Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to the Newman Church Podcast, wherever.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: You are in the world.
[00:00:04] Speaker A: We are so glad you've joined us. Our prayer is that this message will reveal more of who our heavenly Father is as we grow deeper in intimacy with Jesus. Enjoy the message.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: But today we're going to look at a topic which will continue probably for the next few weeks, has to do with where we're going as well, and God in God. I'm not just meaning, like, you know, the. The physical things, but where are we going in God? So we're going to look at Ephesians, chapter 2, verses 19 through 22. Ephesians 2, 1922. We're talking about the presence of God. Today. The missing element in many churches is the presence of God. It's really the core of everything, isn't it? So Ephesians 2, 1922. Paul's speaking to the church. This is what he says. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but your fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure. Notice that he's talking about the church as a structure. Now. Notice that that's important, being joined together. There's a structure, and the structure is being joined together. And as it happens, it grows into a holy temple in the Lord.
In him. You also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. The King James says, a habitation of God. A habitation of God. So what he's saying here is he's unpacking the reality that the church is called to be a house of his habitation. We're called to be the temple of his presence, the temple of the Holy Spirit, first and foremost. So what we should be known for, first and foremost, primarily preeminently, is his presence.
His presence, right. Remember that even when the prophetic is operating, he says, people fall down and worship. The secrets of their heart are laid bare. And they'll say, surely God is among you. God is in your midst. God is with you. He's present with you. That's the thing that marks us and separates us from everything else. So there was a study that was done in the United States, really, on that demographic, the demographic of youth. And they found that in this study, the Barna research group, that nearly 60% of young Christians disconnect from the church after the age of 17, go to church faithfully serving God. But then nearly 60% disconnect after the age of 17, mostly when they're going into university.
And what this survey actually said, this study actually says, is that the responses for this were, number one, church is boring, 31%.
Number two, the church is not relevant to my career or interests, 24%, number three, which is. This is interesting. The Bible's not clearly taught or taught often enough. Isn't that interesting? The church is relevant, but yet the Bible isn't being taught enough, and it's not being taught clearly enough. Right. And then lastly, 20%, God seems missing. From my experience in church, God seems missing. There's another study that was done by the Barna Research Group looking at churches again in America. But I'm sure it's similar to here. And that study concluded this, that most people that attend church regularly in the United States actually say encounters with God during services are extremely rare.
Extremely rare. Okay. So the very thing that should define us in our gatherings, the manifest presence of God has become the exception rather than the norm.
So this is alarming. Obviously, this is a crisis and we have to recognize that this needs to change. Right. Have we substituted religious activity?
We're going to be looking at, by the way, five different kinds of churches this morning. And I know you're going to. You're going to lean in on that. Okay. But what we recognize here is that often we've substituted religious activity for Holy Spirit encounter.
God wants that to change.
Now, Lynn and I, as you know, we were recently in North America.
We were in California and then we went to Canada, came back to California to catch our flight back to Australia. And a cyclone was threatening the Sunshine coast or Southeast Queensland, so they cancelled the flights and we couldn't get back on a flight for. They first said two weeks. We were like, oh. And then we were able to get a flight a week. That was the earliest. So seven days later, while we were in Southern California, we attended a church that friends of ours, they are the pastors at this church. It's a great ministry. And while we were there, we had several amazing things. This is the church of his presence. This is a church where Holy Spirit is moving. And what happened was we received several prophetic words and really interesting. Now when you look at it in retrospect, they were very clear regarding where God is taking you. There were words like, God is taking you to a new season. You're crossing over. There's going to be resources, there's going to be people. Things are going to happen. God is with you and it's going to allow you to fully fulfill what he's called you to do.
Now I'm saying this not Lin and I, because it's not about Lin and I. It's about Jesus and what he's called us to do. Right? It's his calling. We're our obedience.
So this is something that is critical. And so then we received another prophetic word from a minister who was visiting.
He actually, I shouldn't say, that was his home church, and he travels internationally. In fact, he's coming to Australia soon. You may meet him. And he looked at me and he just said, hey, I just feel like I'm supposed to pray for you. Didn't know us, never met before.
I said to him, we appreciate that. I said, we're going through a situation. I shared a little bit of information with him.
And he said, God has called you to build something where you are that is different.
And the Lord wants you to know that he needs you on the Sunshine coast, because what you're called to build is different.
It's different. And he said, build it on the presence. Build it on signs and wonders. Build it on the supernatural. There will be those who will tell you, you can't build a church that way. It freaks people out. Like he's the Holy Casper Ghost or something. I don't. He's like. I don't know, you know, like, Holy Spirit freaks people out. Right? No, Build it on the real raw power and presence of God.
Don't compromise. So that which is going to actually distinguish us, even as Moses said, is what his presence, his presence among us, his glory, his power. Miracles. Few people start getting healed. Guess what? That's what happened when we moved to Australia the first time. We. We moved to Perth, and within two or three weeks, there was a woman visiting. She had been listening to her podcast for a while before we. Before we were the pastors of this church in Perth. And what happened was she heard we were now in Perth, and she goes, oh, my. The church is just down the road from where I live. So she came that day. She was Anglican, walked in, sat in the service, and then when we gave an invitation for prayer and ministry, she came forward, we prayed with her. She fell out under the power of the Holy Spirit. We didn't know exactly what was going on, but she ended up testifying that she went to the doctors and they said she was completely healed. She needed hip replacement surgery, and if she didn't have that, they said she would be in a wheelchair the rest of her life. She was completely healed. The doctors was freaked out and looked at everything and said she was completely healed. Completely healed. Yeah.
People heard about it.
People started coming. A few weeks later, there was a young lady, she's an aboriginal girl, and she saw online that we're talking about miracles. And she said, hey, I want to go to that church. She messaged. And we ended up organizing someone to go and pick her up and bring her to the church that morning. And at the end of the service, we gave an invitation and said, if you need a miracle, a touch from God, come forward. She came forward, she had a walking brace, was in really bad shape, and we just touched her and she went, boom, out onto the power of the Holy Spirit. She got up and started running without her walking. Bryce completely healed in front of the whole church. And we gave her. The video is actually still. I need to download it from Facebook. Facebook's removing videos, don't forget that. But I need to download that because that video is still online. And what actually happened was she said, when you laid your hand on me, she said, I felt like electricity go through my whole body and something dark and evil came out of me.
And she said, and then I was completely healed. Completely healed.
Just that in Jesus name, boom, it happened. And the word got out.
How many know this is a good type of gossip, right?
Talking about what the Lord is doing. So this happened and God did something amazing. The church started to grow. We started doing Sunday night gatherings. We literally saw people who were deaf, their heal, their hearing restored, blind people, their vision literally restored. And we would meet on a Sunday night. Initially, it was once a month, three, sometimes four hours, praying and worshiping. There's no preaching, praying and worshiping. And we would minister to people. And guys, it started to explode. People came from all over. People were hungry. Miracles started to take place. And the word got out.
God wants to make himself known. The way he does it is through his presence, his power. Read the book of Acts, read the Gospels with Jesus.
He reveals himself, his character, his glory, his goodness, his power, his love. He reveals himself to people and makes himself known. Now, the centrality, or can I say the metanarrative of scripture is simply this, that God is wanting to be present in our lives. Okay? Very simple. The main teaching of scripture was, oh, no, Jesus died, rose again so we could be forgiven, reconciled to God so we could go to heaven. Well, why didn't he take us to heaven the moment we were born again? I don't know about you, but me, it would have been probably just a greater way to assure the investment he made stuck. You know what I mean? Like, because if he just Wants to take us to heaven, then why leave us on the earth with all our struggles and our stuff ups and everything that we do right? No, he wants the people to represent him on the earth. He wants the people that manifest who he is on the earth. So he fills us with his Spirit. The gospel isn't just repent and be baptized. Acts 2:38 says, Repent and be baptized, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, his presence with us, his power manifesting in us. So Adam and Eve, going back to the very beginning, right before the fall, here they are in the garden, and it says in Genesis 3:8, they heard the sound, which is the Hebrew word that means voice, the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. So voice comes from another Hebrew word which means to call aloud. So imagine God is calling out to them. Adam, Eve, hey, I'm here. Let's hang out. No, I'm not trying to be too, you know, flippant or casual here, but he's saying, I want to spend time with you, I want to be with you. I want to be present in your life. It was all about that. Okay, now we know the very last chapter of the last book of the Bible is all about a people that share intimate fellowship with him. It speaks about how the dwelling place of God has come to be with man.
So from the beginning, Genesis chapter one, literally, to the very last chapter in Revelation, chapter 22, it's all about the dwelling place, God dwelling with his people. This is the metanarrative of scripture. And so we look at other examples. For example, the wilderness journey.
So the children of Israel are in the wilderness. So after the Exodus, the Israelites didn't just follow a set of rules or ideas. They literally organized their entire community around the presence of God. We know that the tabernacle stood at the center of the camp with the tribes arranged in specific formation around it. And the cloud of God's presence determined when they would move and when they would stay. So this isn't just like a strategic way of, you know, three tribes to the north, to the west, to the east and the south, of just organizing things. Now this is actually a theological principle here that God is trying to teach us that his people had to be organized around him, the center of it all. Jesus, Holy Spirit, God. So it's all about that. Very, very significant. Everything in Israel's life revolved around the manifested presence of God among them. Okay, let's talk about the Tent of Meeting. Whoa, I love this. Before the Tabernacle, we have Moses in Exodus 33, 7, 11, Moses used to take a tent, pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the tent of Meeting. Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp. And whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood at the entrance to their tents watching Moses until he entered the tent. As Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance while the Lord, Yahweh spoke with Moses. The Lord would speak to Moses face to face as one speaks to a friend. Wow.
Now this is so powerful. I don't know if you've ever thought about this. This is something that we literally could preach an entire message from. Okay. But I just want to bring in a few key points. Number one, this shows us about Moses approach to God's presence, that he made seeking God's presence a personal priority by establishing a dedicated place outside of the camp.
He made it a personal priority. Did we prioritize God's presence by establishing a meeting place with him?
By having a regular routine where we catch up with him on a personal level.
Intimately personal. Personally and outside of the camp, a quiet place far removed from distractions? Jesus said, when you go into your prayer closet. Secondly, Moses was intentional about connecting with God on a personal level, not just on a corporate context. What does that say to us? What about our relationship with God, our prayer time?
Are we doing it personally or is it just corporate? Is it just when we come to church on Sunday, do we have that time, that space allocated for him now? Thirdly, he modeled his personal devotion publicly before the people, drawing their attention to and in demonstrating its importance. Now, notice God said, hey, I want you to watch Moses, right? And so literally, the people watched him as the pillar descended. They knew that God was meeting with Moses. It's a powerful thing. So what's my point is this as God's people, we should be exemplifying, we should be modeling in the context of when we gather, true worship.
So let me just meddle a little bit. One of the things that irks me the most is pastors and preachers that sit in their office while worship's happening in the church.
Oh, I don't need to be there. Yes, you do need to be there. Firstly, you're called to worship him. Not just to preach about him, but to worship him. That's more important than ministering. Secondly, you need to model that before the people. Leaders should be the most passionate, worshipful people.
They should be the most devoted to prayer.
And our calling is to exemplify that, to model that for others. Not to sit in a green room and wait until worship's all almost finished and then walk in.
No, that's not right.
Say, oh, no. That's your preference, not my preference.
It's scripture. God wants his people to be people, particularly leaders of prayer. And if you have no prayer life, if you're not a worshiper, if you're not a person who's pursuing his presence, then you need to reevaluate where you're at in your ministry.
See, Moses consistently practiced and prioritized the presence of God, a commitment that was further demonstrating his bold response to God. After, after Israel sinned with the golden calf, Remember? Right. So here's what happens. Israel sins golden calf. It's in Exodus 32. At that point, the Lord speaks to Moses, verses 1 through 3. What happens is he says, the Lord said to Moses, leave this place, you and the people you brought up out of Egypt, and go up to the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, saying, I will give it to your descendants. I will send an angel before you and drive out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you because you're stiff necked people and I might destroy you on the way.
And this is an incredible passage of scripture. And what we see here is that Moses responds and he basically says, God, it's not enough. I know you're going to give us the promised land. You're still going to fulfill your covenant to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But even though you're not going with us, and that's not acceptable, that's not something that we want.
And you've maybe heard me say this before, that it's all really about God saying, I'll give you the promise, but you won't have my presence.
An angel will go with you. How many have you heard Christians say, oh, the angels, the angels, angels, angels. And they emphasize and prioritize angels. Moses said, what's an angel if you're not with us, if your presence isn't with us, what good is an angel? An angel is just a servant. That's all. So we have to recognize here that he's saying, the promise without the presence is not enough. Are we content to have the promise and not the presence? Many of us, I think many leaders would be happy. Oh, God's still going to bless us. He's going to take us into the promised land, a land flowing with milk and honey.
But, yeah, we get it. His presence. No, we don't value his presence as much as we should.
I would rather have his presence without the promise than the promise without the presence.
Now, the good news is it's not either or. It's both. And. But we have to put the presence first. We have to value his presence as preeminent in our lives. And as we do that, then we will see the blessing of God. See, Moses was unwilling to settle for anything less, anything less than the manifest presence of God, even if it meant forfeiting the promise of the land. God's presence wasn't just like a nice addition to the journey. It was the entire point of the journey. It wasn't about the destination. It was about who went with them, who went with them.
Now Moses cry, challenges us, challenges us to evaluate what we truly value. Many would have gladly accepted God's offer, as I've already said, the promised land without his presence. But Moses understood that what made Israel distinct was not their possessions, wasn't their preaching, wasn't their programs, wasn't their production. It wasn't even the promise of God. It was the presence of God, right? And so he cries out, and he says that. He said, look, God, if you don't personally go with us, don't make us leave this place. How will anyone know that you look favorably on me, on me and your people, if you don't go with us? For your presence among us sets your people and me apart from all other people on the earth. I want to say that again. Your presence among us, your presence with us upon me and your people, he said, sets us apart from any other people on the earth. The NIV says, what will distinguish us from any other people if your presence doesn't go with us?
What distinguishes. What's the distinctive factor in all of this? The X factor? What makes all of the difference? Ultimately, it's his presence. Can I say. And I really, this morning, as I was praying and just crying out to the Lord in the secret place, I actually said to the Lord, and I felt like he challenged me. And he said, you know what? If my presence isn't with you, why do you do ministry? Why do you gather?
And it was a challenge. Like, yeah, we got to get back to that in a way that we've never seen, in a way that we've made. I'm not just saying go back to what we once knew. There's more than even what we once knew. And many of us settle for something that was at the time. It may have been extraordinary, it may have been novel, but God has more. There's so much more. He wants us to be a people of his presence. He is calling us to value his presence more than anything else. All right, let's look at churches today. We are going to look at four different types of churches today that operate without God's presence. Now let me rephrase that. They are not just, it is not like they don't have any of the presence of God, but they haven't made the presence what is most preeminent, okay? They're not prioritizing it above anything else. Okay, so the first one is we're going to talk about program based churches, okay? Personality led and then preaching focused, production oriented and then present centered. Okay, Let me break it down already.
Churches that are program based, okay, they prioritize activities and strategic planning over spiritual connection and prayer. Secondly, they measure success by attendance numbers rather than transform lives.
Number three, they become so schedule driven that divine interruption is impossible.
Right? God's like, hey, shut it down. You ever read the scriptures where God says just like, shut up.
No kidding, Like Amos, chapter five, you're worshiping, you're saying, doing all these things, it's noise. Just, just stop it, stop it. He's saying in Amos. He said it's just noise, it's just rhetoric.
Stop it. I want your heart, I want pure worship. I want what is genuine. And God's saying, you know, that that's what it's all about. If we don't have that, if we go faithfully and we, we, we have a revolving door. We bring people in and we bring them out. You know, the factory model of church, boom, boom, boom, boom, have a good 90 minute. And that's even hard these days.
Time where you worship, you know, sing a few songs and then, you know, you get a nice motivational talk.
It's not convicting, doesn't challenge you to go deeper and you leave. Ah, yeah, I'm a great person. I'm good. Yeah.
Rather than Jesus is holy and awesome and he's worthy of worship and I need to bow my knee and I need to repent of my fleshly ways and my lifestyle. That does not truly honor him. We need conviction in the spirit. We need God to change us and challenge us.
This model, the program based model, factory model, values efficiency and busyness over authentic growth and spiritual effectiveness.
All right? So secondly, churches that are personality led, what I mean by that is the rock star pastors, okay? The celebrity pastor, the CEO, pastors, leaders. What I'm talking about here is literally, it's everything is prioritized around the charisma and the giftedness of a leader or a few leaders.
You know, there's a problem with that.
One of the things is it literally creates a succession crisis during leadership transitions. What do I mean by that? Is that when you transition and you finish your season, there's no one to take over and there's no one that compares.
Our rock star. You're not a rock star. Our last pastor was a rock star.
And it's all about the gift, the charisma and the person.
It's not about the presence of God. The church was never meant to be a one man show.
It was never meant to be a one man show. I'm not saying that everyone preaches on a Sunday. But what I'm saying is we all have a gift. We all have a place and we all have something vital to contribute.
Secondly, it fosters unhealthy dependence on specific individuals. We see moral failures happen and it shatters people's faith because their faith, they were too dependent on people.
They esteem people higher than they should have.
I get it. It's disappointing. But guess what?
God wants us to only give Jesus. Put Jesus on the pedestal.
Only Jesus, only Jesus.
It cultivates fans rather than discipline.
There's more. We could say churches that are preaching focused. Oh, we all want good preaching, right? Hey, we lived in Dallas, Texas. It's the buckle of the Bible belt.
The buckle of the Bible belt.
I mean, anyone you want to hear, you can go here on Sunday. I want to hear TD Jakes. Easy. I want to listen to Kenneth Copeland. Easy. Todd White, upper room, whatever you want.
The menu there, right?
And then there's others. Massive churches. Massive churches. And great preachers. Some of the best preachers you'll ever hear on the planet.
And guess what happens is in many instances, it's centered around the gifting. Chuck Swindoll, you remember Chuck Swindoll. He literally lived like down the street from us. Literally. Massive church. You should see the church thing is huge. It's bigger than a shopping center and all of these gifted people preaching. And then this is just me. But I think it's in the spirit. You know, it's like when Paul said, you know, this is me, not Jesus.
You know when he said that, he wasn't saying it's not God.
He was saying, Jesus taught that previously. I'm teaching this now. Jesus never Taught that before I've received fresh revelation. That's what he was saying. He wasn't saying, this is just my opinion. No, he wasn't saying that. He's saying this because he was under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit when he wrote it. So it doesn't make sense if he was just saying it's just his opinion.
So what I'm saying here is that there's literally a place where we recognize in the Spirit that this isn't about the giftedness of someone, their eloquence, their education, their ability to articulate, to exegete passages of scripture.
We need the presence of God. You can listen. You can listen and you go, wow, that was a really good message. It was biblically based, it was theologically sound, and it was, you know, delivered so powerfully. But yet there's no presence, there's no anointing.
And 1 Corinthians 2, verse 5 says that when our faith is not in the power of God, but it's in the wisdom of men, our faith is not to be in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God.
Paul said, I came to you not with wise and persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.
Why verse five, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God.
We literally, I remember when, when we got saved and we were part of a church that believed in the power and the presence of God. It had great preaching, but one of the things that we used to hear is preachers who would spend hours and hours in the prayer closet and they would be crying out, hide me behind the cross. Hide me behind the cross. When I stand up, let people not see me, but let them see Christ in me. Let them hear from heaven. Let them know that this isn't just a man speaking, but this is God speaking through a man. This is the voice of God speaking in power and with revelation.
So we develop sermon centered gatherings with minimal participation.
We emphasize intellectual understanding over transformation.
We create passive congregations who consume without applying consumers. Right.
We substitute eloquent speaking and academic credentials for spiritual gifts on the anointing of the Spirit.
Wow.
Number four churches that are production oriented. What I mean, these are what we might call the fantasy church. You walk in and you're like, oh, wow, is this Willy Wonka's factory? You know, like, wow, and where's the golden ticket, right? You know, and literally you just, wow, look at these place. That LED screen is worth a million dollars, right? True story. There's a church in Singapore we visited. The screen was worth over a million dollars.
The LED screen? Yeah.
Like crazy stuff. It's all about the experience. It's all about, you know, the production, what we can do. And we focus on polished consumer experiences where members are spectators. Let's keep everybody happy. You know, they come in and they'll be amazed and they'll drop some money in the offering. We'll keep this thing going, right?
We prioritize technical excellence and aesthetic appeal over spiritual impact.
Come on now. You know I'm preaching the truth this morning, right?
We spend disproportionate resources on facilities and equipment.
Disproportionate resources on facilities and equipment.
Like, yeah, we need facilities. Unfortunately, I'm not really keen to stand outside when it's 33 degrees and, you know, humid on the sunshine coast and raining like every second day. But at least recently. But I'm saying that we over emphasize, we place. We spend way too much money in many instances. Like, really. I mean, when did you hear someone say, when that light shone up that way in the service? That was it, man. I was undone.
When did you hear that last? Right?
Who says that? Right?
So it's true.
And when we read about all the great moves of God's spirit and revival, and I'm not against lights, I'm not against a screen, I'm not against any of that. But I'm saying there's a place, right? I mean, come on. It's crazy. It's crazy. We foster a performance mentality while discouraging spontaneity. Okay? We measure success by production quality, not spiritual fruitfulness.
That was amazing today. Really?
Tell me why it was amazing. The band was awesome.
The person on the lyrics didn't stuff it up, you know, and the lights and the sound quality. Whoa. I mean, it was amazing, Right? Look, obviously I'm being somewhat facetious and we know not all churches are that extreme. Hopefully none are. But the point is we over prioritize these things and we under prioritize the presence of God.
Lastly, presence centered churches.
Presence centered churches cultivate awareness of God's presence with space for Holy Spirit encounter.
Secondly, they balance structured teaching with flexibility for Holy Spirit direction.
He can interrupt, disrupt, do whatever he wants whenever he wants to.
Thirdly, we value waiting on God over strict schedules.
Present centered churches 4 measure success by spiritual transformation. Not the metrics of attendance, etc.
Bodies, budgets and buildings. Right?
No, we develop leadership that facilitates connection with God rather than controls it.
Can I say I know what it's like to be fearful if we allow God. Look, we were from Toronto. The Toronto revival was crazy.
It was crazy. There's some crazy things that happened in the Toronto revival. Like, definitely not God, okay? There's a lot. There was God, but there's stuff that happened was not God, okay?
And I can tell you that we always look at that and go, you don't like that?
And I don't want that to happen because, you know, that's chaotic, that's fleshly, sometimes even demonic. But ultimately, we get afraid of allowing Holy Spirit to really have his way.
And we can't do that.
We have to make space for him when it's really his spirit. And yes, people may react a certain way and things may happen that we don't fully understand.
Like people may fall out, they may laugh. Yes, people may manifest spirits. At times people may, you know, appear to you like, what are they doing? I don't understand that. But ultimately, you know what? That's all right.
We can deal with that.
If it becomes an issue, we can deal with it. Often I see it happen and it's not an issue, but I'm just saying is we become afraid of allowing Holy Spirit to have his way.
And so we shut it down as soon as God starts to move. Like some leaders literally shut it down or they don't know how to facilitate it. That's something that we want to be good at is when we step up here, you know, when we're leading worship, whatever it may be, that we can facilitate that flow.
The first musician in the Bible, his name was Jubal. And Jubal literally means in Hebrew, to create a flow, to create a flowing river, there has to be a flow. There has to be a flow of the Spirit. We need to just allow him to do what he wants to do. And we've spent years traveling and seeing that happening, and even pastoring and seeing it happened as well.
In presence centered churches, we foster participatory worship over performance.
The audience of one. We're the worshipers. Every one of us. There may be a team that helps facilitate, but it's all about that. We create environments where prayer, spiritual sensitivity, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit flourish.
Very important. All right, so let me just say this. The early church in the Book of Acts, didn't have buildings.
They didn't have massive budgets or elaborate programs, but they had the unmistakable presence of God. And it changed the world.
Today, obviously, we must recapture this as our priority.
And let me say we're called to be a people who like Moses, who say, unless your presence goes with us, do not send us up from here.
The question for each of us today, very simple. Do you know him?
Not just about him, but know him personally through his presence in your life.
Are you willing to stake everything on his presence?
Just like Moses did?
Everything.
Can you imagine traveling through the wilderness and suffering, going through all that Moses did, and then realizing, like, everything that you've given your heart to, your. Your time, your life to could be terminated. Like.
And Moses is like, I don't care.
I just want his presence more than anything else.
So we look at things externally. We make decisions based on our emotions, our experiences, even where we're at.
You know, the Bible says this. The heart is exceedingly wicked and deceitful above all things. Who can know it? The Bible says that?
What's that mean? I just didn't feel in my heart.
No, no, don't lean on your own understanding. Don't go with what your heart says.
Hear from God. Read His Word. What does His Word say? What is Holy Spirit saying to you is really important. See, we cannot truly know God by merely reading about him or hearing sermons. Knowledge from a distance is shallow.
It's a collection of theological facts, secondhand testimonies at its best.
That's it.
But true knowing requires presence.
It demands time spent in prayer, listening for his voice, worshiping him in extended times, experiencing his guidance through both storms and still waters.
It requires encountering him in different seasons, how he responds to your joy, your crisis, your mundane Monday afternoons.
Yeah.
Your presence is with me everywhere I go, everywhere I walk. I'm not just saying. Oh, I just claim that. No, there's this thing in theology called transcendence and immanence. It's also used in other circles. Transcendence is this. God's everywhere, Right? His presence is everywhere, Right. Okay, that's transcendence.
But immanence literally means it's tangible, it's manifest, it's real.
So we say, oh, yeah, God's everywhere. God's everywhere. So the devil knows that.
But do you know that personally? Is that an imminent thing, an imminent immanent?
Is that something near? In other words, God's everywhere, but he's close.
He's everywhere, but he wants to be close.
He wants to manifest Himself to us.
And what we are called to do is to walk with him in a place that we literally attract his presence.
We attract his presence.
He said, that person, that church, that individual.
Right. Draw near to God, he will What? Draw near to you? Yeah.
We'll unpack this more in the next few weeks, next few Sundays. But it's a place where unless your presence goes with us, you know, when you've tasted it and you've known it especially, you just can't go back.
Can't go back.
You know, Lynn and I pastored a church. We were very young.
We just. Actually, it was the first church we pastored. We were on staff at a church, and we got asked to pastor this church in a rural, very remote part of Canada.
And we didn't know much, but we knew him.
And I can tell you that we prayed, we prayed, we prayed, we worshiped. We spent hours with God. And that church, a real revival broke out. Do you know that the nearby Mormon Church, Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints, all the people started coming and they got saved.
And they were not happy about that.
So they sent their. Their leaders to try to convert me. True story.
And they told me. They came into my office and they showed up in the service on Sunday night, and they were all dressed, you know, nice, Norman Mormons do. And they came in and they started telling me why they were there. And they said, we want to meet with you and talk to you. So I prepared.
I'm like, yeah, right. I know what you're up to. So I prepared. They came into my office.
Presence of God was so strong, one of the young guys fell out under the power of the Holy Spirit in my office.
He got sat. They were not happy. In Salt Lake City, Utah.
They shipped him back home.
And the other. Next thing I know, there was someone there to replace him.
We saw the power of God to the point that on Sundays, not every Sunday, but Sundays, there was literally a cloud at the front of our church. It's like a mistake. There was a cloud.
People would walk in and they just start weeping. People would be in the car park and they start weeping, crying.
They get saved. I remember. True story. I'm not trying to be dramatic during a service. There's a young man, he's a homosexual, and his mom had been praying for him. And he cried out in the middle of the service.
He said, God save me. Don't let me go to hell. And later on, he testified that he felt like he was being pulled into hell.
We were like, oh, my gosh. No one was doing anything. It was just you. People came in, people were healed, people were delivered, people were set free.
I mean, crazy what was happening.
I had a personal experience. I've never. I don't know if I've shared this here or not, but I had a personal experience. One night I was preaching, and the next thing you know, I was up there.
I could see my spirit was up there, and I could look down and see and hear myself preaching. True story.
And I was like, what?
And there's no sense of time.
Next thing you know, boom, I'm back in my body.
And all of a sudden, when I'm back in my body, my spirit's back in my body. All these people came running to the front, crying out to God, repentance and hunger and families being saved.
I'm not looking for that experience, but I want his presence.
I wasn't seeking that experience.
I wasn't. I was surprised. I was shocked. I like what.
But I can tell you that God wants to do something fresh and powerful. Just like we read in the Gospels, the book of Acts. And guys, it's crazy.
Some of the things he does. Amazing.
So in, in closing today, we just want to take a moment and just worship him and pray. Okay, let's stand together. We're going to just put some music on, maybe in the background, and if you have something there, even a video you can put on, that'd be amazing. We want to just take some time and just welcome his presence.
We're called to be a church of his presence.
Right?
We can have great programs, production, great preaching, even great leaders, great team members. But ultimately, what is that? It's rubbish. It's all rubbish. Without his presence, it's all rubbish.
What will set us apart on the Sunshine Coast? His presence and his power. What is it going to take to reach this generation? Gen Z, right?
His power, his presence authentically going to take that everywhere we go. I remember being in the Philippines one time in Manila in Chili's, if you're not sure, Chili's is a Tex Mex restaurant, American one. And I'm sitting in Chili's on this, a young lady that serving us. And she comes in and God just gives me all these words of knowledge. I said, I say, you were in college, what they call college university. You're studying to do this. I said, physiotherapy was the word. The Lord said, you never finished. You're doing this now. And God says he wants to help you and all this specific stuff. And I shared that with her. And she looked at me and she was shocked. She was like, oh, my gosh, how did you know that? I said, jesus knows everything. And I said, he just gave me a fragment of what he knows. He just revealed that. And as I shared that with her, no Kidding. She literally was sitting outside. We prayed with her and she came under the anointing and the power of the Holy Spirit was baptized in the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues. She couldn't even finish her shift.
And after that we would run into her. We had seen her and every time, God, I think her name was Mitch, if I remember. Yeah, Mitch. And what God did. And it was powerful. And we've seen God do this stuff. And I'm like, God, I don't want to be someone who lives off the memories of what happened five years ago, 10 years ago, fresh, new, yeah. Present day encounters and experiences. He wants to heal. He wants to show his glory. It's going to take a people who pray. It's going to take a people that consecrate their lives that serve him. It's going to take it, guys. And we're. We're writing. Amen.
[00:55:58] Speaker A: Thank you for joining us. We hope that you enjoyed today's podcast. And we realize that not everyone has had the opportunity to respond to the good news of the Gospel. And for this reason, in all of our services and platforms, we want to extend to you the opportunity to follow Jesus. The Bible teaches us that we have been created for a relationship with God. However, sin, which is essentially disobedience, independence and disbelief, or us simply missing the mark, entered the world and separated us from God. Romans 6:23 says that the wages of sin is death and a debt was owed. And the Bible tells us that he demonstrated his love for us, that while we were still sinners, he died for us. Jesus paid the penalty for our sin. John 3:16 says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. God so loved the world that he gave us Jesus, that whoever believes in him will be saved. All that is required of anyone is that they believe in Jesus, the Son of God who came, lived, died and rose again so that we could be forgiven, made right and given the right to become children of God and to have life forevermore with Him.
Today you can begin a relationship with Jesus. To believe in him is to simply to respond with faith in our hearts and confess with our mouths that he is Lord. And we do that through a simple prayer.
Follow along with me. Dear Jesus, I believe that you are the Son of God. I thank you that you love me and came to forgive me of my sin. I repent from my old way of life and I turn to follow you. I receive the free gift of eternal life and I ask that you fill me with the Holy Spirit so that I can live a life of following after you. I thank you that I am born again as a child of God and that I am a new creation in Christ Jesus. Amen. If you prayed this prayer for the first time, we would love to connect with you and connect you to your next step and the local church in your area. You can contact us on our website at NUMA Church. Thanks for listening.
