Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Crema Chaj podcast.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Sue and I just got back from California. One of our, one of our other homes. We have a few homes it seems this is one of them that and I was out there at a medical healing conference which this one was actually called Restore Healthcare. It's been slightly renamed and just great privilege how many people are healthcare professionals here? Any here or training to be so good number and it's one of my favorite things to do.
My first career was a nurse. I was psychiatric and general nurse. And then 2008, just after I'd had surgery of prostate cancer, I made a statement in Bethel, a church that sees people fly from all over the world to get healed supernaturally. And I stood up and said surgery is not a second class healing. I wasn't trying to be clever, I wasn't trying to be controversial. I just know it's the truth. And as a result of that things like this conference that I've just been at happened. My absolute passion is that healthcare professionals marry the natural in the supernatural and they erase the secular sacred dividend and they don't feel in any way less valuable or less significant.
And it's a very real passion of mine. I'm privileged to call a whole bunch of doctors and healthcare professionals around the world my friends. And some of them treat me as a father, which is kind of weird. They're much cleverer than me but there we go. They do and we're believing for a real movement. But one of the things that I was unpacking there and out of that ended up today's message, which may or may not be similar to the first service. Who knows when you don't follow exact notes, it's really difficult to preach the same thing twice.
But one of the things that I was, I was teaching there bearing in mind that I'm in a room with 200 people and at least 100 PhDs, it feels like it's like no pressure man wearing but is is really this sort of incredible history of education and of science and of technology and of medicine that all arises really out of the religious communities of the Western world.
And it's incredible that that's where it comes from. You know, if you studied science 400 or so years ago, it was a subdivision of theology that's worth thinking about. Science was actually a part of theology and so I was just teaching them some of that. And you know how this incredible journey of men and women of God who laid down their lives in relationship with God for the benefit of mankind. I Mean, men and women who studied X rays ended up dying of radiation sickness and losing their limbs. And in pursuit of answers that we take for granted today.
And it's just an incredible truth. And that actually the really, the east, if you go back a couple of thousand years, they were more advanced than the west in terms of equipment and tools.
But what happened was that they didn't keep moving forward because they didn't have what I would call the Genesis Commission, which is to tend and care and govern and subdue the Earth.
And therefore, it was when, you know man's ability is married to man's relationship with God and man's commission for the land that we have the advancement in the Western world of science and technology and medicine. And.
But what's happened today is very much that because of that advancement, what is now in the hands of men and women who don't know God is the fruit of the work of hundreds of years of men and women who did know God.
And although this isn't my message, it's a part of something that I've just started to see more clearly, and that is that if we as Christians vacate the secular space, we will leave the secular space in the hands of men and women who don't know God. And they are using, as it were, the discoveries of men and women who did know God to make their millions and billions and trillions.
And therefore, we must make sure that we don't back away from the secular space. I love the supernatural. I will spend the rest of my life wanting to see more of the supernatural all around me. But I also know that we must make sure that we don't vacate that space.
That was, you see, the men and women who are there today who are making their millions don't know God.
They are being given the resources of generations who knew God.
And we need to get back in there.
And in a university city like this. I'm always going to say something around that, because there are no first in class ministries, no first in class anointings, no first in class professions or callings.
And therefore we must get back in that space. Is that okay?
A couple of you agree? Joel did anyway.
But out of me being there and teaching and thinking, which I tend to do, came today's what I'm going to share with you. And my title is this. Are you a professional Christian?
Now, the thing is, you might, when I say that, hear me asking a question that I'm not actually asking, because one of the problems is the word profession. We have tended to make it about somebody who makes money doing something is a great example of make sure I get his name right. Tave played. How many people watch Wimbledon, love Wimbledon?
No, not many. Is it too far north or something? Is that what it is or something? It's like there seem to be less tennis fans here than.
And I mean, I'm just getting ready to watch the US Open. And there's a guy called Tavern.
He's a student. He's an American student, college in America, and he played at Wimbledon.
And because he is a student, he's not allowed to take the prize money.
So he had a limit of $10,000 he could win. Well, he got to the second round of Wimbledon and he won £134,000, which isn't bad. Makes you think you should take up tennis, doesn't it? Really like. But so, you know, he actually had ended up with a problem.
So he's not a professional. Here's the question is, if he'd won Wimbledon, would he have been a professional?
Because he wouldn't have been able to take the money.
See, we've tended to make the word professional associated with whether or not I make money doing it.
And, you know, I think there are a number of other examples that I could use. And what we've ended up with is we've come a long way from where the original word profession came from.
See, the original word profession, its earliest use apparently is somewhere between 1100 and 1500, where we. We borrowed the word from the French, who got it from Latin, which is professio, which means a public declaration.
And actually that the origin of that is the solemn declarations and the vows of that were taken when entering into a religious order.
And so then the. The progress over time, because remember that education, science, technology, medicine grew out of the religious orders. And therefore the word profession is a result of people professing, making a declaration out of what they believed.
So you have this.
Now, how many of you, that's new to you, you never thought the word profession and profess came together.
You don't all have to own up and be honest. But here's what's interesting. You take it. So I profess it becomes my profession.
If I continue in it and get good at it, I become a professional.
And the real goal is, and here I'd never made the connection is if I'm good at it, I teach other people and therefore I become a professor.
I'd never seen that until two weeks ago. That sequence of the words, some of you much further advanced and cleverer than me.
But what's the point? The point is this, that it all begins with my values.
What am I declaring? What am I professing? I'll read this in another translation, but it's interesting to me that 1 Timothy 6, 11:12 in the King James uses the word profess.
So let me read it to you. But thou, O man of God, flee these things and follow after. Righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness, fight the good fight of faith, Lay hold on eternal life. Where unto they said things beautifully back in the day. Where unto thou art also called and has professed a good profession before many witnesses.
So my question is, are you a professional Christian?
It's not about getting paid to do it, it's about it being the result of your declaration.
Therefore you have a profession, a way of life that you should be becoming a professional in constantly improving, learning, growing. And the goal for every one of us is we become professors.
We should be professors of what we declare and what we believe.
See, are you a value led Christian?
Is your life being led out of values that you then declare, profess, and therefore it becomes the way you live and therefore you become good at it and you become a lifelong learner and therefore as a result of that you become a professor and you are teaching other people the ways of your faith.
Are you a professional Christian? It's got nothing to do with receiving a paycheck. It's got everything to do with making declarations. See what's influencing us in our world. Our world. There are so many sources of influence that I have been looking recently for me and I'll share with you what I've arrived at for the time being as sort of the eight big values of my life.
I teach values, I teach culture, I teach it organizations, but I don't often teach it to individuals. AKA me.
See what is driving you? We live in a world where populism is driving us in so many ways. Isn't it? Probably recent elections. Definitely. Around the world there are elections that people are being elected because of the popular vote, because of populism.
Now some of that may not be a problem. Maybe your values actually agree with it. But it's very easy to get swept along in a tide of populism. We, we watched with those horrible riots last year. You know, young people finding themselves in the middle of riots because it was like the popular thing to do.
What's, what's, what's driving your life? Is it populism? Or maybe it's comparison. We live in a world where so much presented to us, isn't there comparing ourselves. Now, comparison can be good. If it motivates you, it's good. If it demotivates you, not so good. But what's driving you? Is it comparison? Is it populism? Is it hedonism? Hedonistic thinking? Hedonism is basically seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.
Believe it or not, the assisted dying, what was assisted suicide? But they changed it because they wanted to make it kind of sound nicer.
That's hedonism.
It's avoiding pain, suffering in life.
What's driving you? What are you driven by? Maybe it's other people's opinions, maybe it's selfishness, maybe it's reaction to things that are happening.
What I would suggest, though, what we all need is to be driven by values.
And we have incredible sources for our values.
I've sort of begun to go, I think there's really kind of five big ones for me.
Five big sources. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, the Word of God and the Word of Nature.
Book of nature. And you might go, why the book of nature? Well, it's creation. There was a book of nature before there was a word of God written down.
And out of those sources come our values. So let me go back to some Bible and then I'll come back head to try and tidy it up.
You doing okay?
1 Timothy 4. I'm going to read from verse 11.
Prescribe and teach these things.
Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity. Show yourself an example of those who believe. Here's a great example of taking the values and then becoming the example. In other words, we profess.
We profess these things and then it's what we do.
It becomes our profession, our way of doing things.
And others should see that.
And then he goes on and say, until I come, give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and teaching. Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you which was bestowed on you through prophetic utterance, with the laying on of hands by the presbytery. Take pains with these things, be absorbed in them, so that your progress may be evident to all. So it starts with the values that we profess.
It becomes our profession. But then we should be professional, which is take pains with these things. Keep on studying, keep on going after it. One of the things that marks people like doctors and lawyers particularly, I would say, is that they are lifelong learners. They're constantly reading the articles in their journals. They have to stay ahead of the Game, so to speak. There's always constant developments.
And I would say that that's what we need to be as Christians, that we need to be constantly wanting to learn, wanting to grow in, in our profession and become professional, that we shouldn't just go, okay, I walked to the front one day, said yes to Jesus and here I am. I go to church once a week. No, it should be our way of life, our profession. And then we should be professional. We should be lifelong learners. We should be opening the word of God, expecting to learn something, see something we've never heard before, going along to events or conferences or reading books or listening to sermons with a desire we want to never stop growing so that our progress is evident to all.
And then pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching. Persevere in these things, for as you do this, you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you. See, to me, what Paul is saying to Timothy is basically, what are your values?
When you live those out, it becomes the way you live your profession.
Keep on working at it, be professional and teach these things, be a professor. There's a path for us all to be professional Christians, to be value led, professional Christians, and it's not about being paid to do it. And then what I've already read in the other translation, but one Timothy 6, 11, but flee from these things, you man of God. And then he lists some values. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness.
Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. I charge you in the presence of God who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who testified the good confession or profession before Pontius Pilate.
See, what also impresses me about Paul to Timothy is he's giving us the example of having somebody speaking into our life.
He's giving us the example of having, as it were, a professor speaking into our life.
And in our world today, where we need this more than ever, we need to position ourselves to be able to receive. But this incredible sequence is there and backed up by words that I think we've lost the meaning of. You know, if I say that somebody's a professional, you're probably going to think, no, they get paid for doing it. But actually the roots go back, as I've already said, to the vows in religious institutions which gave us our schools, our colleges, our universities, our science, our medicine, and actually our technology.
That's where it came from.
And so really, there's kind of two challenges in what I'm saying. One challenge is let's not vacate the secular space, let's stay in the secular space, let's get back in there, let's take the ground back, let's not leave it in the hands of people who don't know God. But the second is this.
Are you a value led Christian that is going to cause you to become a professional Christian? That is going to lead to you being a professor that you don't tail off in later life. You keep on going. The truth is the professors in all of the great academic subjects, they're in their 60s, 70s and 80s, and that's what we should be living towards.
So in the interest of my own personal integrity, because it's just the way that I'm wired, let me just share with you the values that I've just kind of been doing. This value reset for me, just work, just thinking it through and you know, what are the values that drive me and wherever they are, there they are.
Not to say that these are right, not for you to say, oh, Paul's worked this out, because I haven't.
But I'm just doing a kind of review so that my life is lined up with my values that make sense.
And my first is this integrity.
Now my theory is that a lot of burnout in our world today is, is the result of a lack of integrity, in other words, double mindedness.
That's my theory.
Now I know there's people who have, you know, mental health issues, but a lot of what people talk about in burnout isn't necessarily there.
My theory is this, that a lot of that burnout is caused by double mindedness.
In other words, saying something and not doing it.
And I don't know if you've noticed, but there is a lot more pulpits in the world today.
Every one of you has got a pulpit, social media to start with.
And so all of us have more opportunity to say something that we don't live. And when we say something we don't live. It's what James said. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
And so I do believe that one of the great needs in our world today for all of us is to walk in. Integrity. In other words, do I do what I say?
It's for me one of the benefits and the checks that sue travels a lot with me because this is one of the most dangerous places on earth. Strap a microphone to your head and start talking to a bunch of people like you're an expert and telling them things that you think they should do, but you don't do yourself.
I know it's never happened in any pulpit in the world, has it?
But with sue, it means that I'll probably get a text go, Paul, you probably shouldn't say it quite like that. You know, it's a check in my life. You know, I was connected to somebody some years ago. The details don't matter, but he would very often talk about spiritual sonship and he would flag up his spiritual sons with. With great detail and emotion.
Meanwhile, he had a hurting son at home.
He didn't feel his dad was ever there for him.
That.
That creates instability, you know, and so I. I try and walk in integrity. So integrity value number one is that, okay, you don't have to choose it, but it's what I. I've written down for where I am in life.
Number two, faith and risk. My life has to have faith and risk in it.
I used to kind of slap myself a bit and almost say I'm not that much of a faith guy, but when I've reviewed it, I've sold up twice and gone across the pond and given up everything to follow what he tells me to do. So I think I'm okay in some respects, but I don't ever want to pull back from that.
So faith and risk is always going to be a value of mine in the way that I live my life. The. The very nature of the Christian faith. I don't know if you realize this or you've ever stopped to think about it, but the very nature, the fact that you're in here is that you believe in someone you haven't seen.
So surely the rest of our lives should be full of faith. So interesting to me that you can have discussions with people who say they're Christians about healing, and they say, I'm not sure whether I believe it, but they don't doubt their salvation.
You can't separate it.
It's Christian faith.
He saves, heals and delivers.
Number three, it's. I've put two words together because can't really separate them. But relationship and trust, it's a value, it's an absolute value of mine.
You can't separate them because I don't think there's true relationship without trust, without checking the trust in a relationship. Absolute value of, for me, of mine, these probably break down into integrity is kind of my internal alignment. Faith and risk is my alignment with the.
With the Christian faith. Relationship and trust is my alignment with community around me. Righteousness is my alignment with God, righteousness, and it's a growing subject for me. But righteousness has to be a value that I live being in right standing with God, has to be. And you could wrap lots of things up in there. Generosity. A life of generosity. Not just about money, but about time, wisdom, energy, whatever it is that I have been given. Generosity is how I steward what's been given to me, to come into alignment with what's been given to me and line it up with the purposes and the needs of people around me.
Being a father or the ladies, being a mother, being sons and daughters, is an absolute value for me that, you know, taking so long for the church to grab hold of this truth. But it's an absolute value to know that if I walk into a room, I want to walk in and represent the Father to be a father, to live that out. It's an absolute value for me to live out of thankfulness is a value.
The opposite just doesn't work.
To live ungrateful. There is always something to be thankful for. The world will tell you there's always something to moan about, that there's always something you don't have. There's always something you need. But the kingdom says, live thankful.
And finally, on my eight values to live as an encourager.
I don't want to be around people who don't encourage me, and I definitely don't want people to not receive encouragement from me. Why am I sharing those with you? Because I'm doing a review of my life. I want to make sure that I am a more professional Christian than I was yesterday.
And it's not about earning more money, having more influence. I want to be a more professional Christian so I can become a better professor of my faith, so that I can instruct people wherever they are, on life's journey.
So that's my challenge for you today. I have another message. I think there's three messages in my notes, but I'm leaving a couple out carefully. But, you know, our assignment on Earth, out of Genesis, subdue, govern, tend, plunder it.
And it needs men and women who have the right values to do that.
And, you know, it doesn't matter what you do for a career, it doesn't matter what you do for a job. It really doesn't.
That's not the issue. The issue is that, do you have values that you declare? And that those become your way of life, your profession, whatever it is you're doing, whether you're standing behind a counter, whether you're selling stuff, whether you're in a season of taking care of your kids at home, whether you're a doctor, a mayor, it doesn't matter.
It all begins with the values that you declare.
What Paul wrote to Timothy, do these things, pursue these things, let that be your way of life.
Let your way of life be lifelong learning. Be a professional and become a professor. So you are teaching people out of what you began to declare. As in my case, 51 years ago when I got saved, or 52, I declared something then. And my goal is to never stop doing that.
For it to be the way I live my life, to be a lifelong learner and to be a professor.
So my challenge is this.
Are you a professional Christian?
Are you a values led Christian?
Because it's a key to us taking our place in this world. Resisting the populism, the hedonism, the comparison, the opinions of others.
A battle. I definitely know that I fight and I'm sure many people fight.
What's someone else going to think? No, When I get my values in place, my values help me make decisions.
See, when I gave up my career and sue and I jumped on a plane, it wasn't a hard decision.
We sold our house, we had enough money to live for a couple of years and we had a one year visa.
These days, thousands of people have been to Bethel. There are visas lined up for people to get. We worked it all out ourselves.
But it wasn't a difficult decision to make because we had a value. It was family.
When you have your values in place, it makes your decisions easier. You see your values become your principles and you apply your principles to make decisions.
So are you a values led Christian?
It's my challenge to you. My list of eight. You can steal them if you like. I don't mind. Go through the Bible and find your own. Sit down, review your life.
My goal, When I preach, I can't preach without expecting an outcome. If it's only one of you, I'm good.
This way I live.
I would just challenge you. Go and sit at the meal table at lunch and go, okay, what are your top three values?
What are the top three values of your life?
Top three things that you express that you live out, that you're constantly growing in and that you really want to help, teach, instruct other people. In other words, become a professor.
And the aside message is get in that secular space. Occupy that space as men and women of God who have values of relationship with God. And let's not leave what hundreds of years of Christians discovered and developed. Knowing God, let's not just leave it for people who don't know God. Let's get back in that space.
Because if we are only thinking in the supernatural, we will leave the natural to men and women who don't know God. And the natural was created by God.
So why don't you stand and let me pray for you and then Rachel will come and close out. But I just want to encourage you, become professional Christians. Christians, let's be professionals. You know, if that tennis player had won Wimbledon, he'd have won 3 million and he'd have had to give back all but 10,000 of it. But it wouldn't have changed the fact that he would have been the Wimbledon champion.
It's what it means to be a professional, to be good at it, and to never stop growing and learning. So Father, I ask that you would release to each one of us in this room an awareness of what our values are. That we would become value led, value driven Christians who take our values and profess them. And when we profess them, it becomes our profession. And when it becomes our profession, we become professional. And when we become professional, we become professors. Not to earn money, but to live out what we declared so that our progress is is evident to all.
Would you release in all of us an impartation, a wisdom to access the values of heaven and to live them out on earth. For the honour of your name, I pray.
Amen.
[00:32:00] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Coma Charge Podcast. If you enjoyed this message, you can like and subscribe. You can also join us in person or online every Sunday at Cromer Church. For more information about us, including our ministries, events, worship and how to donate, visit our website at Chroma Church.
