The Focus of Jesus

Let me quickly tell you about Peter.

Peter, uh, has been in, in Melbourne, ministering for the last 33 years.

Yes.

We call him Bishop when you talk to him later.

Bishop Peter, um, Peter and his wife Lynn have been, uh, what's can now called.

They're the founding pastors of Stairway Church in, um, in Whitehorse.

Anyone know where Whitehorse is?

Kind of the box hill region of Melbourne.

And, um, part of the reason why he's here this week is he's passionate

about seeing the body of Christ brought together, um, for unity and collaboration,

uh, being one in this generation.

And I'm not sure how good a book promoter he is, so I'm just gonna

quickly gonna do that right now.

Uh, Peter's written a number of different books, but one of the

books that he is read is available at the back of the auditorium, uh,

really talking about oneness with God and oneness with each other.

And so why don't you welcome Peter as he comes up and shares with us this morning.

Good morning everybody.

It's uh, really wonderful to be here.

Uh, thank you.

Adam and Dale for trusting me with your beautiful people.

Uh, I don't take it lightly and I consider it a great

privilege and a, and a pleasure.

Um, it's always good to have Phil Baker in the room with me, uh, wherever I am.

He's been a friend for a long time.

And, uh, like Adam, I'm very appreciative for who he is, uh, not only in my

life, but for the life of the church across our nation for so many years.

Um, Roger Sutton's, uh, here tonight.

I understand.

And, uh, Roger uh, said to me this morning that I needed to have a great time here

'cause it's one of the top 10 churches in the world as far as he's concerned.

So I just thought you might like to know that.

Um, he's never been to Stairway, but anyway, uh,

he's been to 10 churches.

We s make things up, but not from the word of God.

Um, alright, let me just do, uh, my timer thing here.

Alright.

Uh, so this morning, um, I really felt like the Lord wanted me to just spend

some time together exploring, pondering, considering what it means to love well.

What does loving well look like?

And uh, there's any number of possible directions that I could go with this.

But the primary thought that I felt the Lord put in my heart for this

morning was that he wants us to learn to love well, because that's his focus.

It's the focus of Jesus.

And I could illustrate that with any number of scriptures.

But the first one that I'd like to read is from John 1334 to 35.

It's a scripture that we'll be familiar with, but nonetheless.

Bears examining in this context.

But before I do that, I'd just like to pray.

Um, my words are gonna be helpful, uh, but the work of the

spirit's gonna be more helpful.

And so my prayer, uh, as I've come here today is that the spirit of the Lord would

reveal things to all of us, including me.

One of the many, uh, exciting things about being a preacher is that you're

preaching away and suddenly this whole stream of thought comes to

you that you've never had before.

And you pretend that it is yours, but the Lord's speaking to you,

uh, as you are delivering it.

And so I trust that something like that will happen for me as well this morning.

So let me just pray.

Lord, we thank you that, uh, words are powerful, but when you grab

them Holy Spirit and open our eyes to see and open our ears to hear.

The words are transformed from that which comes from a mouth of a human being into

that which comes from the heart of God.

And so I pray, Lord, for each of us this morning, that somewhere in our

time together, we would all have that experience, that we'd have

an encounter with you that shifts us more into your image so that

we can reveal you to the world.

I ask this in Jesus name.

Amen.

Amen.

John 1334 to 35, a new commandment I give to you.

The first word I want you to be aware of is that this is something

that Jesus is giving to us and so therefore it is his focus.

It is his desire.

It's not something that he is given us an option about.

He's made it a commandment.

We do make it an option, but he is uh, said a new commandment I give to you.

It's interesting that this commandment has rewritten the second of the two

great commandments of the Old Testament.

The two great commandments of the Old Testament were given to

fulfill the law and the prophets.

And so the second of those commandments was to love one another.

As you love yourself and when you're trying to love people as you love

yourself, we don't love ourselves particularly well at times, and so

therefore we don't love one another.

Very well at times if we're trying to live from the second

of the two great commandments.

But if we're learning to live from the new commandment that Jesus gave to us,

that we are to love one another as he has loved us, that puts an entirely

different perspective on what it looks like to figure out how to love

well, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another, even as I

have loved you, that you also love.

One another by this, all men will know that you are my disciples.

And we are known by all sorts of things in our daily lives.

We're known by all sorts of things, by our family, by our friends,

by our neighbors, by our work colleagues, by the people around us.

But Jesus' desire is that we would be known as his disciples.

And in that being known as his disciples, the key issue that he is

pointing to is that we would love.

Well, that we would love others like he loves us.

This is the focus of the gospel.

This is the focus of the Kingdom of God.

The Kingdom of God is a kingdom of love, and we have so much

to learn about how to love.

Well, all of us do.

And this morning I'm hoping that as we spend this time together, it

might trigger some thoughts in you that takes you a little bit further

along your journey of learning to love well as Christ has loved you.

And then the final part of this verses is if you have loved.

For one another.

Boy, this woman will know that you are my disciples.

If you have love for one another.

This is the most important word in this scripture for me,

because it's a matter of choice.

We can actually choose to love like Jesus, or we can choose to

love like we love ourselves, or we can choose not to love at all.

And so the question of if points to the fact that we have a part to play in this.

Our way of living.

We have a part to play in how we engage with what it means to love well, and that

I'm suggesting to us this morning that this is the key focus that God has in

our lives is helping us to become better lovers, helping us to become people

who love him, love ourselves, and love others from the position of having had

experiences and encounters with his love.

We find in John chapter 15, verse nine.

John 15 · chapter mention

Another call to the place and the power of love.

Just as the father has loved me, I have also loved you abide in my love.

This word abide, uh, generally, uh, as interpreted by scholars,

means to remain so Jesus is saying.

Uh, just as the father has loved me, I've also loved you.

Abide in my love, remain in my love, and there are many things

that distract us from loving.

Well, there are many things that pull us out of loving well.

There are many things that threaten us.

There are many things that overwhelm us.

There are many things that discourage us, and so this capacity to abide in

his love is at war with all the other distractions of life that would want

to shift us into another place, shift us into another frame of reference.

And so Jesus is encouraging us to abide in his love, but is encouraging

us from the perspective of knowing how much we are loved by him.

As the father has loved me, I love you.

And so it's knowing the love of God.

That is the key.

It's understanding the love of God.

That is the key that enables us to abide in the, uh, passion translation.

Uh, of the scripture.

This word is, uh, translated as to be nourished, be nourished by my love.

I, I love that idea that I can actually be on a daily basis nourished by the love

of God because I nourished myself with all sorts of belief systems that I picked up

along my, on, along the way of growing up.

That are more about self, as Dale was talking about over communion.

And so one of the things that, uh, gets us out of abiding in the love of

God is all these patterns of belief.

These trigger points in our hearts that when life squeezes us, when pressure

comes along, we stop abiding in love, or we stop being nourished by love.

And we're nourished by those thoughts that have come to us because

of how we've experienced life.

And so, so whilst we are called in the New Testament commandment.

To love one another as he love us.

This word if becomes incredibly important and for us to realize that this is a

point of tension for all of us, and that if we can just name the point of tension,

it helps us in our daily lives to figure out, am I loving well in this moment or

am I going somewhere else in this moment?

And we only have those thoughts if we elevate love to the primary position.

That our life as followers of Jesus is to follow the New Testament commandment,

to love one another as I have loved you, that that is the central core issue of

what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, because that's how the world will know us.

And so prayer is good fasting, sort of good.

Sometimes maybe not.

Sometimes, maybe, I'm not sure.

Um, tithing is good.

Uh, or, you know, being in fellowship is good.

Studying the word is good there.

There are so many wonderful values and postures and practices about

what it is to be a follower of Jesus.

But they all come back to this one central hub, and it's called loving.

Well, that, that's our call is to love.

Well, GK Chesterton made a really interesting

observation about this thought.

He said the Christian ideal of love has not been tried and found wanting.

It's been found difficult and left untried.

And I think the truth is we find it difficult to abide in the love of

Jesus for us, I think the truth is we've just gotta name it as it's a

real challenge to actually be nourished by the love of God, because that is

a challenging place for us to live.

It's difficult.

And so it's difficult, particularly when life squeezes us, when the

pressures of life come around us, it makes it difficult to remain

in the love that Jesus has for us.

When the pressures of life, when the pressures of finances not working

out, when the pressure of somebody betraying you comes along, when

you hear what somebody's saying to you through your ears and eyes, but

they're actually saying something different, but you are hearing it.

Differently.

The pressure to love them is difficult.

The pressure is difficult to love someone to remain and to be nourished

in the love of Christ by so many things.

That we engage with on a daily basis.

And so the, the way that we learn to live in this space, the way that we

engage in this space, becomes incredibly important because it reveals who

Jesus is to the world by this All men.

We know that you are my disciples, and on the basis of John chapter 17, of

John 17 · chapter mention

us being one with one another, it also reveals the father's love to the world.

And so loving well is the call.

But loving well is difficult, and so I just wanted to take a few

moments this morning to talk about.

Some of the, uh, or two things that I've discovered that helped me to stay in

this space, that helped me to remain in the love of God when I'm under pressure.

In particular, who you are under pressure is who you really are.

When everything is going well, you can be kind, you can be

compassionate, you can be generous.

But when you are under pressure and you're not feeling great,

that's who you really are.

And it exposes the stuff in our inner world that the grace of God

has been given to us, to target, to set us free and to transform us

so that we'd be more like Jesus.

And so we need to pay attention to who I am when I'm under pressure, who I am.

When.

Things get difficult because that's the side of the next

miracle of my transformation.

To bear the image of Jesus and reveal him to the world.

It becomes an opportunity to find healing and wholeness.

If I'll only own it.

That's my issue, and I bring it to the one who loves me the most and says, can

you help me figure out where this has come from, how I got here, and what it

is that you want to give to me as a gift that I don't live from here any longer?

That I actually remain in who I am in you and I don't go to where I

think I am in my own understanding of myself and the world in which I live.

There are so many ideas that I have about this, that I write books

and, uh, and so as Adam has said, I've written a number of books.

I've written six books, and I've brought the last one.

Uh, here today it's available up the back.

It's called Radically Restored to Oneness with one another.

It's got a whole bunch of things in there that the Lord opened

up to my eyes through COVID.

Living in Melbourne was a very difficult thing during COVID.

We're the most lockdown city in the world, apparently.

And, uh, and so.

We had about four months in a row where we couldn't travel further than

five kilometers away from our church.

We could only have four people to run a church service.

And so anyway, I used it as a gift to write a book.

And, uh, I had lots of time, uh, and the Lord was speaking to me about stuff.

And so I've written it and apparently it's helping a whole bunch of people, uh,

all around the world who are reading it.

So I commend it to you.

It's at the back.

If you would like to pick it up, uh, Kinta is going to be up there.

I'm, I'm hopeless with technology.

I didn't power up the square thing that you buy it with, and so if that

doesn't work, just take it and enjoy it.

Uh, that'll, that'll be great.

But I hope that the power of this thing's powered up.

Okay, first discovery.

Um, this goes back to March of 2018.

Uh, I have this privilege, uh, it is extraordinary privilege to be able to

speak into your lives today and to the lives of people all around the globe.

And so, in March of 2018, that first of those opportunities turned

up for that year, and we traveled.

We, my wife Len, and I traveled to Adelaide, uh, to minister in a

church over there for the weekend.

As we arrived in Adelaide, uh, we were waiting for the bags to come off and our

bag was the first bag off on the carousel.

That had never happened before and it's never happened again.

And I travel most, more than most people, and for some reason that still quiet

voice of the Holy Spirit said take notice.

We then went to where we were staying and we were staying in unit

number one of six units on what they call the beach in Adelaide.

It's just where water meets sand.

It's not, uh, it's not like beaches here or in Sydney where I grew up.

And, uh, and, and so then the, the Lord really started to,

to speak a bit louder and say.

Tonight, you'll be seated at table number one when you go out to the restaurant.

And so I told Lynn that just to hold myself accountable.

And sure enough, when we went out to a dinner that night, we were seated at table

number one in a restaurant with 24 tables.

The Lord really showed off when we got back to Melbourne.

I fly Virgin for a whole bunch of reasons, which I won't bore you with.

And uh.

Uh, back in the day, all the carousels for Virgin were tightly packed

together, and so I was standing at carousel number two waiting for my bag.

It was up on the screen.

You get to read bag tags when you travel like I do.

It wasn't the first bag off.

There were lots of bags coming and I was thinking, I want to get home.

Can I just get my bag please?

One other guy picked up his bag and he needed to push past me to get out

because they're so tightly together.

I turned around to let him go out and on Carousel number one, there was one bag.

And it was mine.

I call that the language of the spirit.

I'm a Pentecostal, God made me one.

That's another story altogether, but.

Uh, and so that opened up a, a whole space for me with the Lord where I

felt him calling me into a place of discovering the power of oneness, of, of

being provoked, to study what oneness is actually all about from his perspective.

So Deuteronomy chapter six, verse four, hero Israel, the Lord is our God.

The Lord is one.

This idea of oneness is incredibly powerful all the way through

scripture and out of that experience.

Um, the Lord's asked me to write four books.

I've written the first two radically restored to oneness with God and radically

restored to oneness with one another.

The next two are gonna happen somewhere in the future, but out of this experience,

I started to really dive into the word of God, and I want you to come with me.

Ephesians chapter four, verses one to three.

And just to explore some of the ideas that I unpack in much more detail,

uh, in the book that's at the back.

So if you're interested in any of this, uh, I encourage you to explore

it with me by grabbing a hold of that, either for free or for 20 bucks.

Um, Ephesians chapter four, verse one.

Therefore, I, the prisoner of the Lord implore you to walk in a manner

worthy of the calling with which you have been called with all humility

and gentleness with patience.

Showing tolerance for one another in love being diligent to preserve the

unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

Just a quick grab on a number of thoughts in here.

The first thought is therefore he's writing.

Therefore, 'cause he's saying on the basis of what I've already said to

you, I now wanna say this to you.

And so you need to look at the first three chapters to put this in context.

Therefore, on the basis of what I've said to you in the first three

chapters, I now wanna say this to you.

Therefore, I implore you.

What I'm about to say to you is incredibly important.

I implore you, you think about when you are having a conversation with

somebody and you want them to get it.

You are imploring them.

You step into a place of conversation.

You step into a place of discussion where you are committed to

getting your point of view across because it's so important to you.

And so here Paul is saying, this is, this is so important that we understand this.

Therefore, I implore you that you walk in a manner worthy of your

calling with which you've been called.

The only way you can understand this verse is to put it in the context of

the first three verses, people like me, and I've done it myself in the past.

We'll talk about your calling as a single mother.

You're calling as a teacher.

You're calling as a plumber.

You're calling as a neighbor to your friends.

That's not the context.

The context is that, that we are to be worthy of the calling.

That we've been given.

He's identified our calling in the first three chapters.

So very quickly, just highlighting it through here, chapter one and chapter

two to verse 10, is all about our calling to oneness with God that we're

chosen, we're holy, we're beloved.

He prays that the eyes of our heart would be open to see what it means to

have the calling with oneness with God.

He then tells us in chapter two verses one to 10 about how we got.

To be in oneness with God.

It was by grace that you are saved.

And so one verse, one to two, verse 10 is all about us being, being

radically restored to oneness with God.

Then there's another, therefore, in chapter two, verse 11.

Therefore, on the basis of what I've said, I now wanna say this to you.

That you are all one in Christ.

You've gotta learn to live with one another.

There's neither j nor Gentile.

There's either circumcised or uncircumcised.

I'm building a holy temple.

You fitted together, so therefore, on the basis of the fact that

you're one with God, you need to learn to be one with one another.

In chapter three, he talks about two things that will

undermine us living that way.

I'm not going anywhere near them this morning.

And so now we get to chapter four, verse one.

Therefore, I implore you to walk in a manner worthy of your calling.

You have been called to walk in oneness with God and oneness with one another.

Yeah, that's the call that's on our lives and that's what the Lord is

trying to help us all to step into.

And then he says, be diligent.

And so he, he's now pointing to this thought that to abide in the love

of God, to abide in our oneness with God, to remain there, to be nourished

there, you need to be diligent.

You've gotta pay attention to this.

You, you have to keep it front and center.

You need to be running through your world and understanding of,

did I love well in that situation?

Am I loving well in that situation?

And so he's saying, you've gotta be diligent about this because

this is so important because this is the center of what it means to

be a follower of Jesus to love.

Well, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I have loved you.

If we'll do this, the world will know where his disciples.

And unfortunately, the truth is the world doesn't know us as his disciples

because we're not loving well.

And so there's this great call from heaven.

I feel the windows and doors of heaven opening up over the Church of Australia,

inviting us to consider this, that he would wanna reach our nation through love.

That's how he reached the world.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son.

That love is the motivation for everything that we do.

Love is the motivation for how we engage in every aspect of our lives.

And so the first thing that I've discovered about how do I remain

in the love of God, how do I be nourished by the love of God?

When I'm under pressure, the first thing I've discovered is that I need

to prioritize living through Jesus.

I need to prioritize living through who he is in me and

what he has accomplished for me.

And I only know that by studying the word and studying scripture and

allowing it to soak into my heart that I'm actually a new creation and

what it means to be a new creation, to work out myself, salvation with fear

and trembling that I've been given a whole new way of being a human being.

And that I need to realize that I've already got inside of me a

way of being a human being that I established as I was growing up, and

I established it as I was growing up to stay safe as the eldest child.

And with, with three bro, two brothers and a sister in a Roman Catholic family.

And I, I, I thank God for my Catholicism and I thank God for

people in the Catholic church.

That's not the point of this.

The point is that there was a theological understanding that I was a sinner and

I could never get out of that sinner.

And it was just a challenge to be there.

And as the eldest child, you perform, you try and get loved by through performance.

And so there's all sorts of stuff that you end up carrying in your

heart and you live through that stuff.

Or if we're going to remain in Jesus and be nourished by him, we can live

through who we've become in him.

And that's the difficulty because when you're under pressure, you go back to

what you learned when you were growing.

But what the Lord is wanting to do is to teach us a whole new way of living.

And so what I have to do is when I'm not loving well in any moment, when I'm

listening to self talk, when I'm being self-aware and I'm taking responsibility

for it, lemme just check the time.

I feel like I'm rabbiting on.

I've got plenty of time.

Um,

that, that self-awareness and personal responsibility are so important.

You and I came to faith through self-awareness and

personal responsibility.

I became self-aware that I was separated from God.

I took responsibility for it and prayed a prayer and asked Jesus

to forgive me for all of my sin, and boom, I became a child of God.

I'm chosen.

I'm holy.

I'm beloved.

I'm holy and blameless, and I'm beyond reproach in the eyes of God.

I have a hope of a calling.

I'm empowered by the work of the spirit.

I, I'm an entirely new person because of self-awareness

and personal responsibility.

If that's the greatest point of transformation in my life, and I entered

into it through the door of self-awareness and personal responsibility, I will

enter into every change in my world.

Through self-awareness and personal responsibility, I become

self-aware that I'm now responding in a way that is not loving.

I take responsibility for it, and I bring it to the Lord as a sight

of a miracle inside of my heart to be transformed and changed.

Hmm.

Nobody can make me get angry.

I choose to get angry.

Some people are really good at creating the environment where that

choice is easier for me to make,

but I still make the choice

self-aware.

I'm choosing to be critical.

I'm choosing to be fearful.

I'm choosing to be defensive.

I'm choosing the need to be right.

I'm choosing to make you the loser and me the winner.

I'm choosing to hide in my shame and not tell you about

where I'm really struggling.

I'm choosing not to believe what the word of God tells me about myself.

'cause I'm so convinced about the narrative and the story that I

told myself when I was growing up.

I take responsibility for I, I want that to change.

I want it to be different, and I have a Lord and a Savior who

wants it to be different as well.

Oh, there's a clock up there.

Um,

I was preaching to the church once and, and I, I was in the worship.

I saw this, um, computer screen, uh, in front of me, uh, with the back of it.

And so when I got up to preach, I realized what it was there for.

It was a clock with 30 minutes on it, counting down, and so I got to red.

And I was going into red and I said to the pastor, I'm not done yet.

What do you reckon?

He said, just keep going for it.

So anyway, uh, we'll see how we go when we get there in the next 18 minutes.

I choose, I choose my responses.

I'm responsible for them, but I also have a savior.

I have the word of God.

I have the spirit of the living Christ living inside of me.

I have friends and family and a community of faith that I can be

vulnerable with and I can be humble with.

I can be gentle of heart as a leader rather than a roaring lion.

I have choices that I can make, and so I need to figure out what's the core

issue that I'm making my choices around.

The core issue I've decided for me, it's entirely up to you to

agree or disagree with me, but the core issue is loving well.

Am I making choices to love?

Well.

And I'll discover that when I'm under pressure, I'll discover that.

When I'm feeling fearful, when I'm feeling anxious, when I'm feeling

discouraged, am I loving well?

Am I loving Lynn well?

Am I loving my three children well?

Am I loving my grandchildren?

Am I loving, loving, you know, I don't lead the church anymore.

Hand it over three years ago about did I love my staff?

Well, do I love the people in the church who come up to me straight after I'm

preaching and tell me I've done a bad job.

When I'm squeezed with the pressure of finance raising millions of dollars

to put a church together and we've got a half a million dollar hole for two

years, and the pressure of being the buck stops in my office, am I loving well?

Am I letting that to drive to the surface?

All sorts of fear of failure and fear of rejection, those things that bring

pressure to us and the self-talk and the, we get overwhelmed in the darkness

of our, the shadows of our own lives.

And so, so I've learned.

I've learned that, that this, I, I have to walk in a manner worthy

of my calling and as I walk in a manner worthy of my calling, I have

to live through who I am in Jesus.

And the second thing is that I need to protect my

relationships and not harm them.

If I'm, if I understand who I am in Christ.

Ephesians one verse one to Ephesians two, verse 10.

If I understand I'm chosen and holy and beloved, I'm gonna live through him and

live through who I've become in Him.

And if I understand that living in oneness and loving other people is important, then

I'm going to protect my relationships.

I'm not going to harm them.

If love isn't right front and center, I'm thinking about am I harming this

relationship or am I protecting it?

Now, there are some times as a leader where you've just gotta make difficult

calls of judgment, and some people feel like you are harming them, but

those calls of judgment need to be explained with kindness and generosity

to help people understand how I've got to that conclusion, not just

imposed on them and beating them up.

So there are some challenges in this space of.

Making sure that I protect relationships and I don't harm them.

It's a two-way street.

Some people can think I'm harming the relationship when that's

not my intent and motive, but it's their stuff, not my stuff.

But I can't go to that place 'cause I need to look at the log in my

own eye, not the speck and theirs.

And so I've gotta try and do this dance and do it well and to be

generous and kind and loving.

But sometimes people just don't understand my motivation and so I become the bad guy.

But when I made the bad guy, I then have a choice.

How am I gonna talk about them when they're talking badly about me?

Mm.

And as a church leader, we get made the bad guys at different times and the

good guys go and get some other good guys and really make us the bad guys.

And,

but that's an opportunity for me to, to be self-aware what's happening to me here.

What's, what's actually going on here, and how am I gonna talk about those people?

When somebody outside hears the stories of what's going on, how

am I going to speak about them?

Am I gonna offer a personal opinion about them that gives them value?

Or am I gonna offer a personal opinion about them that draws them down and

brings them down to my level and that I win and people think better

about me than they do about them?

What does loving well look like in those spaces?

Painful, difficult, challenging.

But following Christ is about bearing cross and working out your

salvation with fear and trembling.

So the first thing I've discovered is that I, I need, if I'm gonna make loving,

well the center that I need to learn to live through, uh, who I am in Christ,

and I need to protect relationships.

I wanna stop here for a moment and let you engage with what I'm

saying and let you engage more importantly with the Holy Spirit.

So I just wanna stop here and ask you the question.

What does love require of you in a situation where there's

tension and conflict with someone?

Right now in your world, you have tension and conflict with a workmate,

you have tension and conflict in your family home, you have tension on

conflict with a grownup adult child, you have tension on conflict with

a neighbor, you have con tension.

Just I want you to think about.

A place where you currently have tension and conflict.

And if you don't have that right now, God bless you.

Maybe think back to a more recent time, and I want you to ask the

Holy Spirit, what would love require of me, Lord, in this situation?

How can I live through you rather than living through my own pain?

How can I protect this relationship and stop harming it?

What is it in me that you would want to show me?

That's a site for a miracle, for your grace to land in my heart, not

just to open my eyes to see that I'm not loving well, but to give

me keys about how to love well.

So if you're gonna adopt the preposition, which means close your eyes and bow your

heads, I'm just gonna pray and I'm just going to leave a couple of minutes silence

for you to do some work with the Lord.

Remembering that this is an opportunity for you to receive a miracle.

A miracle that would change your heart attitude to that person.

So, holy Spirit, I'm asking right now that you would come and visit with each

person under the sound of my voice, into that place where there's tension

and conflict with another person.

That place where there's pain, that place where there's judgment,

that place where the need to be right is pounding in our hearts.

I'm asking Holy Spirit, that you would reveal to us how to love well, what does

love look like from your point of view?

Lord,

what am I to do?

How am I to respond?

Give me the courage as I leave this place, Lord, to hang on to what you say to me,

to step into some humble and gentle places

that your love would be revealed.

My concluding thought for you here in this space is that Jesus said to

me, come to me and learn from me.

For I'm humble and gentle of heart.

Loving Well has been humble and gentle of heart.

In the book of Revelation, Jesus is referred to as the lion,

as a as a lion, once and 24 times as the slain lamb of God.

Jesus saved the world by being a slain lamb, by being gentle and humble.

One of the greatest keys to loving well is being gentle and humble, but

when you're under pressure, that's the last thing you feel like being.

And so it's just another key, another thought to center yourself around

if you are making love the center of what it is to follow Jesus.

What's the second thing that I've discovered?

Well, that's another story outta my life.

Um, October, 2004.

Uh, so we've been leading the church in Melbourne for 14 years at this stage.

We started it in February of.

Uh, 1990, uh, the church grew very rapidly.

Uh, over six years.

It grew to, uh, 1,150 people, and then we hit our train wreck years.

We had 380 people leave the church over an 18 month period.

I lost my way as a leader.

I lost my confidence as a leader.

I lost my confidence in relying on the Holy Spirit and started to rely on my

gift and, uh, and, and in that space.

Um, it was a very difficult and challenging time for me,

two years of, of really feeling very much at sea and very lost.

I started to find my way, uh, outta that space and, uh, and a

whole bunch of things started to happen, which were really great.

But I got to 2004.

Uh, and so our church is known internationally.

By this stage, I'm, you know, sort of getting opportunities to do

this, yet I've got all this internal stuff that's going on as well.

Um, but then in October of 2004, the law turned up in my life and he started to

talk to me about my fear, about my fear of being rejected and my fear of being

misunderstood, my fear of being taken advantage of, and my fear of failure.

Those fears were resident in my world because of the upbringing

that I referred to earlier on.

And so I, I figured out in my family of origin that if I performed well,

I'd be loved, and if I performed badly, I would not be experiencing love.

My, there was a temper thing in my dad's life and a bunch of stuff inside

of my family that I don't need to bore you with other than to say that

experience of growing up in that family.

I chose to engage with it.

I'm not blaming them.

I, I'm self-aware and I'm taking responsibility for the way I

chose to create a narrative that if I performed well, I was loved.

And if I didn't perform well, I wasn't loved.

And I carried that narrative into my life with Jesus.

And I carried that narrative into my life as a church leader.

I kept it well hidden.

And well disguised unless you back me into a corner.

And then I would use my power as the one with the most power in the

room as the leader of a church.

And I have great regret about how I use that power at times to get my own way.

I did the best I could at the time that I knew, but it wasn't, I wasn't

loving, well, I was protecting self.

And so the Lord said, well, enough's enough, Peter.

Um, we've gotta deal with this issue.

And so in 2004 I started to see some of this stuff and, uh, I have

to say it was pretty frightening.

Um, and so went on a journey until around Christmas time where

I was feeling really wrecked.

And just thinking, Lord, I can't lead if this is, this is really my

motivation and the way that I do life.

I wasn't all bad, so you know, when I tell this story, Lynn says, make sure you tell

people that you were a nice guy as well.

So it wasn't all bad, but, but it was this, when I, when I actually put

love in the center, it, it started to cast light on what was in the shadows.

And I started, started to see what was in the shadows.

And, uh, and so I got to a point where I, this was, um, I think this was the

second time I wrote my resignation letter, uh, from, you know, and, and

I was offered a job, a really great job, uh, outside of the church world.

And I said, the Lord, can I take it?

He said, well, you can, but you'll just take your, can I say crap with you?

Is that right?

Um, you'll just take your crap with you.

And so, do you wanna do that or do you want me to help get healed?

It's a bit of a no brainer, but it took a while to come to inclusion.

Let's do the healing bit.

Perfect Love, cast out all fear and so, so I recognized that if I had that

level of fear in my world, I didn't understand the love of God deeply enough.

And so I needed more revelation about the love of God.

I knew about the love of God in my head.

I'd preached it.

I knew how to preach about the love of God, but clearly

I didn't know it in my heart.

You have two seats of knowledge in your world, one in your

head, one in your heart.

The one in your heart will always trump the one in your head.

This is why Christians have difficulty forgiving.

They know they should forgive in their head, but in their

heart they want to hurt.

This is why people have difficulty with tithing.

They know in their head they should tithe, but in their reality it's challenging.

So whatever's in your heart is what you'll default to when you're under pressure.

And so, so I chose not to take on the role.

I told my two senior staff at the time, um, you need to

look after me and carry me.

I included 20 people in the process of carrying me.

I wrote four emails to them in another book that I wrote called A Voyage of

Mercy, um, about how the Lord took me on this journey of dealing with my fear.

I got to April of 2005 and, uh, I was lying on my bed in a fetal

position for two Sundays in a row, crying my eyes out so afraid that

nobody was gonna come to church.

And, and at that point I was in my forties, and so this is not

really normal human behavior for a church leader in their forties.

Um, and I felt like that was the bottom of the hole that I was falling

into, but it just turned out to be a ledge on the way down to the bottom.

And so it just kept getting, just kept getting worse.

And, uh, and so fortunately I was surrounded by people who cared about me

and loved me and carried me through this time, and I'll be ever grateful to them.

Um.

But eventually I, I knew, realized I needed some pretty profound help.

So I went to New Zealand, connected with some friends of mine, uh,

Hamish, and died of vet, uh, die has, um, created this whole way of

helping people connect with God.

It's called God.

Space is all refocusing.

So I'm out at their be beach house at Piha outside of Auckland.

It's the middle of winter in New Zealand.

It's freezing cold, it's wet and it's miserable.

We're inside the house.

Di starts asking me these questions, open-ended questions.

She got to a question and said, where's your future?

'cause I felt like I had no future.

I said, it's out.

And I, I just knew intuitively it's outside the window.

Whereabouts outside the window near that tree, what would it be

like if we go to that tree really cold and went and miserable?

Don't let your head kick in, Peter.

Stay with what the spirit's doing.

I have no idea.

Di I dunno.

I dunno what it'd be like.

She said.

Well, let's go out there.

Uh, I can feel myself getting emotional already.

I'm okay.

Um.

So if the tree's there, I'm probably out here because it's surrounded

by grass and it's all wet and I don't want to go in there.

And I said, are you close enough to your future?

And I said, no, I'm not.

I knew I wasn't.

She said, well, you need to get as close as you can.

So I stepped through the grass and I still beside the tree.

And this happened.

I burst into tears.

So I'm gonna step away from the tree so I don't cry anymore.

There is a place that I can go where I know the love of God.

'cause when I stood beside that tree, I heard the Lord say clearly to me.

I love you because you breathe.

It's got nothing to do with your performance.

It's got nothing to do with how you decided to be safe as a child.

I have always been with you and I don't have time to tell you

my experience of growing up with the Lord in that Catholic space.

But when I look back at it, I can see how he was speaking to me as

a 6-year-old and an 8-year-old.

And so from that moment on my world has been entirely different

'cause I now have somewhere to go that defeats that fear in my life.

And one of the reasons why we don't love well is because we're actually

defending the fear that's in our lives.

And, and this is where the self-awareness, personal responsibility

piece comes into its own.

So in Ephesians chapter three, verses 16 and 19, Paul is praying that he would

grant you according to the richest of your glory, to be strengthened with power

through his spirit in the inner man.

If you've gotta be strengthened through the spirit in the inner of man, it

means you've got weaknesses in there.

And so my weakness, my turmoil was a fear of failure, a fear of rejection,

a fear of being misunderstood, a fear of being taken advantage of.

I, I needed to be strengthened in the inner man.

I needed to have an encounter with the love of God.

And Paul identifies this in verse 19, where he says, and to know the love of

Christ, which surpasses knowledge that you may be filled up to the fullness of God.

The Greek word here to know means to know by experience and encounter.

To know in your heart by experiencing encounter the love of Christ, which

surpasses what you know in your head so that you may be filled up to the

fullness of God we live trying to love.

Well, from a knowledge that's in our head without paying attention to the stuff

in our heart, that's undermining us.

And the Holy Spirit will allow circumstances for father

will allow circumstances.

Jesus will allow circumstances that create pressure in your world that cause

you to feel overwhelmed and you need to protect yourself or you need to somehow

be right or all the imaginations of the darkness in the shadows of our lives.

And, and in that space, the Lord is inviting you into a miracle.

The invitation in October was to come on a journey that took nine months

and I had to stay with the journey.

I had to persevere with the journey.

I needed to include others in the journey to carry me.

I needed to tell them about the idiotic and stupid ideas that I was carrying and

let them into my world because confession opens your heart up to the possibility of

what a loving God might wanna do for us.

And so, so Paul is saying here that.

We, we, we've got this stuff in our inner man, this inner stuff that

stops us from loving well, and the way that you deal with it is that

you haven't experienced an encounter.

I'm not saying go and stand by a tree somewhere, that that's what worked for me.

But if you don't love, well, it's a possibility that there's something in your

inner world that stopping you from loving well, that the Holy Spirit wants to heal.

And he wants to give you an experience and encounter to heal that.

And sometimes that experience encounter is preceded by a time of turmoil, a

time of deep challenge, a time where your circumstances just, just are

not what you would want them to be.

And it's creating something on the inside of you.

And we try and escape the circumstances, but we should embrace the circumstance

for what it's teaching us about ourselves.

And it's in that space.

The, the life.

Oh, there it's, sorry.

That's my timer.

Peter, your time's up.

Um, the life of Stairway was profoundly changed because of that encounter.

'cause I, I was the gatekeeper of what could happen in Stairway

and what couldn't happen.

I was keeping some things out because of my fear.

Once that was dealt with, I opened my heart up to possibilities and we

saw the spirit of God begin to do things that were just extraordinary.

And so I just wanna take another couple of minutes as we start to move

towards a close, I, I want you to think about your world this morning.

Are you able to identify fear?

Any sort of fear in your world that stops you from loving?

Well, because perfect love casts out all fear.

Is there a place where the Lord is speaking to you?

About something in your world that you're afraid of that causes you to protect

yourself, or can you think about when you're not loving well, where there's

tension and conflict and you turn into somebody you don't want to be?

And can you ask the Lord, Lord, is there fear in there?

And if there is, is there an encounter and an experience you want to give

to me to help deal with that fear?

Understanding that there will be a possible power encounter like I had beside

the tree, but it will often be proceeded by a time of complete and total confusion

and chaos because the Lord is wanting to show you how deep and far and wide that

fear impacts your world and how you live.

So.

Prayer position again.

Closing eyes, bowing heads moment with God.

For you personally,

I just want you to reflect on moments when you're not who you want to be, when for

whatever reason, the pressure of life, it squeezes you and you know that you, you

are not being kind, you are not loving well, you're not being compassionate.

As you think about that space, and you might, you know, visit that space

semi-regularly, you might visit it regularly, but I wanna pray that the Lord

would show you what motivates that space.

What is it in your heart that causes you to respond that way?

Because behavior is always the echo of belief and following Jesus is about belief

management, not behavior management.

And so your behavior is not what you want it to be, but it's because

there's a belief that's driving it.

It's that, that the Lord wants to show you

and it's there that he wants to give you an encounter and

an experience with his love.

And so, Lord, I pray this morning that for all of us, you would open

our hearts and our eyes, and our ears to see and hear what's the belief

system that causes me to not to love?

Well.

Is there a belief system?

Lord, in here of fear where I'm protecting myself, is there a sight for a miracle

that you wanna reveal to me today or for those that are already on this journey?

Lord, I pray that you've given them the courage to persevere, the courage

to keep seeking you, the courage to include others in their journey, that

thy Lord would be set free from fear.

And that thou would embrace the love that you have for all of us.

I'm asking Holy Spirit, over these next couple of minutes of silence,

Lord, would you just speak to our hearts, help us to see what we maybe

have been ignoring or have never really taken the time to consider?

Very good.

As I come to a close today, I just wanna leave you with this thought that,

um, through all of this, uh, for me, I have understand to be a Christian.

It includes the following.

I'm learning to walk with the Lord in mystery through discovery for the purpose

of transformation that I might bear his image and reveal him to the world.

It's a mystery to me why people reject me and betray me 'cause I'm

not intending to hurt them, but I do.

Mm. And I have to be able to pay, take part of the log in my own

eye and not go after the spec.

So it is a mystery, but I have to approach it with discovery.

It's a mystery why some people get sick in ways that I just don't understand.

It's a mystery why some business people go broke in ways that I don't understand.

It's a mystery that people struggle so much that they need to divorce.

I'm not critical of any of those things, but what I am appealing

to is that in the mystery, could we take a posture of discovery?

Could we take a posture of discovering through self-awareness

and personal responsibility?

What is it that the Lord's trying to show me?

'cause he wants you to be transformed.

He wants you to live through him, not through your own

narrative and your own story.

Because he wants us to bear his image and reveal him to the world.

And that happens through making love the center of who we are.

God bless you.

Thanks for listening to me.

Thank.