Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Welcome to the Chroma Church podcast.
[00:00:08] Good morning. Yeah, you can grab a seat.
[00:00:11] Nothing is impossible with God.
[00:00:15] We thank you, Jesus. I also just wanted to jump on and share a story, a testimony that was shared in the first service just of a guy in our church who over the summer between six weeks, so he, his throat started to hurt. He went along to the doctor, they said that it potentially could be throat cancer. But even if it wasn't throat cancer, there was a big kind of cyst on his throat and he went for continual checkups and they started doing all of this preparation for his treatment. Anyway, they went for a scan last Tuesday and the doctor said there is nothing there, completely gone.
[00:00:54] So we are so, so grateful for the Lord at work and please do let us know as you continue to get healed. But this morning I'm going to be speaking about the family of God and I felt like the Lord put this topic on my heart a few weeks ago. And so I'm excited to share this with you. You know, I feel like it's been a big week for families. I don't know if you've seen on social media, but lots of, well, lots of us as parents, we've sent our kids off to school, right. I've got a four year old who started school for the first time this week and I dropped her off and I have to say I got in the car and I was a bit emotional and then I thought, I think these are happy tears.
[00:01:32] I think I'm sending her and she's ready and I'm ready and routine is back. Praise the Lord.
[00:01:40] I love the summer, but I'm big on routine. I find it really helpful.
[00:01:44] But bless you if you've sent your kids back to school this week.
[00:01:48] But the family of God. So we know as a church that the family of God is a blessing to us from the Lord and so we don't have to run this race on our own. You know, when you give your life to Jesus and you join this family, there is never a day now that you are alone.
[00:02:04] You are, you have been drafted into the family of God. You have the perfect father. And we're going to talk about some of those things this morning. But I want you to know if you have given your life to Jesus, you are part of an incredible family. And if you're visiting us and you're not yet part of, you've not yet given your life to Jesus, you can be invited into that family, family of God, and give your life to him. And so that is what we're going to be talking about this morning. You know, I'm part of a big family.
[00:02:28] I've grown up with lots of brothers and sisters and aunties and uncles and lots of people around. And we. When we get together at Christmas, there's. There was 14 of us. There's 15 of us now in one house.
[00:02:41] Deep breath.
[00:02:42] And I love my family. I think there's eight adults and seven children.
[00:02:47] And I love my family, my wider family. I love my family at home. I've got three children, but, you know, there's almost this beautiful chaos. If that's not okay to say it's beautiful. But it's always busy, right? And I feel like it's the perfect place to see really how much you're filled with the Fruit of the Spirit.
[00:03:06] Anyone else with me, like, you really find out how patient you are when there's seven children around you and adults as well. And it's the same for the church. Right, too. Actually, this. This family that exists, this physical family, but this wider family where we're all part of the Bride of Christ, actually get to walk alongside each other and work out how much of the Fruit of the Spirit we have. Sometimes I wouldn't have a problem with anyone if it was just me.
[00:03:37] Same. Same for everyone here. But the point is, we get to do life alongside each other through thick and thin. The point of family is that you can't get out of it.
[00:03:46] Once you're in, you can't get out. You're in it for the long haul. And brothers and sisters, we learn to walk side by side.
[00:03:52] We are in covenant relationship with him, and we're in covenant relationship with one another.
[00:03:59] That's the gift of family. That's God's design for us. In Ephesians 2:19, it says this. You are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of his household.
[00:04:14] So we are part of the house, God's household together.
[00:04:18] And what a household we're in. Kramer, you know, we. We talk about this. Absolutely. This is true for the global church. So we are part of a, you know, a global family. But this family right here is pretty incredible. If you look to the left and you look to the right right now, who's sitting next to you? These are brothers and sisters, and there is gold amongst us. And just over the last few weeks, I've heard countless stories, probably because I knew this was my topic, but I've heard countless stories of the family in action. And I just want to. I believe the Lord Wants to encourage us this morning as I share some of those. Is that okay? I just want to shout out a few families. I'm not going to name them because treasures in heaven and all of that, but there's this one family in our church who have a separate bank account just to bless the family of God.
[00:05:05] So they put us up. They have it. They have an account assigned with money assigned to bless people in this church.
[00:05:12] And they've been here for a number of years. And I've heard over and over again lawnmowers, watches, people going on mission trips. They've all been blessed by this family because they've decided to put aside money to bless the family of God. How generous is that?
[00:05:28] And in this family, the mum has decided. So she came along to Chosen. Chosen is our youth festival. It happened a few weeks ago. It was incredible. There was, I think, 26 salvations and lots of healings. The whole building was full of 200 young people. It was incredible. Many of you sent your children.
[00:05:48] But I came along one of the days and I got hit in the face. Can I say honestly, with the smell, with po.
[00:05:59] And I think most of the staff decided that week to work from home, to be honest. But I remember also I went into the toilet and I walked straight back out again. I couldn't even use the toilet because there was some mess in that. But this mum, she turned up on one of the days and she turned up with her gloves and her bleach and her cleaning products and she cleaned all of the toilets in this church.
[00:06:22] How incredible is that? Yeah, you can clap her if you want to.
[00:06:27] We cheer for salvations, don't we, in healings. But this is the family at work, loving one another. It's incredible. There's another family. This next story, unfortunately, one of our. One again, a family had a. They had a small car accident a few weeks ago and. And it was actually on a Sunday after church. And so anyway, so the car was undriveable and they managed to get out of the car and they were standing on the verge on the side of the road. You can imagine the two kids in the back, quite shaken up, actually.
[00:06:58] And then another car pulls up alongside them and there's this lady who gets out of the car and she goes over and she gives them a cuddle and she gives them some sweets and she prays for them. And it ends up being one of the children's ministry workers from that morning who had been in her group. She had been sent by, I believe she'd been sent by God to that situation at that time so that she could get out of the car and offer comfort to the children who needed it.
[00:07:26] You know, the Lord sends his angels absolutely, but he sends his saints, he sends one another. That we get to be this family of God together.
[00:07:37] So encouraging.
[00:07:38] There's another family at the moment who are going through immense grief. And there's again a lady in our church who, she didn't have access to her car. She decided to get an Uber 30 minutes away to visit this family and then 30 minutes back again over and over again. I think she's done like five trips in an Uber. And each time she's taken home cooked food, she's prayed for the family, she's put her arm around the family, she's unclogged their sink or helped clean the house.
[00:08:06] Just the incredible generosity of the family. And, you know, this is what represents the kingdom of God, that we would be people who love one another and lay our lives down for one another. This isn't just some fun friendship group who sometimes have a choir on a Sunday morning. Like, we are so much more than that. We are the family of God designed to show the world something of the kingdom of God. And Cromer Church, we have some gold amongst us. And I know that that's the tip of the iceberg, right? There's so many more stories, which I'm sure you would know, but family is God's design to reflect the kingdom. You know, when Paul talks about marriage in Ephesians 5, many of us will know this Scripture talks about, husbands, love your wives like Christ, love the church. Wives, submit to your husband as Christ submits to the church, as the church submits to Christ. So he's teaching us that through marriage, that although marriage is this beautiful gift and it is this relationship on earth between two people, through marriage, it reflects something of his kingdom to us.
[00:09:13] We learn about God's love for his bride and the bride's love for God through the beauty and communion of marriage. And it's exactly the same for family. We learn something of the nature and the character of God through the family of church.
[00:09:29] So here's how.
[00:09:31] Firstly, he is our Father.
[00:09:35] We each have been woven together and designed by God, our Father.
[00:09:41] He has breathed life into our lungs. He has pursued us, he has called us. He has been the initiator in this relationship. He has run after us. And even though each of us have sinned and then we've broken that relationship with the Father, we know that when we come to Jesus we receive what he did on the cross by dying for our sin. We receive that payment in full. And what happens is we're washed clean. The Holy Spirit comes and fills us and we are adopted into the family.
[00:10:12] The relationship with the Father is fully restored to how it was always meant to be.
[00:10:18] The spirit of adoption comes upon us. And we're going to read this in Romans 8. So wherever you are, why don't you stand? If you've got a Bible, you can turn there to Romans, chapter 8, verse 14.
[00:10:37] Okay, it says this. Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you receive the spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, abba. Father. The Spirit himself testifies with our Spirit that we are God's children. Now, if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and co heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
[00:11:08] Amen. You guys could grab a seat.
[00:11:12] We have received a spirit of adoption. It says now we are children and we are heirs. Paul is explaining that we have been drafted back into the family of God. Not only are we forgiven and free, but we are restored back into the household of God. And many of you will know the famous parable that Jesus shares about the prodigal son. It's in Luke 15. And we read about how, you know, the Son realizes that he's made all of these mistakes and he needs to come home. And in his head he's like rehearsing what he's going to say to his father. Oh, Father, I'll just. I'll just come as a slave. I'll just come as a servant. You don't need to do anything fancy. I've messed up. And the Father says, no, I will restore you back to the identity as a son. And he gives him the. The robe, if you remember. He gives him a ring, he gives him sandals, he gives him a big party, the fattened calf. The point is this, that we don't come back to the Father all full of shame and guilt, but we come back to the Father. Not entitled, but we do receive in grace the restoration of being a son with a perfect father.
[00:12:16] That's the truth of when you come home to Jesus and he loves us unconditionally. You know, as a parent, I'm learning what it looks like to selflessly love my children. I'm. I'm not always massively filled with grace with it, but I'm learning to be selfless when it's 4am in the morning or whatever time it is, and they. And they need my attention. We're learning what it looks like to be selfless. And. And this just gives us a taste, parents, of the unconditional love that the father has for us. We get to learn about it afresh as we become parents. I had a few years ago, I think Harper was about 2 years old, and she came into our room and she said that she started to feel sick. Okay, can I just say disclaimer?
[00:13:01] Being a parent is amazing and children are wonderful and they are a gift from God. But on this night, she said that she started to feel sick. And I can deal with most bodily things, but sick is something that just.
[00:13:15] It's not great. And I remember just picking her up and she started to look like she was going to, you know, throw up. So I did what any good mum would do and I called for Joel, my husband.
[00:13:27] I was like, please come here and take her. And as he took her, of course, she just projectile vomited all down his neck. It went. I'm telling you, it went under his T shirt. I'm sorry for the details. I remember the sound of it, like, clunking on the floor because it was, like, chunky. And I just. I still remember the smell. And you know what Joel did?
[00:13:54] He just held her.
[00:13:56] He just was totally unfa. I mean, you probably were phased a little bit, but you seemed like. He seemed like he was totally unfazed. If anything, he held her that bit closer.
[00:14:07] He put his arms around her and comforted her throughout her mess.
[00:14:12] And yes, we cleaned it up. Yes, the Father cleans up our mess. He doesn't leave us in that state, but he receives us as we are.
[00:14:21] And there's this love that we experience and encounter when we come to the Father where He loves us unconditionally. He doesn't roll his eyes at us or scoff or say, oh, you've done it again.
[00:14:34] He loves us. He holds us and he washes us clean. And yes, he brings correction, but he always holds us. He always embraces us.
[00:14:44] And we can live with that family of God. We can wake up in the morning and go to bed at night and walk through our life knowing that we are loved by the Father. I can make a mess of my work or I can do X, Y and Z. And we don't do it on purpose, but we know that we come home to a father who loves us, and that is health. Actually, we walk in Health. When we know that I stand on the foundation of a father who loves me enough to send his own son to come and die on the cross for me so that I might live for eternity in relationship with him. Because that's how much he loves me.
[00:15:16] That's how much he loves me. And when I live with that reality, I can stand with my head tall, not because I'm arrogant, not because I'm entitled, but because I'm covered in grace and I'm restored back to the family.
[00:15:29] We come and we live under the knowledge of the perfect love of the Father.
[00:15:35] Psalm 68. I just want to read this. It says in verse 5, he is Father of the fatherless and protector of widows. God is in his holy habitation. God settles the solitary in a home. He leads out the prisoners to prosperity, and the rebellious dwell in a parched land. He is father of the fatherless. No matter what your physical earthly situation is, he is a father to you. He is a protector to you. And he sets the lonely in families.
[00:16:05] And so my first point is that he is a good father. And secondly, we are all siblings, whether you like it or not, we are siblings. We are his children.
[00:16:15] Matthew, chapter five. Jesus teaches us to pray.
[00:16:19] And we, we know the Lord's Prayer, right? But it starts with our Father in Heaven.
[00:16:25] I think that that's so beautiful. Our Father in heaven, he's not just my father, he is my Father. And there's a place for that. And we have our secret place with the Lord, but he's our Father. We do this together in community with one another.
[00:16:41] He's highlighting, Jesus is highlighting that we're to pray to our Father in communion with others, side by side, whether we've had a rubbish week and we turn up to church and we've just about made it because of all the stuff going on in our lives. And someone, a brother or sister, come alongside us and they speak faith, they speak hope, they lift up our arms, they pray for us, or they take us for lunch, whatever it might be. And then the following week, we do the same with someone else. You know, someone else is struggling a bit, someone else is going through something and we get to lift them up. This is what it looks like to live in side by side relationship with our siblings, with our brothers and our sisters. And, you know, I would like to challenge us, who is ahead of you? Who has more faith than you in this season that you can say, can I get around you? Can I hear what you do in your life? Can I hear the promises of God and how you've handled your money or how you've done X, Y and Z, you can ask them, teach me. And then we look behind us and go, who needs a helping hand? Who can I encourage today? Who can I pray for today? Who can I teach the Bible to today?
[00:17:44] And so much of that is being a parent, right? We teach our children, we pray five times a day, we read the Bible, we memorize Psalm 23. These are all important things for raising children. And we do this in the family of God.
[00:17:57] How do we help teach people who are one step behind us and how do we look ahead to people who are ahead of us and go, would you help me? Would you pull me on? Is that okay?
[00:18:07] Yeah, great.
[00:18:09] Side by side. I was hanging out with a friend of mine.
[00:18:12] She's a beautiful girl in this church and she actually gave her life to Jesus about seven or eight years ago. She came from a Hindu background and she fell in love with the Lord and she's been radically saved. And I was hanging out with her over the summer and I just said, oh, there's actually some people in our chur. Well, there's one girl I know of in our church who's just given her life to Jesus. She's from a Hindu background. Would you mind maybe catching up with her? Going for a coffee with her, she was like, I'm already on it, Rach. She said, I beat you to it. She said last week she had, when I was talking to her last week, I had three of them round for lunch. So there's three girls who have all converted from Hinduism to Christianity and they're learning what it looks like to love Jesus. And she rolled up her sleeves and she said, I had them all over for lunch, I cooked for them on a Sunday and we talked about what life is like now.
[00:18:59] Beautiful.
[00:19:04] This is the beautiful family of God. And yes, we put in structures and we want things to happen where we, where we plan things like that. But this is the family of God rolling up our sleeves and loving those who are maybe one step behind us, putting our arm around them and doing life together just as he loved us. We love one another.
[00:19:26] I want to say this. The gospel isn't self centered.
[00:19:29] You know, I've heard lots of people, well, I would say maybe five or six people say in the last kind of year, I don't really need church because I receive on my own.
[00:19:39] You know, I watch the livestream at home and I have a great time with the Lord and you know, I've been doing that for the past six months. And I'm totally fine.
[00:19:47] And I want to say good for you, but the church needed you.
[00:19:53] Maybe there was someone who missed out because what you could have bought them and you didn't show up.
[00:19:58] You know, we are one body.
[00:20:01] It's not. It's not a telling off. It's not that. But there is a part that we all get to play that make this family work. And we get to express the image of God. We get to learn from one another the nature of God because each of our brothers and sisters are. Have been made in his image, but we all look different. And so as we get to know our brothers and sisters, we get to understand the nature of God in them.
[00:20:25] It's a beautiful relationship that the Lord puts us in.
[00:20:29] So we recognize each other as brothers and sisters, we encourage one another, and we build each other up and we say, keep going even when it's tough. I'm reading the Bible in a year at the moment with a friend of mine. We're doing different versions, but we're kind of on the same track. And over the summer, we're like, are you three days behind or three weeks behind? And we're like, okay, we need to catch up. We need to do this. What are you learning? You know, we were joking about New Year's Eve. We're going to be like reading the whole of Revelation in case we're behind. But it's okay because we'll do it together and we'll spur each other on. We'll keep going. We encourage one another.
[00:21:04] Brothers and sisters challenge one another. Iron sharpens iron. People have different views. And we find out what we really believe when we start having these conversations. And that's. That's a good thing because we go back to the Bible and say, well, let's see what the Lord says.
[00:21:18] Let's actually grapple with this and work it out together. Iron sharpening iron.
[00:21:24] And then we must learn to forgive quickly. The Lord says, forgive others as I have forgiven you.
[00:21:30] It's only as we forgive others that he forgives us. The Lord's prayer is clear. And so as we learn to do that in the family of God, his blessing comes upon us as we live under his commands.
[00:21:42] And so the church can often be seen as an organization, but it's so much more than that.
[00:21:47] The family of God is a living, loving family that God has ordained. And we learn to live in relationship with other believers. This is the training ground as we recognize our father, we recognize our siblings, we love him, we love Others, we lay our lives down for him. We lay our lives down for others. This is what it looks like. We don't have to do it on our own.
[00:22:12] And then just lastly, thirdly, we come under a unified purpose. You know, the. The goal of the church. The goal is a bad word. The purpose of the church, first and foremost is to bring him glory.
[00:22:26] Our highest call is to worship him and to bring him glory.
[00:22:30] But we are also commissioned within that. We're commissioned for a purpose that's so much greater than our own salvation, than our own sanctification.
[00:22:40] It's almost like we exist for the people who aren't part of us yet.
[00:22:43] Before I had my own family, I don't think I really thought much beyond my own life. Maybe this is just me, but as you know, like a single girl, I used to think about, I don't know what job I was going to have and where I was going to live and what my husband would be like, and maybe we'll have kids one day. I don't know. You know, maybe you think about your kind of your own life quite isolated.
[00:23:05] But since having children, I do start to think way beyond my life. Obviously, I think to their life, but I think even beyond that to their children and their children, their children. There's something, there's a perspective that changes when we live in family.
[00:23:19] We start to think about legacy.
[00:23:21] We start to think about the generations to come. We start to think about, what do I want to leave on this sight? What mark do I want to leave on this earth?
[00:23:30] And so we start to look outside of our own family. And this is the same for the family of God. Yes, we love the Lord. That's our priority. And we love one another. But then we looked outside of the church and our heart actually starts to yearn for those who aren't part of the family to be part of the family.
[00:23:49] It's an outworking of being filled with his spirit. We're so in love with the Father. We're so amazed by what he's doing in people's lives that we start to have a faith for what he could do for my neighbor, for what he could do with my friend who doesn't know him. And we start to be filled with faith and filled with this yearning for them to know him as well.
[00:24:10] And so our hearts join the. The heartbeat of heaven for those who aren't part of the family. And this is actually our commission. I mean, I could go to loads of scriptures in the Bible where the Lord teaches us that this is what we're to go after. But one of the things that.
[00:24:25] One of the verses that actually is our kind of church verse, if you like, that we go back to regularly, is Matthew, chapter five. In the message, it says this. You're here to be a light bringing out the God colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this. As public as a city on a hill. If I make you light bearers, you don't think I'm going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I'm putting you on a light stand.
[00:24:52] Now that I've put you there on a hilltop on a light stand, shine, keep, open house. Be generous with your lives. By opening up to others. You'll prompt people to open up with God. This generous Father in heaven, he's saying, as we love him, as we love one another, we are the city on a hill, a light to the world.
[00:25:17] If you can imagine just a dark landscape and people looking out for hope, people looking out for answers, and then they see at the top of a hill a light, a city.
[00:25:28] And it brings hope and it brings light.
[00:25:30] That is what we are called to be as a church. Yes, we love the Lord and we love one another. But those who are looking at the church, looking at the bride, go, oh, my goodness. That's what it looks like to love Yahweh.
[00:25:42] That's what it looks like to follow the one true God. I want to be part of that.
[00:25:47] That's what happens when people see us as the church loving the Lord.
[00:25:52] And so what am I saying this morning? The family of God is ordained by him. It's his design.
[00:26:00] Firstly, my prayer is that we would live in the reality of the Father, that we would each walk in the knowledge and the goodness of his love over us as our perfect Father.
[00:26:12] Secondly is that we would recognize our family as a result of that. That walking side by side, brothers and sisters, we would lift up people who are next to us and be lifted up by those around us, that we would do life together.
[00:26:27] And thirdly, that we would say yes again to the family mission, that we would exist for the family that isn't yet family, that we would be a light to the nation, that we would be light bearers. It says this Cromer Church, shine. I'm putting you on a light stand. Now that I've put you there on a hilltop on a light stand, shine.
[00:26:46] We get to shine for the world around us and lead people into this beautiful relationship with the Father and the family of God. That he has designed. Are we up for it?
[00:26:56] Sound good?
[00:26:58] Thanks for listening to the Chroma 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 Cromer Church.
