4th June 2023 - Communion Service - Dave Food - No place I would rather be

Is no place I would rather be. And that's not just this morning.

That's our theme for the whole of the month of Jude. I don't know

whether you've ever been a place where you sit there and think, ah,

this is great. You've probably got a favorite place to have a coffee.

Maybe you've got to have a favorite place for praying. Maybe you've got a

favorite place to take friends. But there'll be a place where you sit and

you go something like, oh, And I'm not saying it is your home,

but it feels like home. It feels like you're comfortable. That's the

kind of place where we can say no place I would rather be right now

at that moment, I personally believe that ought to be many times with God.

I'm not saying it's always. I'm not saying God's not there, but

I think our relationship with God, our space and our time, no place

I would rather be than to be in His presence. Now, let me

just explore before we get to no place I would rather be, let me

explore sometimes when you would rather not be. You know my mum her name

was Jane, and she was known as the woman with the all seeing eye.

How do I know that as her son. Well, sometimes I'd be

upstairs and she'd say, Dave, what are you doing? Or David?

She called me, David, David, what are you doing? And I'd

say nothing, Mum, And I think, how did she know that I

was doing something I shouldn't have been doing. But we can feel the same

about God, and so sometimes there are places we'd like to be in his

presence, but we can't because we feel not able to. Sometimes we feel

that we're un how can I put it. We're unable to sit, We're

unable to stand in his presences. We're ashamed. Just like Adam in the

garden God, God was wondering around, saying where are you Adam? And

he was ashamed because he was naked. He hadn't been ashamed before he'd eaten

of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Wow.

So sometimes we'd like to be in God's presence, but we think we're

not worthy. You know, it's not by what we do that makes us

worthy. It's not by who we are that makes us worthy. It's all

because of Jesus. It's all because of him. So no place I would

rather be. Let's look at Psalms David wrote in Psalms this Psalm eighty four,

verses one to four, Lord who rules over all, how lovely is

the place where you live. I long to be in the courtyards of the

Lord's temple. I deeply long to be there. My whole being cries out

for the living God, Lord who rules over all. Even the sparrow has

a home near your altar, my King and my God. The swallow also

has a nest there where she may have her young. Blessed are those who

live in your house. They are always praising you. Blessed of those who

live in your house. Now, firstly, I want to explore some simple

words here. What does it mean? So house is a building? Okay,

And in other translations you'll finding instead of house it says home. Now,

what's the difference between a house and a home. But I know there's

some people who've moved recently or in the process of moving, and there was

a place you used to call home, and then you've moved and you've moved

to a different building, a different house, but sometimes it's not yet home.

Yeah you're kind of thinking about, well, yeah, there's stuff in

boxes. Haven't got that special picture that I put on the wall in my

kitchen. So it doesn't yet feel like home. But I'll tell you what.

You've lived there a while, You've brought some friends around, you brought

your family around. It's home. Let me give you a different example about

home and house. You may have had guests to stay with you at some

point. Some people will walk in and they'll walk around your house with their

shoes on. Some cultures they take the shoes off outside the house. And

you know, you walk in different cultures different ways. But you know,

whenever I get home, I kick my shoes off straight away. I take

my shoes off because it's home. I'm not precious about my carpets at all.

We've got a dog. Why would you be precious about carpets with their

dog. But you know, I kick my shoes off, and I do

that with places where I feel at home, where people make me feel welcome,

I almost automatically go, I'm going to take my shoes and sometimes they'll

say, oh, you don't need to, it's okay. And it's not

about me keeping their flaws clean at all. It's about me making myself at

home. And so there is a difference between the house and a home.

There's also a difference between visiting and living. We visit a hotel room.

Anybody stayed in the hotel room. When we go there, we check in

and we some of us won't even unpack our bags. If we're there for

a couple of nights, we might just open up our bag and take our

stuff out. We won't put everything in the war job. If we're there

for a month, that's a different thing. We'll probably get everything out and

pack it away. But it's still not home. It's still not home.

You might have a picture of your family, you might have a whole bunch

of things you bring with you to make it feel a little more homely,

but it's still not home. And I bet you don't kick your kid shoes

off when you go into the hotel room. Just as an example, Keith

Haysel, dear friend of ours who has now gone to be with the lord

who's started and led Life Links International. For many, many, many years,

he traveled probably most weekends. He was away from home most weekends.

He said. One of the things he learned very quickly was to make the

place that he was going home. How did he do that? But he

walked, He walked into our kitchen. I think one of the first times

he stayed and he said, anybody on a cup of tea. Now we

hadn't said to him, make yourself at home, but he made himself at

home because I guess because of our body language, we'd said please. We

may have even used to praise our house is your house espaniola su casa,

you know, and we could say that my castle is your castle. I

love that. It's a much better statement than my house is your house.

My castle is your castle. Wow. And there's some great spiritual truth in

that castle, you know. And as Britz I know we've got a very

multinational community now at URSF, but as Brits we often have that concept of

getting in the door, shutting the door, pulling up the drawbridge and keeping

the world out. Do you know keeping the world out means that you make

guests feel unwelcome. Same can be true of church. We can make guests

feel unwelcome with we're not careful. I had a conversation on our leadership team

not that long ago where we were talking about our small groups and our zoom

groups. And you know, if you want to join us online in any

of our small groups, the link is there. You can click on the

link and the past word is publicly available. Why because we don't have bouncers

on the doors. You know, you might think I'm crazy, but we

don't have bouncers on the Welcomers on the door at church are not bouncers.

They're not keeping the bad people out because if they kept the bad people out,

none of us would be in here, because we've all got it wrong

somewhere. If if the job was the welcome was to keep all the sinners

out, you know, this room would be empty, including me. I

wouldn't be in it because they'd be going. Dave, you upset somebody this

week? You said something, Yes I did. But you know we say

to people you are welcome. You are welcome in this place. Do you

know there's something else about home? You want to welcome people to your home.

You want to welcome people to your home. I once remember having a

community is a place to gather. Church is like this community is a place

to gather. It's a place to talk, it's a place to give not

just money but food and fellowship and time, and it's also a place to

serve. So this could be true of any community. Of any community,

and I want to remember John and nyvon I went to her eightieth birthday recently.

Yvonne lives over in Egham Hive and we had an after meet to her

church one Sunday and she ranked it was planned to be at her house after

church and she said, Dave, I haven't had time to polish this week.

She said, so come we move it somewhere else, and I said,

I looked at her, and I said, people are more important than

polish. How many times do we keep people away because you know, I

don't know. We're walking down the street with a friend and we want to

say I'll come in for a coffee, and then we rewind and we think,

okay, yeah, the plates are still on the table, and the

washing from the washing line is in a pile in the corner somewhere, and

we just suddenly think about all those things about why not to bring them.

I learned something which has probably changed me for most of my life. Most

of you know, I worked in Papua New Guinea and I had the privilege

of going to many many villages, and because I was white and different,

I'd often be walking through the bush and then somebody would come and join me,

and then somebody else would come and join me, and I'd sometimes have

a crowd as we walked into the village. And we walk into the village

and they say, come and eat with us. I used to call me

brother Dave because I was single. Then they couldn't understand how I could be

unmarried, but so they called me brother Dave. I wasn't a monk or

anything, but that's what I used to call me. And walked into the

village and then we went to a house wind. Now a house wind is

a house without any walls. It's where you sit out of the sun.

You eat together. And we sat in the house when and they said,

would you like to eat with us? It's all that's very kind of you,

thank you very much. And then they bring food out. Now in

Papua New Guinea, it's all root vegetables. There's very little protein. So

you get great big glumps of sweet potato, great big glumps of taro,

great big glumps of yam, you know, in the great big bowl,

and you don't need a knife and fork. You just pick it up and

eat it. It's cooked, but you eat it like apples, like you

would eat an apple, take a bite out it, put it down on

the plate and so on, you know. And I felt very welcome,

and they bought the plates out and I said, O god, this is

pretty good because I'd only walked. They hadn't planned that I was going to

visit. How is it that they had dinner ready? Until I've done this

a few times? And I started talking to Peter, who was one of

my best friends there, and said, how does this work? He said,

well, you're eating their lunch. I said, pardon. He said,

yes, no, they've cooked their lunch for their family, and they

are serving you as a special guest, and they're saying welcome, please eat

with us. But someone's going with that, and I, honestly I didn't

know what to do. I didn't know what to say. Even now,

forty years ago, it still kind of brings me to tears to think about

it. But then I remembered that my mum used to say, FHB anybody

used that phrase before? Do you know what it stands for? Family holds

back? Sometimes you might have a chicken dinner for your family. There's four

in your family, and you choose a child in your family says, oh,

can I invite so and so for dinner. Yes, of course you

can, Okay, but there's only four portions of chicken. So how does

that work? Family holds back. Somebody may have the bits of the chicken

that have fallen off. Somebody might just have rice and peace, no chicken

at all. But I'll tell you what. It humbled me. It truly

humbled me because I then realized that they were making me at home. They

were making me at home, and church's a place where I hope that we

could be. And I don't know whether if we go back to the previous

slide, Jonathan, look at the similarity that work. So I talked about

gather to talk, to give, to serve, and in church we just

bring another dimension into this, which is of course God. And in church

we gather to be with one another, but to be with God. We

gather to talk, but not just to talk to one another, to talk

to God. We gather to give, and we will take the offering after

in the midst of the communion, and we will give to God and to

others, and will gather to serve not just God, but the community beyond.

There's a program that used to be on television. I don't think it's

on television anymore. But they used to go into celebrities houses. I think

it was called through the Keyhole, and you go into celebrities house and there

will be a phrase that came up on screen. I tried to find this

clip of it, but I couldn't find one. They said, whose house

could this be? And then they'd wander around the house and they take pictures

of the books on the bookshelf, and they take pictures of certain things,

and they show it and then they'd say, who do you think it is?

And the celebrities would guess, and they would guess, I wonder if

we took a camera around your house. Now some of you immediately are doing

exactly the people polish thing. You're already thinking, oh, what if I

said to you right now there is a TV crew visiting your house. We've

spoken to somebody in your family, they've let the TV crew in, and

they're going to be walking around your house filming, and we're just about to

bring it up on live that I am not Michael McIntyre by at this point,

by the way, but that's the kind of thing he would do.

And you're immediately thinking, well, what states my house in But I'll tell

you what, if we zoomed in on certain things, I wonder if we'd

recognize your house. I'm not talking about the building and the shape, because

we many of us have visited one of those houses. But maybe the books

that are are our bookshelves. Maybe the thing that the precious thinks the pictures,

because in Matthew chapter six, verse twenty one, it says this,

for where your treasure is there, your heart will be. Also, the

things that are important to us we take with us we display. Some of

you probably work in a hot desk environment. I don't mean that your desk

is hot. I mean that you know it's not your desk. It's a

real challenge because this home house issue comes back to play when you work in

a hot desking environment, because it's no longer your desk, it's a desk.

And so people then start to play these kind of games and they start

to make their desk their home. And what they will do is they'll bring

a picture of the family, They'll bring other things. They'll bring their their

coffee mug and their coffee heater to keep their coffee warm, and all those

things. And then they'll deliberately leave them out to say this is my desk.

Keep away, this is my desk. You know, even though the

guid that says please have a clear desk at the end of the day,

you still see in those kind of companies stuff being left on desks. They

go, oh, sorry that it was an accident. No it wasn't.

It's about saying this is my place. I want to sit here. Don't

you dare sit in my desk for where your treasure is that your heart is.

Also, let me give you a different example. I hadn't really thought

about this until we had to do an inventory check for insurance, and we've

got a whole shelf. And I know this is old school now guys.

So for those newer people and younger people, let me put it that way,

you're probably thinking that, yeah, okay, I'm not talking about LPs

now, I'm talking about DVDs. We've got a whole shelf full of DVDs,

hundreds of them, you know, and you know, the next generation

coming through won't know about that at all. I'll just press on that app

on their phone and they'll play what they want to play. But I was

just thinking about it and thinking Okay. If each one of those DVDs cost

somewhere between five and ten pounds each, and then you start counting the DVDs

on the shelf, I just think, man alive. There's a lot of

money on that shelf. Where your treasure is there, your heart will be

also. I mean, there's a program that I've listened to on Radio four

I'm revealing some of my habits now Radio four called Desert Island Discs. It's

on Friday mornings, and so I think it's on Sundays as well now.

And a celebrity is invited to talk about if they went to a desert island

and they discussed their life, and they're allowed to take eight pieces of music

with them, and they picked these eight pieces of music and they tell them

why it's important, and then they eventually say okay, and if all of

your and then you're allowed a luxury and a book you're allowed to know the

Bible and Shakespeare, and then another book as well. What's your special book

you would take? And I'm just throwing these out there. You might like

to think about it yourself. What would be the book you would take beyond

the Bible? But one of the questions, then says, Okay, if

you then jumped onto a boat to get off the island, and then that

boat sunk and you could only have one piece of music, what would be

the one piece of music you would keep? And I'd like to ask you

a similar question in sense of okay, if your house was burning down and

you had to grab a few things, what one thing would you grab?

Do you know where it is? This is just this is I'm not trying

to sell insurance here, guys, by the way, but but but but

but you know, think about it. If you said, okay, the

one thing I would grab is my box of treasures, which has maybe got

your birth certificate in it, and maybe your passport and a few other things,

maybe your first child's tooth. When that for all those kind of things,

the kind of things that are irreplaceable, do you know where it is?

Now? You might say, they don't be so morbid, But I'm

sure they're listening right now. But Alison Gordon, who used to worship with

us, they're now further up north and they'll be joining us online. The

block of flats they lived in court fire. It was on the news.

I remember it being on the news. And they had to leave, not

because they're built their flat was on fire, but because the whole block of

flax is on fire, and it burnt for a long time, and the

smoke got everywhere, and eventually they put the fire out, and after a

couple of days and they stayed in that they might have stayed with us to

start with, or in the hope that they can't remember, it doesn't matter.

But the point is they were then told, Okay, because the building

is now unsafe, you're going to be allowed to go back into the building

for one visit. Now think about this, because this is where your treasure

is there, your heart. This is the question as you went back into

the building, what would you go and collect. Okay, you're going to

be had a walk out. This is not a wardrobe or a bed or

you know, you're not going to carry your lovely bed out that you love

sleeping in, because you know you need two or three people to do that.

This is what you can carry out. What would it be? They

would suggest, this scripture is severely tested in that particular moment where your treasure

is there, your heart will be also in Matthew, the Gospel of Matthew

get Chapter twenty two, Jesus is asked this teacher, which command in God's

Law is the most important. Jesus said, love the Lord your God with

all your passion and prayer and intelligence. This is the most important, the

first on any list. But there is a second. But there is a

second to set alongside it. Love others as well as you love yourselves,

teacher, which is the great commandment in the law. Oh, now you've

gone back to the beginning again, sorry, Jesus. Jesus said to him,

you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all

your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great

commandment. And the second is like this, that you love your neighbor as

yourself. Two versions, the International Reader and the New King James. I

wanted to read it in a couple of versions there, just to give us

some flavor here. The first one love God, and the second to love

the world around you, to love those around you. Okay, let me

ask some ouch questions now, Okay, if possible, the being in God's

presence is the place you want to be, then wouldn't you want to invite

because you love some other people to the place where you want to be.

There's a place in Norwich Cathedral that I, as a student loved very much.

And I was a student at Norwich and as a pside chapel in Norwich

Cathedral which has a beautiful picture on the altar, and sometimes I'd go in

there and I'd just sit. Firstly, it was nice and called in the

summer. But secondly, this picture, it was a picture of an opened

half open door and it was basically saying welcome. But the picture almost you

could feel yourself. You could walk up to it and think, actually,

there is something beyond. It was that good a picture. You could almost

feel you could walk up there and push the door open and walk through.

It was so inviting as a picture. No place I would rather be than

to be in God's presence. No place I would rather be than to be

in God's house. I personally this is just my personal example. But you

know, I've had to travel over weekends before now. In fact, I'm

traveling this afternoon for work. And one of the things I've said to my

boss every time is I don't want to miss church, so you're going to

have to work, So Dave, the that doesn't work. So this afternoon

I'm actually meant to be somewhere at five point thirty, and I'm not going

to be there at five because the latest plain I can catch to still be

in church means I'm going to be late for a meeting. But for me,

there's no place I would rather be than be here. And that's not

because I'm a church leader. That's not because that's because I want to be

in with God's people. I want to be with you in his presence.

I want to be in his presence this morning. Now, there are other

places I could have gone, and I'll give you a different example. So

the other way is sometimes it's not possible. So at the beginning of May,

I had to be in a conference in the States and I said to

them, Okay, you're gonna have to fly me out on Saturday. Well

why is that, then, Dave, or because I need to be in

church on Sunday and for me to be there Sunday evening, I'm actually gonna

have to leave on Saturday. Now, God gives me some great wisdom and

he says, well, actually, if you fly on a Saturday, the

tickets are cheaper, and that you often say more on the tickets than you

do on the hotel. So just at the beginning of May, I find

myself in a hotel in Orlando, thinking, okay, God, where do

you want me to go to church this morning? So I opened up the

phone book and I opened up my app and I typed in some things,

found a church that was pretty close, got an uber to go to church,

arrived at church like all guests do. This is just a reminder toward

us. Guests always arrive early. I was there half an hour before the

service started. You know, they were still practicing and worship practicing. The

worship band were practicing. What I hadn't realized I hadn't paid attention to it

was a Spanish speaking church. So you might think, oh, just a

coincidence. So I was sitting there at the back with my bag because you

know, I was changing hotels as well, so that I had two bags,

and I was sitting in the back as they were worshiping, and various

people came over to me and I used my little broken Spanish and they talked

to me, and eventually somebody came across and started translating and said, thank

you. Where do you come from? And I explained and said, we've

got Spanish speaking people in our church too, So anyway, service start and

the whole service gets translated into English. There's somebody standing at the front a

leading worship, well not in worship, but you know, whenever there was

an announcement, they'd simultaneously translated into English, and I thought, wow,

I feel special. What I hadn't realized was there was another couple who'd also

turned up for the first time from Puerto Rico, and his wife didn't speak

any Spanish either, so there was two of us in the service. Not

my plan, not my agenda, but I'll tell you what. They made

me feel so home. I sat there thinking, God, they translated just

for me. Well, thank you God. And then then afterwards, lost

we were having coffee, I said, you didn't need to translate just for

me. I have a smattering of Spanish and I can go with the flow.

I can speak in tongues when I run out of words, I can

do that. But they said, well, David, wasn't just for you,

It's for this lady over here as well. And they said, we're

taking this as a prophetic sign that we need to start preparing for international visitors.

I'm still in contact with them now four weeks later, So my choice

was just a coincidence. Yeah, come on, two people. I didn't

get to speak to the couple from Puerto Rico, but it was their first

time in church. Two and they'd only moved into the area the previous Thursday,

and they were in church on Sunday looking for a local church. They

looked up on the web. And I know that can be true for some

of the people sitting in this room. You just looked us up on the

web, found us, and came and now your family. I guess because

of exactly what I'm talking about. This place feels like home. Even though

our even though our skin colors are different, even though our habits are different,

even though our cultures are different, this feels like home. Well how

does that work? You walk into different cultured homes and the smell of the

kitchen will be very, very very different. Some you'll get the freshness of

herbs, you know, something like an Italian. There'll be lots of different

herbs and you'll smell freshness tomato. Another place you'll smell spices. Another place

you'll smell the gee. You really will no place I would rather be.

There's no better place than to be home. How many of you have been

through a stressful situation, a stressful day at work, a stressful trip,

and as you walk through the door, kick your shoes off and go and

sit down, make yourself a cup of tea or coffee, whichever is your

preference, and sit there, and then there's probably this moment where you go,

I'm home. And this is not just true about the home that you

live in. If you are parents or grandparents and your children move away,

there will be times when they come and visit and they'll kick their shoes off,

and they'll pick up a cup of tea or a cup of coffee,

and they'll go, it's great to be home, Mum, It's great to

be home dad. It's not their home, but they still remember it as

home. And I hope that for many hundreds of people, UCF would be

a place that we fall home. I don't just mean this building. I

mean the building that we would grow into, the place that we would grow

into, the online services that we would do. I deliberately want to encourage

everybody to say we want to talk to you, to talk to you at

home, not just those in the room. It's not a flight you're not

watching us doing church. We are doing church. We're doing church together,

and as we do church together, you can be part of us and we

can be part of you. That's why we gather. That's what this is.

We talk, we pray, That's what the WhatsApp groups are about.

We give time and money, and then we find a place to serve.

In p Salm eighty four, David wrote this verses ten to twelve. A

single day in your ports is better than a thousands anywhere else. I'd rather

guard the door of the house of my God than live in the tents of

sinful people. The Lord God is like the sun that gives us light.

He has a shield that keeps us safe. The Lord blesses us with favor

and honor. He doesn't hold back on anything good from those whose lives are

without blame. Lord rules over all. Blessed is everyone who trusts in You.

One of the things we do to help people make them feel at home

is we welcome them. That's why I'm encouraging people to and we started having

somebody on the door because of COVID. Let's turn that into something good and

always have somebody on the door. If you are wanting to be part of

the welcome team. Let me know that, Julia. Let Julia know.

You know we'd love to add you to the welcome team. This is just

a couple of things you got to do. Number One, turn up early,

because guests always turn up early. Number two is come with a small

on your face and make people feel welcome. A church I visited again on

one of my international trips where I was there on a Sunday, and a

gentleman came and he saw me walking from my car in the car park and

he started walking from the steps at the front of the church. He probably

walked twenty meters towards me. He said, sir, you're new here,

aren't you. He said welcome, And as we walked, he walked so

effectively walked all the way, you know, right to the end of the

road. He saw me parking. He recognized that I was different, I

guess, because I was in a car with a different number plate and he

said it said higher car on the back window. I guess. But he

greeted me and we walked together up the steps and we stood on the steps

and we talked, and then he gave me a business card and said Dave,

I'd love to stay in contact with you, and for the next few

weeks afterwards he encouraged me. I mean he was in America, I was

back in the UK. He stayed in contact. There are people who call

RCF home and they now live in other company countries. How does that work?

Well, it's the same way as your children leaving home. When your

children leave home, they move somewhere else. I can think of students who

used to be with us from Chile, Paula and Gonzala. You know they

still think of us as home. They still stay in touch from time to

time. Another one would be a manual. Emmanuel was a master's student here

probably ten years ago now, and he still stays in touch. He still

sends us a Christmas message. As a church, he always asks how are

you doing? He joins us online and listens to the service. He might

be listening today. Who knows if you are welcome? Better is one day

in your courts than the thousand elsewhere. One of the things that I'll be

honest with you, I was almost a little disappointed with was that we didn't

have life worship. And it's something we really laid our hearts before God.

That senior leadership, the leadership of the church, and we're going to pray

about this, and we prayed about it. We started praying about it back

in the last year, really laying it before the Lord. And now look,

firstly, we've got Paul and Keddy coming and visiting us, and thank

you for coming. That's just great in relationship, out of friendship. I

hope Mikasasukas, I hope this feels like home. But then it seemed like

out of nowhere, Jonathan and Sama and Cherryon arrived and we now have a

worship too. I just praise God for that because I'll tell you what.

There's music in my house. There's music in my hope. There's worship in

my hope. Again, I'll give you a bit of a hint now,

but we'd often have Radio two on in our house, and then when a

certain gentleman moved from Radio two to somewhere else, we've moved our allegiances too,

you know. So, but when he's gone, often the music that's

on in our house is worship. Okay, Alexa, And I don't want

to say Alexa too loud because I might switch something on at home for those

people who are listening, you can cause real have it if somebody's listening to

a stream. And I've heard about people doing this on radio and they very

loudly said okay, alecta. And things have happened at people's homes because anyway,

that's a bit of fun. Better is one day in your courts than

a thousand elsewhere. So what am I asking you to do? Well?

I guess one of the things I'm asking you is to mentally kick your shoes

off at the door. If you want to kick your shoes off, please

make sure your socks are clean, and you wash and you wash your feet.

But feel free. If you want to kick your shoes off as you

come into church as a as a statement I'm home, then feel free to

do so. We'll work out how we deal with all the shoes by the

door. That's a different issue. But make yourself at home. If you

want to dance in his presence, then feel free to do so. Don't

feel you only have to do it at home, for better is one day

in your courts than a thousand to elsewhere. I sometimes twist this little scripture.

Sometimes I get an opportunity to not here, but somewhere else. I've

various conferences. I've said, I'll be on the door, is it,

David, You don't need to be on the door. No, No,

I'd like to because I'd rather be a doorkeeper in his house than doing something

else. So if I was going to visit your house, what would your

house say? Are you calling church home? No place I would rather be.

I'll end with a story which is a bit of an out story,

but it's true. My dad passed away on Wednesday evening, I think it

was Wednesday anyway, weekday evening, and I got a phone call in the

midst of our small group meeting that was going on. Obviously, the phone

kept on ringing. Not normally we would just let the phone ring, but

the phone kept on ringing and kept on ringing. So I said, okay,

I better go and check. And that was my that mum. She

told me that my dad had passed away and obviously explained the situation. I

came back into the room, and obviously I didn't look good, and people

said, Dave, what's what's happened? I said, well, if that

has passed, immediately said sorry to hear about that, and said, well

we better go. Then this is The point I'm making is I said,

no, I'd rather you stay. Rather you stay because your family and they

stayed, and they prayed with me and Julia, and you know, it's

just a small group because sometimes we can run away from difficult circumstances. There's

no place I would rather be with a difficult circumstance than in His house with

you. And now think if we start modeling that, then the world will

start looking going. Do you know what If I take my problems or if

I take my struggles to a place where they can get sorted with people who

can can connect with God, Miracles will happen, Prophetic words will come,

insight come, intercession will happen, breakthrough will happen. No place I would

rather be. So Church, what is it? It's a place of change.

I hope that you will not leave this place the same way you arrived.

In some small way. It might be an adjustment of mindset. It

might be a miraculous touch from God, it might be a fresh perspective that

God's given you through scriptures. But it's a place of change. That's the

kind of thing that I'm looking for, the place that I want to linger.

No place so it's a place of change. It's a place of connection

not just with one another, but with God too. And please, if

we leave God out of that equation, then we're lost. I really believe

that. You know, we could just be a club if we're just going

to have a chat. And I know BT said, it's good to talk.

And it's a place of commitment too. It's a place of commitment to

God. It's a placement of commitment to one another. Sometimes part of our

journey is to share our stories. Sometimes part of our story is to share

with other people and say, hey, this is what I'm walking through right

now. And then, in my opinion, family and friends, what we

do is then the next time we see somebody, how's it going. You

know last week you told me about this, what's happened? How can I

keep praying? Because that shows commitment to one another and commitment to a relationship

with God. We keep on bringing our friends to God, bringing our connections

to God and saying Lord, I can't deal with this, but you can.

So let me pray. Let me pray. No place I would rather

be. I'm just going to pause and allow this to settle into your spirits.

Just since that there's been some raining going on, there's been some fresh

insight come, some fresh questions arisen. It's so easy to look at the

reasons why you wouldn't, why we wouldn't invite someone home for tea and coffee.

The same thing can happen with church too. We can think of all

the reasons why not, rather than the one reason why not. So Father,

first, firstly, I pray that you'd open our eyes. Open our

eyes, O God, open our eyes to what you're doing in our world,

what you're doing in our lives, what you're doing in our homes,

what you're doing in the church. Lord God, Father, I pray that

Lord your light would burn brightly in us as we read in Isaiah, the

Lord your light shines up. So Father, I pray that Lord, we

wouldn't tarnish the light that you'd set a blaze within us. Fathers, help

us to be men and women, have holiness set apart, to walk like

you, to walk your ways, to walk like Jesus, to do what

Jesus would do. And Father, help us to run to church. Help

us to want to be with His people, because there's no place we would

rather be. Now, as I'm praying, there's one thing that immediately sprang

into my mind. Sometimes we say to ourselves, I can't go and hang

out with them. I'm not like them, And that could be a whole

set of reasons. Maybe I've done something wrong that I shouldn't have done,

and think, Okay, how can I sit in God's presence? How can

I sit with these people when I know I've done this thing wrong. Well,

turn from that habit, turn from that way, turn from that choice,

and choose to walk into His presence. No place I would rather be

be in your house over So we're going to come back to a place of

worship now as we sing a song. But I want to use this as

a place of reflection before we come to communion, because we're going to gather

around the communion table after we sung this song, and we're going to do

that just because we're moving from no place I would rather be to be in

your presence, to sit at your feet where your love surrounds me and makes

me complete. So I want to encourage you as we sing this song if

you need to have a