Oh, Happy New Year to each and everyone of you.
And I trust that your Christmas has been wonderful in the sense
of this presence of God being close to each one of you, no
matter what it's looked like, whether it's been full or quiet.
Yeah, I just trust that Jesus has been close.
And for those of you who don't know, I'm Claire.
I'm one of the pastors here at Verso.
And today is really special. It is the first Sunday of a
brand new year. I know we all love a new year
don't we? A re regroup so to speak and a
restart. But it's also a special Sunday
for us. As many of us in the room will
know, it is the last Sunday of what we have fondly called our
in between season. Because next Sunday Verso
Church, you will be so excited to know that we are going to
Commission the wonderful Chuck and Taron.
I know right? Praise God, we've made it to
January 4th and we are super excited for this next turn of
the page in our story as a Verso Church family.
And this season didn't. It began back in September when
Mark and Steph moved to Australia.
I got to chat with them this Christmas.
They say hello to each and everyone of you.
They're doing well. And if you were here, you'll
remember that we started that season praying Psalm 23 over us,
asking Gods, trusting God to be our Good Shepherd.
Remember that we invited Him to lead us in this season side His
still waters, and to help us to learn to feast on the table that
He sets before us even in times of uncertainty.
That we would be secure in His mercy and His goodness.
And from that grounding we started our series on pressing
into and onto Jesus, allowing the Holy Spirit to form us as we
did. And we had an incredible series
where we started. If you remember, I brought my
shovels. You know, I like a good prop.
As many of you know, I brought the shovels with me.
And we talked about this invitation of God to dig the
well of prayer in this season. And no matter how big the shovel
in each one of our hands, the invitation was for us all to
start digging, to exercise our muscles of prayer and allow God
to change the shape of who we are.
And then we explored, didn't we? Through a series, many different
dynamics, Incredible people spoke and we learnt about this
increasing hunger for his presence, for prayer, for
stillness, for lingering, for worship.
And I, I was thinking this Christmas, just back on this
season, like just what God has done in US, rowing us in this
hunger for him. We've had our space online,
we've been fasting together, we've seen the new prayer room
opened. You know, we've seen Christmas
Eve. I don't know, I was so excited
on Christmas Eve. We probably saw 15 to 20 people
give their life to Jesus in this room on Christmas Eve.
Come on, I know thank the Lord this morning.
And then just on New Year's Eve, we had over 400 people hungry
together and worship and see the New Year in in prayer and his
presence. And then and we took a couple of
weeks, didn't we then to look at mission, how God is working in
US and through us to extend the places and spaces that we allow
people to counter Jesus, reverse O care to the ends of the earth,
which we've heard about this morning, to stepping into new
partnerships that would kind of look at bringing God's justice
in the world. And we rocked into heaven into
Christmas series and we looked our heaven invades earth
shockwave of the eternal into the ordinary and how God is with
us and haven't we known him with us in this season and a few
months, You know, we in those few months.
I just want to say this morning as we come to kind of closing
this chapter as one of your pastors, that we are so grateful
for the way that you have journeyed in this time.
You heard that challenge in September to not be stagnant, to
not sit back, to not just wait and see what happens.
You have pressed in and onto Jesus so beautifully.
And I want to say thank you. Thank you for being a church
that's walked faithfully together.
You've loved each other well and you've been full of grace, full
of encouragement. And, and I love that as we've
done that, God has grown this hunger in US and he's marked as
afresh with prayer and worship and devotion.
And, and I think there's been a real gift, hasn't there, in this
kind of in between season that perhaps felt a little bit rocky
to start with. You thought, gosh, what are we
going to do in this time? But I think God's given us this
beautiful gift where he's reminded us that unless the Lord
builds the house, we labour in vain, right?
He's reminded us that we posture ourselves on Him and His
leadership and Him alone. And when we do, look what
happens. He keeps moving in our midst.
And so this time has not been empty in any way.
It's been formative. And I believe it's not a mistake
that God paused us in this time to prepare us for what's ahead.
I want to say this this morning. I know that as we turn into the
next phase of transition and of change again as a new year
comes, like there's just a whole nother wave of things that rises
in US. And just as we said in
September, I want to just remind us again in this moment that we
can be both excited and expectant.
We can be a little bit nervous. We can be a bit unsure.
But here's the deal. The Lord makes space for however
you feel this morning walking into this next chapter.
And His invitation stays the same.
He just invites us to keep pressing into and onto Him and
trusting Him with everything that we have.
And as we do, we get to bring the bits that make us nervous
and we get to exchange them for His expectancy and for who He
is. And so I just want to pray for
us as we kind of close in on this chapter and we get ready
for next week. I just want to invite us to
stand as a church and ask the Holy Spirit to just seal what
he's done in this time and to prepare us for what's ahead.
So Holy Spirit, we thank you this morning that you are
present with us. We thank you for the gift of
your presence. It is a literal miracle.
It's something that blows our mind.
And we, we don't take it for granted that we do not walk this
life. And God, we thank you for this
season. There has been.
We thank you for your purpose in it.
We thank you for what you've done in US.
Would you seal it in our hearts this morning?
And Lord, we pray that we would know this isn't an end.
It was just the beginning what you've planted in US.
Would you bring it to fruition? Would you expand it in US?
And Lord, would you take us this morning as we come and would you
not leave us here? Would you keep moving us forward
in Jesus name? Man, man, it's stuff church
wonderful. Well, it's January.
I, I have to say that I was like pressing the the brake a little
bit as I was heading towards new Year.
I was like, I could use another week, I think another week to do
nothing, maybe a few more PJ days.
But one of the things I love to do and perhaps my husband
doesn't love about me is that when we get to the Christmas
holidays and I'm looking at January, I get into the mode of
thinking about holidays. I need things to look forward
to. I need to see past grey long
January and have things that I'm planning.
And, and it got me thinking about some funny moments and I
was thinking about, I got back into a place of thinking about a
camping trip that we took. I took with my four young
children by myself without my husband like a Wally.
I thought, oh, this is a great idea.
I'll go away in the summer holidays with four children
under the age of 10 along with two other mums.
And that gave us 10 children and three adults and three large
tents to put up by ourselves. And I'm just going to give you a
favour. If you are a mum in this room
and you are planning a camping trip by yourself, don't do it,
OK? Just don't do it.
It's not a good plan. But it's funny, isn't it?
When we I was thinking about this and it made me smile
because of the scripture that the Lord placed on my heart for
us this morning. And you will understand why.
But let's read it. It's Isaiah 54, one to three,
and it says this seeing barren women.
You are you who never bore a child, burst into song, shout
for joy, you who were never in labour, because more are the
children of the desolate women than of of her who has a
husband, says the word. Enlarge the place of your tent,
stretch your tent curtains wide. Do not hold back.
Lengthen your chords, strengthen your stakes, for you will spread
out to the right and to the left your descendants will
dispossessed nations and settle in desolate cities.
And Isaiah is a prophet and he is prophetically speaking here
to Israel. And Isaiah 54 comes after the
Suffering Servant chapter of Isaiah 53.
And Isaiah is calling upon Israel to see that their current
circumstances are not the end of their story, but their
fruitfulness is coming. And it's it's the fruitfulness
of their future. That means that he's calling
them to sing, to worship, even now, as he goes on to call them
to prepare for what is to come. And what Isaiah does in this
moment is essentially he releases something over them.
He's calling them to lift their eyes, right, to worship even
before they see the breakthrough, even before they
see the fruitfulness in the physical.
And then he calls them to prepare for what's to come.
And you might think, well, Claire, we have not had a story
that's barren and we haven't versa has been fruitful and
growing. And it's been a beautiful story
that God has been unfolding in our midst.
But as I prayed about this one off Sunday at the beginning of a
year at the beginning as we step into a new season of transition,
and I prayed about it. The Lord just laid on my heart
that this scripture, and it's been really significant in our
history. For those of you who've been
around a while, you will have heard this before, but I felt
like the Lord wants to release something in the room this
morning as we walk into a new year personally, which is
unknown. Every single one of us does not
know what 2026 will look like as we walk into changes that will
come in our personal lives. Hopefully, if we are disciples
of Jesus, we are changing, but also as we walk into a new
chapter as a church about how we are to posture ourselves in
preparation for what is to come. And the promise is that it, what
is to come, will be fruitful and it will be good and it will go
beyond our imagination. Amen.
And so I want us to look at three things this morning that
the Lord just highlighted to me as I sat in the Scripture for us
as a church. In fact, I'm going to pray
again. Yeah, Lord, we just invite your
Spirit to come and move in this room to open our hearts to
receive what you would have us hold onto from your word this
morning. Increase our openness in this
place, tender our hearts this morning, lift us out of the fog
of a Christmas holiday and Sheen as to what you want to say in
Jesus name. The first phrase that that
jumped out of me as I was sitting in the scripture was
that phrase. Enlarge the place of your tent.
Stretch your curtains wide. Now, if you look at the original
Hebrew of this, I want us to dig in a little bit to what these
words mean. And the word for enlarge
actually means to make wide to createspace, to live without
constraint. And at first glance, when we hit
see see that word, sometimes I think we just go immediately to
the action of like making something bigger, of growing
something, expanding something, picking something up and
stretching it. But I want us to keep digging
into this and you'll see what I mean in a second.
The second word was the you're. And if you look at the you're in
the Hebrew, it's quite interesting that the grammar
nerds in your midst will be fascinated to know that this
your word in the original was a second person, feminine,
singular possessive suffix. I was like, right, Lord, I'm not
a grammar expert. However, what I learnt was that
Isaiah is addressing Israel, which he has put into this image
of a barren woman who will soon have many children.
And the you're given the, the, the type of tense that it is
means that it's not a generic you're, but it's an intimate and
personal one directed at this woman.
It's the your own space, your own heart, your own life.
And in Hebrews thought that possession often implied
identity and responsibility, not just ownership.
And God was speaking directly to who she was, not just what she
did. And then the word tent, in its
literal meaning, a tent was a portable, temporary dwelling,
right? It was the place that they
lived, but it was also an emphasis in that time of their
dependence upon God, rather than a permanency on themselves.
It was the centre of family life, protection, the place of
hospitality, their inheritance. And a tent could easily be
expanded, unlike a physical stone building.
But the tent in the Old Testament times was also the
place where they went to encounter God.
And so if we put all of that together, what we start to see
is that it's not like our Western mindset often thinks,
make it bigger, get to action. Let's go after these things like
let's stretch it. God was saying, enlarge your
tent, make room without constraint in you for you to
encounter God and to offer hospitality to others.
The presence of God dwells in us, but God's invitation, as
he's calling them to prepare for fruitfulness, was to enlarge
their hearts to make room for his presence in them, not
someone else's. Turn my turn, your turn my
heart, your heart. In fact, Andrew Murray says
this, the soul that gives God room will find God enlarging the
capacity of the heart. And in order we, we, we need to
get this right, right. Like it's even what Freya said
this morning. She didn't know I was going to
talk on. But you know, the the posture of
our heart comes first, and then we are empowered to stretch the
curtain wide, or as one version says, the canvas of our
habitations, our lives, the body of our church to create spaces
for others. And I felt like the Lord willing
to remind us on this first Sunday of the year is that He is
calling us in preparation to keep enlarging the space inside
of our hearts for more and more and more and more and more of
His presence. Because as Proverbs says, above
all else, guard your heart, for everything flows from it.
And so as we walk into a new year, I want to ask you, you
know, this is prime time for us like resetting and rethinking
and setting goals. And I'm going to get really fit
this year. And I'm going to do this and I'm
going to do that. And I'm going to put this to
action. I'm going to get more effective
at this and I'm going to become better at this.
And I want to ask you, where in your plan for 2026 is this call
to action to make more room, more space in your heart for the
presence of God? How are we ensuring that we are
growing in our formation, A formation by God, and not just
putting constraints on the space He takes in our lives, but
putting constraints on being formed by a world and enlarging
the space to be formed by God? Because God is most interested
in our transformation over our usefulness.
Usefulness, effectiveness, becoming more of who He's made
you to be, flows out from a transformed life that's found in
the presence of God. John 15, Remain in me and I will
remain in you, and apart from me you can do nothing.
And that is true this morning for us personally, but I believe
it's something that God is calling us corporately to
explore. How are we going to make more
space for Him in this place? How are we going to step into
this together? You know, we've prayed through
the autumn and we've gathered together and that doesn't end
with this chapter closing. It's just a continuation of
growing and growing and growing and asking God to lead us to
become more hungry and more longing and more devoted and
more compassionate and more and more and more and more.
And we do that by giving him more space.
And so I want to ask you, how will that look for you this
year? Practically?
What's one step that you could take to put yourself in a place
of experiencing more of the presence of God #2 There's a
really strong little sentence in the Scripture and it says this.
Do not hold back. Isaiah speaks to them and he
says expand the place of your 10, stretch out your things.
And then he says do not hold back.
And I want to have a real and honest moment with you as one of
the passes that's journeyed with you to this point so far as we
are about to walk into a new season, when we get to welcome
Jack and Tara, and when we get to welcome more of the Lord and
we get to trust what he's stewarding for this next season.
We know that change doesn't come without resistance in US, right?
We, we're not human beings, don't love change.
Let's be honest. We don't love change even in our
own lives. He's really excited to exercise
more this year. No one loves change, right?
We, we are resistant to it, but the Lord here, he speaks through
Isaiah and he says, do not hold back.
And I want us to think about what holding back looks like
because to do not hold back, we need to understand what holding
back looks like in US. You know, I talked about this
back in September. You know, it's that place of
being slightly guarded. I'll just wait the jury's out,
see how this thing turns out. It's subtle.
It looks like wisdom. Sometimes on the outside in our
heart, it's holding back. Sometimes holding back looks
like tightening our grip on what we've known.
Because familiarity feels safe. And it feels like I feel valued
in the place that I know how things are going to be.
And there's something God-given about wanting to be safe, but it
just needs to come from Jesus, not from us curating familiar
circumstances. And it also looks like
resistance everything. We start to resist everything
but the thing. The scripture actually calls us
to resist in times of change. The enemy loves to convince us
that we need to resist everything but the thing him
that the Scripture tells us to resist.
Now, hear me on this like that. James 17 says that resist the
devil and he will flee from you, right?
And it's one of the only places that we've talked about
resisting. And he has a really fascinating
way of getting us to put resisting in the wrong place in
times of change. When things feel uncomfortable,
we start to resist the uncomfortableness.
We start to resist each other. We start to resist being
involved in case I get hurt. We start to resist curious
questions or difficult conversations.
We resist doing things slightly differently or being open to
doing things slightly differently, not because we
actually disagree or choose to, but because sometimes different
just feels like wrong even when it's not.
And I could go on, but you get the picture.
Holding back looks like resistance inside of us.
And God first calls them to enlarge their heart to make more
room for Him. Why?
Because that is our way of protecting ourselves from
resisting the wrong thing. And so I want us to see this
morning here and hear my heart. First, though, holding back is
really subtle. It's hidden in our hearts.
And it often looks like subtle tightness.
Holding tightly to what's been familiar, holding tightly to the
things we don't want to lose, holding tightly to the things
that make sense to us. And I think God would remind us
this morning that as we move into a fruitful future, into
more of what he has for us, he's saying do not hold back.
Do not hold back because do not hold back is him saying trust me
with the future. What we understand is that do
not hold back means that we don't.
He's not. He loves us enough not to let us
walk like that. In holding, in asking us to not
hold back, He's asking us not to forget the past, not to
dishonour what has been before or treat what we've been doing
as wrong or insufficient. He's simply saying trust me
fully with what is to come. And it's a posture that we get
to choose in this moment. God's invitation in change in
all seasons is through a growing heart posture to trust Him more,
to be more grounded in Him as our deepest security, to lean
into His Spirit so that He can transform us from the inside
out. And I think He's just asking us
to hold things lightly. Corrie, 10 Boom, is a hero of my
faith, and she has something that I love.
She says I've held many things in my hands and I have lost them
all. But whatever I have placed in
God's hands that I still possess.
And ultimately, when we hear enlarge your 10 and do not hold
back what God's invitation to us as we move forward is one of
faith. Faith is believing for what not
is as though it is. It's to be fully alive in us as
we surrender the control as we give him all the whole right to
our lives and we say we're not going to grip things harder in
our uncertainty. We're going to hold our hands
open to you, God, in this season.
And that posture, one of being humble and surrendered and open,
prepares us for what's ahead. And we are going to stay
prayerful, staying connected to the Father.
We're going to be flexible, open to the Spirit.
We see the enemy's tactics through change.
We're not going to take offence. We're going to ask curious
questions of one another. We're going to notice the
resistance that comes up or any objection in US and we're going
to abandon the outcomes to God, not as passivity, but as
allegiance as John Mark Romer says.
And we're going to be a people that are expectant, trusting God
to move as he sees fit, not just how we see fit.
And together with God, we're going to entrust him to lead us
into the fruitful future ahead of us because we're the Spirit
of the Lord is there is freedom. And when we refuse to hold back,
we increasingly make room for God.
We make room for his Spirit, and we allow him to work with
freedom in our hearts, our lives, our plans, our desires,
our hopes, personally and in us as a church, we're in for an
exciting adventure ahead. And I don't know about you, but
I know that place when fear starts to try to grip us.
And I just felt like the Lord wants to breathe over us freedom
in this room this morning. He wants us to see fear and
resistance and and that place of offence for what it is.
And I know I'm talking about the tough stuff this morning on this
first Sunday of the year, but when we see it, we name it, we
rebuke it, and we choose to walk in the way of the Spirit, which
is to be loving and grace filled and kind and gentle and
expecting in who God is. Amen.
And thirdly, this Isaiah doesn't stop with enlarge your 10 and do
not hold back. He says lengthen your cord,
strengthen your stakes for you will spread out to the right and
to the left. As God is describing a people
moving into increasing fruitfulness and as we walk into
2026, I believe this is the promise that God has spoken over
us as a church. What is ahead is even greater
than what is behind. It goes beyond what we could
imagine and the times we are living in the posture of this
moment, the number of people coming to faith.
I'm going to be really honest with you, on Christmas Eve, I
had low expectations, if I'm honest, that people would come
to faith in this building. And I went home and I just cried
before the Lord. Like this is the hour people are
hungry for Jesus and we are postured in our city in this
place for a purpose. And God is preparing us in here
in this space for what he is about to bring through us.
And so as we go into these days ahead, they're a day of promise.
They're a day of fruitfulness. We will spread out to the left
and the right and into the nations.
And there's this huge promise. But notice what came before the
promise. Lengthen the chords and
strengthen the stakes. And when I was a teenager, we
had a family friend who ran a marquee business and they used
to, we used to go and help as teenagers.
It would not happen in 2025 because of health and safety,
but we we used to put our trainers on, get on the field
and we'd often go to some of the big festivals and help with
getting these Marquis up. And it was hard work, but an
adventure. But I learnt quite a lot about
what it takes to put a huge marquee up that can hold 10,000
people. It takes a large team of people,
but the tense strength isn't found in the fabric, it's in the
tension between the chords and the stakes.
And interestingly, when you stand around a marquee putting
up and everybody's on their beasts, there is this beautiful
teamwork that happens where someone has to release a chord
for the other cord to be pulled tightly.
And then you have to wrap them around these stakes, which have
been driven in with consistent effort of pushing deeper and
deeper. And the bigger the marquee, the
deeper the stakes had to go. And if the stakes didn't go deep
enough, the wind would loosen those ropes around them and the
tent would go down. And if the cords weren't held at
the right tension or weren't long enough, the tent would
collapse inwards. And it got me thinking how
Kingdom growth is just works the same way God forms us as a
people in Jesus who are committed to partnership in the
Spirit. But it carries all of us showing
up just like a team that puts up a marquee.
I want to tell you right now, Chuck and Taryn are amazing.
They are gifted, wonderful, wonderful leaders who we cannot
wait to walk with. But the fruitful future Reverso
is not simply on their shoulders.
Every one of us in this room has a part to play.
Every one of us needs to be consistently driving the stakes
of prayer into the ground. Every one of us needs to be
consistently pressing into the presence of God to be formed and
shaped by who He is, so that we get to bring the gift He's
placed in each one of us for this time that He has brought us
here. And interestingly, as we do
that, we are released in freedom to loosen us cord from this
direction for it to be tightened.
Over Here we learn to hold loosely because we recognise as
the Spirit moves, things shift and change, not because one
person's effort isn't needed. Actually, we need one person to
release in order for one person to pull tighter.
Over here, revival is God's work, but preparation is ours.
And we're going to be rooted, rooted and grounded and built up
in 2026 because we are preparing for what God is going to do in
our midst. And God is able to do
immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine according to His
work, His power at work within us.
And notice that it's His power at work in US.
The inside out brings them more than we can ask or imagine as we
allow God's space to move in US and the freedom of His Spirit to
internally expand us, to grow us as a body to That all comes
before that external fruitfulness.
And I just think it's remarkable, the gift this past
season has been at reorientating us in worship and lingering in
His presence, in listening in prayer, in succeeding and
fasting and learning to hold a posture fully engaged in him,
contending for this beautiful, fruitful future that is ours.
And that's the same in our own lives, our own disciples, as it
is for us as a church. And so as we do all of these
things and we hold this posture, we're going to walk into a
season, I believe, of increasing harvest and increasing growth.
And I pray I read this this week and it made me smile.
Philip Brooks says, do not pray for tasks that equal your
strength. Pray for strength that equals
your task. And my prayer over us as a
church is that we would pray that the Spirit of God would
equip us for the task of his fruitfulness, his Kingdom coming
in the here and the now, here in Saint Albans, in Hemel and
Hatfield. And I want to exhort us as a
church this morning to let's keep making increasing space for
God in our hearts, our lives, so that we can be increasingly
surrendered to him. Let's refuse to hold back.
Let's see how the enemy loves to grow subtle resistance in US and
convince us that different is wrong and that different or
change means bad things. Verso, do not hold back.
Let's press on with increasing freedom in the Spirit.
Believe in God for the goodness that He wants to show us in the
land that we are living in. In this next season, every
single one of us is needed. So do not let the subtle lie of
the enemy convince you you are not needed in this next season.
You are needed. We all get to play, we all get
to be involved, and we all, I believe, will grow in our
commitment to the faithfulness and the active participation in
stewarding together what God has for us in the future.
Are you up for that? Enlarge the space of your tent.
Do not hold back. Strengthen your stakes, lengthen
your chords. And we are going to see God move
to our right and to our left and to every nation of this world
because of our simple yes to keep pushing in and pressing
onto Him.