Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Karma Chaj podcast.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: It's a real joy to be with you.
I don't often get introduced as an author, but I have written quite a few books. And I mentioned in the earlier service I was preaching somewhere last Sunday and I just said to people, there's a number of books at the back and you can come and talk to me there and you can select what you want. And this person came up to me afterwards, she was fairly new to the church and she said, I want that book. So I said, which book do you want? She said, the one that you said we could have this morning. I said, I mentioned a number of them. She said, no, I want that book. So I said, well, have this one as a gift. And she said, I don't want a freebie, I want that book. And I thought, what am I going to do? Because she'd obviously got the impression that there was a I just preached from a book or something like that. And I rarely, rarely do that. But it did make me think that actually there is some value in saying the sort of things I'm talking about this morning are available in a book. So I've got a book called Unstoppable Church, which is out there, and Maya and Destiny have been looking after that for me. There's a card machine there. It's only a seven pound book, so you can easily afford that. And it'll sort of make it a bit easier for me if you get the book because I don't have to cover everything that's in the book. But there's something I really wanted to talk about this morning because, you know, when we were singing about there's a great awakening. I've got that passion in my heart. And, you know, one of the things I do believe we talked about that scripture which talks about test me and see if I'll open the windows of heaven. You know, when it talks about the windows of heaven being opened, it always takes me back to the flood, really. And one of the things that happened with the flood was it wasn't just the windows of heaven that were open, it was the fountains of the deep that were broken up. And I think one of the things that God wants to do at the moment is to break up the fountains of the deep so that he can open up the windows of heaven. And that really puts a responsibility on us, really, because his depths are crying out to our depths and he's saying it's time that there was this kind of brokenness in the church that gives him an opportunity to move.
And that's a bit uncomfortable, isn't it? The whole thought of brokenness can easily make us feel a bit uncomfortable. But I remember when I was a student and I knew God was working in my life at the time, and I was working in hospital before we had sort of the kind of sterilization that we have nowadays. So I had this box of instruments that needed sterilizing, and I was carrying them back down the ward. And I just heard the Lord say to me as I was holding that little box, if you put everything that you are into my hands, I'll use you to feed 5,000. And I thought, that's really great. I really fancy that. And then I thought, well, actually, there's a condition on that.
He can only use you to feed 5,000 if you're prepared to be blessed and then broken. We all like the thought about being blessed, but the thought about being broken can make us feel really uncomfortable at times. But I think this morning God wants me to share something that could actually stir us up a little bit and lead us to that point where we just come before the Lord again and say, lord, here am I. Use me. Whatever it takes, use me. Because there's a desperate need in this land. And one of the things I'm absolutely convinced of is this land needs the church.
I was doing an academic seminar some time ago, and I was really making the point that the church does not need this to be a Christian land.
Because some people have got this idea that the church can only survive if we're in a sort of totally Christian environment. I just do not believe that is true. I mean, God birthed the church into an alien environment.
Because the point was the church was there to change the environment. And I think that's why we're here today. We're here to change the environment. We're here to see the streams of living water flowing through the church that bring leaves of healing to the nations. The wisdom should not be coming from the world to the church. It should be coming from the church to the world. So there's a whole lot that God wants to do, and I'm really excited about it. We sang this morning about the Great Awakening. We sang about Azusa Street. We sang about what happened in the upper room. And what happened in the upper room was absolutely incredible, wasn't it? You know, these people were in there waiting on God, and then suddenly the Holy Spirit was poured out. And we know that tongues of fire sat on their heads, and they were so filled with the spirit of God. That they just, they just started praising him in other languages. And they spilled out onto the streets where there was this huge crowd that had been gathered and there was a testimony from their lives. And we know that that day 3,000 people responded to the Gospel message. And I've always had this question in my mind.
What did the 3,000 people have? Was it the same as the 120 in the upper room? Because that would be really, really significant. I don't think God is interested in moving just a little elite. I think he's interested in a mass mobilization.
And I just get excited about that. And I am convinced that what happened in that upper room with 120, exactly the same thing happened in the hearts of the 3,000 people that said yes to Jesus that day. And I think that's the transformative power of God. And I want us to think about that this morning. I want to think first of all about what Peter did on the day of Pentecost, because it was extraordinary. You know, they'd been waiting 10 days. Jesus had ascended into heaven and told them to go and wait in Jerusalem until they were endued with the Spirit of God from on high. And they waited and they tried to get everything in order. It was like they were doing all they could. They were searching the scriptures. They discovered that actually they needed someone to come and take the place of Judas. So they were doing everything that they could to get absolutely ready for the Spirit. But they didn't know when the Spirit of God was coming. I mean, they could have guessed, I suppose, and thought, well, you know, Jesus died at Paso. It would be great if the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost. And so they could have had that anticipation. But I don't even know that on Pentecost morning they would think, today is going to be the day. They were just saying, lord, we are ready whenever, whatever you want to do now. Of course there was a really big clue that it was going to be Pentecost because God had established these things way back. In fact, you know, what we find in the Old Testament is God laying down the pattern in preparation for the new. So he knew that the Passover feast, when he actually said, you slay the lamb and you eat the unleavened bread. He knew that that was a preparation for Jesus coming and for Jesus laying down his life on the cross. And he also knew when he told them that on the day of Pentecost they were to eat unleavened bread when they pass over, but they were to eat leavened bread At Pentecost, they knew too that that was on God's heart.
And that leaven there was not a picture of, you know, we take the leaven of sin out at Passover and bring it back again at Pentecost. No, this was about the Holy Spirit coming at Pentecost, which is absolutely incredible. God had got it all planned. In fact, when they celebrated the Pentecost feast, they also used to celebrate Moses giving the law. That was part of what the Jewish community did at that feast day. And so they'd spent 10 days in an upper room, 120 of them. Amazing group. You know, Mary was there and the brothers of Jesus were there. Even though they'd been incredibly skeptical before, Jesus had appeared to James after he'd been raised from the dead, there was a turnaround. So the 120 in the upper room were seeking God. They were searching the scriptures we know, the kind of scriptures they look at. Because when Peter stands up and preaches on the day of Pentecost, he preaches from the Psalms, he preaches from the book of Joel. All the things they would have been discussing in that upper room in preparation for that sermon would have been incredible. And of course, what's happening is that the crowd had been gathered by the Holy Spirit. You know, the wind had blown through that city in the early morning, and a crowd had gathered, probably far more than 3,000 because this was a feast time. So just about every house that was there in Jerusalem had got multiple occupation for the week. You know, everyone who could had turned up and found somewhere to stay. Cause these three harvest festivals in the year, the Passover, the Pentecost and the Tabernacles feast, were called presentation feasts. And if you were a Jewish believer in those days, no matter where you were in the known world, there was an expectation on you to come to Jerusalem if you possibly could. And they were quite evangelistic. There were people that were proselytes, that had been people that had been converted to Judaism that embraced the Jewish law, even though they got a gentile background and they felt obligated to come too. So there was this massive increase in the population that was there in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost.
And when the wind of God's Spirit blew through the city, you know, people were sort of, what is that? And so they all came out of their homes and gathered together to try and work out what it was. And then into that crowd, you've got these people, the ones that have been filled with the Spirit in the upper room, they come down into that crowd, and they're still praising God. They've still got the fire of God on them, even though it's no longer visible. And they're going through that crowd. And you know, when it says they're talking about the mighty works of God, they were not saying it was incredible. You know, when the Red Sea opened up and all the children. No, they were talking about what had just happened in their lives. You know, I've been taken out of darkness and brought into life. You know, God's just changed my whole life. And these were the mighty works of God that were being heard in different languages. And some were even speaking their own language because it said the people of Judea understood them as well. So this was incredible impact. And so when Peter stands up to preach, he's got this people group in front of him that are curious, you know, and then he starts preaching from Joel and he says, you know, these people aren't drunk as some of you are saying.
In a sense, they were drunk with the Holy Spirit. It was the new wine of the Holy Spirit. But he said, they're not drunk as you suppose.
But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel, that he will pour out his spirit on all flesh.
God. God says, on my maidservants and on my manservants. In a sense, these people were religious people who really wanted to serve God. And they were there in that square. They'd come for the feast. And then Peter makes this promise, and it sounded so rash.
He said, if you repent and be baptized, you will receive the Holy Spirit.
Now, that's bold, isn't it? You know, he's actually making this promise, and he's having to be totally dependent on God to back it up. You know, you have this sometimes where you think, I'm going to say this and just hope it works. But he was believing that God would actually do something. And I actually believe that he was quite clear as to what the expectation was in his heart. Because, you know, you preach a sermon, you preach a sermon, and you think it'd be great if people respond. And you may have a few respond, but he was believing, I think, for a really specific number to respond.
Because, you know, they were talking about giving the law of Moses. Well, when the law of Moses came in on that day, when Moses brought the tablets down from the mountain, 3,000 people died because they'd been worshipping an idol. And Moses said, who's for the Lord and who's for this idol? And 3,000 of them didn't sign up for the lord. And those 3,000 that didn't sign up lost their lives that day. And Jesus in the upper room when they were there before he went to the cross, said, this is the new covenant in my blood.
So he's talking about a new agreement that God is establishing. It had been signalled up hundreds of years before. At the time of the exile, Jeremiah and Ezekiel started saying, there's going to be a new covenant. There's going to be a new covenant. And then, incredibly, Jesus announces it. After this long gap, he says, now is the new covenant. And so when they're looking at the Scriptures, they're thinking, what's this new covenant about?
Well, Jeremiah and Ezekiel make it really clear. This is the covenant, which means that the the law of God is no longer external to you. It's actually written in your heart and written in your mind. This is the time when no longer people will be saying, know the Lord as if it's remote because everyone will have the opportunity to know him. So this is the new covenant that's coming in. And so he's preaching with this expectation that if the old covenant, there was a covenant of death, saw 3,000 people die, he was believing, I'm absolutely certain that on the day when the new covenant coming in, he was going to see 3,000 people live.
And so the appeal wasn't some casual thing. Let's just see how many people say yes. There was a pressing through. And I believe that he exhorted, it says in Scripture, with many such words, he exhorted them. So after he preached, he's pressing on in faith. There are 3,000 people in this crowd that I believe are going to say yes to Jesus today and be baptized. And he's made this rash promise which would have seemed, that if you are repentant and you are baptized, you will receive the Holy Spirit. And he could have said, in exactly the same way as we just have, you will know him in the way that we've now come to know him. Of course, what they needed at this moment was the reality. You could give them all the explanations later, but this was the moment when they had to make their decision. And 3,000 people, even as he was preaching, were making their way to the Paul of Siloam and the pool of Bethesda to be baptized.
Baptizing 3,000 people in one day is quite an assignment, but they just got on with it. And as people were coming back out of the water, you knew their lives had been transformed. And what's more important, they knew their lives had been transformed. I think one of the things that we're going to see in these days as we're looking for a great awakening is something that happens in the church that transforms the church. When I was a student, you know, I was at medical school, and a lot of us were thinking about serving overseas. And we knew that some of the countries where we were thinking of going were going to be really tough. You know, one missionary going out there amongst so many was going to be really hard. And we started praying, lord, why don't you send the people from the nations to this country?
And that's what we prayed. We really believed that if there was a vibrant church in this country, the way that we could really see effective evangelism take place was people from other nations coming here and encountering Jesus, not just in one missionary here and one missionary there, but in a vibrant church that was actually living out the life of God to the level that, you know, when you landed at Heathrow or Gatwick or Manchester, you would know that you've come into the place where the spirit of the Lord was operating. That's what we were believing for.
Now, it sounds impossible, but, you know, that's what a vibrant church can do.
Every time I go to Nigeria, I'm flying out to Nigeria the week after next. But every time I go to Nigeria, I'm always reminded that when I first went out there, there was a sign when you were getting off the plane. It says, welcome to Nigeria, a passionate people. And if you've ever been to Nigeria, you know, the first time I was out there, I saw two people having what I thought was an argument on the street. They were just having a discussion, but it was so passionate, you know, it was just so passionate. The first time I went to a drama group in Nigeria for the church, they were actually performing the Road to Emmaus sketch. When, you know, we got to the moment when Jesus was revealed to the two on the road to Emmaus. And, you know, you do this in sort of white culture, and it's all very polite, oh, it's Jesus.
But it was, ah, it's Jesus. And I thought, this is different.
This is a passionate people.
And, you know, that was just what you got when you arrived.
But we just believed that there was something that we could find in this nation, that if the church was alive, what a transformative experience it would be. You know, it wouldn't be a case of people coming in and saying, gosh, is this where the missionaries came from? What happened to the church it would be a case of, we can see why the people came from here, because what we've got here is just so incredible, it just needs to be shared. So that's what we were expecting. And on the day of Pentecost, that's what happened. Basically. You know, when those 3,000 people encountered Jesus, they got a recognition of a radical transformation in their lives. They might not have had the words for it, they might not have been able to say, you know, I've just been born again. They just knew that somehow the spirit of God had just transformed them and they knew their lives would never be the same again. Many of them had been trying to live under the Jewish law and had found it impossible. But now, in an incredible way, now that the word of God was written in their hearts and in their minds, everything that had looked like a commandment becomes a promise. You just think about this. If you have got the empowerment of the Holy Spirit and the law of God written on your heart and your mind, every one of those commandments becomes a promise. It's not, thou shalt not kill, it's you won't kill.
It becomes a promise.
You won't commit adultery, you won't steal, you won't covet. You've got a different nature now. The heart of stone has been taken out. You've been given a heart of flesh and God is writing the laws on the fleshy tablets of your heart. And suddenly everything has changed. And everything had changed on the inside of them. They were new people and they'd got a radical change that they were able to recognize in their lives. They might not have been able to articulate it, but they knew it was there.
And the incredible thing was that, do you know, I've done lots of evangelistic campaigns. I know the last big one that Billy Graham did here, I was responsible for all the counseling and the follow up for that. And, and we were seeing 3,000 people a night respond. It was like the day of Pentecost every night. It was just incredible. And I was responsible for making sure that every one of those people were talked to, given an opportunity to pray the prayer of salvation, and then allocated to a church. It was a big assignment. And I know that every night I knew I could absolutely rely on it, that we get to the end of the message. And Billy Graham would stand there and he'd say, now those of you who've just given your life to Jesus, there are four things I want you to know. You gotta read your Bible, you gotta pray, you gotta talk to Jesus. You've gotta meet with other Christians, find a Bible believing church, and you've gotta share the good news with others.
And you know, that was the necessary commitment that we were having to make to people. But I don't think Peter, I can't find it in Acts chapter two where Peter stood up on the day of Pentecost and said, now, now you've made this commitment. I want you to read your Bibles, I want you to pray, I want you to have fellowship with one another and I want you to make sure you tell other people. But it says this in the Bible, Talking of the 3,000, they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayers. Everyone was filled with awe of the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. And all the believers were together and everything was in common. No one had to tell them.
No one had to tell them. I don't think the apostles said, could you all be here at 9:00 tomorrow in Solomon's Colonnade? I think they said to one another, let's meet here at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning at Solomon's Colonnade. They didn't have to be told to pray. In fact, when the apostles James, Peter and John went up to pray, I think the church was already praying in Solomon's Colonnade when they went up and saw that lame man healed at the beautiful gate. Because there was such a passion in people's hearts, they wanted to meet together, they wanted to fellowship. They devoted themselves to it. It was a big thing. You know, some of them had only come for a week. You know, they'd only brought a toothbrush and a few bits and pieces and they were staying with Auntie, so and so. And then they say, I am not going home until I've got everything I can possibly get out of this. Which was tough on Auntie. So and so this is why the church had to start looking for alternative accommodation. Basically, they'd got all of these people that had come for a week and were staying indefinitely because they were just so hungry for God. Isn't that incredible? The first Bible college didn't have a recruitment program.
These people were just so motivated.
So they got this mutual encouragement. They just wanted to build one another up. I mean, the book called Unstoppable Church that's out there. I wrote this because I was beginning to realize that somewhere along the line we were getting confused about discipleship. In fact, in America they don't talk about discipleship. They talk about one to one and I thought, well, yeah, discipleship is one to one, but it's also the opportunity to. Like this morning, this is a discipleship exercise, folks, whether you realize it or not. And when they were actually teaching 3,000 people in Solomon's Colonnade and the numbers went up to 5,000 and there were 12 of them doing the teaching, even if you divided them all into groups, you were still actually not one to one. But the one to one element was what was going on at a voluntary level amongst people, you know, and I do a lot of running. I went out for a run this morning and I know I run faster. If there's a pace setter for someone running in front of me, it's a provocation to run faster. But I know sometimes I can be a pacesetter for someone else. And, you know, it's that ability, isn't it, to run together. So sometimes you're the pacesetter for them and sometimes they're the pacesetter for you. I mean, one of the things that seems crazy to me is if you bring a friend along to church and they get saved, that friend gets taken away from you very often and put in a special group, whereas you could actually be their number one encourager.
And we need to realize that we can do this. So this is God wanting to mobilize the church.
And, you know, not only were they into mutual encouragement and prayer and actually giving. So that the giving was phenomenal. I mean, just think about it. You know, these people that had come for a week and were staying indefinitely, they had to house them, they had to feed them, they had to do all of these things. And initially the apostles were doing it, but then they said, no, no, no, come on, look, this is something we can do.
And then they were so hungry for God's word.
I think they said to the apostles, could you be here to teach us tomorrow morning at 9:00? I think this wasn't the apostles telling them. I think it was them telling the apostles. I remember being out in Uganda, this was ages ago, and I'd been teaching on Jacob wrestling with God and how his thigh had been put out of joint and how after that he limped. And, you know, that seemed to be quite good for the sheep that were carrying young or a bit elderly. And I realized that what happens a lot of the time is the church progresses at the speed of the slowest.
Now if you think about this, if you're in a race and you're all slowing down so that the one at the back doesn't feel bad, you'll end up virtually standing still.
And there was something that really struck me about this, and I actually said to the crowd, there was a whole load of pastors sitting on one side. I said to them, how many of you here today would wish your pastor would increase the pace of your church? And they all put their hands up and the pastors looked shocked.
But I tell you what, every time I went back, I was seeing them actually fulfilling that commitment. Some of the churches I went to at the beginning with just 200 members, one church ended up actually taking the Mandela stadium and having 130,000 people in it on New Year's Eve. And that started with just 200 people when I first went out there and encouraged them to increase the pace in the church. You see, God can do incredible things when there's a hunger. You can see these things happening. And just that hunger for God was really transformative. And I think we're so close to seeing this. If we could see the church find this level of mutual encouragement and hunger for the Word, I think that we would have a transforming impact upon the nation.
And I think we're really close.
And if you ask me what I think is holding things back, I would say our expectation of, like, predictability.
We like our safety zone, don't we? And, you know, but God is doing things that are taking us out of our safety zone. He's saving people. You wouldn't expect him to save. Well, I would expect him to save because I've always known he goes for the worst. I used to go to a church when I was a kid, and it had a big sign up, go for souls and go for the worst. And I thought, you know, that's what the preacher is looking at when he's preaching us. But then I realized it was meant to send us out into the world with that commitment.
But what I'm sensing now is that if we could see this dynamic church, what a difference it would make in Leicester University, in De Montfort, in where we work, in this town, in this nation?
It would just transform things.
It would be something that spoke. The river of life would be flowing, such power that the nation would be asking, where are the leaves of wisdom that you could give us?
And I think God wants to do this.
And I think we're so close. We've just got to be prepared to break out of the predictable. And I think God is about to do that.
He's about to take us away from the things that are comfortable, some of our denominational structures, where you know, everyone gets, as it were, how can I put it, reproduced after their own kind.
I was the free churches president and president of Churches Dear England for eight years. And I could tell you just about where everyone was at if they were a Methodist, a Baptist, United Reformed Church, brethren, all of these, you could spot it. You could spot the Pentecostals, praise God. But there was a lot else you could recognize as well. And I was just thinking, we've spent so long reproducing after our own kind instead of actually going back and looking, hey, that's what we are meant to be like.
And to break free is something that's a real challenge. Now I'm going to take you to a story in Genesis 30. It's just a few verses in Genesis 30, and the story concerns Jacob when he was still with Laban. Now, God has a sense of humor because Jacob was a trickster. You know how he tried to trick his brother out of his inheritance? Well, God sent him on a journey and he ended up living with an even bigger trickster than he was himself because Uncle Laban knew how to pull a fast one. You know, he managed to get more work out of that young Jacob than you can possibly imagine, first of all by giving him the wrong wife, but then making him work for the next one. So, I mean, there was all sorts of things he did. But in the end, Jacob knows it's time to move on.
And so he says to Laban, look, can we do a deal? Okay, I'll move on. I've looked after your flock for all of these years. I am entitled to them. I'm your son in law. I'm the one who's looked after them. But I will only take the ones that are speckled or spotted.
And Laban said, it's a deal.
But then what Laban did was to say to his sons, can you go through the flocks and take all of the goats and sheep, the male goats and sheep that are spotted and speckled, and take them miles away from here? And what he was trying to do was to make sure that there were no spotted and speckled sheep reproduced in that flock of sheep and goats.
And, you know, you'd think that would be the end of the story.
But you know, there are times when God puts us in a position where he says, you know, that's not how it's going to work.
It's no longer going to be sort of reproducing after their own kind.
It's actually going to be people will replicate what they see. Now this is what I'm absolutely convinced that God wants to do. Once we can see a vibrant church, people that get born again into a vibrant church will be born again into that same kind of vibrancy of spirit instead of just into a sort of denominational formality. You understanding what I'm saying? So sometimes it's good, isn't it? We say, yeah, we know exactly what we're going to do. We're going to have the people like this, the ones that you might reject. We go for the spotted and we go for the speckled. And then guess what? Someone tries to say, well, you're not going to get any of them.
But what Jacob did was really quite odd. Don't ask me to explain it scientifically. He got sticks and he peeled off some of the bark of the sticks so that the sticks looked spotted and speckled. And then he put the spotted and speckled sticks into the runnels where they came to the water trough, which was where normally the sort of multiplication took place.
And it was incredible because what happened was that as those sheep and goats looked on those speckled sticks, they produced speckled offspring.
Now I've just got this sense that if the church presents what God wants people to be, we are not going to see people just as it were, born again into the pattern of the past. We're going to see people born again into the reality and the fullness of what God wants to do. We're going to see a generation that's born again with a realization of the radical change that's taken place in their lives. We're going to see people that want mutual encouragement. We're going to see people that are hungry for God's word. But we are the ones that have got to be prepared to break up the fountains of the deep and to say, if we can set that template, then we're going to see the transformation. Now, I know it's going to be costly.
I know particularly for leaders, it's going to be costly because somehow, you know, there's a responsibility on us. Okay, I don't believe this is going to be a leader led movement. I think it's a people led movement. I've already said it was like the people saying, can the apostles come? I think it's going to be like that. I think the momentum is going to come from the people. But there's a responsibility on those of us who lead to set an example of transparency.
I said, I'm used to going to Nigeria.
I'm trying to transform nations at the moment. And one of them that's very much on my heart is Nigeria. And I've worked at so many levels with the church out there. I used to go initially to those of you who know Nigeria, to the Adeboye's and the Kamuis. And then I sort of got involved with the next level down of leadership. Now I'm on my about third generation of leadership. I'm working. And what I'm constantly saying is this, look, I think we can change the church if we just change three things. It's quite simple. I say if instead of having this idea that we're all tied to one particular senior leader, we said, let's respect all of those that are senior to us and then let's relate to all of those that are on the same level of us and let's release all of those that we raise up.
And I say to them, if we could do that, we will change the church because it will just turn everything upside down. If instead of saying, I am of Paul and I am of Apollos, or I won't go into names, but you know what I mean? But we say, I respect Paul and I respect Apollos and I respect Peter and I respect all of these people.
Or we don't just pick and choose the churches we want to relate to and say, well, you know, I'll talk to this brother because we are doctrinally identical and he's just as separatist as I am. So we can just have fellowship, the two of us, and it'll be wonderful. It'll be a case of saying no. If you're my brother, I don't want to compete with you. I want to link with you.
And when we raise up people, we don't raise them up to ourselves, but we raise them up to release them.
That would be huge. That would be transformative. My goodness.
But I'm just seeing right here now that part of the cost of that is a transparency in the leadership.
And I know in some cultures, you know, leaders are so highly related that it's almost a barrier to mobilizing the church.
Because it's like if you've set leadership up that high, it's almost like a turnoff, isn't it? You know, do I really want that?
Do I really want that prestige? Do I really want that responsibility? Do I really want that pressure? But if you're prepared to peel off some of this stuff and say, you know, I'm going to lay all of that down, you know, I don't have to have you know, five bodyguards going with me everywhere. I don't have to have the helicopter pad. I don't have to have these things. And just be prepared to peel off some of the layers and just be a real person. And then suddenly you're accessible as a template rather than as someone that you have to look at with awe and wonder.
Gosh, I am upsetting people, aren't I? But you. Can you see, can you see what I'm saying? That there's a cost in this? This is the brokenness that we have to go through because God wants to mobilize his church. And do you know what? When Jesus taught the 12, he didn't just teach them to be followers, he taught them to be leaders.
And when they taught everyone else, guess what they taught them? They didn't just teach them to be followers. They were teaching them to be leaders.
This is what church mobilization is about.
It's not about, I'm just going to be a follower. You know, I want this person to be the leader. No, God wants you to be a leader.
It might only be the leader to your friend or to the leader to someone in the office or the leader in your household, but it might be a leader in the church. But it's what God is wanting you to be. This is what discipleship is about. It's about making followers into leaders so that there's a mobilization right across the board. This is what the early church was like. They were initiative takers. You know, when they said, we need people that can serve alongside, and they were looking for the deacons, we said, we want men full of faith, full of the Holy Spirit. Want this? Do you think there were only seven candidates?
I think that was one of the hardest jobs they must have had. Out of all the thousands that could have said, well, I can do that, to say, we'll go with those.
But guess what? The ones that were chosen weren't letting everyone else off the hook.
It wasn't. Now we've got leaders, we can all sit back and just be followers. There was a sense in which God was mobilizing his church. You know, I'm not ashamed of coming along this morning and saying, I'm just having a go at breaking up the fountains of the deep, really. Because I think the result of the gates of heaven being opened and the spirit of God being poured out are so absolutely phenomenal that to preach a message like this and to say, we need to see unstoppable church in the 21st century, we really need to see it. And it can Start here. You know, you've actually got a head start. Cromer. I go to a lot of churches. You're slightly ahead of most on these kind of things, and a little bit of provocation just push you a little bit further. And we can see God doing things in this place.
And I'm going to pray right now and believe for this. I know Tim's going to come in a moment and he's going to do the Peter thing and see 3,000 people come to the Lord this morning. But I just want at the moment just to say, let's take this seriously and let's begin to see what God can do.
I'm not asking you to do the impossible.
I'm just asking you to live out the reality of what the Holy Spirit is working in. You.
You know, he's working in. You've just got to work it out.
But that's what God wants to see happen. So, Father, I just want to thank you. I thank you from the depths of my heart for Cromer. I thank you for what you're raising up here. I thank you for what you're doing. I thank you for the people who are getting saved. I thank you for what you're doing in transforming people's lives. And Lord, I am just so convinced that we could just see churches that really honestly lay that reality before the world at this time and speak of your transformative power. So, Lord, I just give you my heart, really and say, lord, I've always had this prayer, Lord, just break me, use me. But Lord, do it for my brothers and sisters as well, that we might see this world transformed in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:38:59] Speaker A: 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 Chroma Church. For more information about us, including our ministries, events, worship, and how to donate, visit our website at Cromer Church.
