Oh, it's nice seeing everybody if we haven't met.
My name is Chris and this is Alice.
And Alice is going to be speaking to us.
And yeah, it's just good to be here, isn't it?
Good to be together, Good to be following Jesus?
Best thing we can do with our lives.
And let's pray, Lord, thank you, that we've got this little
window of time now to be together and to sit in the
scriptures together and to we just say that we want to grow in
our faith. We want to grow in our
recognition of who you are. We want to give our lives to you
and be shaped by you. We want to be used by you for
your Kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.
And we pray that this this next half an hour or so is a really
nutritious, satisfying, equipping time for us.
Feed us, inspire us. Holy Spirit, come and make, Come
and make Jesus name to us. Amen.
We're going through a series this year.
What is the good news? And kind of dovetailing in with
just started a course called the Introduction to the Trinitarian
Faith course, which definitely needs a better title, although
you trust it more, don't you? It's not into branding or
marketing in any way. If you've looked at any of the
films or anything, they're like, yeah, they're just kind of
trying to say what they believe. They really haven't thought
through the sales side of it. And what?
So what I've been doing is, and once a month going through
different aspects of what the good news could be for us, kind
of living as we are in our time and place.
Bill has been going through the book of Romans, What is the good
news? And Paul has been going through
what is the good news in terms of the reality of being rooted
completely and fully and and embraced within the Godhead,
within the, the love of the Father, Son and Spirit and what
that means. So it kind of they, they sort of
work together, but have slightly different emphasis.
We probably land in slightly different places.
We think that's a very healthy culture to wrestle through what
we think reality is. I think if someone claims a
monopoly on reality, then they are deluded.
There is one person who claims their reality.
His name is Jesus and we're all feeling our way towards him,
feeling our way towards that revelation.
But I think we have an image of a diamond that all of us can get
a facet, A glimpse, a colour, a way of representing it.
And that's why we submit to one another out of reverence for
Christ, because I will submit to you and and get something of
Jesus that I couldn't bring to the table and vice versa.
So what I'm going to bring is if it's all true, if any of it's
true, Jesus has to be bigger than Adam.
And I'm really excited by this slide because that's Jesus and
that's Adam Sadler. Just remember that for the rest
of your days. And if you ever meet him, you
can say you came up. But Jesus was bigger.
It it was actually impossible to get an image to try and explain
what I meant by Jesus being bigger than Adam.
Adam, death, sin, evil. The most horrific things that
humans have ever done and could do to each other is this little
speck compared to the omniscience, the omnipresence,
the omnipotence of the Christ apparently, who holds the cosmos
and holds us all together. It's just so mind blowing.
It's hard to use words to articulate this reality.
If this is true that Jesus is bigger than Adam.
However, in our actual lives, waking up this morning who had
an argument with a family member if you live with someone this
morning or not an argument Because some people don't argue,
do they? Like Chris doesn't argue, I
argue so how does that work? It's like I'm trying to argue
but there's no argument anyway. And then some people are like
two people who don't argue, but they're just really angry inside
anyway. So hands up anyone who had any
of that. If you're not living with, I'm
going to get to you people living on your own, don't you
worry. But if you're living with anyone
else from about 678 AM this morning, how many of you felt
frustrated with someone else in your life this morning?
Gosh, you're so godly. Look at you all.
There's only a few of us, both the Robinsons.
You have honesty, integrity and transparency all over your
family if you're living on your own.
Did someone just say, Claire, come up here and tell me what
your morning experience? What was it like being you this
morning? Do you want to share something
that wasn't? Maybe Adam was a bit bigger than
Jesus. I don't really know what.
It was like being me. I got back very late last night,
so it's very tiring being me this morning.
Yeah, yeah. But anyway, nothing new to say.
Sometimes you can get quite frustrated with yourself,
though. Even if you don't live with
anyone else, you can still get frustrated.
You see, aren't we? Aren't we problematic?
Us humans? We have a fundamental
restlessness we can't do the most basic thing of at all,
which is accept ourselves and love the people.
Apparently he we're supposed to love more than anyone else in
the world, and we can't even bear them sometimes.
There is a real problem called Adam.
That's Adam right there. We get up in the morning, we
don't know how to do life. We get across with the people
we're supposed to love. We get across with ourselves for
getting across with the people we're supposed to love.
We soothe it with addictions. This is Adam, and either that's
it and that culminates in communities, nations,
international disputes because it's the same old basic problem,
or Jesus is bigger than that. That that's the issue.
There isn't any other issue. There isn't any other way out.
There has to be someone, something, a way of life that's
bigger than that. So we love the idea of feeling
in control. Most of us humans, we want to
feel in control. We want to feel in control of
our relationships, our finances, our life.
We want to feel like things are working the way we wanted them
to work. But almost all the time we feel
like they're out of control. We feel like we lack agency.
We lack powerless. We are, we are powerless in the
way we kind of instinctively think we shouldn't be.
And that is happening in our own levels, in our own households,
in our own lives this morning. But also it is really bizarrely
happening. And it may be because we're,
we've, we're now in a world of such instant access to anything
going on anywhere that's obviously income generated when
it's the most click baity. So it may be that the world has
always felt incredibly unstable and we just are more aware of it
now because that that is extractive it people make money
out of our awareness of instability.
But in the last five years, we've experienced a global
pandemic for the first time since the Spanish flu in 1918 to
1990. We've experienced the first war
in Europe since the Second World War.
We've experienced the virtual collapse of the oldest and most
successful political party, the Conservative Party in history.
Whenever you think about the Conservative Party, it's it's
been named the British Conservative Party by other
liberal democracies as the most successful political party in
history because it was kind of like that was the party that
represented how the West works. We do liberal democracy and that
party that still gets voted in, still is kind of nimble,
flexible, works for the times, delivers whatever it delivers.
Over 2-3 hundred years is a sign that liberal democracy is
working. And we've seen that in our
country virtually collapse. We've tasted the beginnings of
physical violence, breaking out of the largest ideological civil
war that we've ever had within the West.
So we had the Civil War, if you remember the Cold War between a
Western way of thinking, which is kind of rooted in what I've
said, liberal democracy, capitalism, freedom of speech,
against what we called communism, which is more like
totalitarian governments seeking to redistribute economically
through through kind of big government, rather than
capitalism, which is trying to redistribute through big
society. And they were, and that was like
a civil war, but it wasn't within the West.
This is the first ideological civil war we've had within the
West. And now we're seeing it break
out into violence where people are kind of like it should be
violent. Actually, the with the
assassination of Charlie Kirk was very polarising.
But one of the things that people felt who were pleased
that he died is actually he's been verbally violent that
justifies physical violence. So that kind of unspoken social
contract we used to have, which is you have freedom of speech,
you have the right to say whatever you want to say as long
as you say it honourably and respectfully.
And then we have this debate and we may not agree with each
other, but but what you're saying isn't violent has now
changed. We assume anything that causes
harm to someone else, if that social, emotional, psychological
can be deemed violent and therefore can be retributed with
physical violence, that is changed.
That was not in the social contract 5-10 years ago.
It's not in the social contract. People aren't regretting it.
Some people are. I as a Christian D, but as a
Westerner, we've changed. So that's happening in the world
we live in. We've got the rise of
nationalism, including Christian nationalism for the first time
ever that I've heard of on the right in response to the hyper
progressivism that that kind of Co opted through the left.
All in the midst of the rise of China actually as the global
superpower, a climate emergency and then transition from the
industrial age to the technological age.
So all of this, we are living in such a seismic shift of how we
actually do live that is akin to the change from the agricultural
revolution to the industrial. That changed everything.
It changed how people worked, where people lived, how they
related to each other, how they related to themselves, as as
economic, as products, as people who create products.
Everything changed in the industrial revolution because we
were born into that. We don't realise the change that
that brought to our humanity, but we are living through
exactly the same thing. In the technological age, which
people will look at probably say in about 2007 in the launch of
the smartphone, it happened. And so we're living in
unbelievable instability. It's unprecedented and people
use that word, but it really is, this is really unprecedented.
Partly what I'm going to be touching on is AI.
We've created for the first time ever a super intelligence that
in terms of processing speed is infinitely more intelligent than
humans. And these are all kind of forms
of death. They're forms of Adam,
instability, insecurity, financial concerns, obviously
physical and verbal violence are forms of death.
The fact that because the AI sector has to deliver a profit
to their shareholder, it's not driven by human interest.
Is this going to be like really in the, in the, in the interests
of the person who's using this or even if that heart's there,
even if that spirit's there? And I think we all have a
conscience and I think we all care.
There's this market forces, I talked about them, the spiritual
principalities and powers that are bigger.
And actually there's just this drivenness to deliver a profit
to the shareholders, so to develop the sector for that aim.
So these are all, all forms of death.
But what's really interesting is us humans are actually still the
same. We haven't had.
We might have done, we might not realise it had a chip in our
brains. But anyway, I don't think that
has happened. Yeah, yeah.
So ultimately we are still human, and apparently the
highest calling on a human is not knowledge, power, security
or control. It's the capacity to love and be
loved. So Jesus says in a time of
unbelievable upheaval and brutality and actually really
what happened to Jerusalem under the oppression of Rome around 66
AD when Jerusalem was destroyed, was was one of the most brutal
experiences in history. Like many people were killed,
many were enslaved, Jewish people under Roman oppression.
Eventually in about 160 they were kicked out of the region
and suffered horrifically. And Jesus says to his followers,
who at this critical moment of like, what does it actually mean
to be Jewish? Who is the Messiah?
Are you the Messiah? And he says to those people
thinking maybe he is. You will hear of wars and
rumours of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed.
Such things must happen. But the end is still to come.
Nation will rise against nation and Kingdom against Kingdom.
There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.
All these are the beginning of birth pains.
So he's framing something when he uses the word labour pains,
he's framing pain redemptively birth pains.
That is a very different kind of framing to a kind of pain that
leads to death. So everything you've just heard,
warfare, pandemics, crisis, the drivenness to deliver a profit
to the shareholder, all of these he's reframing as potentially
birth pains that are going to heighten to such a degree that
they will actually deliver new creation.
They're going to birth something in and for and through humanity
that is fundamentally restorative.
Then you will be handed over to be persecuted.
You'll be put to death. We saw that happened in history.
The the blood of the martyrs, of the seeds of the church, and you
will be hated by all nations because of me.
At that time, many will turn away from the faith and will
betray and hate each other. Many false prophets will appear
and deceive many people because of the increase of evil.
The love of most will go cold. But the one who stands firm to
the end will be restored. Jesus is not dismayed by this
horrors, not only that his community are going to face, but
he himself is going to face. He knows what what will what
happen, what he has to go through to establish restoration
and redemption. He's taken all of that in
himself. Paul talked about this Paul golf
on the Trinitarian faith course on Wednesday.
This verse that is so true. It's one of those verses that's
so weighty and true. I sit in my life every day.
Since the children have flesh and blood sarks, humanity that
is subject to mortality and death, He too shared in their
humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who
holds the power of death, that is the enemy, the devil and free
those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of
death. Almost all our decisions are
made based on chronic, acute anxiety that we are going to
die. That's almost everything we do.
All our entertainment is just dispelling that reality.
We're just going to put that reality down, just be
entertained, because essentially we're going to die.
All our hoarding, all our fear of being generous, it's because
we think we're going to die. All our panicked parenting, it's
because we think we or our children are going to die.
Everything how we responded to the pandemic is about death.
Death literally is the master of us all.
Almost everything we do, we say, we think, we're motivated and
driven by this unbelievably profound self protecting drive
to evade or negotiate or somehow get out of this problem of
death. So Jesus has to be bigger than
that. Jesus has to be bigger than
Adam, who died, and in him we all died.
And Paul makes this claim, just as an Adam all have died, so in
Christ all will be made alive. So he's making this claim that
Jesus is bigger than Adam. It's not just about having a
nice life now, being kind to people, making the best that we
can with our heads down, and then we're all going to die.
And let's just make it rosy for as much as we can, for as much
of the world as we can, which is a secular humanist vision.
It's about something about that being so thoroughly conquered,
overcome and destroyed that we can actually live an
indestructible life. And Paul got this because he had
an encounter with Jesus, because one of the things we're learning
is this isn't something we can compute with our dark and
alienated minds. That's controlled by death.
We need a an eruption of a spiritual revelation from within
that breaks out, realigns our thinking and breaks out into
good news for everyone else. This image of the river flowing
out of of Hope Chapel or flowing out of the temple, Jesus says
it's from here, from gut, from the depths of your being,
Streams, rivers of living water will flow and then that bubbles
up, realigns our thinking into reality.
But it doesn't start with our mind trying to work it out.
It starts with the revelation of a full and complete encounter
with Jesus who has been raised from the dead.
Paul had that. Paul the apostle had that moment
of encounter. He talks about it multiple times
in his writings. He testified to an encounter
with Jesus who'd been raised from the dead.
So when he's saying this, this isn't just a nice idea or a
philosophy or another way of dealing with the inevitable,
which is death, He'd actually. Encountered resurrection.
Now, brothers and sisters, I want you to remind you of the
gospel I preached to you, which you received on, on which you
have taken your stand by this gospel.
You have been saved if you hold firmly to the word I preached to
you. Otherwise you have believed in
vain. And this formulation here, it's
probably written in maybe the 50s, is one of the oldest
formulations of the gospel. And it's so simple, so
beautiful, so profound, and so utterly incomprehensible for
what I received. I passed on to you as a first
importance, this bit, this bit that Christ died for our sins.
What does that mean? What is that?
How is that? Why is that?
Christ died for our sins. Something happened in the Christ
event. It's called us.
Call it the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that
fundamentally changed everything.
And we all know that. Even people who don't believe
that Jesus was who He says He was, everyone knows something
changed through the Christ event, and there's something
about his death for our sins that changed everything.
As I said the other night when I was hosting Paul in the course,
I think a lot about why Jesus died, why he died the way he
did. Christ died for our sins.
This is what Paul's giving us, that he was buried, that he was
raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.
That's the gospel. That's apparently the solution
to Adam. Christ died for our sins
according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was
raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and
that he appeared to Peter or Cephas and then to the 12 after
that. He appeared to more than 500 of
brothers and sisters at the same time.
This is what we're wrestling with.
What is that? What the heck is that?
How can that solve this? Everything I've been talking
about, what does it mean? Christ died for our sins, that
He was buried and that He was raised on the third day.
Something about death being fully absorbed into Him in every
way, past, present and future. The Lamb that was slain from the
beginning of before the beginning of time, before the
foundation of the world had covered and atoned everything to
the end of the age that death was completely conquered because
death couldn't hold him. Because as we learnt, he's God
in human form, not just a higher form of humanity.
He's God in human form and God is life.
So God couldn't be killed. He had to be raised again.
He has indestructible life that cannot be dead and buried and
left there, unlike all of us. He had to explode back out
because he is life. Apparently that's reality.
Apparently that changed the world forever.
Apparently that's changing us forever.
And I know what's happened to each one of us is we've tasted a
deposit of it, guaranteeing what is to come.
We've tasted something. I I feel at the moment I'm just
seeing Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the
world. That phrases in me all the time.
It moves into tears. I'm like, I know there's
something in this. It's almost impossible to
articulate it or express it, but there's something in this that's
like an explosive atomic bomb just waiting to get out and
disrupt all of us from this horrific fear of death that's
just brutal and has mastery over us.
There's something about this that's wanting to explode out of
us. But if it is preached that
Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say
there is no resurrection of the dead?
This was an unbelievably foolish claim.
People claimed a lot of things in the 1st century Pagan Roman
mythology, but no one claimed in in physical human resurrection.
That was utterly foolish. If there is no resurrection of
the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.
And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is
useless, and so is your faith. It's something about the
resurrection of the dead that the whole thing stands or falls
on. There's something about the fact
that death doesn't have the final word.
That's a conquest of death and overcoming A resurrection that
changes everything. This isn't just a nice idea or a
nice way to live, or if you're a Christian, you'll be a nice
person. This is about resurrection from
the dead. Fundamentally, that's what it's
about. And it's about something that
happened 2000 years ago before we we were even thought of or
even involved. Something happened in history
when Jesus took on incarnation sarks.
He took on the flesh of the human condition.
He lived it. It he, he died, it died with
him, was buried and completely raised from the dead.
That somehow releases atonement to all of us.
Or it's nothing. It's nothing.
There's nothing. There's nothing beyond our
materiality. There isn't any other way to to
solve the problem of death. No other religion or worldview
can solve the problem of death. And in fact, none of them even
want to or try to. Only this extraordinary claim is
saying that problem is there, and that problem's been solved.
More than that, we are found to be false witnesses about God.
For if testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead,
but he did not raise him, if in fact the dead are not raised.
For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised
either. And if Christ has not been
raised, your faith is futile. You're still in your sins.
Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.
If only for this life. We have hope in Christ.
We are of all people to be most pitied.
You don't need to lay down your life, your job.
You don't need to lay down your marriage or the way you work.
You don't need to think about your mind, you all of that.
You do. We do because we believe in
resurrection. If we're just trying to follow
Christ now, why the heck wouldn't you just eat, drink,
and be merry? Because tomorrow we die.
That's the that is the world view of death, and that is how
most people live. And if we're actually what we
it's been called practical atheists in that we say we
believe in resurrection, but essentially we don't.
We're most pitied. We don't get to eat, drink and
be merry for tomorrow we die. And we've laid down everything
for the gospel, which we don't believe in, hot or cold, but
lukewarm. I'll spit you out of my mouth
like it's either true or it isn't.
And if it isn't true, eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we
die. For Christ has indeed been
raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen
asleep. For since death came through a
man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.
For is in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive,
but each in turn Christ the first fruits.
Then when He comes those who belong to Him, then the end will
come, when he hands over the Kingdom to God the Father, after
he's destroyed all dominion, authority and power.
For He must reign until he has put all his enemies under His
feet. The last enemy to be destroyed
is death, for He has put everything under His feet.
Now when it says that everything has been put under him, it is
clear that this does not include God Himself who put everything
under Christ. When He has done this, then the
Son Himself will be made subject to Him who put everything under
Him, so that God may be All in all.
The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.
It is written the first man, Adam, became a a living being,
the last Adam a life giving spirit.
The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and
after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of
the earth. The second man is of heaven.
As was the earthly man, so are those are of the earth.
As is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven.
And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so
shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.
I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that Sark's flesh and
blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, nor does the perishable
inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery.
We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed in a flash,
in the twinkling of eye at the last trumpet.
For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised
imperishable, and we will be changed.
For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable,
and the mortar with immortality. When the perishable has been
clothed with the imperishable and the mortar with immortality,
then the saying that is written will come true.
Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Where O death is your victory? Where O death is your sting?
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God, he gives us the victory through our Lord
Jesus Christ. And I've put this last verse
we're going to read now because according to Steve Covey, the
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, we live with the end in
mind. Whatever we think the end in
mind is, we'll in frame and inform everything we do.
And I mean what we really think the end in mind is not all we
kind of think, but what we really think, what our actual
actual belief system is. This is why I do everything I
do. This is why I've made the
decisions I've made. This is why I've chosen the life
I've chosen, If you can say that I think He chose me.
Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm.
Let nothing move. You always give yourselves fully
to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the
Lord is not in vain. It changes everything.
It's why people took out their coffins to countries who didn't
know about Jesus. It's why people from the
Moravian movement who enslaved themselves to hang out with
enslaved people and share the good news about Jesus.
It's why people went and just immediately died of diseases
knowing that they would because of Jesus.
It's about the people in the first few centuries.
It's about Paul going to Nero and saying you're not Lord.
Jesus is Lord. At some point he'd broken
through death as his mastery into the resurrection, enough to
take the bullet for Jesus. I just don't know how much I've
been scraping the surface of that.
So I've said I've made some decisions, but in the last few
weeks I've been thinking a few months, how much am I convinced
by the resurrection of the dead? That's my journey, that's my
curiosity. Is that real?
So what I want to do is really we want to have some ministry
time. Now for some of us, there are
big things that we we find incredibly difficult and really
struggle with it, like climate anxiety people, some people
really struggle with that. The rise of Christian
nationalism, some people really struggle with that.
The grip of hyper progressivism. There are big things that
certain people struggle with. We want us to.
They are pain points for us. Other people, it's actually a
lot more personal, a lot more, not deep, but a lot more
vulnerable. Maybe in terms of our actual
lives, there may be some relationship pain points we're
in. There may be real, real anxiety
about money that grips us and keeps us awake at night or
something we may have done or thought or said or shame.
And when we're on our own in a dark place, that's the thing
that's ruling us. And I want, I want this time for
us to, to begin to make that move from unbelief to faith,
from death to life, from Adam to Jesus.
I want for us all the repentance is, is a metonoid reframing in
the light of reality to see clearly that extraordinarily
brutal and vulnerable thing in our lives, in the light that
Jesus is bigger than Adam. And I think Lazarus does, sorry.
Jesus does this beautifully with Adam, with Lazarus.
So Lazarus was a very close friend.
He loved him. He was often hosted in the house
and he felt he only does what he sees the Father doing.
And he knew he was ill, He knew he could heal him.
But the Father said don't go, don't go, don't go.
He dies and then he dies for four days, which is really dead.
Before that you could get a resuscitation in.
By day four you're in the tomb, you're decaying, you are dead.
The only option is resurrection and Jesus has to try, as the
humanity of Jesus has to trust that his status, his his reality
is the beloved son. So much to go.
I'm not going to go, I'm not going to go, I'm not going to
go. He goes.
His son, his friend has died. He weeps, he's broken hearted.
He he he meets death and he grieves it because it's not
right that his friends should die.
Everything in your life that you're thinking about now is not
right. That is not what we're designed
to do or bear or carry or know about or experience.
Our bodies simply can't handle the weight of mortality.
We're not designed for it, and it kills us.
So he wept, and then he moved to a place where Jesus was bigger
than Adam and he physically raised Lazarus from the dead.
People think at the political, social level was the thing that
got him crucified because that that was just too
discombobulating, too costly, too disruptive for the religious
elite at the time. This person really does have
resurrection power. We've got to kill him because
Rome will take our temple and our nation.
So with the the thing we're thinking about that we want to
pray through and pray through with someone else, I want us to
think about that moment for Jesus with Lazarus where he is
able both to weep, to lament, to bring his complaint, to be
bitter and open and honest and travail and cry and have those
labour pains that you think you're going to die, you think
you're going to die, you do. I think there's something in
labour pains. You're supposed to think you're
going to die because it's a kind of metaphor of the birth pains
of suffering that bring about new creation, where you have to
go through death to get to the resurrection.
Jesus talks about it in John 14. He says a woman is in anguish
until her time has come. Everything in this age is a
metaphor for reality. And I think labour pains, what
you think are going to die, is part of a daily experience for
so many people, so many people around the world forever.
That there is death is not the end, there's always
resurrection. Everything can be framed by
labour pains, giving birth to new creation.
So I want you to hold that thing and feel the complaint and the
grief and the sadness. And then I also want you to pray
with someone. Hold someone, put your arm
around someone and pray. Just pray.
Jesus can be bigger than Adam in that thing.
Pray for resurrection in that thing, Pray for healing,
restoration, whatever it is that Jesus wants to do to show he's
bigger than Adam in that area. So it could be a big area that
you find extremely difficult. It could be a very personal
area, but I don't want anyone to go away today unless they want
to because we always have agency believing that Adam is bigger.
If you have agency, you do have agency and you want to believe
this is a moment of transaction where you can say get me to to
such an encounter with Jesus that I can believe in
resurrection. So I'm going to pray now.
And what we're going to do is you can either find someone near
you to pray with or you can come up to the front.
I'll pray crystal pray other people where we, we mobilise
here. We believe in every member
ministry. So everyone's authorised to
minister and to pray. But sometimes we want to pray
with someone who almost who doesn't know.
And other times we want to pray with someone who does know.
And that's we respect both those approaches here.
So I'm going to pray and then we're going to minister to each
other. Lord, we just, we just need
breakthrough revelation of who you are.
We need what Paul had on the Damascus Rd when he was going to
kill and put followers of the way in prison and he encountered
you in such a way that he death wasn't the end for him anymore.
That he believed in resurrection and he lived the rest of his
life towards that end. And he would say things like to
I'm torn. It is better for you communities
of believers that I live. But if I die, I will be with
Christ, which is better by far. He had something he'd
encountered, someone that changed him forever.
And we need that. We need that for ourselves.
And Lord, all of us are in the birth pains.
All of us are in pain in different areas for different
reasons. And so we invite you, Holy
Spirit, as our counsellor, as our comforter, as we pray for
each other and minister to each other now that Adam is bigger
than Jesus, that the river of life that flows from the temple
is able to heal and bring back to life the dead things that
they are small in the river. Glorify your name, magnify your
name, reveal your reality to us in such a way that we can come
into agreement with Paul and say Christ was raised from the dead.
Amen.