29th October 2023 Celebration Service -

I've got to share. This morning is for everybody. So I think you

can take it to school, you can take it to university, you can

take it home, you can take it into the streets. We've been looking

at resistance over the last three four weeks, and I kind of want to

kind of flow with some of the style that Juliette was flying with this morning,

in the sense that in the middle of the week we got a letter

from our neighbors saying that our fence was wobbling, and so, you know,

I kind of thought I'll get around to sorting it out. It's just

wobbling a bit. And we've got another letter saying we're a bit concerned about

the fence. And I just felt the Lord say to me, boundaries matter,

Dave. We need to draw lines clearly, and so protect your boundaries.

I just so I got Matt, who used delivered us to come and

sort it out. And he came and sort it out, and I was

really, so that's great. The first thing I want to say to us

is Church, let's make sure we're clear about boundaries. Personally, I'll work

in lots of different ways. Let's draw lines, and if God says this

is the line. Take that line. If God speaks to you personally about

this in some particular circumstance, take this line, then take it, because

He will be with you in it. You know, you're not standing there

on your own, trying to hold back the dike or trying to hold back

You're standing there holding the line with God's hand in your hands. And so

first thing I want to say is, let's put some boundaries in place.

Let's make sure that the boundaries that God has given us are clear and we

are clear about them. So I went to check the boundary this morning,

and I was all excited about church. And unfortunately, when I went to

kind of go around the back of the building here, one of those unfortunate

things happened. I stepped into something that had been left there by an animal.

You know what that experience is, like, I'm all dressed up for

church and now I'm in a mess. And my first thoughts were, oh,

and I've just been honest with you. But I again, as I

was clearing up the mess, you know, you know it's not a pleasant

experience that I won't go into all the graphics of it. We don't need

to. You're already there with me. But I just felt God say to

me, yeah, Dave, you're in the mess, but I'm still with

you. If this doesn't change anything, the fact that you've got stuff on

your shoes doesn't change anything. The fact that with our lives in a mess,

the fact that a circumstances overwhelming us, God can still be with us

in the mess. He doesn't leave us behind because we're in the mess.

That's one of the things I think we do is sometimes we say I must

be off track, and therefore God has left me and I'm now in the

mess. Do you know what? God is still with us. We might

have made some bad choices, but if we turn to him, then he's

with us in the mess, and he comes and he helps us, and

he comes to the impact. He gives us wisdom. And so as we

explore resistance today, I want to start with the saying that I think you

might know you might be familiar with this phrase. When I put the title

up for this month about resist, I thought, Okay, we're all going

to come up with this theme. And he Hasmen didn't, Simon didn't,

I didn't. But here it is resist the devil and he will flee from

you. We're familiar with that. Yeah. The problem with this phrase here

is we miss the sentence that comes before it. We miss the sentence that

comes before this, and so we go, oh, yeah, the devil's

here, come and then bring it on. I'm ready and I step in

the doodo ah, and something happens and we get bad news and go oh,

and there's that sense where you say, I'm going to resist the devil.

He's not going to have me. But we forget the sentence that comes

before this. In James chapter four, verse seven, it says, therefore,

submit yourselves to God. Submit yourselves to God. Then it says,

and then resist the devil, and he will flee from you. So we

start with establishing ourselves in who we are in God. We don't do it

in our own strength, because that's dangerous. That's not a good place to

be. We'll put ourselves into a place of vulner ability. We'll find that

we become wobbly and uncertain. We'll find that other things come and surprise us.

And so I want to be really clear. Let's make sure we get

scripture in all its fullness. Submit ourselves to God, then resist the devil.

Now on what basis, can we do these kinds of things? Well?

In Luke chapter nine, verse twenty three, this is what he said.

He then he said to them, if anyone desires to come after me,

let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.

Now, Jesus went to some difficult places garden. He went there with

his disciples, and he went into the garden the guest emie and he said,

I'm going to go further into the garden and pray. And when he

came back, what were they doing? They were asleep? He said,

could you not just pray with me just for a short while. And sometimes

I think we can feel a bit like Jesus there. We can think I'm

on my own, But we're not on our own. We're not on our

own. The first thing I want to say is we're not our own because

God is with us. The next thing I want to say is we're not

on our own because we have others around us. We don't need to give

people all the detail for people to be able to pray, because He knows

all the detail. And so sometimes, and I've used this as an illustration

before, so I might say to you, how are you today? And

actually your week's been so rubbish you you almost want to burst into tears.

And so and what we do is the British thing. Maybe it's wider than

British thing. We go fine, thanks very much, you know, and

that we've got the mask on, and we we're all pretending, you know,

and that person goes away thinking Dave's fine, and actually all they've seen

is a mask, and we've denied God, we've denied fellowship, we've denied

the opportunity for prayer because we put the mask on. And I'm not saying

we have to go. Yeah, you know, sometimes it happens. Sometimes

somebody asks you how you are and you literally get the lot there. And

that's okay too if you' already you just have to say God help me in

the midst of this. But there is a third way. And the third

way is this, actually I'm in a pretty rubbish place right now. Pray

for me, because that's a great statement. You don't have to tell any

more detail because he knows. So the person who just said, actually,

I'm not in a good place can just say pray for Dave. God,

you know what's going on now. One of the things is sometimes I think

we kind of feel we need to know more so that we can pray more

intelligently. But you know, sometimes it's just because we want to hear things.

You know, we don't need to know. Sometimes I think people want

to tell us. That's fine, But if they don't, that's fine too,

because God will open things up as we journey through this. So,

you know, let's take up our cross and follow Jesus. Let's sometimes go

the difficult way. Let's sometimes go where it's harder to do those kind of

things. And I also want to say, God invades our day in unexpected

ways. So when we sang that song in Hawaiian, I'm balling my eyes

out at the front. I don't know why. You know, I've never

spoken Hawaiian before, I've never been to Hawaii. I have no logical connection

with Hawaii. But my hands are up in the air and I'm balling my

eyes out at the front. You know, I just thought, Okay,

God, what's going on here? I don't need to know. I don't

really, I just I'm just I mean, I'm in connection with God.

In those few moments, I'm connecting with him and He's connecting with me.

And that's okay, and so please don't think that God is always tidy and

organized. In Philippians Chapter two, verses nine and ten, it says this,

therefore God also has highly exalted him and given him the name above every

name, that at the name of Jesus, every niche or bow of those

in heaven, of those under earth, and of those under the earth.

So first thing, submit ourselves to God. Then where does our authority come

from. Our authority comes through Jesus. And so we have to understand who

Jesus is. And Jesus is the son of God, and he's been given

all authority. And so when we submitting ourselves to God, we're putting ourselves

in alignment with his son. And so at the name of Jesus, every

knee should bow, and that includes the devil. And so when we're resisting

that that, we're resisting it with an authority that was given by his father

to his son, to Jesus, and we stand with him. Now,

how can I make that connection? I make that connection in Matthew twenty eight,

verses eighteen and nineteen, and Jesus came and spoke to them, saying,

all authority has been given to me. In heaven and on earth.

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name

of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And in

other places he also coaches, you will do greater things than I have done.

So let's stand. Let's stand with God. Let's submit ourselves to him.

And that's all of us. Please. I don't know whether you've ever

done this before, but you know, once in a while when I was

a small kid. I know it's a long time ago, but I want

to tell stories that you can tell your parents, to Hope and Joel and

others. Sometimes I'd be doing something I shouldn't be doing, and maybe I've

got my hand covered in I don't know, chocolate, you know, and

maybe I'm walking. I'm walking into the kitchen to try and wash my hands,

and my mum walks into the kitchen at the same time as me,

and so I put my hand behind my back. She says, all right,

said yes, thank you, And I'm kind of dancing around her like

this, and she says, what's in your hand? Oh, nothing,

mum. Well, and I don't get the hand out, go nothing,

mom, she said, the other hand, and that you know, your

mums always know these things like this. I pulled his hand out and I

would been eating a chocolate bar that I shouldn't have been eating. And she

says, where did you get that from? I said, out the chocolates,

and she said did you ask? And I went no, sorry.

You know, she didn't mind that much, but the principle was I should

have asked. The principally, mumy said, Mums and dads love to give

good things to their children. They might say only one at a time,

all those kind of things. And you know, we've got a whole bowl

full of nice chocolates for today for the memory verse, because it's a really

short memory verse. So you know, I'm hoping that we're going to get

rid of lots of chocolates today. So God, like our parents, loves

us unconditionally, including the mess. And I've seen this happen. I've seen

various children in our house who've visited, and you know, they've got a

snotty nose and they're crying and they're real and Mum or dad or grandma picks

them up, gives them a hut. They don't care about all the peripheral

stuff and just giving a hug. That's just stuff on the outside. You

can clear up the mess afterwards. Most if you wentugh, that child's going

to memorize that moment when you went. And God does not do that with

us. God does not do Oh, go and clean yourself up first,

Dave, he goes, come here, let me hug you. Let me

give you a hug. Because do you know what? We were designed for

worship? We were designed for worship, not just Christians people, humanity was

designed for worship. How do I know that? Because I see that all

the time. For those people who were for those people who were watching the

rugby yesterday, sorry, the rugby on Friday. When England won, you

know, I was quite pleased about that. There would be a whole stadium

full of people going. Yes, there would be people balling their eyes out

because they won. You know, there'd be people give them high fives,

there would be just elation in the stadium. You go to your favorite pop

concert and there'll be people who are almost prostrating themselves because their pop star is

walking on stage and they're just you know, we are designed for worship.

Now, when people say to me, oh no, no, I don't

believe in god, I said, but you're still designed for worship. Oh

no, no, no, I say, let me show you where do

you spend your time and your energy? What do you what? What really

gets you going? And it would be a football team, or it'll it'll,

it'll be you know, whatever it is, and I want to go

on from that. So we were designed for worship. Therefore, everyone has

an altar. Every one of us has an altar. If I can,

there's There was a series on TV is it called Whose House? Is It?

Anyway? Something like that? No, not not lying anyway, Who's

Where? Basically Lloyd Grossman chaired it and people and they went round somebody's celebrities

house and they showed pictures of different rooms and then you had to guess who

it was through the keyhole. Thank you, through the keyhole. There you

go, and they go around and there would be those indicators, Oh,

this is a musical person. He's got a piano in a guitar, and

there's a music room. This person likes to read. Look at all the

books on their bookshelf. They're ulcers because they've spent money on those things.

Now it might because they need to do it for their job. If he's

a full time professional musician. Of course he needs the instruments to be a

full time professional musician. But do you know what for full time professional musicians,

I'll tell you what. Their guitar is a pretty special thing, you

know. I remember Philip Hahnnah when she came here and she spoke here,

and she talked about her guitar going in the plane and it went in the

hold, and when it came out the other end, it was broken,

and she said, I was in tears. She said, that was my

guitar. You know, that was like a personal friend to her. It

wasn't It wasn't just you could buy another guitar. That was her guitar.

That guitar had been around the world, been to different places, she'd sung

different songs. All the history was associated. You know. That's an altar.

And here's the thing about an altar. Every altar has a throne because

there's something at the center of what we worship. And it might be it

might be, you know, in Philip's case, it might have been a

guitar. I'm not suggesting that, but that would be true for musicians.

For others, it might be it might be cooking Juliet, you brought that

up as one. You know, some people they love cooking. You know

some people love food. You know they want to go to that, they

live to eat in the best restaurants they can afford to eating. I'm not

saying we shouldn't eat good food. I'm just saying where is our altar and

who is on the throne? Because the best place to be is putting Jesus

on the throat, putting Jesus at the center. It doesn't mean these other

things can't be important, but it's where is our first and foremost love.

Oh God, you are my God. Early will I seek you my soul

first for you. My flesh longs for you in the dry and thirsty land

where there is no water. So I have looked for you in the sanctuary

to see your power and your glory. Now, when you've touched God,

when you've touched God in some way or form, you want to touch God

again. There are moments in my life when I can rewind back to a

particular maybe two minutes, three minutes, five minutes, an hour. Wow,

I remember that day. I remember when I prayed, I remember when

this happened. I remember when worship broke out. I remember meeting, for

example, in the school at Manorcroft, just the other side of the railway,

and we were worshiping God, and Margaret bless who's now going to be

with the Lord? She burst out in a song in tongues and she just

wept and wept and wept, and God was touching her. And in that

moment, and I still remember it now. The hairs are still standing up

on the back of my neck even as I'm telling you about it now,

I felt I had to make it a teaching moment because it was unusual,

didn't happen every Sunday, and she was obviously lost in God. She was

completely lost in God, and I just had to say, okay, let's

carry on worshiping. But Margaret, like others, there were people on the

floor. I said, this is okay. It looks a bit messy,

but it's okay. And I want to encourage us because don't we want more

of those experiences. Don't we want to grow deeper in our relationship with God?

And so like in through the Keyhole, I wonder what your house would

say about you. Matthew six twenty and twenty one says this, but Lay

up yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where

thieves do not break in and steel. For where your treasure is there,

your heart will be also. I wonder if Lloyd Grossman came to your bedroom,

to your to your study, to your house and panned around and showed

the different things, most of us are all immediately thinking, hm hmm,

what states my house in right now? I mean if I if I happen

to turn around and say, Debbie and Cherry in today, we have a

camera in your house. We have a film crew in your house. They've

been shooting around your different rooms. Some of you'd be immediately thinking, Okay,

what state did I leave it in? What did I leave out?

Did I did I leave the T shirt on the floor. You'd be thinking

all those kinds of things. Now, those kind of things really don't matter.

But what would be at the center. What would be the center of

the room, What would draw people in? What would what would the camera

focus on? Because there's a thing in a room called a focal point.

You know, often the focal point in the living room is the television.

In old olden times, the focal point would have been the fireplace, you

know, and it changes. And if you go into a house and they've

got a sixty five inch TV right in the center of the room, you

have an idea about what's important in that room. And I'm not saying television

is wrong. I'm just saying it illustrates the priority. I remember going to

an American friends sorry, Canadian friends of mine, and the TV he had

in his house was so big. I'd never seen the TV that big.

It took up the whole of the corner of the room. And he'd loved

watching sport. That was his thing, and so the TV was access to

his sport. But that was his al ti. That TV was his altar.

And on the throne was a particular team, you know. And so

I want to say, what alters are you building? Who is on new

your throne? And is it obvious? I don't think we need to walk

around with a T shirt on all the time saying. You don't have to

walk into your office and say to your boss, good morning, boss,

how are you today. Jesus is Lord and he loves you. I mean,

if God said provokes you to say that, fine, but we don't

need to say that every day. We show it in so many other ways.

We evidence it in the things that we do and the things that we

don't do, and where we draw lines and the boundaries that we put in

place. And so despite what we find ourselves in, I would like to

say this, in everything, give thanks for this is the will of God.

In everything, in the rubbish moments, in the good moments, in

the in between moments. In everything, give thanks. And then we can

pray this kind of prayer, and this kind of prayer in the Phesians three,

verse twenty and twenty one says this Now to him who is able to

do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power

that works in us, to him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus,

to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. So I just want

to come back and now just kind of build this. We're designed for worship.

Yeah, So okay, so let me just ask you to think I'm

going to go reflectively through this again just a few key points. So every

one of us has an altar, maybe multiple altars, as you know,

as members of the church are from the Indian subcontinent, and we kind of

strangely touched the Indian subcontinent in a different way. Ian Byrd who leads the

Life Links network that we're part of, and Joel Wells, who's also on

the senior Leadership team, and Dallas. Three guys came and stayed with us

on Thursday night. They're Canadians and they were meant to be going to do

a conference in India. So these three guys said, can we stay with

you, Dave, because it's quite a long journey from Canada all the way

out to India, and can we stay with you. We kind of looked

at it and went, yeah, we can just about squeeze them in.

So they stayed with us on Thursday night. But I don't know whether you

know, but India and China, India and Canada are fallen out the moment

because of some things that have been said, and so all visas are off,

so they weren't allowed to go to India. So I messaged him and

said, are you still going? He said, yeah, we bought the

tickets. We're still We're still going, but not to India. They've gone

to Katar and they're going to Pakistan and they're going to Nepal. All around

the edge. Do you know what, I just sense something in as they

were traveling. As they were going, they said, we're going. God's

called us to go. And just because the visas aren't there, we're still

we're still leaving Canada. We're still going to touch some of the nations of

Asia. And I truly believe God will bless their time and he'll do it,

and he'll do it with wonder and to perform. And I'm sure there

will be hundreds, maybe thousands. They're doing some open air crusades in Pakistan.

I think, man, that's nuts, but they feel cooled to do

it. They're going to be doing it, So to him be the glory

in the church for an ever, So let's build an altar? What kind

of altar are we building? And sorry, I just realized why I was

going down that story about telling about them. In India, there are lots

of altars in some homes. There will be multiple altars, multiple gods,

and it's very obvious because you walk in and that gets pre eminence in that

particular house where Hindu sika, you know, And I want not ask what

altars are we building? Is it obvious? Who we love? Do we

keep on telling people that we love them, and I want to expand this.

You know, it's the love of God that enables us to love one

another. I've run out of love in my humanity. I run out of

love. But with God's help, I can be filled again and again and

again. And so let's build an altar. And once we built the altar

of God, let's put him on the throne. So let me pray.

Now, Father, God, we come to you in our humanity today,

Lord, with a mess that is around us. And firstly, Lord,

we want to welcome you into our day, into our world, into our

situation. Lord, it's nuts for us to think like I thought with my

mum, that my hand behind my back would in any way stop us and

knowing and Lord, we do it with you too. We think we can

hide things from you. We think we can hide things in our heart from

you. And you know, Lord, you see us building altars that are

not unto you. And Father, forgive us, forgive us when we don't

bring you, when we don't put you in your rightful place, Father God,

when we don't pour out our love to you, when we save it

for something else, when something else has become King in our lives. Father,

forgive us. Lord, We're sorry, we repent, we want to

turn from those things. And Father God, I pray that Lord you'd help

us again to get our eyes fix the right on you. There's no better

place, there's no stronger moment of confidence and keeping our eyes fixed on you.

And just as I'm praying, I just sensed the Father would nudge a

couple of people and just say, do you know what you've been walking the

wrong side of the line, just the wrong side of the lies. You're

not your way off track, You're just the wrong side of the line.

Just a nudge, one step sideways, you're back on track. Yeah,

but you know, one step sideways, and one step sideways, and one

step sideways, and suddenly we're way off track. Allow the Father to speak

to you today. Allow the Father to nudge you back on track today.

Allow the Father to adjust your focus. Allow the Father to adjust your attention.

To grab your attention again today. Don't allow the noise of the day,

don't allow the things that seem urgent to overwhelm the things that are important.

And so, Father God, we come to you as we are because

of who you are, and we come to you with our hands in a

mess, with our circumstances, in a mess, and we say, Lord,

here's the stuff, here's what I'm working with, here's what I'm journeying

through. Lord help me. Sometimes you'll ask you to sort things in certain

ways, and prioritize things in a different dimension, and think about things differently.

But those small adjustments will make significant change. And so, Father God,

as we align ourselves with your will, as we align ourselves with your

kingdom plan, with your kingdom purposes, Lord help us to be and to

do what You've called us to be and to do. In Jesus' name. Amen,