Victory: Transformed Relationships | Every Nation West Coast

[Music] hello everybody and welcome to every nation west coast in the book of romans chapter 15 verse 7 the bible says therefore welcome one another as christ has welcomed you for the glory of god and i am so excited for this opportunity to welcome everyone to the service i hope you have a good time enjoy good morning church we actually happy that we are back we thank god for this opportunity you know being at home not being able to come here physically wow that was really a very hard time we all hate but as you can see irene and i and all the men we are so excited to give you this beautiful moment of worship and i hope you are home just enjoy with us be free let the presence of god just you know touch you heal you wherever you are whatever you're going through just believe that when we go together through this moment it's just gonna be awesome thank you [Music] i was lost but he brought me [Music] [Applause] [Music] day [Music] his grace [Music] yes [Music] of god [Music] there's a place for me [Music] again [Music] i am [Music] i am [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] i am [Music] house there's a place [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Music] [Applause] me [Music] my [Music] send me [Music] cuz [Music] is [Music] [Music] me [Music] [Music] from the inside [Music] from the inside [Music] it says [Music] me [Music] is [Music] um [Music] is [Music] is [Music] [Music] is [Music] is [Music] [Music] we want you to [Music] [Music] is [Music] from the inside [Music] in the inside [Music] from the inside from the inside [Music] cause you to be [Music] that you are a father we thank you father for your lord we thank you father for your presence in our lives be glorified be glorified jesus [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] for you to be glad for you to believe [Music] you should be lifted [Music] and all i want [Music] is for you [Music] is for you [Music] thank you jesus [Music] we are so blessed to be given life by you father we are so blessed to be loved by you [Applause] for you to give life and bring breath into our lives for you to give hope and to restore and for you to mend every broken heart you are great [Music] you bring light to the dark unless you give up you restore every heart dart is broken [Music] jesus [Music] praise [Music] your bread [Music] me [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you father thank you for the love thank you for your divine protection over our family the devil jesus no power against us you are victorious [Music] jesus christ [Music] [Music] for me [Music] will out your praise our hearts will cry these bombs will sing great [Music] [Music] these bonds oh [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so foreign [Music] jesus christ [Music] shall die before you [Music] you are so so great [Music] yourself [Music] well good morning chesh and welcome to every nation west coast my name is pentelope magona dano you can call me penny and it's such a blessing to be with you this morning won't you say hi drop something on the line on the chat box to greet everyone and it will be lovely to hear from you the announcement i'm about to make are available on our website you can visit it on every nation west coast dot o r g slash announcements [Music] ladies in the house if you haven't registered yet please don't forget to register for our every nation west to coast women alive conference the theme this year is the unchangeables faith hope and love we're busy talking to some amazing speakers and we just know that the lord is going to bless all the women through this conference please don't miss out why not invite also a friend or family member and enjoy the conference of a cup of tea and some cakes we believe that the lord has an appointment with us this year so ladies please let's not miss this it will take place on saturday 18 september from 3 p.m to 4 30 pm online as well as there will be a small watch party here at church [Music] as a church we're also called to be the hands and feet of jesus in our community and one of the ways in which we do this is through our amazing pantry project this is led by auntie lorraine and maya we would like to encourage you to please sew financially into the project or donate any food or toiletry items if you would like to donate food or toiletry items please drop it off here church or contact maya the financial contributions will be much appreciated as we working with a health professional to put together profit 19 packages for those infected as you know these are challenging times these have been such a blessing to many also remember that you can speak to your connect leader if you are in need during this time so they let us not switch quite sit quietly when we are in need [Music] we also meeting on zoom this coming tuesday for our second marketplace forum and would encourage all business people entrepreneurs and professionals in the church to please join your lisa our sister and the rest of us on this forum it will be 7 p.m over zoom and the link will be sent out there were some great conversations last week please don't miss out [Applause] [Music] now we transition to the offering message we'll be reading from the book of acts 20 verse 35 and these are the words of spoken by paul to the ephesian elders and he says reminding them of the words of jesus 35 in all things i have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the lord jesus how he himself said open code it is more blessed to give than to receive close quote this scripture showcases how giving in itself is a blessing to both the giver and the recipient our lord jesus as we know he was not only didn't only say it but he also lived it may we follow him continue giving let us pray lord help us to imitate you to be generous because every blessing we have lord comes from you as a gift bless every hand lord that gives and everyone who gives in their own way father for when we freely give you freely provide to us all all for the glory of your name lord god in the mighty name of jesus christ amen [Music] now let us please open our hearts to what the lord wants to say to us this morning as we welcome pastor dennis as his as he bring the word good morning everyone it's so good to be in the house of the lord again it's so good to be with you again thank you for joining us for our online church and um thank you penny for our announcements god is doing so much so we are busy with our victory series and so if you've missed it we started talking identity two weeks ago and really what that was about is to say how do we walk in the identity that god's called us to walk in that he's because he loves us and he's got the right identity for us and to step away from our fake or our expired identities last week nikki jones spoke about generational curses and how do we break those curses how do we step out of agreement with those things that have flowed through the generations and i really hope you've taken the time to think about to talk about these things because really our trust is that through the series you are walking in victory so we'll encourage you to go there go and talk about these difficult things in your homes and your families in your connect groups if you're not in a connect group please contact me so that we can connect you in we want you to go deeper we want this to be a time of restoration a time of healing and a time of you stepping into the fullness of who god's called you to be so today we're talking transformed relationships and so let me pray as we start father god i thank you i thank you that we can pause from everything that's gone before us this week lord we can pause before your throne and lord i pray that you will speak to us use me to speak into the hearts of people this morning and lord i thank you for your word i thank you for the joy of having your word and that your word shapes us and transforms us and so lord we bring every relationship before you i pray for ears to hear and lord i pray that this word will will drop into our hearts and bear good fruit we pray this in jesus name amen so i'm going to start with a story now this is a true story when i was before we came to every nation west coast we worked for every nation rose bank in johannesburg and as part of my role there i had the the role of loving our neighbors now we all called to love our neighbors but i was called to actually love the neighbors of the church where the church building was and so the neighbors were unhappy because a lot of those neighbors it was in a residential suburb and a lot of those neighbors had bought their homes when the church wasn't a every nation church or even before that his people church it was a brethren church and that was a quiet community of a few hundred people who who lived together quietly now what was happening is now we were every nation now we're a loud community we're also a bigger community so from a few hundred people to two to three thousand on a sunday parking on their pavements making noise as we walk to the car um generally disrupting their neighborhood and so the neighbors were on edge and so i was tasked to go speak to the neighbors and that's what i did so the one day i made an appointment with an older lady who lived across the road from the church and will call her mrs marmalade because she um loved marmalade but she also used to package and sell marmalade and so she was very upset when i arrived so she had allowed me to come into her home but she was upset because she was upset because people were parking on her pavement um people were making so much noise and she was battling to to rest etc and so i came into that atmosphere walking into her home she had a very dark home so there were no lights on it was quite dark they were the furniture in her home was old furniture so it was like old solid cupboards and chairs and big solid dark wood things and then it was like this it felt like you were walking a little bit into an antique store because even in the corner there was the suit of armor and i keep kept expecting to see eyes shining from from the eyes of the suit of armor now so this was the picture and so i'm sitting talking to this lady she had a big dog a great dane so they are big dogs with this black great dane and this black great dane kept on standing in front of me so i'm sitting on the couch talking to her and this dog would keep stepping in front of me so i'm kind of trying to see over the dog now as i'm talking to her and she's telling me the challenges she has with the church out of the corner of my eye i see a movement and as i look i see a mouse run across the room so i'm like okay that's okay and then as i noticed the mouse i suddenly noticed movement in all different parts of the room and at any one time during that whole conversation there were five to six mice just scurrying around and it was it was a little freaky and so at one stage one of those mice ran under my chair and i like jumped and she said oh oh the mice don't worry about the mice i hardly notice them anymore because i didn't have the heart to get rid of them and so there were these mice scurrying around later she was trying to sell the house to the church and so she showed me the house and as we walked around the house there were mice everywhere and it was it was a little a little freaky to me i definitely wouldn't want to stay there too long now the reason i raised this is there were relational challenges that had started this conversation with mrs marmalade relational challenges between me and the church but there were also all of these mice and so what had happened is these mice were in her home and she no longer even knew that they were there they weren't she sort of got used to these mice being around and so we're talking relational challenges and often that's how it is it's little things that we allow and suddenly they breed and suddenly it's a colony of mice and so that's what we're talking about this morning relationships are important we all need relationships in this time with covert even more so we need to be walking in relationships but relationships are harder than ever because of covert you know it's less easy to just have a coffee or pop around to someone so they're more difficult but actually more needed because they say people are lonelier than ever and so we need relationships but also we've sort of got out of the habit of relating on a one-on-one basis and that's why in the church we encourage you to join a connect group that's where you build relationships because on a sunday you are going to um you if you come to church in person you're going to chat to one or two people for a few minutes kind of make small talk but you don't really go deeper whereas in the connect groups you're going deeper when you serve in the life of the church by serving in one of the ministries again that's when you go deeper relationally and so that's why we encourage you in that direction because relationships take work i want us to be working on our relationships god's called us to have good relationships one with another god's called you to have good relationships within your family so but they do take work now emily is amazing most of you would know emily and emily works at the church pretty much in a voluntary capacity and she's just got the greatest of hearts and emily's taken onto herself to minister into the lives of people which is what we all should be doing and so what emily did on sunday and she told me this when we came in for to work on on tuesday last sunday emily was going for a walk close to the sea and she saw an old lady sitting on a bench and so she went and sat next to this old lady and started a conversation it ended up being this old lady was 94 years old she had her children but what she was saying is she was lonely and so in the end emily and this old 94 year old lady spent two hours talking because the lady was lonely the lady needed relationship so there's a hunger in this world for relationship but the problem is we also live in an age where social media is keeps the relationship shallow and that's where we need to challenge ourselves to go deeper social media is is is such that i can have a relationship with someone but i can i just see a photo or i see photos of their lives and so we have that on the other hand we have what we call a cancel culture where we can quickly end relationships and those are generally with more distant relationships but we still can kind of cancel someone or we can block someone's phone and sort of close off the relationship rather than dealing with the relationship and so what we're talking about is what are the things that we need to be doing to help our relationships go with me in your bibles to john 13 verse 34 and these are the words of jesus john 13 and what jesus says here he says a new command i give to you love one another as i have loved you so you must love one another and this is the heart of jesus he's saying this is a commandment love one another and that means relationship that means god wants to see you in a good relationship he wants to see your relationship strong but as a result there's battles around relationship now if you think back to genesis where we had adam and eve walking in the garden of eden with god they had a good relationship but something entered in sin entered into that into that space and sin separated them from god and so sin does that today sin separates a marriage where a husband is watching pornography and suddenly in that marriage that comes into the marriage sin separates in relationship where i respond in anger and pride and i don't say sorry and that relationship is harmed that's what happens in relationship and sin comes in and so that's what we're talking about how do we trust god to transform our relationships what does it look like to transform our relationships because i do believe god's called us to go deeper so there's five common relational issues that come up and i see these in my day-to-day interaction with with people as we do counseling as we we journey with people we see these issues again and again so the first of these is the issue of offense and what's offense offenses when you're walking here at table bay mall and you walk past me and you say hi pastor and i ignore you and you're like ah that pasta i don't trust him anymore okay that's offense now i may have i would never ignore you on purpose i may not recognize you because you got a mask on or maybe i don't know you or i may have been in my own world which does happen but when we take offense we build up a little something in our heart against the other person so i'll give you a second example imagine a couple they fast asleep in their bed and they're the couple they've got this one-year-old child and some of you can kind of connect with that and the one-year-old child starts to cry sort of in the middle of the night and so this couple wakes up and so initially both of them this baby's crying and initially both of them are are maybe one wakes up and the immediate response is let me go and pick up the baby but then say the husband he's like but you know what i've got a meeting tomorrow morning i can't get up and spend an hour with the baby now so let me let me sort of roll over and kind of pretend i'm snoring and nudge my wife and maybe she'll get up and the wife is lying there and she's hearing this baby and she's saying i wish my husband would get up and go and tend to the baby because i've been with this child the whole day i'm tired i'm exhausted and so they're lying next to each other and what starts to happen is the husband starts to go this you know she knows i've got this meeting in this morning the following morning she knows i need to be at my best and she's not willing you know look how inconsiderate she is look how lazy she is the husband's thinking about the wife she doesn't love me she doesn't know how important this thing is that i've got in the morning and so can you see suddenly they've got a fence against each other they've built a gap between one another so when they wake up in the morning obviously someone's going to stand up and attend to the baby and then they wake up the in the next morning and then unless they deal with that there's a little gap between them what they've done is they've taken offense and the way i look at it it's almost like if you think of those little picket fences with these little slats of white wood and so it's almost like when i take on a fence i put a piece of wood there and i kind of hammer it in and then something else happens the pastor walks past you again and he doesn't greet you you take another piece of wood and you hammer it in there and so very soon you've got a whole fence or even a whole wall and so that's what happens in relationships that's what happens in marriage but the bible speaks to this the bible in proverbs 18 verse 19 says the following proverbs 18 verse 19 an offended brother is more unyielding than a fortified city and disputes are like the barred gates of a citadel and that's that thing of offense building up to be just this gate proverb 17 verse 9 says he who covers over an offense promotes love but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends proverbs 19 verse 11 says a man's wisdom gives him patience it is to his glory to overlook an offense so when we have an offense against someone when someone does something that kind of goes and and we feel that that little offense take root what we're called to do is to not hold on to that but to overlook it okay and we'll talk about that in a moment so that's the one area we see offense the second area we see happening a lot in relationships is unforgiveness and bitterness because if we don't deal with offense through forgiveness then we create roots of bitterness and those grow up in our lives and so it's a root of bitterness that grows so it's almost like my mrs marmalade there was one mouse at one time and instead of dealing with the mouse and getting rid of the mouse she just let the mice breathe and that's what happens when we don't deal with offense those mice breed with each other and suddenly we got an army of mice that's what offense does and it creates this root of bitterness and this root of business i don't know if you ever come across as someone who's really bitter the britain bitterness formula seeps through them you can see it like even in their mouth these are this bitterness that's in them and that root of bitterness gives birth to all sorts of other bad fruit ephesians 4 31 says ephesians 4 31 says get rid of all bitterness rage and anger brawling and slander along with every form of malice and so bitterness is that thing that seeps through and that's when we hold on to an offense so if i use my example the pastor doesn't greet you the pastor doesn't greet you and and and i you know somehow we don't deal with that then after a little while i'm not going to be able to do anything right because you all you're doing is you're seeing me through the eyes of that offense the same in a marriage if i keep building another wall and another wall in another world pretty soon i'm separated pretty soon all i'm seeing is the wrong not what that person is doing right in the relationship hebrews 12 15 says see to it that no one misses the grace of god and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many and the way we know there's a bitter root is if you think of that person there's like a a stabbing in your heart but there's almost like a desire for revenge or there's a desire to hit back at that person that's what happens the third one is rebellion against authority now what happens in this sort of situation is that we in some relationships we would rebel against authority and what that means is we rebel against god okay so that separates us in our relationship with god and god may have said this but we don't want to listen to god and so we rebel against god so it impacts our relationship with god but also we we might want to rebel against people who god has placed an authority over us that might be our parents for example but the bible is very clear that we're called to honor our mother and our father the bible is clear that we need to submit to the authority that god's placed over us one samuel 15 23 says for rebellion is like the sin of divination and arrogance like the evil of idolatry because you have rejected the word of the lord he has rejected you as king psalm 106 verse 43 says many times he delivered them but they were bent on rebellion and they wasted away in their sin and so it's almost like rebellion is is where that unforgiveness has taken those roots of bitterness have become like a forest and and now i'm just i'm not willing to agree to someone i'm not willing to be led by someone i'm not willing to submit to the authority of someone and that's rebellion rebellion against authority so that's the third one the fourth thing we see in relationships the fourth relational dysfunction we see is broken family relationships and broken family relationships come because of unfaithfulness broken relationship family relationships come because of adultery in a family or they come because of the trust has been broken in some significant way or there's been favoritism or there's been selfishness so if you think of the example in genesis of joseph and and israel israel looked at joseph and treated him differently to his brothers and as a result the brothers in the end tried to get rid of joseph because they were jealous and and so that was what happens in in families favoritism jealousy selfishness in malachi 4 verse 6 we read he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers or else i will come and strike the land with a curse we don't want to be walking in that curse we want situations where the hearts of family members are bound together not divided and so we need to fight for that and against this relational dysfunction the fifth one is rejection because rejection is one of those things that happens i shared in the in the first of the series the rejection i had battled through and so i want you to think about areas in your life where you've battled rejection because that becomes something that takes root in your heart and that impacts how you respond how you relate to other people psalm 27 verse 10 says though my father and mother forsake me the lord will receive me though my father and mother those closest to me those who should accept me even though they reject me it says the lord will receive me and so i want to challenge you we're called not to reject not to not to feel rejected not to take on that rejection that the enemy would try to lie to us for like he lied to me and my past we're not to accept the rejection we're not to take it on but we also need to be careful not to be rejecting others just like we shouldn't be taking offense we shouldn't be rejecting others because what god calls us to is to love one another not to reject one another not to judge one another we always gonna love the person so those those five relational dysfunctions which are it's rejection okay it's um broken family relationships it's rebellion against authority it's unforgiveness and bitterness and it's offense and so what's the solution to these things because these things creep into our lives these things come in and all of a sudden now we've got these issues in our relationships but god's given us a solution god's given us a solution to fight against these things that would come into our home and run around like those mice so to walk in freedom there's certain things we need to be doing the first one is we're called to love one another and we started with that john 15 11 says these things i have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full this is my commandment that you love one another as i have loved you greater love has no one than this that someone lay down his life for his friends you are my friends if you do what i command you we are called to love one another now love takes work love takes sacrifice i love my wife and so because i love her that means i'm saying no to things for myself that means i'm over i'm stepping over my own selfish desires because i love her that's what love looks like love means that not everything is going to go my way love means i sacrifice and so we're called to love one another we're called to overlook her wrong to overlook an offence because of love so love one another we're also called to forgive those who have offended or have hurt you god calls us to forgive and we saw we see in scripture in matthew 6 14 what does it say matthew 6 14 for if you forgive men when they sin against you your heavenly father will also forgive you but if you also if you do not forgive men their sins your father will not forgive your sins hey now if you don't don't forgive their sins god will not forgive your sins so think about that god calls us to walk uprightly to walk in good relationships to take those things where there's been an offense and to forgive go speak to that person now there's a story told and it's a true story of corey ten boom who was an amazing woman of god who survived the nazi concentration camps and she was sitting one day she was speaking one day after the war to a group of people and as these people were in front of her they were they were they were listening to her she was talking about this journey she's taken and as she did that she noticed a guy in the audience and this guy in the audience was the prison warder who had been responsible for sending her sister and her parents to the gas chambers to death and she was now faced and god challenged her to say you have to forgive even him and he came up afterwards to speak to her and he reached out his hand to shake her hand and she battled internally because she didn't want to forgive because she had every reason why she shouldn't forgive but god said to her forgiven so she even though she didn't feel like it she stretched out her hand to take his and as she did that the weight was lifted over her the weight of the hurt the weight of the pain the weight of all the unforgiveness she'd been carrying against the sky and everything he represented and so god calls us to walk in forgiveness but it's it takes us saying okay lord you help me that what she had to do she had to say lord help me with this but i'm going to take the action in matthew 18 21 we read then peter came to jesus and asked lord how many times shall i forgive my brother when he sins against me up to seven times jesus answered i tell you not seven times but 77 times our job is to forgive sometimes we don't want to forgive because that person needs to be punished for what they did but in the end god knows that he will judge them number one number two the consequences of the action they will reap the we reap the fruit of what we sow and so it's not our place to judge it's our place to love it's our place to forgive we also need to renounce all roots of bitterness so those roots if those things have taken root in your life if you look at your life and you go i've got this thing that i'm angry about because that's often the evidence of a root of bitterness is anger irritation resentment if i'm feeling that then i need to kind of go what's the route what's causing this and lord i renounce it i repent i turn away and i go in the other direction we also need to ask for forgiveness from those we have offended and this goes two ways if if i walked past you and i offended you then what i want you to do is to is firstly forgive me but also come and speak to me and say what happened why did you ignore me and that's what god calls us to do that's how we meant to deal with things if i've taken offense if there was something that came between us what we need to do and we need to get better about it is to go to that person first not talk about it to someone else not post about it on facebook but go and speak to the person and say what happened somehow this this hurt my feelings and allow the healing okay and allow the restoration and you might come to me and i might go you know what i'm so sorry i messed up i didn't see you i didn't recognize you or i might be challenged to say oh you know what i was a little angry that day and so i'm sorry i was in my own world or whatever it might be but come and speak lastly we're called to to do our best to walk in right relationship with others god's called us to love one another that's how people will know that we're his disciples by our love for one another and so i want us to work at our relationships i want us to work at building relationships so to do this i want us to be proactive in doing what is right if the right thing is to go and speak to someone and say you know what this thing hurt my feelings go and do what is right if the right thing is to to to keep loving that person love that person if the right thing is to address of stress something address it in the right way do the right thing secondly think the best of the person let's assume the best let's not assume the worst so if use my example i walk past you assume the best assume that the pastor's just in his own world okay so assume the best if in that relationship where the the the couple are in bed and the baby's crying and your husband doesn't get up assume the best don't assume the worst philippians 4 verse 8 says finally brothers whatever is true whatever is no honorable whatever is just whatever is pure whatever is lovely whatever is commendable if there is any excellence if there is anything worthy of praise think about these things what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me practice these things and the god of peace will be with you so we do what is right we think the best we're called to love and we're called to talk to strangers okay if you're under the age of 18 don't talk to strangers but god's told us to reach into the lives of others build relationally with others ask questions about their life get to know people get to know their story be a bridge builder between people if you see a relationship is strained don't interfere but also don't just ignore it try and say lord how do i bring restoration in this relationship because that's what god's called us to do so as i close what i want to challenge you on is to think about those five relational dysfunctions are there anything of those are there any mice running around in your heart are there any of those things that you need to deal with you need to deal with that offense you need to deal with that that thing that's causing you a worry in your marriage or in a relationship with with a sibling or or in a relationship with a friend that's come between you and you'll know that there's something where that when you look at that person there's almost like a little bit of a wall that comes up then you know there's something i need to deal with now we're not saying you have to be good best friends with everyone but what we are saying is you shouldn't be walking with all of these little mice running around okay you you we want you to have a good relationship where you can be stand before god and know that everything between the two of us is good so let's pray and as we pray i want you to bring you those relationships that that maybe are you're struggling with those things in your heart where where you've got the hurt or you've got the pain from from being hurt in relationships or and i want you to bring them before the throne of grace so lord i come before you today and lord we come before you today and lord we we're not doing this perfectly lord god we mess up so often and lord we come and we humble ourselves before your throne and lord we come and i and just on behalf of myself on behalf of everyone lord we apologize lord god for allowing the little mice to take root for allowing these things to to to stay in our hearts lord god help us to forgive help us to deal with offense in the right way lord help us to love one another and lord over look her wrong help us to think the best of one another and lord where they are relationships lord god of everyone listening lord god where the relationships are strained i pray that for the wisdom to bring healing i pray that you will give us the wisdom to know how do i reach out and bridge the gap how what how can i take the best first action to restore lord i pray for a restoration between fathers and sons fathers and children children and parents siblings lord i pray for a restoration between friends lord i pray that we will walk in good relationship and lord i pray that we will show forth your love to people we encounter as we walk through life lord god i pray that we will be healers through our words through our actions i pray all of this in the mighty name of jesus amen and amen let's go this week and let's be a little bit more proactive in building relationships in restoring relationships and in and in just being friends because god's called us to be authentic as believers so let's be authentic let's be real with one another have an awesome week join us for prayer afterwards if you do need prayer into these things have good conversations in your connect groups have an awesome week further have a good one [Music] you

Channel: Every Nation West Coast

Views: 183

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Every Nation West Coast, Every Nation, EN, Christian Church, West Coast, Blouberg, Table View, Table Bay Mall, ENWC

Id: 1L0zMMdJeP4

Length: 61min 43sec (3703 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 22 2021