"A Lifestyle of Intimacy" | Power Hour | Ep.83

[Music] [Music] [Music] hey [Music] [Laughter] [Music] foreign [Music] good afternoon par our world it is so good to have you with us you are super super welcome facebookers youtubers all across the globe somebody telling me in the comments they're not sleeping well in california so they've got to switch on it must be the middle of the night so welcome evening welcome in the morning welcome in the nations and we are just privileged to have you come and spend time with us make sure you comment tell us where you're watching from make sure you share as well because we love that stuff good morning good morning good afternoon good evening and sj back and the lovely nate is back in his purple glow oh why purple day sometimes it looks a bit dodgy and you have a red glow don't know i need to i need to get more adventurous and just spread out different colors but for some reason i end up going to the same ones i had this on last night and yes i just left it and magnolia here in perth i have to stay i was just thinking as we were listening to the music i needed i need some advice on what color to paint my walls and my new office and so any any suggestions any requests um and who knows oh wow not that color that's very bright and it would be gratefully received and i might need your interior eye i love you know i love talking about colors cult colors is one of my favorite things to talk about you know and what did god actually mean when he created colors uh you know all that kind of thing so when a color is anointed what does it do you know doesn't if look at anointed yellow in prophetic art does it heal cancer you know the thought process of heaven when it's creating color uh so i love all that because color is so uh much part of the biblical story god using color to display promises uh and what i love is i mean we're we're we're off on something spiritual already i love the fact that god says he dresses in a rainbow i love the fact that his shawl is rainbow that he decides to put himself in brilliant colors in his seat where he works and where he rules the world so you know uh we actually have a page i think sam did it for us on uh colors in the bible and what they mean so if you see them uh or you paint with them you know what their biblical symbolism is so anyway anyway yes but anyway you've got photographs that you didn't have what have you got on your wall i do behind me it's one of those like little heart things that you can put photos in so i have um a postcard of our time actually in jerusalem that i just i'd sent to aleister and thomas uh when sophie and i were with the gpc crew a couple of octobers ago we had such a great trip to israel and an amazing time in jerusalem so that's from the garden tomb that's at the bottom i have pictures of our doggies and with a friend's dog which is just a great photo i have my kids my husband i have my husband and i in cowboy hats so um you love um country music don't you and line dancing that's your guilty well i have to blame texas for that because i spent two years living in texas and i do have a pair of cowboy boots that i bought with you when we were in where were we colorado no dallas i bought some new uh actually yeah i might wear them today later on and some cowboy boots which aren't the most comfy yet because i haven't worn them in properly and but i absolutely love my time in texas you know the lone star bar for two-step in dancing and all that goes with it i love that whole culture and country music i did get into a little bit i have a little bit ever ever ever yeah a thing for some country but i don't listen to a huge amount i have to say it's never quite go under my skin it has to be said are you a country music person look at that face nate no it's like that in bluegrass oh it's like awesome don't say that don't say that bluegrass as well what's the name um oh forgot my name now that's good isn't it it's funny because a lot of the country artists like now are almost sounding more pop than they are sounding country so like i don't know you know i don't listen to any pop music at all i have no idea what's going on my children absolutely despair of me uh but maybe it's a sign of age that uh that i listen to more and more classical music or maybe it's just because i married a classical musician but whenever i actually when i come off par r and i just want to debrief elgar's cello concerto you've got to listen to that and david and i do a good line in conducting pretend conducting david really you know gets his black knight and goes for it so um yes uh anyway i think the best music is big band music like to rest and relax coffee shop there's something wrong about jazz and i don't know what it is oh no i love like michael buble or like just oh louis armstrong glenn miller that you know or even yeah ella fitzgerald jazz is great but this modern sort of like discordant jazz i once went to a jazz this is a long time ago this is before i knew jesus properly and i went to a jazz club and it was it was one of the tortuous nights of my life it was discorded music it might have been a date so i think i just forced myself to sit there otherwise i would have walked out it was awful just stick with cliff richard oh no one of my conventions is my mother years and years ago did take me to a cliff richard uh concert in my teenage i was the teenage years decades ago i must have been the youngest person in and i was the only one who didn't come in with a flask of hot tea you know to drink in preparation for cliff coming on david's asking what's wrong with dad david's asking what's wrong with jazz david saying saxophones is what's wrong with jazz have we talked about my husband's dislike of the saxophone it is very very hilarious if you want to if you want to annoy david and get under his skin send him send him saxophone pictures saxophone socks sacrifice t-shirts saxophone music because he believes that the saxophone is satan's favorite instrument and uh he says there should be no phones in church is his considered opinion i think he might need ministry over this he's got a little bit unhinged on it but uh yes people love the saxophone david do you see you're offending our listeners favorite moments with david when uh somebody gets out a saxophone and starts playing it in the middle of worship and emma and i turn around to watch david's face contorting in pain it's just a funny little take it's the same like i don't eat lamb he doesn't like saxophones you know we all have our little ticks don't we our little commodities oh do i have one i'm not sure i'm sure it does yeah roads what are mine we have little oddities i'm sure very normal i don't have any very let's not start with my oddities we could be here for a whole hour let's talk about something else dean martin yes love some dean martin yes gosh yes that's boring that's not wedding song like sorry dave is just saying in the in the private chat to you and i and that and the sam actually has been on the comments hi sam um it's it's sam said it took him about a week of bible study to write the color chart of colors and bible references and so david's saying can you please tell the people that if we find the color chart we will share in a future episode there's been about 100 requests in the comments so yes sam you're on somewhere in the comments although you're supposed to be at university do do you have access to it anyway he'll come on and he'll let us know but actually it's very very useful so if you see like turquoise in a vision you know you have to go right where's turquoise in scripture and of course you know that it's in uh isaiah isaiah 54. you know uh oh afflicted city lash by storms and not comforted i will rebuild you with turquoise so you know that turquoise is in scripture a rebuilding color and we can maybe talk through that on another occasion because that's not our theme for today but uh i think god loves color and actually in different seasons uh i do think that we sometimes need to change the color we wear uh we need to change the color of decoration we need to change the color of bed linen and on occasions let me tell you a weird story uh before we jump into today's uh thing i uh many years ago i had a couple come to me and and uh i think it was just a prophetic appointment but i could see that there were issues in their marriage and the lord said to me tell them if they buy different colored bed linen and paint the walls a different color i will put a fresh anointing of blessing on the physical intimacy in their marriage that is missing and even i'm thinking god since when did different colors fix a relationship you know and i must say i was a little bit god what are you talking god what are you talking about well you know you're faithful to the word of god and i i said then god is just saying to put different by different color paint different colors and all that couple did was buy different color bed linen and paint a wall and they said it was like the glory of god came into their bedroom and they fell in love with each other and there was a total uh healing of their physical intimacy as a husband and wife just through following what god was i mean that's not a method don't take that as a method it's just that god sometimes says wild things where he anoints color and colors signify a change so i think we have to be more mindful sometimes of of the colors that we wear and what they say i know isn't it a while so it's going what it's not a wild story but actually i've seen god do that a couple of times where god has said you need to dress in different colors to different people because you need to dress in the colors of your new anointing because you've got to know in the spirit that anointings of different colors yes because god dreads himself in all the colors don't you think he dresses us in the spirit in colors if he dresses himself in the spirit in colors come on we got to read the book yes right we are talking today that we're nearly halfway through we're talking today about our personal juries and a number of you have emailed in and said talk to us about what is normal for you in your rhythms of uh meeting with jesus what is normal in your personal intimacy now i have to say we do not have a monopoly on the right way to do it at all please don't hear us say that but to share some top tips and with uh with you on how we steward intimacy with jesus what works maybe what doesn't work how you do when you get stuck and so on so as sarah jane why don't you kick us off and and talk us through some of your top tips and your daily rhythms wow well daily rhythms um for me look actually different each day and i think we were chatting about this before we came on live in my early days as a christian i think i got myself sometimes into a little bit of a state if i hadn't uh taken my quiet time in the way that i always took it so even to the point where you know i'd be sitting at the same seat in the kitchen reading the bible and taking my journaling notes and thinking if i didn't get that time with the lord every morning that it threw my day completely off and i realized um after some time that that was me being religious rather than relational and so i think as the years have gone on my relationship with the lord it looks different and it looks different not every day because i do have some basic building blocks or foundational things that i would do obviously reading scripture i'm often in the psalms in my personal uh reflection and personal prayer time and quiet listening and watching with the lord but i would say that i've been more flexible than religious and flexibility and relational and so for me like this morning i was like oh lord i just want to walk with you this morning i just want to get out in the fresh air and look at the view we've moved into the country so moving watching the view worshiping walking the dog and talking to jesus and you know that was really powerful a really powerful time the old me the original sarah jane when i first started my walk with the lord would have gone well that doesn't really count because you're not sitting at the kitchen table and you're not going through the motions that you would normally have and the prescriptive if you will um religious ways and it's funny i'm just reminded of a book that i picked up in an old antiquarian bookstore in anik actually in northumberland on a holiday and it was rhythms of prayer and it was very very prescriptive and it was like you must do this every morning every lunchtime almost like and every evening and this is to be the way you must always repent you must always bring yourself low before the lord now absolutely do i do that i have times of repentance yes i have times on my face i have times on my knee and i come into my room and i shut the door wherever that room happens to be i have times when i cry out to the lord i have times when i'm uh feeling stuck and i'm working my way through repentance issues that the holy spirit's brought to light and or i just know that my behavior has been um questionable that day and so i want to repent before i go to sleep at night and i would say that this is a journey of relational um i don't know what's i don't want to use that word process relational and depth a journey of relational depth almost like for those of you that are married you know that your relationship when you first get married is very different to what it is and 15 years on 10 years on or for us it'll be 20 years in november that sense of actually the knowing the comfortableness the uh the walking together the nuances even of having walked a long journey with somebody relationally and so for me it doesn't look the same every day but there are those building blocks of quiet listening and positioning with myself before the lord to hear what he's saying and getting into the word every day and so yeah that would be my top line of of how i approach my relationship with the lord and i think what you're saying is so important this relational journey one of the greatest things that ever happened to me in my personal connection with god was where he wrestled with me one day and he said i am not work i am your friend and that turned everything over because i think we think about god as work god i need to work to get to you god i have to do this ritual of uh bible reading and and tonight you do have to read your bible but actually there is a sense of god saying you know i am your friend i am not your work and so you don't go and you leave or vacation away from god to get away from the god that is your work but actually you are the friend of god all of the time and i think for us to say i am the friend of god i am the friend of god totally alters that sense of uh wrong religious diligence now there is diligence and there is habits that we have to create but so much of our time as christians is spell spent in guilt or shame and feeling that we're about to be fined out because somebody somewhere else must be doing it better than i'm doing it you know that there might be somebody who has who has nailed it that day and i'm sure it's not me you know and most of us from the greatest leader to however you rate or score people i think we all feel that but it is in the knowing that i am god aware or i am god conscious all of the time and that i am his friend that brings an ease into the rhythm because you want to spend time with your friend rather than your task master nate what does it look like for you we can't hear you there we go yeah for me it it does look different i think to each day but for me what i found is i schedule i do um i put it in my calendar because for me it's one of those things that i've made i want to make sure i make a priority and i'm talking about really of more of the aspect of the secret place time with the lord as as we talked about in um matthew six and six but you know obviously throughout the day but you know for me it's like i love i love you know like a lot of times we'll drop the kids off at school the kids are back to school praise god now so it's a little bit quieter in the house um as much as i actually miss them but um what we do a lot of times is out in our living room i'll turn on our tv and i turn on like upper room worship service or bethel or whatever and literally we just turn it up you know what i mean and so sometimes it's literally just like i'm i'm i'm at church and i'm in this worship set or or i may be literally on my face before the lord just just you know stewing in his presence or you know but i always typically have you know worship music on in that because i think there's such a such a fruit in that that secret time that that that time that he talks about matthew 6 is really really stepping away because obviously you know yeah so matthew 6 and 6 says but when you pray go away by yourself shut the door behind you and pray to your father in private then your father who sees everything will reward you and i think you know at least you know growing up as our being like a youth pastor for many years and working with young people was like well you know they're like well i pray on on the bus on the way to school or i pray on this or this or that and there's always to me i see them as you know excuses i've used myself as well i just do it you know whenever i'm doing something and obviously i totally agree you know with them like that's amazing we should be like i pray in tongues a lot of times i'm walking the kids in the school and you know or you know not out loud because everybody'd be like looking at me but you know you're you're praying and you're talking to the lord but it's those times that i i love to see with with jesus because he he points out very specifically that that secret time that that that private time that is just between you and the lord and so i you know me and my wife a lot of times we'll do it together but a lot of times we do it separately like this morning i'm just in the loft and i love to turn it on and honestly for me it's like i sit in the floor a lot of times it's kind of weird i have a desk and chair but i sit in the floor and i i it's just this place that i found that that i that i just i appreciate you know and and it's just you're i'm like rocking in the lord or i'm laying in the floor and and it's sometimes it's it's very specific and you know but a lot of times it's at that beginning with worship and beginning of a depth of worship but then going through um you know forgiveness at that point and walking through what that looks like but for me as well with that secret time it's it's it's reading the word of god but it you know it's not just you know this uh religious thing as we're saying is is just to read it just to read it but actually there's a breakthrough when you actually begin to study the word of god and so for me it's not reading the quantity it's it's reading the bible for quality and so it's it's really unpacking something really trying to um you know develop and really see what god is trying to say through scripture and if that's cross-referencing to other places and really unpacking something because it's not just like well the more i read you know and and i love one-year bibles and things like that i think it's excellent because you can feel your you know you get more and more of the word but if we're not careful sometimes we're so um religious about it it's like well i gotta read my five chapters or whatever it is that we almost miss the whole point of actually that relation like sarah jane is talking about and i love how you know it's as the more you grow together the more you can actually sense how you hear from the lord better and and those times of as she was saying is walking out just being with the lord in her walk like that she fought you find those times that actually work for you and god and and i think every day can look different with that um but i always find myself as well is is like i'm reading the word of god and i i try to broaden my perspective on books but you know i'm i'm always reading books that are really challenging and just like that challenge my spirit that helped keep me encouraged with that but you know and then i'm trying to read other books that are more educational you know or you know book book like trying to build your faith but let me build your knowledge of the word of god but then i need books that really just challenge your faith like yes god i want that so i want to know more and how to do that and really for me that's what helps keep me burning and running because it's like i get away i'm reading the word of god i'm just worshiping him aligning myself with him and then just stirring that fire to want more of him yes there's so many things that you've opened up there let's touch on a few of them um it is very common when i say to a group of people and i stand in front of them it feels like a long time since that's happened what percentage of you struggle with reading the word of god i would say in an average audience of several hundred about eighty percent of people always admit to struggling with the word of god it is always the majority of the room not the minority and i think that is noteworthy because what i want to do is break off some shame that you think well maybe i'm the only person with any struggles you are not and in an honest church environment it is a real warfare issue and people report all sorts of things of distraction of a lack of focus of exhaustion and fatigue uh of a sense of you know they don't they they don't understand what they're always reading and and the list of issues of reading the word of god seem to be almost endless so you know when it is that sort of percentage in the body of christ that sometimes we need each other to warfare for each other the demons that come in on the back of reading the word of god and a massive part of what because because i i love to read a massive part of my own personal daily devotion is reading is reading scripture and i actually do read things like this cover to cover to read the bible in a year because i feel it is vitally important that we have what is called um a hermeneutical understanding and hermeneutics is the ark of the content of scripture it's the arc of what all of scripture is saying and so one of my pet peeves is the taking of verses out of context or the taking half a verse you know like for example um resist the devil and he will flee now we all quote that one but we don't quote the beginning of it which says submit yourself to god and resist the devil and he will flee which takes on a completely different meaning and so i feel like if you've not read the bible uh fully covered to cover it is absolutely imperative that you get a tool that enables you to do that and something like cover to cover is very very useful and that you get a hermeneutic understanding an arc of scripture understanding uh and i would say that that has to be woven in and i think we're in this this place where trust is being fought for uh because we have no idea what the word of god actually says we have no idea some of the key concepts uh that that are in it you know uh and even when my dad was on empire last week talking about righteousness oh you've got the cover to cover too you know and it's shocking because we don't actually know what it says so i let me pray for you because to me a lot of the other books that i then read are because i want something academic to help me understand truth can i let you into confession i don't read although i'm a charismatic writer i don't read many charismatic writers books uh because i want to understand truth so let me just release up where you have struggled with the reading of the word of god we now bless you into ease and where there has been even a fear of failure and even a sense of shame that you've not got it right i break that off you right now in the name of jesus and where there has been even sleepy spirits and demonic oppression rhyme to bite you we say it ends nigh in the mighty name of jesus and i loose to you an ease in bible reasoning reading i lost to you a voracious appetite for truth i lose to you an ability to connect with the word of god like never before i list to you an ability to be rooted and grinded and established in truth and i put passion back into you for truth i put passion back into you for truth right now in jesus mighty name does anybody else want to pray on the back of that can you hear me guys to you and ease to find the living god to find holy spirit to find jesus as you read scripture and as you search for him with all of your heart well we lose that ease to each one watching the there would not be this sense of pushing a finger through a lattice and only touching a finger but standing face to face with jesus standing face to face with the living god fully connected fully relational heart to heart skin to skin and face to face and lord would you pray that prayer lord that you as they as they search for your face as they seek your face that they would see it that they would gaze upon it with ease and there would be a relational and yeah a relational flexibility a relational ability to read your word and find you to pray and find you to worship and find you with great ease and we just want to tear that veil that actually isn't there in the spirit the veil has gone but for some reason that spirit of religion loves to put a gauze it almost looks like an insect gauze that you guys in hot countries would have on your porches or on your doors that we don't need here it looks like that in the spirit and so we just remove that gauze that film or that veil if you will that the spirit of religion has put we knock it down you know how easy those things come down the dog can go through them a child could go through them with ease and we just push it down and say there is no veil whoa there is no veil between you and the living god there is no veil between you and holy spirit there is no veil between you and that relationship with jesus and we just bind the spirit of religion that wants to hook you to the bible in a wrong way that wants to hook you to your uh prayer life in the wrong way and we release you into a life of liberty and relation to relatability with the loving god in jesus name you know you know with that said is you know it i know i feel like there's some people watching right now that even just feel like they're like well i don't have hunger i don't have a desire i'm i'm struggling even for that desire right now and it's kind of one of those things you know with with your kids you know you you know you ask the kids one minute they're not hungry and then you drive by their favorite fast food or you know you drive by mcdonald's all of a sudden i'm hungry you know and so in the same aspect right now god we just release this um supernatural desire and hunger right now god got a fresh sense god and maybe you can just breathe in right now and just receive this this um yeah this supernatural hunger for the word of god right now god and i just pray for a fresh understanding father as they begin to just dig in deeper right now and as they begin to read your word that it's fresh revelation that these nuggets just begin to develop and come forth that they've not seen before but god that it just stirs this fire inside of them that develops them into every bit of who you have called them to be father and we just release this passion and this hunger right now to every person that's watching that that they throw out the thought that god that well i'm not hungry because father you are feeding their appetite right now and building that hunger right now in them in jesus name we pray amen yeah and let me go through some other top tips i do think that there is a very key role for healthy holy discontentment i think when you are spiritually satisfied it is very problematic because spiritual satisfaction removes from you a longing for the more yeah when god moves in an individual life i believe it starts with a deep sense of discontent and longing and hunger must be prayed for repetitively you must possess spiritual longing and that actually you can do every top tip in the book known to man to meet with god and it will always fall short if within you there is not a healthy hunger and healthy discontentment about where you are there must always be a prayer somewhere in your week that is an acknowledgement of the desire for more and when you don't feel hungry and sometimes we don't and and sometimes life pushes in and that's why we have these conversations you must lay hands on your own stomach and say spiritual hunger wake up some of you can do it right now spiritual hunger wake up i receive a self dissatisfaction or a discontentment that drives a longing for god and it's not that i want you to live in a sense of dis-ease all of the time but i certainly want you to live in a hungry place all of the time and so there must be a contention within you and i think it is the massive difference between the real rabbit pioneers and the settlers in that the rabbit pioneers who are living on the cutting edge with god have a voracious appetite for who jesus is and when you have a voracious appetite your there is a sense of risk and a sense of cutting edge so you you can't you have to manage that yourself and and monitor when you don't have it and then contend for it even though you might not feel like it in the moment you utter the prayer but knowing that god hearing that will wake something up within you i think the other thing uh i i would say to you is that um you must learn a discipline of repentance you must learn a discipline of repentance why let me say this phrase to you it is not familiarity that breeds contempt it is not familiarity that breeds contempt it's not knowing god too much that breeds contempt it is a lack of wonder that breeds contempt and it's not familiarity that reads contempt it's lack of wonder and what repentance does is that it takes you to a low a right low place of yielded submission where you go to a place of acknowledgement your need of god it postures your heart to go wow only you can turn my life around and we have to come into a default setting that that understands that i have need of a savior in an ongoing way and so when mark chapter 1 kicks in verse 15 and it says repent and believe it is really giving us this order that the the fullness of my ability to believe the fullness of my level of faith the level of my expectation is directly connected to my repentance did you see that in scripture before repent and believe that you actually repent first before there is a rush all fresh believing okay it doesn't say fall in love and then your faith will suddenly explode okay so there has to be a discipline of repentance that is not just a kind of a panic uh of all i need to earn it that's mark 1 verse 15. it's a kind it's not a panic of you know oh you know uh uh did i do that check did i do that check did i do that check but actually a lingering in the place of repentance because how many of you linger in repentance how many of us linger in repentance or do we just feel like we need to get through it to get on to the next thing that i really want to talk to god gadabite well here's my vending machine list let me just do the access bit so that we can shift god but actually there is a lingering in repentance that magnifies god because you start to realize that you do not have what it takes by yourself okay so linger in repentance as much as you pray for a holy discontentment i have several other top tips do any of you want to talk about that repentance or hunger or discontentment before we move on yeah i think i think that's yeah you know i think with that is you know i i love what you're saying emma because it's that place of of of coming before the lord humbly but then within that your your hunger is building up because you're you're growing as as you're you're discontent you're not you're not like you're in this place like god i know what you have said i know what you keep telling me you know it was kind of like even for me on the journey of praying for healing like there was this discontentment because i wasn't seeing anything happen in my life i wasn't seeing these things forward that i'm like i'm reading in scripture jesus is telling me to do this and and this is what you're telling me in a secret place but god where is this and how do i how do i how do i walk out the fullness of this and so it actually because of that discontentment it drove me to more hunger it drove me to deeper into his word it drove me to a place of going after him at new depths of that more yes and that lingering in repentance is not is not you know uh let me list every single minutiae i sin that i've ever thought that i might have committed sins of a mission and sins of commission now there are times you must bring very specific sins because you know you screwed up but i think that lingering and repentance has that sense about it of i acknowledge my frailty i acknowledge that i don't have what it takes i acknowledge that my weakness gets me into messes i acknowledge that i love some things that i should not love lord i want to have a heartfelt sorry because only you can fix this i can't and it's those kind of prayers that keep a sense of wonder of who he is you are god and i am not those kind of things um sj did you want to comment on that yeah i think just what you're saying there about the lingering is so good and because over the years i've met many people who have exactly what you're saying get stuck in repentance oh god i'm so sorry like almost starting every day you know with everything where i was you know listing a listing a a list before god of everything they did wrong that day almost and never getting out of the place of repentance and being under sin and moving forward in relationship on almost that place of oh god i'm a worm i'm never gonna be more than a worm you know i'm i'm so sinful i'm so sinful i'm so sinful but we know that's not the posture of a child of god and then a child a child of god says i'm sorry and father says you're forgiven and and now move on you know and your sins are as far as the east is from the west he's forgotten then once we've brought them to him and we don't need to keep bringing them back but i think the the repentance issue is so key and i think that there are some really great tools to to help us with that in prayers of discernment so that if we find ourselves in more of a besetting sin i don't know like i don't know for example i can't think of anything other than pornography that's probably not a great a great one to choose this morning but i can't think of a better one than that and if if if somebody's really stuck and he'd be setting sin like that then it's almost like this is going to require more than just a a one-off or i'm sorry every time that uh that person goes back to watch or look at something of pornography and keep saying sorry but keep repeating the sin and so does that sense of actually needing to step back get some help get some accountability confess our sins one to another because we know that actual repentance to each other is so key as well and as we were saying earlier emma about relationship with each other is key because the bible is very clear on that confess your sins one to another there are things we can do in the private time with the lord but sometimes we have to expose it out of darkness we have to get it out there into the light and say it to somebody else and say i have a problem with this i'm using the example of pornography but there are many things i really need help you know um or i'm really struggling and i've prayed through this do you see anything in my life have i got any blind spots because we all have those you know help me to see what i'm not seeing and we also know that holy spirit convicts he doesn't condemn and so we must never be under that shame of condemnation and we must always reach out for somebody to help us through that process of confessing our sins one to another but i think it comes in the quiet place it comes in that relational time with the lord he puts his finger on something and says hey you know says to me sj we need to deal with that and over the years there have been times when there's another thing that god will say right we're dealing with this issue uh whether it be a generational sin or whether it be something personal in my behavior god's got his finger on on that and it's often friends actually that bring it to light i know that that you've done that for me emma and other friends in the faith have done it over the years and said hey i don't think that's godly behavior you know let's have a conversation and then bringing it to god i i do think that a good personal relationship with god should open the doorway to a good personal relationship with the rest of the body of christ and that we don't do a lifestyle of intimacy in isolation we start in the private prayer closet but you do need godly friends i think we are a little bit light on the james 5 concept of confess your sins to one another and be healed i must have learned to in the king james if i've got to be healed in my memory bank for how that scripture goes uh but james five convince your sins to one another and be healed and that when was the last time you publicly confessed sin to somebody else see i don't think we like that scripture but sometimes our lack of healing is because we didn't publicly confess sin that the scriptures clearly link public confession to private well-being and that sense of uh that my wellness is dependent on my interactions with others at a level of vulnerability that i don't usually hit and the the the time i saw this model the best i don't forgive me if i've told this story we've done 80 something hours and i don't know what where i've told what story when i first went to glasgow elim an amazing church and led by simon foster who is one of the great leaders and apostles in the british isles and he was pastoring in that church at the time and david now many many years ago were looking for a church and because this is in the public domain i i can tell the story he stood on the platform and we didn't know anybody in this church at the time in front of the muslim three four hundred there and he said this he said um uh our youth one of our youth workers and his girlfriend have something to say and i thought okay i don't know who they are and the gentleman took the microphone he could hardly speak it's like etched in my brain and he sobbed and he sobbed and he sobbed and all he could say on the microphone to everybody was i've got my girlfriend pregnant and there was this collective as you could well imagine and then his girlfriend took the microphone and they publicly repented and then simon foster said this what do you want to do church and the church on mass got up and ran to the front and hugged them it was our first day in that church building and i watched that church do that do you know what simon foster had done in that moment he killed gossip he killed the bat chat he killed the judgment he killed the nonsense and in their sin there was a moment of restoration i had never seen anything like it and few churches are brave enough to do that but it was the marking of a church that had understood [Music] that public confession brings private healing and well-being and so i would encourage you you know you don't necessarily have to do what those couple did and take a microphone but i do think there is something beautiful in our accountability one to another that creates for all of us a greater dependency in god let me give you another couple of top tips because i've got one eye on time and i'm going to go uh uh quickly you must have god by yourself you must go to god alone and loneliness before god is good and i think the lord says to many of us where are you most at home where are you most at home and the answer should be that i am most at home alone with you god and i believe that you will always feel displaced till god is your primary home did you hear me you will always feel displaced until god is your primary home this is really important in terms of our personal life you know when i left years ago to be a student um and i i changed nations i went from northern ireland to england to the university of york to do a degree there politics and sociology and of course before mobile phones before computers it you know it was miles away from home and my parents moved church and they moved house because my dad isn't obviously a minister and i didn't know where they lived i had no image of it i had never attended the church i felt displaced that home had been removed completely by the my parents moving highs there was nowhere familiar for me to go back to and of course we've rented an awful lot during the years and been subject to the whim of a landlord we've lived in nations that are not our birth nations and when you know that he is home it settles you no matter where you are and i think in your personal lives with god you must always have a prayer that says god make you make god i want my home to be with you god i want you to be my primary place of security god i want you to be my home and when that decree comes out of your mice then you have a settledness and an ability to work in the world and some of the disjointedness that we feel as a body of believers is because we have not made god home i hope you're learning some stuff this morning and one of those pivot truths because actually when you don't have god as home you can accidentally love your nation more than you love his kingdom then you get into the sin of nationalism talk about that more tomorrow next top tip exodus says this exodus 20 verse 22 that for beauty and for glory uh the context is garments are being made for the priests but they're being made for beauty and for glory and you get this amazing thing in the pentachuck where moses in writing it pulls together concepts of beauty and glory and he weds them and he says look when you see something beautiful you will have an open door to glory therefore you must know as a spiritual christian that beauty and accessing god are part of your rhythm therefore you must be i in nature from time to time you must find something beautiful to look at because it opens your door to glory these are life rhythms so something beautiful will lead to greater glory is why this this is mind-blowing stuff because god talks about it in items of clothing and colors are you here we're back round we've done a full circle are you hearing this that there are beautiful clothes this is exodus 28 that bring glory [Laughter] isn't that wild that you can wear certain colors that are so beautiful it opens the door to encounters with glory that's in scripture don't you think that's mad don't you think that that is completely contrary to the all we've said about poverty in in the history of the church and what you should and shouldn't you know you must dress dowdy and you must dress in gray and you mustn't be too showy and you you know and you you mustn't be over the top and you mustn't be ostentatious and here's god saying actually the opposite is true that something beautiful makes you go wow the glory of god so good so good what color and some of you're going i you know you know no idea yes now my final top tip and i'm racing because i because uh somebody got yes one of my teams going amen amen now am i saying to you all go shopping maybe if you have an issue in that please don't but if you only wear black and gray you need to deal with that wardrobe biblically oh right and somebody said that's why i love shopping is it really some of us love shopping for the wrong reasons not the x just 28 reasons okay and my final top tip here for this morning is in the rhythms that create healthy christian people the top one must be sabbath rest and it is not just a bite i need a day off because the bible tells me i need a day off no let's get more intelligent than that place together what a rest day does is it creates daydream space and without daydream space you struggle to start to raise expectation about the future daydream space and rest space with god help create a broader view of the future if all you do is work work work work and there is no pause within your rhythms you will kill your daydream capability you will kill your capability to dream with god the god who has more for you than you can ever dare to imagine and you can accidentally by not resting make god more boring than he is and sometimes your boredom with god is because you didn't rest because rest creates a wonderful space for a firing of godly imagination your imagination does not fire in the same ways in busy day-to-day just turnover of doing doing doing are you hearing me that the way we channel uh uh sometimes god is by our rest so our prayers for holy discontentment our reading of the scriptures are we didn't even get to talking about in tongues our sense of repentance our understanding of beauty and this place of rest create a life where we are in sync of god god conscious god aware that it is not just did i spend 10 minutes into due diligence but did i use all of the tools of scripture that i might find and ease in my relationship we're so over time but i think we we needed to do that uh sergeant talk about tongues just in 90 seconds let's do that okay yeah praying in tongues building yourselves up or building ourselves up in our most holy faith in accordance with jude one and uh for 22 14. it's around there yeah and so this spirit uh language that we're given the known and this the tongues of man and angels that were given to build ourselves up in our holy faith and to speak uh words of instruction but actually the building ourselves up in our most holy faith is important it's almost like uh i would say as important as brushing my teeth and taking a shower every day as uh doing my exercise you know it's like it's part of breathing i think think you know english is my first language but actually uh tongs is my my language of communion my language of the spirit where i commune with god in depth and so i would say to you for all of us certainly in our walks and i know for sam and for others who run with us at gpc praying in the spirit praying in tongues is the most um essential muscle that we exercise is our tongue muscle and so i would encourage you to practice praying in tongues speaking in tongues whatever you're doing if it's washing the dishes i have a friend who just would get up in the morning and she would just pray in tongues the whole morning and even if she was walking about doing her jobs in the house i do it when i'm out and about in the car or walking the dogs or in the morning getting ready whatever it is uh just having that rhythm of being connected with god in the heavenly language and i would say that's one of those essentials emma that that we really can't do without yes i think you know somebody's saying sharon is saying always in my head yes i mean we must pray in tongues ours a day but it is not that i sit on my set or get down on my knees and i have my tongue's time it's just constant it's shopping it's driving starring it's it's you know and actually i would say tongues is the soundtrack of our lives i would go as far as to say that you know and actually bizarrely when you go into the ladies restrooms in our building you know usually one of the staff is in there praying in tongues just because you wouldn't miss the opportunity at the toilet not to play in town you know it's true you're like oh you know you wouldn't miss the opportunity while driving in a car to pray in tongues you know you wouldn't miss the opportunity and sergey and i have shared enough hotels over the years in our travel for me to know that she goes to bed praying in tongues wakes up praying in tongues and every time in between and it's a continue-like background noise and so these are the kind of things that break the sense of religiosity of my jesus time you know it's lit this little box into this adventure of a relationship between tongues and beauty and shopping for colors and repenting and daydream space that give this sense of a life lived in adventure with god where he is not my work but he is my friend god is not my work god is my friend amen so i don't think we've ever gone that far over but we must have needed to uh my dad is back on tomorrow oh i can't tell you how controversial the conversations have been over the dinner table but if it wasn't controversial enough last week he's following up with more controversy after his uh last thursday mike drop uh stuff so tune in early uh for part two of controversial clergy fathers see you tomorrow bye [Music] do [Music] do [Music] you

Channel: Global Prophetic Alliance-Glasgow Prophetic Centre

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Length: 66min 52sec (4012 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 09 2020