Jesus is Bigger Than Adam

Oh, it's nice seeing everybody if we haven't met.

My name is Chris and this is Alice.

And Alice is going to be speaking to us.

And yeah, it's just good to be here, isn't it?

Good to be together, Good to be following Jesus?

Best thing we can do with our lives.

And let's pray, Lord, thank you, that we've got this little

window of time now to be together and to sit in the

scriptures together and to we just say that we want to grow in

our faith. We want to grow in our

recognition of who you are. We want to give our lives to you

and be shaped by you. We want to be used by you for

your Kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.

And we pray that this this next half an hour or so is a really

nutritious, satisfying, equipping time for us.

Feed us, inspire us. Holy Spirit, come and make, Come

and make Jesus name to us. Amen.

We're going through a series this year.

What is the good news? And kind of dovetailing in with

just started a course called the Introduction to the Trinitarian

Faith course, which definitely needs a better title, although

you trust it more, don't you? It's not into branding or

marketing in any way. If you've looked at any of the

films or anything, they're like, yeah, they're just kind of

trying to say what they believe. They really haven't thought

through the sales side of it. And what?

So what I've been doing is, and once a month going through

different aspects of what the good news could be for us, kind

of living as we are in our time and place.

Bill has been going through the book of Romans, What is the good

news? And Paul has been going through

what is the good news in terms of the reality of being rooted

completely and fully and and embraced within the Godhead,

within the, the love of the Father, Son and Spirit and what

that means. So it kind of they, they sort of

work together, but have slightly different emphasis.

We probably land in slightly different places.

We think that's a very healthy culture to wrestle through what

we think reality is. I think if someone claims a

monopoly on reality, then they are deluded.

There is one person who claims their reality.

His name is Jesus and we're all feeling our way towards him,

feeling our way towards that revelation.

But I think we have an image of a diamond that all of us can get

a facet, A glimpse, a colour, a way of representing it.

And that's why we submit to one another out of reverence for

Christ, because I will submit to you and and get something of

Jesus that I couldn't bring to the table and vice versa.

So what I'm going to bring is if it's all true, if any of it's

true, Jesus has to be bigger than Adam.

And I'm really excited by this slide because that's Jesus and

that's Adam Sadler. Just remember that for the rest

of your days. And if you ever meet him, you

can say you came up. But Jesus was bigger.

It it was actually impossible to get an image to try and explain

what I meant by Jesus being bigger than Adam.

Adam, death, sin, evil. The most horrific things that

humans have ever done and could do to each other is this little

speck compared to the omniscience, the omnipresence,

the omnipotence of the Christ apparently, who holds the cosmos

and holds us all together. It's just so mind blowing.

It's hard to use words to articulate this reality.

If this is true that Jesus is bigger than Adam.

However, in our actual lives, waking up this morning who had

an argument with a family member if you live with someone this

morning or not an argument Because some people don't argue,

do they? Like Chris doesn't argue, I

argue so how does that work? It's like I'm trying to argue

but there's no argument anyway. And then some people are like

two people who don't argue, but they're just really angry inside

anyway. So hands up anyone who had any

of that. If you're not living with, I'm

going to get to you people living on your own, don't you

worry. But if you're living with anyone

else from about 678 AM this morning, how many of you felt

frustrated with someone else in your life this morning?

Gosh, you're so godly. Look at you all.

There's only a few of us, both the Robinsons.

You have honesty, integrity and transparency all over your

family if you're living on your own.

Did someone just say, Claire, come up here and tell me what

your morning experience? What was it like being you this

morning? Do you want to share something

that wasn't? Maybe Adam was a bit bigger than

Jesus. I don't really know what.

It was like being me. I got back very late last night,

so it's very tiring being me this morning.

Yeah, yeah. But anyway, nothing new to say.

Sometimes you can get quite frustrated with yourself,

though. Even if you don't live with

anyone else, you can still get frustrated.

You see, aren't we? Aren't we problematic?

Us humans? We have a fundamental

restlessness we can't do the most basic thing of at all,

which is accept ourselves and love the people.

Apparently he we're supposed to love more than anyone else in

the world, and we can't even bear them sometimes.

There is a real problem called Adam.

That's Adam right there. We get up in the morning, we

don't know how to do life. We get across with the people

we're supposed to love. We get across with ourselves for

getting across with the people we're supposed to love.

We soothe it with addictions. This is Adam, and either that's

it and that culminates in communities, nations,

international disputes because it's the same old basic problem,

or Jesus is bigger than that. That that's the issue.

There isn't any other issue. There isn't any other way out.

There has to be someone, something, a way of life that's

bigger than that. So we love the idea of feeling

in control. Most of us humans, we want to

feel in control. We want to feel in control of

our relationships, our finances, our life.

We want to feel like things are working the way we wanted them

to work. But almost all the time we feel

like they're out of control. We feel like we lack agency.

We lack powerless. We are, we are powerless in the

way we kind of instinctively think we shouldn't be.

And that is happening in our own levels, in our own households,

in our own lives this morning. But also it is really bizarrely

happening. And it may be because we're,

we've, we're now in a world of such instant access to anything

going on anywhere that's obviously income generated when

it's the most click baity. So it may be that the world has

always felt incredibly unstable and we just are more aware of it

now because that that is extractive it people make money

out of our awareness of instability.

But in the last five years, we've experienced a global

pandemic for the first time since the Spanish flu in 1918 to

1990. We've experienced the first war

in Europe since the Second World War.

We've experienced the virtual collapse of the oldest and most

successful political party, the Conservative Party in history.

Whenever you think about the Conservative Party, it's it's

been named the British Conservative Party by other

liberal democracies as the most successful political party in

history because it was kind of like that was the party that

represented how the West works. We do liberal democracy and that

party that still gets voted in, still is kind of nimble,

flexible, works for the times, delivers whatever it delivers.

Over 2-3 hundred years is a sign that liberal democracy is

working. And we've seen that in our

country virtually collapse. We've tasted the beginnings of

physical violence, breaking out of the largest ideological civil

war that we've ever had within the West.

So we had the Civil War, if you remember the Cold War between a

Western way of thinking, which is kind of rooted in what I've

said, liberal democracy, capitalism, freedom of speech,

against what we called communism, which is more like

totalitarian governments seeking to redistribute economically

through through kind of big government, rather than

capitalism, which is trying to redistribute through big

society. And they were, and that was like

a civil war, but it wasn't within the West.

This is the first ideological civil war we've had within the

West. And now we're seeing it break

out into violence where people are kind of like it should be

violent. Actually, the with the

assassination of Charlie Kirk was very polarising.

But one of the things that people felt who were pleased

that he died is actually he's been verbally violent that

justifies physical violence. So that kind of unspoken social

contract we used to have, which is you have freedom of speech,

you have the right to say whatever you want to say as long

as you say it honourably and respectfully.

And then we have this debate and we may not agree with each

other, but but what you're saying isn't violent has now

changed. We assume anything that causes

harm to someone else, if that social, emotional, psychological

can be deemed violent and therefore can be retributed with

physical violence, that is changed.

That was not in the social contract 5-10 years ago.

It's not in the social contract. People aren't regretting it.

Some people are. I as a Christian D, but as a

Westerner, we've changed. So that's happening in the world

we live in. We've got the rise of

nationalism, including Christian nationalism for the first time

ever that I've heard of on the right in response to the hyper

progressivism that that kind of Co opted through the left.

All in the midst of the rise of China actually as the global

superpower, a climate emergency and then transition from the

industrial age to the technological age.

So all of this, we are living in such a seismic shift of how we

actually do live that is akin to the change from the agricultural

revolution to the industrial. That changed everything.

It changed how people worked, where people lived, how they

related to each other, how they related to themselves, as as

economic, as products, as people who create products.

Everything changed in the industrial revolution because we

were born into that. We don't realise the change that

that brought to our humanity, but we are living through

exactly the same thing. In the technological age, which

people will look at probably say in about 2007 in the launch of

the smartphone, it happened. And so we're living in

unbelievable instability. It's unprecedented and people

use that word, but it really is, this is really unprecedented.

Partly what I'm going to be touching on is AI.

We've created for the first time ever a super intelligence that

in terms of processing speed is infinitely more intelligent than

humans. And these are all kind of forms

of death. They're forms of Adam,

instability, insecurity, financial concerns, obviously

physical and verbal violence are forms of death.

The fact that because the AI sector has to deliver a profit

to their shareholder, it's not driven by human interest.

Is this going to be like really in the, in the, in the interests

of the person who's using this or even if that heart's there,

even if that spirit's there? And I think we all have a

conscience and I think we all care.

There's this market forces, I talked about them, the spiritual

principalities and powers that are bigger.

And actually there's just this drivenness to deliver a profit

to the shareholders, so to develop the sector for that aim.

So these are all, all forms of death.

But what's really interesting is us humans are actually still the

same. We haven't had.

We might have done, we might not realise it had a chip in our

brains. But anyway, I don't think that

has happened. Yeah, yeah.

So ultimately we are still human, and apparently the

highest calling on a human is not knowledge, power, security

or control. It's the capacity to love and be

loved. So Jesus says in a time of

unbelievable upheaval and brutality and actually really

what happened to Jerusalem under the oppression of Rome around 66

AD when Jerusalem was destroyed, was was one of the most brutal

experiences in history. Like many people were killed,

many were enslaved, Jewish people under Roman oppression.

Eventually in about 160 they were kicked out of the region

and suffered horrifically. And Jesus says to his followers,

who at this critical moment of like, what does it actually mean

to be Jewish? Who is the Messiah?

Are you the Messiah? And he says to those people

thinking maybe he is. You will hear of wars and

rumours of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed.

Such things must happen. But the end is still to come.

Nation will rise against nation and Kingdom against Kingdom.

There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.

All these are the beginning of birth pains.

So he's framing something when he uses the word labour pains,

he's framing pain redemptively birth pains.

That is a very different kind of framing to a kind of pain that

leads to death. So everything you've just heard,

warfare, pandemics, crisis, the drivenness to deliver a profit

to the shareholder, all of these he's reframing as potentially

birth pains that are going to heighten to such a degree that

they will actually deliver new creation.

They're going to birth something in and for and through humanity

that is fundamentally restorative.

Then you will be handed over to be persecuted.

You'll be put to death. We saw that happened in history.

The the blood of the martyrs, of the seeds of the church, and you

will be hated by all nations because of me.

At that time, many will turn away from the faith and will

betray and hate each other. Many false prophets will appear

and deceive many people because of the increase of evil.

The love of most will go cold. But the one who stands firm to

the end will be restored. Jesus is not dismayed by this

horrors, not only that his community are going to face, but

he himself is going to face. He knows what what will what

happen, what he has to go through to establish restoration

and redemption. He's taken all of that in

himself. Paul talked about this Paul golf

on the Trinitarian faith course on Wednesday.

This verse that is so true. It's one of those verses that's

so weighty and true. I sit in my life every day.

Since the children have flesh and blood sarks, humanity that

is subject to mortality and death, He too shared in their

humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who

holds the power of death, that is the enemy, the devil and free

those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of

death. Almost all our decisions are

made based on chronic, acute anxiety that we are going to

die. That's almost everything we do.

All our entertainment is just dispelling that reality.

We're just going to put that reality down, just be

entertained, because essentially we're going to die.

All our hoarding, all our fear of being generous, it's because

we think we're going to die. All our panicked parenting, it's

because we think we or our children are going to die.

Everything how we responded to the pandemic is about death.

Death literally is the master of us all.

Almost everything we do, we say, we think, we're motivated and

driven by this unbelievably profound self protecting drive

to evade or negotiate or somehow get out of this problem of

death. So Jesus has to be bigger than

that. Jesus has to be bigger than

Adam, who died, and in him we all died.

And Paul makes this claim, just as an Adam all have died, so in

Christ all will be made alive. So he's making this claim that

Jesus is bigger than Adam. It's not just about having a

nice life now, being kind to people, making the best that we

can with our heads down, and then we're all going to die.

And let's just make it rosy for as much as we can, for as much

of the world as we can, which is a secular humanist vision.

It's about something about that being so thoroughly conquered,

overcome and destroyed that we can actually live an

indestructible life. And Paul got this because he had

an encounter with Jesus, because one of the things we're learning

is this isn't something we can compute with our dark and

alienated minds. That's controlled by death.

We need a an eruption of a spiritual revelation from within

that breaks out, realigns our thinking and breaks out into

good news for everyone else. This image of the river flowing

out of of Hope Chapel or flowing out of the temple, Jesus says

it's from here, from gut, from the depths of your being,

Streams, rivers of living water will flow and then that bubbles

up, realigns our thinking into reality.

But it doesn't start with our mind trying to work it out.

It starts with the revelation of a full and complete encounter

with Jesus who has been raised from the dead.

Paul had that. Paul the apostle had that moment

of encounter. He talks about it multiple times

in his writings. He testified to an encounter

with Jesus who'd been raised from the dead.

So when he's saying this, this isn't just a nice idea or a

philosophy or another way of dealing with the inevitable,

which is death, He'd actually. Encountered resurrection.

Now, brothers and sisters, I want you to remind you of the

gospel I preached to you, which you received on, on which you

have taken your stand by this gospel.

You have been saved if you hold firmly to the word I preached to

you. Otherwise you have believed in

vain. And this formulation here, it's

probably written in maybe the 50s, is one of the oldest

formulations of the gospel. And it's so simple, so

beautiful, so profound, and so utterly incomprehensible for

what I received. I passed on to you as a first

importance, this bit, this bit that Christ died for our sins.

What does that mean? What is that?

How is that? Why is that?

Christ died for our sins. Something happened in the Christ

event. It's called us.

Call it the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that

fundamentally changed everything.

And we all know that. Even people who don't believe

that Jesus was who He says He was, everyone knows something

changed through the Christ event, and there's something

about his death for our sins that changed everything.

As I said the other night when I was hosting Paul in the course,

I think a lot about why Jesus died, why he died the way he

did. Christ died for our sins.

This is what Paul's giving us, that he was buried, that he was

raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.

That's the gospel. That's apparently the solution

to Adam. Christ died for our sins

according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was

raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and

that he appeared to Peter or Cephas and then to the 12 after

that. He appeared to more than 500 of

brothers and sisters at the same time.

This is what we're wrestling with.

What is that? What the heck is that?

How can that solve this? Everything I've been talking

about, what does it mean? Christ died for our sins, that

He was buried and that He was raised on the third day.

Something about death being fully absorbed into Him in every

way, past, present and future. The Lamb that was slain from the

beginning of before the beginning of time, before the

foundation of the world had covered and atoned everything to

the end of the age that death was completely conquered because

death couldn't hold him. Because as we learnt, he's God

in human form, not just a higher form of humanity.

He's God in human form and God is life.

So God couldn't be killed. He had to be raised again.

He has indestructible life that cannot be dead and buried and

left there, unlike all of us. He had to explode back out

because he is life. Apparently that's reality.

Apparently that changed the world forever.

Apparently that's changing us forever.

And I know what's happened to each one of us is we've tasted a

deposit of it, guaranteeing what is to come.

We've tasted something. I I feel at the moment I'm just

seeing Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the

world. That phrases in me all the time.

It moves into tears. I'm like, I know there's

something in this. It's almost impossible to

articulate it or express it, but there's something in this that's

like an explosive atomic bomb just waiting to get out and

disrupt all of us from this horrific fear of death that's

just brutal and has mastery over us.

There's something about this that's wanting to explode out of

us. But if it is preached that

Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say

there is no resurrection of the dead?

This was an unbelievably foolish claim.

People claimed a lot of things in the 1st century Pagan Roman

mythology, but no one claimed in in physical human resurrection.

That was utterly foolish. If there is no resurrection of

the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.

And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is

useless, and so is your faith. It's something about the

resurrection of the dead that the whole thing stands or falls

on. There's something about the fact

that death doesn't have the final word.

That's a conquest of death and overcoming A resurrection that

changes everything. This isn't just a nice idea or a

nice way to live, or if you're a Christian, you'll be a nice

person. This is about resurrection from

the dead. Fundamentally, that's what it's

about. And it's about something that

happened 2000 years ago before we we were even thought of or

even involved. Something happened in history

when Jesus took on incarnation sarks.

He took on the flesh of the human condition.

He lived it. It he, he died, it died with

him, was buried and completely raised from the dead.

That somehow releases atonement to all of us.

Or it's nothing. It's nothing.

There's nothing. There's nothing beyond our

materiality. There isn't any other way to to

solve the problem of death. No other religion or worldview

can solve the problem of death. And in fact, none of them even

want to or try to. Only this extraordinary claim is

saying that problem is there, and that problem's been solved.

More than that, we are found to be false witnesses about God.

For if testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead,

but he did not raise him, if in fact the dead are not raised.

For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised

either. And if Christ has not been

raised, your faith is futile. You're still in your sins.

Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.

If only for this life. We have hope in Christ.

We are of all people to be most pitied.

You don't need to lay down your life, your job.

You don't need to lay down your marriage or the way you work.

You don't need to think about your mind, you all of that.

You do. We do because we believe in

resurrection. If we're just trying to follow

Christ now, why the heck wouldn't you just eat, drink,

and be merry? Because tomorrow we die.

That's the that is the world view of death, and that is how

most people live. And if we're actually what we

it's been called practical atheists in that we say we

believe in resurrection, but essentially we don't.

We're most pitied. We don't get to eat, drink and

be merry for tomorrow we die. And we've laid down everything

for the gospel, which we don't believe in, hot or cold, but

lukewarm. I'll spit you out of my mouth

like it's either true or it isn't.

And if it isn't true, eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we

die. For Christ has indeed been

raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen

asleep. For since death came through a

man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.

For is in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive,

but each in turn Christ the first fruits.

Then when He comes those who belong to Him, then the end will

come, when he hands over the Kingdom to God the Father, after

he's destroyed all dominion, authority and power.

For He must reign until he has put all his enemies under His

feet. The last enemy to be destroyed

is death, for He has put everything under His feet.

Now when it says that everything has been put under him, it is

clear that this does not include God Himself who put everything

under Christ. When He has done this, then the

Son Himself will be made subject to Him who put everything under

Him, so that God may be All in all.

The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

It is written the first man, Adam, became a a living being,

the last Adam a life giving spirit.

The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and

after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of

the earth. The second man is of heaven.

As was the earthly man, so are those are of the earth.

As is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven.

And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so

shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.

I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that Sark's flesh and

blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, nor does the perishable

inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery.

We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed in a flash,

in the twinkling of eye at the last trumpet.

For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised

imperishable, and we will be changed.

For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable,

and the mortar with immortality. When the perishable has been

clothed with the imperishable and the mortar with immortality,

then the saying that is written will come true.

Death has been swallowed up in victory.

Where O death is your victory? Where O death is your sting?

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God, he gives us the victory through our Lord

Jesus Christ. And I've put this last verse

we're going to read now because according to Steve Covey, the

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, we live with the end in

mind. Whatever we think the end in

mind is, we'll in frame and inform everything we do.

And I mean what we really think the end in mind is not all we

kind of think, but what we really think, what our actual

actual belief system is. This is why I do everything I

do. This is why I've made the

decisions I've made. This is why I've chosen the life

I've chosen, If you can say that I think He chose me.

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm.

Let nothing move. You always give yourselves fully

to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the

Lord is not in vain. It changes everything.

It's why people took out their coffins to countries who didn't

know about Jesus. It's why people from the

Moravian movement who enslaved themselves to hang out with

enslaved people and share the good news about Jesus.

It's why people went and just immediately died of diseases

knowing that they would because of Jesus.

It's about the people in the first few centuries.

It's about Paul going to Nero and saying you're not Lord.

Jesus is Lord. At some point he'd broken

through death as his mastery into the resurrection, enough to

take the bullet for Jesus. I just don't know how much I've

been scraping the surface of that.

So I've said I've made some decisions, but in the last few

weeks I've been thinking a few months, how much am I convinced

by the resurrection of the dead? That's my journey, that's my

curiosity. Is that real?

So what I want to do is really we want to have some ministry

time. Now for some of us, there are

big things that we we find incredibly difficult and really

struggle with it, like climate anxiety people, some people

really struggle with that. The rise of Christian

nationalism, some people really struggle with that.

The grip of hyper progressivism. There are big things that

certain people struggle with. We want us to.

They are pain points for us. Other people, it's actually a

lot more personal, a lot more, not deep, but a lot more

vulnerable. Maybe in terms of our actual

lives, there may be some relationship pain points we're

in. There may be real, real anxiety

about money that grips us and keeps us awake at night or

something we may have done or thought or said or shame.

And when we're on our own in a dark place, that's the thing

that's ruling us. And I want, I want this time for

us to, to begin to make that move from unbelief to faith,

from death to life, from Adam to Jesus.

I want for us all the repentance is, is a metonoid reframing in

the light of reality to see clearly that extraordinarily

brutal and vulnerable thing in our lives, in the light that

Jesus is bigger than Adam. And I think Lazarus does, sorry.

Jesus does this beautifully with Adam, with Lazarus.

So Lazarus was a very close friend.

He loved him. He was often hosted in the house

and he felt he only does what he sees the Father doing.

And he knew he was ill, He knew he could heal him.

But the Father said don't go, don't go, don't go.

He dies and then he dies for four days, which is really dead.

Before that you could get a resuscitation in.

By day four you're in the tomb, you're decaying, you are dead.

The only option is resurrection and Jesus has to try, as the

humanity of Jesus has to trust that his status, his his reality

is the beloved son. So much to go.

I'm not going to go, I'm not going to go, I'm not going to

go. He goes.

His son, his friend has died. He weeps, he's broken hearted.

He he he meets death and he grieves it because it's not

right that his friends should die.

Everything in your life that you're thinking about now is not

right. That is not what we're designed

to do or bear or carry or know about or experience.

Our bodies simply can't handle the weight of mortality.

We're not designed for it, and it kills us.

So he wept, and then he moved to a place where Jesus was bigger

than Adam and he physically raised Lazarus from the dead.

People think at the political, social level was the thing that

got him crucified because that that was just too

discombobulating, too costly, too disruptive for the religious

elite at the time. This person really does have

resurrection power. We've got to kill him because

Rome will take our temple and our nation.

So with the the thing we're thinking about that we want to

pray through and pray through with someone else, I want us to

think about that moment for Jesus with Lazarus where he is

able both to weep, to lament, to bring his complaint, to be

bitter and open and honest and travail and cry and have those

labour pains that you think you're going to die, you think

you're going to die, you do. I think there's something in

labour pains. You're supposed to think you're

going to die because it's a kind of metaphor of the birth pains

of suffering that bring about new creation, where you have to

go through death to get to the resurrection.

Jesus talks about it in John 14. He says a woman is in anguish

until her time has come. Everything in this age is a

metaphor for reality. And I think labour pains, what

you think are going to die, is part of a daily experience for

so many people, so many people around the world forever.

That there is death is not the end, there's always

resurrection. Everything can be framed by

labour pains, giving birth to new creation.

So I want you to hold that thing and feel the complaint and the

grief and the sadness. And then I also want you to pray

with someone. Hold someone, put your arm

around someone and pray. Just pray.

Jesus can be bigger than Adam in that thing.

Pray for resurrection in that thing, Pray for healing,

restoration, whatever it is that Jesus wants to do to show he's

bigger than Adam in that area. So it could be a big area that

you find extremely difficult. It could be a very personal

area, but I don't want anyone to go away today unless they want

to because we always have agency believing that Adam is bigger.

If you have agency, you do have agency and you want to believe

this is a moment of transaction where you can say get me to to

such an encounter with Jesus that I can believe in

resurrection. So I'm going to pray now.

And what we're going to do is you can either find someone near

you to pray with or you can come up to the front.

I'll pray crystal pray other people where we, we mobilise

here. We believe in every member

ministry. So everyone's authorised to

minister and to pray. But sometimes we want to pray

with someone who almost who doesn't know.

And other times we want to pray with someone who does know.

And that's we respect both those approaches here.

So I'm going to pray and then we're going to minister to each

other. Lord, we just, we just need

breakthrough revelation of who you are.

We need what Paul had on the Damascus Rd when he was going to

kill and put followers of the way in prison and he encountered

you in such a way that he death wasn't the end for him anymore.

That he believed in resurrection and he lived the rest of his

life towards that end. And he would say things like to

I'm torn. It is better for you communities

of believers that I live. But if I die, I will be with

Christ, which is better by far. He had something he'd

encountered, someone that changed him forever.

And we need that. We need that for ourselves.

And Lord, all of us are in the birth pains.

All of us are in pain in different areas for different

reasons. And so we invite you, Holy

Spirit, as our counsellor, as our comforter, as we pray for

each other and minister to each other now that Adam is bigger

than Jesus, that the river of life that flows from the temple

is able to heal and bring back to life the dead things that

they are small in the river. Glorify your name, magnify your

name, reveal your reality to us in such a way that we can come

into agreement with Paul and say Christ was raised from the dead.

Amen.