#IJM - International Justice Mission

So as you can see, God has been doing a miraculous work through

IJM over the last 28 years, and that initial spark of hope

really is becoming a flame. And I'd love to tell you a

little bit more about IJM so that you've got a full picture

of who we are this morning as we introduce this organization to

you at Verso. So IJM International Justice

Mission is one of the world's largest anti slavery

organisations and we're currently working on 32 justice

system strengthening projects across 20 countries all over the

world. That initial spark has spread

across the entire globe now. And we exist because on our

watch there are 50 million people in slavery in our world

today. And shockingly, one in four of

these is a child below the age of 18.

And the thing that I find compelling about IJM is that not

only are we seeing one life transformed, one person brought

to safety from slavery and violence, but we're also seeing

entire justice systems transformed.

And you'll see up on screen here now that six of the 9

jurisdictions that we've seen between A50 and 86% reduction in

slavery in the communities where we've worked.

It's an extraordinary transformation that is going on.

And it seems to be that the key to this breakthrough is, is

twofold. First of all, it seems to be

that there's this tipping point that happens because of the way

that we work, where we see slavery go from a low risk, high

reward activity to a high risk, low reward activity, as we see

perpetrators held to account for some of their crimes and support

survivors through the justice system.

But also, we are a movement that is underpinned by prayer.

And so this is how we're seeing this miraculous transformation

happen around the world. One of the first ways that I was

introduced to IJM, Claire mentioned that my husband and I

are involved in leading new wine.

And through new wine, I met IJM and was invited out to Ghana as

a church leader several years ago.

And on one of the days in Ghana, the trip organisers told us that

they were taking us to see one of the slave castles that was

built in the 1600s by the Europeans.

And if I'm honest, as someone who doesn't love museums, I was

a bit like, why are they spending one of our precious

days in Ghana going to see this old museum?

What I didn't realise was that beneath, as you'll see up on the

screen, beneath these white stone washed walls, beneath the

the beautiful banqueting suites and the bedrooms, looking out to

see there is a dungeon. And in this dungeon, the the

person showing us around told us that our British ancestors would

round up natives from that area in Ghana and hold them in this

dungeon thousands at a time, in close confines in the heat, with

no sanitation, bodies decaying left on the ground.

And if this isn't shocking enough, the thing that really

got our attention, that arrested my heart that day was when the

tour guides told us that right in the middle of that castle, on

top of the dungeon, there was a church.

And the slave masters would walk over a grate in the ground which

led down to the dungeons with the smell and the sounds coming

up through this grate. And during that worship

services, they prayed, just like we've been doing of their

worship. And thanks to God, if the sounds

of suffering were too loud, they would sing a little louder.

And in that moment, I just had this realisation again, I guess

that it's possible to be around church, to pray, to worship

even, and yet to not be people who are seeking first the

Kingdom of God on this earth. To be paying attention to the

least and the lost to the most vulnerable in our world.

John Tyson, who is a pastor in New York, I heard somebody tell

me recently that he'd said to a group of UK church leaders that

we are seeking, we're not seeking revival, we're seeking

the Kingdom coming. And that's, that's what we're

about, isn't it? I know that's what you're about

here at Verso and I believe that this heart cry is what Jesus

meant when he's taught his closest friends and followers to

pray your Kingdom come, your will be done in Matthew 6.

And so this morning we're going to dig into this prayer and I'm

going to read from Matthew 6, verse 5 to 15 if you want to

Matthew 6:5–15

follow along either on screen or on in your Bibles.

So verse 5 says, And when you pray, do not be like the

hypocrites, for they love to pray, standing in the synagogues

and on the street corners to be seen by others.

Truly I tell you, they have received their rewards in full.

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to

your Father who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what

is done in secret, will reward you.

And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans so they

think they will be heard because of their many words.

Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need

before you ask Him. This then, is how you should

pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed

be your name, your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it

is in heaven. Give us today Our Daily Bread

and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil

one. For if you forgive other people

when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also

forgive you. But if you do not forgive others

their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

So as you might know if you've read this passage, this teaching

on prayer is in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, which

is goes from Matthew 5 through to Matthew 7.

And the Sermon on the Mount is this big chunk of teaching that

Jesus gathered his closest friends and followers to tell

them what the Kingdom of God looks like and how to live in

it. Essentially think church

weekends away. It's kind of those type of

vibes. He took his his friends up to

the top of the mountain, hence Sermon on the Mount.

And it becomes clear as you read through it that this Kingdom is

not like any other Kingdom. This is an upside down Kingdom.

He teaches that here you're blessed if you're poor in

spirits, You're blessed when you hunger and thirst for

righteousness, you're blessed when you're being insulted and

mistreated. This is not a Kingdom that the

world recognises. And if we want to understand a

little bit more about what the Kingdom of God looks like, we

can look at Jesus's wider ministry.

And I love looking at Luke 4, which is almost like Jesus

inauguration speech as he steps into public ministry and he uses

that famous passage from Isaiah 61 and he, he proclaims that the

spirit of the sovereign Lords is on him.

And, and he says that he's here to proclaim good news to the

poor, doesn't he? Freedom for the prisoners,

recovery of the site for the blind and to set the oppressed

free. That was his priority as he

stepped into his public ministry.

But I wonder if this this Kingdom mindsets can sometimes

get missed from our Western Christianity, from our churches.

I know that I can certainly do that.

I love what NT Wright, who is a theologian some of you may have

heard about, says that in Western Christianity there can

be a tendency for the theme of God's Kingdom coming on earth as

it is in heaven to be quietly lost from view.

But he's clear that the gospel's main message at the centre of it

all is about how God became king of the whole world.

The Kingdom of God is at the centre of what our faith is

about. And so the Sermon on the Mount

is central to our understanding of the Kingdom of God.

And it's no surprise to me that prayer is right at the centre.

In chapter 6, Jesus is teaching that the Kingdom of God's life

has prayer at the centre because prayer is where the

transformation happens. Prayer is where the power is.

And so prayer is where we must start because prayer

acknowledges that the power is is in the spiritual realms.

Our fight is not against flesh and blood, is it?

And so if we want to see transformation, we need to pray

for the power to change in the heavenly realms first.

And do you know, this is one of the things I love about IGN

because we really believe this and the culture that's been

created there really models having prayer right at the

centre. So our whole working rhythm is

modelled completely around prayer.

So in the morning, as a staff team of 1400 all around the

world, we have half an hour in stillness asking that God would

transform us. And then at lunchtime, we have

another half an hour coming together as teams around the

world asking that as transformed people, we would be people who

transform the world. But that God would do the work

that only he can do, because there's only so much we can do

in our own strength, isn't there?

It's God who needs to do the things like bringing down the

giant of slavery. Only he can ultimately do that.

So prayer has to be at the centre as we seek for God's

Kingdom to come on earth. Carl Bartz puts it like this to

clasp the hands in prayer. It's the beginning of an

uprising against the disorder of the world.

So I wonder when you remember first praying the Lord's Prayer

For me, I didn't grow up in church.

I didn't become a Christian to my 20s.

And so my first memory of praying the Lord's Prayer was in

a tiny little primary school room sitting alongside where the

peers probably nudging them and a bit of giggling and stuff.

And it was a lot of praying by rote and sort of chanting and

that kind of thing. I don't know what it brings back

for you, but beyond liturgy and and memorised lines, this prayer

is absolute fire. It summarises what it is to be

in relationship with our Heavenly Father, but also to

contend for a move of God, to contend for God's Kingdom to

come. So it starts by reframing how we

should relate to God. In Jewish culture, God was often

referred to as Father, but in the place of prayer he would

have been referred to as Lord. So they would have said adonai,

which was the words that they would have used.

So when Jesus teaches his followers to refer to God as

Father in the place of prayer, it was this moment of bringing

in a new kind of intimacy into that place.

I loved Lechio 365. Some of you may use that app,

and this week it actually was featuring the Lord's Prayer, and

it had this beautiful image of imagining curling up on our

Father's lap as we say these words.

I love that image, but at the same time, it combines the word

Father with reminding us that he's in heaven, that his name is

to be hallowed. And we were singing it at the

beginning, weren't we? Our God reigns above it all.

He's sovereign, He is holy. And so this duality of intimacy,

but also majesty is foundational.

As we pray your Kingdom come, your will be done.

Because here's the thing, if God is a God of intimacy, a God who

has a father's heart, who's compassionate, who loves his

children. But if he's also a God who is

holy, who is separate from sin, who longs to see his rule and

reign on the earth, it it logically means that all of his

being, all of his will, will be longing for his Kingdom to come

to be established on earth. And justice is all about what is

right and restoring the earth to what it should be.

And so it flows out of God's holiness.

So to pray for God's Kingdom to come is to pray for the things

that Jesus announced in Luke 4. Good news for the poor, freedom

for the prisoner and the oppressed.

God longs for the world to be set right, and He longs for his

followers to long for the world to be set right.

Do we long for the world to be set right?

And so he teaches his followers to centre their communication

with their loving Heavenly Father around this same heart.

Cry, Let your Kingdom come and your will be done.

So the last line that we're going to look at in the first

half of this prayer is on earth as it is in heaven.

And Tim Mackey, who is part of the Bible Project, lots of

amazing videos that you can watch online, says that the

Lord's Prayer is ultimately a prayer for the reunication of

heaven and earth. So Jesus is is teaching his

closest friends a prayer for God's presence, for God's rule

and reign to be restored on the earth, for his presence to be

here, just as it was always intended.

And we know, don't we, that one day heaven will come to earth.

God will be restored on the earth or will be made new.

Every tear will be wiped from every eye, but in the meantime,

as followers of Jesus, our job is to pray your Kingdom come on

earth as it is in heaven. If we look at history and look

at the awakenings of the Church, we see that these awakenings of

the church led to His Kingdom coming on earth, to society

being transformed, to people being healed, to nations being

changed. I loved some words from Pete

Gregg recently who said And it'll come up on screen.

The quiet revival within Wesley's heart during the First

Great Awakening in England would spark one of the greatest

awakenings the world has ever seen.

Detonating the Methodist movement, reforming British

society, averting a bloody revolution, repopulating dying

churches, mobilizing the lazy, rescuing millions from

generational cycles of poverty, catalyzing the planting of

countless new churches, and ultimately, through Wesley's

disciple Wilberforce, criminalising the slave trades

in the British Empire. From our churches being renewed

and awakened, society was transformed.

What would it look like for this awakening to lead to our world

being restored and transformed? What would you love to see?

What do you long for? And I know that you guys at

Verso are doing an incredible job through Verso care, meeting

the needs of some of the more vulnerable people in your

neighborhoods. I know that you're partnering

with Azalea, a local charity who work with survivors of

trafficking, and we're so thankful for your new

partnership with IJM. We're so thankful for churches

like yours around the country and around the world because

it's means that we can work with more local agents on the ground

to see God's Kingdom come in the ways that I've been explaining.

Your support is like a stake in the ground that says that an

awakening of the Church must. Include justice and the

Reformation of society from your local street right to the ends

of the earth. And so as we come in towards the

end, I want to tell you about one of the newest areas of work

is you step in to partnership with IGN.

It's an area that we are just stepping into and it's in the

nation of Bangladesh. And I just want to give a

trigger warning that I'm going to be speaking about sexual

exploitation. And so if this is something that

you will find hard to hear, feel so free to step out.

And I know that there'll be pastoral care around if that's

something that you would like to access.

So our office in Bangladesh has been opened over the last six

months, but we've been working there over the last few years

because we've been aware of the issue of commercial sexual

exploitation of children. Our investigators have been

working on the ground for, as I say, the last few years and what

they found has kind of blown our mind.

It's beyond what we expected. What we found is that of the

200,000 people in the commercial sexual exploitation, commercial

sexual industry in Bangladesh, we believe that 50% of those

children are children, which means that there are up to

100,000 children who are currently being exploited for

sex just in one nation. In fact, we found the

investigators my colleagues found as they went around

brothels in the 14 brothel villages that are licensed in

Bangladesh. They found in 100% of the

brothels they visited there were children who were being who are

available for sex. Let's take a moment to take in

those figures. 100,000 is about the population of Watford.

And of course, inside these figures, our siblings, our

children, our friends, each one of these 100,000 is a person

with dreams, with hobbies, with hormones.

They're just normal people like you and I.

One of the IJM team over there, someone called Marie, told us

that she chatted to a 16 year old girl and this 16 year old

girl had a four month old baby. And she discovers it in

conversations with the other women in the brothel that when

the 16 year old was servicing clients, she was hand her baby

to other women in the brothel. But if there weren't other women

to look after the baby, the baby was put under the bed while the

16 year old serviced clients. When we pray the Lord's Prayer,

we're praying for people like this 16 year old girl, but we're

also praying that the systems and the structures that have led

to her and many others being exploited would be smashed,

would be transformed and changed.

Amen. Amen.

And the great thing is that we know that change is possible

because God answers prayer. God is powerful, and we have

seen God bring miraculous transformation.

As I said at the beginning, in nine jurisdictions around the

world, we've seen up to an 86% reduction in slavery and

violence. We know that he will do it again

in Bangladesh. So light is breaking in.

But as the video said at the beginning, this is just the

beginning. And so we're so thankful Verso

for your partnership as we step into works like Bangladesh and

many others around the world. In a minute, we're going to

stand and pray the Lord's Prayer together.

But first, I'd love to give you an opportunity to individually

step into praying with us as you journey with IJM as a church.

If you look on the screen, you can see the the part of our

website. So if you go to IGMUK, you may

even want to get your phone out. Now you can go to

igmuk.org/prayer and you can sign up to be a prayer partner

with us, which means that you get an e-mail and there's an

option to also get SMS text, which gives you updates on some

of our work, like the work I've been talking about this morning,

and gives you avenues to pray. Your Kingdom come on, earth as

in heaven. So if you would like to do that,

we would love you to join the thousands already in this

country who are doing that. Should we stand and pray?

I think Claire's going to join me.

So Verso, let's pray this together.

I think there might be a slide before this one.

We know the prayer. Come on guys.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, your

Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day Our Daily Bread, and forgive us our

trespasses, as we forgive those who sin against, and lead us not

into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever

and ever. Amen.