Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Welcome to the Karma Church podcast.
[00:00:07] I also want you to remember when King David buys a field and he buys the threshing floor of Auron to build an altar, and he insists on paying the full price. You can read the story in 1 Chronicles 21 declaring he would not make an offering or a sacrifice to God through that cost him nothing.
[00:00:27] And that site that David buys becomes Solomon's temple. And I really believe that the church must do business differently than the world. I believe that 5 million is a fair price. They've spent 12 million refurbishing it. So this is a good deal.
[00:00:44] And I want the university to be blessed.
[00:00:47] I want the city to be blessed, because that brings glory to God. And many of you here will have been at Leicester University and been blessed with the education that they have given you. And so we want them to continue and we want them to do well because it will mean God's blessing for this city as well.
[00:01:10] Why this site? Well, obviously the planning and the location are good. We've been searching for three years trying to find somewhere.
[00:01:20] But one of the interesting things, I was reading Jeremiah in my readings in the last few weeks, and Jeremiah, the Lord tells Jeremiah to buy a field as a prophetic promise. You can read it in Jeremiah 32 as a prophetic promise that the Jews will return from exile. So they're just going into exile, and the Lord says, buy a field.
[00:01:43] And Jeremiah goes, but this is not a good time to buy a field. And the Lord said, buy the field. And Jeremiah buys it as a prophetic sign that they would be coming out of exile. And I really believe that as we buy this site, it is a prophetic declaration of everything the Lord wants to do in this city and in this nation.
[00:02:07] So we might, you know, some of the building might be an uphill task. We've got to get some of the.
[00:02:14] Some of the planning, those planning things sorted. But we are stepping forward in faith, believing this place will bless this city and this nation.
[00:02:27] So the question is, can we do it?
[00:02:30] Yes. Good.
[00:02:32] The Pentecostals are in the house. Phew.
[00:02:36] We will need a miracle.
[00:02:38] I think we might need some help.
[00:02:41] You know, we are a very young church, but many thousands of people have been part of this family over the last 18 years. Many have found faith here.
[00:02:53] Some have found partners, husbands and wives. You owe me a lot of money if you found your husband and wife here. All right. Careers have been launched from here. We have a big online congregation, a lot through our music.
[00:03:08] And I'm praying that the Holy Spirit would stir generosity in our here and our wider family so that this miracle can happen.
[00:03:19] So what am I asking? And then I'm going to teach on faith a little bit. Back in February, when I realized this was going to come about, I remember going to sleep praying and just saying to the Lord, this is impossible.
[00:03:34] To raise this money is impossible. I know it's a stupid thing to say to God, but you say stupid prayers as well. And he loves you, and he loves me. And I'm saying, lord, this is impossible. And I remember waking up that morning and as clear as anything I knew, he said, all you need is 500 people to give £10,000.
[00:03:56] And I went into my study and I just wrote a check.
[00:04:01] And I mentioned this just before we did the offering at Easter.
[00:04:05] And I know, you know, we need 5,000 to give 1,000.
[00:04:10] But I felt the Lord give a challenge. And I've mentioned this just once or twice. And a number of you in the last offering heard what I said and rose to the challenge and gave a gift of £10,000. And I want to thank you, some of you. Back in Easter 25, when we took up our first building offering, you did exactly the same.
[00:04:31] I want to thank you.
[00:04:33] And we're going to. One of the things we're going to do is produce these little cards and we're going to send them out.
[00:04:39] And before anyone says so, you're only interested in people that can give you lots of money. Breathe.
[00:04:47] No, we are just in a situation where we need to raise some money quickly. And so I feel the Lord has given some goalposts, but over the next five to 10 years, he's going to bless you all. And you're all going to be able to do this because of the blessing of God upon your life.
[00:05:06] That's why we talked about sowing and reaping. Some can do it now, some are going to do it over a period of time.
[00:05:13] And, you know, as I go out to Vivi Mienta, they've been building their building and I've been giving in to that. And somewhere I have a brick with my name on it. I have no idea where.
[00:05:24] And as a celebration that I'm part of what God is doing, and we're going to do exactly the same with you guys. Somewhere there's going to be a place. I don't know how we're going to do it with everyone's name so that the generations to come will look and go, who was that person that sowed into all that God has done in my life now. So we're going to do that. And the reason I've been teaching about sowing and reaping is so that you can see this as a fun adventure, a faith adventure with the Holy Spirit. Because when we get our thinking about money right, giving from our resources into the kingdom of God is pure joy. Because we're only giving out what he's already given us. And I don't believe this is meant to be a hardship.
[00:06:11] So as we have sown, the Holy Spirit has now given us favor with the university and they've made this agreement with us. And I just want to just treasure this moment just for 10 seconds. This is the first time in my entire life that I have ever been the preferred candidate of a left wing university.
[00:06:35] And I'm just enjoying it. Okay, for just 10 seconds of what God does. All right?
[00:06:44] But what I want to do is I want to talk to you about finding faith.
[00:06:48] Because when we have these situations before us, how do we find faith? So find Nehemiah. We looked at Nehemiah chapter one. We're going to look at chapter two this week, and if you're having trouble, it's Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah. So why don't you stand and we're going to read some verses and we're going to do from verse 11. This is Nehemiah speaking.
[00:07:11] So I came to Jerusalem and was there three days. Then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me. I told no one what my God had put in my heart to do at Jerusalem. Nor was there any animal with me, except the one on which I rode. And when I went out by night through the valley gate to the serpent well and the refuge gate and viewed the walls of Jerusalem which were broken down and its gates which were burned with fire. Then I went on to the fountain gate and to the king's pool. But there was no room for the animal under me to pass. So I went up in the night by the valley and viewed the wal.
[00:07:51] Then I turned back and entered by the valley gate and so returned.
[00:07:56] And the officials did not know where I'd gone or what I had done.
[00:08:02] I had not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials, or the others who did the work. Then I said to them, you see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lies in waste and its gates are burned with fire.
[00:08:17] Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer be a reproach. And I told them of the hand of my God, which had been good upon me. Also the king's words that he had spoken to me. So they said, let us rise up and build. Then they set their hands to this good work. But when Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem heard of it, they laughed at us and despised us and said, what is this thing you are doing? Will you rebel against the king? So I answered them and said to them, the God of heaven himself will prosper us. Therefore we, his servants, will arise and build. But you have no heritage or rights or memorial in Jerusalem.
[00:09:05] Amen. Take a seat, and let me ask you a question.
[00:09:15] How do you find faith when you're in a difficult situation?
[00:09:21] You know, we have a large sum of money to raise.
[00:09:25] You might have a mountain in your life that looks so big. How do you find faith that can overcome that situation?
[00:09:34] And let me be honest with you. Last Friday, you know, we could have probably wrapped this up a week ago, but as we were in the meeting, fear came on me.
[00:09:47] And, you know, any of you who experience this, you're about to step out and do something with the Lord, and fear comes on you, come on own up. Yeah, I know, I know, I know it's not meant to happen, but it does happen.
[00:10:01] And if I stand up here and don't tell you that this happens, you know, I'm never fearful. Of course I'm fearful. And, you know, sometimes, you know, we can look at the Bible characters.
[00:10:11] Gideon, oh, mighty man of valor. And Gideon's going, where?
[00:10:16] Okay, God sees things very, very, very different. But. But fear came on me, and, you know, I'm the leader. I'm meant to be walking in heaven.
[00:10:26] And so this is really important that you hear this. We are walking on the earth as citizens of heaven.
[00:10:35] So our job is to find heaven's solutions for earthly problems.
[00:10:39] Okay? So that's where sometimes we feel overwhelmed at what's ahead, that we need to hear what heaven has to say and find faith. You see, fear holds us back, but faith moves us forward. And Hebrews tells us, you cannot please God without faith.
[00:11:01] All right? So when we believe him, it pleases God.
[00:11:05] So when there's a mountain before you, faith changes your perspective. You know, mountains look really high from Earth. You know, we'll go to the foot of a mountain and we'll look at it and go, oh, my goodness, that is so big.
[00:11:23] But Jesus says, if you have faith the size of master seed, you say to this mountain, throw yourself in the sea. Why? Because he doesn't look from earth. He looks from heaven.
[00:11:31] And when you look down from what heaven sees, the mountain suddenly doesn't look as big. And that's why you only need a little bit of faith, because it's no longer a big mountain. So in my fear, I needed to find faith.
[00:11:48] So what Nehemiah does is he goes and surveys the walls secretly.
[00:11:53] Why? Because he needs to find the faith from the Lord.
[00:11:57] You see, real faith, all right, comes from seeing the real need, the real cost, so that you know when you get the real miracle.
[00:12:07] Let me say that to you again. Real faith comes from seeing the real need. It's not pretending what has to be done.
[00:12:16] The real cost, what's this really going to cost us?
[00:12:20] And then we can see the real miracle that we need when it comes from heaven. Remember Moses, he sends the 12 spies out and it doesn't go well. You know, they go into the land and they find grapes the size that takes two people to carry.
[00:12:39] But what do they report? The Nephilim are there, the giants are there, and we are that high.
[00:12:48] We can't do this. And they end up in the wilderness for 40 years. So? So Joshua, after the 40 years, learns from Moses, and he sends two spies out, and they come back after being with Rahab and says, we can do this.
[00:13:06] We can take this land. In fact, the fear of God is already upon them. We can do this. Joshua's taking no chances. So Nehemiah, he takes a few men and goes and looks for himself. He knows what God has put on his heart. And what he's saying is, now, Lord, will you give me faith for it? And I want you to understand, when God puts something on your heart, you then need to find the faith for it. And you need to hear what he says. It doesn't automatically come. Well, at least in my experience.
[00:13:37] Because until the faith for it comes, how will the people catch it?
[00:13:44] So I felt it. And often this fear is demonic.
[00:13:49] It's the demons whispering in your ear. You're a fool to think you can do this. You can't do this.
[00:13:54] Who do you think you're. You're too old for this. I don't go. I know, I know, I know.
[00:14:00] So I prayed, Lord, throw me a bone.
[00:14:04] You know, I often pray. Just give me a sign, Lord, just like Gideon. And by a bone, I meant £5 million in our bank accounts. So I check her bank account.
[00:14:14] Zilch.
[00:14:16] All right? And I'm like, lord, it was a bank holiday.
[00:14:21] So. But then, this last Monday, there's a Jonathan runs a men's group there, and what an incredible bunch of guys. And they'd asked me and they wanted. We did a Q and A session. We talked a little bit about forgiveness.
[00:14:40] And, you know, There was nearly 40 guys there. They were all worshipping their hearts out.
[00:14:46] I mean, oh, my goodness, you'd want to be in this room.
[00:14:50] Anyway, they said, we got a gift for you.
[00:14:55] Before I started, I hope it would be chocolate or something like that. They handed me this picture.
[00:15:05] Hold it, let me show you. Where is it, this picture? And it should come up on the screen.
[00:15:16] It's even got my car on it.
[00:15:22] Personal guest of Jesus.
[00:15:25] You know, I can look around and see all the different people. But the thing that really got me was the Holy Spirit over the flags from every nation, the Lord drawing us from the ends of the earth into his presence.
[00:15:42] Hebrews says this.
[00:15:45] Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
[00:15:52] For by it, the elders obtained a good testimony.
[00:15:57] Do you remember we talked about testimony? It might be. I can't remember. A couple whoops, it might have been a couple of weeks ago. And we said that test testimony, the word for testimony is where we get the word martyr.
[00:16:10] And the word has changed in meaning. And we tend to think of someone who dies for their faith.
[00:16:16] But when the writers of the New Testament were using this word, it was someone who lives for their faith. And it was just unfortunate because they were living for faith, that they lost their life. But the Word was a story of life.
[00:16:32] And you see, as I looked at what the guys saw, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. That's it.
[00:16:43] That's it.
[00:16:45] And faith started to rise up in me because this is how it works. The Lord had thrown me a bone, a sign the Holy Spirit had already started working in them. The evidence of things not seen.
[00:16:59] And so in me, I start to realize we're on a Holy Spirit adventure. He wants to enlarge our thinking.
[00:17:09] So what I want to say to all of you is when God puts something on your heart and it feels too big, ask him to give you the faith for it.
[00:17:20] And when the fear comes, because it will, His Word overrules the fear.
[00:17:28] And what he will do is, as he speaks to you, an assurance of faith will start to rise up in your life. Do you know what do you think it was like for Noah building the ark?
[00:17:44] Noah, go build an ark.
[00:17:46] It's going to rain. Do you know, it probably had never rained before.
[00:17:51] There's no account of it ever raining in the Bible. In fact, it says the earth was watered from the earth, not the sky.
[00:17:59] You see, faith helps us see bigger. We see the things as God sees them. God normally wants to do more than we can imagine. Ephesians 3.
[00:18:12] You know, you think you know what God wants to do. It's normally more than you think it's normally. In fact, Paul says it's more than you can even imagine. And I was reading so. And I'm taking you on a process because you know we've got to raise £5 million. So I'm like, where will I find £5 million in the Bible Revelation?
[00:18:33] The streets of the new Jerusalem, they're made with gold. God has to have a spare 5 million.
[00:18:40] I was reading the construction of its walls. This is Jerusalem. The new Jerusalem was of Jasper and the city was pure gold, like clear glass.
[00:18:50] I don't know this gold exists yet. It's so pure, it's clear.
[00:18:57] And then I have one of those mines. I just start thinking about this. I wonder how big it is.
[00:19:03] That's what it says.
[00:19:05] And he measured the city with a reed, 12,000 furlongs. Its length, breadth and height are equal.
[00:19:14] So I inquired of Chatgpt, because he knows everything.
[00:19:20] And I said, how big is New Jerusalem?
[00:19:27] Have you ever thought of doing that?
[00:19:29] I don't know how big a furlong is.
[00:19:33] Do you know? New Jerusalem will be the size of Australia.
[00:19:42] Coming down from heaven. It'll be the width and the breadth of Australia. But what's more important, it's the height of Australia on end, 5,000 miles into the sky, into the thermosphere.
[00:20:02] And New Jerusalem literally opens the heavens to earth.
[00:20:10] The thermosphere is the last bit to the air just suddenly starts getting thinner and thinner and I can't remember what the next sphere is. I asked Chatgpt that as well. We were having a little chat about this in the week.
[00:20:23] John sees Jerusalem made of gold coming down the size of Australia. And this is just one of God's cities. This is the capital city, but it's just one city of all of the realms of heaven.
[00:20:42] You see, faith enables us to see what heaven sees and get a new perspective.
[00:20:48] Nehemiah is standing in the rubble. His horse can't get through the gates.
[00:20:53] They're broken down, they're burnt down. But in a moment, he sees something greater. He sees what the prophet Haggai saw. And this will be better than the former. And he finds faith for the adventure.
[00:21:10] You see what holds us back from walking with the Lord, the fear of failure, the fear of looking foolish.
[00:21:20] And it will stop you walking forward in faith. And look, we.
[00:21:25] We all have that fear. Nobody here woke up this morning and said, lord, how can I look stupid? We don't want. We don't want to do that.
[00:21:32] We want to. You know, there's something in it. We want to look good, we want to win battles. But when that fear arises, we have to find the faith. And we do that not by walking blindly into situations. We have real information.
[00:21:48] But as we walk with Jesus, we hear his voice.
[00:21:51] And Nehemiah says, I told no one what God had put in my heart that he was going to do in Jerusalem. And as we weigh up the task, we get his wisdom.
[00:22:00] Walking through the rubble, the feeling, I can see Nehemiah there. Someone has to do something.
[00:22:07] Someone has to believe God, and there's no one else here.
[00:22:12] And then he says, I told them of the hand of my God, which had been good upon me.
[00:22:17] And the truth is, unless the Lord moves, we cannot do this. And in fact, if it's not the Lord, we don't want to do it right? Why would we?
[00:22:26] We want to go after what he's doing. And, you know, you see too often the church and works through strategy. And I'm not saying strategy is wrong, you know, the things that are accomplishable by our own reasoning.
[00:22:45] But when we do that, we lose the miraculous from heaven because we're meant to do.
[00:22:52] It's okay to weigh up what's measurable. It's okay to know what we can do in our own strength. But the reason we gave our lives to Jesus was we wanted to see what he could do. We wanted to see what our lives could be in him. And he wants to do so much more.
[00:23:08] And Nehemiah says this. He says, you see the distress that we are in and how Jerusalem lies in waste. Its gates are burned with fire. Come and let us build the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer be a reproach. And I told them of the hand of God, which had been good upon me, and also on the king's words spoken to me. And I just want to say to you, what if we were to build something here in Leicester? Something so miraculous, something so worshipful, something so joyful that the people around us will say, that must be Jesus.
[00:23:38] They couldn't have done it any other way. That must be Jesus. We have never seen anything like it.
[00:23:50] So the people said, let us rise up and build.
[00:23:55] They set their hands to do this work. But Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem, they laughed at us and despised us and said, what is this thing you are doing, there's always people that will mock you. There's always people saying, you can't do it. You don't have enough resource, you're not old enough, you're not young enough, you're not clever enough, you're not anointed enough. So I answered them and said this. The God of heaven himself will prosper us. Therefore, we as servants will arise and build. But you have no heritage or right or memorial in Jerusalem.
[00:24:32] Today, I'm presenting a possible future.
[00:24:36] Raising 5 million in 12 weeks seems impossible unless the God of Heaven prospers us.
[00:24:43] That's the word of God.
[00:24:46] You see, Nehemiah stands in the rubble, but sees what Jerusalem could be.
[00:24:53] The Apostle John is exiled on Patmos, and as the church is in tribulation, and he sees New Jerusalem coming down from heaven. Between those two visions is us, the Church, proclaiming the kingdom of God in the power of the Spirit.
[00:25:13] Between the vision of Nehemiah. This is what Jerusalem could be, John. This is what New Jerusalem is going to be like. Like gold coming down from heaven the size of Australia. And here we stand, the church in between the two visions, proclaiming the kingdom of God in the power of the Spirit of. Let us rise up and build for a land of revival, because God wants to do it here in the United Kingdom now.
[00:25:41] So over the next 12 weeks, we'll keep you updated. This is a new season. Would you pray?
[00:25:48] Would you fast? And I mean, not just fasting in between meals, right the way through.
[00:25:55] Would you take the challenge of giving? But most importantly, would you go to God and find the faith that comes from heaven, that we would be a believing people. For without faith, we cannot please God.
[00:26:11] And, you know, when we do the offering time and we pass the baskets around for the next few weeks, each time we do that, we're gonna show you another clip of the video, okay. So you can see some more. There's more car parking and there's some beautiful lands, and there's a. There's a house and stuff there. So you can start to get a little bit of picture of the site.
[00:26:32] But I also want to make a promise to you.
[00:26:36] We will stay focused on his presence and salvation in this church.
[00:26:42] But this is also an opportunity for us to get our thinking about the resource of heaven. Right?
[00:26:50] And what we'll do is possibly not tomorrow, but in a week's time, we'll open up, if we can fix it up, and we'll let you know, we'll have an open meeting where you can come and ask your questions if you want to come and ask your questions and hear a little bit more. But today, whatever you're mounting, hear his voice over fear and find your faith in him and you will move forward into all of the miraculous provision and abundance of our God. Amen.
[00:27:27] Amen. Why don't you stand up?
[00:27:30] Thanks for listening to the Cromacharge 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.
