Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Welcome to the Chroma Chaj podcast.
[00:00:06] No pressure. Hey, hey, Steve, you need to come and get your bits and bobs because there's not room up here for all of you and all of me. Look, look. See, like, there's your Bible, your glasses. Have you got anything else up here? Excuse me.
[00:00:24] Oh, you may be seated. By the way.
[00:00:29] Excuse me while I just get myself sorted. Happy Mothering Sunday to you all.
[00:00:37] How wonderful it is to celebrate that thing that women do, the special gift. I'm not saying that men haven't got this, okay, before you start sending me letters, but the special gift that women have to nurture and bring things to life and to nurture friends, colleagues, family members, children, spiritual children to thrive.
[00:01:04] And it's something that women do. That's wonderful. And it's not just about being a physical mum. You know, if you haven't got children, you can be a spiritual mum. That's the thing in the kingdom of God. And I often on Mother's Day, I like to tell the story of how I grew up with a very, very special single mom who was very young when she had me. And she's my absolute hero. She's amazing. She worked tirelessly hard when I was a little girl.
[00:01:33] And I just honor her for all that, all that she's been to me and all that she's done and sacrificed. But there was another woman who was really significant in my life when I was a child. A Christian. I always say the first Christian that I met was the kindest person that I knew. She was a woman in our street who everybody called Auntie Liz.
[00:01:52] And she had the biggest house in the road, and she used to fill her house up with children, of which I was one. And with Auntie Liz, there was a special place in her heart for me. And she was so kind to me because often my mom had to work and I would just be at her house a lot, and she would show me how to bake, and I would do things with the kids, and she would let me stay often on a Saturday night and on a Sunday morning would take me to her church.
[00:02:15] And she loved Jesus. And I knew that there was no lasting conversion for me there. But I did learn about who Jesus was through. Through that woman. You know, it's a special thing, isn't it, to give nurture. And women do it to their actual children and their spiritual children. And that's what we're celebrating today. So it is, oh, so fitting that you get gifts.
[00:02:36] That you get gifts and surprises and cards and flowers and take people out for dinner. And if you haven't planned any of that, you do have my permission to leave early today and go and sort yourself out. It's very important that we celebrate today.
[00:02:50] This morning I want to talk about another very, very special gift to us, the most important gift of all, the gift of the Lord's presence and purpose among us as God's people.
[00:03:03] The gift of more of him and more of his anointing. You know, we're in a season of teaching where we're talking about sowing and reaping. And as I began to prepare this message, I was thinking that what I wanted to do was, would be based on this passage. James 1 Every good and perfect gift comes from above, coming down from the Father of Lights, who does not change, who by his truth made us the first fruits of his creatures. I was just pondering on that and pondering on this whole thing that God is just an incredible gift giver, that he is a good Father, a lavish Father. And the greatest gift that he has given us is sending His Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit among us so that Jesus is manifest to us, that we would also be like him, children of God, this truth that we would become the first fruits of his creatures, born again, born of the Spirit, full of God, to do the words and the works of Jesus, this great gift that he's poured out among us. And as I was pondering on this, I was thinking what I would talk about is how God is such a good gift giver.
[00:04:12] And, you know, if we don't know that, we don't so well, because we don't actually believe that God's a good Father.
[00:04:19] And you know, sometimes the things that we've experienced play into that. But that's where I started anyway. But where I actually landed was on this thought from the Holy Spirit, of course, that the greatest gift that he's given and the reason we would sow anything at all is because we love him, because he is the greatest gift in our life. And we sow in order to see more of him, to experience more of him, to see more of his kingdom come.
[00:04:53] It's about our love and our devotion for Jesus.
[00:04:58] Luke 11, 9, 14. We mentioned this also last week. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened. What Father among you? If his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion. If you then, though you Are evil. Know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?
[00:05:24] The gift of the Son and the gift of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, making all things new among us, making us the first fruits of his creatures.
[00:05:37] His presence, his healing, his salvation is a gift that's freely given because of what Jesus did on the cross. His offering poured out for us. His sacrifice is a gift freely given. We can't earn it. There's nothing we can do even to deserve it. It's a gift freely given.
[00:05:59] His Spirit poured out in our midst is a free gift lavished on us from our great and good Father. We cannot earn it. When I'm saying we sow in order to receive more of Him. I'm not saying that the gift that he's already given us, that we've just read about isn't free. It's freely given. Of course it is.
[00:06:23] But our reciprocate response to this outpouring in our lives to being God's children, His offering is that we bring our offerings to the feet of Jesus and we say, come Lord Jesus, we want more of you. We want more of you in our lives. More of your rescue, more of your healing, more of your salvation.
[00:06:48] We pour out our offerings because he is the great reward.
[00:06:56] And we've said we're asking, we're, we're seeking, we're knocking. When we bring our offerings, we bring offerings of prayer, but we also bring offerings of actions and things that we do because we want this more of Him. We're knocking on the door saying, come Lord Jesus, Come Lord Jesus, we want more of you.
[00:07:18] You know my favorite story in the New Covenant, Favorite of all favorites. You know, we have lots of favorites. But my favorite of all favorites is the story of the sinful woman who came to the feet of Jesus. Many of us will have that favorite story. It's a beautiful, beautiful, powerful story.
[00:07:35] But in Luke 7, when we read about the sinful woman coming to the feet of Jesus, of course what she brought before him was the perfect offering. Offerings throughout the history of God's people had looked like many different things. But this was the true offering of the New Covenant to pour out a life to before him.
[00:07:56] And with that, she also brought this very expensive bottle of perfume, probably all that she had, very expensive, extravagant gift. And she poured that out as well at the same time as she poured out her life at his feet. And we know what that story is about.
[00:08:14] We know that story is about her repentance, we know that story is about worship. It's about her willingness to be vulnerable. With all the religious onlookers who are critical of this woman coming to the feet of Jesus, all these people who didn't want to be honest before him. We know it's about the forgiveness that she received. But I, as a woman who knows what it is, who can still remember coming to the feet of Jesus as many of you can, I hope all of you can. And if you haven't yet come to the feet of Jesus and given him your life, you will have an opportunity to do that today. But when we come, we come with all of our stuff, all of our sin, and we pour it out at the feet of Jesus. And as she did that, with the perfume, her hair on his feet, what was it all about? She was saying, more Jesus, I can't. I can only get this close to you. I want more of you.
[00:09:16] More of you in my life, more of your presence in my life. Because I can't do this without you. Jesus, you are my salvation.
[00:09:24] And this is the appropriate way that God's people are to bring their offerings. We bring to the feet of Jesus.
[00:09:33] We sow because we long for more of Him.
[00:09:40] Jesus said this beautiful parable. He said, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found and covered it up, that then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and he buys that field again. The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls who on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and he bought it.
[00:10:07] These parables tell the story of the more of the kingdom of the more of the manifest presence of Jesus through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit among us. The more of his kingdom come.
[00:10:18] Jesus is a free gift, and yet he costs us everything. We give him our whole lives, but we receive him freely. But then these stories say there is something to behold that is the more of him that will cost us everything.
[00:10:34] We have the treasure, we've buried it in a field. But because the treasure is so significant to us, we will give it all for him to see more of his kingdom come.
[00:10:48] You know, in this church, as we sow in weeks to come, we are saying, God, we need a building.
[00:10:56] But we need a building because we've seen more of Him. We need a building because his presence has come among us and his salvation. And so many people have been saved.
[00:11:08] We think around 1300 people have walked forward and given their lives to Jesus in this community, that's a lot of people.
[00:11:16] That's a lot of people. And that's the growth. We have seen growth because of that salvation. The more of Jesus in our midst, do you see, the more of his kingdom come. And now we have to get a building.
[00:11:31] We have to get a building because of that. And we're sowing in to receive a building. Yes, we're sowing our offerings. We said we've given lots of different offerings to other churches. You're sowing, you're going to sow. And yes, we're saying, lord, we need these things in our lives and we need a building. But we're sowing because we want to see more of what we've already seen.
[00:11:55] It's the extension of his kingdom. It's the treasure, it's the pearl, his presence in the midst of us. And we'll sell everything, we'll give everything to see more of Him.
[00:12:06] And you know, if you've been around here, when I say more of what we've already seen, if you've been around here for the last 10 years, you know what I mean. You know something of the story of this church. You know what he's done among us. You know what we've already seen. And you also know that it has been costly.
[00:12:24] It has been costly for us, costly for our team, costly for many of you. As the Lord has moved among us and we have leaned in to his priorities, over our priorities as we've said yes to Jesus and seen the extension of his kingdom.
[00:12:40] We've laid down our lives to see serve him and see the more of what it looks like when we have more of Him.
[00:12:48] But some of you have been here maybe in the last year, maybe in the last couple of years, maybe in the last three years. And you don't really know the story of what it means when I say we sow in order to see more of Him. You don't really understand more of what he's already done. What does that actually mean?
[00:13:05] And I wanted to tell you a little bit of the story today. I know some of you have heard it a million times, but there's people here that have never heard it.
[00:13:13] So that you know what we're talking about when we want to see more. That's why we sow to see more of Jesus.
[00:13:21] About 10 years ago, Steve and I, 2016, 2017, we had a big church. We had a great church to all intents and purposes. And to everybody looking on, they would have said, this is a great church. It's a big church.
[00:13:35] But we were not doing well in ourselves.
[00:13:39] We had been working hard for a long time. We had teenage kids, we'd been doing ministry. We'd been running hard and we'd run out so that we were running on empty.
[00:13:51] And I don't know how we got that way. I don't know how we got so worn out and tired and battle weary. I don't know what happened. Because you see, Steve and I were born again. Born of the Spirit. We were both born in moves of the anointing of the Spirit, what happens when he comes? And we both saw the more of his kingdom come at our conversions. And our ministries were marked by that Holy Spirit anointing on our lives. And in our ministries, we'd always seen salvation and healing. But somehow, somehow we got into the motions of form and instruction of what he wanted without actually asking him to fill it.
[00:14:33] Sometimes we describe it as like the cart and the horse. If the Lord, if the Lord, if the Lord is the horse pulling the cart and we're the cart, what happens when the cart goes in front of the horse? It all gets out of. It's not working anymore.
[00:14:49] We were dry and tired and we were not following the lead of the Holy Spirit. He was blessing what we were doing because he's and because he's kind and because his presence in our lives is a free gift. But this more of his kingdom come was not what we were seeing. And we were tired and we were asking questions like, people get saved in our church, but they're not changing.
[00:15:13] You know, it's growing, but it feels like people don't really want to worship. Like they're out drinking coffee.
[00:15:19] There were so many things that we were asking the Lord about, but we didn't know it was because we had got tired. You know, it says in 1 Thessalonians 5, do not quench the Holy Spirit.
[00:15:32] Do not quench him. And I don't know how we did it. You know, busyness sometimes, just wanting to be in control of everything, just not paying attention, not listening, not spending enough time with him, going through the motions, doing all the work. I don't know. And then in the midst of all of that, some sin creeps in and you start people pleasing. You're doing what the people want instead of what he wants. And the priorities shift and change and there's a gradual slippage and then you end up like an ember, like just a flickery flame.
[00:16:06] We were thirsty and we were burnt out and we were tired and, you know, what the Lord did with us in that season.
[00:16:13] You know, sometimes when we're in that sort of place where we need God to ride in and rescue us, do you know, the thing he'll do sometimes is the very hardest thing we could imagine. Sometimes what he'll do is allow the full manifestation of what you're in to manifest in such a way that you see it for all it is. And that's what happened to us.
[00:16:34] All of the things that we had put our trust in, believed in, been working towards doing for the last 20 years just came to an almighty halt. And there was lots of stuff that happened in the midst of that that I don't have time to tell you. And it's not important really. It was just that in that moment, through a very hard situation, the Lord got our attention. Absolutely. And we saw how exhausted we were. Because in that moment where the rug was pulled from beneath our feet, we began to say, I don't know if we can carry on. Why?
[00:17:05] Because this is about his work, not ours. This is about him and us. And we knew that we were worn out and we were not full of the Holy Spirit anymore. And we were not listening or leaning into Him. And what we had in our church was not what looked like Jesus in all its entirety. We knew that some of it was, but some of it wasn't.
[00:17:29] And in that place, the Lord spoke to us. And we visited a couple of churches. And I'm going to really speed it up and just give you the highlights. One of them was Bethel, one of them was Aviva Miento. And those two churches are a people of the presence.
[00:17:43] And in those churches, they were generous and kind.
[00:17:47] And in those churches, we encountered the Lord again.
[00:17:51] And when we came home, this was in the space of a couple of years, visiting and visiting. When we came home, the only way I can describe it is it was as if a veil was taken off of our eyes and everything looked different. And we knew everything had to change. And. And much of what you see today is the fruit of that, because we just began, little by little, to prioritize what he wanted over what we thought he wanted. We got rid of things like chocolate and notices. You know, would you ever ask, why don't they really do the notices? Like, we have a little bit of a notice at the end of church. It was because actually we want to make space for you and notices get in the way. And we began to. To learn together how to do what we did this morning. Worship and praise and experience and encounter the manifest presence of Jesus and make time and space and wait and have what we would often call hallelujah moments in his presence.
[00:18:47] We talked about our structure. You know, the Holy Spirit isn't without structure.
[00:18:53] God doesn't do anything without a plan.
[00:18:56] But we wanted the structure to be his structure, not our structure. And we were asking, how do we make space for you? How do we make room for you? And much of what you see today is that church. It is that church. But gradually, over the space of a few years, and we did things like fire tunnels and risky things that we'd never done before, so that all of our church could learn how to encounter the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit.
[00:19:21] And we leaned in, and Steve has told this story many times before, but one of the things that the Lord said to him on this journey was, walk with me.
[00:19:30] And he would bounce out of bed early in the morning, which he hadn't been doing in years before. But this awakening, this encounter with the life and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, he began to bounce out of bed with our dog Milo, and walk around our village.
[00:19:48] And he would sing alleluia. The Lord would have him singing Alleluia. And he just began to encounter the Lord again in a manifest way and hear what he wanted for our church. And that sweet moment of intimacy, the hallelujah moment in the private place became what we had in the corporate place as the Lord taught us that very same thing.
[00:20:15] His presence, the greatest treasure.
[00:20:19] But then, as he poured out his spirit again and again and the manifest presence of Jesus came into our meetings, there was this eruption of joy. This eruption of joy started to break out, just like you saw today. You know, when the marching starts, everybody's joyous, and they're shouting out, well, that never happened before. It all used to be very quiet, but this eruption of joy started. Like, it's just normal to us now. You're like, what are you talking about? But this was new. And people started dancing and singing, and we looked at each other and said, who knew that in his presence there is the fullness of joy?
[00:20:55] The oil, the oil of his joy. And a garment of praise was poured out among us. But they were dancing, and sometimes they got so raucous and so loud. And, you know, coming from the background that we come from, we were like, are we hyping them? Is this hype?
[00:21:11] And we were like, you're not supposed to hype them. But we're like, but they are just hyped. They're just hyped. Without being hyped. What's happening? And I would sometimes stand at the side and say to the Lord God, are we okay? Are we okay? Because they were so, like, stamping on my feet, and there was so much dancing.
[00:21:31] And then one day, in just an image in the back of my mind, I saw the Lord dancing through the middle the. Of. Of all of our young people dancing through the mosh pit.
[00:21:42] And I just felt. I heard the Lord say, I love the dance.
[00:21:48] And then Steve started preaching about dancing. And I was like, who are you and what have you done with my husband? I'm like, he doesn't like dancing. Steve did not dance at our wedding. Even he does not like dancing, and he definitely doesn't like flags. But something just happened, and he started singing, talking about dance like David did. And then we started writing songs about dance like David did. And undignified praise kind of just poured out of us.
[00:22:13] It's what the Lord did when he came.
[00:22:16] And then in the midst of all that, he started talking to us about salvation.
[00:22:21] You see, at the beginning of the journey, he'd said right at the very beginning, my presence, my salvation, which also means healing and get your thinking right about money. But we sort of took the journey one step at a time. And in the midst of all of this joy, the Lord started speaking about salvation. And he said to Steve, I want you to do an altar call, but I want you to ask them to come out to the front. We'd never done that before. We got people to hold up their hands, but then we never knew where they went, and the community didn't know who they were. And it's like we're asking, why are people's lives not changing? But we don't even know who they are.
[00:22:58] And it's like, of course.
[00:22:59] So the Lord just began to really sort of convict us and challenge us to do this thing. And Steve started doing it. And if you were here, you know the pain of it. Anybody? Does anybody remember that?
[00:23:10] Ah, just a few of you. You see, it was costly, right?
[00:23:15] For over six months, every single service, Steve did an altar call. And for over six months, not one person came forward. And it got painful after three, I tell you, because he was making space. And people are like, what happened to the ministry time? Why don't we just start ministering to everybody? Why are we waiting for Mr. Nobody to come forward? And it was just because, you know, it sort of created this conflict in the community. It wasn't really bad, but it was, like, a little bit bad.
[00:23:41] And then people are sort of coming up to Steve and they're saying, hey, listen, you know, evangelists, get them to put their hands up. Why don't you do those? It's not what the Lord said. We used to do that, but it's not what the Lord said. And then even famous evangelists would say to Satan, Steve, when they were visiting, if you would just let them put up their hands. And he's like, I can't. It's not what the Lord said.
[00:24:03] And then after six months, over six months, the first person came forward and I tell you, I can barely remember their faces, but I remember the sound of the crowd. There was so much pent up frustration that they screamed for what felt like an eternity. Praise to the Lord. This poor person was like, what's going on?
[00:24:22] We were so excited. And from that day on, every Sunday, with the exception of a few and the season of COVID we have seen someone give their life to Jesus. It was broken.
[00:24:36] You see more of him, more of his presence, more of his salvation.
[00:24:42] And now we have seen around 1300 people give their lives to Jesus. Not everybody has stayed. Some people have gone back to their hometowns. Many were students. But because we have seen that many people, we have grown and we want to see more of him. We want to see more of this in our city, more of this in our families, more of this in our community, more of this in our land. And that's the reason we sow. Come Lord Jesus and come and do what you do among us. We want to see your salvation in our land. Revival looks like this and the people sow the to see his kingdom come. It's the treasure. We've seen the treasure. And now we're willing to sell all we have and buy the field that is the more of his kingdom come salvation in our midst. And I remember a whole group of women who didn't even really stay in our church. They came one Sunday night because one traveler had come to an evening, no, a morning service and she'd given her life to Jesus.
[00:25:42] And then she went off on the travels with this group of travelers and she preached the gospel to loads of women and they wanted to give their lives to Jesus. And she took them to lots of churches. I think she took them to a few churches anyway, might be exaggerated, I can't remember, but it was a few churches on their travels that she took them to and there was no altar call. So in the end they drove all the way back to our church for an evening service. And all these Women came and they were so on the tip of their cheeks, ready to give their lives to Jesus that Rachel had to change everything round and do the altar call after the worship. And all these women came forward and gave their lives to Jesus.
[00:26:18] This is why we're sowing people.
[00:26:21] This is the treasure, his presence, his salvation and his healing.
[00:26:29] We've been on that journey. We make space for healing every single week. And get your thinking right about money. And that's what, what we're in now.
[00:26:37] That's what we're in now. But when, when the Lord first spoke to us about it, we didn't really fully understand. We were like, ah, why money?
[00:26:46] And then we've told the story. We did our declarations right at the start of the journey. The Lord said, I want you to do declarations.
[00:26:53] And people left the church because they didn't want to say declarations, they were so offended.
[00:26:59] And then we realized, oh, God, this is why you want us to talk about this. This is why you're saying, get your thinking right about money. Because so many of God's people don't know that you are a good Father and you want to bless your people. And it's not wrong that we declare your word, that we speak your word back to you in your presence and believe you for increase.
[00:27:26] But now we really understand because with the more of his presence and the more of his salvation, we need a building.
[00:27:36] And that building's going to cost us like 4, 5 million. I mean, give or take a million.
[00:27:42] It's ridiculous, right? And we know it's way beyond what we could dream or imagine. And we need to get our thinking right and know that we have a good heavenly Father who can provide for all our needs. So as we sow, we're saying we want more of Him.
[00:28:01] And I'll just finish with this.
[00:28:04] You know, many, many of you, when you're reading the scriptures or you're pondering over Scriptures, you have these sort of revelatory moments where the Lord shows you something new, right? In something that you've read over and over again.
[00:28:17] And the Holy Spirit just showed me something really beautiful as I was meditating and preparing for this passage this morning.
[00:28:25] And, and I just began to think about Jesus's inaugural address, you know, in Luke 4, where he stands up and reads from the scroll of Isaiah. If you have that passage, you can put it on that screen right now. Luke 4, he stands up and he reads, yeah, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim Good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour. And the Lord said to me, see, this is what happens when I come.
[00:29:02] This is my anointing. It's all there. You know, this blueprint that the Lord has given us.
[00:29:09] When the Spirit of the Lord is upon us and the presence of Jesus is fully manifest among us, we preach the word of the Lord, and souls are saved and healed and delivered.
[00:29:24] The blind are set free, and there is a release from oppression that the Bible calls the year of the Lord's favor. And we understand that to mean in the new covenant, all that Jesus did on the cross and what we receive by grace, our salvation, the sin spiritual part of that which is the forgiveness of our sins and our new lives in Jesus Christ, anointed by the Holy Spirit to become word workers just as he was.
[00:29:57] We understand that that's the year of the Lord's favor, but it is also the whole of the Scriptures where the year of the Lord's favor, the year of jubilee, was that debt were actually cancelled. And now, after 10 years of seeing people saved and set free, we're beginning to hear stories of people having their debts cancelled. We're beginning to hear stories of people buying houses and receiving the full blessing of the year of the Lord's favor. And this too is the story of Acts as the Holy Spirit was poured out and Peter stood up and he preached boldly what the word of the Lord. He preached boldly the gospel of the kingdom. And what happened? People were saved and set free, free and healed and delivered.
[00:30:44] And they lived together and they shared in each other's homes. And there was no one among them who had need.
[00:30:50] And people bought and sold houses. What for? Why did they sow? Because they wanted to see more of him, more of what they'd already received.
[00:31:01] This is why we sow, friends.
[00:31:03] And we will sow for many, many reasons.
[00:31:07] We will sow to reap personal things that we're asking the Lord for. We will sow to reap a building. We will, this is true.
[00:31:15] But at the heart of it all is us saying, jesus, come and do more of what you've already done. We've seen the treasure that is your manifest presence among us. And we will sell all we have to buy that field. And, Lord, you can have the next 10 years. And the next 10 years we sow because we want to pour out our offering at the feet of Jesus.
[00:31:47] Will you stand?
[00:31:52] Thanks for listening to the Coma Church Podcast. If you enjoyed this message, you can like and subscribe. You can also join us in person or online every Sunday at Cromer Church. For more information about us, including our ministries, events, worship and how to donate, visit our website at Chroma Church.
