Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Welcome to the Crema Chaj podcast.
[00:00:10] Hey, I said in the first service, it is a legitimate way to grow a church in revival, to just fill the church with cute babies. Right.
[00:00:20] I mean, they're gorgeous, aren't they?
[00:00:24] So will you stay standing?
[00:00:26] I just love to begin in prayer.
[00:00:31] Father, we thank you so much for a church community filled with young people and children and, Lord, they're so precious.
[00:00:41] We thank you, Lord, for the increase of your presence among us and all that you're doing.
[00:00:46] And Lord, I ask this morning that you would anoint me, that you'd anoint my words and that I'd speak, speak of your love and your goodness, and that we'd hear your word today.
[00:00:56] In Jesus name, amen. Will you take a seat?
[00:01:01] I wanted. The last few weeks, we have been talking about the Book of Nehemiah and we've been talking about building, which we're going to continue to do. But I'm just taking a little break today to talk about something a little bit different.
[00:01:15] I wanted to go back and remember our wonderful Presence and Promise Conference that we had in May on Pentecost weekend. It was a glorious time that we had. And I just. Because we've sort of been in this, building momentum and talking about Nehemiah, what I didn't want to do was to forget. And it's really good for us to treasure what God does among us. So I'm just going to rewind and talk a little bit about that and a little bit about what that means to us as a community.
[00:01:50] Some of you here today, you've come as visitors. You've come as visitors because babies are being dedicated. You may not be a Christian. You may not know anything about the Bible. And if that's you and you don't understand what I'm talking about, it's fine to just ask the person who you came with, what the heck is she talking about? And hopefully something of what I say will make sense to you. But I trust the Lord will speak to you this morning also about God's love for you.
[00:02:17] Yeah. So we had this wonderful weekend, Presence and Promise Conference, Pentecost weekend. And really what I want to say to you today is Pentecost is not just for Pentecost weekend, and Pentecost is not just for Pentecostals.
[00:02:33] Pentecost is our inheritance, the norm of Christian life that we are to receive and live in every single day, to be a people of his presence, to be on fire for God. But when we have this weekend, what we do is we take A moment just to remember how good God is. And we say, we love your presence. We want your fiery presence in our lives. And when your presence is in our lives, we can live by the promises of God. We can actually live the word of God that we are Word Spirit people. And so we have this weekend as a reminder, and it's a wonderful time. God blessed us. He poured out his spirit. And on the final night of the weekend, we had a glory night, which was glorious. How many of you were here at the glory night on Sunday evening? Well, if you missed it, I'm sorry. But listen, I'm here to say that this is what we're meant to be in all the time, that it's a reminder the weekend, but this is how we are to live, to live in the glorious presence of God that He would be manifest among us.
[00:03:35] And so he was on that Sunday night, and we had a couple of guests with us, and one of them was prophet Rich Gordon. And he's such a beautiful man of.
[00:03:48] He prayed for us and ministered to us so relentlessly. He had great things to say. But the thing that really impressed upon me was that he was willing to stay late into the night ministering to people so that they would encounter the love of God. And by the end of the weekend, we thought we should jolly well pray for him because he'd given out so much. And so he stood on the stage and we prayed for him. And as we prayed for him, the fire of God, the fire of the Holy Spirit just came upon him and he fell to the ground. Many of us were slain in this spirit. And I think Rich last of all. And he fell to the ground. As he fell to the ground under the fire of God, I was praying for him, and then I fell over under the fire of God. And both of us were kind of shaking on the stage for all of the congregation to see. Although many of you were having your own moments with God. It was a glorious, glorious time. We were drunk in the Holy Spirit.
[00:04:42] And this is a very biblical thing, isn't it?
[00:04:45] Ephesians tells us, Ephesians 5, don't get drunk on wine, but be filled with the Spirit. This is the normal Christian life, that we should be giddy with the love of God, that we should encounter him in such a way that we can hardly stand because he is God and we are not. And he overwhelms us with his power and fiery love. And he did it on that Sunday night. And I was so drunk in the Holy Spirit, I could hardly get off the stage. And I sat on the edge of the stage. And then there was this lovely lady who grew up in a wild revival in South America. And she clocked me, and she saw that I was as drunk as can be. And she came over. She walked over and she said, you're drunk in the Holy Spirit, aren't you? And I said, I am indeed. And she said, let me help you get up. So she stood me up and walked me over. And as we walked over, we noticed all these girls standing over at the side. And we just were, like, together. By then, she's drunk in the Holy Spirit, too. And we just decided, we're going to pray for these girls. So we just put our arms around them and we began to pray. And we all began to sing in the Spirit. And we began to pray in tongues. And everybody was laughing. We started laughing so hard. Don't get drunk on wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. We were so full, we were laughing. We were swaying. And at one point, I actually said, I think I'm gonna wet myself.
[00:06:06] And I'm sorry if that's too much information, but I'm just telling you what it was really like. And this. This lady, this South American lady, she said, juliet, just be British, will you? And I said, no, I don't want to be British. We don't want to be British.
[00:06:22] We want to be slain in the spirit. We want to be filled with the Spirit. We want to be filled with the fiery love of God because He is good. And that encounter, his presence in our lives enables us to live by the promises of God.
[00:06:35] And we were so full and so on fire for God. Why am I telling you that?
[00:06:40] Because we know Chroma Church, don't we? It's not about the manifestations in our physical self. Of course it's not. It's about the fruit. It's about what happens afterwards in our lives. But it is about his manifest presence among us.
[00:06:53] Pentecost is not just for Pentecost Sunday. And Pentecost is not just for Pentecostals. Pentecost was the story of Acts 2, when they were filled with the Holy Spirit, overwhelmed with the Holy Spirit, the so that they all look like they were drunk.
[00:07:10] And then by Acts 4, it seems they've leaked because they're praying again. Stretch out your hand and perform signs and wonders. And he comes again, and he fills them with his Holy Spirit. This is the norm for Christian life, you know? There was another young preacher with us for presence and promise. And his name was Dylan. Long. And he preached the word of God in such a powerful way.
[00:07:34] And he talked about what it really means to be a true disciple of Jesus. He talked about this cruciform life and laid down life, surrendered to Jesus. And one of the things he said early on really struck me.
[00:07:48] He said, we talk a lot about revival these days. We believe that we're seeing revival.
[00:07:54] But he said what we call revival, the earliest church would have called normal Christianity.
[00:08:01] And it just struck me to be on fire for God, to be fully alive and awakened in God, to be. To be doing the things that Jesus did, to be so in love with Jesus, to be so consumed by the fiery love of God, that we live the way the earliest church did, and everybody around us is experiencing that love of God because we shine brightly for Jesus. This is the norm for Christians. This is how we are to live. And, you know, one of the things that I just thought about as I was preparing for this was that some of the earliest Christians, probably about 30 years after Jesus in the Neronian persecution, were actually burnt at the stake for their faith. They were actually lighting up the streets with their burning bodies as they were persecuted. And I thought, aha, you see, the devil, he always counterfeits what's true.
[00:08:58] He takes the truth and he makes a lie. He perverts truth.
[00:09:04] And when they were lit up in the street, the truth, the opposite of that, is that Christians are to burn brightly for Jesus. They are to be on fire for God. And it's not just for one weekend. That's what I want to say to you today.
[00:09:18] This is our inheritance. This is what I want us to remember and give thanks for about that weekend.
[00:09:25] And I just want to meditate with you for a little while on a passage of scripture just to encourage us, just to exhort us in this. Grab your Bibles. We're going to be reading from 1 Thessalonians 5.
[00:09:40] As you find that passage, just from the beginning, will you stand? We always stand here to read the word of the Lord, because his word is higher than our word.
[00:09:51] And it says this. 1 Thessalonians 5. Now, concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you, for you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying there is peace and security, then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.
[00:10:15] But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief, for you are all Children of the light, children of day. We are not of the night and not of the darkness. So then let us not sleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.
[00:10:31] Will you take a seat?
[00:10:35] You know, these two letters, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, were written as the word of God by the Apostle Paul.
[00:10:44] And the Apostle Paul had preached the gospel to them. They were fairly new Christians, and we read about that in Acts 17.
[00:10:52] And at that time, there was some kind of persecution that happened.
[00:10:56] There was lots of persecution happening just because they were Christians and they were talking about Jesus. But the particular persecution that happened meant that Jason, who was the brother who hosted them, had to pay off the authorities so that the Apostle Paul and the Apostle Paul, the Apostle Paul and Silas could leave.
[00:11:19] And for some reason, he says because Satan prevented him, he hasn't been able to go back and visit the Thessalonian Church. And they were experiencing persecution to the point where some had died. And we don't know why and exactly what it was. We know that it was their.
[00:11:37] Their countrymen who were persecuting them because they loved Jesus and were proclaiming Jesus.
[00:11:43] And it seems for some reason their. Their faith and their devotion for God was kind of waning. And he caused this falling asleep.
[00:11:52] And somehow in all of this, some error had crept in and they had begun to believe that the day of the Lord, as in the return of Jesus, was already upon them.
[00:12:03] And that's interesting because, you know, sometimes when persecution hits in our day or difficult times hit in our day, you hear more Christians talking about the day of the Lord coming.
[00:12:15] But the day of the Lord has not yet come. And what he's saying in his letter to them here is, though it has not yet come and nobody will know when that day is coming. We are to live as though we are ready for him to return any given day.
[00:12:28] Don't go to sleep. Wake up, wake up.
[00:12:32] Be alert. Be sober. Wake up. Don't go to sleep. Stay on fire. Stay as in your first love. Stay on fire for God.
[00:12:42] Don't be diminished.
[00:12:44] And he's preaching this to them, people who had been had the gospel preached to them in the power of the Holy Spirit. It says in 1 Thessalonians 1 that they were full of the Holy Spirit, that they had received the Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit. And the evidence of this was true because they had joy in great affliction, and they were known in the region because in suffering and difficult times, they had joy.
[00:13:13] And yet somehow, through this persecution and suffering and struggles, they were waning.
[00:13:20] They were becoming diminished in some way.
[00:13:27] And we know this, don't we? You know, we can come out of a conference like Presence and Promise that was like, wow, we had a wonderful time. And then we go to work the next day. And life hits.
[00:13:39] You know, life gets hard. You only have to go out of here from being in the presence of the Lord. And you know, the presence of the Lord is with you, and his promises are true in your mind. And you go out and you get a phone call from somebody, and it's like, you know, putting a pin in a balloon. And suddenly you feel diminished in faith and expectancy. You know, you. You. You're with the Lord in the morning, and you're listening to the Lord and you're singing and you're worshipping. And then you go to work and you. And you try to share your faith and they hate you for it.
[00:14:12] Or you say to somebody that you're a Christian, and then you find that suddenly you're being bullied because you don't think the way they do.
[00:14:20] Or we experience suffering through sickness or financial difficulties or whatever, and we find ourselves waning, diminished.
[00:14:30] And what the apostle Paul is saying here, no matter your affliction, we live with this readiness that Jesus would return any day. And just as Dylan said, the norm of Christianity that is true for us today, that we are always on fire for God.
[00:14:48] And he gives this exhortation in 1 Thessalonians 5. That kind of is like a closing comment at the end of the chapter, but it's really summing up everything he's been saying to exhort them and to encourage them to live this undiminished life in the presence of God.
[00:15:09] And it says this. Will you stand again? You know, just in case you might go to sleep, I'm going to get you to stand twice this morning.
[00:15:17] Just a little. Just a little passage at the end of 1 Thessalonians 5 says this.
[00:15:24] 16.
[00:15:26] Rejoice always.
[00:15:28] Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstance, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you to do not quench the spirit.
[00:15:37] Do not despise prophecies, but test everything. Hold fast to what is good. Abstain from every kind of evil. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely. And may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, and he will surely do it.
[00:15:59] Will you take a seat?
[00:16:01] This is the exhortation. How do we Live undiminished through the stuff of everyday life.
[00:16:11] You know, the fire of God, his presence within us. The Holy Spirit, who leads us to Jesus, who leads us into all truth, is either an ember or a burning, bright flame. There is nothing in between. The Bible speaks of nothing in between.
[00:16:28] To be lukewarm is to be diminished.
[00:16:33] To be full of the Holy Spirit means to be on fire for God. There's nothing in between. If you think of a flame, if you think of a fire, it's either an ember or it's like, poof, I'm a light.
[00:16:46] And that's how it is for the Christian. This is the picture of the Christian life. His love is a consuming fire that means he takes up all of our lives.
[00:16:55] So when we encounter his presence and we believe his promises, we walk in the truth of who we are as Christians, and we are undiminished. But when we feel that waning, what is the antidote?
[00:17:09] Obviously, it is to encounter him and to walk with him. But the Apostle Paul gives us instructions for how to do that. And he says, rejoice always.
[00:17:19] Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstance, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus. For you let your will be done in my life, on earth as it is in heaven. Rejoice always, Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstance. This is how we do it.
[00:17:38] And, you know, sometimes that can feel hard, but we have a choice in life. We have a choice in life. Every time we face a difficult situation, we are either the glass that is completely empty or we are full.
[00:17:55] And it's how we. What do we do when difficulties hit?
[00:18:00] We have a choice.
[00:18:01] You know, Steve and I, you know, we have been on this building journey and we've been on it for several years, but just in this last season, we are on this journey to raise £5 million, which is ridiculous.
[00:18:18] It can only be a miracle.
[00:18:20] And we are praying and we are believing and we are stepping out in faith.
[00:18:26] And, you know, we're about halfway now from where we've got to raise all this money. And I said to Steve on Monday, I said, you know, we haven't got it yet, have we?
[00:18:35] And there you have the choice.
[00:18:38] And I went out for a walk, and as I was walking, I just began to pray.
[00:18:44] Just talking to God, just began to pray. And it doesn't mean we're not real about what we're going through. I just began to talk to him about, you know, we haven't got this money yet, Lord, but, you know, when you start to pray, you can't help but start to rejoice.
[00:18:59] And as I was walking, I started to just say, lord, you're so amazing.
[00:19:04] You know, you are Yahweh who parted the sea. You are awesome. You've done such great things for us. I'm so thankful.
[00:19:13] I'm so thankful. And this commune starts with God, where suddenly the present reality that you're in grows dim in comparison to the glory of our Lord. And we begin to look at the face and the countenance of Jesus as we pray.
[00:19:29] And as I was praying, the Lord just reminded me that Steve had said that one of the vision parts, the parts of our vision was that we would be like the Moravians. And do you remember the Moravians were, were the revivalists who prayed.
[00:19:44] And then he reminded me that everything we've asked for in our revival prayer gatherings, he has answered. It's like this place of prayer and answered prayer that we've had for years. And he reminded me of when we held up all our new believers packs because we hadn't seen anybody give their life to Jesus for several weeks. And we got all the packs out and there were about 30 of them and we held them up. Was anybody here when we did that?
[00:20:11] Yes, some of you were here. And we held them up and we said, lord, let people come to know Jesus on Sunday. And every single one of those packs went. 32 people gave their lives to Jesus that Sunday, more than we've ever seen. And he reminded me that we need to pray. And we hadn't been praying in our revival prayer about the building because we, honestly, we don't want to bore you with just constantly talking about the building, but the Bible says ask, seek, knock, and we need to do it together. And so that week we started praying again. And we're going to pray every week until we see our miracle.
[00:20:46] Rejoice, rejoice. Pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstance so that the will of God on earth as it is in heaven will become the present reality that we receive, if only to start with, in what we believe for.
[00:21:08] And do not quench the Holy Spirit.
[00:21:12] You see, when we don't believe God, when we don't believe his promises, when we are diminished, instead of being on fire for God, we quench the presence of God in our lives. His Word and His Spirit.
[00:21:27] Do not quench the Holy Spirit.
[00:21:32] You know, there's another part of scripture. There are many places that talk about God as a consuming fire, consuming all of our lives. But there's Another place where the Apostle Paul talks about this reality, and he is. It's the letter he sends to his Son in the Lord Timothy. And we read about it in 2 Timothy 1. And he says, fan the flame of the gift of God within you that you receive by the laying on of hands.
[00:21:58] For God did not give you a spirit of timidity or fear, but of power and of sound mind.
[00:22:07] You see, how do we fan the flame of God within us?
[00:22:10] We have faith over fear.
[00:22:12] And again, it's a choice.
[00:22:14] It's a choice in any given circumstance. But I heard a story the other day and it just.
[00:22:20] I thought it was such a beautiful story. There's a girl in our church who.
[00:22:24] She works in a pub and she's a manager in a pub, and she's only 23 years old. And she would say it's not the best job in the world, to be honest, not the easiest place to be as a Christian.
[00:22:35] And she works there because it gives her flexibility, so she can go off and do mission.
[00:22:41] And so anyway, they've said that they'd like to promote her and make her a landlady and do training with her. And she's only 23. And she told me about this, but what she hadn't told me, her mum told me last week that she prays over the beer.
[00:22:57] We're like, well, that messes with my head.
[00:23:02] The wind blows wherever he pleases and God is not in our box. And Jesus turned water into wine.
[00:23:09] She prays over the beer and they say it tastes better when she's there.
[00:23:16] I don't know if it does, but what I do know is taste and see that the Lord is good when she is there. The presence of the Lord is there and she's praying. Do you know what? In that situation, she could be diminished.
[00:23:29] She could be smaller because it's. There's lots of stuff that goes on in pubs, right?
[00:23:35] But instead she's praying for the beer.
[00:23:39] You did not receive a spirit of timidity and fear, but of power, of love, of sound mind. We do what Jesus tells us to do. We do what the word of God tells us to do. And we take hold of faith over fear. And the Holy Spirit. Spirit leads us.
[00:23:57] Instead of quenching him and diminishing him, we follow his lead and we do what he says.
[00:24:05] Do not despise prophecies.
[00:24:09] Have you ever despised a prophecy, you know, the word of God here, the promises of God here that we have not seen yet come true?
[00:24:19] Or maybe a word of God that you've received from someone. You know, sometimes when we look at this, we think to despise prophecy is about when somebody gives us a weird prophetic word that's not true. It's not really about that, you know. You know, when it's not right, it just. We test and we know. We're like, no, that's not the Lord.
[00:24:41] But when we get that word from the Lord, or we're in the Scriptures, and we're like, I know. That promise is for me.
[00:24:48] And we know, and something goes off in us, you know what's hard? When it doesn't happen.
[00:24:53] And we could begin to despise that word.
[00:24:57] But don't despise prophecies. Stick them on your wall and believe God for them. You know, last year I received an amazing prophetic word. We received it as a church, and then afterwards, I feel like we had the hardest year in ministry. We've had for a long time the difficulties with this building. I broke my wrist. We had a car accident. I could despise that word because it seems like it's not going to happen. But that's not what we do.
[00:25:24] We believe God's word in our lives and we pin it to the fridge and they. And we say. And we pray over it and we say, you said, lord.
[00:25:33] I heard a beautiful illustration of this on Sunday night. Pastor Chris Adams, who was leading us in worship this morning, gave his first preach on Sunday night.
[00:25:45] And he said bold. He said he received a prophetic word when he was a teenager, that he would preach before men and women.
[00:25:55] And at the time, he was so terrified of public speaking, he could not even think of ever doing that. And he carried this word, but he felt this. I don't know how I could ever do that. But he didn't despise it.
[00:26:09] He believed it, and he walked in it.
[00:26:13] And then on Sunday night, which would be, I think, maybe about 15 years later, from that prophetic word, he stood up and he preached on Jonah.
[00:26:21] And he said, I know what it is to be a man who the Lord says, tell the people about my love, and you would rather jump into the mouth of a whale.
[00:26:32] He said, but I'm here and I'm doing it.
[00:26:36] Stepping into the prophetic promise, never giving up. Do not despise the prophetic words that are written over your lives. Put them on your wall, recite them, pray over them, and abstain from every form of evil.
[00:26:54] You see, the Bible also tells us not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God.
[00:26:59] You know, sometimes Christians think his presence will just leave us. Well, he does not leave easily. We have to renounce the Lord and everything about Him.
[00:27:12] And even then, does he ever leave?
[00:27:15] He is the one whose love is enduring. He never gives up.
[00:27:21] Sometimes we leave.
[00:27:23] He doesn't easily leave us.
[00:27:26] He is the seal, the guarantee written on our hearts for our eternal salvation. But listen, remember the glass empty and the glass full, the fire diminished like a flame or a flicker, and the fire burning brightly. We can grieve him, him, abstain from every form of evil.
[00:27:50] We have to get rid of those things that we know in our lives are sin because it will diminish his presence in our lives.
[00:27:59] Because the Holy Spirit, he is holy.
[00:28:04] He is Holy Spirit.
[00:28:08] And when we live according to the promise of God, according to the Word of God, and we walk in all his ways, the fire of God burns brightly in our lives.
[00:28:22] Pentecost is not just for Pentecost Weekend Pentecost is not just for Pentecostals.
[00:28:34] The power and the presence of the Lord, the fire of God living with a readiness as if Jesus would return any day. To be burning brightly with the love of God is the inheritance for all of us who are in Christ.
[00:28:50] What we sometimes call revival. The earliest Christian church called normal Christianity. It is time and to live with the fire of God in our lives, burning brightly. We are the ones who stoke the flame of his presence by rejoicing always in all circumstance, praying without ceasing, giving thanks no matter what, saying let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven in my life. We will not quench him, we will not give way to fear.
[00:29:27] We have faith in the Word of God and we follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. And we remember the prophecies, the promises of Scripture and the promises written over our lives.
[00:29:39] And we abstain from every form of evil.
[00:29:45] And the people said Amen. Will you stand? Will you stand?
[00:29:52] Thanks for listening to the Chroma Charge podcast. If you enjoyed episode 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.
