SPEAKER_00: Reverend Faith Mugera is a prominent Kenyan pastor, missionary, and a non-profit leader who serves at the Nairobi Chapel.
SPEAKER_00: She leads the church's global partnerships, mobilizes global missions, and is passionate about empowering the next generation and championing social justice in undeserved communities.
SPEAKER_00: She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Nairobi and a master's degree in non-profit management from Eastern University in the United States.
SPEAKER_00: Though she initially resisted full-time ministry after her college internship, she eventually embraced a calling starting in social justice.
SPEAKER_00: She currently serves as the pastor of global partnerships at Nairobi Chapel and as a board member for Logos Africa, an organization focused on empowering youth and children.
SPEAKER_00: Reverend Mugera is a frequent speaker and preacher, often sharing messages on platforms like the Afrigo magazine and contributing to the Nairobi Chapel media channels.
SPEAKER_00: She is a dedicated mother to two teenage boys, often openly sharing experiences and insights on motherhood.
SPEAKER_04: Let's appreciate her.
SPEAKER_04: Let's keep clapping until she gets here.
SPEAKER_04: Let's keep clapping.
SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
SPEAKER_01: Happy birthday.
SPEAKER_01: May you have many, many.
SPEAKER_01: Happy birthday.
SPEAKER_01: Happy birthday, dear Paki.
SPEAKER_01: Shango Navigele Gele.
SPEAKER_02: Our Father and our God on our feet.
SPEAKER_02: We celebrate your goodness and mercy.
SPEAKER_02: We celebrate your love.
SPEAKER_02: We celebrate your seasons.
SPEAKER_02: We celebrate 50 years of this ministry.
SPEAKER_02: As we turn to your word, remind us that it is all your doing.
SPEAKER_02: Remind us that without you we can do nothing.
SPEAKER_02: Remind us that as you invite us into a Jubilee season, your promise is that you will restore, refresh, reset what it is you're intending for us in the next 50 years.
SPEAKER_02: And so how I pray, Holy Spirit, that you would come with great conviction, but also great refreshing.
SPEAKER_02: Speak to us, Lord, we ask.
SPEAKER_02: And God's people said, Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Please have your seats.
SPEAKER_02: And I don't know how do you follow that?
SPEAKER_02: Amy, because gay's uh situation.
SPEAKER_02: I've always wondered what you would call a Kalenjin woman who is influenced by Nigerians.
SPEAKER_02: I think you call her Emmy.
SPEAKER_02: It's true.
SPEAKER_02: I just she has thunder.
SPEAKER_02: She comes with thunder.
SPEAKER_02: And please just invite me a come to her.
SPEAKER_02: I I want that little, you know, Nigerian fire.
SPEAKER_02: A little Nigerian fire.
SPEAKER_02: Just to help me move things along.
SPEAKER_02: I said yes to coming here because I know you are Bapticostals.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Me, I like fire because we we are very tame where we come from.
SPEAKER_02: But you have seeped the Pentecostal spirit of God, and I'm here to tap into it.
SPEAKER_02: I am not alone.
SPEAKER_02: I have come with many guests, but my most important guest is my husband, Patrick Mugera, if you would stand up.
SPEAKER_02: I thank you, babe.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for your support through our years of ministry.
SPEAKER_02: He's not a pastor, he's a businessman and a farmer, but somehow finds himself on the pulpit because God propels him here.
SPEAKER_02: So thank you for your support, babe, over the years.
SPEAKER_02: I really thank God for you.
SPEAKER_02: I've also come with a few sisters who decided to escort me.
SPEAKER_02: People who come here seem to have escorts.
SPEAKER_02: So I got a little nervous and I asked some people to escort me.
SPEAKER_02: My sisters, Makenna and Joanne and Marion, are here.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for coming with me.
SPEAKER_02: Are there any Nairobi Chapel who've made their way here today?
SPEAKER_02: From Nairobi Chapel.
SPEAKER_02: Just we I won't tell on you.
SPEAKER_02: I'll just say you are visiting and you're coming back home.
SPEAKER_02: Just stand up.
SPEAKER_02: I see you.
SPEAKER_02: Well, Patriots Baptists receive our deepest celebration greeting, particularly from uh Bishop Oscar Moreau and his wife, Reverend B.
SPEAKER_02: Moreau, who are out of the country, but I know are celebrating God's goodness with you in this season, together with the elders and all the different congregations of the Nairobi Chapel movement, together with the TC churches.
SPEAKER_02: We are so thrilled that you are pausing to celebrate God's goodness in your lives.
SPEAKER_02: He is an amazing God.
SPEAKER_02: 50 years is more than a milestone.
SPEAKER_02: 50 years is a lot of years.
SPEAKER_02: And when I got this invitation and have been seeing the people profiled to speak from this pulpit, I've been wondering why they invite me.
SPEAKER_02: But then I found out that almost everybody who's been invited is over 50 years.
SPEAKER_02: Including me, which is where you have to be shocked.
SPEAKER_02: Hey, not possible.
SPEAKER_02: I have a 50-year jubilee story that I'll be telling as part of Sherry from God's word.
SPEAKER_02: But 50 years is an end of a season, the beginning of another.
SPEAKER_02: 50-year-olds wear glasses to read.
SPEAKER_02: Did you see Reverend Simon and how you were struggling here?
SPEAKER_02: I don't know what you're drinking, honorable Reverend Ambrose, because what you are drinking, we want.
SPEAKER_02: This 50 is not a joke.
SPEAKER_02: And 50 is not about just looking back to see the great things God has done.
SPEAKER_02: It is important.
SPEAKER_02: It is important to retrospect, to look at the rear view mirror and see God's goodness and celebrate it.
SPEAKER_02: But 50 is about looking upwards, which is what you're doing this week and into the months of your Jubilee year.
SPEAKER_02: But it is also looking forward with bold courage.
SPEAKER_02: With bold courage.
SPEAKER_02: Every Jubilee season marks the end of one important time and the beginning of another one.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm here to say that we are celebrating not just God's grace and goodness, but his promises into the future.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know how many will be here 50 years from now, just by a show of hands.
SPEAKER_02: I know I asked God for 97 years, I'll have passed.
SPEAKER_02: You will be alive 50 years from now.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, the people on this front row, they didn't raise their hands.
SPEAKER_02: Then they are honest.
SPEAKER_02: Let me see again how many people will be here for a hundredth year celebration, anniversary.
SPEAKER_02: May the Lord grant that desire.
SPEAKER_02: And you will be wearing glasses, I can tell you for sure.
SPEAKER_02: We are celebrating five important things, and I love that you're calling it switches.
SPEAKER_02: Yesterday, Reverend Ambrose talked about the switch of legacy, that thing that stops the regular flow of 50 years and ups the current to the next 50 years.
SPEAKER_02: You're celebrating God's faithfulness.
SPEAKER_02: Psalm 126 says, the Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.
SPEAKER_02: That instruction from the book of Isaiah 62 is such a beautiful reminder.
SPEAKER_02: Because Israel, as they were getting into the year of Jubilee, and there are several chapters before chapter 25 of Leviticus, God talks about how to enter your Jubilee.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: How to walk into your Jubilee.
SPEAKER_02: But first, let me just say as you have looked back as a church and as a ministry for 50 years, many things have been done.
SPEAKER_02: Through your faithfulness, through your sacrifice, through your prayers, through your ministries.
SPEAKER_02: God has saved souls through you.
SPEAKER_02: God people say amen.
SPEAKER_02: God has raised leaders through you.
SPEAKER_02: God has healed families.
SPEAKER_02: You have sent out missionaries.
SPEAKER_02: Can I hear an amen?
SPEAKER_02: You have given sacrificially of your finances.
SPEAKER_02: God has increased your numbers and your congregations.
SPEAKER_02: You have been affirmed in your journey of integrity and humility.
SPEAKER_02: That journey that your leaders have walked.
SPEAKER_02: God has opened for you impossible doors.
SPEAKER_02: Can I hear an amen?
SPEAKER_02: The testimony in this season of 50 is not that God just opened doors and we built a church.
SPEAKER_02: The witness and the testimony is that God built his church.
SPEAKER_02: God built his church, ladies and gentlemen.
SPEAKER_02: My brothers and sisters, God built his church.
SPEAKER_02: And sometimes we forget that it is his church.
SPEAKER_02: And so we honor God's faithfulness.
SPEAKER_02: It is critical in this time of celebration.
SPEAKER_02: We also honor legacy.
SPEAKER_02: I love that that is the running theme through this year.
SPEAKER_02: Hebrews 13:7.
SPEAKER_02: Remember your leaders who taught you the word of God.
SPEAKER_02: Think of all the good that has come from their lives and follow the examples of their faith.
SPEAKER_02: We stand on the foundations of those who went ahead of us.
SPEAKER_02: Those who prayed many prayers, who came to many prayer meetings, those who sacrificed and gave, we've mentioned, those who remained faithful in difficult seasons, those who gave up so that the kingdom of God would be advanced, those who packed up their bags and went into distant lands so that others could come to the saving grace of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: This year, this week, today, we celebrate the legacy of those who went before us.
SPEAKER_02: So let me just ask: is there anyone here who has been here for 50, 40 years, 50 years, has been part of the last, the initial 50, 40 years?
SPEAKER_02: If you're there, just stand up.
SPEAKER_02: I just want to ask you to just graciously stand up.
SPEAKER_02: You were there 40 years ago.
SPEAKER_02: You were there 42 years ago, you are there 49 years ago.
SPEAKER_02: Just just raise on your feet.
SPEAKER_02: Someone raise their hand.
SPEAKER_02: You don't look that old.
SPEAKER_02: You look you look nicely and healthy.
SPEAKER_02: No, hold on, hold on.
SPEAKER_02: I just want them to stand up.
SPEAKER_02: You are there.
SPEAKER_02: Were you in Sunday school?
SPEAKER_02: You look very young.
SPEAKER_02: No?
SPEAKER_02: Keep standing, keep standing.
SPEAKER_02: Those, those who are here.
SPEAKER_02: Look at that.
SPEAKER_02: Ladies and gentlemen, let's celebrate those who lay their lives for this ministry.
SPEAKER_02: And let me tell you something.
SPEAKER_02: There are many churches that were started 50 years ago, 40 years ago, even 30, that are not standing.
SPEAKER_02: And the main reason for that is because of the integrity of your leaders.
SPEAKER_02: You have men.
SPEAKER_02: Reverend Simon, Reverend Ambrose Nyangau.
SPEAKER_02: Let's celebrate these two men.
SPEAKER_02: In their leadership, we honor you, we celebrate you.
SPEAKER_02: We thank you for faithful ministry.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_02: You may have your seats.
SPEAKER_02: So Jubilee celebrating legacy, those who have sacrificed, given.
SPEAKER_02: And I know what it is to start a church, to plant a church.
SPEAKER_02: Around the COVID season as it was ending, my husband and I started a small congregation at the back of our church at the invitation of our bishop.
SPEAKER_02: And there were times to tell you the honest truth, it was our children and I and the neighbor.
SPEAKER_02: For real.
SPEAKER_02: I have deep compassion for church planters, deep inside me.
SPEAKER_02: Before that, I was the HR person who used to ask, where is your giving?
SPEAKER_02: What's wrong with your giving?
SPEAKER_02: How can we support this man?
SPEAKER_02: These days I say, to God be the glory, anybody showed up.
SPEAKER_02: There is a cost to raising a congregation.
SPEAKER_02: And those who have come before us, everyone who has faithfully carried this baton to this season, to God be the glory for your sacrifice.
SPEAKER_02: This Jubilee, we embrace God's restoration.
SPEAKER_02: The promise, even the prophetic declaration spoken from this pulpit, especially yesterday, that God will restore your families, God will restore your property, God will restore your identity, God will restore your freedom, God will restore mission, God will restore vision.
SPEAKER_02: It is his commitment in this year of Jubilee.
SPEAKER_02: And so there is a reset button.
SPEAKER_02: Even more, the fourth thing that is important is that God is inviting us to step boldly and courageously into our future.
SPEAKER_02: I'm doing a new thing, the Lord says in Isaiah 43.
SPEAKER_02: Do not let yesterday's challenges limit our tomorrow.
SPEAKER_02: He's already there.
SPEAKER_02: You know, those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar like eagles.
SPEAKER_02: It is said of eagles that as they grow older, they go, they need to go into a molting season in order to survive.
SPEAKER_02: And so what they do over a period of time is they begin to shed their old feathers.
SPEAKER_02: Actually, it's a natural process that comes out of being an eagle.
SPEAKER_02: You begin to molt.
SPEAKER_02: All the old worn-out feathers are removed by their beaks, even their talons and their beaks begin to fall out.
SPEAKER_02: And what God does in his wisdom as creator is give them new feathers, new feathers, new talons, new beaks.
SPEAKER_02: Because do you know why?
SPEAKER_02: They need to soar into higher heights.
SPEAKER_02: So this year, God is saying to you, Packlands Baptists, step courageously into your future.
SPEAKER_02: God is already there, and He is giving you fresh vision, fresh strength, fresh leaders, fresh opportunities because this church, this church of God, will need to soar even higher.
SPEAKER_02: The churches that stop renewing never stop, always stop growing.
SPEAKER_02: They stop being what God has ordained for them.
SPEAKER_02: And then the fifth thing that I have loved as I've watched what this week will unfold and be is the promise of passing our faith to the next generation.
SPEAKER_02: So we know a number of us will not be here 50 years from now.
SPEAKER_02: And I know this sanctuary will have tripled in its size.
SPEAKER_02: And I know that your congregations will be in the furthermost parts of the earth, according to the reflections of this uh floods, because a jubilee isn't complete unless faith is transferred.
SPEAKER_02: A jubilee is just a celebration, unless those who are coming after us have the angst, the passion, the commitment, the commission to be sent out to multiply.
SPEAKER_02: And I know you are deliberate about planting for the next generation's sake.
SPEAKER_02: My husband is a mango farmer, and about five or seven years ago, he planted seedlings, many mango seedlings.
SPEAKER_02: And every year we would ask with our children so these mangoes, what's the story of the mangoes?
SPEAKER_02: There are no mangoes.
SPEAKER_02: We are on the fifth year, and this is the time we are beginning to eat mangoes.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: If you're my friend, you talk to me.
SPEAKER_02: However, the bountifulest of the mango trees will come 30 years from now.
SPEAKER_02: A mango tree gives fruit into its 40th, 50th year, most of its fruit.
SPEAKER_02: All that to say, babe, that we might not be there to enjoy it.
SPEAKER_02: But we planted.
SPEAKER_02: We planted, we are passing on the pattern of faith to the next generation.
SPEAKER_02: And Paki, you are doing it right.
SPEAKER_02: My work this evening is talk about the restoration switch.
SPEAKER_02: The restoration switch returning to God's intention.
SPEAKER_02: I love the switch um picture.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, a switch is a simple device, but it changes everything.
SPEAKER_02: You flip on a switch and darkness becomes light.
SPEAKER_02: You flip on a power switch and a dormant machine kicks into life.
SPEAKER_02: You turn on your car engine, you turn on a machinery in a factory, you flip a circuit breaker after a power outage.
SPEAKER_02: God bless you, Kenya power.
SPEAKER_02: You turn on this circuit breaker that has been flipped because of a surge, and your electricity is restored.
SPEAKER_02: The year of Jubilee was God's restoration switch.
SPEAKER_02: It reconnected Israel to God's original design as he called his people God's people.
SPEAKER_02: God's original design was about freedom, was about justice.
SPEAKER_02: I'm passionate about issues of social injustice.
SPEAKER_02: It is about restoring order, it was about worship, coming back into the throne of thrones.
SPEAKER_02: It was about community.
SPEAKER_02: And this year, God is inviting us to switch back and reset to factory settings.
SPEAKER_02: Coming back to say, Lord, we did it in what we knew was best in the last 50 years.
SPEAKER_02: We are flipping back restoration that you would do it in your plan.
SPEAKER_02: His desire is to restore you into the new season and the new agenda and blueprint that he has for you as a church.
SPEAKER_02: I want to invite you to kindly be on your feet as we read God's word from Isaiah 62.
SPEAKER_02: Where there is a noun, and a noun is uh a noun.
SPEAKER_02: A noun is a name, okay?
SPEAKER_02: Faith, Jane, Parklands, Baptists, etc.
SPEAKER_02: Put in the name, your name, and then put in the name of this church.
SPEAKER_02: This Isaiah 62 was actually uh Reverend Simon's reference on Sunday and had already been directed there by the Spirit of God, and so I affirm what God is doing.
SPEAKER_02: This is what Isaiah said.
SPEAKER_02: Because I love Zion.
SPEAKER_02: Your name is because I love you, I will not keep still.
SPEAKER_02: Because my heart yearns for you.
SPEAKER_02: Your name is I cannot remain silent, I will not stop praying for you until your righteousness shines like the dawn and your salvation blazes like a burning torch.
SPEAKER_02: The nations will see your righteousness.
SPEAKER_02: Wild leaders will be blinded by your glory, and you will be given a new name by the Lord's mouth.
SPEAKER_02: The Lord will hold you in his hand for all to see, a splendid crown in the hand of God.
SPEAKER_02: Never again will you be called the forsaken city, the forsaken person, or the desolate land, because this road will be tamaked.
SPEAKER_02: Your new name will.
SPEAKER_02: Be the church where it's altarmarked.
SPEAKER_02: Your new name will be the city of God's delight, the bride of God.
SPEAKER_02: For the Lord will delight in you and will claim you as his bride.
SPEAKER_02: Your children, your children will commit themselves to you, oh Parklands Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_02: Just as a young man commits himself to his bride, and then God will rejoice over you as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride.
SPEAKER_02: And God's people said, Please have your seats and thank you.
SPEAKER_02: This is the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Five things that I quickly need to say about the restoration switch.
SPEAKER_02: The first is that God is switching you back to freedom.
SPEAKER_02: Did you hear that?
unknown: Yes.
SPEAKER_02: That God is switching you back to freedom from bondage, from slavery.
SPEAKER_02: In the preceding chapters of Leviticus 25, God gives instructions about what freedom means and why it was important to him.
SPEAKER_02: He said slaves must go back to their original homes.
SPEAKER_02: If you have a slave who was your kinman, your clanman, you go and buy them out.
SPEAKER_02: They needed to come back home.
SPEAKER_02: Land was supposed to be restored back to the original owners in the 50 years.
SPEAKER_02: You were supposed, excuse me, you were supposed to cancel debt.
SPEAKER_02: Chains were going to be broken.
SPEAKER_02: God's intention was to bring liberty and freedom in the jubilee.
SPEAKER_02: Many scholars have understood the year of the Lord's favor to be a jubilee yeah.
SPEAKER_02: And God favors restoration, healing, freedom.
SPEAKER_02: The things that need to go back to original setting.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus himself effectively called himself God's restoration switch.
SPEAKER_02: Through him, captives are set free.
SPEAKER_02: The broken are healed.
SPEAKER_02: The marginalized are welcomed.
SPEAKER_02: God's people are restored to God's original intention.
SPEAKER_02: The connection makes a compelling golden jubilee message where everything points to Christ, who compels us through grace to come back to God's original setting.
SPEAKER_02: In India, where they use elephants to run errands for them, to tame them, they start by tying a little baby elephant to a little rope.
SPEAKER_02: And so anytime the elephant wants to move away, it knows there's a restriction.
SPEAKER_02: In the mind of that elephant, it is not free.
SPEAKER_02: As it grows older, they make that cord even smaller.
SPEAKER_02: But the time a grown elephant is grown up, in its mind it is not free.
SPEAKER_02: Because all the days of its life it had a little restriction.
SPEAKER_02: That little rope can be broken by a grown-up elephant, except in its mind, it is totally bound.
SPEAKER_02: Many of us are held back by the lies of the enemy from recognizing our freedom in Christ.
SPEAKER_02: And so in this Jubilee year, Parklands Baptist Church, God is coming to reset.
SPEAKER_02: He's coming to give us a new mindset, to break a lie and turn it into truth, to confront an identity crisis, who you are in Christ.
SPEAKER_02: A relationship that has you so bound that you have forgotten what God has said about it.
SPEAKER_02: There's an important aspect of release.
SPEAKER_02: One of the most important parts of God's invitation to the year of Jubilee was forgiveness.
SPEAKER_02: Forgiveness.
SPEAKER_02: Even perhaps reconciliation.
SPEAKER_02: This was a very key principle in God's teachings, in Jesus' teachings, and it is a bondage to many of us.
SPEAKER_02: Forgiveness says, I want to break this rope that has me tied, that makes me believe that the pain is too much.
SPEAKER_02: I need revenge.
SPEAKER_02: You don't even know what I have gone through.
SPEAKER_02: The divorce left me with nothing.
SPEAKER_02: The deal, a business deal left me completely broken.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know what to do about my family.
SPEAKER_02: They betrayed me.
SPEAKER_02: And today I want to invite you, Parklands Baptist Church, to reset by saying, This day, I forgive all my debtors.
SPEAKER_02: Of those today by faith, you're asking, God, give me the grace to forgive.
SPEAKER_02: But I want to believe today I have released this person or this situation because I cannot carry it into my year of jubilee.
SPEAKER_02: Who do you need to forgive?
SPEAKER_02: But even more important, who do you need to ask for forgiveness?
SPEAKER_02: Who do you need to invite to release you because you know you wronged them?
SPEAKER_02: And so let me ask you all to pull out your phones, like really seriously, and write down as the Spirit of God prompts you, two people that you will forgive.
SPEAKER_02: And one person, and there are many, some people here are completely freed from this, but the Spirit of God prompted me to invite you to freedom.
SPEAKER_02: Because unforgiveness is a strong chain.
SPEAKER_02: It's the reason why Jesus in the scripture over and over tells people, before you sacrifice or come to the court of God, go and forgive.
SPEAKER_02: Go and release this burden.
SPEAKER_02: I want you to free this person because I want you to walk in freedom.
SPEAKER_02: Did you write down a name?
SPEAKER_02: You all look like your angels.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you don't even.
SPEAKER_02: It's not your.
SPEAKER_02: I'll just pause for a minute.
SPEAKER_02: Let me just pause for a minute.
SPEAKER_02: Who do you need to forgive?
SPEAKER_02: Lord, as we trust you to give us this freedom through forgiveness, through asking for forgiveness.
SPEAKER_02: Perhaps even the grace to seek reconciliation.
SPEAKER_02: Allow that this would not be something that we carry into our jubilee.
SPEAKER_02: It will burden us.
SPEAKER_02: It will make the new task that you're giving us heavy and burdensome.
SPEAKER_02: So we ask that you would reset our relationships through the power of forgiveness.
SPEAKER_02: That we would walk in your freedom.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: So the first is God's invitation to restore your freedom.
SPEAKER_02: The things that you need to reset.
SPEAKER_02: And then you said say this forgiveness is not always reconciliation.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: There's a special grace that comes with God inviting you to go and reconcile with somebody where there has been a broken relationship.
SPEAKER_02: Some people that we need to forgive may not even be on this side of heaven.
SPEAKER_02: But what forgiveness is is saying, I will not carry the pain of what you did or what I have perceived as a slight on me into my future anymore.
SPEAKER_02: From today, I release this person and I will not carry them into my tomorrow.
SPEAKER_02: The second thing is this God is inviting you to stewardship.
SPEAKER_02: Stewardship is when you know that you're not an owner.
SPEAKER_02: Alright?
SPEAKER_02: If you borrow somebody's car, you can take pictures and put them on social media, but that doesn't make you an owner.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: You can floss with other people's things.
SPEAKER_02: But that doesn't necessarily make you, unless you have the car log book, you're not the owner.
SPEAKER_02: Which is the truth.
SPEAKER_02: It's painful.
SPEAKER_02: Which is the truth about what stewardship is against ownership.
SPEAKER_02: Stewardship says nothing belongs to us.
SPEAKER_02: It all comes to you.
SPEAKER_02: It is all from you, my family, my husband, my land, my everything.
SPEAKER_02: This ministry belongs to you.
SPEAKER_02: I am not an owner.
SPEAKER_02: I am here to steward God's grace in the finances, in the ministries, in the outreach, in the mission.
SPEAKER_02: I need to know who owns it all.
SPEAKER_02: The reset back to restoration says, remember that it is the Lord who gives you the ability to create wealth, to steward his things.
SPEAKER_02: Everything we have belongs to him.
SPEAKER_02: So restoration says, move your mindset back to knowing that you're just a steward.
SPEAKER_02: I have given you these gifts for you to steward on my behalf.
SPEAKER_02: The third thing that is important is moving from just regularness into covenant relationships.
SPEAKER_02: If you have served in a ministry with someone for 50 years, 40 years, 30 years, you move from being literally brothers in the Lord to being covenanted brothers.
SPEAKER_02: The kind of relationship that is Jonathan and David that we see in Reverend Ambrose and Reverend Simon.
SPEAKER_02: You become covenant brothers and covenant sisters.
SPEAKER_02: God is saying you're going to move from relationships that are just kawah.
SPEAKER_02: I borrowed that from your pastor.
SPEAKER_02: Kawaida, just regular, to relationships that first put God and then those I serve with.
SPEAKER_02: Because we have covenanted.
SPEAKER_02: It's almost like a blood connection.
SPEAKER_02: The kind of thing that says, I will show up before you ask.
SPEAKER_02: I will be there to support, to cry with, to celebrate with, to pray with, to fast with.
SPEAKER_02: I will hold you accountable.
SPEAKER_02: I will ask you hard questions, but I will celebrate what God has done because that's what covenant relationships look like.
SPEAKER_02: God wants us to move to relationships that count.
SPEAKER_02: For us who have been in ministry, one of the things that is a little unfortunate is that once our season of ministry ends, our congregations forget us.
SPEAKER_02: And they want to love the next person.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know about you, Bishop Adoyo.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe they all came with you from Sitam.
SPEAKER_02: But the truth about it is that ministry is almost limited to where you're serving, and then it is not.
SPEAKER_02: And I want to challenge you, Parklands Baptist, in the season that God is taking you, that you will walk with your ministers into retirement and beyond.
SPEAKER_02: Because you're covenanting in this next season that ministry will not just be constrained in these walls or in the places of mission where you go.
SPEAKER_02: That every person who ministers here will not count you to continue celebrating them in their sunset years.
SPEAKER_02: Trust the gift of covenant relationships.
SPEAKER_02: God honors them.
SPEAKER_02: The fourth thing is the beautiful gift of not gatekeeping.
SPEAKER_02: Only Gen Z know what gatekeeping is.
SPEAKER_02: So if you're a Gen Z, just tell the person next to you what gatekeeping is.
SPEAKER_02: It's not being a watchman, okay?
SPEAKER_02: It is not being a watchman.
SPEAKER_02: Anyone gatekeeping?
SPEAKER_02: We love to preserve good things, okay?
SPEAKER_02: Paki has done amazing good things and refined them over 50 years.
SPEAKER_02: You do good things.
SPEAKER_02: All young people come to this place because they know good things happen here for young people.
SPEAKER_02: I met one of your um protocol team members and thank you for the grace that you have just allowed for us to be here.
SPEAKER_02: I have felt spoiled.
SPEAKER_02: And and I want to stay, but I don't know.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, the kind of driving I have been driven, it's been amazing.
SPEAKER_02: Oh Lord.
SPEAKER_02: I hope my boss is watching this.
SPEAKER_02: But however, gatekeeping, gatekeeping means I have refined something and it is working in the most amazing ways.
SPEAKER_02: But I don't want to share it.
SPEAKER_02: I want to keep and preserve a culture that is refined and real and true so that no one else will get it.
SPEAKER_02: Church, 50 years is not about preserving tradition or culture.
SPEAKER_02: 50 years is celebrating the things that we know made us shine, but saying that it can't be what is defining us.
SPEAKER_02: There are some things you will need to put away.
SPEAKER_02: They served you for this season, but new things are coming.
SPEAKER_02: The young people in this church, you have been called into global spaces.
SPEAKER_02: Arise, be the missionaries.
SPEAKER_02: As you go away to be students, as you get global positions, we want to teach you how to be missionaries.
SPEAKER_02: And the money of these 50 over 50-year-olds will be on your back.
SPEAKER_02: That is what Partnership of Missions says.
SPEAKER_02: It says we will not hold back because we didn't do it like this before.
SPEAKER_02: We will not hold back because we have never tried this.
SPEAKER_02: We will not get keep because it has served us well.
SPEAKER_02: We will open and release every resource for the new thing God is sending us to.
SPEAKER_02: There are many of you sitting here that in the next year, two years or so will be in international schools abroad, different places, maybe representing all these flags.
SPEAKER_02: You are our missionaries.
SPEAKER_02: You are the new generation of missions.
SPEAKER_02: You speak a language that is global.
SPEAKER_02: You understand the trends.
SPEAKER_02: You speak a united language, sing the same songs as people in Pakistan and in New Zealand and in other places.
SPEAKER_02: May it be that we will not hold back because we didn't do it like that.
SPEAKER_02: And allow that God unleashes this church to the furthermost part of the world.
SPEAKER_02: Please get into the space of giving and receiving.
SPEAKER_02: The Sea of Galilee is fresh because it both gives and receives.
SPEAKER_02: And churches become healthy when they realize that God's grace is called to flow into them and to flow out.
SPEAKER_02: May it be that you won't gatekeep and be held back by what has been tried and true.
SPEAKER_02: But God, as He restores you in the year of Jubilee, is calling you not just to celebrate, but to consecrate.
SPEAKER_02: Celebration without consecration becomes entertainment.
SPEAKER_02: And ladies and gentlemen, you're doing this celebration so amazingly well.
SPEAKER_02: But God is saying that we would, and we must consecrate to position ourselves for another season of God's favor.
SPEAKER_02: Now there is a twist to these five things.
SPEAKER_02: There is something that God needs to say to us in regards to the switch of restoration.
SPEAKER_02: We have said that God is calling us for five things.
SPEAKER_02: He's calling us from preservation of the traditions to mission and to being bold enough to step out to where he sends us, wherever it is.
SPEAKER_02: And he's calling us from celebration to consecration.
SPEAKER_02: But there are some certain things that will keep us back from fully switching over.
SPEAKER_02: You know how sometimes you turn on the car, the engine, and it gives you a hard start.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: When it does that chang yang yang yo thing, it's because all its wires are not right.
SPEAKER_02: I have brought to you from God's word four things that will hold back or give a hard start to all these amazing switches God has promised you.
SPEAKER_02: And I read from 1 John chapter 2, verses 12.
SPEAKER_02: And this is what it says I'm writing to you who are God's children, because your sins have been forgiven through Jesus in this year of Jubilee.
SPEAKER_02: I'm writing to you who are mature in the faith because you know Christ, who existed from the beginning.
SPEAKER_02: I'm writing to you who are young in the faith because, as young people, you have won your battle with the evil one.
SPEAKER_02: I have written to you who are God's children because you know the Father.
SPEAKER_02: And then he skips to verse 15 and he says, Do not love this world or the things it offers you.
SPEAKER_02: For when you love this world, you do not have the love of the Father with you.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 16 says, For the world offers only a craving to physical pleasure, to craving for everything we see, to pride in our achievements and in possessions.
SPEAKER_02: These are not from the Father, but from the world.
SPEAKER_02: Let me read it in the NIV version, which some of us may be more familiar with.
SPEAKER_02: It says this You who are my children, do not love the world or anything in the world.
SPEAKER_02: If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them.
SPEAKER_02: For everything in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life does not come from the Father, but from the world.
SPEAKER_02: And the world and its desires will pass away.
SPEAKER_02: But whoever does the will of God lives forever.
SPEAKER_02: So there's three heart postures that I invite for you to check on as we enter into this new season.
SPEAKER_02: The first that this scripture calls the last of the flesh is not about you because you are God's children.
SPEAKER_02: Prior to that, he says, I know who you are.
SPEAKER_02: You're my children because you have resisted the evil one, you know me and you believe me.
SPEAKER_02: So the last of the flesh is not sinful things, it is about control.
SPEAKER_02: Parklands Baptist Church, the last 50 years have spoken well over you.
SPEAKER_02: Your determination to stay the course, to run faithfully, to run the race with no scandals, no questionable doctrine.
SPEAKER_02: You're not selling handkerchiefs or holy water.
SPEAKER_02: I hope not.
SPEAKER_02: You have managed your affairs in a godly fashion, to be honest.
SPEAKER_02: We admire it.
SPEAKER_02: We esteem it.
SPEAKER_02: We even come secretly to ask how you did it.
SPEAKER_02: We truly celebrate your faithfulness in ministry.
SPEAKER_02: And it is evident because of the affirmation that you will celebrate this week into the coming days through this Jubilee.
SPEAKER_02: However, it is very easy to keep doing things well, so well that you do things only God should be doing.
SPEAKER_02: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_02: It is very easy, and I'm speaking from experience, to do things well, very well.
SPEAKER_02: You refine them, structures, systems, protocol, um, standard operating procedures.
SPEAKER_02: To do things so well that you begin to control the things only God should be controlling.
SPEAKER_02: You and I know that there are many ministries that have done things exceedingly well, but have lost intimacy with God.
SPEAKER_02: And I think it's one of the main reasons when we evaluate global ministries.
SPEAKER_02: There are many people who have done exploits for the kingdom but have not finished well.
SPEAKER_02: Because they started controlling and managing the things that were only for God to do.
SPEAKER_02: Scripture has them men of God, women of God, Moses, Abraham, David.
SPEAKER_02: They did things in their trident and true strength, in their wisdom, in their power, and began to do things that only God should do.
SPEAKER_02: You need to evaluate what over the last 50 years.
SPEAKER_02: You have stepped into divine control.
SPEAKER_02: You have to live within the tension of hearing God's voice and being obedient to it and stepping out boldly and courageously.
SPEAKER_02: And it is a tension that only God can give you wisdom to manage.
SPEAKER_02: The decision to resist temptation, to impact and control everything is something that impacts how we think, what we say, and how we do going forward.
SPEAKER_02: The idea of giving up control and replacing it with intentional humility and dependence, absolute dependence on God, counters everything leadership books and university courses and professional leadership courses give us, where they tell you to work on strategy, a 50-year plan, work backwards from there, create a critical path.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus' course was not this course.
SPEAKER_02: You carried your cross daily and followed him.
SPEAKER_02: Many times when we have resolved crisis, I mean, I'm sure to build this sanctuary took a Herculean effort on all our parts.
SPEAKER_02: Many people, I'm sure there were committees and fundraisers and etc.
SPEAKER_02: And we did this, and it's amazing and other things that you will celebrate.
SPEAKER_02: But God is saying it may be that you overstepped your mark.
SPEAKER_02: And so I'm giving you the opportunity in this restoration switch to release the old wineskins and step into the gift of new wineskins.
SPEAKER_02: He's telling you to open your hearts and your hands for the new as God resets you and restores you.
SPEAKER_02: The Jubilee posture brings restoration because you have open hands and open hearts.
SPEAKER_02: You're not hanging on to anything that's been done and tried.
SPEAKER_02: You're not harboring things in your heart and you know worked well.
SPEAKER_02: You're saying, Lord, we did it.
SPEAKER_02: Forgive us where we overstepped, but we are ready for the new.
SPEAKER_02: We release control.
SPEAKER_02: The second thing God is saying and from this passage of scripture that is called the last of the eyes, and it is not the last of the eyes as we we know it.
SPEAKER_02: It is just that creeping thing in ministry when we begin to see things that are tangible, that are easy to control better than we see God's things, his perspective of what is around us.
SPEAKER_02: Our idols are whatever we depend on in place of God.
SPEAKER_02: And so the last of the eyes is idols.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm not talking about small little gods in homes.
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: I'm talking about the things we have celebrated.
SPEAKER_02: And for most of us to be honest, money, our possessions, very easily become idols unless the Spirit of God keeps checking on us.
SPEAKER_02: Most of us here will never say it loud, but we we secretly believe that money solves a lot of problems.
SPEAKER_02: So Reverend Simon here said on Sunday that he went into a place where they were printing dollars on Sunday.
SPEAKER_02: Hi, I just wanted to know who his friends are.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, take me with you the next time.
SPEAKER_02: Because money has a way of blinding us to what God is doing, especially when we are successful.
SPEAKER_02: When Jesus asked his disciples when it was time to feed the people, he said, Listen, the people are hungry.
SPEAKER_02: Before I bring the word, I need to feed them.
SPEAKER_02: He told them, gentlemen, we need to feed people, just figure it out.
SPEAKER_02: And their immediate response was, Lord, we have no money to 5,000 people.
SPEAKER_02: And apparently those were just men.
SPEAKER_02: And we all know that where Jesus is, there's more women.
SPEAKER_02: So can you imagine how many people there were?
SPEAKER_02: What did Jesus?
SPEAKER_02: How did Jesus respond?
SPEAKER_02: He took what they had, he took what was available, he took the five loaves of bread and the two fish and multiplied that.
SPEAKER_02: That is what removing the idol of possession and money does.
SPEAKER_02: Stopping to ask the master, Lord, this is all I have.
SPEAKER_02: Won't you multiply it?
SPEAKER_02: Because as you have become 50 years old, and people who are over 50 know about that, success has full sort of crept up on you.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: You no longer live where you were when you were in 20s.
SPEAKER_02: You don't drive the car you drove when you were in your 20s, you're possibly not doing the same job you did when you're in your 30s.
SPEAKER_02: Somehow success has shown up.
SPEAKER_02: And it shows up in things that very easily trip us.
SPEAKER_02: I'm very sure that your needs as a church right now are not five fish and two low five loaves and two fish situation.
SPEAKER_02: I can tell you here when you started out in 20, you know, 30 years ago, 35, 40 years ago, you were posing to ask the Lord, where is the money for this, Lord?
SPEAKER_02: Show up for us.
SPEAKER_02: How do we do this?
SPEAKER_02: You trusted in his miracles to provide.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm not sure that is your need right now, Parklands Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_02: And it is very easy to stop trusting the God of miracles, especially about our immediate needs.
SPEAKER_02: We need to continue having God's abundance mentality.
SPEAKER_02: When we trust in what we see, we will always have a scarcity mentality.
SPEAKER_02: When we trust in the God of provision where we cannot see, and all we have is five loaves and two fish, we have an abundance mentality.
SPEAKER_02: When we begin to think that we need more and more and more of funds and money to sustain ministry, we can can, that doesn't say all of us do, but can very easily fall into the trap where the love of resources catches up with us.
SPEAKER_02: And we forget to pray bold, miraculous prayers, the kind of prayers that make God sweat.
SPEAKER_02: 20, 30 years ago you prayed for a sanctuary that will fit all these people.
SPEAKER_02: That prayer made God sweat.
SPEAKER_02: But now as resources have come, you've sort of managed it.
SPEAKER_02: You know, you have the grace to do things without telling Lord, oh Lord, come or we die.
SPEAKER_02: Show up.
SPEAKER_02: And I have to say that there is a certainly, for sure, a God-honoring biblical way to invite God's people to participate in ministry and in God's word through financial generosity.
SPEAKER_02: But even then, we cannot, we must not believe that our ministry depends on what is given.
SPEAKER_02: That can very easily slide us into a scarcity mentality.
SPEAKER_02: We have to believe that God can do even much more than we can think, ask, or imagine.
SPEAKER_02: A.W.
SPEAKER_02: Toza said this about this particular posture.
SPEAKER_02: He said, there is within the human heart a tough, fibrous root of a fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess.
SPEAKER_02: This nature covers things with a deep and fierce passion.
SPEAKER_02: God's gifts take the place of God, and the whole course of our nature is upset by this monstrous substitution.
SPEAKER_02: Many times, as Christian leaders, not just ministers, even those who are lay ministers and pastors who volunteer in significant ministries, many times we begin to talk and act and think as though we own our church, my church, my congregation, my people, my ministry, that we own our reputation, our time, our ministry.
SPEAKER_02: And somehow, as has been proven by ministry, when that little bag of idol worship scrips in, we lose our tangent.
SPEAKER_02: The Jubilee posture says that restoration is about continuing to trust God with what we cannot see.
SPEAKER_02: The miracles that fueled us by asking God to use just what we had.
SPEAKER_02: Remember 30 years ago, 45 years ago.
SPEAKER_02: The third thing that this scripture uh talks about, um, as John wrote it, was the pride of life.
SPEAKER_02: And this particular posture, like the other two, of control and worshipping things that we shouldn't, make it hard for the switch to turn over.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, oh.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, oh that men, uh the leaders of this church who have served for 50 years, don't have bodyguards, don't have red seats that should be here, over here.
SPEAKER_02: Um I'm like, really?
SPEAKER_02: Let's celebrate that because it's not common for this kind of success.
SPEAKER_02: You have purpose to check your hearts, and that is to be celebrated.
SPEAKER_02: This particular posture is very easy to compromise the switch.
SPEAKER_02: To be honest, all of us like to be liked.
SPEAKER_02: True?
SPEAKER_02: We like to be liked.
SPEAKER_02: That is, therefore, affirmation is not a negative quality.
SPEAKER_02: But when pride dictates our motives, even our best intentions gets cued.
SPEAKER_02: But when we seek our affirmation from God alone, from his direction alone, from his leading alone, from the spirits speaking into us and giving instruction alone, from him to give us our identity, then this little thing that will compromise us, which is mitigated.
SPEAKER_02: When we seek applause from other sources other than God, we give away our secure place in Christ in exchange for momentary fain that we have to keep amplifying and learning at every turn.
SPEAKER_02: Ask any preacher after a Sunday service, after they have preached how Monday looks like.
SPEAKER_02: That's a place the enemy comes in and keeps us on a performance treadmill where we are keep chasing affirmation.
SPEAKER_02: And we begin to talk about the numbers of churches we've planted, and there's nothing wrong with that.
SPEAKER_02: We begin to talk about the books we have written, and there's nothing wrong with that.
SPEAKER_02: The size of buildings we have built, the number of small groups in our churches, it becomes about the three B's bodies, building budgets.
SPEAKER_02: Let me tell you, when that becomes to be your identity, yay, it will trip you.
SPEAKER_02: Our hearts are deceitful, they are broken, they're deceitful above everything, and they reveal, they reveal a lot about us.
SPEAKER_02: Somehow, as churches, we have believed that if you don't get bigger and bigger every year and do more and more every year, somehow God's work is being left undone.
SPEAKER_02: If we haven't doubled our congregations or our or the number of uh assemblies we have planted, you know, these days there are matrices and even scientific ways to make sure that you have a congregation that breaks even.
SPEAKER_02: It's a science.
SPEAKER_02: And church, spiritual pride can masquerade under the disguise of ministry zeal.
SPEAKER_02: In this year of Jubilee, we need to ask the Spirit of God to check us.
SPEAKER_02: That we avoid the damaging effect of creeping pride, that every decision is an opportunity to grow more.
SPEAKER_02: What about if in this new year he's saying, I want you to work with half of your budget, give away the rest to us.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
SPEAKER_02: The psalmist says, Search me, O Lord, and know my heart.
SPEAKER_02: Test me, test me.
SPEAKER_02: I'm a broken human.
SPEAKER_02: Test me, know my anxious thoughts.
SPEAKER_02: See there is wickedness, anxiety, manipulation, self-angradizement in me.
SPEAKER_02: Lead me to the way everlasting.
SPEAKER_02: When God is in control, any other view kneels to his power, to his authority.
SPEAKER_02: The ethics of this world tell us we must be number one in everything we do.
SPEAKER_02: And the competition he had state is always about being bigger, more financially stable, more prominent than the others.
SPEAKER_02: And hear me well, church.
SPEAKER_02: Growth is not the issue.
SPEAKER_02: It is what and how we posture ourselves to receive God's increase.
SPEAKER_02: It cannot be our identity because we will be found compromised.
SPEAKER_02: And so three postures that this scripture from 2 John gives us.
SPEAKER_02: The question of who is in control, that's the last of the flesh.
SPEAKER_02: Who do we serve?
SPEAKER_02: That's the last of the eyes, where we are not chasing the things that are around us, and the pride of life when we recognize that our affirmation, our identity, who we are as ministers of the gospel, as people called by God's name, is in Him and only Him.
SPEAKER_02: But for these three places of evaluation to work well, there's a fourth one.
SPEAKER_02: And as I wind down, that one is a very tough one for people in ministry, particularly.
SPEAKER_02: And that's the invitation to lead from rest.
SPEAKER_02: The one day of weekly rest, where we pause everything and say, Lord, speak to me, refresh me, allow me to know that my labor is not what brings bread to my table.
SPEAKER_02: Lord, reset my thinking.
SPEAKER_02: And so, all of us here, because we are God's children, one day a week we turn off our phones and we tell the Lord, Lord, speak, I am here.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: There are some of you whose phones have never turned off since you got it, who are still blinking.
SPEAKER_02: No, there are some of you here who are non-vibrant.
SPEAKER_02: You can't even turn off your phone for a celebration.
SPEAKER_02: In the 49th year, God said this.
SPEAKER_02: For six years, sow your field.
SPEAKER_02: But in the seventh year, which was the 49th year, have a year of Sabbath rest, a Sabbath to the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Leviticus 25, 3 to 4.
SPEAKER_02: Seven years, seven times was 49.
SPEAKER_02: And in that year, they were going to stop planting any crops, they were going to stop harvesting for profit.
SPEAKER_02: They were going to allow the land to rest.
SPEAKER_02: They were only going to eat what grew naturally.
SPEAKER_02: Because as they stepped into Jubilee, they were going to trust God fully for provision, not their sweat, not their industry, not what they planted, not their animals, only Jehovah Jira.
SPEAKER_02: And so, unfortunately, because we have borrowed a lot of our thinking and ethos from the corporate world, from the marketplace, our church culture talks about celebrating product-driven leadership.
SPEAKER_02: Give us results, give us numbers.
SPEAKER_02: And we are driven as ministry leaders to be workaholics.
SPEAKER_02: Our elders' boards, our deacon boards want us to come back with numbers, positive numbers.
SPEAKER_02: How many people came to Christ?
SPEAKER_02: And that's important to measure.
SPEAKER_02: But how many groups are there?
SPEAKER_02: How many people showed up?
SPEAKER_02: We drive ourselves to adopting overwhelming work schedules and demanding long ministry hours at the cost of God's time, at the cost of our families, at the cost of our health.
SPEAKER_02: And I don't need to tell you how many ministers have blood pressure, medicine, diabetes, every lifestyle disease, because we have forgotten the God of rest.
SPEAKER_02: Church, God gave us a Sabbath principle.
SPEAKER_02: Work six days, rest on the seventh.
SPEAKER_02: So if you turn your phone on one day a week, you're ready for Jubilee.
SPEAKER_02: If you haven't turned it on since you bought it, you need to prepare.
SPEAKER_02: Work six days, rest as a rhythm, as a habit.
SPEAKER_02: Because as you get into the 49th year, you are supposed to turn your phone off for a year.
SPEAKER_02: How will deals happen?
SPEAKER_02: How will MPESA be transacted?
SPEAKER_02: Ask the God of the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_02: 48 years you work, 49th year you get ready, 50 years you celebrate.
SPEAKER_02: And so spiritual restoration began with the 48th year that was all about God's provision.
SPEAKER_02: He gave bountiful harvest, he increased, he made sure everything was stored.
SPEAKER_02: In the 49th year, it was God's preparation.
SPEAKER_02: In the 50th year, it was God's restoration.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know how many of us pride ourselves with the number of hours we work.
SPEAKER_02: I know when I started working at the Nairobi chapel a while, not very long ago, like a while back.
SPEAKER_02: People would call and say, Pastor, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm calling you.
SPEAKER_02: I know you're busy, I know, I know you're very, very busy.
SPEAKER_02: And I remember just thinking to myself, what do they think I do every day?
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure they think I pray every minute I wake up.
SPEAKER_02: So I better get busy.
SPEAKER_02: And I got caught up somewhere in that rat race.
SPEAKER_02: When we need to succeed in ministry, for the sake of our reputation, we wreck God's order.
SPEAKER_02: We need to restore it back.
SPEAKER_02: We need to step into rest, silence, solitude, rest.
SPEAKER_02: Silence frees us from the need to control others.
SPEAKER_02: And one reason we can hardly remain silent or restful, because it makes us feel helpless.
SPEAKER_02: We have made ourselves gods unto ourselves.
SPEAKER_02: We are so accustomed to relying on words and deeds to manage things, to manage others.
SPEAKER_02: We evaluate people, we judge people, condemn people in our business.
SPEAKER_02: We devour people with our words because they're not measured, because we are not rested.
SPEAKER_02: We are in urgency.
SPEAKER_02: Our bodies are full of adrenaline and silence.
SPEAKER_02: Church, silence and rest is one of the deepest disciplines of the spirit.
SPEAKER_02: Because it renders our hearts open and vulnerable before the throne of grace.
SPEAKER_02: God is inviting you this year, Parklands Baptist Church, to be still.
SPEAKER_02: After your celebrations, God is saying, Psalm 46, 10, be still, be still.
SPEAKER_02: Know that I am God.
SPEAKER_02: Be still.
SPEAKER_02: In my 49th year of being alive, God gave me stillness by rendering me blind.
SPEAKER_02: As in, I couldn't see.
SPEAKER_02: For I started wearing glasses, I think, when I was six or seven, and for all my adult years, I wove.
SPEAKER_02: Prescriptive glasses, the kind of you go and it's a higher index and a higher index.
SPEAKER_02: And the year before we were ordained at the Nairobi chapel, uh a week before our ordination, it had been a whole year of experiencing this.
SPEAKER_02: A week before ordination, I I went blind.
SPEAKER_02: I had a detached retina on my right eye and a tear on my left at the same time.
SPEAKER_02: The doctors were saying we have never experienced this.
SPEAKER_02: What is what's going on?
SPEAKER_02: And when I went and they said we need to have surgery, I said, What does that mean?
SPEAKER_02: And they said, Surgery will mean we'll have to repressure your eyes to connect again, but you will not be able to see for at least two months.
SPEAKER_02: Two months.
SPEAKER_02: So I said to the doctor, listen, this was on a Friday, on next Saturday, I have an ordination.
SPEAKER_02: I have waited for this all my life.
SPEAKER_02: My dad, who's an Anglican minister, has never called me Pastor Faith.
SPEAKER_02: He's going to be there.
SPEAKER_02: I need him to see, I need to see his face.
SPEAKER_02: When he finally says, Pastor Faith, hey, I had waited.
SPEAKER_02: And here I am, I can't see.
SPEAKER_02: And so the doctor said, Listen, even if it was your wedding, I would ask you to postpone it.
SPEAKER_02: If you wait any longer, you will not be able to see.
SPEAKER_02: And so the surgery happened.
SPEAKER_02: An ordination day.
SPEAKER_02: That day had waited for many years of ministry.
SPEAKER_02: I couldn't see.
SPEAKER_02: My good husband walked me up on stage when we were kneeling.
SPEAKER_02: He told me to kneel.
SPEAKER_02: When he was signing our covenant, he I don't know how he made me sign it.
SPEAKER_02: And everybody just said, Oh my god, that man loves that woman.
SPEAKER_02: I I haven't had the heart to tell them I couldn't see, guys.
SPEAKER_02: We had such a love situation going on.
SPEAKER_02: And then I was that was I believe 2018.
SPEAKER_02: Um 2019, I reckoned with the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: I said, why this particular?
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Why couldn't you have waited a year before?
SPEAKER_02: 2019?
SPEAKER_02: What are you trying to do?
SPEAKER_02: What is going on?
SPEAKER_02: And God was silent.
SPEAKER_02: And I remember ministry became hard because I felt God had abandoned me in a critical point of ministry.
SPEAKER_02: Higher.
SPEAKER_02: 2020 happened.
SPEAKER_02: And everything shut down.
SPEAKER_02: And I know God gave us in many ways, many of us that he has a year of rest.
SPEAKER_02: But for a lot of us ministers, it was when we experienced the most burnout.
SPEAKER_02: We ran hard, people had to be visited in hospital, had to be buried.
SPEAKER_02: And God increasingly told me, I need you to hear from me.
SPEAKER_02: It was only in the year 2021 when God invited me to two weeks of solitude and silence.
SPEAKER_02: Where he said, All I wanted you to know is that my grace is enough.
SPEAKER_02: My grace.
SPEAKER_02: Ignoring rest produces anxiety instead of divine strength.
SPEAKER_02: Ignoring rest disrupts God's created rhythms.
SPEAKER_02: Ignoring rest pulls us back into the slavery mentality.
SPEAKER_02: Ignoring rest weakens our relationship with Yahweh.
SPEAKER_02: Ignoring rest leads us to burnout rather than fruitful ministry.
SPEAKER_02: Ignoring rest reveals misplaced trust instead of trusting that God is for you.
SPEAKER_02: So Parklands Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_02: So Sabbath, begin to tame your time, begin to tame your quiet, begin to invite resetting in solitude, in silence.
SPEAKER_02: I love what Matthew 11 in the message translation says.
SPEAKER_02: It says, Are you tired?
SPEAKER_02: Are you worn out?
SPEAKER_02: Are you burnt out on religion?
SPEAKER_02: Come to me, said Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Get away with me.
SPEAKER_02: You will recover your life.
SPEAKER_02: I will show you how to take real rest.
SPEAKER_02: Walk with me, work with me.
SPEAKER_02: Watch how I do it.
SPEAKER_02: Learn how to learn the enforced rhythms of grace.
SPEAKER_02: I will not lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.
SPEAKER_02: Keep company with me, and you will learn to live freely and lightly.
SPEAKER_02: Jubilee is about returning to God's original intention.
SPEAKER_02: When we return to his original intention, he gives us restoration.
SPEAKER_02: And so over you Parklands Baptist Church, I pray increase.
SPEAKER_02: And not only pray multiplication, as you learn to live from rest, you will experience exponential growth.
SPEAKER_02: Exponential is more than multiplication.
SPEAKER_02: Exponential as opposed to multiplication.
SPEAKER_02: Multiplication says more members, more offerings, more buildings, more programs.
SPEAKER_02: Exponential growth happens when every believer disciples another believer.
SPEAKER_02: When every leader develops new leaders, when every ministry reproduces itself, when every church plants other churches, multiplication increases what you do, but exponential growth reproduces who you are and will create a movement.
SPEAKER_02: So as I come to the end of our time with us, I want to say this that God did not preserve this year, this church for 50 years just to multiply your numbers.
SPEAKER_02: The next years might not must not be simply about being bigger, they must be about reproducing, where every disciple makes a disciple, every ministry grows itself a hundredfold.
SPEAKER_02: But if you do it on your own strength without being still enough, it is very easy for the other three postures to creep in where you control, where sudden suddenly there are idols that you're worshipping more than God, where the pride of life takes over.
SPEAKER_02: Let me invite you, Reverend Ambrose, to please come up.
SPEAKER_01: Oh let the grace of the Lord calm down let the grace calm down Let the grace.
SPEAKER_02: Fift years.
SPEAKER_02: You have been Pakkland Baptist Church's rock.
SPEAKER_02: You have been their shepherd and provider.
SPEAKER_02: You have sustained this church through seasons of joy and seasons of trial.
SPEAKER_02: You have saved the lost, you have healed the brokenhearted, you have raised up leaders, you have healed and strengthened families, you have extended your kingdom through this congregation of faithful men and women.
SPEAKER_02: We declare with grateful hearts that the Lord has done great things.
SPEAKER_02: We are filled with joy.
SPEAKER_02: We thank you for every pastor, every elder, every deacon, every volunteer, every missionary, every donor, every faithful member who has served with love and grace and sacrifice.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for those who laid the foundation, who carried the vision, who have remained steadfast even when the journey has been difficult.
SPEAKER_02: Lord, today we say that their labor in you will never be forgotten.
SPEAKER_02: As we celebrate this golden jubilee, we consecrate ourselves afresh to you.
SPEAKER_02: Restore anything that has been lost, renew a fast love for Christ.
SPEAKER_02: Rekindle our passion for your word, for prayer, for holiness, for the lost.
SPEAKER_02: Let us never become satisfied with the past victories.
SPEAKER_02: And Lord, we would long to hunger and thirst for your presence and obedient to your calling.
SPEAKER_02: And we particularly pray your spirit conviction against these three postures that you would secure the like rhythms of this church where you can speak your wisdom and direction in the stillness of silence and solitude and rest.
SPEAKER_02: Grant wisdom to every leader, strength to every servant, courage to every believer, and hope to every generation.
SPEAKER_02: Raise up your sons and daughters who will carry the gospel further than we have.
SPEAKER_02: May our children and our grandchildren know you, love you, faithfully proclaim your name.
SPEAKER_02: Lord, we ask that your glory would never depart from this house.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, let your spirit continue to dwell among us.
SPEAKER_02: May every ministry bear lasting fruit, every act of service bring you honor, our God.
SPEAKER_02: And every life touched by this church, may every life testify to your grace.
SPEAKER_02: And so by faith, we dedicate the next 50 years to you.
SPEAKER_02: Build your church, Lord.
SPEAKER_02: May the gates of hell never prevail against it.
SPEAKER_02: Let everything we do give glory to the name of God, to our Savior Jesus Christ, and to the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: This we pray in the matchless name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and God's people said.