Hey, welcome to the city point church podcast.
Thanks for joining us every day is an opportunity to take hold
of. So we hope this message inspires
you and build your faith, but it helps you have more of a God
perspective for your day. Enjoy, I want.
To read out a story to you, better put on my glasses.
Here we go. This is a man called Gino
Bartelli. He was one of Italy's greatest
cyclists, born in 1914, known as king of cycling, born into power
in rural, he said that word rural country, Tuscany, near
Florence. He rose to fame in his early
20s, winning the Tour de France in 1938 and again in 1948 after
the war, along with multiple titles.
He was a devout Catholic with strong moral convictions.
Bartelli displayed extraordinary courage in World War 2 following
Germany's 1943 occupation of Italy, which led to the
deportation of nearly 10,000 Jews, 7000 of which perished in
camps. He used his celebrity and
position as a military bike messenger to aid the resistance.
At the request of the Catholic cardinal, who was a friend of
his, Bartelli transported counterfeit identity documents
between Florence and Assisi, completing at least 40 long
training bikes with papers hidden in his bicycles, frame
and handlebars. He also collected funds from
Swiss Bank in Genoa to support hidden Jews in Florence and
sheltered his Jewish friends and family in an apartment and
basement. These actions that he did, they
carried immense personal risk, imprisonment or death for
himself and his family. Yet Batali believed that helping
those in need outweighed the danger.
He kept his wartime heroism a secret until his death in 2000,
insisting good deeds should not be boasted about.
He once told his son, if you're good at a sport, they attract
medals to your shirt and then they shine in some museum.
That which is earned by doing good deeds is attached to the
soul and shines elsewhere. Now I I love this story and I
wonder if someone like Bartelli ever sat there as a child on his
little bike, riding through country Tuscany and pondered
what could be possible in his life.
He started out as a poor boy riding through these these
country streets and his life was ordinary.
But his faith and his conviction caused him to look at the 'cause
that was presented around him, take what he had and to achieve
extraordinary feats with the richest kind of eternal reward.
I wonder for you and I if we could ponder the thought this
morning, what is possible? So the title of the message is
what is possible and what is our part?
Because we always have a part to play.
It's not just all God doing all things.
We're included in the picture in Matthew 1926.
Is this a problem? Do you want me to take a mic?
No, OK, Matthew 1926 it reads. Jesus looked at them intently
and said humanly speaking it is impossible, but with God
everything is possible. With God everything is possible.
In Mark 923 it reads anything is possible if a person believes So
have you sat down and ever pondered the question?
What's possible? The Bible encourages us to
broaden our minds, ask the question, ask him the question.
But while embracing one important part in this
Scripture, I want to do a little bit of a dance this morning with
a word and it says with God everything is possible.
With Greek word there is para. I so badly wanted to find
someone Greek and tell me how I did, saying that I practiced so
hard. John's not even here, he's at
Bribie, and so we didn't get to hear it.
You could argue that the word para, it means it could mean in
or of or from, but it translates better in this particular
passage of Scripture as with so if I say that I went to the park
with my grandson Balfa, who's present, I've got Balfa and
myself. There's two people in the room.
If Pastor Rachel said I'm taking all of the song leaders out to
dinner, who's at dinner? We've got Pastor Rach and or the
song leaders. When we use the word with it
usually means yourself and someone else in the room.
Our Lord Jesus, he's so relational.
He's so relational. He wants to do life with you.
He wants to be so close, so intricately involved in your
life. Almighty God, Creator of heaven
and earth, desires to do life with you.
And so when he tells us anything is possible, it's anything is
possible with Him, we're not excluded from the picture we're
in. We're in that, that picture.
We're in that diagram. It's God and it's us, which
means God has a part to play in. Anything is possible, but we
have a part to play. It's a partnership.
It's with God. All things are possible.
Sometimes we can excuse our involvement.
We can say things like, well, if God wanted it to happen, he'll
just go and make it happen. He's God.
And I mean, God is God. He can do whatever he pleases,
but it's genuinely not how he works.
He likes to invite us into his will.
God's will be done, which means please pray for God's will to be
done. It's an invitation to partner
with God with what he wants, with what he wants to establish
in US and through us. He gives us the strength and the
power, the enabling, the anointing to outwork that which
He wants to do. He's relational.
He wants to do life with. In Philippians 413 it says for I
can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength?
I can do. He gives strength.
Why do we need strength? Why do we need strength if God's
just going to go and do it all? We need strength because we have
a part to play. We're not absent in the things
that are possible with God. We're present in the process.
So it's a partnership of Him working with us.
So with God we can do all things.
All things are possible to those that believe.
And I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
With God. We can do anything if we
believe, which leads me to 4 points.
I want to race through four points this morning on what is
our part to play and the first one being .1.
Our part is to believe. Our part is to believe.
In Mark 923 we did not read that.
Anything is possible if a a person ticks all of life's
boxes. We didn't even read that.
Anything is possible if you tick all of churches boxes.
We didn't read that. Anything is possible if you're a
really, really good person on your best behaviour.
And we didn't read that anything is possible if you just work
hard enough. Like the world loves to tell
you. No, God's Holy Bible says
anything is possible if a person believes.
Being a good person and doing good deeds is not what qualifies
us to receive from God. Faith does He made the way we
are reconciled to God by His power, and believing in Him
gives us access to the heavenly. It gives us access to believe
what is possible out there, what is possible in here.
Faith opens more doors than sin will ever close.
You cannot earn His power. You cannot be good enough for
it. You can't work hard enough for
it. It's made available through
faith, through believing. Anything is possible.
For those that believe the Bible says anything, Do you believe
that anything is possible? Maybe a more pointed question
could be what have you deemed impossible?
What have you given up on? What have you put away?
I'm pretty sure that ship sailed for me.
It this is this will never happen for me.
I tried it and it didn't work. I can feel God's presence here
wanting just to speak right into this.
It's, it's almost like you've, you've started out with life and
it's like a maze. You know, those really fun ones
that you, you pay to run around in and you've got all of the
shrubs and there's a beginning and then there is an end and
there's a way through. But you've started out in this
maze in all excitement, but then you hit a dead end and you're
like, oh, OK, so you've gone down a different path, but you
hit another dead end. And this has kept happening
until you got so discouraged and convinced yourself it's just a
cruel joke, and you stopped going down paths and stopped
believing that there was a way through the scripture that we
just read. Where is it, Mark, that anything
is possible for those who believe in that particular
story, that scenario, Jesus was speaking right into that kind of
disappointment. Do you know the cynical people?
They don't usually start out cynical.
Cynical people usually start out overly optimistic with all of
the energy, with all of the hope, with all of the faith, and
then they hit disappointment. Then they get discouraged, they
get let down, they might experience betrayal, they get
hurt, disillusioned, and so they become cynical.
The words of Jesus. And I just pray that that you
would hear the words of Jesus because this is not my words.
This is from his Bible he speaks right into.
It was this kind of disappointment that he spoke
into. Anything is possible for those
that believe. Anything is possible for those
that believe. Any situation is possible for
those that believe. Any marriage can be great for
those that believe any financial crisis has a way through.
For those that believe restoration is possible.
For those that believe transformation is possible.
For those that believe spiritual freedom is possible.
For those that believe anything is possible, and I even just
pray in this moment that you will allow His words to Pierce
your heart right now into that space that you've given up on.
I can almost hear you screaming at me.
Don't you give me false hope. Don't do it again.
I've buried that. I've put a cap on it.
I'm not revisiting that again. I pray you would hear His words
that anything is possible. He created you with purpose.
He created you for a plan, and it's possible if you just
believe. With God, anything is possible.
Our part is to believe. And so how do we then match our
faith and expectation to our desired outcome?
That's then in what we do, James talks about our works being as
the evidence of our faith, the proof that faith exists.
So point to our part is to do the work.
In Philippians 212 to 13, it says work hard.
I don't like that word so much work.
Can't it be like work softly, work a little bit?
Does it even need to be work? Define.
Let's define work. I mean now it says work hard to
show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep
reverence and fear. For God is working in you,
giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.
So God has desires. How beautiful.
God has desires, things that He wants to see and it's plans for
good for you and for the people in and around us all.
And the way that he brings forth what pleases him is to work in
US and give us the power to do what pleases him.
He empowers us to I just said the word.
It's 2 letters starts with D wakey wake.
He empowers us to do his work. It's his power, God, power our
work. There's that partnership again.
He'll do it, but he empowers us. It's together, it's with God.
God has a part to play and we have a part to play.
When we believe God for something, our actions will then
prove what we believe. So when we entertain what is
possible, our actions are going to be the evidence of what we
believe. I have an example here.
Years ago when I went to City Point N, it used to be called
COC. I've got my good friend
Peschelen in the auditorium here today, visiting from Sweden, a
friend of more than 30 years. Do you remember how we had the
shed? I don't know what it's called.
Yeah, the the shed. I don't know what you call it.
It's where they've got the big God bowl, that big, beautiful
building now. Sorry, Epicentre.
OK, there we go. I didn't know that word.
I still call it the shed. So Pastor Ross Abraham, what's
his title now, chairman of the Inc movement.
I remember recall him giving a word and he was saying the story
of how the shed, the epicentre came into being.
And there was a group of them who wanted their own area for a
youth service. They wanted to get this off the
ground. And so a bunch of men went
around on a a dirt slab and they started praying and seeking God
for this building. Now the building I believe was
going to cost somewhere in the vicinity of $200,000, which was
a lot of money back then. And so they got together and
they prayed and they believed God.
And then they got to work. So they had a car wash.
Pretty sure they raised about 180 bucks.
And I love this story because in their own efforts, it was
impossible. They were never going to raise
that money washing cars. But you have to understand, God
breathes and moves on faith. That's believing in Him with
action. They got the money for the
building and we now have what's called an epicentre.
But that's because men of God stood before and petitioned him.
They believed God and then got to work.
We still have to do the work. It's faith and action that
caused heaven to open up and then the money just started to
flow. You know, if God's called you in
this place to be a doctor, you still have to do the work.
If I come to see you, I don't care how anointed by God you are
to be a doctor. If you don't have that
certificate on your wall that says graduated, you are not
coming near me with a scalpel. You've still got to do the work.
There's work that we have to do. We can't escape it.
Genuine faith, prove through what we do.
It will require testing, commitment, grit, sticking it
out when things get hard. Which leads me to .3.
Our part is to surrender and obey, and you might think that
doing the work and obey is one of the same things.
I assure you, it is not. Just because you are working
hard does not mean you are being obedient.
Just because you are busy does not mean you're living a life of
surrender. In Romans 12/1, Let's read.
And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to
give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you.
Let them be a living and holy sacrifice, the kind He will find
acceptable. This is truly the way to worship
Him. A living sacrifice.
May I point out the obvious, please?
It's a living sacrifice, not a dead 1.
It's a living sacrifice. It's not a dead one.
It says, let me clear something up.
When we when we go to God and we surrender to God, sometimes we
can have this attitude of oh, Lord, I just surrender
everything over to you. And we get down on our knees and
we're like, oh, Lord, I'll just surrender.
I'm handing it all over to you. I just give you everything.
I'll give you all of the work. You do it, Lord, you're good for
this. I'm just an encourager.
Go team God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, you got this.
So I'm just oh, that feels a bit better.
Yeah, take, take all of it, Lord.
And you lie down. He was my pillow because this,
this floor is looking pretty good on this altar.
And it's Lord. I just, I lay it all down.
Oh, that's good. That's a bit comfy.
And we take a nap. Oh.
Surrender is not just laying everything down to God.
You do it, Lord. Oh, you're good, You're
powerful, you're king. I just hand it all off to you.
It's laying it down on the altar, but it's picking up what
he wants to do. It's laying down your will and
picking up God's will. What did Pastor Mills say?
When we're on the floor, I'm just processing.
Lord, we've got to hear, get vision, understand what He's
doing, what He wants to do in and through you, and pick up
what He wants us to do. We don't get to just check out.
Give it all to you, God, I'm checking out.
We don't get to do that as parents.
Wouldn't that mean I sometimes, you know, when they're throwing
tantrums? Just check out not my child
today, Lord, and they're throwing up and you got the,
the, the the sickness that's going on.
Woo Hoo, Hoo. I'm not that person's parent.
No, we don't get to do that. We have to stay for the whole
process surrenders, laying down your will and picking up his
your will be done. God with you, Lord, all things
are possible with you laying down what we want, picking up
what He wants. What do we actually think a
living sacrifice means? Have you ever just, do you stop?
Sometimes in scripture when you're reading the Bible, do you
get to, I get to a word, sometimes I'll get 3 words in
and I just stop and go. What does that actually mean?
Lookout Internship. This is what I do.
But to stop and go. What is it to be a living
sacrifice? It's sacrifice.
Sacrificial. It's obedience.
It's often rolled up and like it's often displayed as rolled
up sleeves, hard work. It often is faced with
challenge, even heartache. Do you know why we're so slow to
surrender and obey? Because it's often the very
opposite of what we actually want to do.
It can look terrifying, but it's why faith is required.
It's why we've got to know who God is.
It's why we've got to have a vision of what he's doing and,
and, and tenacity to believe God for what he wants to do.
Otherwise, guys, you might not make it genuine faith.
You can tick all of the boxes. You can do all that this church
asks you to do, but there comes a moment where you've got to get
real personal with your Creator and go, you know what?
I believe you. I believe in you with God.
He promises to sustain us. He promises that He will be with
us and there's beauty and there's rest and there's
richness and there's fulfilment in his will, but we need a bit
of grit. We will potentially miss what is
possible if we're only looking for what's pleasurable.
You'll potentially miss what's possible if all you're looking
for is what brings you pleasure. Jesus cares.
He cares so deeply about every detail in your life.
He knows you better than he know yourself.
There's fulfilment and joy in his purposes.
But our faith needs to be allowed to cost us sometimes.
Which leads me to .4, which is our part is to commit our way.
Other word would be a line in Psalms 37 verses 3 to 6.
It reads trust in the Lord and do good.
Then you will live safely in the land and prosper.
That's good news. Take delight in the Lord and He
will give you your heart's desires.
Commit everything you do to the Lord, Trust Him and He will help
you. There's that partnership, God
and you. He will make your innocence
radiate like the dawn, and the justice of your cause will shine
like the noonday. Much of what we've talked about
this morning is summed up in this scripture.
You know what? It's OK to have desires.
It's OK to dream the impossible. But did you catch the key in
there? It says commit your way to the
Lord. In other words, whose agenda are
you on here? Are you running on God's agenda
or are you running on your own agenda?
Do we set our agenda and then just try and fit Jesus in it?
This is what I'm doing, Lord, this is what my life's about.
Need a new kitchen, got to pay for school fees over here hoping
to restore, you know, or do something with this building
over there. And then I'll come to church on
Sunday, say a quick prayer and try and fit Jesus in.
Whose agenda are you on? You might, you might be crying
and going. I have tried.
I've believed God for things and he hasn't shown up.
I've got to ask the question, whose agenda are you on?
He invites you to jump on his agenda.
You will never experience more fulfillment than when you do.
You will never experience more satisfaction.
You will be blown away by what he can do with your life.
By then you can take your mess and he'll actually turn it into
a message. When you jump on his agenda, he
can pour life into it. He can pour hope into it.
It's amazing what He will do, and I'm reminded of that
scripture that says when you seek the Lord, all of these
things will be added unto you. It all gets sorted out when you
jump on His agenda. All things are possible.
He'll use all of it. Musos, could I just get you to
jump on up with me please? Is our cause about ourself?
What are we about? Or is it actually about?
Jesus is our cause Christ is our cause, His gospel message?
Is our cause to see freedom, spiritual transformation in US,
and reform in our region? Is our life aligned with His
will, what He desires, and what He wants to do?
When we pray, many people come to God and think that it's
begging God for Him to do what we want to do.
It's actually flipped. God has things that He wants to
do, that He wants to establish, that He wants to breathe.
He's told us all about it in here.
If you want to know what God wants, open up His Word.
There are 8000 plus promises in here for you and for our region.
So God wants to do these things. So when we pray, it's not us
begging Him to do what we want. It's us coming in to align with
what He wants to do. And no thing will be impossible
for you. Nothing will be impossible for
you. When we align ourselves in His
desire, His will ask and you will actually receive.
There are promises in here, thousands of them.
But when we talk about God's promises, sometimes we skim over
the fact that there's usually conditions.
You might go conditions. It's like, yes, there's
conditions that we are invited to believe, work at, obey, and
align with. There's a part God plays and
there's a part we play. He empowers.
It's our part to obey. He does the transformation.
It's our part to walk in step with Holy Spirit.
He provides. Oh, He provides.
He provides. There's our job to steward.
He initiates. It's our job to respond.
And he saves. Oh, he saves.
It's our part to believe. If we want to see social reform
in our region, God actually says that he will heal our land.
He says it our part was to humble ourselves, see God, pray,
turn from wickedness. What would our region look like?
Healed. Paint a picture.
I see beauty, I see prosperity. I see Centenary Lakes, that
whole side cleaned up. I see cafes, boardwalks.
I see high rises. I see a little sectioned off
area in that lake where where you've got little tugboats that
families can go and hire and get out on the lake.
I see Peace hospital beds empty because mental health has calmed
right down. And I see sound minds.
I see people, godly people, in positions of influence in our
governments, schools, public services.
I see that there's an answer for homeless people, that anyone who
so chooses to be in a home will have access to a a house with
enmities and a lockable door. What do you see?
What's your part in God's big story?
Because we have a part to play. He wants to do it, but not
everything that happens is God's will.
We get to choose to partner with Him, to bring about what he
wants to do. And we are so honoured that the
God of the universe would choose you and I to be his answer for
humanity. To introduce them to the God who
cares, to introduce them to the God who sees, who has a plan,
who wants to work with you. Do you know Him this morning?