29th June 2025 - Celebration Service

For Good Reads. But I was as Dave had the mic,

I think. So I came to RCF, I think when

I was eleven, maybe, and as Dave was holding the mic,

not only did I just remember so many incredible moments

in the presence of God at RCF, but I was

remembering someone called Nate Pulsford. He used to hold the

mic like this on his chin. And I have so

many memories that I'm so grateful for from RCF, and

I have I will always be in debt to this family,

and I'm so grateful. So thank you so much for

the honor of being here today, and thank you a

huge thank you to Dave and Julia. And so if

you came today thinking that you'd be impressed or entertained

by me, I'm so sorry. My wife will tell you

that you'll be disappointed pretty quickly. But what I'm going

to try and do is give you something much much better,

which is the Word of God. And I'm going to

try and do it in the way that I feel

God is teaching me at the moment, which is a

lot about reciting scripture. And so some of you might

know from the in Acts chapter two, in Act chapter four,

the church that was so new, a little baby church.

Devoted themselves to a few different things, but one of

the things was the public reading of scripture and the

teaching of the apostles, but the public reading of scripture.

And so today the most important thing I will do

is recite scripture. Everything else is there to just bring out. Well.

Sometimes can be really hard. I don't know about anyone else,

but sometimes I find the Bible really hard. Remember, Dave,

you are just so brave, Dave. He once I think

the first time I ever led worship was with the

youth group exss some Fire. The first time I ever

preached was Excess some Fire, and I had this weird

It tells you a lot about my personality. I had this.

I chose to speak from Leviticus, man alive. What was

I doing? But today I'm choosing to speak from the

Book of Philippians. And when the Book of Philippians was written,

it didn't have any chapters and verses. It was just

a letter, and it would have been read. And so

today I'm the temptation. I love Philippins three so much.

Oh my goodness. I can talk for hours. I can

talk for hours anyway, but I can talk for hours

about Filippins three. But I'm going to try and speak

to you from the letter because that's how it's written,

and there is power in the Word of God that

is not anything like the words that I'm going to say.

So I want to give everyone permission to take something

away that isn't what I'm going to be preaching about,

but comes from the text. The Holy Spirit is so

much better than me, full stop. But the Holy Spirit

is able to give every single person what they need.

And so you can go home today with food that

I can't give you. Or Jesus says, you know, if

you drink from this water, you won't thirst again, So

what he gives you is good. So I also love questions.

You know. The Disciples love asking questions, and there's something

amazing right questions. If you have a question, stick your

hand up, please be bolled. And I'm not saying I'll

give you a good answer, but it's nice to have

the question. I've also been criticized for talking too much,

and so I've got four chapters to cover. So let's pray. Jesus,

you taught us to pray in the Lord's Prayer that

all the glory the kingdom. The power is yours. So Jesus,

we ask for you. We are for you. Now. The

word of God is powerful. So we slow ourselves down

and we open ourselves up, and we asked that you

would feed us, Lord Jesus, because we are hungry. We

are hungry for you. The grass withers and the flowers fade,

but the word of our God endures forever. Amen. Okay,

so I haven't the only part I've actually learnt well

is Flippings three, but we'll get to Flippings three. We're

going to go through three three chapters, Philippins one, Flippings two,

Flippings three and four. You guys know fourd you rejoice

in the Lord always and again rejoice. But we're going

to go with Flippins one. So I've heard that you

guys have been thinking about loving Egham, and I hope

this helps. So here we go. If you have your Bibles,

let's start with Philippins chapter one, and this is the

good bit. I'm going to start from verse three. I

thank my God every time I remember you in all

my prayers for you, I always pray with joy because

of your partnership in the Gospel from the first day

until now, being confident of this that He who began

a good work in you will carry it on to

completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Amen, it is

right for me to what feel this way about all

of you, all of you since I have you in

my heart, and whether I'm in chains or defending and

confirming the Gospel, all of you share in God's grace

with me. Praise God. God can testify how I long

for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

And this is my prayer that your love may abound

more and more in knowledge and depth of insight. Every

time I remember you, I always pray with joy. It

is right for me to feel this way about all

of you. How I long for all of you with

the affection of Christ Jesus. This is my prayer that

your love may abound more and more. So this incredible letter,

I mean, if I had like two hours, I would

just love to nitty gritty go through every single part

of it. Is so good. This letter starts with love.

It's this amazing letter. We'll come into the next chapter

in a second about the heart of our God, but

it's this amazing letter that just starts with a man

who was the persecutor of Christians, a murderer who is

now full to the brim with gooey affectionate love for

other people. This is our mark. This is how we

should taste and sound and feel when people come into

our presence. This is what they should feel. Remember the

word in verse seven. It is right for me to

feel this way. Love is not a feeling amen, otherwise

I would not be a very loving person. But it

does feel. So it doesn't mean that we need to

be feeling all this love is not just the thing

that comes and goes, but it does have a feeling.

Sometimes it does long for people. And you know, I

want to ask us all do we cry with love

for people? Are we moved by people? And do people

feel love from us? And I started off by talking

about Davin, Julia and Nate, and I could name so

many people that have loved me and so grateful. And

you know, at the end of you know, the Letter

of One Corinthians. We are all charismatic Christians, right. We

believe in the parer of the Holy Spirit, the gifts

of the Holy Spirit. Praise God, They're amazing. But in

one Printin's thirteen. He's saying that the only point of

it all is about love. If you prophesy, it's about love.

If you can speak in tongues, it's about love. If

you can be wise, it's about love. If it's anything else,

you are nothing. He'd say, you are nothing. It means nothing.

I want us to pray this prayer that your love

may abound more and more in knowledge and insight. And

I want us to pray that in our lives. It's

an amazing prayer. If you can ever find prayers from scripture,

they're so great to pray. There's another great one in

Ephesians three. This is a good one. It says more

and more. This is good news. This means you can grow.

Life in God is so awesome. It is so exciting.

You can grow. You can go one step further. If

you currently give ten percent, you can give eleven. You

can give fifteen percent, more and more. If you have

ten minutes to pray for someone, you can do eleven.

Jesus says, you know, if you walk one mile with someone,

you can go too. But we want to pray that.

Like Paul's saying, every time I remember you and praying

for you, how does he do it. He prays with joy.

He likes praying for people. He enjoys it because he

loves them. And so our life of ministry we do

with joy because we love people. Jesus said in New Command,

I give to you love one another as I have

loved you. So you must love one another. By this,

everyone will know that you are my disciples. If you

love one another, I think we can feel like loving

one another. Is this like hippie thing, that's like wishy

washy and easy? But then you know that In John fifteen,

when Jesus is talking about abiding in me, if you

don't do what I command, get thrown in the fire.

And the command in the chapters before and after repeatedly

is love one another. He's basically saying, like, this is it.

This is it If you want to know what your

mission is about, it for all of us is expressed

in different ways, but it's about love. It's about love.

So to love Eggham is a good idea. It's a

good thing. So we want to be affectionate like Christ.

Paul says in this chapter the Affection of Christ. We

want to be affectionate. We want to be we want

to pray for people because of our love. You know,

I was struck recently. I'm doing this thing with some

friends where we're for ninety days. We're trying to pray

an hour a day and do lots of other things,

and twenty minutes of the hour is about intercession. And

this is just to tell you about my own journey.

I noticed that that was the one part of my

day that I'd always compromise on. It's always the part

the other parts of scripture. I love scripture. Maybe you

can tell I love silence. Some people don't like science.

I love it, but it always compromise on an intercession.

I'd always do it a bit shorter, do it when

I'm a bit distracted. And then I felt the spirit

tell me why. It's because I didn't really I wasn't

really believing that my prayers mean anything. But if you read,

if you read Jesus Words, there's no two ways about it.

You if you believe Jesus Words, prayer does something. I

don't understand it. I don't get it, but it makes

a difference. And if you love someone, if you really

really love someone, you will pray for them because you

know that you can't do for them what God can

do for them. So your intercession is an indicator of

your love. And so pray, pray with joy for people.

So philippiins one, love one another. Philippiins two. And this

is just this is just so amazing. I'm going to

start from verse two. Therefore, if you have any encouragement

from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love,

if any common sharing in the spirit, if any tenderness

and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like minded,

having the same love, being one in spirit and of

one mind. So he's saying, if you have anything to bring,

if you have anything to bring to church, if you

are part of the body of Christ, then whatever you do,

do it this way. He's about to say it. Do

nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather in humility,

value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests,

but each of you to the interests of the others.

This is so radical, and it's basically impossible. I mean,

try and do like And if you've trying to do

an hour without trying to do something that's self seeking,

it's hard. It's really really hard. I said, it's almost impossible.

Because it's not impossible. And this is why, in your

relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.

And this is just the most amazing, beautiful poem about

the heart of our God, who, being in very nature God,

did not consider a quality with God something to be

used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing

nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being

made in human likeness and being found in appearance as

a man. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death,

even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalted him to

the highest place and gave him the name that is

above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every

knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under

the earth. You know, everyone will bow one day. It's

just that those who are saved will do it by choice.

He says. Every knee will bow, and every tongue acknowledged

that Christ Jesus is lord to the glory of God

the Father. We have an awesome God. I want to

start going back to verse four again. Do nothing out

of self Verse three, Do nothing out of selfish ambition

or vain conceit. Rather in humility, value others above yourselves.

So some of us try to do this. Some of

us just don't try to do this. Some of us

try to do this by pretending we haven't got any needs.

So we all pretend that I'm fine, I'm fine, I've

got issues, I'm fine, I don't need love, I don't

need anyone to look after me. I'm fine, fine, fine, fine,

And then eventually it comes out that we're not actually

as fine as we think we are, and we can

try and like serving all the time and helping all

the time, and actually underneath it we've got needs. Then

you have other people, and but that's doing it in

your own strength, So people serving their own strengths. But

then you have other people who make it everyone else's

responsibility to look after their needs and take no responsibility

for their own heart. But a Christian has a very

different way. The Christian knows that they have needs, they

know that they need love, they know that they get anxious.

I get anxious. But like Jesus says in the Sermon

on the Mount, your father knows what you need before

you ask him. So the Christian can go, I have needs,

but I know where they get met, and so I

can value others above myself, not because I don't have needs,

but because I've got someone else who's looking after them

for me. So I can be generous. I can give.

I don't need to, you know, Jesus says, the eye

of the eye. Oh gosh, I forgot it now, the lamp.

The eye is the lamp someone will help me. The

eye is the lamp of the soul. And it's a

Hebrew idiom. It's a saying, And what it means is

that do you see the world as this world that

you're my Father has created for you and that he

has your needs looked after a world of abundancy, or

are you scared that there isn't enough all the time.

This is what he's saying. And he's saying that if

you have a generous heart, because you know your Father's

looking after you, and you know it, and you really

know it, like deep down, then you can value others

above yourself, not in a way where you're pretending that

you haven't got needs, but where you know God can

look after them. And I tell you there's something incredible

about when you do know that God looks after you.

It's the most freeing thing. It's so freeing, So love Egham.

You can only really love Egham if you love God,

because if you don't, then your love for Eggham and

for others will be based on them or what you

can get from them. So if they're not very grateful,

or if they do something you don't like, you might

want to pull your love back a bit, you might

want to give a bit less. But if you love

others because you love God, you're not doing it for them.

You're free. You know, freedom and love are these they

come together. You can really love someone if you're doing

it for God. But then you can't really love God

unless you really know his love for you, because God

is love. And any other attempt to love God, and

we all do this for any other reason other than

the fact that He's loved us is a is a cheat,

and it will run out. But if you love others

because you love God, and you love God because He

loves you, you are becoming a person of love. You

are not a clanging gong or a resounding symbol. You

will sound beautiful. He made himself nothing, becoming a servant,

and so God, we just pray that we would encounter

the love of God even today, Come, Lord Jesus in

your grace and do something we can't do. Pour your

love into our hearts by your holy spirit. Now open

our eyes. Lord Jesus, perfect love casts out all fear.

Come with your love in this room and banish or

fear that we might enjoy loving one another. Okay, Filippins, three,

here we go. Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord.

There's no trouble for me to write to you again

about this, but a protection for you. So I've learned

it in a slightly different translation. To you, guys, watch out

for dogs, watch out for evil doers, watch out for

mutilators of the flesh. For we are the circumcision, the

ones you serve by the spirit of God. Boast in

Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh, although

I once did put confidence in the flesh. And if

any of you think you have grounds for confidence in

the flesh, I have more circumcised. On the eighth day

of the Nation of Israel or the tribe of Benjamin,

a Hebrew of Hebrews with regards to the law a

Pharisee with regards to Zeal persecuting the Church with regards

to righteousness in the law blameless. But whatever was considered

gain to me, I now consider loss because of Christ.

And more than that, I now consider everything to be

a loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ,

Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have suffered the

loss of all things and consider them filth, that I

might gain Christ and be found in Him. Not having

a righteousness of my own based on law, but one

that comes from faith in Christ, a righteousness from God

based on faith. Not that I have already obtained this

or I am already fully mature. But one thing I do.

What do we do forgetting what is behind? Reaching to

what is ahead? I press on. I'm going to stop there.

It is powerful. It is so powerful. This stuff is

like dynamite. This is Paul's testimony. This is his life story.

What's your life story? Can you list all your the

things that both you're ashamed of and the things that

you're proud of and say that they're filth? What things

are you p of? He's saying, I'm just proud of Christ.

I just boast in Christ. He's just all in. This

is so like radical and extreme. He's so all in.

There's no like Plan B. He's all in on Christ.

And then he says, my goal is to know him.

We were singing that beautiful song, thank you so much

for worship the beautiful song that I want to know him.

My goal is to know him. My goal is not

to have a good pension or to be even even

to be semi comfortable. My goal is to know Him

and the power of his resurrection and sharing in his sufferings,

being conformed to him and his death, assuming I somehow

attain the resurrection from the dead. You know, we hear

a lot about how we're saved by faith. Amen, were

saved by faith, not by anything that we've done. That's

good news. Everyone could be happy because of that good news.

But it's not the end. It's the door in the end.

Is knowing the end, is knowing him where That's what

it's all about. Intimacy with Jesus. I know that there

are people in this room that know Jesus. And you know,

he says later on in this chapter, imitate me, and

I want to encourage you guys, find someone else here

who knows Christ more than you do. Remember he was praying,

you know, I pray that your love would about more

and more. It's a gradual process. Find someone else that

knows more than you and just spend time with them.

Ask them about their life. Ask them about how you

pray when you're stressed. Ask them how you pray when

you're not stressed. Ask them how they spend their money.

After the Kingdom of God, the second most talked about

thing that Jesus talks about is money. So ask learn

from people. Your goal is to know him, amen. Christianity

is not about being good, but it's about knowing Him.

So last things I want to say, thank you so

much for listening. The more that you enjoy God, the

more that you value him above everything, The more that

the name when the name of Jesus makes you happy,

the more that you can enjoy Him, the more you

can love others. You will be free. Remember we said

we can't love Egham unless we love God. We can't

love God unless he loves us. The more you enjoy Him,

the more you love him, the more you can love others,

And there's nothing more freeing. Both Jesus and Paul say

this that the entire law, all of life's requirements are

summed up in this one command. Love one another, Galatians

chapter five, love one another. If you feel like you're

not really there, and if it feels like it's kind

of going over your head, don't worry. You can start

from wherever you are. It's amazing. Jesus is so kind

and so gracious. Wherever you are, you can start learning

from him as your teacher. And Paul says it here,

although I am not fully mature, that's a relief. The

most one of the most incredible men in the history

of the church. I'm not fully mature. Okay, that's good news.

I want to end by saying that it's human nature

to be drawn to personalities over character, and to be

drawn to form over essence, the external appearances of things

over what it really matters, and that can actually even

happen even when we listen to people we love good communicators,

and don't get me wrong, good communicators are great. There

is a real, very real gift to the Body of Christ.

But that should never be an expense of essence and meaning.

And so I just want to graciously ask everyone, even

if my personality, my form today hasn't been easy to follow,

which wouldn't surprise me, please please listen to what the

scriptures are saying, love one another. Love one another. If

you want to be free, love others. If you want

to become like Christ, love others. If you want to

know what the whole point of your life is, love others.

Just want to end by reading this amazing part of

Philippings two again. This is our God in your relationships

with one another. Have the same mindset as Christ. Jesus, who,

being in very nature God, did not consider a quality

with God it's something to be used to his own advantage. Rather,

he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of

a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found

in appearance as a man. He humbled himself. Father. We

just pray for the spirit of humility to mark all

of us. Father, not in a way that we are

losing ourselves, pretending that we don't have needs, but in

a way where all of us know that we have

a father in heaven looking after us, who's put us

in a family. Thank you God that we're in a family.

There are no orphans in this room. We are all

adored by our heavenly Father who's lavished his love on us.

Help us to love our brothers and sisters Therefore God

exalted him to the highest place and gave him the

name that is above every name, that the name of Jesus.

Every niece should bow in heaven and on earth and

under the earth, and every tongue acknowledged that Jesus Christ

is lord to the glory of God the Father.

You're worthy of it all. You're worthy of it all.

For from you are.

All things, and to you.

Are all things.

You deserve the glory.

You are worthy of it.

All, you are worthy of it.

All.

Far from you are a sas and to you all

things you deserve the glory.

And then I just want to give one last encouragement,

which is that Jesus is doing copy Jesus, Jesus doing

what we can all do. If you want to become great,

if you want to be exalted, do you humble yourself?

Jesus says it, says Paul says, Therefore God exalted him

after he'd humbled himself. You know, someone will know the reference,

and no signon will know the reference. God oppose the proud,

but gives grace to the humble, exalts the humble. And

I think one of the most amazing things that I

was I've reflected a bit recently on RCF and how

grateful I am for RCF. There is incredible humility in

David Julia and I am. I look at my life

and I think I was so fortunate to be. When

you're a young person, you have no idea what people

are doing around you, and I was the recipient of

such generosity in humility. And God has exalted them and

will exalt them. The exaltation of God is so good.

We all want it. We all want it in our lives,

in our work, in our home and our and we

want it in the life to come. So I just

bless you, guys, to love one another, to enjoy being

loved by one another, to swim in the love of God. Amen.