4th May 2025 - Communion Service - Dave Food - We believe it matters

Body, soul, and spirit. Thank you for sending your son

to die for us. Lord, that we remembered that at Easter,

you sent your one and only son, your one and

only son, to pay the price for our wrongdoing. And

we walk in that freedom because we know him and

he knows you. So Father, we remember that as we

eat of this bread and drink of this wine, we

give thanks thank you having you Father in Jesus' name. Amen,

Well in church. Great to be here, Great to see

some smiling faces in the room, Great to see some

new faces. And to those who are joining us online,

it's great to have you with us. We step into

post ease at Easter season. I don't know whether you linger.

I don't know how long is your memory. If I

asked you what you had for dinner last Tuesday, could

you remember. I'm not going to test you, by the way.

I'm just saying that our memories are not very long.

We forget things very quickly, and we're only a week

after Easter, and it would be very easy to forget Easter.

But do you know what our faith, the crux of

our faith is built around Jesus went to the cross

for you and for me, and for all mankind to

pay the price for our wrongdoing. But he rose again,

and that's the crux of our faith. So we should

be resurrection people. We should be Easter Sunday every day,

because it's not just once a year that we celebrate

Jesus rose from the dead and he paid the price

for our sins. It's every day. It's absolutely every day.

And if there isn't a day when we feel like

we're celebrating Jesus has risen from the dead, then let's pray.

So let's pray, Father God, as we come round your

word today, I pray that Lord, you set me on

fire again, Lord, as you stirred the word in my

heart as I prepared for this. Lord God, But Father,

would you speak to our hearts and souls that we

would leave this building changed. Lord, If we come with stuff,

then Father, help us to leave it at the foot

of the cross, and not to meddle with it anymore,

but to leave it with you, and say, Lord, I'm

trusting you with this. You know, Church, even as I'm praying,

a sense there are people who have loose ends, that

it's a bit like a scab you keep on picking

at it, and that the Father God's just saying this morning,

just leave it at the foot of the cross and

leave it with me. In my time, I will sort it.

I will sort it, but not if you're going to

keep on meddling, because you're messing it up again. But

Father God, we come to you as we are with

all that we are to give thanks for who all

that you are in Jesus's name. Amen. The theme for May,

as we're now stepped into May, is we believe we're

heading towards a week of mission. The first week in June,

we'll be doing a mission Love Egg and with Saint

John's Church. Both churches will be working together for the

whole of the first week in June to do mission,

to reach out, to share, to have a men's night,

a ladies' night, a student night, to do a joint

service together, and to bless a cal Child Action Anker,

a ministry that both churches support. So leading up to

Love eggm it'd be good to Layson Foundation. We believe.

I don't know what you believe. Some of you might

in the room say I'm a flat Earth person. I

believe the world is flat. Personally, I don't. I believe

it's round. I've seen pictures of people who've gone into space,

who've taken a picture of the world and said it's

a globe, and that you see those pictures, haven't you.

One hundred years ago, no one has seen pictures like that,

So there were still people who thought the world was flat.

Sometimes we believe what we believe because our parents told us.

Sometimes we believe what we leave because our teachers told us.

And it's a really shocking circumstance when you come to

the end and you find out something your teacher, or

your parents, or your best friend or someone you revere

isn't actually what's right, you find suddenly find something new.

You know, going to church doesn't make you a Christian.

Going to church with your parents doesn't make you a Christian.

A great singer called Keith Green said, going to church

doesn't make you a Christian anymore than going to McDonald's

makes you a burger. It's a funny little story, but

it makes the point. You know, we don't become Christians

because we go to church. We want to go to

church because we're Christians, because we want to meet with

other good men and women of God to be encouraged.

Who needs encouraging today there's some hands. If there's some

hands that haven't gone up, then are brilliant. You don't

need encouraging, that's fantastic. But you know what, I need

encouragement every day, and I'm not looking for human encouragement

because do you know what, I will be disappointed. You

will be disappointed because sometimes we won't get encouraged for

something that we do. Let me think of the kind

of jobs that you and I hate doing, washing up, dusting,

cleaning the toilets. Excus aren't getting a bit graphic there?

Those kind of jobs. I am absolutely sure no one

in your household ever says thank you for cleaning the loop.

No one does it? Do we? But thank you for

doing it. Thank you for the people who put the

chairs out this Sunday. Thank you for all the people

who set the PA system up because otherwise we couldn't

do churchs. Thank you for the technology team who helps

to make it happen every Sunday. That what we do

goes and reaches the world. So why do I believe

what I believe? Do you know what? I really want

to press into some things today? I want to press

into some stuff because what we believe matters, and if

you really believe it, it ought to show. If you really

believe it, it ought to show. Now, if you believed

in keeping yourself fit, then you probably haven't got a

tummy like I've got. And it's not that I don't

believe in teething it. I haven't put it into practice.

So we can have things in our head that we

think that we know, but we don't do anything with

that theory. It's just a theory. You know how many

people believe in gravity? Okay, everybody's hand went up? Do

you know what if anybody, if it wasn't a hand

that went up, I would just say, okay, allow me

to float across to you a pound coin right now.

I could do it right now. I could go and

get a pound coin. I could say, okay, if there's

no gravity, this pound coin will come to you right now,

and I could throw it and it wouldn't reach you

because of gravity. So it doesn't matter whether we believe

in gravity or not. Gravity is still there. It doesn't

matter whether we believe in God or not. God is

still there. It doesn't matter whether we believe. Now, I

want to go to some real basics here because some

people would say the Bible's a fairy story. I've got

people who've told me the Bible's a fairy story, and

I go, Okay, what makes you say that? Well, because

there's bits that contradict one another. Well, I think I

used to work with the police. If you ever went

anywhere and asked all the witnesses to say what they'd seen,

they'd all say something different. And actually, if it's all

the same, then something's being concocted. But actually, I find

the fact that the four Gospels all give us a

different perspective of the same story very very helpful. Because

I love Luke because he gives us detail. I love

John because he gives us some love. I love Matthew

because he's into people. But the fact that all the

stories are slightly different for me gives me confidence it's

a real story. And then when I go, well, okay,

it's only one book, where I go, Okay, let's go

and look at some other great texts and see whether

I'm a geologist. For example, I'm a geologist. Do you

believe in the Great Flood? I don't know whether you

want to go there today, but I'm going to go

there as a book by a guy called Velikovsky who

went and looked in the Torah, the Kuran, the Bible,

and the geological record to see what evidence there was

for the flood. And it's in all of those documents.

So if somebody wants to go, well, I'm not sure

whether the flood really happened, I go, Okay, how much

more evidence do you need? What do we believe? And

why do we believe it? Do you know? If we're

not sure, get into God's word. Open God's word, open

it up and read it. Why do we believe what

we believe? Well, sometimes we believe what we believe out

of habit. Sometimes we believe what we believe because our

parents told us. Somebody might ask you this week, what

do you believe? What makes you say that? Would you

know what? I want to help you today because I

want to start with this really basic phrase that I

want to get stuck in your head. It's what I

would call an earworm. So I want you to choose

part of his story and make it your own. So

go and read the Bible. And if we go and

read the Bible, we will find that people got healed.

We will find that people will race with it. There,

we will find people who came to salvation. We will

find Jesus did miracles, will find Daniel went into the fire.

I'm not sure whether you're going to sign up for

that one, but you might just find a story in

the Bible. Say I'd like this to be real for me.

So you make his story your story. Now, let me

tell you why I think this is so important, because

when you tell your story, you do it with passion,

you do it with energy. I worked in Papua New

Guinea for a number of years, and Papua New Guinea

is a malarial country. You get malario. I took my

anti malarials. I was a good tablet taker, but in

the middle of the two years that I was there,

I got sick and I couldn't keep my tablets down.

I was getting eaten by or the mosquito seemed to

like me. So I came back from Papa New Guinea

all fit and well, went to the Tropical Diseases Hospital,

got given a clean bill of health, and then six

months later I started falling ill. I gone to university

again and I started falling ill. And I recognized it

because malaria has a cycle, and you get the shivers,

you get the chills, you have quiet eight hours, and

then then you get a temperature and it just goes cycling.

It gets worse and worse and worse. So I'm not

going with the details of how the disease worked. But

I went to see a doctor and he just said,

I think it's just a cold. Just go back to

your room and you'll get over it. But if it

gets worse, come and see me. I got so worse

I couldn't get back to the doctors. James, who lived

in the house that I lived in, he took me

down to the doctors and they went oops, and I

ended up in an isolation walk because they really weren't

clear about what it was, and they identified it as

malaria treated it with it, but they didn't give me

enough anti malarial, so the mallarial bug inside my body

was still there and multiplying again. I was getting sick again.

I knew what it was, and I went to a

Christian Union meeting and a gentleman stood up the front

and he said, I believe four people are going to

be healed today. And at the end of the meeting,

various people were prayed for and Johnny, who was the

leader of the CEU. Came to the back because he

knew I wasn't well. You could see I wasn't well.

My tummy was bulging. I was really not well, and said,

would you like prayer, Dave, we know you're not well,

and they prayed for me, and I don't remember the

rest of it. God dealt with me. He laid me out,

He healed me. Julia, now, my wife walked me back

to my room. I was as if I was drunk.

And I was like that for most of the weekends.

And I then went back to the hospital to try

and get some more anti mallarials. And the doctor looked

at my notes and he called the nurse in and

he said, where's mister Foods notes? These are not mister

Foods notes because he had a bulging stumma and lots

of things that he'd seen. He said, these can't be

his notes. And then he tested me and they tested

my blood clear, tummy swelling, spleen gone down. He said this,

and I told him, just a few days before i'd

been prayed for. God had healed me. I've never had

malaria come back. Now, Why do I share that with you?

I share it with you, because it's my story. You

can argue with me as much as you Well, you

can say, well I don't believe you, Dave. Well, okay,

if you don't believe me, that's fine. But it's my

story and I will come back with more and more

examples of my story. If it wants to know which doctor,

which hospital, it's in my medical notes. I could. I

don't know whether they're probably electronic these days, but it

should be in my medical notes. So it's there. So

you can disagree with me as much as you want.

But when I say God heals and then somebody says, well,

what makes you say that? I then tell you my story.

So if you've got a bit of his story, that

becomes your story. Then when somebody says how can you

say that's true? You tell them your story. I remember

taking a group of young people to a meeting in

Twickenham and they were listening to a guy called John Noble,

and he was telling some fantastic stories. And I remember Laura,

who's one of the young people who's with us, She said,

do you know, I can't believe what he's saying, but

it just is so passionate, it's so true. I cannot

doubt it. For her, it was an enigma. Do you

know all of us can be an enigma when we

tell our story. So we move, we choose part of

his story. We ask to be made our story to

be a testimony. That's what testimony is. Testimony is testifying

speaking to something that you know to be true. And

so that's what I hope you will get stuck in

your head. Have you got that on a slide micro?

I think I put it there, choose to be, choose

part of his story, to make it my story to

be a testimony. I want to encourage you that I

want that to be an earworm in your head. And

I want to encourage every one of you to go

and find a new piece of your story. Yeah, maybe

you've never led someone to Christ. Maybe you've never shared

anything and put yourself in a place. Here's the here's

the trick. And maybe maybe somebody's never told you this.

Here's the trick. It's okay not to know the answer

to a question. It's all right when somebody says what

makes you say that? And he said, well, actually I

don't know, but I will go and find out. And

you go and ask somebody else, and you go and

ask God and say, God, give me an answer to

this question. And you go back to the person who

asked you and you tell them. Do you know we're

all on a journey? Anybody got a PhD In being

a Christian? No? You know, we're all on a journey.

We're all learning. So I hope that you can choose

part of his story to make it your story, to

be a testimony. Well, why is that important? In Revelation twelve,

verse eleven, it says we will overcome by the word

of our testimony and the blood of the Lamb, and

not loving our lives unto death. The word of our

testimony is powerful. Why is it powerful? Why is it

so strong? Because it's our testimony. If I go and

I read that from the message, they defeated him through

the blood of the Lamb and the bold word of

their witness, they weren't in love with themselves. They were

willing to die for Christ. And dying for Christ doesn't

necessarily mean that you're going to be a martyr. It

might just be that you your reputation comes under testing,

or it might be a dream comes under a test.

Are we willing to lay things down for him. In Luke,

chapter nineteen, verse ten, it says this, for the son

of Man has come to seek and to save that

which was lost. There are parables that Jesus told. He

talked about the lost coin, talked about the lost son,

the prodigals, an, he talked about the lost sheep. None

of those stories, none of them, not the sheep, not

the prodigals. On They didn't plan to be lost. Anybody

in the room plan to be lost. No, we don't

do it. We typically have a destination somewhere, where are

we going, And because we've got somewhere, where we go,

and we plan a direction and where we're going to.

But you know what, when people get lost they need help,

where are they going to get help from? They're going

to get help from you and me, And we're going

to show them and we're going to share with them.

We're going to show God's story. Mark chapter fourteen, verses

Chapter one, verses fourteen and fifteen. Now John was put

in prison, not the place you want to be. Jesus

came to Galilee, preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom and saying,

the time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe in the gospel. Gospel is good news.

Who likes good news? Do the newspapers like good news? No?

They don't. Why do we buy them? I don't know,

but you know that's apparently we like news. But you

know what I want to say this, I am not ashamed.

There's a picture now, Mike, if you want to put it.

I am not ashamed. It's from Romance, Romans one versus sixties.

I am not ashamed of the Gospel. There are times

when we need to stand up and be counted. I'm

going to tell you a story about work, but I

would love you to make this your story. There are

times when I have sat I work in supply chain.

That's the kind of place that I work in, and

I often find myself in a traffic offics. Now, the

traffic office often has a blue culture. The language is blue.

It's a bit naughty, it's a bit risky. And so

you can hear these words. You know, people are on

the phone and they're swearing, and they're effing, and they're blinding,

and I'm thinking, I don't want to be part of this.

And now I was sitting in a traffic office one

day and a lady sitting opposite me. She started going,

oh Jesus, and she wasn't using it in a nice way,

and I thought, I don't feel comfortable. So when I

got a moment, when I got an opportunity, one of

the things that I did was I took her to

one side. I said, can I make you a cup

of coffee? And we went and we made a cup

of coffee together, and I said, I just want you

to know that name is precious to me, so every

time you use it, it hurts me. She said, I'm sorry.

I didn't even realize. Now I share this just as

an example. You find your own way of doing this.

Don't challenge people up front in the meetings. Wait, stop

doing that doesn't help. Just quietly took her to the

side and said, I'd rather you didn't it hurts me.

It's a precious name to me. Now, this is what happened.

She's then on the phone later on in the day

and she goes oh, and she looks at me and

she goes, sorry, Dave. And then we were sitting in

meetings at various other times and then she go oh,

and then she turned to me and goes sorry, Dave.

And then people I started asking her why she was

saying sorry to me. I wasn't saying anything. And then

other people started to do it because she told them

I didn't have to do it. She told them, She

told them that this name was precious to me. I

didn't need to tell them. And so suddenly I was

One time I was sitting in a meeting and three

or four people all went and they said, oh so,

And then it started not just to be the name Jesus,

it started to be any swearing. And then I realized

I'd become my mum. My mum's name was Jane, and

she didn't like swearing. And so with always, the test

was is this joke okay with Auntie Jean? You know?

And suddenly everybody in the room was apologizing to me.

And I just want to encourage you to make his

story your story, because I can tell that story again

and again and again, and it's nothing to do with me.

It's all to do with the Holy Spirit. The Holy

Spirit was at work, you know. We cleansed up the atmosphere.

That office was no longer a blue office, and not

because of anything or maybe I said a couple of words,

but really it was the Holy Spirit at work. So

wherever you find yourself in prisoner somewhere else, repent for

the Gospel is at hand. I am not ashamed of

the Gospel, are you, Because you know what, there will

be times when we get tested, and there are times

when we need to choose to say something or keep quiet.

Had the privilege of being by the deathbed of my

singing teacher, and I remember him telling me, and I'd

shared my faith with him all the way through my

singing lessons, and I remember him telling me. He had

a friend who was a Baptist pastor. And it does

actually actually doesn't matter what but what denomination the person was.

But this friend found out that my singing teacher was

going to be was in hospital. He had pancreatic cancer.

He was yellow, and he was really seriously ill. And

I got to pray with him. I got to go

into the ICU and got to pray with him. And

one of his best friends, who was a Baptist pastor,

said I must come and see you. I need to

come and see you in the ICU. It's urgent that

I see you. And Wynn said too, through his wife,

said why do you need to come see yourself. Something

I've got to tell you. And Wynn said back through

his wife, said, I've known him forty years. If he

if he nat needs to tell me now, then it

can't be that important. He should have told me forty

years ago. Do you know what? I got to pray

with Winford on his deathbed, you know, and he found

a deeper relationship with Jesus. But it wasn't out of

anything that I said, I must tell you now. It

was all because I told him my story again and

again and again. And you might say, I can't do

this on my own. If we look in Acts chapter one,

it says this, but you shall receive power when the

Holy Spirit has come upon you. We shall be witness

You shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and all

Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth Geah.

If we can't do it ourselves, ask the Holy Spirit.

And what's the result of the Holy Spirit being at work?

We read on further Enacts, and the hand of the

Lord was with them, and a great number believed and

turned to the Lord. So what is his story? What

is the truth? If there's one scripture and you know

this scripture. You know this scripture. I'm going to read

it in a bit more of an unusual version from

the amplified one. For God so greatly loved and dearly

prized the world that he even gave up his only begotten,

unique son, so that whoever believes in him, trust in him,

clings to him, relies on him, shall not perish, come

to destruction, be lost, but have eternal, ever lasting life.

You know, find a part of his story, your story,

and then share it as a testimony. And the scripture

that I want you to build it all upon is

this John chapter three, verses sixteen and seventeen. For God

so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son,

that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have

everlasting life. And why did God do this? For God

did not send his son into the world to condemn

the world, but that the world through him might be saved.

It's all about Jesus. It's all about Jesus, not about me.

It's not about you. It's about Jesus. It's about the

Holy Spirit helping us to do that. And so this

is the memory verse for this week. John chapter three,

verse sixteen and seventeen two verses. So that's not fair, Davis.

It two verses. Let me pray, Let me pray, and

I'm going to pray with our eyes closed. It's closed

their eyes. And for those at home, I'm just going

to ask you whether you'd like to join me in

the process this week of choosing a bit of his

story and making it mine. I don't know what bit

of the story you will choose. That's completely up to you,

but I would love you to go through this process

and say, I'm going to pray about this part of

his story and I'm going to ask God to help

me to make it my story so that it become

a testimony. If that's you, would you stand I'm standing

because I want to go through that process this week.

I want to choose and pray about a particular part

of his story and say, Lord, would you help her

to make it my story? So if you'd like to

stand with me, I'm going to pray, and effectively, we

just drawn a line in the sand, and we just

said we're stepping over this line, and Lord, we're stepping

into a new week. We're stepping into a new week

with a bank holiday. Yes, would be and we're going

to ask God to help to make part of his

story our story. And so, Father God, I pray, as

we stand in your presence, even those at home, those

listening late, as we stand in your presence, Father, I

pray you'd open our eyes to a glimpse of something

in your story. Lord. Would you draw each one of

us to a different chapter, different verse, different story, different book. Lord,

that we'd find something that Lord you speak to us,

that you highlight, that you bring to attention. And Father God,

as we step into that, Father, we pray that that

story would become our story. And Guys, I'm praying a

bold prayer here, because if God takes you to raising

people from the dead, you can have an interesting week.

But Father, girl, we pray that you take us to

a story that it might become our story, that we

will have a testimony in Jesus name, help us to

do it. Why your Holy Spirit? Amen? Amen,