We are one church. We love God, love people, love
His mission, and love His church.
Welcome to the One Church podcast.
Whenever you could turn with me to Acts chapter one verse 4 to
8, Acts chapter one verse 4 to 8.
So it'll probably come up behind me or you can flick there on
your phone or turn there if you have a a hard copy of the Bible
like I do here. I want to say to you, this is a
significant time in the history of this church.
It really is a significant time. I really, before I came here
four days ago in prayer, I was so reminded of the day of
Pentecost being prophesied for hundreds of years.
Of course, it was by the prophet Joel.
God gives a lot of warning before he moves mightily.
And then on the day of Pentecost there was a suddenly, and there
are these suddenly moments where God just changes the destiny of
his people. He changes the destiny of cities
and of nations and of people's lives.
And now it's such a time. God is moving in Leicester and
God is moving in the one church. Well, you really missed a good
point to say Amen, folks. But I want to say to you that
God is up to something here, and I believe he's mocking you in
this day and in this season. He's opening a new door and he's
calling you to go through it, to be volunteers in the day of his
power, the psalmist said. My people will be volunteers in
the day of my power. And I want you to know that that
as you say yes to Him, He will begin to do extraordinary things
in your life and through your life.
God is always looking for a place of agreement on the earth.
He's looking for a yes from His people.
And if you'll say yes, He'll do extraordinary things through
you. And you know when the Spirit
fell on the day of Pentecost, there was the sound of a mighty
wind and tongues like there's a fire that came to rest on each
one of them. It was an each one account
encounter and each one moment where the Spirit came on each
one. The crowds gathered outside as
they heard and were moved by the sound of the wind.
As the Spirit of God came upon that 120 people, it changed the
history of the world. 120 people in an upper room filled with the
power of the Holy Spirit. My goodness, there's more than
120 here this morning. What could God do with such a
people here in Leicester who say yes to him?
And you know, they all gathered there.
Peter stood up amongst the 11 and of course and he preached,
and as he preached, 3000 came to Christ and then it was spread on
from there. It didn't stay in that little
section of Jerusalem, but it went out and it spread out and
they began to proclaim the gospel throughout the city.
It gets to a place where in Acts 5, the Bible says that people
came from all over the region and they laid the sick down on
the streets so that even the shadow of Peter passing by might
fall on them. And the Bible says that everyone
was healed. How remarkable and wonderful.
I've in 37 years of travelling around the world, about 57
nations, I've only seen, I've always seen people healed.
But to the glory of God, it's only Jesus.
Jesus is the the healer, Amen. He's the only healer, but you
know, there have been some meetings and some large gospel,
open air gospel campaigns with thousands and thousands of
people where Jesus has healed everyone, everyone of
everything. And, and if they weren't
instantly healed in the gathering, they were healed by
the time they crossed the threshold of their home.
It's amazing. In Rwanda 2 years ago, that
happened. That happened in the place
called Byumba. And actually when we, when we
came back, this one, sorry, that was three years ago, the second
year that we went back, I was introduced by the Bishop of
Bayumba to all the leaders there from all the different
denominations as so many more churches came on board for the
second year for that city. And as he introduced me, he
said, my brothers and sisters, as I introduced Jonathan to you,
I want to say that when he first came to Bayumba we didn't
support him because we thought that he was like some of these
others that we have had who have come and hid people who
pretended to be ill in the crowd and then got them to come up and
testify that they were healed. And it brought such disrepute to
the gospel, they said. We felt that we could not honour
any other evangelist coming through who claimed that Jesus
healed the sick today, he said. But in the months that followed
the Mission 24 visit to Bayumba last year, I kept bumping into
blind people that I knew who was seeing, to friends who were deaf
and we're now hearing to cripple people who I knew in our
congregations who were now walking and didn't need a lift
to church. He said.
I could not deny the reality of what Jesus had done.
So now we are behind you fully. And they stood with us, all of
them. And Jesus did the most
remarkable miracles again in that place.
And you know, it's, it's all Jesus and it's one of them.
But I want to say to you, I believe that in this movie God,
and I believe you're in the early beginnings of it.
I believe you are in the beginnings of it.
Do I have to keep saying that until I get more of an Amen, a
place of agreement from the people of God?
I'm serious. God is doing something and he
looks for people you know who will listen, who are listening,
who will do what they see the Father doing and will make
themselves fully available. I sometimes say to people, you
know, with all of my travelling, I, I often I'm invited to a home
before I go to preach somewhere. And when I walk in the home, if
the lady of the house is cooking up something lovely and tasty, I
walk in the house. And the moment I walk in the
house, there's that lovely smell and aroma coming from the
kitchen. And so everybody knows that
something is cooking. But actually it's only if I'm
cheeky enough to go into the kitchen and lift up the pots and
pans and I look in and then I know what's cooking.
And actually, that's like the intercessors, that's like the
people who pray, that's like the people who live close to God in
prayer and in worship and in the word of God.
They know, they pick up in advance that God is up to
something, that he's doing something.
The, the, the people who are just like church attenders and
they don't do much else. They, they don't get what's
going on from day-to-day, to be honest with you.
They're a bit backslidden. They're not on fire, or should I
say a normal Christian. Now I want to encourage you to
be a normal on fire Christian, to live close to God and to be
listening and in prayer because the Spirit is looking for people
who recognise what he's doing, who will recognise his moving
and move with him and he will do extraordinary things through
your life. He's welcoming you, He's
summoning you, He's calling you up into his world.
What great days we're living in. So I want to speak to you about
this. The time is now is my theme this
morning. And I just want to say I want to
invite my beautiful wife Elaine to come up for a few moments and
share what the Lord showed her because I, I did say something
before she comes and it's this. I know your history.
I used to come occasionally over to what was All Nations Church.
And so I, I, I knew all about the building and I knew about
the place and I, I, I know what God has done amongst you and how
you've gone from there to where you are today and, and all the
very exciting things actually that God is doing with you at
this time. It's great, it's wonderful.
But my wife Elaine knew absolutely nothing about your
history. And so what's really
interesting, you'll see what it where I'm going when Elaine
tells you what she saw when she walked into this building.
Sweetie, could you just come and just show?
Could you give Elaine a a warm welcome?
Thank you. OK.
When I walked in the building on Thursday, when we came, I walked
through the doors. Just.
Passed here and went on upstairs.
When I was upstairs and we were in prayer, I saw a picture of
this sanctuary here. But I saw flags all the way
round of different nations. And I saw people from those
nations or people that had a heart for that nation gathered,
drawn to those flags that were hanging around the nations and
praying for that nation or had a heart for that nation and wanted
to be sent to that nation. And that was what I'd seen.
Thank you, sweetie. Yeah, this is a time in your
history where God is turning the church inside out.
This is a time where he's going to visit you in fresh power and
he's going to lay his hand upon different ones of you and he's
going to send you out to the nations.
Individuals from amongst you and teams from amongst you are going
to go into this nation and into other nations.
And when you wells are going to be opened up of the Kingdom of
God, new churches planted, teams going out bringing the power and
the glory of what God will do and is doing amongst you.
And he's going to release it in the nations.
And this is again going to become an Antioch church that's
going to send teams, apostles, evangelist, prophets, teachers.
You're going to go to the end of the earth with the good news of
Jesus. This is a new time and ascending
time by the Spirit of God, Amen and Amen, glory to God.
Acts 1428 says this being assembled together with them, he
commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for
the promise of the Father. Thank God, the Holy Spirit is
the promise of the Father. If we don't earn him, we receive
him, which he said you've heard from me.
But John truly baptised with water.
But you shall be baptised with the Holy Spirit not many days
from now. In the first service, Susan
turned over to me and she looked at me.
She said when I was baptised with water I was wearing a white
dress. That's a nightie.
There you are. OK, a white nightie.
Well, I said to her, when I got baptised in water, I was wearing
a denim shirt and denim trousers.
And you know, if you know anything about denim, it can
hold a lot of water. I mean, they needed a crown.
It really a crane to Get Me Out of there.
But, but, but the thing about it is it's a beautiful
illustration. The word for baptism in the
Greek language is Baptiser. It means to be immersed in,
because we're immersed into Christ, you know, in, in
Christian baptism. And so, you know, but it's, it's
not only that, but when we were baptised in the Holy Spirit, you
know, when I came out of those waters, anyone who touched me
would have got wet. When we are immersed in the
power of the Holy Spirit, people should feel the influence and
the power of the presence of God around our lives and from us.
That when we touch them to lay hands on them in prayer, when we
speak to them, that they feel that essence of God's power and
presence through our lives. You know, even in the Old
Testament, Moses said, said to God, you know, if you don't come
with us, we're not leaving this place.
For it's your presence amongst us that sets us apart from every
other people on the face of the earth, that the presence of God
is in US and on us and amongst us.
Amen. Glory to God.
Therefore, when they'd come together, they asked him,
saying, Lord, will you at this time restore the Kingdom to
Israel? He said to them, It's not for
you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His
own authority. There are times and seasons God
reveals, and there are times and seasons He keeps to Himself.
He's sovereign. That's His own business.
But He does reveal times and seasons.
But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon
you, and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all
Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.
Power is always given with purpose.
So we find, let's turn over to 2nd Corinthians 6, verse one and
two Second Corinthians chapter 6.
The apostle Paul says, we then as workers together with him.
I love that expression. Notice he didn't say workers for
him, but workers together with Him.
My goodness, His ministry is always more exciting than ours,
as workers together with Him also plead with you not to
receive the grace of God in vain.
Can I just say something to us for a moment about grace?
Grace in New Testament Greek is both a noun and a verb.
It speaks to us of the position that we stand in before God, of
acceptance, of forgiveness, of the gift of righteousness given
to us through faith in Christ, meaning that we are accepted,
we're forgiven, we're sons and daughters of God, and we are
welcomed into his family and into his holy presence.
That's a gift of God through faith in Christ.
It's a noun. It's a done deal.
It's established, it's who you are and where you stand as a
child of God in the grace of God.
But grace is also a verb in Scripture and it's the word that
is used when it talks about the gift of the Holy Spirit, The
Spirit's power, he's enabling, he is given as a gift.
The gifts of the Spirit are all given as gifts.
They are grace. They're not earned, they're
received. And that grace is a, is a divine
enablement and empowering from the Spirit of God to enable us
to live our lives like Christ and to minister like Christ did.
And that's what we're called to be and to do.
If there's one message that I'm hearing everywhere in every
denomination and movement that I'm involved in or minister
amongst in the UK today and actually around the world at the
moment, it's the word discipleship.
Jesus is calling his church again to no longer be just
consumers and attenders, but calling them to be disciples.
If we claim to be people who follow the one who made
disciples, but we don't make disciples, it's a contradiction
in terms. I knew that would go quiet
because Jesus really isn't interested in whether you are a
conference attender. No one on that day when Jesus
returns is going to be given an award, a reward, and there will
be many rewards on that day, the Bible says.
But no one will be given a reward for how many conferences
they attended. It's true, he said.
I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.
I was hungry and you fed me. I was in prison and you visited
me. It's not that we're saved by
those things, but when we're saved by grace, the grace of God
works in our lives to activate us.
If we will yield to Him and be those volunteers in the day of
His power, and then go out to carry the message and to carry
the love and to carry the demonstration of His Spirit to a
hurting world, and all of that flows.
We are God's workmanship. Ephesians 210 says created in
you, in Christ Jesus for good works that he is before ordained
that we should walk in them. My brother, my sister, there are
good plans that God has for your life.
There are good works, good deeds that he is already for ordained
before you were even born for you to walk in.
But you know what, it's not automatic.
You have to step into it and the rewards of the Lord come for
those who are willing to take those steps.
You know, I've read many times and I'm sure you have Matthew
chapter 13 where it has the account of Jesus calling Peter.
And Peter is there and they're in the middle of a storm and
they're in the middle of the storm and they're all terrified
that they're going to die. Jesus suddenly comes walking on
the water. As he's walking on the water,
Peter asked him a remarkable question.
He says, Lord, if it's you, tell me to come on the water to where
you are to walk with you on the water.
I don't know about you. I that seems crazy to me.
I if it was me, I would have said Jesus, if that's you, just
get us out of here. You know, I just but actually
Jesus says, come, come, and Peter does a remarkable that he
steps out of the boat and he starts walking on the water and
does exactly the same as Jesus until of course, we know the
story till he takes his eyes off Jesus.
But here's the thing. Why did Peter ask that question?
Look, I've not heard this anymore, but as I read it, I get
this impression in my spirit. Peter had gone through by the
the timing of the Gospels. He has been around Jesus for 18
months at least, and in those eighteen months he's been
personally discipled by Jesus. Let me explain to you biblical
discipleship one O 1. It's not sitting in the
classroom by itself. That has its part, but it's not
it. And if that's all it is, it
isn't biblical discipleship. This is biblical discipleship.
Watch me do it. Do it with me, do it yourself.
Peter was so used to watching Jesus step out and do miraculous
things and then doing them with Jesus and then being sent out by
Jesus to do miraculous things that when Jesus comes walking on
the water, he's basically he's turning to the guy and saying,
listen, if this is the Jesus we know and have followed for 18
months, he's going to tell us to do what he's doing.
So he says Jesus. If it's you, let's get with the
programme, let's do what we're doing.
Tell me to come and I'm going to come and do what you did because
you've taught us that we can do what you do.
If only we believe Jesus is calling you up into true
discipleship. All of us, All of us to do what
he's doing, to be a great army of volunteers in the Kingdom.
And I want to say to you, the time is now.
He goes on. He said, look, don't receive the
grace of God in vain. He wants to make you productive
and fruitful in the Kingdom of God.
He says in an acceptable time, I've heard you in the day of
salvation, I've helped you. Behold, now is the accepted
time. Behold, now is the day of
salvation. There's one thing that's
peculiar about the time now. What is it?
It's, it's now, it's not tomorrow, it's now.
When I used to work with the great evangelist on double many
years ago, I can remember him going to a trip to preach in the
church in America. And he got up from the hotel in
the morning and he had heard from people in the hotel.
There was an amazing coffee house just down the road.
And he wanted us to try the coffee.
And when he got to the coffee house, he saw a big a sign
outside that said this free coffee served here tomorrow.
He was a bit disappointed, but he went the next day for his
free coffee. But you know what?
It was still being served tomorrow.
And the trouble is, tomorrow is tomorrow is tomorrow.
But God's time is now and God is calling you now.
Amen. You know, Billy Graham, who
lived to be 99 years old, great evangelist, probably preached to
more people than anyone else in the history of the world.
When he was 99 years old, just actually a couple of years
before then, he was interviewed on American television and he
was asked this question. He said, Mr Graham, you've been
the friend of presidents. You've spoken to governments, to
millions of people face to face all over the world.
You've had, by any account, a remarkable life.
But as you look back over your life, may I ask you, Doctor
Graham, in all the years that you have lived, what has been
your greatest surprise? That's an interesting question,
isn't it? Well, he answered with typical
Billy Graham clarity. My greatest surprise in at that
stage 97 years of life has been the brevity of life.
How short life is. Is it?
It only seems like yesterday I was on my parents farm and then
all these years that I've preached to all these millions
of people, I never set out to do it.
God called me to do it and here I am and I'm 97 years old and
looking forward to that day when I see my Saviour face to face.
How fast life goes. It's come and gone in a moment.
No wonder the Apostle Paul said in Ephesians chapter 5 and verse
16. Redeem the time for the days are
evil or as the NIV says, make the most of every opportunity.
I want to say to you catch the wave.
God wants to use you, some of you who's going to shake your
life up a bit and so that you're willing to to be flexible and to
leave your comfort zone. You know, that's really what
Jesus said when he he he said it both in John chapter 4 and I
believe it's around verse 35 somewhere around there and
Matthew 935 to 37. He said in both passages, the
fields are white unto harvest. They need to be reached right
now or they're going to be lost. He says pray the Lord of the
harvest that he will thrust out labourers into his harvest.
You know, labourers are those who bear the heat of the sun.
They don't. They're not just momentarily
inspired, but they're willing to work.
And Jesus is looking for workers in our day.
He will say, yes, I'm going to work for the Kingdom of God.
I'm going to get out there and share the gospel.
The body of Christ has many people who are momentarily
inspired and and you know, it's OK, but actually what the Lord
is looking for is faithful workers who will work with him
in in his harvest fields. Amen.
That word thrust out, it's quite a word.
You know, it's not the kind of wooing that we hear about
sometimes in church. What is the Spirit of God
drawing you to do? The Greek language is much
stronger than that. It literally means to be
forcibly compelled out, pushed out, kicked out, even from one
position to another. The Lord will disturb your
comfort zone if you will just listen to Him and allow Him.
But I tell you what, on the other side of that are the most
remarkable miracles that Jesus does.
I can tell you so many stories from all around the world.
You know, it's one thing to preach in an organised meeting,
but, and, and I love organised gospel campaigns.
I love it when Jesus does miracles in those sort of
settings. But I have many, many, many
stories where Jesus has told me to do things that were very
uncomfortable at the moment. But you know, I'm just going to
tell you very quickly. I remember in South America
being on a ferry, you know, and I'm on this ferry and as I, as
we're going through the waters is right down the southern parts
of southern tip of Chile. And so it's very cold.
There's icebergs around and all kinds of stuff.
But I'm on this ferry. I've just finished the gospel
campaign on the little island of Chilli Chico.
Amazing miracles happened and many came to Christ.
Anyway, here I am. I'm very tired.
I'm looking forward to a rest. I'm on my way.
I'm minding my own business. But as I'm sitting there, the
Holy Spirit suddenly speaks to me and says, get up and preach
the gospel to the fairy. It was the furthest thought from
my mind. I got to be honest with you.
He said, get up and preach the gospel to the fairy.
So I I turned to my interpreter who happened to be with me, and
I said, I hope you're ready for this.
He said, what do you mean, John? I said in a few moments, I'm
going to get up and I'm going to preach the gospel to the fairy.
He said, you're going to what? I said, look, Jesus is telling
me to do this, there isn't an option.
So he said, well, how are you going to do it?
I said, well, I don't know. That's what we're going to find
out. I said, actually what I'm going
to do is I'm going to pray like Paul said, I'm going to pray for
a door of grace. I asked the Lord to open the
door and let's see what Jesus does.
She's OK. So I said, Lord, would you
please just open the door. Suddenly after that prayer, 2
minutes later a guy walks across from the other side of the
ferry. He walks up to my interpreter
and says, please tell Jonathan I was the first man who got healed
in his Chilli Chico crusade. I had a major stomach condition.
I was on my way. He says I'm supposed to be going
to concession. It's a South American city in in
Chile where I was going to have an operation, but he laid hands
on me and I was completely and totally healed.
I'm on my way. He says to cancel the operation
and confirm with the doctors I'm medically healed.
And I said, that's a wonderful testimony.
Tell him that I'm going to introduce him to the ferry.
He's going to give his testimony and then I'm going to preach on
the back of it. And that's what I did.
So I clapped to everybody. I stood up and said, Hello
everybody, wonderful to be on this ferry with you today.
I said, You can tell I'm not from round here, I'm an
Englishman, I said, visiting the beautiful island of Chile,
Chico, I said, But on the island of Chile, Chico, this gentleman
here had a terrible condition. He was on his way to the doctors
to be healed, but he met with Jesus Christ as we prayed for
him and he was miraculously healed.
I wonder if you'd give him a few moments of respect to let him
tell you his story. Everybody look, So he gave his
account of how he was miraculously healed.
So I then get up and said to her, let's give him a clap.
So everybody clap. I said, isn't that a wonderful
thing? Well, nobody could deny it.
So everybody clapped and I said to them all guys, now I want to
tell you an even greater miracle because the Jesus who healed
that man also died on the cross to pay the penalty for all of
our sins. We've all committed them.
No, it's not the end of the story. 3 days later, God raised
him back to life. He's alive.
He's on this ferry by the Holy Spirit, and if you'll call on
him, he'll save you right now. Is there anyone here who wants
Jesus Christ in their life? Do you know what?
Everybody looked at each other for a moment and then a very
forthright lady suddenly said, Jonathan, we all need the Lord.
And suddenly every hand in the fairy went up and everyone got
bored again and we ministered to the sick in the way into the
ferry. You know, I through the years
the Lord's had me do stuff like that in the Czech Republic.
He had me walk into a factory, a factory of all places.
They thought I was an English businessman coming to do a, a
contract. I said I have come to do
business. I said my father's business
said, what's that? They said, well here's the deal.
I said, Jesus told me you have many workers in your factory who
have bad backs and he wants to heal them.
And she looked at her associate and went and I said, listen,
with all due respect to you, I know this seems a bit crazy, but
the fact about it is that, you know, I'm a pastor.
I never say evangelist. I don't know what that is.
I said, I'm a pastor and Jesus speaks to me.
And from time to time when he tells me to do something like
this, amazing things happen. And look, here's here's the
deal. If you let me pray for your
workers, I said, and they get healed, they're going to stop
complaining. They're going to, they're not
going to take so much time off work.
So that's going to increase your profit margins, your
productivity. And so she looked at me.
She says, here's the thing. She says, how much does it cost?
I said, this is where the good news really kicks in.
I said, because actually it cost God everything.
He gave his Son Jesus who bled and died for our sins on the
cross outside Jerusalem 2000 years ago.
And he also carried our sicknesses and diseases.
It cost him everything. But to you and me, it's free.
How about it? She looked and she said, I have
a terrible chronic neck condition.
I have to go to the hospital every week.
Do you think that prayer could help me?
I said Jesus certainly could. Want to make a Long story short,
she let me pray for her. She was instantly healed.
Then she gave her life to Christ.
Then she took me and stopped the whole factory.
All the workers had to stop and she introduced me like this.
Everybody listen to me. You will know about my neck
condition. This man is a pastor from
England. God sent him here.
I am now healed and I've become a Christian.
And what God has done for me, I am sure he will do for you too.
I thought, wow, I thought she's an evangelist.
And you know what the power of God for?
I've learned this through the years when you listen to the
Holy Spirit and just follow that impression, follow that inner
voice, follow that leading that He gives, amazing things happen
on the inside of it. Do you know what happened?
Everyone in the factory was healed.
Everyone and 2/3 of them gave their lives to Christ.
Just glorious. And the pastor was really happy
because suddenly he turned up to collect me.
And when he did, the lady was so happy.
They gave him a big check to help His church.
So glory to gone, guys. Look, I didn't want to say there
is a life of adventure that the Lord is calling you to.
We're all called with divine purpose.
Psalm 139, verse 13 to 16 tells us that actually we were knit
together by God in our mother's womb, and all the days that he
ordained for us were written in his book before there was one of
them. That's amazing.
But God has a plan for our lives.
You find in Acts chapter 8, verse 4 to 8, after the great
persecution that arose against the church in Jerusalem, that
all of the apostles stayed in Jerusalem, but the rest of the
church was scattered everywhere, and they went everywhere
preaching the gospel. And Philip, who we later know
became known as an evangelist, but at this time he was just an
ordinary guy, was a server of tables.
And he goes to Samaria and preaches the gospel.
And there's great joy in the city, the signs and wonders,
healings and deliverances as this ordinary server of tables
goes and proclaims Christ. Let me tell you, God does
extraordinary works of power to ordinary believers who are
willing to say yes to him. Amen.
Glory to God right now. Bonky says that God's harvest
feels ripen at different times. And I want to say to you, this
is Lester's time. This is Lester's time, this is 1
church's time. God is going to do an amazing
thing amongst you and through you.
And when we obey him, we can expect God to breakthrough in
remarkable and wonderful ways. There's always a certain cost to
this. Luke chapter 923 to 26, just
after Jesus made known to his disciples that he was going to
go to the cross and die and be raised back to life again.
Do you remember this? It's a remarkable feature of
Jesus's life before he went to the cross.
He prophesied his own death and his own resurrection 3 times
before he went to the cross. It was the plan of God that he
would die for us and pay the price for the sins of the whole
world. And then he turns to his
disciples and says this to them all.
If anyone that's any of us would be my disciple, let him deny
himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
He who tries to save his life will lose it, but he who loses
his life for my sake and the Gospels will find it.
You know, there are some of us that the Lord may call one day
to actually be martyrs for Christ physically, but that may
not be many of us here. But the reality is that there is
a certain dying to self that has to happen in all of our lives if
we're going to really live for God.
But what we find is that when we die to ourselves and say yes to
Jesus, to whatever he wants us to do, and no matter what anyone
says about us or thinks about us, but we're willing just to be
obedient when we do it. We find a higher life than we
ever thought was possible. We find a greater and more
exciting purpose to live for than anything that we could ever
find in this life is in its normal way of jobs or whatever
else I want to say. Are you willing?
Hebrews chapter 12 one and two starting to come into land, says
this after the amazing chapter. Hebrews 11 The great heroes of
faith, the writers of the Hebrew says, Therefore we also, since
we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses to the life
of faith, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so
easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that
is set before us. Looking unto Jesus, the Author
and the finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set
before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat
down at the right hand of the throne of God.
There is a race that the Lord has for you to run.
He has a great purpose for your life.
He's calling you to lay aside the sin, the weights, the things
that hold you back from His purpose, to fix your eyes on the
One who loves you, who knows you.
He's called you by name, Jesus, the Saviour, the Son of God, the
Lord, and he's calling you. You can't do it without him.
He knows that. But that's why he gives us a
helper, the Holy Spirit, to empower us to live our lives for
Christ, to shine his light in this needy and Dark World, to
run the race and to call others to follow him too.
Say yes to Jesus. It's an all hands on deck time
brothers and sisters. It really is at all hands on
deck time. I'm very privileged to minister
every year for the last 6-7 years in Argentina.
The revival that happened there was quite spontaneous and
powerful. 30,000 a day coming to Christ.
Before the revival came, the largest churches in Argentina
were 43 to 46 people. When Carla son Anaconda came to
them as a businessman recently converted and filled with the
Spirit and came to the pastors of Buenos Aires and said to
them, God has told me he's sending a great revival to
Argentina. The pastors looked at him and
said, who are you? We have our theological degrees
with the leaders of the churches.
Who do you think you are? You're an unknown businessman.
No one would listen to him. Being a wealthy businessman.
He bought a 20,000 seater tent of his own and set it up the
next week. It was in the middle of the
Falklands War. The Belgrana was sunk and when
they look back at it today, they say the pride of the Argentinian
people was broken and people began to turn to God.
Carlos set up a tent in the outskirts of Buenos Aires and
started to preach the gospel and in six weeks 30,000 people had
given their lives to Christ. The pastors came to him and
said, what do you have that we don't?
He said you have your recognition in this realm, I
have mine in another. He was praying, he was fasting,
he was going. He didn't keep it in here, he
took it out there. There's a thirst in the hearts
of the people of Leicester, there's a thirst in the hearts
of the people of our nation, there's a thirst in the world
for the waters of eternal life and only you and I can bring it
to them. But Jesus is saying, say yes,
he's accelerating his work in the earth, He's coming soon.
There's a great harvest to be reaped, and he's accelerating
his work in the one church. I tell you this by the word of
the Lord, I'm not just saying it because I want it and I do want
it, but because I've heard it. And I want to say to you, he
needs many more people to be volunteers in the life of his
church to be ready. Carlos says when the move of God
came, it came in one wave and the church wasn't ready for it.
So many people feel the churches, the leaders were
overwhelmed and many of the churches ended up emptying
eventually because they couldn't contain what God did.
But then in His grace He came again and this time they were
ready. Will we take seriously what the
Lord is saying and doing in our day?
Do say yes to Him. I want to close with a a
testimony, a story that is not a Christian one, but it's very
poignant. Many of us will be familiar with
the Nobel Peace Prize, but many of us are not familiar with
where it came from. Alfred Nobel, who lived between
1833 to 1896, is best known for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Less well known is the fact that Alfred Nobel also invented
dynamite. As well as a chemist, an
engineer and an innovator. He was a weapons manufacturer.
But in 1888, Alfred's brother Ludwig died, and a French
newspaper mistakenly published Alfred's obituary.
It condemned him for his invention of dynamite, stating
the merchant of death is dead. Doctor Alfred Nobel, who became
rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever
before, died yesterday. Alfred Nobel was devastated by
the foretaste of how he would be remembered.
His last will and testament set aside the bulk of his estate to
establish the Nobel Prizes. He gave the equivalent of 250
million U.S. dollars to fund such prizes.
Alfred Nobel had the rare opportunity to evaluate his life
near to its end and to live long enough to change its assessment.
Have you ever wondered what difference your life might make?
How can your life bring blessing to other people?
How can you change the world for the better?
And how your life can be of ultimate lasting value in the
Kingdom of God? I want to say to you that today
the Lord put this word on my heart to share with you because
He's looking for a people who are willing in the day of His
power to be ready, to be prepared.
Perhaps you're one of those who's going to catch one of
those flags and He's going to send you to another nation to
bring the good news of Jesus to a dying people.
He is the hope of the world. He is our life.
The Lord bless you. And keep you.
The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you.
The Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace.