#The Holy Spirit brings...Guidance

Morning everyone congratulations to the newlyweds as well Gabriel

and Hannah. That's really cool.

Can you believe that some people say, oh, if I become a

Christian, does that mean I have to go to church and and yet the

the truth is we get to go to church.

Isn't that so brilliant? I just, I'm, I'm loving our

church today for some reason. I always love it, but I just

anyway, so this is the part of the service where we're going to

read the Bible and then we're going to try to understand its

meaning for our lives today. And so if you've got a Bible

with you in the original book version, then you get a special

Gold Star about you, You know, if you've got it on your device

or whatever, that's good too. We're going to be reading in a

moment from the book of Acts, chapter 13.

Acts 13 · chapter mention

And just so you know, there's, there's like a, there's a

contents page at the beginning of every Bible.

I, I and I, in all kind of seriousness, you know, for some

of you, you're new to church, you're new to the Bible, you're

new to faith and you're like, I've no idea how to find

anything. The contents page is there's

always one and there's no shame at all in just having a look.

And also just to say the book of Acts is about that far, about an

inch from the front and it's about, I'm going to say 9

millimetres from the back. So metric and imperial, there be

more or less the same in all Bibles.

Let me just say before we open up the Scriptures together, just

you may be are aware you maybe not that as well as having

responsibilities in leadership in this church, Karen and I also

carry some other leadership responsibilities in our family

of churches. So, so this church is part of a

movement called the Vineyard Movement.

That's about 2 1/2 thousand Vineyard churches in 100

different countries around the world.

And in this country, there are about the Vineyard churches in

about 150 locations. And we have some

responsibilities there. And one of the responsibilities

that I have is that I am, I lead A-Team called the Multiply team,

which is a team right at the heart of the Vineyard whose

responsibility is to provoke and initiate and train and resource

church planters, church planting.

So new churches in new different places.

The truth is that you know, like if you're, if you were going to

go away to university somewhere in the UK or Ireland or you're

going to get a new job somewhere or maybe you meet someone online

and there's a love interest for that's the reason why you want

to move to a new place. There are a whole bunch of

Vineyard churches around the UK and Ireland, but there are also

lots of towns and cities all over the place where there are

not churches like a vineyard. And so we, we want to see new

churches planted all over the place and as one of the ways to

kind of flush out people who maybe, you know, that's part of

their future at some point down the line.

Me and Taran are hosting a conference.

It's called the Multiply Summit. And it's happening in two weeks

time. And it's really for anyone, it's

not really, it's not specifically about church

planting. It's a conference for anyone

who's trying to hear God about the future, right?

So if you're there will be a whole bunch of people online or

in Hemel or Hatfield, hate, hate to you guys or, or, or in the

room, you're like, I think, I think I just need to hear God

about my next step or about where I'm headed in my life.

Then that's what this conference is for.

It's called the multiply summit two weeks time.

Now the really cool thing is that you, you already know the

venue because it's here, right? So so you can come.

It's an and we just wanted to throw open the invitation.

You are welcome to come to the multiply summit.

It's two weeks time. It's a Friday night, Friday the

19th, I think Saturday the 20th. So it's Friday night, all day,

Saturday up until about 5:00. You will need to buy a ticket,

although the tickets are very reasonable.

And so to buy a ticket, you have to go to the Vineyard Churches

website, not the Versa website, the Vineyard Churches website.

And you need to click on events and you'll find it.

You'll find it there. We would love you to come.

You know, the worships going to be epic.

Eduardo and the team are going to do that.

And so we already know that's going to be awesome.

And then our friends Jeff and Sherry Surat, who are remarkable

leaders from from Denver and Colorado.

They've been on the staff of Saddleback with Rick Warren and

they've been the kind of world's experts on church planting and

different things like that. And so we'd love you to come.

You're super welcome. 19th and 20th, come and speak to me

afterwards. If you're in this room, I'd love

to tell you more about it. OK, Can we just pray for a

moment? Lord, we understand that for

2000 years the followers of Jesus have been gathering around

this book and trying to hear your voice.

And we're just kind of stepping into the flow of that.

And we pray that by your word and Your Spirit, we would hear

your voice and that you would guide our lives.

Amen. Amen.

So we have been in this series working our way through the book

of Acts and called Impact. And we've been stopping every

time the Holy Spirit is mentioned.

And we've been doing that for months and months and, and, and

we're kind of coming into land with that in the next, I don't

know, a few weeks or so, but we're in Acts chapter 13.

Acts 13 · chapter mention

And here's another mention of the Holy Spirit.

So Acts chapter 13 reading from verse one says this.

Acts 13 · chapter mention

Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and

teachers, Barnabas, Simeon, who they called Niger, Lucius of

Cyrene, Manaean who had been brought up with Herod the

Tetrarch and saw while they were worshipping the Lord and

fasting, the Holy Spirit said, there he is the Holy Spirit, The

Holy Spirit said, set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the

work to which I've called them. So after they had fasted and

prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.

The two of them sent on their way by the Holy Spirit went down

to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus.

And that's going to be our text for this morning.

I don't know what you do for a living.

I know what some of you do for a living, but not all of you.

I imagine there are some people in the room who are medical

doctors and your passion is medicine.

And I imagine that on a Friday night or Saturday night, there's

nothing you could imagine doing more just really enjoying

yourself than watching like, ER or, or, or the Pit.

Hands up, if you've watched the Pit.

Yeah, it's really cool. I love that thing.

But anyway, so I imagine you're sitting there and you're

watching it and you're watching them like get some kind of it

like a rib spreader and spreading open the ribs and then

like, you know, squeezing someone's heart like that.

And I imagine you're just like, now that is medicine.

In fact, you're probably not. You're probably like, they never

do that in real life because as you know, your heart is just

beating a little bit faster when you do somebody do medicine

really well. Or perhaps you're really into

cars. Maybe you're a mechanic and you,

you know, you're watching Top Gear or you're watching one of

those Youtubers, Matt Armstrong or something like that, someone

like that. And you're like, hey, there's

the Bentley Continental GT super Sports or the, you know,

whatever it is and you're like, now that's a car or whatever it

is. Well, the truth is that I'm like

a professional Christian, right? I'm a pastor.

And so when I read stuff like this about a brilliant church in

the Bible, I'm like, now that's a church, you know, my heart's

beating faster. And to be honest, that's not

exclusively reserved for pastors, right?

You know, if you know and love Jesus and you love his church,

and then you read something in the Bible and you just think

that is so brilliant, you know, that's open to you as well.

You can take that. But what I want to do this

morning is, is to point out two ways in which this church that

we've just read about is brilliant.

Like, like just a couple of things.

And then we're going to speak a little bit about God's guidance.

But, but the first reason that I love this church in the book of

Acts in Antioch is that it's a stunningly diverse church.

So Saul and Barnabas, they've they've visited their brothers

and sisters in Jerusalem. They've just come back.

The leadership community. It's like the the leadership

group, the leadership team of the church in Antioch.

They gather together and they want to hear what it is that

Saul and Barnabas have got to say.

But what's amazing about this leadership community is it's is

it's, is I've forgotten how to speak.

It's extraordinary diversity there in verse one.

First of all, there's Barnabas. Now we know from Acts chapter 4

Acts 4:36

verse 36 that Barnabas is a Levite from Cyprus.

So he's a European Jew. Secondly, there's someone called

Simeon who's also got the name Niger and that the word Niger is

a Latin word, it means black. So he's he's most likely, that's

most likely referring to his colour, right?

He's a black African. Then there's Lucius of Sireni.

Sireni is in modern day Libya and so he's a kind of North

African Libyan. And then there's Manaean.

Manaean. It says about Manaean that he

was brought up with Herod the Tetrarch.

Now what's quite funny, I was, I was Googling this this morning

because I wanted to get my facts right.

And that's what you do, right? You look at Google and it's said

that there are actually six different Herod's in the Bible.

And so I won't list them all, but there is 6 people called

Herod. But Herod the tetrarch is, is

Herod Antipas. And he was the one who was

responsible for the beheading of John the Baptist.

And so this guy Manaean, he's grown up in royal palaces.

In other words, he's he's grown up with opulence and with with

opportunity and with influence. He's he's someone who's known

extraordinary wealth. Maybe he's the foster brother or

the best friend or something like that of Herod the Tetrarch.

And so there are people even just in this small group in the

church in Antioch. There are people from southern

Europe, from northern and other places in Africa potentially,

and then also from western Asia. And there are people who've

grown up with extraordinary wealth and people who really

haven't. And can you see this?

This is an extraordinarily diverse group of people.

And we're only like, I mean, what's the maths?

11 chapters from the birth of the church.

And the the church starts off just with Jews in Jerusalem.

And then suddenly it's like this enormously diverse group of

people, black people, brown people, white people, people

have known extraordinary influence and opportunity and

wealth and people who really haven't.

It's a stunningly diverse church.

And the truth is that the church always flourishes best when

she's diverse. I was a while ago changing the

brake pads on my wife's car. She's got a Mini Clubman, right?

So, and I was, I was like, no, no, I don't need to read any

instructions or anything like that.

I'll just, I'll just, I'll just know what to do.

And then I really quickly got myself into hot water.

And so I found this website for mini owners, right?

It's like a forum. And so I go on to the Mini

owners forum. And then I'm like, OK, well,

it's actually a Mini club man F50 four.

So then I go on to that and I find the Mini Mini Clubman F54

owners. And then it's like a section for

people who own Mini Clubman F50 fours that have been

manufactured between 2014 and 2017.

And then I go on to that section there.

And then there's a section for people who having problems with

their front brake pads for their Mini F54 manufactured exactly

between 2014 and 2017. And I'm like, here's my people,

right? There's my tribe and I'm

chatting away to them and they're helping me figure this

thing out. And my point is that we all

imagined, didn't we? We were, we, we were sold a

vision of how, how the future was going to be, you know, that,

that we are the world, we are rich people.

You know, it's like we're, we're, we're going to be mixing

with, like our life is going to be full of the energy and the

vitality and the colour of just knowing people from all over the

world. And EasyJet is bringing us

closer together and the Internet and mobile phones and we're just

going to be connecting with all kinds of different people.

And yet the truth is technology is doing the exact opposite to

us, right? I don't need to hang out with

anyone who owns anything else. And the other than a mini club

man manufactured between 2014 and 2017, you've got problems

with their brake pads. The algorithms, right?

The social media algorithms are reinforcing our preferences and

making it so that you never have to mix with anyone who doesn't

believe the same things you believe and who doesn't who

doesn't see the world the way that you see the world.

Everything is is mitigating against us knowing anyone who

who is like different from us. And yet can you see the Bible is

casting a vision for us about an entirely different way to live.

So we would be the kind of community that is like we're

mixing all the time with people who haven't.

We have nothing in common with other than the cross of Jesus

Christ. That the Spirit of God would

unify people of incredible difference in diversity in a way

that is totally counter cultural.

You know, I'll never forget years and this isn't in my

notes, but years and years ago we had a barbecue in our church

in Scotland. And I've been chatting to this

guy before the the church service on the Sunday morning

and I knew for a fact that he was sleeping in a car park.

And to be honest, he smelled like he was sleeping in a car

park. But there he was at this church

barbecue and there was a three legged race and he was strapped

to a guy who was responsible for the finances of all of the

decommissioning of the oil rigs in the North Sea.

Where else in the world does that happen but in the local

church? And maybe it just takes Taryn

and I to come from another country to come here and be part

of this church, to say to some of you who have just been here

for so long that you can't see it anymore, that what God is

doing in this church is incredible.

Let's just have a look around this morning and just look at

the difference in the diversity and people from all kind.

And I'm not just talking about ethnic heritage, although that

is obviously incredibly important.

I'm talking about people with PhDs and people who just didn't

really get on at school, right? People who are hugely wealthy

and other people who are really not.

People who are creatives and artists, artists and all of

that. And other people who are really

good at maths and science. People who are extroverts and

people who are introverts. People who are loud and people

who are quiet. And the Lord is knitting us

together into this incredible thing and he's been doing it

since the beginning of this church.

But you can kind of see it accelerating over time, and I

couldn't be more excited. And so the first thing to notice

about this church in Antioch is one of the reasons why it's so

brilliant is because it's stunningly diverse.

And what I want to say to you is if you're from Brazil, then you

don't, OK, You don't need to stop being Brazilian when you

walk through the door, right? Just bring it.

Just bring it if you're Nigerian, if you're, if you're

Welsh, if you're from Yorkshire, like wherever you're from, bring

it. Just bring it in all of its

diversity and all of its richness.

We, you're welcome here. We want you here and we want you

to bring your whole self into this community.

There's a stunningly diverse church.

The second thing is it's a church that hears the voice of

the Holy Spirit and is led by the voice of the Holy Spirit.

We've often seen, you know, in our journey so far through the

book of Acts, the way that the Holy Spirit empowers people,

right? So, so you know, we started off

in Acts chapter 2 where the Holy Spirit is like tongues of fire

Acts 2 · chapter mention

filling people. You're filled with fire when

you're filled with the Holy Spirit and, and how people

suddenly start speaking in languages that they haven't

learned. And they're, and they're,

they're speaking with enormous courage and boldness and they're

being empowered in all kinds of different ways.

But what struck that me in this passage wasn't so much how the

Spirit empowers the missionaries so much as the Holy Spirit

directs the mission. You know, I don't know whether

you noticed it, but actually that's what's happening.

We've been seeing it all the way through the book of Acts,

actually. And when you when you see it,

you can't Unsee it. It's the Holy Spirit who tells

Philip to go and stand by that chariot over there and then it's

the Holy Spirit who whisks Philip off afterwards.

It's the Holy Spirit who directs Peter to go to Cornelius house

in Acts chapter 10. It's the Spirit who stops Paul

Acts 10 · chapter mention

from going into the province of Asia and then prevents him from

going to Bithynia. It's the Spirit who says in in

verse 2 in our passage set us set apart from me, Barnabas and

Saul for the work to which I've called them.

And then it's the Holy Spirit who sends them on their way.

So the point is the Holy Spirit is like masterminding this whole

thing. In fact, George Eldon Ladd, who

was a theologian kind of from the middle of of the 20th

century, who was incredibly influential right at the birth

of the Vineyard movement in in the second-half of the 20th

century. He said this, the whole

operation, he's talking about the mission of the church, the

whole operation is masterminded by the Spirit.

Without the Spirit, there would be no mission and no story for

Luke to write. And so my point is this, the

Holy Spirit has a master plan for the nations.

If you, if you, if you're a kind of the, the sort of person who

likes to picture things in your mind, maybe you could picture

one of those big war, big maps they have on the wall in, in war

films, you know, where they're like moving tanks from this

place to this place and moving soldiers from this place to this

place. Or maybe it's on a big table and

they're like pushing them along. Have you seen that?

And it's like the Holy Spirit has got a plan for everyone.

He's moving the Peter here and Philip there and, and Saul and

Barnabas there. He's like directing everyone as

to where they should be. And not only does he have a

master plan for all the other nations of the earth, and not

only does he have a plan for all the people who've gone before

us, he has a plan for us. He has a plan for Saint Albans

and for Hertfordshire, for Hemel and Hatfield and, and London and

all these kinds of places. He has a master plan and he's

moving people around. Taron and I, to be honest, we

have no idea why we're here. But somehow in the master plan,

it's like Chuck and Taron move from Scotland to there, and then

you move from there to there. And and, and so so the

responsibility we each have is Lord.

Where are you calling me to? It's inconceivable that you

haven't found yourself in your workplace by accident, right?

It's like it's a whole mindset that needs to change when we

start to think. The Holy Spirit has put me here

in my workplace, in my family, in my friendship group, at the

gym I go to or don't go to in my case.

There's a vision being cast for us today about the kind of

church that we could and should be, a church that is led by the

Spirit. You know it's not.

We need to not reject the idea of human leaders in the church,

right? This is a human leadership

community that we've just talked about, but actually we want the

Holy Spirit to be like the senior leader, right?

The rest of us, we're kind of under shepherds, under God's

shepherding. You know, I'm not an

unintelligent person. I've got A levels in mass

physics and chemistry, although I didn't do as well as my

parents might have hoped I would have done.

And and you know, my wife, Karen, she is an amazing leader

and she's like strategic and visionary and creative and ever

so kind. But what we don't want in this

church is to just live on and follow a whole bunch of good

ideas. What we actually want is God's

ideas, right? We we want to, we want to be led

by the Spirit of God. And so the vision being cast for

us today is that we would become a church a bit like Samuel in

the Old Testament. You know, young Samuel, he says,

speak, Lord, your servants are listening.

Or like Isaiah, you know, Old Testament prophet Isaiah, who in

Isaiah chapter 6, he just says, here I am, Lord, send me.

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

Or a church like the Israelites in the book of Exodus who like,

they're hungry and they're grumpy and they're, they're, you

know, emotionally fragile and they're walking around in the

wilderness until God says, here you go.

And he sends a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by

night. And he guides them from the

wilderness and into a land filled with promise.

And as a church is so important that we become like that the

week that we allow ourselves to be led by the pillar of fire and

the pillar of cloud. And so how would we do that?

How would we go about just posturing ourselves as a

community in such a way that God would lead us by his Spirit?

Well, let me just point out some completely obvious things for a

few minutes and then we're going to pray for each other.

The answer is found in verse 2 where it says this while they

were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said

set apart for me, Saul and Barnabas.

So this isn't just like, Oh well, I just, you know, whilst

I'm peeling the potatoes, I occasionally pray to the Lord.

You know, I mean that would be a good thing to do.

There's a whole has anyone read brother Andrew the practice of

the presence of God? He literally talks about peeling

the potatoes whilst whilst speaking to the Lord, right?

Don't don't let me stop you doing that.

But that isn't what they're doing here.

You know, this isn't just, well, as I'm driving in my car, I

sometimes cast my mind to the Lord and just he and I have a

little conversation. It's not really that either.

Although don't, don't let me stop you from doing that.

There's an intensity and a sincerity and an intentionality

about what they're doing here. They this is a community that is

posturing themselves in a deliberate way to hear the Lord

and I just want to land on three particular applications, three

decisions that we might make as a church family.

The first one relates to worship.

While they were worshipping the Lord, the Holy Spirit said the

influential Bible teacher John Piper says that that it's

impossible to overestimate the significance and importance of

this moment in the whole of human history.

Before this moment, there's been no mission trips beyond the

immediate locality that you know, they've not visited Spain

or Asia or or Greece. There's been no intentionality

when it comes to mission. There's been no missionary

journeys, no organized mission just outside of that little part

of the Eastern Mediterranean. And from this moment in Acts

Acts 13 · chapter mention

chapter 13, suddenly the missionary movement is born and

people start travelling all over.

And this, this, this kind of almost inconspicuous little sect

of the Jewish religion that is just a few thousand people in a

very localized part of the world, suddenly within 2 1/2

centuries becomes the major dominant religion of the Roman

Empire. And now there there's barely a

country on earth that isn't filled with followers of Jesus,

2.4 billion of us across the globe.

And all of that can point to this moment when the Holy Spirit

said, now go and start to do this thing in an intentional

way. And how did all of that happen?

That all began in a time of sun worship.

I just find that so fascinating. And isn't it so important that

we start to raise our expectation about what God might

want to do in our worship? You know, so, so often I find

myself getting so caught up with, is it too loud?

Is it not loud enough? I, I, I'm not sure I agree with

the words of this song. I don't like this song.

I, oh, I like this song. It's like all about my

preferences, right? And I'm so caught up with my

preferences that I'm forgetting that God might want to speak to

me in a way that might change something about the world.

Maybe we need to start like coming into church and just

being like, OK, Lord, maybe this is the day when as we're singing

songs of love and adoration to you, Maybe you want to drop a

holy bomb in my life. And so we as a community, we

like, we are so blessed, aren't we?

So blessed by the guys who service week in week out in

worship with they do such an amazing job.

It makes it a lot easier, doesn't it, to hear the Lord

when the guitars in tune. And so we're, we're, we're very

grateful for that. But let's as a church, let's

just say Lord in the worship, if you spoke to them in the Bible

during the worship, we'll have it.

That's the first thing, worship. The second decision that we need

to make is about unfortunately, fasting.

Hallelujah. It's actually quite shocking,

isn't it? The the part that fasting plays

in this passage. I don't know whether you noticed

it actually comes up gloriously twice.

Verse 2, while they were worshipping the Lord and

fasting, the Holy Spirit said, and then after God spoken, it

says verse 3. So after they had fasted again

and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.

I don't know about you. I'm not, I'm not delighted about

that. I'm the kind of person, you

know, if you have to fill in a form and you have to fill in

your hobbies, right? I'm the kind of person who would

have written on their CV, though I've written ACV for a while,

but I write, you know, what do you like to do?

Eating with friends, you know, or I might, I might put cooking

or baking. It's very hard to think of

something that I enjoy doing that isn't in some way food

related. During this is my confession

during COVID, the thing I missed most when we were in lockdown,

Nando's, right? So but friends, this is this is

actually a thing fasting in the purposes and promises of God is

is is a thing. In Matthew chapter 6 in the

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is talking about hidden devotion,

things that we might do in in a kind of private way that honour

the Lord and posture ourselves in order to to be blessed.

And he says when you give right, when you give, not if you give

when you give, he says make sure you do it in a way that your

left hand doesn't know what your right hand is doing.

In other words, this is a kind of a private devotion when you

give. Second one, when you pray, not

if you pray when you pray, make sure that you don't do it in an

ostentatious way, but just do it in a way that has real integrity

to it. When you pray, when you give,

and then he says when you fast. This is Matthew 6 verse 16.

Matthew 6:16

When you fast, don't look sombre as the hypocrites do, for they

disfigure their faces to show that others that they're

fasting. It may just because they can't

help it, because it's so miserable, but truly I tell you,

they've received their reward in full.

When you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face so that

it will not be obvious to others that you're fasting, but only to

your Father who's unseen and your Father who sees what's done

in secret will reward you. This is so this is like the hop,

skip and the jump of the Christian life.

When you give, when you pray, when you fast, This is this is

the three things that would be normal to followers of Jesus in

his expectation. Now, I just want to put this out

there. There's a narrative out there

that says when you fast, you're going to experience all kinds of

glorious, you know, encounters with the Lord, right?

Or, or when, when you fast, you're, you're, oh, you'll never

know his presence like when you fast or when you fast, you'll

just get this incredible mental clarity, right?

And, and if you've been, if you tried fasting once and you're

like, it didn't work for me. I just felt hungry.

Then I just want to say to you, it doesn't actually say anywhere

in the Bible that I can find that you would experience mental

clarity or that you would hear God's voice in a remarkable way,

or that you would like encounter the 7th heaven or something like

that. In fact, if you think about it,

Jesus, when he fast for 40 days, right?

Does he hear God's voice? Well, mainly he hears the

devil's voice, right? And then it says Jesus fasted

for 40 days and 40 nights and he was hungry is what it says.

So if when you're fasting, right, if when you're fasting

you are not feeling especially connected with the Lord, you're

mainly feeling connected to the side effects of not eating, then

I just want to endorse that from the Bible and say I think that's

what it is. I think it's actually the

opposite of what some people think it is.

Fasting is about surrender. It's about coming before the

Lord and saying if I don't even eat, then I become a terrible

person. It's about waving the white

flag. I surrender to you, Lord, I need

you. I need you for everything.

I'm powerless without you. And the truth is I actually I

can't think of a better time in our lifetimes to fast and right

now to to surrender before the Lord.

We're living an incredibly complicated and angry world.

We're living in chaos, and I'm not only talking about the

potholes, right? The world is the world's broken.

And yet in this moment, God is moving in the most remarkable

way. Wouldn't this be a really

important moment for us as a community to come before him and

just fast and say, I surrender to you, Lord.

And so let me just say this. If you've fasted before and that

in fact, let's just try this, Put up your hand.

If you fasted before and you're glad you did it.

OK, Loads of us. Yeah.

Brilliant. And and I should probably just

just for the sake of balance, put up your hand if you fasted

and you you'd not glad you did it.

OK, one or two anyway. Anyway.

But my point is, if, if fasting has been something that you've

tried before, then why not consider building a rhythm of

fasting? And maybe once a week, it's like

I'm going to skip. And this isn't intermittent

fasting, by the way, This isn't just like for the sake of my

health benefits, I'm going to not have breakfast or I'm going

to reduce my eating window. I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about for the purposes of surrendering before

the Lord. I'm going to now only do it if

your doctor approves of it, right?

If there's a medical reason why you shouldn't do it, then then

fast something else. But for the rest of us, let's,

let's make this a habit. And if you've never done it

before, do it once and see how you get on fasting really

quickly. So worship is a is something we

could do and take more seriously.

Fasting is something that we should implement.

And the third thing if we want to be guided by the Lord as a

community is obedience. The Holy Spirit said verse 2 set

set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the witch for the work

to which I called them. What was their response?

Their immediate response was OK verse 3.

So after they fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them

and sent them off. It's all very well listening to

the Spirit of God. I mean really listening.

It's another whole thing to then do it, to put it into practice,

whatever he's asking us to do. And the interesting thing is

they don't. There's so much that they don't

know, right? He hasn't revealed to them the

full journey. They don't.

They don't know what they're going to be doing when they go.

They don't know whether they'll be back in a week or a month or

a year or never. But they do know the first step.

And so that's what they do. And we've got to, as a church

community, we've got to posture ourselves in a way where we

really listen for the voice of God in all kinds of ways, not

just in a peeling the potatoes way, but in a no, I, I'm

posturing my life in a way that if God was speaking, I would

hear him. And then we've got to make sure

that we do whatever we're told. Why don't we stand?