Emotional Health and Kingdom Power Week 16: Commissioning - A Lifestyle of Maturity & Power

We've been talking about what it actually looks like to turn all

of that inside out stuff and get stuck into doing the stuff.

So as I was sitting down with a coffee the other day, just kind

of looking over my notes and seeking the Holy Spirit as to

what I should bring to this message, I was thinking about

back about where we've been. And I kept coming back to the

story of the very early days of the Vineyard movement.

And it's about a bloke who walked into a church one Sunday

morning. He was expectant and really

hungry for something real, because he'd been devouring the

New Testament for weeks. He'd been reading the Bible on

his own, and he'd read all these incredible accounts about Jesus

healing the blind, kicking out demons, speaking peace to

literal storms. And he's read about completely

ordinary fishermen who just dropped everything and followed

Jesus and got sent out into the world to change history.

So this guy sits through the service.

He listens to the hymns, he hears the sermon, and he watches

the polite handshakes at the end.

And he rocks up to the senior pastor and he says, when do we

get to do the stuff? Senior pastor probably looks a

little bit confused. That man was John Wimber, and if

you haven't come across him, John was a key founder of the

Vineyard movement back in the 70s and the 80s.

But he wasn't your usual vicar type.

It's a bit like my husband really.

Before he found his faith, he was actually a professional

keyboard player for The Righteous Brothers.

You know, the guys who did. You've lost that love and

feeling. I know I'm not supposed to sing,

Sorry. So that's who he was.

He came from this world of late nights and from Smokey jazz

clubs and from this kind of real world grit, not Sunday school.

And he was just an ordinary bloke who was brave enough to

ask that if the Bible was actually for real in the here

and now, then why weren't we actually doing the stuff?

Go to a church service, sing all the things, talk all the talk,

Don't see anything from it. And that passion for doing the

stuff is exactly what the Vineyard thrives on.

And I think many of us in this room have got stories of coming

to faith, of having God transform our lives.

Phil and I certainly have. And passionately wanting that

transformation for other people. And we're here because of the

Kingdom of God is right here, right now.

And it's actually within our reach.

You know, there are people out there in the world who are fired

up spiritually, but without meeting the purpose person of

Jesus through this church, they'll end up down a spiritual

alley and trapped in darkness. There are people searching for

truth and encountering Jesus in dreams, and they're just waiting

for an opportunity to see the Kingdom of God break into their

lives in signs and wonders. You know, if you go into the

Waterstone shop here in Darlington, go upstairs, go to

the religion section, what you'll see is way more books on

witchcraft than you do on Christianity.

And it's because they're selling.

There are people who are spiritually driven and

spiritually searching. So the past couple of months

we've been going into a great depth about what it actually

means to be Ascent people doing the stuff that Jesus did,

healing the sick, casting out demons, being naturally

supernatural without being weird.

And you can watch all those back on our darlow dot church slash

watch watch again. And in the next couple of weeks

we'll be starting a series on what is the Vineyard.

So I'm not going to start to begin to explain our

distinctives right now, but as Vineyard people, our confidence

to step out into the street and to pray for someone comes from a

specific way of looking at the world that we called the

already, but not yet. And this is the core lens for

everything that we do. Jesus declared in Mark one,

verse 15, that the time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God

is at hand. Repent and believe in the

gospel. The invasions come, but we also

can see from looking out the window that the world's still a

mess, and that this full promise of restoration hasn't yet

happened. And I've felt that tension in my

own life in ways that are quite hard to put into words sometimes

now. I remember sitting in cramped

bamboo shacks in Myanmar over stagnant swamps, full of

disease, full of faeces, in 40° heat, and the air was so thick

with the poverty that you could almost taste it.

And in the middle of all of that, as we spoke with people

and as we heard their stories, we would pray.

And I watched the Holy Spirit move to bring miraculous healing

to people who had absolutely zero other hope.

The transformation was incredible.

We met one man. He was a trishaw rider, he

couldn't work, his wrist was badly hurt and he had this

really dirty bandage around his wrist and he couldn't buy his

family food. And so the only thing we could

do is was to pray. And we did it the vineyard way.

Identified the problem, commanded the healing in Jesus

name and get the person to check as it changed.

No big waffly, clever prayers, nothing smart.

So the guy looks at us confused and we think it's a language

barrier thing, but then tentatively starts to just try

and move his wrist. Then he wiggles it.

Then he bent it. Then he flapped it.

Then he took the bandage off, whooped and threw the bandage

into the swamp. Not the best place to dispose of

a bandage in, in that mess anyway.

But this guy couldn't believe it.

And we, we say these things like all we did is pray.

But this is the heartbeat. This is where heaven comes to

earth. And I remember a few of us

praying for a woman who'd been promised to evil spirits in a

bloodletting ceremony when she was a baby.

And she was in the church service, the mixed Burmese and

international church service that we had on a Sunday.

And she literally walked up and she said, you've got to pray for

me now. Something is happening, you've

got to pray for me now. And so as we prayed, the lady

fell on the floor and she started to writhe and wriggle on

the floor. And so calmly and with authority

while inside, you're going, what the heck?

We commanded out the demon. And she stopped wriggling and

she stopped rising. And we breathed a sigh of

relief. And then she started speaking in

this baby voice and we were like, Oh no, here we go again.

So we commanded the demon to leave in the name of Jesus.

And she stopped speaking, breathed a sigh of relief.

And then she started to turn blue.

Her lips started to turn blue. And at that point you could

panic, but we're like, we've got to pray again.

So we went again, again, Spirit of death.

On you, off you, off you. Sorry.

Calm, calm as Googama spirit of death off you in the name of

Jesus. And she took the biggest intake

of breath I've ever seen in my life and sat bolt upright.

Didn't remember anything that had happened.

You know, I didn't believe those things before I went to Myanmar

and they were right in front of my eyes.

We literally watched the light of Christ breakthrough that

room. We saw physical deliverance from

decades of demonic oppression right before our eyes.

And after that, all sorts of things that she'd been

experiencing, anxiety, depression, bad dreams,

everything just went in that moment.

You know, there's no no real hype needed.

You start hyping things up, you start to make it about yourself.

Panic inside, yes, calm on the outside.

And that's the already, and I've got loads of other stories that

quite literally are only explained in the supernatural

Kingdom of God. You know the king is taking his

ground back, the TV and social media and everybody out of these

walls will turn and say that the world's going to hell in a

handbag, but the King is actually on the move.

But the enemy is trying to deceive the people who are

looking for hope. But the problem is I've also sat

with dear friends through gut wrenching grief When the healing

we prayed for so hard just didn't come.

When someone's husband was convinced that he would be

healed and the wife actually wanted a good death and to say

goodbye. But the healing never came and

it was painful. It was agonising and gruelling

for absolutely everyone. When I had two miscarriages and

we prayed and we prayed, but those children never made it.

And that's a painful reality of the not yet.

They were doing the stuff isn't about having all of the answers

and it's not about 100% success rate.

It's simply an act of living in that tension.

It's leaning into the already every single day and saying as

we pray in Matthew 610, Lord, let your Kingdom come right here

on this High Street, right here in our town, just as it is in

heaven. You know, when I was made to

recite the Lord's Prayer at school as a little girl, maybe

quite a few of you in the room did as well.

I was never told what a dangerous prayer that was, what

a risk taking prayer that was. They were just words to me.

But as a faith filled, born again and baptised believer, I

know exactly how costly that prayer can be to us now to live

like this without burning out. We've got to have a foundation

and it starts with being built on the Word.

And by that I don't mean liking reading the Bible, I mean

actually doing what it says in James 1/22.

It commands. But be doers of the Word and not

hearers only deceiving yourselves.

We don't want to be a church full of people as I heard

someone say recently, with massive heads and tiny hands.

You know people who study the Bible constantly but never

actually get their hands dirty and go out and do the stuff.

You know, knowing the Word in isolation won't change your life

or bless you. You're blessed only when you

actually do it. Jesus said it in John 1317.

If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

And we're also built by the Spirit, not by our own hard work

or our cleverness. There's a famous line from

Zechariah 46. It says not by might nor by

power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of the hosts.

We've got to learn to practise this, this discipline of

pausing, haven't we? It means that we've got to

refuse to run ahead with our own brilliant projects when it's all

exciting and spilling over and then coming up afterwards and

asking God to bless them. True confidence in Kingdom power

comes from being humble enough to stop and to depend on the

Lord and to ask what He is actually doing in that moment,

Acts 18 promises. But you will receive power when

the Holy Spirit has come upon you.

You know, if we're going to get out and do the stuff, we've got

to be confident that it's in the power of the Holy Spirit and not

just our good idea or not our need for recognition.

Doing the stuff takes a huge amount of humility and if you

don't have it, you will quickly learn it.

And so as we do that, we do it with a Kingdom mindset.

We refuse to look at what we have, like our small numbers and

our limited resources and think, well, it's never going to amount

to anything. It's too puny.

We don't discard the small things and give up.

You know, there's that famous line in Zechariah 410.

For whoever, whoever has despised the day of small things

shall rejoice. Sounds a bit confusing, doesn't

it? But it tells us not to despise

the day of small beginnings. And honestly, it's such a great

reality check. It was a massive key verse in

our church planting journey. You know, in the scripture back

then, the rubber ball was feeling really discouraged

because the new temple he was building, it didn't look like

the original 1, but God basically told him, look, I'm

actually rejoicing to see the work start.

And it's a reminder that even if our progress feels slow or

insignificant right now, those tiny first steps are the

foundation for something bigger. We know that God absolutely

loves a mustard, mustard seed start.

And Phil and I have got experience with this because we

may be sitting here today, but when we planted this church 7

years ago, we came back from Myanmar where we'd lived for

three years. We had no house, we had 30 kilos

of luggage each. And it was just me, Phil and

Elsie that came to plant the church.

No house, no job, no salary, £400 in our pocket and the whole

thing was an impossibility. But we knew that God had called

us and we know that with God nothing is impossible.

And so many times we were given this verse in Zechariah.

Don't despise small beginnings and look what God has done.

You see a fraction of it here this morning, but there is so

much more that God has done in this town and through this

church because of lives that are transformed and because people

have been going and doing the stuff.

You know, the Kingdom of God completely redefines what

success looks like. It's not about how many bums are

on the seats on a Sunday morning.

It's about our sending capacity. It's about how many of us who

it's about how many of us out there filled with the spirit

doing the work during the week in our offices in our schools,

in our communities. Following two Timothy chapter 2

verse 2, which says and what you have heard from me in the

presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will

be able to teach others also get out, get off your bum, go and do

the stuff, introduce people to the person of Jesus and now all

the signs and wonders, the supernatural should point back

to the presence and the person of Jesus.

You know, all of this stuff flows into what we call the four

corners of the Kingdom and it starts with personal

transformation. It starts with all of the work

that God is doing in US, sorting us out from the inside, being

transformed into the same image from 1° of glory to another.

You know, you can't come and hear a message and accept the

grace. We don't do cheap grace around

here. It's a term that was coined by

Deirdre Bonhoeffer, this Theodrum from the 1930s.

We don't get a spiritual get out of gaol free card.

We don't get to enjoy all the perks of forgiveness and divine

love without actually having to change our lives or take

responsibility for our actions. We don't get to claim the prize

without ever running the race or without making sacrifices that

come with genuine conviction. We don't strive for the comfort

of faith without the actual commitment of living it out.

You know, Jesus did not invite us to add a casual religious

hobby to our weekend. He called us, as it says in Luke

923, take up your cross daily and follow me.

And I don't know if you've ever seen our guys carrying the cross

through the town centre for Good Friday, but taking up that cross

is a very good representation of how difficult it is.

Another of the four corners is social transformation.

You know, the Kingdom of God has got this public post code.

It's not isolated. And if this church in this town

doesn't actually make the town a tangibly better place, then

we're entirely missing the point.

You know, it's about seeking justice and practically looking

after the poor right here in our own communities, doing what it

says in Micah 6, verse 8, to do justice, to love kindness, to

Micah 6:8

walk humbly with your God. It means bringing the hope of

the Kingdom into our hospitals when we're visiting the sick, or

into the way we spend time caring for people or in our

family home. It's the patience that you show

when you're looking after elderly parents or the way you

raise your kids in a world that feels increasingly chaotic.

It's all part of the Kingdom breaking in.

But we also expect power encounters.

I said earlier that a lot of people today are deeply

spiritually hungry. They've got no time for dry

religious arguments. You can't argue someone into the

Kingdom. People actually need to see the

real thing. You know, we've, we've spent so

much time sanitising the church in the fear that people might

find us just a bit weird. Well wake up because we are

weird. What's the point in being the

same as culture that's left people lacking identity, left

them emotionally spent having no hope?

We're Kingdom culture bringers. We do the stuff, we do what it

says in the Bible. People are looking for a debate.

They're actually looking for a demonstration.

They want to know, does this actually work because my life is

in the bin right now. Paul wrote in one Corinthians 2,

verse four, that his preaching was not implausible words of

wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of the power.

You know, every sermon that is preached here in this church

isn't a demonstration of clever words.

It actually gets crafted by a personal revelation every single

time. It's the conviction in US that

we go and then we pass it on. It's this kind of aha moment

that we find in the scripture as the Spirit moves in US and

transforms us. I told the story about the woman

who was possessed by demons. We embrace the Spirit's power to

heal the sick and cast out demons.

In Matthew 10, Jesus says go nowhere among the Gentiles and

enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep

of the House of Israel and proclaim as you go, saying the

Kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead,

cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.

You received without paying, give without pay.

Acquire no gold or silver or copper for your belts, no bag

for your tunic or sandals or a staff for the labourer deserves

his food. And whatever town or village you

enter, find out who is worthy in it and stay there until you

depart. This isn't a passage that says

you're not allowed to have physical things.

What it says it means don't take physical things with you.

You've got to depend on God. Complete total submission and

dependence on God. It's not just for the movies.

It's for the bloke next door who's being tormented by

depression. It's for the woman stuck in

addiction. It's for people who are

experiencing spiritual darkness. Go proclaim the Kingdom of

heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead,

cleanse lepers, cast out demons. Your Kingdom come, your will be

done on earth as it is in heaven.

I don't see many people doing that around Darlington, apart

from the gentleman who preaches on the street.

You know, the last corner of the Kingdom is church planting,

which is simply how the Kingdom grows.

You take a healthy bit of something and you plant it

somewhere else and it grows itself.

You know, this is the practical outworking of multiplication.

In Acts 13 it says set apart for me, Barnabas and Saul, for the

work to which I've called them, the work I have called them.

Then after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them

and sent them off. I mean queued us to the vineyard

movement. We have got a nice pathway where

we train and we quit and we release people and they go out

and plant churches. But in the words of a lady that

spoke at the vineyard leaders gathering the other week, get

out and plant a church. We don't wait for perfect

conditions. You know, when we planted this

church 7 years ago, we totally felt out of our depth.

We'd had zero resources. We were living in Southeast

Asia. No money in the bank, no

guaranteed salary, and no House of our own, let alone a church

building or anywhere to meet. Didn't know anyone in

Darlington. We've been 6 1/2 thousand miles

away. I mean, come on, it's not the

job I'd apply for. But we also knew if we waited to

have enough money in the bank or a perfectly polished team, we'd

have never have done it. We would have missed God's

timing and someone else would have been called instead.

Ecclesiastes 11/4 says he who observes the wind will not sow,

and he who regards the clouds will not reap.

You know those early days proved that God accord us to church

plant and boy did we come kicking and screaming.

But if God has called you, you've got everything you need

to start. We started with what we had and

discerned God's voice and heart for the church.

And he has performed miracles. But multiplication isn't just

for the church planters. It's exactly the same dynamic

when we're hosted small groups in our homes.

It's isn't about having an Instagram perfect house or a

perfectly polished Bible study. It's about opening up our messy

living rooms, tripping over shoes in the hallways.

If you've been to a Christian house, you know there's always

shoes in the hallway. Why do you always take your

shoes off? Sorry, that's the old me coming

out. People don't care too much about

your theology until they see how you handle a genuine row with

your spouse. And some people giggle in here,

I don't know why. Oh yeah, with your spouse.

And then. And people care how you parent

your children, and they care how you actually treat somebody who

is not like you. You can have as much theology as

you want, but if your character stinks, then it's game over.

You know, we've honestly seen so much of the stuff happen over

coffee in a crowded lounge as we have in massive meetings praying

for someone's bad back to be healed while the dogs barking

its head off in the background. You know, and this is the best

part of our DNA. There's no spectators.

We're all a royal priesthood. You don't need a dog collar or a

fancy title to do the works of Jesus.

We're aiming for a life that's naturally supernatural.

It's about being a completely normal person, a bit weird.

And it's whether you know, you might be a nurse on a busy ward,

you might be a stay at home parent, a builder.

It's about allowing the Spirit of God to do extraordinary

things through you as you go about your day.

But you wouldn't expect a Carpenter to show up to a

building site without his tools. And we shouldn't expect to bring

the Kingdom of God without the tools of the trade either.

We need prophecy, healing, and discernment.

And these are tools that the Holy Spirit gives us to get the

job done. You know, it's really good

meeting here on a Sunday and we come to worship God and we come

to hear the Word. But the actual work is out

there. It's outside of the walls and

we've got a generation that doesn't need an apologetic

church. They're desperate for an

authentic, bold community that actually believes God is alive

and is still moving in power. You know, Jesus said in John

1412, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I

do. Whoever believes not the special

ones, not the got it all together ones, not the head

knowledge ones. Whoever believes that's me and

that's you. So what do we do?

We go out and do the stuff. And perhaps that feels too

freaky or uncomfortable to do right now.

We've all felt it. But if that is you, we'd love to

pray for you today. Because actually we can get

paralysis and we can actually then start to turn it in on

ourselves that we're not good enough.

Absolutely right. We're not good enough.

The Holy Spirit power is what brings about the change.

So to end today, we're commissioning or recommissioning

you to go and do the stuff. To pray for the sick, to cast

out demons, to be naturally supernatural, to step into all

that the Lord is calling you to. To listen for where the Lord is

doing something and to partner with Him in it.

To bring the Kingdom of heaven to earth.

Just imagine the whole town of Darlington, relieved of

oppression, relieved of poverty, children in loving homes, people

healed, people delivered, who come to know Jesus as the hope

of the world. What an image.

It's why we're here. It's not a cosy club.

So I Commission you today to be listeners to the quiet whisperer

of the Spirit and to the hidden pain of the people you meet.

I Commission you to be risk takers who are willing to look a

bit foolish for the sake of love.

I Commission you to be healers, carrying the raw compassion of

Jesus into the hospitals, the schools, and the dark corners of

this town that everybody else avoids.

Let's not just sing songs about being the change.

Let us accept the commissioning of the Lord.

Isaiah 6 verse 8 says And I heard the voice of the Lord

Isaiah 6:8

saying, Whom shall I send and who will go for us?

Then I said. Then we said, here I am, here we

are, send me, send us. Let's be a people who stand up

and say right then, Lord, send me.