2nd January 2022 - Communion Service - A new Year dawns

As we gather around your word today, Lord, would you speak to us.

Father. We want to hear from you. Father, Speak to us.

We pray. Let us know your presence, Let us know your word

deep in our inner being. Speak to our spiritual being, Lord God,

that we would be refreshed and restored and renewed in Jesus' name. Amen.

He greetings our CF family, Dave, Julia Leaders. Well, it's the

end of another amazing year in our church history, and I just want to

encourage you with something going into the new year. I trust you had a

great Christmas holiday. It was a little better than last year. We're getting

through it together. Is it going to the end of twenty five twenty one

and into twenty twenty two? And I'm not a big, you know,

a word for a year type prophetic person. I know that's kind of popular,

but it kind of wears out after January. Most people don't reference this

was the word for the year in July and September. They don't really think

about it. So I don't think God works on the human calendar. He

has his heavenly calendar. And Eccles asked these three says to everything, there's

a season. God works some times in seasons, but going into this new

season, I would call it just the season of the church. I know

our church. We're going into twenty one days of prayer fasting January third.

I'm excited about that. I would encourage you to seek the Lord with some

prayer and fasting going into the new year. Many churches do, many Christians

do. But a couple of things I thought for you. Number one,

Revelation three to eight was in my heart for you that Jesus said, behold,

I open a door. I love this. He says, I have

set before you and open door which no man can shut. Our CF I

really believe you are still You're a door into the Eggo community, and no

man can shut it. So see yourselves as a doorway to Christ, a

doorway of opportunity. And so with that, let me give you four little

quick words to encourage your going into this new year. Number one is be

involved. Be involved. Stay involved. Whatever Dave and the team come up

with to involve you and engage you in spiritual family. Be involved. Make

a commitment. I'm going to be involved. Secondly, be informed. Be

informed. Check out what your information feed is, where you're getting all your

information from We tend to woman the informational bias. We have a bias toward

what feeds us. Get fed from the word of God. Be informed number

one, by the word of God. Let the Word of God shape your

world of view and this amazing time we're in, the preachings that come and

the exportations that come, be informed from a biblical standpoint. Thirdly, be

investing. Continue to invest your time, your talent, your tithe invest in

the Kingdom through the local church that you are in. And finally, be

inviting. Invite somebody into what spiritual family, not just church. When you

say come to church, that's good, But behind that you need to think,

how can we get them into a spiritual family. That's what people need.

We're sheep. We need a shepherd, and so help people taste what

true spiritual family is. Invite them into your home, invite them to a

small group, invite them up for coffee, and then at some point be

inviting into spiritual family. Once people taste spiritual family, it's a game changer.

It's not just church, it's not just religion. They taste what it

means to be part of God's family. Other we're the body of Christ.

Were brothers and sisters. We're doing this together, and I'm with you,

and I pray for you. I have scheduled be with you in May and

maybe in between if I pop in and out. So I pray for you.

Continue to pray for your leaders, Pray for your elders. Pray for

Dave and Julia as they continue to lead in these treacherous times. But God

is revealing a lot of things in this hour, and God's might is shining

upon you. The door to our CF is open to the ego community,

and Jesus has done that because He must have reached people through you. So

God bless you. We'll see you soon and happy New Year. Sorry,

doesn't even know that understood that. Well, that one didn't work. So

that one didn't work. So we're going to come around a little bit more.

My thing building upon what Yasmin had shared. Actually, what Yasmen shared

was very similar to what I shared on Boxing Day last Sunday, building upon

the story the Wise Man. So very interesting. But we step into twenty

twenty two, a new day, a new year. Every day starts somewhere.

For some people, their days start well. When Norman was a baker,

Norman's day started at three point thirty four o'clock in the morning. Most

of you didn't even know that time existed. For other people who do night

shift, the days starts in the afternoon as they get up and they get

ready to go to work. So we can't alwait. Okay, the day

has the sunrising and the sunsetting, But a day starts somewhere, and we

choose when our day starts. We choose whether we set the alarm. We

choose whether we respond to that alarm. We choose whether we press snooze and

roll over. I'm sure some of us have done that a few days,

a few times over these last few days. But we choose not only when

our day starts, but also how we step into our day. We can

step into our day, and some of us are a positive people. If

you look at your energy graph, if you graft your energy over the day,

some of us will be mourning people. Some of us would be evening

people. Some of us will be middle of the day people. Some of

us it doesn't matter with the same whatever time of the day or night it

is. And there'll be some people. And you can read about this in

Proverbs, and it says you know, if you're allowed person first thing in

the morning, think about those who are not. Let me encourage you.

However, you step into your day, Step into it with purpose, Step

into it with us a knowledge that God is with you. Step into it

with a certainty that there is a plan and a purpose for the day,

and God wants to lead you through that. I'm not going to read the

story I read that last week, but I was going to reference from Matthew.

Let's spring up on screen Matthew chapter two, verses one to twelve,

the story of the wise Men. And please, I know in our Nativity,

if I said to you the wise men and the shepherds were not in

the same room at the same time, some of you were shouting no,

no, no, no, that's wrong, Dave, You're wrong past the

day. That's what our Nativity set shows, isn't it, Mary Joseph,

a cow, a donkey, sometimes a camel, sometimes other things. And

there's a picture on our website with a cleansing agent in our nativity scene.

This is not the true cleansing agent, although I encourage you to use it

at this time. The true cleansing agent is the Spirit of God. And

so and if I said to you there were not three wise men, there

were many, or kings as they were called in other translations, you say,

no, no, no, there are only three. I even know

their names. And there is a tradition of knowing the names of some of

the wise men. But they traveled in a crowd. And it's the fact

that there were three gifts, not three wise men. That's where all the

stories got blurred. And then we have the kings visiting Jesus in a stable.

If you read in Matthew's firstly, it talks about the young child.

This is not a baby in a manger when the three kings come to visit

him, you know. And we compressed this all together into Christmas a week,

but he goes on for weeks. And I'm just celebrating the story as

we talk about it. And so there is a plan and a purpose.

And when we talked about in beginning, God created and he spoke and there

was light. Why does light talk to the Christmas story? Because there was

a star that led the wise men and shot led the wise man to the

place where the young child lay. And this was promised, this was prophesied.

This was not something that was just just happened. It was spoken of.

People were expecting a new king, and they went on their way,

and when they saw the star, when they saw the light, they rejoiced

with exceeding the great joy. I hope and I pray for all of us

that when we see glimmers of light in twenty twenty two, we will rejoice.

We will rejoice for anybody who's ever been in a very very dark place.

I don't mean a spiritually dark place. I mean where you can't see

anything. Maybe you've woken up in the middle of the night and you've got

young children. You know, there's the hazards of lego on the floor,

and so you get your phone out, you get something out. You want

some light, Even a little light in complete darkness makes a massive difference.

Even a torch where the battery is just about going, that's going to be

better than trying to find your way around in the darkness. And so when

light comes, let's rejoice with exceedingly great joy. And when we see Jesus

at work, when we see when the wise men came and they saw Jesus,

they fell down and worshiped him. When we see Christ at work in

our world, in our day, in our lives. Let's bring worship where

it belongs to our savior, Jesus Christ. And so there's some questions I

want to encourage you as we step into a new year, a new day,

there's some questions I want to encourage you to ask yourself in twenty twenty

two. And you might say, oh, Dave, questions. Why are

you always giving us questions? I don't know whether you noticed every table talk

there's a question. There's always something to talk about. Do you know what

the thing is that when somebody asks you a question, they're giving you permission

to speak. There's many countries in the world where we are not allowed to

preach. But what you can do is you can answer questions. So one

of the key things is to provoke questions to do things that are different.

And one of the things that I've certainly noticed over the Christmas period is a

couple of things I did on a zoom call and somebody said, well,

hang on a second, just before we move on, Dave, why did

you say that? And it was just a prompting. It was just a

prompting in my spirit. I said something in particular, and I said,

well, Lork Okay, let me explain. I had an opportunity to share

a bit at the Christmas story in a business meeting, and so I want

to encourage you. Let's live lives that ask questions. So these questions aren't

biblical questions, but they're really good questions. The first thing is, think

about this. Whenever you're heading somewhere, Am I going in the right direction?

Have you ever you ever got lost somewhere and your sat Nav's not working

and you're kind of heading down the road and thinking is this the right direction?

Have I been here before? Am I going around in circles? Sometimes

God causes us to go around in circles. I honestly, since there's times

when God has asked me questions and I thought, I've been here before,

And God's asking me the same question again, take note. Maybe he wants

you to learn something, Maybe he wants me to learn something. In those

moments. This is not wasted time. This is where God is leading us

to a place where He wants to bring revelation to us. So are we

heading in the right direction? The way men knew they were heading in the

right direction because they were following a star. Now they went, they went

to Jerusalem initially, didn't they That's where they met Herod because that's where they

thought it's the capital. They thought, well, the king's going to be

here. And then they spoke to Herod and said, well, we're following

this star, so are you? What do you following? As Clem said

in his word, what's your source? I've so many times over the last

year said to people, what makes you say that? Oh, well,

it's in Google's Google become your Bible. It's a challenging thought. Has Google

become your Bible? Is it become your single source of truth? Because we

live in data bubbles and I'm not going to go into that that will get

me onto a completely different thing. But we do live in data bubbles,

which leads us to have particular thoughts in particular ways, and the Bible is

a great way of breaking out of that bubble. Secondly, do you know

where you're going? Not just are you going in the right direction? Do

you know where you're going? Where is your destination? They were following a

star. Whether you just following a random star. No, the prophecy has

said a star will lead them to a child, a king. They weren't

expecting a child. That was a bit of a bit of a surprise to

them, expecting kingliness badly? Have you considered the consequences of the actions that

you take every day? We make decisions, and there are consequences to those

decisions. Do you know? We've had to learn to discuss risk in a

different way in twenty twenty one, we got to think about, Okay,

are we going out? Are we staying in? Are we going to gather

with friends or not? Are we going to do Churchill or not? We

have to trade off and balance out the risks of those things. There are

consequences to every decision that we make. And then how do we know whether

we've got to where we need to be? How do we know we've arrived?

How many times have you heard the question are we there yet? And

here's a good question. When you get to a moment where you have to

make a choice a fork in the road, left or right, some people

will go left, some people will go right, some people will stop.

It's not a two way choice left or right. I'm not talking about a

three way junction. I'm talking about a two way junction. It's not just

left or right. Some people will choose to say I'm stopping here till I

know what to do. Other people will turn around and say it's two difficult.

I don't even know. I don't even know how to choose. So

I'm turning around and going back again, going back to where I know.

Here's one thing that I know. God does not want us to settle and

do nothing. God does not want us to settle and do nothing. As

we've locked down, as we've shut down, as we've made choices through twenty

twenty and twenty twenty one, some of us become stationary. I don't know

how many of you can pinch your waist, and I'll be honest with you,

I can pinch my waist. I shouldn't be able to do that.

What's That's not just a consequence of Christmas. It's a consequence of sitting at

a desk and staring at a computer screen. You know. And Okay,

I'm not into New year resolutions. I am into making good choices and making

new choices. And you can do that anytime of the year. It doesn't

have to be in January. But wherever we reflect, let's think about making

choices, and as we make those choices, let's step into our purpose and

see what God will do. It's a new day, it's a new year.

God, use it to your glory. And so Father, quick thank

you for twenty twenty two is a year for the potential. Father. We

want to tune into you. We want to tune into your word. We

want to tune into your ways. Father, help us what to know,

what to do and how to do it. Help us to respond to a

nudge from your spirit, and help us to bring you glory in Jesus name. Amen.