28th January 2024 - Teaching Service - Dave Food - My Church, is My Church

I thought it was there the end of jail already. You know, we're

well into twenty twenty four and we're finishing. I wanted to close this out

with a theme that says, my church is my church. And I don't

know whether you can say that, because people go through to journey, they

talk about the church. A scripture talks about the church. People will talk

about the church. Statistics would talk about the church, and people might point

it, say the church, and it's nothing to do with them, It's

just a building. It's just the places. And then they might because they

know you, they might say things like your church. And as they're sharing,

you know, because they know that you go to church and you talk

a little bit about church, and they might talk about your church. But

then people might come and visit. There were visitors last week, there are

visitors this week. There are people joining us online who've never joined us for

the first time. Welcome to you. But there comes a point when you

start to visit and you know, you feel a little awkward. And one

of the things I want to encourage, which our regulars, is please think

about making a little bit more room. One of the things that I have

had the privilege of over the last year is I used to have to come

at nine point thirty every Sunday morning and set up the technology. I don't

set up technology at all now, Praise God, Thank you Jonathan, thank

you Charing, and thank you others who helped with that. I don't set

up technology at all. So my first thought was, Okay, I can

leave a little later. You know, that was my starting point. I

can leave a little later. And I sense the Father come along and say

to me, Dave, what are you talking about. Why are you going

later to church. I've provided some people who can help do this. Now

I want you to do something else. And this morning I had enough time

that I went out there with the litterpicker and I picked up all the litter,

well not all the but quite a bit of litter. I just had

time to do it. I want to encourage every one of you. I'll

give you an interesting exact ample. Before church, about quarter to quarter to

eleven, there was a car parked over the road with the bonnet up,

and there was a gentleman on the phone and he had an empty bottle of

water in his hands. And I just sensed the Father said go and talk

to him. So I walked up to him and I just said, sir,

can I help you? Do you need some more water? He said,

oh, yes, please, I've got a leaky radiator. So I

went and filled up a bottle, took it back. He said, do

you if I asked for some more? And so I came back. I

said to Samer, go and have a chat with him. So she's standing

out there talking to a guy fiddling with his engine. We filled up some

bottles of water. A taxi driving from London. But an opportunity. Now,

you don't have that opportunity unless here. If we turn up at one

minute to eleven. Oh oh, I didn't have time to talk with starting

church. I just encourage you to make some room. Think it's five and

it's more minutes more. I know that people like Debbie, for example,

who wants to be up to at the end of the road. People this

morning, standing out there in the sunshine, enjoying the sunshine talking. You

know, people come up now here's there's a stupid little example. And the

ways are being maintained. They're often maintained on on a Sunday. Some of

you have experienced that when they're being maintained bus stop at the end of the

road and there's people waiting. I'll get a bus instead of trading. That

is a Caablians. We can go and seek. Every time there's maintenance going

on the railways, there's an evangelistic opportunity. Just an example. And then

once art chemists, they still start talking about your church, but then they

start feeling like they're making themselves and they start arriving early, they start volunteering

and helping and those kinds of things, helping on the doors, serving coffee,

those kind of things, and then their language and it goes from your

church to my church. Now, one thing I notice when people start saying

my church, they're basically saying I'm a home. This is my home.

And we've got such a range of artist for the size of church we are,

we are a rasily diverse group of people. And I love that.

I really love that. I love the fact that we have different people who

do things do things different ways. And one of my favorite questions, probably

for the last decade, has been is this a cultural issue? Different nations

will do things differently. Think about pop lu lunch that we have every month,

the range of food that ends up on the table is diverse and rich,

but we have to pay attention to Some people have spice levels like Debbie

are up here, and then we've got other people like maybe Yasmin whose spice

levels are down here. Now neither's wrong, they're just frient and church.

You know what, There is such much an opportunity. Now here's an exciting

thing. I remember talking to them who will be coming in the next couple

of months, who's are overseer? And I remember him talking about how he

went to church in China once and he was speaking in a house church and

they had microphones downs and downstairs was completely full. Every seat was full.

They brought in every chair they had. When guests came, they got off

their seats and they sat on the floor or even squatted on them and made

the chair available for against. And then they then put upstairs in the bedrooms

and people sat in the bedrooms to do church. Just imagine if you couldn't

sit in this room and we had to have an overflow room into the room

or somewhere else. In the short term, I'll be exciting for some people

would say, oh, I see, I don't want to come, you

know, I want to be with you I want to be We've gotten in

God's presence. So I think God is building my church, and that's why

I wanted to share, as we call it month, my church is and

you can express that any way unless with Ephesians chapter four Versus one to six.

Let me just read to you from that. I therefore, the prisoner

of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you

are called, with all loneliness and gentleness, with long suffering, bearing with

one another in love. Notice all the nice gifts, the nice fruit that

he's talking about there, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the

bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you

were called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith,

one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and

through all, and in you all. I just find that so compelling when

we think about just how God is building us together. And I just want

to encourage you when you the devil loves to whisper in our ears. He

loves to whisper doubt into our ears. You know, I believe we're a

church who was full of faith. And so when when question comes that brings

doubt. My first question is, okay, is this true? Because God

building, God is not breaking apart. And as God is building, then

he's drawing us together in unity. As I've just read there in Ephesians.

Let me just imagine me and Jonathan, Me and Jonathan. Okay, Jonathan,

and Jonathan's hatching some settings on the computer. He is all the time,

you know, and and and they're settings that I don't know and I

don't understand, and that Jonathan is fiddling with the technology absolutely rattitude. Jonathan's

fiddling with the technology great, And rather than allow it to divide me in

Jonathan, I wanted to unite me and Jonathan say thanks Jonathan for all that

you're doing. I don't understand some of it. Help me to understand.

And so whenever you hear a whispering ear, you just just check, you

know, if it's going to separate you from someone, just check. Have

a check in your spirit, have a check in all that's being said and

all that's being done. So my church is let's look at some thieves.

It's true. I hope you could say these my church injing people. That's

you and me, but maybe other people too. I was John O who

came and visits us on Friday, the guy from Germany. He was in

the youth group when you were in the youth group. Normal, wasn't he?

John O was was here when you were here and when you were in

youth. And he told us stories about things I had completely forgotten, things

that we've done, things that helped him. He's now on a good journey.

So scenes that were sown decades and decades ago is nearly fifty now are

bearing fruit. Now. He came to see us and say thank you,

said thank you for being church. But I also believe not only is church

changing people, you and me and the rest of the community, but also

changing places. And I believe as Scripture talks about us being salt and light.

Now, if you bring light into a dark room, suddenly you can

see. If you put salt in food, suddenly there is flavor. And

the thing is that light and salt are useless in isolation. They've got to

be brought forward, They've got to be held up. Scripture then talked about

you know why you don't build a You build a city on a hill so

it can be seen. You hold up a lamp so it can bring light.

And so actually proximity matters. Someone encourage you wherever you find yourself spending

time, whether it's at work, whether it's at school, on the way

to school, on the bat on the train, you are sitting next to

someone, you will change a place. Now. One of the things I

can't remember who I was talking about, but I was walking around outside I

think it might have been yesterday or this morning, and I said, oh,

this rubbish outside and there's there is a rubbish bin at the entrance,

the entrance to the car park and it's always fault and it's emptied every day.

So Madden and might default setting was all these people dropping rubbish. And

then I just felt the father whisper in my own and say, yeah,

but David, you could pick some of it up. And that just doesn't

benefit me or the church. That benefits everybody. But it also models something.

And if we model something, I mean, imagine, imagine what your

children see when they look at things when you're if you've got a nissa or

a nephew, when they look at what you do. If we turned the

sound off in your world and all they saw, all they got was what

they saw, what would your life say, what would my life say in

a silent world, because then it's very much about what they see us.

I think we'd all be a little surprised when we turn the sound off as

to what we're communicating what's important. But I also think if we can say

it's my church, then actually I think my church is changing me. Further

on, in Ephesians, it says this, so Christ himself gave apostles and

prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers to equip the church for the works of

service, so that the body of Christ may be built up, and we

all reach unity in faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God,

and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by waves,

and blown here and there by every wind of teaching, and by the cunning

and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead speaking the truth in love,

we will grow to come in every respect the mature body of Him who

is the Head that is Christ. From him, the whole body, joined

and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love.

As each part does its work, we all have a part to play.

Just think about the stories. You know, I gave you my personal

story. I don't have to do the technology on him. I sense God

will bring people into our church. You say they'll come ready, they'll come

already with faith, they'll come reserve, and what can I do? And

I would like them in quickly because I sent to God's growing teams a sense

grods go. I do not wat cherry. And I don't know whether you

caught it when he started off the services, when he said the fastest winged

church. I believe that to be true statistically actly easy. If you already

watch a capectured people and you want to measure percentages, they've got to grow

by a lot more people. But we start starting off with a low base

face to face. But I think that's true, and I think God's wanting

to put into the foundations of what we're doing, the right things so that

we're ready to grow. We don't have to old the goodness. Yeah,

we've already taken the chairs that we're already making more room. We can get

fifty people in this room, no problem. And if suddenly and we've been

praying on campus. A few weeks ago, the churches in the Eggam area

met together to pray and worship on campus. R all all the way.

We were praying for revival. We're praying for God to break out. Now

there's ten thousand students or more at the top of the hill. Just imagine

if one percent of them came to Christ. That's a really low I mean,

my expectation is bigger than that, but just imagine one percent. One

percent is how many one hundred people. You know, they all need to

find church. Now, if we had just I don't know, ten percent

of that hundred, ten new students turned up here one Sunday, people go,

oh, we need to put some more chairs out. Great, fantastic,

that's so exciting, and so I hope that we can make statements like

this. My church is growing me my church. One of the reasons why

we do Bible studies in the week, and one of the reasons that the

young adults meet together is to grow together, to grow. And it's that

what this reason we a veced in teaching materials. Teaching material available for everybody,

whether you're physically here or whether you're joining us online. We have the

capability of sharing that material online with all of you, and I want to

equip every one of you to be bigger, better, more capable, more

full of life. That's part of our judge leadership and church is to say,

let's equip you. And we are not standing still. We are not

standing still. As someone who's supposedly an expert in logistics, I do know

that these big ships that are now getting diververted. Instead of going through the

Red Sea, they're now getting diverted all the way around the South part of

Africa. No I was. I was on a webinar recently and said it

costs a million dollars more for that ship to go round South Africa than it

does to go through the Red Sea, and millions of fuel. So that's

the kind of stuff that's going on in the world. These weak ships,

they've got tires, tily little right bull no. And when you they're going

actually to maneuver them in the ports, it is very difficult. You need

a ton, you need things, and you nub them to be laice.

But then going forward they're easy to step and up in the wheel house,

so turns a wheel or pulls a lever, a lever these days a bit

like playing one of the game machines. Put in the lever and then down

belo, this rudder turns. This rudder is so small, and it turns,

and then slowly the ship starts to turn. And the turning that size

is miles and miles. You can do a three point to one with a

ship like that, for anybody who's good at three point turns. And so

I saise, he's nudging us. But we've got to be on the move.

If we'll stay okay, God, we're ready. What do we need

to do. The first thing he's got to do is to get us on

so we can shape us this. I think it's great. That will and

we'll mix the misks. Okay, that's part being much. I might get

something wrong, You might get something wrong. It's okay. Let's think God

needs in a particular direction. Let's say God, I'm just the direction of

giving out office to commuters money right now. I'm just complete very randomly here.

But just imagine I came see it up at half past four coffee to

do that. Some people are half past five people morning. I'm not I'm

not at all. If God wants us to do that kind of thing.

Then I want to be ready. We're on the move, and we'll try

it and if it doesn't work. And Debbie already quoted this, but I'm

quoting it from a different version. In Matthew twenty eight, you quoted from

Mark exactly, very very similar quote. It says this, the eleven disciples

went away and where Jesus appointed them. When they saw him, they worshiped

him, but some doubted, And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying,

all all, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on

earth. So with that authority behind the disciples, behind us as a church,

here is the commission. Go therefore and make dimples of all nations,

baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the

Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you,

and below I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

I'm believing in twenty twenty four we're going to need to have some baptismal

services. I'm believing that we're going to lead some people to Christ. I've

already had a few people say to me, Dave, we need to make

sure that every Sunday we give an opportunity for someone to respond. That might

not be in the room, it might be online. But we need to

keep on asking, because you know what, I'm distinctly reminded of a friend

of mine I used to work with and one of the things that he was

and one of his friends. He said, I need to have a coffee.

I've got something really important I want to tell you. I sapt him

for a coffee and he was old weeks to live. I've got something really

important to tell you. And he started to share for his faith, and

this really good friend of him said, I don't want to hear it.

He said, well why not? He said, if it was that important

for my friend, why had you not already told me about it? Why

he waits till now? He said, if you told me finding me again,

that's a different thing. He said, but you've never mentioned it before.

He said, I don't want to know. It can't be that important

to you. I remember talking with this guy and he said, Dave,

I was broken, But I don't wait now. If I feel a nudge

from the father, it's the question, then I'll ask the question. If

if you ask me who I am, and i'm what's important to me,

I tell them of Jesus. I want to ink you. Let's not lea

opportunity at least open and our scripture says open in your mouth. And sometimes

we don't know what conversation will be. We can start and we can start

journey. So let me pray, Father, God, thank you for the

privilege and the opportunity to be your church, to be your church at work.

Father, Help each one of us to find our place, Help each

one of us to share our faith, Help each one of us to speak

forth truth and life. Father, I pray that your Holy Spirit would fill

us as we worship you again. Father, would you give us dreams and

visions, words of knowledge, words of wisdom. Holy Spirit. You are

welcome here. And as we step back into worship, Lord God, we

step back into listening to you more and more. Speak to us directly,

download to us something of your heart, for us as a church, for

us as individuals. Father, speak to our spirits. And Father, if

we anybody's listening on, somebody who's in the room, who's heard talking about

you, God, the fact you An's only son Jesus to this earth,

not the we to do good because he was good, but to die in

our place and pray the price for our sin. Father, we want to

embrace. We want to embrace that relationship again. And Father, if there's

anyone who's listening who wants to make that choice to put their trust in Jesus

to turn from their habits and their ways and take a new journey. Father,

I pray that Lord, you'd open their eyes, speak to them,

draw them close to you, that they might turn away from those habits and

those choices and walk a new way in Jesus' name. Amen. Just before

I hand back to the worship too. If that's you, for those lifting

a line, or anyone in the room, I'd love to speak to you

afterwards. Message for me, I'd love to have a conversation Karris some