Discipleship Activated

Transcript (Auto-generated)

Good morning. It's great to see your smiling faces and those songs. Well, thank you. Tremendous stuff. Tremendous stuff. Just before we open God's Word, I just want to have a quick chat about Church Council and the AGM coming up. Nominations are due very shortly. There's a couple of things I want you to consider. At the moment, Reese is moving on to God's moving to another state to serve down. Lindell is coming to the end of her second term, and so she can stand for nomination again for Church Council. But if anyone's good with maths, on one hand you can count Church Council. And as a church, yes, we need servants for the Lord. And I know people serve in other ways in the church. Can I ask you to pray that God will raise leaders up? And secondly, can I also ask you to pray that if you are laid on your heart to serve on the Church Council, that you'll have a word of affirmation. I'm not asking people to self-nominate. I know that sounds a bit weird, but I want to challenge you with that today. That be praying for our Church Council continuously, but also pray about the leadership as we go forward. And if that's something in your heart, we have a position description. We have all sorts of ways of letting your nose and lots of reading there and just to get an understanding for the position. But we ask you to pray about that. That sound fair enough? Are you awake? Do I hear an amen? I was waiting when we were singing that song, Kel, for everyone to go amen at the end of every line because I was thinking, oh, this is awesome. Well done, well done. Well, folks, let's open God's word this morning, and I might start with praying. Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, that as we come into your presence, Father, you speak to our hearts. Lord, whether it's a group as your body, the Church here today, Father, or whether it's in our individual time at home, or as we walk by the streams, Lord, as we walk in the mountains, Lord, we drive our cars, and Lord, as we interact with those around us. And Father, as we open your word today and talk about what it means to be active for you as disciples, Lord, we ask that you'll just show us your way. Speak to heart through your spirit. And Father, as always, Lord, ask the words I speak. Lord, not be my words, but your words, Lord, for your glory, in your name, amen. So we spent a lot of time looking about whole life discipleship. We did a 10-week series on it. So we're going to do a mini series now, mini series about what it means to be active as disciples because we've done a lot of teaching, a lot of thinking, a lot of home groups, and that's a great place for us to start. But what does God say to us as individuals and as a church, how we make that go out into the community? And so just a bit of a reflection there. We've had a look at the whole life disciples. So we've got a list there. There's 10 in the list. And I want you to just draw your eyes down to number five, because number five is what we're talking about today, is withdraw and meditate. Now, just to show of hands, put your hand up in order to meditate. And I don't mean sitting cross leg with your knees going, oh, mum, mum, mum. If you do that, we need to talk. But just about meditating in God's word and what it means. Our pastoral team, we've been praying about this for a few weeks now. And our heart is to give you tools, put stuff in your hands so that you can be disciples that do what God has called you to do. Have head knowledge. I really believe in psychomotor. That is what you understand. Put it in your hands. That's the one term from Teachers College I remember is psychomotor. So as disciples, we're activated. And when we're activated, a couple of things happen. We're going to talk about withdraw and meditate. And I've got a little plus sign on the end of meditate there because a little bit extra for you to do. So it's not just about withdrawing and being with God, it's actually putting sanction. And so there's a command and mandate in our church. And our understanding of what we do in the Bible tells us that we need to do things for God. During mission is growing in God and going for God. And we're committed to do both of those. And we understand in Scripture that Jesus said in Matthew 28, 19, says, go and make disciples in all the nation. He didn't say sit in church and make disciples, did He? He said go and make disciples. He also said we proclaim Him in closions. We proclaim Him. We say Jesus, really loud like that when we're in the middle of the shopping center. Put your hand up, you do that. Okay, right, we need some work to do. Having a class about how to yell out about Jesus. And perhaps that's not your thing. In Acts 1.8, it says to witness only to the people you like. So it's only to those people who you feel comfortable with. Remember, we did a little while back that was talking about ministering to the awkward people in our lives. That's the old thing is, if you look around a group of people and you can't find the awkward one, it's usually you. Discipleship activated is. It's taking a whole life of discipleship and that's putting feet on it, hands and feet on it, putting stuff in our hands and get on the ground and see what God says. I've got a challenge for at the end of the service and I pray that you might be able to respond to that with God's leading. But it's between you and God, of course. So our slide comes up and it says that we're crossing the car park opportunities to engage. So we're crossing the car park and we've got two entrances in our church and we're wondering which one gets the most. So I'm going to show of hands today, who comes through the western entrance. Put your hand up please. Okay, put your hand up, you come through the northern entrance. Okay, 50-50 a bit more. Put your hand up, you come through the southern entrance. Oh, look at the workers here coming early. Open place up, thank you. I did try and avoid the term back door and front door because there's a connotation there. But it does mean that we do, when we leave here, what do we do? We cross the car park. We cross the car park. We cross the car park. Oh my goodness me, I'm sorry. I might just close in prayer. Perhaps this isn't the message God's got for you today. Perhaps he's saying, I'm sorry. Doug, you got it wrong. You're bullfed. Okay. But there's a challenge in it, isn't there? We say we proclaim him. We say we believe we need to go make disciples, but how does it happen in hands and feet? I was reading through John 17 verses 14 to 21 and I came across this understanding in Scripture. This read with me, it's not on the screen, who's got their Bibles here? Electronic or hardcover? Who's got tablets as in stone? No, okay. I thought there might have been some old school people here, that's fine. Okay. Let's have a read from John 17, which is the core verse to inspire us. And this is Jesus praying. I know it's Jesus speaking because my Bible's got red letters, which is how Jesus speaks to me. I've given them your word and the word has, and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world anymore. I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but you protect them from the evil one. They're not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth of your word that is truth. And as you sent me into the world, I've sent them into the world. For I am sanctifying myself, I sanctify them myself that they too may be truly sanctified. My prayer is not for them alone, meaning the disciples and that, but I pray for those who also will believe in me through the message, engage. That all of them may be one. Father, just as you are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. That to me says, disciples go. That to me says, disciples, activate, engage. Thunderbirds are go. I was reading through this and it's interesting how a modern person might respond to this. Please bear with me. You may come across some of this language. If God has set us up like that, you may respond this way. I think I'm offended and triggered. I might need to retreat to my safe place for a personal day just to reflect on how I feel about this, this challenge to go. I'm not really, I'm not really feeling body positive at the moment and certainly don't want to convey cultural appropriation of a first century Middle Eastern culture by presenting myself as a modern disciple from Jerusalem with its toxic masculinity. Or because I spoke my truth and not their truth about a man who was gender specific and mansplained his way through Galilee, I can't even think about that. I don't want to be cancelled or a social pariah for the question I have. Is Jesus, does Jesus know what the world's like now? When he spoke those words with his disciples, first century Jerusalem, he's speaking those words to us today. Of course he knows what it means. Of course he knows what it is and I've written down here. Yep, he does. That is why he sent us across the car park into a world with the message of truth and hope to a world lost in the swirl of confusion, language, ideology and assumptions about faith. And you talked to a lot of people and they will say they struggle with what truth is and what faith is. And as disciples we call to take that truth. We call to take what we've learned in scriptures, we've learned the last 10 weeks, we've learned the last five years of discipleship and put it in action. They say that when you look at professional sportsmen who are really good at what they do, men and women, they start off with a ball at a very young age. They start off just playing with it in the backyard and getting their eye-hand coordination, their eye-foot coordination if they play soccer-football. And so it's the same with us with God's word. When we have it in our hands, when we get used to it, when our kids get used to seeing it, when we read it with our little ones, no matter how old they are, they say, hey, this is important. This is significant. We're going to encourage you to keep doing this because when you do it as a child, the prayer is that you'll keep doing it as an adult and be dynamic for the King of Heaven, not for our glory, but for God's glory. So as we have a look at where we are, where we're positioned in our car park, the first slide up there is our church. I want you to notice something about it, as it comes up now. Do you see the green arrows? That's the way out of this church from the front door. It goes out that door, turn left, go around, turn left or right and head out across the car park, taking the word of God into the world. The second slide's a bit bigger for you. As I just went to Google Earth, did a bit of twitching around, and there's another way out through our western entrance, out to the car park, turn left or right, then down past the ATC and into the world. That is what we're called to do. We do come to church to worship, I understand that. We do come to church to exalt God, but he's given us a mission. He's given us the heart to share any aspect he can, any way we can, and he thinks we can contribute to the Kingdom of Heaven. So we make his name famous, and people are saved. They're not lost to eternity. That's what Across the Car Park series is about. It's a long intro to a message. I just want you to be patient with me as we have a look at these two aspects of what we're looking at today of withdraw and meditate. How are we going so far? Everything okay? All make sense? Still biblical? Okay, no duggisms in there? I'm not too many duggisms. Okay, we're on the win. Let's have a look at withdrawal first. We notice when we're going through our assault worship series that we had Jesus withdraw and pray with his disciples. It's a great lesson for us and a challenge for us to be able to do that regularly, to be a people of faith that want to glorify God, but we need to spend time on his word, we need to turn time quietly on the side. And so as we have a look at it, we understand that when Jesus was withdrawing, he was gathering his thoughts, and it usually preceded an action in John 6, 15 to 19. It was about when Jesus was walking on the water through the storm, but it says these words in verse 15, Jesus knowing that they intended to come and take him, make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself. And as then it says in the next passage, just reading on from that, that Jesus then went down and the boys were in the disciples were in the boat and the storm was raging and he appeared to them. In Matthew 14, 13 to 17, just prior to feeding the 5,000, verse 14 says, when Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by a boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot into the towns. Jesus gives us the model of withdrawing. When things get a bit tense, you step back, but he didn't step back and go to sleep. He didn't step back and get nice and comfortable. He stepped back for a reason. He stepped back to meditate, stepped back to cotton plate his Heavenly Father because he was getting ready in Matthew 26, 36. When Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane and he said to them, sit here and while I go over there and pray, Luke 22, he withdrew to a stone's throw from beyond them, net down and pray. So he was modelling to them the whole time. There is a Bible precedent here of spending time withdrawing and praying, withdrawing and praying, spending time to meditate on the Lord. See, Jesus spent time in his Father's presence and we think, well, we come to church, we sing songs and that speaks to us partly. We worship in song. We also worship in His Word. We can worship in prayer. We can worship in fellowship. We can participate and worship at the table when we have communion and remembering what He's done to us and done for us. We worship in prayer. We ask God to speak to us in this way and it's about seeking His will. We've come across this before. This is a little anchor date that I like to use. You may have heard before, please don't spoil the punchline. It's about finding God's will. It's about being in prayer and understanding that God leads us where He wants us to. And please, there's no inflection of anyone in the room when I read this. An overweight man decided it was time to shed some pounds or some kilos. He informed his co-workers that he was going on a diet and would no longer be bringing donuts to the office. And you would be hard to resist stopping at the baker and his way to work, but he committed himself to remain strong and resisting temptation. His co-workers were surprised one morning to see him arrive at the office with a big box of donuts. When they reminded him of his diet, he just smiled. These are very special donuts, he said. When I left for the office this morning, I knew I was going to drive by the bakery and I wondered if the Lord might want me to have some donuts today. I wasn't sure, so I prayed. Lord, if you want me to stop and buy some donuts, let there be an open parking spot directly in front of the bakery. You did pretty good prayer, didn't you? I mean, that's really putting the fleece out. And as you know, parking spots in front of the bakery are pretty hard to get. So the parking spot was there, said one co-worker. He said it was a miracle, the man replied. The eighth time around the block, one appeared. So when we're seeking God's will, we don't want to impose upon him our will in a sort of insidious sort of way. We don't want to sort of sneak it in the side and, Lord, just make this be your will, that what I'm thinking, what you desire. When we pray, when we drop in and we draw with God and we pray, what we're doing is we're asking God to speak into our heart, what it means to be close with him. And as we do that, we start the discoveries will even a more greater way. And it helps us to understand him. And so as we understand, then, look on the long page, when we seek his will, then we can be more dynamic for him. So as we put it all together, what does that mean for us? Well, let's have a look at meditate. Meditate is something that Jesus did. He went and sat by his father and he asked him to teach him and to show him. So what do we learn from this? Meditation is a filling up from God. Eastern meditation says you empty your head out, but biblical meditation says you fill up with God. So that's the challenge. When you meditate, it's just how do we do that? How do we block the things of the world out and just think about God? How do we read his word? Do we pray? Do we be silent? Is there danger in being silence? Jesus knew the disciples went through all this and he was modeling for them constantly. You see, meditating is reflecting on the goodness of God to start off with. Within your temple, oh God, I meditate on your unfailing love. First and foremost, within your temple. Well, we do that, don't we? As a church, we do it beautifully this morning. Not we don't do it every morning beautifully, but this morning with our singing, our connecting with God. We consider how he inspires us. I will consider all your works and mediate and meditate on all your mighty deeds. Sometimes it's interesting to sit down the piece of paper and just write out what has God done for me this week? How has he shown me his love and grace and mercy? And that's a real challenge sometimes because if you go through a hard week, sometimes that's pretty tough gear, but God is faithful in that and he'll show you and reveal to him, reveal to you through him what it means to write those things down and just spend some time with him. A bit of a challenge for you to put your head around today. Meditating on God is listening to God's word, reflecting on God's works, rehearsing God's deeds and contemplating God's law. If there's anything you want to write down or you want to take a photo or you want to look at it later when it's online, that might be something to contemplate, to keep those things close to you. Meditating is about the intimacy we find when we're in a relationship with our Father and say, Father, what is your will for me? That's a dangerous prayer to pray. What is your will for me, Lord? How do you want me to live my life for you? Because it's easy for us to say, I've lived my life for God, but what's he really saying to our hearts? If we can take out a discipleship and what we've learned in that and make it to sip and go into the world, we've got to find out God's will is for each of us and so we can walk with him boldly in his strength. We have in our church and understand him, we have four values. When I was thinking about this, it's about taking what we know and then engaging and letting us go first and so when we engage in what God has taught us, then we sow fruit for the kingdom of heaven. We learned about fruit last week and the challenges that Dave had for us there about being part of the body of the vine. We're informed by God's word. Do you like, I got spock up there. Is it Kirk? Picard. I want to see how many Trekkies were here. It didn't work. But the values in that church should be informed by God's word. So when you're meditating and praying and withdrawing, you're thinking, what's God's word teaching me? Transform by his word and spirit and I think the P is missing. Is the P missing? Yeah. We're in reach by building each other up in fellowship and equipping the church and we're outreach to engage the gospel. That's the four values of our church and that is part of what we call the dualist assault worship. So we take our meditate, we take our withdraw, we think about engage and next question is what about me? The song that Jenna Knowles made famous the second time around and the question I have, I suppose, and I was praying about this and thinking about preparing for the message and the first thing that came to my mind was what is your word of testimony? Jesus said, God said to me, what is your word of testimony, Doug? How do people know that you're a believer in Jesus Christ? What's happened in your life that is significant that I've taught you or showed you what it is? What do you take into the world as a testimony of God's goodness and provision in your life? What do you take into the world? Some people try to compartmentalize and Edmund spoke about compartmentalizing our Christianity and our discipling and sometimes we live one way around the believers and we go to work and we find it very difficult so we don't take anything into the world. The challenge is today is to take into the world what God has given you. Discipleship crosses over to discipling when we actively and intentionally engage. We don't just learn about it, we don't just do our study books, we actually think, okay Lord, how can I engage? How can I take what you've taught me and put that into practice? Shariah and I were invited out last night to the Gatton Hawks presentation night and so we drove out there and drove back and got home about midnight but it was one of those times where we connected up with the people that we'd done ministry with and it was good to connect up and catch up with people who'd been struggling with things in their life. I wasn't there very long, wasn't scripted, the president came up and said, Doug, could you give thanks before we eat? And so we calmed down the 200-odd people there and we prayed and not all of them are Christians, some of them are so anti-Christian but they all had that respect at that time, it was all a God thing and I got to do some other things during though it wasn't scripted but it's about what we can take into the community and God says, people say, I recognize something about you, where does it come from? When we withdraw and meditate, God gives us those things, He gives us the answers, He gives us the words, He gives us the action, gives us the heart because we're in intimate relationship with Him. And the question is how can you share the basic goodness of salvation that occurs in your life? It's interesting isn't we have a testimony in our life? I like going around the church with Scott here and said, oh hey, how are you going? Been a few years with each other, how are you going with the Lord? I'm going pretty good, thank you, Doug. It's really good. I said, oh good, so are you baptized? Do you know today is the first day of Queensland Baptist Baptism Week and the tank's not full? I missed out there. Are you a church member? Do you contribute to the body of the church? Are you in a discipleship group? Do you make it your business to say, I need to spend time with brothers and sisters learning about the intricacies of Scripture and how to be challenged and kept accountable? And how to grow in my faith? Do you contribute to the life of the church? Do you read your Bible daily? All those things swirl around in our heads and so we're getting engaged in community. We're engaged with God as in our hearts and God teaches us that way. The thing I firmly believe, we all have a baseline. Everyone here today has a story to share about their faith walk, some way shape or form. It doesn't have to be grandiose, it doesn't have to be full of language and that's what I think Dave is going to do and he takes through Christianity and he explored, explained. Yeah, I got it wrong last week, sorry bro. It's about having the tools to do that. It's about signing up and saying, okay, I'm going to be effective for the kingdom of heaven. Give me something, Lord show me. How can I say it differently? You say things like, I'm redeemed by the Savior, the blood of the Lamb, freaks most people out in the community. If you're saved by a bloke named Jesus who loved me and went to the cross to die for me because John 17 or 1513 says that, that's a different story. I want to encourage you to seek ways to increase your baseline to make sure that you're there for God. And when we're praying, just a side note, just to keep things important. In prayer, the real prayer we begin to think, in real prayer we begin to think God's thoughts after him, not our thoughts in front of him. To desire the things he desires, to love the things he loves, to will the things he wills, progressively we are taught to say the things from his point of view. Prayer teaches us that. Don't forget prayer is also about listening. So down the front, I've got a challenge for you. It'd be remiss of me not to give you an opportunity to give you a tool or something in your hand you can take that will say, okay, this is how I'm going to engage in this message today. Lord's lay this on Pastor Doug's heart to share. I better follow it up in some way, shape or form or perhaps I'll think about it. Down there I've got some sheets. On the sheets it says crossing the car park number one, withdraw and meditate. I've got instructions and guide. I wanted to make sure you had the tools. First one is listen to what God is telling you. The second one is record what you hear, see, sense or discover. So write it down somewhere, put it down even if you speak it with a dictaphone or whatever it is. I tried that on my Microsoft the other day, it was hilarious. Share with others. Myself Pastor Dave or Pastor Dylan noted on paper, send us a text say, God taught me this today, Pastor David. Don't, you can text Pastor Dylan too but he won't get you because he's on Fraser. So share it with others, share someone in your home group, in your discipleship group. This is what God's taught me. There's a scripture verse which I'm not going to read because I want you to read that and discover what God is saying. And there's a suggested way to pray before the Lord. Number one, Father, reveal in me anything that requires my repentance and forgiveness. Psalm 139, 23 and 24 says, search me, God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. To be effective for the kingdom of heaven, you have to be humble. Be effective for the kingdom of heaven and be able to let people know what's going on. You've got to do business with God yourself. You've got to sit down and actually think about those words and declare before God, God, search me. Speak to my heart. Is there something in here that shouldn't be here? I need to confess to you so that I can be more effective for you, Lord. So I can speak your love in truth without some sort of hypocrisy back in my mind because Satan will want you to be a hypocrite. He just wants you to be successful for the kingdom of heaven. He doesn't want to see that people come to faith. He wants to make sure Christians are mute. And so pray that prayer honestly and write down what God reveals to you. Encourage to do that. Second one, Lord, as your body and the light into the world, we want to honour you through our witness in the community. Father, bring us into unity when you reveal your way to crossing the car park. Reveal to us your unity, Lord. We can have all these people running in different directions. When we're unified in the Spirit, we do what God plans for the life of this church. And you might be surprised and pleasantly surprised and certainly blessed when we give some feedback about the prayer points that are coming into the three pastors and other disolvership group leaders. This is what people have been saying. And you go, hey, there's about 15 of these. They all agree. Thank you, Jesus. Something's happening here. Some direction is coming. And lastly, all those two more. Father, show me where my role in your plan is for the church that I might humbly contribute to your kingdom. Give me courage, Lord, to step out in faith and commitment in my church family. God is shaking the cage. Oh, no, he's shaking the cage. He's doing something today. He's been doing something for weeks. He's been preparing this for the last three or four years. If he's challenged you about something today, react to him, respond to him. Say, yes, Lord, I hear you. I want to do something about this. Give me the wisdom, Lord, to do it the way you want me to. And lastly, Lord, reveal in me as I pray and read your word the ways you desire for me to cross the car park to be your witness in the community. One of the great myths about Christianity is that people only get saved in church. If I don't just get them to church, brothers and sisters, they don't challenge you. You are the church in the community. And people are talking to you in relationship to you. They're dying to know what's going on in your life. The ministry had in Gatton for all those years could only be done through God's power because people want to know what the difference was and why we're doing what we're doing. And he does the same with our barbecue trail. He does the same with the community garden. He does the same with all the outreach events we do. But how about we accept the challenge today? There's sheets out here. That's the last songs being played. God prompts your heart in front of everybody. Walk up and grab a sheet. Don't worry about whether you don't wave it around and get the sheet. After the service, you want to slide in quietly, grab a sheet. If we do run out, if we eventually run out, then we'll email them. I believe God's going to do a great work as we cross the car park. I believe that discipleship is now down that go-cart hill down the other side. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, that you meet us right where we are. Father, I thank you, Lord, for your example you set with the disciples. What it meant to just sit quietly and listen to you, Lord, and hear you and Father understand you more deeply. Father, too, Lord, be part of your ministry in this community. Lord, I thank you for each person in Kabultje Baptist Church. Father, I thank you for those who are here today, those at home being challenged with your word. Father, I thank you, Lord, that you walk in our lives. Lord, you've set aside a great foundation. Lord, we want to see people saved. Lord, give us a heart for the lost. Give us a way to, Lord, empower us, Lord, to go before you, to engage in our mission statement, going for you. Lord, we give you thanks and praise for who you are. In your name, amen.