And I'm so grateful for Jesus, so grateful for his promise and
his goodness to us. And you know, the Psalm and what
we see there, that picture of his abundance and and his
goodness for us is actually really the grounding of this new
series that we're going to press into pressing in and pressing
on. And, and as I was sat preparing,
I was thinking, Oh Lord, people are going to be like, she's
getting up there and be like, come on, guys, we've got to
press on and press in and keep going.
But this is the truth. We are pressing in and on to
someone in this season. This isn't about us putting on
our big girl pants as a church and being like we can do this.
It is about pressing in and on to the person of Jesus, Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, the one who prepares a table for us for
this season. And so we're going to be digging
into a new series as a church that is all about how we press
in and press on to Jesus. Ultimately, this series is about
prayer because that is how we engage with Him.
It's how we talk to Him, it's how we hear from Him, it's how
we receive the goodness of who He is that transforms how we
feel and what we see and what we do.
And so we are going to be looking at prayer over the next
6-7 weeks because I believe the Lord wants to do something in us
in this moment in time, in this part of our journey.
He is alive and active and He doesn't go on standstill in the
in between. He has got something for us that
he wants to do in us in this time.
And so I want us to look at, we're going to look at the
scripture. I'm going to pray.
Spirit of the living God, I thank you that you're present
and I thank you that you illuminate your truth in the
Word. And God, we want to say that
we're open right now to hear from you and what you want to
speak to us this morning in Jesus name, Amen.
Amen. Wonderful.
As Eduardo would like to say, he's becoming a legend in this
place for his wonderful. Great.
Well, if you have a Bible on you, I would love you to turn
this morning to Genesis 26. We're going to look at a
Scripture, which may feel like a little bit of a funny story.
You'll probably think to start with Clara, where are we going?
But we are not the first group of people in history to find
ourselves in the in between. In fact, throughout the Bible,
we find groups of people who are walking these kind of in between
seasons. We recognise in our own lives.
We walk through transition and change and in between seasons.
And so I was drawn to this story in Genesis 26 this morning, and
I want us to to read a little part of it first and then we're
going to tuck into it. So verse 17, it says this.
So Isaac departed from there and encamped in the valley of Gora
and settled there. And Isaac dug again the wells of
water that had been dug in the days of Abraham his father,
which the Philistines had stopped after the stopped up
after the death of Abraham. And he gave them the names that
his father had given them. But when Isaac's servants dug in
the valley, they found a well of spring water.
The herdsman of Guerra quarrelled with Isaac's
herdsman, saying, this water is ours.
So he named that well esque, which means contention.
And then they dug another well, and they quarrelled over that
one also. And he named it Sitna, which
means accusation. And he moved from there, and he
dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it.
So he called his name, Rehoboth, saying, For now the Lord has
made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.
From there he went to Bathsheba. And the Lord appeared to him the
same night and said, I am the God of Abraham your father.
Fear not, for I am with you, and I will bless you, and I will
multiply your offspring for your servant Abraham's sake.
So he built an altar there, and he called upon the name of the
Lord and pitched his tent there. And there Isaac's servants dug a
well. What we've got going on here in
the beginning of this portion is Isaac.
We've got this guy Isaac, and he stands between his father
Abraham's legacy. Abraham was the pioneer and
Jacob who comes after Isaac, who is a nation builder.
Jacob's sons became the tribes of Israel and they expanded and
we see this huge nation building.
But here we've got Isaac who's standing in the in between.
And Isaac gives us a picture of what generational batten to
batten, faithfulness and spiritual stewardship looks like
in the middle. But what is Isaac doing here?
It's a bit of an odd scripture, you might think, to pick that
He's digging wells and he's digging wells because in their
time, they needed living water. It was the most valuable thing
that they needed to thrive and survive.
And what we see to start with is Isaac going back and revisiting
and digging the wells that Abraham had opened, but that
even in the face of resistance where they had been shut down.
And he's trying to dig them again and they're being
contended for and they're being, he's being receiving accusation.
He just keeps going and he's contending for the fresh water
in the present. And it got me thinking about how
poignant that imagery is for us now here in the in between of
our story. You know, we have at Verso this
rich history of kind of 36 ish years, 3737.
Thanks, Richard. 37 years since we began, and we've got
incredible wells that have been dug in this place.
Wells of passionate worship, intimate worship, wells of
digging into the Word of God and letting it transform us.
We've got wells of faithful prayer that have gone through
all of those years. Even this week I was hearing
stories of just the Super faithful people.
They're not on the stage. Most of us won't even know
they've been doing it, but they've been showing up day in
and day out praying for us at the church.
We've got wells of compassion, right?
We've seen Versa Care grow from a from a tiny box in the car
park to what it is here today, reaching hundreds of people
every week with the compassion of Jesus.
We've seen wells of the power of God in this place that break
out, and we've seen many, many hundreds of stories of healing.
We've got wells of hospitality and making spaces where people
come and belong and are known. We've got sites that are
extending our reach to places so that we can extend who Jesus is
into those places too. We've got wells of unbelievable
courage, of discipleship, of mission, and all of those wells
have done what they've ultimately allow us to
experience, the Living water Jesus.
And in doing so, we're opening up spaces for others to
encounter him and taste and see just how good he is.
And in our own lives, if we think about it, each one of us
will have unique wells that the Lord has caused us to dig.
Now, some of us are intercessors in the room, or some of us are
great businessmen because we dig because of what God has done in
us to ensure that Jesus can be made known everywhere, anywhere,
at all times. And as I was sat in the story, I
was reminded that God wants to whisper to us this morning,
Birth. Save in your church to not
forget the wells that he's given us to dig in this place in this
moment. Do not sit back.
Do not think be tempted. Well, this is a nice break for
the next three months, four months.
I want to encourage us here on our first Sunday of this in
between, to keep stewarding and tending the wells that the Lord
has given us to dig in this place, to actively step in, to
not be passive in this moment. But there is fresh water that we
need to contend for this month, in October, in November, in
December. The Lord wants to make himself
known to us in this place. And what we're going to see as
we unpack this story this morning is that the God meets
those who have a shovel in their hand to keep digging, and he's
stepping into the water. Not quite yet, Fred, not quite
yet. She's she's on point for a
special moment. You know, it actually reminded
me of preaching here almost two years ago at the story of the
crossing of the Jordan. And I spoke about that holiness
the night before holiness moment.
If you were here, you might remember it.
And as the Lord led his people, he invites them to step into the
water under his presence and see what He will do.
And it reminded me again, like this is a bit of that moment.
We need to keep digging the wells of His presence in this
place because we're going to step into the water and watch
what He's going to do in this next chapter.
He's preparing us first, though, in this moment, not passively,
but actively. And we all need to pick up our
shovels and be a part of it. But the well that I think the
Lord has really been speaking to us about that he wants to to
really dig in US in this season is the well of prayer.
And I know when I say that there's some of us because I've
been there and done this. Oh, here we go.
We're going to have a six week series on how we all need to
pray more. And there's a little bit of, you
know, a little bit of like, oh, this, I'm just going to feel
guilty at the end of it that I just don't do prayer enough.
I just want to rebuke that lie in this room in the name of
Jesus. OK.
This is not about a series that we're going to feel guilty on.
It is about a series that is going to awaken us this morning.
Amen. It's going to awaken us in this,
in this moment, because I believe that God wants to not
just make us more intelligent or knowledgeable about prayer.
I think he wants to form something in us.
He wants to form us as a people, that of prayer that it is
essentially in us as we reclaim and stand firm on the
foundations that have been in our story thus far.
And we press into Jesus for the now as we ultimately stand in
faith, believing for what is to come because the best is yet to
come. Now let's look a little bit
closely closer here because you might be thinking, well, Claire,
this was an awful lot in here about people like contending
against Isaac as he's digging these wells.
And you know, this season of transition and change for us as
a church has not been birthed out of something going wrong.
Hallelujah, praise Jesus, right? This is not because we've got a
leader that did something bad and we've had to change leaders.
It is a it is a beautifully spirit filled stewardship of God
that he's unfolding a story in US, right?
And he has been so faithful in that from the beginning of the
Lord speaking to Mark and Steph like last year all the way
through. So kind, so kind in the way that
he's doing this story. But let's be honest, you know,
we can know that God is in this story.
We can know that he's good and he's he's doing his thing.
But we still face internal tensions, right?
Maybe it's just me. Like I can know God is in this
story. There's a little bit of anxiety
in me about how it's all going to unfold, right?
We can know he's good. We can know he's writing the
story. But we can in our humanness be
anxious in the unknown and the change because most humans don't
like change. We can know that God is the
leader of our church, that we're just the under shepherds, but we
can still slip into the temptations that would love to
convince us that somehow He's not on the throne in this
moment. And we need to do something to
try to control this internal tension that we experience.
We can slip into those temptations of nostalgia and
believe that the best is actually behind us.
Because who could be like the pastors that we've had before?
Surely they're not going to be as good as those guys.
We can slip into that comparison or disengagement or have a
jury's out guys not going to sit there and wait and see.
I don't know about this Chuck and Taran yet.
We'll see if they prove themselves to be as good as we
hope. God is the leader of this
church. He is writing a story and
therefore we don't need to hold any of those positions.
We can hold fast to a position that he is writing the story and
what he's bringing in this next season.
He's on it, and we are all part of it because you're here right
now, in this moment, and he's brought you here for a reason.
Let's get even more real. We face these internal tensions,
don't we? Accusations that come at us in
our discipleship when we know we're supposed to, you know,
read the Bible, man. Every time I try to read the
Bible, it's like something is trying to stop me.
Or we can know that we're supposed to pray or worship or
whatever it might be. And when we just don't quite
manage to do it in the way that we'd hoped or you thought we
were supposed to do, it doesn't the accuser love to just come
and shame us and tell us, well, don't bother trying again.
I mean, you've clearly shown you can't.
You can't, you can't get a grip of this.
Or as we look at our world right now, you know, we can know that
we know the end of the story. OK?
We know the end of the story verse over in your church in
this moment where the darkness feels like it's getting darker,
where the contention feels like it's rising, where the tension
in US is like what is going on, the cultural wars, The body of
Christ seems to be butting heads with one another.
Which side of this camp do I sit on?
And we can know that eternity is in God's hands and still have
this internal wrestle of how to walk out in this moment.
But I want us to notice something about Isaac.
How does he walk in that moment when he is facing the
contention, when he is facing accusation and he keeps going,
What does he do? He just keeps digging wells
because he knows that water is the only thing that will sustain
them and keep them alive. He doesn't get wound up.
He doesn't get angry. He just keeps digging and doing
the thing that God has shown them to do.
You know, it reminded me, actually, I have this funny
story. I like, you know, I got to the
summer and I used to be a runner.
I used to call myself a runner, ran 1/2 marathon, the Great
North Run. I know that's my little claim to
fame from years ago. And about two years ago, I did
something. I did a a race and I seriously
messed up my knee. Like seriously messed it up.
And I was like, in fact, Krista's in the room.
Krista Alexander was with me on that walk.
We did this hike up and down the South Downs and I really did
something awful to my knee. And so I gave up.
I was like, I'm not a runner anymore and I thought there's no
way I'm ever going to go back to running.
And I just gave into it and I missed that feeling of running.
I miss what that breakthrough moment where you clear your head
after a long run. And in this summer, I just heard
the Lord. Honestly, it was the Lord.
He said to me, what, why you stopped running?
And I was like, because I can't run because I've got this
injured knee and what, you haven't healed it.
So you know how my conversations with the Lord go and anyway, I
and I just him say, I just want you to try again.
And so I downloaded a couch to 5K and it's very demoralizing
when you've been able to run a half marathon to start at one
minute running, one minute walking, one minute running, one
minute walking. However I did, I thought, you
know what, I'm going to get the shoes to help with the knee and
do all the things. And I just started.
And the difference was I just felt him say to me, stop looking
at the whole plan and just do the day in front of you, do one
run at a time and take it one day at a time.
I was doing so well, loving it. And then this summer I was at
the beach with my boys and we're walking towards the ocean and
like a good mum, I was like messing with one of them and one
of them kicked her foot up just as they were laughing.
And they hit my foot really bad and injured it really badly.
And I was like, oh see, I'm not a runner, I'm not a runner,
What's the point? May as well give up.
And the Lord caught me in preparation for this.
And he said to me, Claire, how often do you treat your prayer
life like that? You give up because you
couldn't. You couldn't sustain the half an
hour that you thought you were supposed to pray on this thing.
And instead of just doing the next thing and taking it back up
and saying, you know what? Even though I've not done that,
I'm just going to pick it up again.
I'm just going to try again one day at a time.
Even if I have to go back to day one of one minute of running,
one minute of walking. I'm just going to keep trying
and deep digging because here's the deal.
The enemy's number one strategy in seasons of change and
transition and when we face opposition and resistance is to
do anything He can to distract us and disempower us and fill us
so much with disappointment that we fill up and we dry up the
wells that will give us the living water, the spaces that
allow us to encounter Jesus, the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit. And we just need to understand
that our wells of prayer are going to be contended.
They are going to face opposition and we just need to
see it, need to name it, and we need to own it.
And we need to walk forward one day at a time, because it's in
those spaces of prayer that our uncertainty and fear fall in the
security of Jesus, our rock that we stand on.
It's in the spaces of prayer where our doubts and our hurts
are audaciously allowed to be made known to the most loving
Father who cares and invites us to come as we are and meet us
there and not leave us there to lead us forward, to be able to
give grace and love to those around us.
It's in the spaces of prayer that we can bring Him our
questions about our world. We can even dare to say, Jesus,
are you really enough in this moment?
It's the spaces of prayer where we take up our responsibility as
His bride, our faithful posture and position to stand firm in
the face of whatever is to come, knowing that we don't, as, as He
said this morning, fight against flesh and blood, but with Jesus,
who has a better word through the finished work of the cross,
we can keep believing, we can keep contending, we can keep
trying, because God's heart is there for the taking and we want
His heart for our world, for our lives, His expectation.
And we don't have to surrender anything less than a belief that
we will see His goodness in the land that we are living in, in
this hour right now, here in our church, in our city, in our
nation, and in our world, He will be made known for His
goodness. Amen.
And So what I want us to see here this morning is that prayer
through the Scripture, this imagery that we get through
Isaac is prayer requires persistence.
Prayer that will form us Verso, not just in kind of inform us
that will literally form us is intentional prayer.
It is costly. It's going to be hard work
because digging wells is hard work.
In fact, in the Scriptures when they were digging wells, it
literally took them years to keep digging and digging and
digging. Because prayer is ultimately an
act of humility, acknowledging God and who he is and taking our
rightful place and recognising that we can do nothing apart
from him. John 15.
And so this morning I, I'm going to this is my moment.
I brought a little prop. Steve's going to kill me.
I grabbed it out the garage. Sorry darling.
Prayer is hard work. We all have a shovel in our hand
in this room and what the Lord I believe wants to do in us in the
season is form prayer in US and this is what it looks like.
Every muscle in our being is required.
Prayer doesn't just drop in our lap.
It literally is like picking up a shovel and working our
muscles, our prayer muscles, day in and day out.
And what happens when you do strength training or you dig in
the garden repetitively? What happens to your muscles?
They change shape. It literally changes the form of
who we are. And I believe in the Spirit that
the Lord wants to do something in the next few months in us
around prayer that will shape us and form us to look different.
Literally our muscles will look different.
And some of us, you might be like, well, I can't pick up a
big shovel. Maybe it's a little shovel.
It doesn't matter what size the shovel is.
You just got to pick the shovel up.
And we're just going to dig one shovel at a time, one prayer at
a time. One time coming to a prayer
meeting, one time getting up at 6:00 in the morning to set your
alarm to pray. I don't care what it looks like,
but just pick up your shovel church and pray.
Amen. Amen.
Don't get the preacher going in this girl's morning.
And I want, so I want you to hear this prayer is persistent
and it's where we unstuck those inner tensions.
It's a life posture that we just keep using our muscles and we
keep pressing in. But the resistance in prayer is
not defeat or failure. It's confirmation that you're
doing the right thing. And so there's a question for us
in the room this morning. Where is God asking you to pray
more intentionally, repeatedly, consistently, wider, deeper,
longer for yourself and for the sake of others.
Now let's look a little bit further here.
What what happens next? Isaac he they press on and they
press on. And then what does it say?
It says that they came to a place where the spring flowed
and there was no quarrelling over it.
And he named it Rehoboth. Now if I'd been Isaac and I'd
been digging these wells and we suddenly had a breakthrough and
there was no one in opposition to me, I'd have been like,
Hallelujah, let's sit back and enjoy this moment of provision.
But what does Isaac do? He moves to where it says in
verse 23. He then went to Bathsheba.
Bathsheba. What is Bathsheba?
Well, Bathsheba is the place that Abraham had been in.
If you go back several chapters, he'd been digging a well there.
He'd come up against opposition and he'd made a covenant at
Bathsheba and he planted a tree and and it and in the name of
the Lord everlasting God. And suddenly Isaac has seen this
provision Rehoboth a place where they could be fruitful.
And he doesn't stay there. He goes to Bathsheba.
And what happens in Bathsheba? It says that the Lord appeared
to him that same night. And he says that I am the God of
Abraham, your father. Fear not, for I am with you, and
I will bless you, and I will multiply your offspring for my
servant Abraham's sake. In our church life right now, we
have seen the provision of God in our story in so many ways.
But at this particular time, we've seen His provision in
bringing Chuck and Taryn to us in January.
We've seen His provision in lots of different ways, in the ways
that you guys are all stepping up and taking your place and
being faithful. But I think the Lord would say
to us this morning, it's time to move to Bathsheba, the place of
presence, to pursue his presence.
Isaac was not satisfied with just provision.
He moved into Bathsheba, a place of presence where God spoke to
him and said that I am God, I'm the God of your father and I'm
your God. Fear not, but I'm with you.
And He reminds them of the fruitfulness that is to come
1st. So that is the Lord's heart for
us this morning, that we would remember that He is our leader.
He is with us, we have nothing to fear.
And He is writing a beautiful story of fruitfulness in our
midst. And He's inviting us afresh this
morning to move into His presence.
And then what happens? It says that Isaac, I love this,
Isaac's response, he's come into the presence of God and he's
then it says he built an altar there and he called upon the
name of the Lord, and he pitched his tent there and there Isaac's
servants dug a well. Isaac's response in the presence
of God was to build an altar. An altar is an ultimate
declaration of surrender and worship.
It's the beautiful place that we get to come as we are this
morning. Why?
Because of the covenant relationship established through
the work of the cross in Jesus. Just as Isaac moved back into
the place where Abraham had established a covenant that
ended the opposition, we have The opposition has been ended in
the name and the blood of Jesus. Amen.
And so we get to move into his presence and bring all that we
are and know there is a solution for it.
It's our way of saying, yes, you are God and I am not.
And I will worship you today not based on how I feel, but the
reality of who you are because this season belongs to you.
Worship anchors us in uncertainty.
Altars lay down our need for control, our need to be right.
They're the place where we say your God.
And would you speak to me? Would you help me listen?
I've been so challenged on this in in the things that are going
on in our world. Our world is full of opinions in
this hour and over the last few weeks.
I just heard the Lord say, Claire, come talk to me about
it. Don't jump on social media.
Don't Give your opinion. Come and talk to me.
Let me shape you because revival starts in here 1st And then what
does Isaac do? He calls on the name of the
Lord. This is our time to call on the
name of the Word to stand in intercessory prayer versus
church family for one another, for our city, for Hemel and
Hatfield, for this nation, for our world, so that we are marked
by Him and we receive from Him. How to pray, what to pray?
How to stand in this gap? We've got a quiet revival
breaking out. The light is shining brightly as
the darkness gets darker. And our posture as the bride of
Christ is to know that we stand on the authority of ours in
Christ Jesus and to hold the gap that we will see more and more
people coming to experience His presence and His love.
But it's our hour versa, to run to His presence and to call on
His name and to be formed by who he is in that space.
But I love this third one. It says he pictures a tent.
What was the tent in Isaac's day?
It was the place that they gathered together.
The families dwelt together. It was the place that they were
rooted. Even in their transient life,
they were rooted in that tent. They stayed present to one
another. And this is our reminder.
It's not just about praying on your own.
It's about gathering together. I want to call us in the season
to show up in our corporate spaces, in our groups in the
week, in our prayer spaces, in our Sunday meetings.
We are all needed in this place because when we come together,
we bring what we've had in the secret place and we bring it and
we remind one another of who we are in Christ Jesus.
And we can stand as one in this place to contend for his
presence, to stand up against opposition in our lives, to be
stand arm in arm and say, you know what, it was a tough week,
but I'm here to remind you that Jesus is enough.
He is enough. And then what I love is this.
They dig another as they come into the presence, as they
encounter God and reminded who he is and who they are and they
do it together. They are empowered to dig again.
And I just felt like the Lord say, call the church to pray, to
call on his name to gather and pitch our tent in this hour
because we are going to start digging new wells in our future
that are going to bring even more fruitfulness, even more of
the Kingdom into the here and the not yet.
And he's preparing us in this hour.
And prayer is not the prelude. It is the process of which we
are formed. And he will mark us.
I believe in this time around prayer in a way that we will
keep praying. It's not going to be like, let's
pray till January. We give up.
No, he's going to change something in us in our posture.
And so this is my question for you today, my challenge.
You can listen to a talk like this and give me all the amens
you want in this room. I love it.
I love a good Amen.
Thanks, Elizabeth. But you need to pick up your
shovel, every one of us. And so picking up your shovel,
what does it look like this week if you're in this room and you
don't even know Jesus and you're like, what is this girl talking
about? I didn't know shovels were part
of Jesus. I want to dare you.
If you've never met Jesus in this room, I want you to talk to
him this week like, like he's real.
I dare you to. If you don't know whether you
believe in Him or not, just start talking to Jesus like He's
real this week and see what He does in your life.
But some of us in this room need to hear this and hear my heart.
Like I get it. I'm preaching to myself this
morning. Our lives are busy, but what is
it going to look like this week? Maybe it's that you're going to
take your group time. Maybe as a group you're going to
pray together once a month for the next few months.
Maybe it's, as I said, you're going to set your alarm one, one
day, just one day this week at 6:00 in the morning.
If you get up at 7:00 and you're going to say, God, I'm here, I'm
going to pray. Maybe you're going to log on to
space online this week at lunchtime in your business
workplace, headphones in and you're going to give your lunch.
Just pray with us, the church. Maybe you're going to join the
faithful group Prayer hour. Guys, this group has been
praying faithfully for years in our midst.
Go find them. Go find John and Penny and
others and and find out how you can be on that group.
It might not be your style. It might feel slightly
uncomfortable. That is OK Prayer isn't all
about how it feels, it is about showing up and doing it anyway.
And we're also we've got so many spaces and I've probably
forgotten them. Please don't be offended if I've
not mentioned your particular space that we pray.
There are so many in this building.
But I just like, seriously, right now think about your week.
How are you going to step up and pick up your shovel to pray
wider and deeper and longer this week in a new way, Every single
one of us Think about it. The Lord meets those who pick up
their shovel and that he wants to form in us a new hunger for
His presence as he prepares us for what's ahead.
And we're going to look over the next few weeks at the different
ways we can get like stronger using our muscles all the
different ways we can pray in different seasons.
We've got amazing speakers coming to unpack that.
I could not be more excited about what God's going to do in
our midst. And finally, we, we with this
kind of in our, this sense of the Lord around wanting to form
us around prayer. I'm really excited to share that
we're also opening up a new space in our midst to engage in
prayer room. And there are going to be more
details about this coming. But in the within the next few
weeks, we're going to be opening a prayer room in this building,
a permanent space. Well, we can come in to pray and
that isn't going to be the place where we come and get prayer
ministry. We've got a prayer ministry team
that does that stuff. This room is going to be
dedicated space to minister to the ward and to stand in
intercession for for us as a church for the people in Saint
Albans and Hatfield and Hemel, for this nation and for the
nations of the world because we believe that God is calling us
on this journey of prayer and we want to respond with a
resounding yes. Amen.
Let's stand church.