Seing God at work making a difference

Father. But how many people go into the room and

we've got this prayer list. We've got this great, big

one prayer list of things, and we go, okay, God,

I'm ready. I'm going to bring you all the things

that I've got to share with you today. And we

start down our prayer list and then we get to

the end and we think, Okay, time's gone. I've got

to go now. And I'm sure the father's looking down

at us going as he wants to speak back to us.

And I want to encourage you. This is this is

an encouragement. This is an all age or family service

or nation service. I want to encourage every one of us.

Do you make time to listen to the Father? Do

you make time? Do you then take it? Sometimes our

diaries are so full of stuff that we have to

put stuff in our diary and say I'm going to

make some time. You know, for example, when I get

a very busy day, I have to put in my

diary that I'm going to walk the dog. The dog

gets walked every day, but in a busy day, suddenly

it will get to the end of the day it

will be done, and poor Teddy will be going, where's

my walk, And I'm sure God's very much like that too.

He's going, where's my time with you? Dave? And so

when my day starts to fill up with appointments, I

have to put in my diary a quiet time. I

don't know whether you do that. I don't know whether

you're diary orientated. Maybe you're just you just have a

structure to your day and just say, okay, my quiet

time is first thing in the morning. Well, what happens

if you're going to be on a you know, you're

going to be busy doing something, there's a prayer meeting

going on. Maybe it doesn't work. I want to encourage

you make time to spend time with the Father and

in that time deliberately be quiet. So, Father, have you

got something to say to me? Because I'm absolutely sure

that when God speaks to us, it's creative, it's purposeful,

It impacts us, it changes us. His word is living

and effective. We know that. But that's not just the Bible.

It's his voice speaking into our lives when he speaks.

When you've had a prophetic word, there are people in

this room who've walked with prophetic words. You've walked with

the truth that God has given you, and you said,

but God, said Keith Hazel, who's now gone to be

with the Father. Part of the network we're part of.

He was on a plane and he had he had

prophetic words, and he was on a plane traveling. I

think it was in India. He was traveling in India

and one of the engines stopped working and everybody started panicking. Now,

this plane had three engines, one at the back and

two on the wings, had three engines. One of the

engines stopped working, and everybody started panicking, and the pilot

was coming over, it's okay with the plane has been

designed to lose an engine. That's fine, We're okay. We

will get to our destination, Keith going to his neighbor.

We will get to our destination. And then the second

engine stopped working. Now everybody's panicking. Even the pilot's going, well,

I've never flown a plane with one engine. And Keith

turned to the people around him he said, it's okay.

I have unfulfilled prophecy in my life. There is stuff

that God has promised he's going to do. It's been

spoken over me, and it's yet to happen. This plane

is not going to crash. There is no one is

going to die. And he said that out the confidence

of the fact that God had spoken to him. The

plane landed. Eventually he got there and there was lots

of rounds of applause, and that one or two people

who hugged him and said, thank you Keith for sharing

that with me, because he got to know it was

it was a fairly small plane. If you, if God

has spoken to you, that job is to be done.

That job is to be fulfilled. That job is to

be fulfilled by you. As I shared last week, you

know there is not an alternative you or all alternative me.

I shared the story about the youth group, and somebody said,

they've seen me in another country. You are unique, just

like snowflakes are unique, just like fingerprints are unique. You

are unique. And the plan that God has for you

is the plan for you, the plan for you. In

Matthew chapter five, it says this, you are the salt

of the earth, and you are the light of the world.

You are the salt of the earth. But if the

salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?

It is no longer good for anything except to be

thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of

the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.

Neither do people put a light a lamp and put

it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on the stand,

and it gives light to everyone in the house. In

the same way, let your light shine before others, that

they may see your good deeds and glorify your father

in heaven. You know, salt is about proximity. You can't

have salt separate to food. You can't say, oh, salts

sitting here and the food's here, and it's going to

make the food taste better. One of the things you've

got to do is you've got to put salt in

You know, I understand, And I'm not a cook. Please

don't ever, don't never ask me to cook anything. Julius

nodding very vociferously there, you know, But I do know

that if you want to salt something, maybe you want

to bring the flavor out of the meat. You maybe

you need to rub salt into it to bring the

flavor out. You can't leave it on the side. Sometimes

people forget to put salt in something and they realize, oh,

I forgot to put the salt in you can taste

it because the flavor hasn't come out. We need to

be closer to one another to be able to rub

up against one another. When you rub up against one another,

you smell things, You get warmth coming from people. If

you've ever been in a very very very very crowded train,

maybe the underground in the winter, you know you're standing there,

you can't even put your hands in your own pockets.

You can put your hand in somebody else's pocket, but

you can't put your hand in your own pocket. And

you know, you start to smell a bit. You know,

you think you can smell whether somebody's got oud color

or something else. And you feel the warmth of other people.

You can gen. You know, some people are hot people.

Are you a hot person? You come and stand next

to someone who's not a hot person, they say, oh,

come and stand closer, I'll have some of your warmth.

You know, there'll be some people here who've got two

or three I was on the underground this week on Tuesday.

It was and there was somebody who's sitting on the

underground and they had a jumper on and a puffer

coat on, and I was there in a single shit

with my sleeves were rolled up. I was seeing God,

it's hot in here. They're obviously from a different country,

you know, they're obviously used to thirty five forty degrees

and there's me quite comfortable at seventeen. You know, salt

salts brings out flavor. We need to bring out the

flavor in the world. There are good people in the

world who just need to come alongside a Christian and

see God at work and see God's hand at work.

And when God's hands at work, there will be flavor

brought out. And likewise light. What does it take to

drive back the darkness? Just one light and anybody here

fearful of the dark. I'm not going to pray about that.

But we're not like that. It's a few people. It's

one or two people who know, okay, But you know,

if we are, we wonder what's in the dark, don't we,

Because that's the thing fear. Do you know what gets

rid of darkness? Turn the light on, guys, turn the

light on. And one of the things that I honestly

feel missionary is mission. Being a missionary is all about

is taking light into a dark place. That place which

was dark becomes less dark because someone is there holding

a torch, someone is there lighting a candle. In Isaiah

chapter six, I'm not going to read it today, but

in the in the year King Usiah died, I saw

the Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up,

and his robe filled to the temple. And he goes

on to say in verse three, and he cried unto

another and said, Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts.

The whole earth is full of his glory. If we

just get a glimpse of God's glory. Do you know what?

In worship this morning, I was in tears. I was

just thinking, okay, little old r CFI and we've got

a oh choir up the front, singing harmonies, beautiful harmonies,

and I just imagine, Okay, let's turn that from four five,

six to one hundred to one thousand. When angels worship

with us, and then you start to hear a Welsh

choir or whatever nationality choir you prefer, other other nationalities

are available. You know, whatever, whatever you hear, just get

lost in worship. Now I have I have sung alone,

and I've sung with a choir. I'm saying that again

I've sung alone, but I've sung with the choir no

one else in the room, but I've sensed harmonies. I've

sent others singing with me. They weren't in the room.

That's just angels coming and joining in and not saying

my worship was any special to anybody else's. And please,

if you say, like some of my friends have said

to me, Dave, I can't sing. Julie and I had

some very good friends at at university. They used to

sit behind us at church, and they love to worship,

but they couldn't sing. And when I say couldn't sing,

if you went la la, they couldn't tell you whether

that was up or down. They couldn't tell you. But

I'll tell you what. They love to worship, and God

loved their worship, so they'd be going for it. And

if you try to follow them, you get lost because

they weren't going where you were going. They were singing

the words, and they were singing them in the right time,

but they weren't singing them in the right tune. But

God loved their worship, and I loved sometimes sitting in

front of them, as long as I managed to tune

out to their tune. Our need to make a difference

is that we need to be to see God and

see God at work. Some people will tell you I

don't know God, I don't know this God that you're

talking about. I say, well, can I show you him?

Can I pray? How can I pray for you? One

of the most important things that we can do, and

this is saltiness at work, is to say, can I

pray for you? It was in the high street last week.

I was chatting to someone. I just I had a

bit of time, and I sat down on a bench

next to somebody and then I realized I knew them,

and I started talking and then they got up and

went and somebody sat down on the bench next to me.

I hadn't realized the person had changed. I carried on

talking to them, and they turned to me and said,

excuse me, are you talking to me? And I went, oh, sorry,

And then we got into a conversation, so I thought, okay, God,

you've done this nothing to do with me. Got into

a conversation and they were talking about how they had

a family member at home who wasn't well, and I said,

I'm a Christian, would you mind if I prayed and

they went, oh, please do And I am absolutely sure

that they thought I meant I was going to go

home and pray. And I grabbed hold of their hand.

I said, I hope you don't mind, and I prayed.

I don't know what God's done in that meantime, but

Heaven touches Earth. When we pray, the Father responds to

the persistent widow. The Father responds to you and to

me when we pray. When we get into the throne

room with God, when it's us and him and we're

crying out to him, you know what stopped, you know?

And I said to her, do you know God? You

said not really. I said, well, let me pray and

let's see what God will do. And I've left that

in his hands. You know, one of the reasons we

don't get into a room with God is because we're lazy.

I'm lazy. I guess you might say you're lazy sometimes.

You know, day gets too busy and we can't do

stuff and we can't be bothered. You know, the Father's

sitting there waiting to hear from you and me. One

of the other things that stops us getting close to

God is our sin. Have I sinned this week, Yes,

anybody else. I'm not going to ask you to put

your hands up, but think about it. And what I

mean by sin is not just I don't even doing

bad things. I mean doing things that God doesn't want

us to do. And some of those things can be

good things, good can be the enemy of God thinks.

Sometimes we can do things and we think, oh, we're

in a hurry. Anybody in a hurry today? Yeah, We're

always in a hurry, aren't we. Yeah that was too quick, Juliet.

That was too quick, Juliet. But do you know what?

Our ability to see God and to see God at

work lifts us up, encourages us, and I want to

encourage you. If you are discouraged. Right now, I'm going

to ask you to talk to God. And when I

finish talking, I'm going to ask you to talk to

God and say, Lord, would you just show me something

of yourself? Would you show me something of your presence?

Because our ability to see God is impacted by our sin,

by our knowledge of who He is and where we

expect to find him, we often don't reach out to

God because that we feel we're in a place we

shouldn't be in. We'll get out of that place. Then move,

take a step, and there might be a mindset. Sometimes

we're in a cycle of downward a downward spiral, and

we're in a pity party and we say, oh God,

where am I? Where are you? What does David say

in some one hundred and thirty nine, if I go

to the uttermost parts of the earth, even there, your

hand will guide me. How far is uttermost? How far

is uttermost? I think as at least around the globe?

Once twice I watched a very interesting program of astronauts

and they were talking about Sorry I was sorry not

watched the program. The conference I was at this week,

the key speaker was Tim Peak, and he said he

saw the sunrise eight times in one day. When you're

in the space station, you say good morning a lot

of times, then, don't you. I mean, you see the

sunrise as a glorious moment. You see God's creation, you

see it at work. You see, he said, you see

stars that you don't see from earth. He said, I

don't know how any astronaut cannot be a Christian. Interesting point,

interesting thought. I want to kind of pull this all

together with the last scripture that's in the Mica. I

want to talk about the Feeding of the five thousands,

just briefly, so let me read it to you first. Matthew,

Chapter fourteen, verses thirteen to twenty one. When Jesus heard

what had happened, he withdrew with by boat privately to

a solitary place. He went to a quiet place. Hearing

of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns.

Imagine how annoying that would be. When Jesus landed, he

saw a large crowd. He had compassion on them and

healed the sick. As evening approached, the disciples came to

him and said, this is a remote place and it's

getting late. Send the crowds away so they can get

to the villages and buy themselves some food. Jesus replied,

they do not need to go away. You give them

something to eat. We only have five loads of bread

and two fish, they answered. Bring them to me, he said,

and he directed the people to sit down on the grass,

Taking the five loads and two fish, and looking up

to Heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loads. Then

he gave it to the disciples, and the disciples gave

it to the people they all ate and were satisfied,

and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces

that were left over. The number of those who ate

was about five thousand men plus women and children. So

when we say the feeding of the five thousand, it's

a lot more than five thousands. I just want you

to take three principles from this simple story. Because I

used to have a bracelet. It's broken and worn out. Now.

It used to say, WWJD, what would Jesus do? If

you ever find yourself in a place where you're running out,

You're running out of yourself, you're running out of time,

you're running out of food, let me encourage you to

do what Jesus did. Number one, Sit down, don't panic

and rush around and try and do all the things

you need to do. Sit and be still, as it

says in some forty six verse ten, be still and

know that I am God. Be still. Stop. And that's

not just in the heart, that's not just with the body. Sit. Sit,

if you need to sit on your hands, be still

and know that I am God. Because there's a moment

where you're saying, Lord, I can't do anymore, I can't

do anymore. So I'm just going to hand this over

to you. You hand it over to him. Be still.

That's number one. Number two is give thanks, give thanks,

Give thanks for what you have, give thanks for what

you don't have. Be thankful in all things. More in

your love this because we've talked about this before. Give

thanks out all times, even when life is pretty bad.

I was about to say a bad word, though I

won't say a bad word. Life is is not good.

But give thanks. Get your eyes off the things, get

your eyes off the lack, onto the God who will provide.

So number one, be still. Number two, give thanks. Number three,

then disperse what you have, just distribute what you have.

The fascinating thing is they started with five loaves and

two fish, and yet there was many. Many baskets have leftovers.

God is a god of plenty. God is a god

of more than enough. I'm believing, not just in that

basket this morning, there's going to be more than enough

to pay for the wall and the offering that's going

to be given for those who are giving online. Believing

that that wall bill is covered. Juliet stepped out and

face she said, the wall's come down. She said, I

need to get it repaired for the safety of everything involved.

We don't want anybody nipping in and causing trouble. So

she got it sorted. Now it's God's bill. In my opinion,

we felt, we felt, we felt that we should do that,

which didn't feel we should wait, so crack on. There

are times when God says, you've got to go back

to him and say you'll build God. You're bill because

you said. I'm not saying we should be crazy. But

if God says, God says, and we need to stand

on that word, and we need to walk in that goodness.

We will see need at many times in our world.

We will see need at many moments, perhaps due to hopelessness,

sometimes due to selfishness, sometimes due to pride. But you

know what we can give, and God is able to

give more than we ask or imagine. So let me pray. Father,

You're a god of more than enough. Lord, you own

the cattle on a thousand hills. It says that in

your word. And so Father, we look to the author

and perfector of our faith, who sent his one and

only son, as I talked about last week, to pay

the price for you and me, to pay the price

for our wrongdoing. To pray the price for our sinfulness,

that we might have a unique relationship through Jesus, through

Christ with the Father. And so Father, I pray Lord,

you'd cause breakthrough today. I'm going to pray for a

number of things, and I'm just going to ask people

to stand as there's a number of things in my

heart I want to pray for. I want to start

with there's a number of people in the room and

those listening online and those listening later where you need

to see a change in circumstance, not something This is

not something you can change. This is not something you

can do anything about. This is not about you making

a bad decision. You need to see a change in circumstance.

One or two of you are praying for your bosses,

and your bosses are giving you a really hard time.

You can't get your boss dismissed. You can pray for them.

Some of them will get promotions because of the prayers

that happen today, but they won't be your boss anymore. So,

if you need to see a change in circumstances, I

am not talking about something you can do. I'm talking

about something you can do nothing about. I'd ask you

to stand I'm not going to ask you what it is.

You can take that to the Father. You can bring

it to the Father. But if you need a change

in your circumstances, would you stand, because I'm going to

pray that God changes circumstances. Those at home, those listening later,

If that's you, please just stand. Just God, God sees

there's an important thing where we go. Lord, it's me.

It's me. I'm standing, and so Father, as we stand

in your presence right now, Father, I pray for a

change in atmosphere Father, where there is a shortage of

funds in the company and the jobs at risk. Father,

I pray that you'd call the bills to be paid

on time. Father, I pray that you'd release funds and Lord,

suddenly customers will be paying who haven't been paying. Father,

I pray for a confidence in a future career. Lord,

for those who are worried about jobs and job certainty,

who are standing right now, For someone who's waiting for

a diagnosis, and the diagnosis is all in the hands

of the doctors. Father, I pray, Lord, you'd you'd shine

a light on what needs to be done. Father, I

pray that it will be very, very clear what needs

to be done. Father, for reputational issues, for those who

are standing, because reputation has come under question. Father, I

pray that, Lord, God, you draw a line in the sands. Lord,

you draw a line at the bottom of the page. Lord,

you'd sign it off and say enough's enough. Let's move

on into the next chapter. Father, I pray for closure

for some of those people, and for all the other things. Father,

I bring them to you and say, Lord, would your

hand be at work? Would your hand be at work?

We pray in Jesus' name. Move circumstances, move people, move,

situationis complete paperwork. Lord, let that which was lost be found.

We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. So if you just

want to take your seats, there's two more things I

want to pray about. I want to pray for those

who are wrestling with a friend or a close family

member who has a long term health problem, and you're

carrying the burden of caring for them, worrying about them.

If that's you, would you stand Because there is something

that we do as care is there's something we do

which becomes very, very burdensome if we're not careful and

we can't do anything about the health of this friend

or this family member. But we carry all the junk,

the stuff, and I want to pray that. I want

to pray, as it says, his burden is light, I

pray that his You are carrying your friends worry, but

I want you to take it to the foot of

the cross today. So Father, we stand in your present,

Lord God, worried about our friends, worry about our family members,

Lord God, and we carry all that worry. Father, I

pray you'd help us to leave it at the foot

of the cross right now. Lord. It's not that we

don't care, but Lord, we have to place it in

your hands. And we say, Lord, would you take our worry?

Would you take our concern? Would you take our caring,

Lord God, and help us in that tireless giving to others. Father,

I pray that you'd lift that burden office as we

stand or Father, I pray you'd take it from us,

and Lord it would stay nailed to the cross. But Father, too,

I pray for the healing of those that we are

caring for. I pray for the mental breakthrough for those

who need a different mindset, Father, for those who are

dealing with parkins AND's for those who are dealing with Alzheimer's,

for those who are dealing with mind battles. Father, I

pray right now in Jesus' name, Lord, you bring freedom

and liberty. Lord, you'd reposition story, you'd reposition yourself in

light of where they are. Let them see you. We

pray in Jesus' name, and Father, I pray that our

walk would be a skip and a step in your

name Jesus name. Amen. How if you just want to

sit down and the final one, then just want to

pray for those who have a sense of hopelessness right now.

I'm not going to ask you what that's about. It

might just be in one very specific area. It might

be one area where you've given up and I'm going

to ask you to stand again. I know it might

be difficult, but I'm going to ask you if you

if you if you have lost hope over a circle.

It might be a prophetic word being fulfilled. It might

be someone that you desperately want to see saved, but

you are in a place of hope less ness. I

sense the Father wants to download hope to you today.

So if that's you, would you stand. I'm not going

to ask you what it is, you know what area

that's in You lift that to the Father because his

word is powerful and effective, and he's able to do

immeasurably more than we ask or imagine. So, Father God,

I pray, Lord God, that you would release fresh hope

to those who are standing. Father, I pray you'd release

hope right now, a bundle of hope, a bucket full

of hope, no, a ton of hope. Lord God, Lord,

would you release hope nor not just into the situation,

but through our brothers and sisters. Lord, that they would

not only sense your hope and your presence, but be

able to share that with others. Father, I pray for

an atmospheric change of hope in Jesus Mighty name. Amen. Amen,