Vision Morning; Word and Wonders

Tim and Matt Dobson sharing some Vision with the leaders, ahead of them church planting Woodlands East

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We're going through. Our goal is that we're going to finish at one o'clock and I'm going to give some time as well at the very end just to go to talk to the practicality of the one next and for all of you guys too. So it may be more of a whistle stop tour, but we're talking about the word. And I don't know about you, but for me, this book right here, my Bible, has completely radically changed my life. Like ever since I've started reading it and I've learned more about God. I've studied it kind of academically as well. And for me, this is going to be a central part of us as a church together. It's going to be the Bible and reading the word together. My life has radically changed, not just through knowing more about the book, but through God speaking to me, God shaping and changing my life. Because we know that we encounter the Liby Word through the written word. And so for us as church, as we look forward to how each Sunday we do some variety of reading the word, preaching, that sort of thing. And we want to open up the conversation, right? What could this look like for us? Because for me, a priority is not just that we read and study and get to know it better, but that it is applicable to our lives. We know in Matthew 7, a very well-known passage, Jesus says this, therefore, anyone who knows these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And for us, we want to, as a church, we welcome new people in as well as as we grow in our relationship, our discipleship to Jesus. And we don't just want to hear the word, and we want to put it into practice. And so for us, a key priority and a principle that we'll carry into all of our services is not only do we want to go deep into our Bible, not only do we want to grow together collectively as disciples for Him, but we also want to primarily focus on how this applies to our life and life application. And this provides for us some challenges. Similarly, this is why we gather and study and preach from the Bible. We come along with a backpack full of preferences around how we like to receive that. And this is going to be a challenge and a journey for lots of us that we probably all want when we turn up to church, we can almost curate the perfect Sunday that would perfectly do a Matt Dobson kind of download of wow, that was an amazing Sunday. But I want to kind of submit to us a crucial part for us as being a place that you can bring friends to, a place that we can welcome people that don't know Jesus yet. As well as welcome people that are maybe returning to Jesus, or even at the different kind of stages of either deconstructing or faith or picking things up together, or really on fire of like, oh, I need to know more, I need to learn more, where's kind of the study nitty-gritty, I want a lecture at a club. There's a whole range of different preferences that we can turn up to. But what I want to submit to us is actually our priority on a Sunday is always going to be. We're always going to be life application. Those who hear my words and put them into practice while I build a house on that foundation. I say for us as people, as we kind of pursue this church about, we want to be people that build our lives practically on the foundation of Jesus. We want to apply the things that we learn and teach, and as we do kind of relationship together, as we read and study, as we preach on the Bible, we want to learn and grow into practice and stuff that we know that has radically changed our lives, and I believe we'll continue to grow our lives and that process of sanctification becoming more like Jesus. And that's the goal for us. But I want to actually give quite a bit of time to be able to discuss and chat because we want to be able to hash out some of the um of the preferences that you've got uh when it comes to preaching on Sunday. Maybe some of the expectations of a space that you want to listen to preach, maybe stylistically, um you might have some of these things where you say, oh, I really want to find a church that does, dot dot dot, or there's this amazing preacher that I listen to online. And this is what I'm looking for from my my Sunday experience. And I'm going to replicate that guy or that lass. And that's the stuff that we're um that we'll need to put aside. So what I want to submit as is we'll have the principles here, but our preferences have to be open and like. And so I want to ask the question and to discuss in your groups. Um, how can a Sunday morning talk help people with a discipleship of following Jesus? So, how on a Sunday, when we open up the word, um, how can this help us and people that are brand new, people that are friends that we've brought in in their journey of following Jesus? And the second question, and maybe more the crucial one, is how is a Sunday talk limited in that respect as well? Um so these are all going to be kind of discussing and chatting around now as we look at this topic of the word. So we've got five, ten minutes here to talk about this together, and then we'll come back in and share broader.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Okay, yeah, so the last uh what do we expect on a Sunday as we gather? Um actually we are expecting that we're a we are a loving community, but we are a supernatural community. Um and in the end that's what people are looking for. Um it was interesting talking. I went to a little uh seminar by someone called uh Justin Braley, and he was talking about um uh what are people looking for in church. Um and he was he he's got got this idea, as he's done quite a lot of research, is that um people don't mind weird. So sometimes we kind of we we think we're doing church and we have a visitors come in and somehow we've we've got to be like the visitors so that they feel at home and feel welcome. And actually, what he's saying is actually people, when they if they if they are brave enough to come to something, actually they're probably looking for something that's different. Actually, they're looking for something that's unusual, they're looking for something that um they've not got already. So if we try to be too much like our visitors and the guests coming along, actually he says that he thinks we're missing the very thing that people are looking for, which is the mysterious, the supernatural, the unknown. Um and he would classify it the weird. Um and so do we have enough space uh in church for the weird? Now that's not necessarily you being weird, but actually it's about the supernatural. So do we do we have space on a Sunday where we're anticipating at these moments God's gonna do something that only God can do? And it's not to do with us and what we can do. So we can do a certain amount of stuff, but there's stuff, some stuff that only God can do, and do make space for that. So obviously, uh part of that is prayer. So together we will there will be space to pray, and when that's prayer that's personal, kind of prayer ministry, like someone was saying, after the word's been preached and it's chances of heart, there's prayer that can be a personal prayer for personal breakthrough. Actually, when we gather together, it is appropriate that we pray for our locality. If we know some of the issues and the needs of our locality, we we should be praying that. Should we be praying for the for the prayer for the in hope and for the food bank, we should be praying for the for the total group and for some of the things. Actually, we should be praying for our locality. Actually, also when we gather together, we're part of the global church. Of course, there'll be Sundays when we pray for global partners and we pray for the wider world because uh, although we wanted to reach this part of our world, the world matters to us as well. So, so prayer is obviously part of our supernatural thing, and we believe in prayer. God turns up and does things mysteriously because we, with our faith, offer up prayers. So, in that respect, prayer ministry will be expecting prayer. We'll be expect God to break through. But there is that kind of thing around how supernatural gifts. Do we anticipate that um that the gifts of the spirit are part of our church life? Um uh now, different parts of the New Testament talk about gifts of the Spirit, whether it's Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians 1 Peter 4, um uh we'll we'll talk about uh God giving each person gifts. Now, some of those gifts that God gives to people may look like natural gifts. So some of you might be naturally caring people, some of you might be naturally good at sharing your faith, some of you might be natural leaders, some of you might be natural teachers. Actually, there's there's things that are part of who we are naturally, and and part of again the deal, I think, for Matt and for the team is to try and draw out those natural gifts. But there's some gifts that are supernatural. So uh things like healing, uh speaking in tongues, um uh prophecy, uh words of knowledge, words of wisdom. Actually, there's some things that are gifts of the spirit, they're not naturally who God's created you to be, but they're things that God will, the Holy Spirit will imbue on you, manifestations of the Spirit. Um and I I think in the moment, too in our small groups, just to say, are we anticipating that that will happen? Are you brave enough to exercise those gifts of the spirit? Because um God gives gifts for a purpose. Um and for me, the purpose of the gifts of the spirit are first of all, they glorify God. People say, how did you do that? It's interesting when when Peter and John they go to the temple and there's a lame person there asking for money, and they say, silver and gold, I haven't got what I have got in the name of Jesus, get up a walk. He gets up a walk and it says he went walking and leaping and praising Peter and John because they were such wonderful people. No, they went walking and leaping, praising God. Actually, the result was not your amazing people, Peter and John. Actually, the result was God's an amazing God. And actually, part of what we do is that. I know sometimes at um at Woodlands I've had a word of knowledge at Britain. One evening, I had a couple of words of knowledge. One was of someone with a bruised uh right hip and a cut on their left foot. Um, uh, and this there was this person who's one of the uh a bouncer in a nightclub, first time in church, and he comes up straight out to me after kind of whilst it was happening, says, How did you know about me? And I said, What do you mean? Well, I was involved in a bit of a tussle last night with one of my drunk customers, and he threw me against the door. I've got a really bad hip. And as he threw me on the door, there was a broken bit of glass on the on the floor, which I trod on, which cut my right kind of heel. How did you know that? I said, Well, it wasn't me, it was God. And actually, what he does is he encounters the living God through a gift of the Spirit. And I wonder whether we're open to the gifts of the Spirit that bring glory to God. How do you do that? It's not me, it's him, uh, and brings glory to God. I think the gifts of the spirit actually they do build up the body. I think there's something about as we use the gifts of the spirit, we remind one another, it's a spiritual journey we're on, it's a battle we're involved with, light against darkness. Actually, as we use the gifts of the spirit and we speak and prophesy God's word into people's lives rather than the lies of the enemy or the lies of the world, as we come and we maybe we regard this as a little bit like a nursery. We learn how to pray for people to be healed and we see a few bits of healing. And because ultimately the gifts of the spirit are there to equip the saints for works of service. Actually, ultimately the gifts of the spirit are for out there, and as you read through the Acts of the Apostles, uh, those encounters the gifts of the Spirit are significantly uh people who are not yet Christians uh finding healing, finding deliverance. And when you see those supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the in the communities, actually that's where salvation comes off the back of that. And again, if you read through those times where a miracle happens, quite frequently after a story of a miracle happened, it says God added to their number daily, or that the word multiplied. Um, and I think it's something about the gifts of the Spirit, the manifestations of the Spirit that uh see the word of God being packed up. And in fact, that's what when he sends out the 12, when Jesus sits out the 12, he says, Go and preach the kingdom of God, heal sick people. And when he sends out the 72, it's the same other way around, heal sick people, and when they say how do you do that, tell them that the kingdom of God is upon you. So, question, 10 minutes. Are we anticipating that in as we gather together there's gonna be the supernatural happening? Now, I know for some of you, if you're a bit like me, you like control, you like things to be ordered, you like things to be predictable, you like to come and think I know what the sun's gonna be like, it's gonna be this, we're gonna have a nice warm welcome on the door, we're gonna have kind of there's gonna be a time of worship, and the children are gonna feel really included. There's gonna be a kind of the preaching's gonna happen, and it's gonna be really anointed, and it's gonna be bi-biblical based. Um, there's gonna be a chance for well, we're gonna go home. No, there's gonna be a chance for the power of God to touch people's lives, okay? But how do we see that happen? And again, I know from different and again we come from different experiences. But some of you, you might think, yeah, just I love the gifts of the spirit, I I I will frequently pray for people to be healed, or I love to prophesy. Some of you might think, actually, that's outside of my experience. That's maybe outside my churchmanship. I didn't grow up with that anticipation that God's going to be definitely here. Um, so uh how could we see how did the gifts of the spirit be used and seen within our Sunday gatherings? So people leave thinking God is in your midst because something's gone on. Is that okay? So we've got five, ten minutes in your small groups. How do we see the supernatural happening within our Sunday gatherings?