
training and history. Why should he therefore accept
this as being God speaking to him?
It could just be it looks like it's a bit abstract and AWOL
actually, if we compare it to the word of God, which obviously
wasn't the New Testament, obviously wasn't written at this
point, but he was there with Jesus as it was all happening.
We see that that throughout the life of Jesus, Jesus was
constantly showing, showing the people that his message and his
life wasn't just for, wasn't just for Jews, wasn't just for
Israel. I'll just rattle a few a few
examples. Jesus birth the Magi, the wise
men come, they weren't Jewish. He goes.
Jesus goes into Samaria and meets the woman at the well,
reveals himself to her and she reveals Jesus to her whole
village. He praises the faith of the
Roman centurion. He heals the centurion servant
and said that many would come from the east and the West to
enter the Kingdom. He travelled across Galilee into
a Gentile area and and healed someone who is demon possessed
and sent them out as a witness to their own community.
Responded to the persistent faith of a Canaanite woman and
granted her request. Made a Samaritan the hero of his
parable of the Good Samaritan cleansed the temple and said it
was supposed to be a place of prayer for all nations.
He welcomed Greeks who sought him and spoke of drawing all
people to himself through the cross.
He ended his ministry by commanding his disciples to make
disciples of all nations. So the word of God spoken by
Jesus revealed that actually what Peter was seeing here
wasn't just some abstract and AWOL and different thing.
It was completely consistent with the with the revelation of
Jesus way of peace is our is the 4th West of guidance.
And throughout this description of events, Peter comes across,
he comes across as pitiful and he seems to sort of wonder at,
at what's going on. He wonders at the at the word.
And then when Cornelius comes to the house, he, he welcomes him
in and he's hospitable to him. And so let's, let's, let's,
let's say you can see that Peter has this peace and sense of
rightness about what's going on in his spirit.
And then the 5th W is witness of the Saints.
We don't just discern the spirits leading on our own as
individuals and say that God says this to me, I'm right off I
go. But we, we do, we do it in
community. And in this passage here, we
don't see that straight away, but we see in Acts Chapter 11,
after it's all happened, he goes to Cornelius's house.
The Holy Spirit is poured out on the on the believers there.
They come to experience all that Peter's experienced really.
And then Peter goes back to Jerusalem shortly afterwards and
the believers there, the the believers that basically rebuke
him, say, what are you doing? You're going into a non Jewish
house and you're meeting people, Peter people there.
And he, Peter explains all that's happened, explains the
vision, explains everything. And, and, and they basically say
verse, Chapter 11, verse 18, when they heard this
explanation, they had no further objections and they praised God
saying say that even to Gentiles, God has granted
repentance that leads to life. So there's a quick whiz through
of Acts chapter 10. And I just like seeing the way
that God reveals himself to Peter, the way he speaks to
Peter, the way he leads him in this passage.
And I want us to have some time to pray.
So I want to just be quite quick in this last bit.
I've got a prophetic word to share with us from Liz Evans.
And some of you might know Liz, she's been investing in us as a,
as a staff team over the a bit the last year we've been Alice
and I've been tracking with her since about for about the last
five years or so. She's a prophetic lady and I've
I've learnt a lot from her. We had a good time with her
recently in November, we had a, an encouragement evening for a
prophetic encouragement evening for hopes boat and life group
leaders. And, and within that she shared
a prophetic word for us as a church.
And I just asked if she would summarise it in a little 5
minute clip that I could share with you now and wanted to speak
into it a bit more probably at the AGM in a few weeks time.
So really just just sort of playing it to you at this point
without giving much sort of explanation or context.
You'll probably have some questions coming off the back of
it. But again, leading in the spirit
for us in community, this is a bit this is just I think it's 5
minutes long. I'm going to play this as we
come in to land if I can find it on my on my WhatsApp.
Here we go. Liz Evans, here she is.
OK, so here we go. Here's.
The recording that you asked for, I realised that God has a
habit of speaking to churches and in Revelation there are 7
letters, but in those he kind of tells each of them.
I see what's going on, I see what's happening around you.
You're really amazing at this. There's kind of this that we can
tweak, and when we do, really when we do, amazing things are
going to happen. So when God spoke to me about
Hope Chapel in a fairly obvious and easy piece of scripture, the
Ezekiel 47 river that came from the altar, which is the place of
prayer, it made huge sense that He would use that to speak to
you. I mean, praying is a beautiful
thing and I know it gains you all incredible results.
And initially we brought that to the Hope boats.
But Hope is also a boat. And there are certain specific
things for the church in this passage that the Lord has been
showing me. And interestingly, mostly there,
with the exception of 1, I think you've already been speaking
about them. So these three things that I
think you all need to be aware of is that the first one sounds
very obvious, but there needs to be a substantial shift in order
to realise it. So the first one is of course
the out of the place of prayer, the altar, comes the place of
substance and presence, that the source of life, the river of
life is flowing. It makes the salty things fresh
and brings life. But it's really dependent on
going deeper. The Angel measures off 1000
cubits, so one is the number of source.
But you put zeros on anything and it's more impactful.
If I were to give you a cheque for 1 LB, you'd probably not be
very impressed, but if I added a few zeros, you would like it
much better. So there's a promise in the
invitation to measure off 1000 more cubits that you're going to
go deeper in encounter and in experience and carrying the
source of life with incredible effect.
So it's really important that we help you go deeper in encounter
with the source, with God. That's something that we can
help you do, but we're going to have to put time aside to do
that. Each person can also do that by
going into the place of prayer themselves.
The second thing that really came across to me in this
passage and that God seems to care about is to make sure that
your community is working well. Because if you guys are going to
be well, we're going to have to have the Ephesians 4 joints and
supply working well so that the body builds itself up in love.
And this is in the passage in the symbol of the Nets.
There's been a bit of a fraying of Nets and some people around
the edges are feeling a little bit disconnected.
It's not only important that we pull the community together
because God was speaking to me about how important that is.
It's really important so that other people can come in, then
they can feel secure. So we need to address the fact
that some people are feeling a little bit disconnected and the
Lord's seen them because he's addressing the net.
He's addressing those joints and supply.
So, so far we've got bringing you into a powerful place of
encounter so that you can carry the source of God and move with
the source of God is a better way to put it in greater measure
that when he moves, you're moving because his power and
authority and purity is what's going to make the salty things
fresh, both for you and for those around you.
The second thing, of course, is that we need to address the
community so nobody feels left out and so that there's an
effective net, a web of relationships, of joints and
supply that includes everybody, including those who God is
bringing. And this is really on his heart.
So if you're listening to this and you're one of those people
who's been feeling a little bit disconnected, God is on it.
He cares about you and things are going to be adjusted.
But there was a third thing that he spoke to me, and that was in
the symbol that alongside the river there were two different
sorts of people. They were fruit trees and they
were fishermen. And here in the passage, we have
two different types of people effortlessly being who they
were, supplied with everything they need, and they're just
doing their thing. And this is about identity, that
each of you has a unique identity that isn't just broad
Bush. I was looking out of the window
this morning and I was watching the birds.
There were great big birds sawing by.
There were those Magpies doing really clumsy flying.
They're clumsy little birds when they fly.
And they were little cute songbirds.
But each bird had a function and each bird had a song.
It didn't matter how big or how small they were.
And this is key, your identity is key to the body and it's key
to you effortlessly singing your song, being confident in who you
are so that you can bless everybody around you, especially
you. So the three things that we need
to address for hope are just firstly, to praise you all for
being this incredible place of prayer.
Secondly, we need to make opportunities so that you
understand how and where and so that you can come into a place
of encounter with the source so that the power and authority of
God is flowing where you are and to you.
The second is to address matters of connection and supply in
community and bring everybody in.
And the third is to bring you into an understanding that Jesus
in Scripture says you were called this, now you're called
this. And that's a reflection of our
stories that things happen to us and maybe people give you a name
or you take on an identity which isn't effortlessly happy, that
isn't effortlessly secure, but the identity that God birthed is
effortless and beautiful. So we need to help you
understand what is the name that He gave you and how can you live
confidently in that. And those 3 shifts are going to
mark a new day for hope. Thanks Liz.
So I just wanted to share to that to you just fairly rawly
and then with some more chance to talk about it and process it
at a late at a later date. But yeah, as we come into land,
I guess the key things that I've seen as I've been reading these
bits of Scripture and and, and, and, and the life thinking about
the life being led by the Spirit of God.
This this thing we saw in Zechariah around God working in
US and through us despite our weaknesses.
And, and then in in for Peter. I just love the these kind of
rhythm and his lifestyle of prayer, the way that he's
constantly learning and growing. And he's not sort of fixed on
what he doesn't claim to have the full and complete revelation
of everything. But he's he's being led by the
Spirit of God in in his daily life in ways that expand God's
Kingdom and, and just see wonderful change around the
world. And I, and you know, I always
feel that we as a, as a church, Liz just spoken to that a little
bit there some of our church identity.
And we've got this, I think a calling within the kind of
greater Bristol area to, to bring something quite
significant. We bring something quite
significant. We're fairly small as a church,
but we people often say our hope sort of punches above its
weight. And I think there's, there's
things that we do in our prayer, in our, in our daily lives and
our work around the city and in who we are a repentant people
who are constantly being changed.
You know, we, we have quite, we have quite an impact.
So I'm excited this year about pressing into more of that and
I'd love to pray a prayer for us now and then have a bit of time
for us to be prayed for, pray for each other to be to be led
by the Spirit this year. So Lord, I want to just just
pray for us as as hope first of all, and again, say this year,
maybe be a church that's led by your spirit into the adventures
into the the works of faith that you've got for us.
Holy Spirit, we invite you to keep on speaking to us.
We want to hear your voice, we want to be led by you and we
pray that you use us this year. Amen.
So really mindful of just kids being collected at 12:10.
We've got at least 5 minutes for those who've got kids to collect
and a couple of options. I actually, I just primed Tom
and Ruth asking if you'd be up for praying for people.
I wondered if you'd be up for coming towards the front here.
And I'll be here as well if anyone would like to come.
And we prayed for at the front by any, by any one of us three,
we'd love to do that or just pray with someone around you.
Or if you'd prefer just to sit and just process with God for,
for 5 minutes, if that's your style, then do that.
And I'm just thinking, I just want to be prayed to be filled
with the Holy Spirit, to be led by the Spirit of God this year.
And let's have 5 minutes doing that when we get to 10 past.
Just keep an eye on it. If you've got kids and little
gems particularly to go and whisk them out, great, there we
go.