Vineyard National Gathering Pete Greig It's time to climb

well hello everybody and it's just great to be with you albeit through a screen at the vineyard national leaders conference sammy and i have such deep affection and admiration for the vineyard movement your impact on the church in the uk has been incalculable and we're especially uh grateful to john and debbie wright for their courageous and clear leadership through this uh really difficult year that we we we've all had um thank you as leaders for the price that you've paid to lead sacrificially through let's be honest probably the most challenging year of any of our lives i feel like it's in my own life been constant change management dealing with a lot of grief and and trauma people are just angrier than than before and it's just been exhausting and so just good job well done and thanks for having me with you like this now john's asked me to share a message that i'm really carrying on my heart right now for the church uh in the uk entitled a time to climb a time to climb and my prayer is that this can be a sort of re-centering uh moment for all of us at a moment of such cultural and spiritual uh dislocation let's pray together lord jesus i ask you that you would speak by your spirit deep into people's hearts and souls and psyches now i pray lord that you would bring encouragement and clarity fresh strength energy and vision in the name of for the glory of jesus amen okay we're going to look together at a familiar passage uh this is one that you all know well this is 1 kings chapter 18 and we're going to read verses 41 to 46. one kings 18 41-46 elijah said to ahab go eat and drink for there is the sound of a heavy rain remember he's he's just had his big showdown on carmel with the prophets of baal and there's been drought in the land so ahab went off to eat and drink but elijah climbed to the top of carmel bent down to the ground and put his face between his knees go and look towards the sea he told his servant and he went up and looked there's nothing there he said seven times elijah said go back the seventh time the servant reported a cloud as small as a man's hand is rising from the sea so elijah said go and tell ahab hitch up your chariot and go down before the rain stops you meanwhile the sky grew black with clouds the wind rose a heavy rainstorm came on and ahab rode off to jezreel the power of the lord came on elijah and tucking his cloak into his belt he ran ahead of ahab all the way to jezreel beautiful powerful story israel is in deep crisis environmentally it hasn't rained for three years economically they're in crisis they're an agrarian culture which means that their business world is in free fall businesses are going bust spiritually they are in uh crisis because the very foundations of jewish identity are under attack and then socially they are in crisis because many have died and are dying everyone is mourning someone perhaps that all sounds strangely familiar are we an environmental crisis but you'd better believe it climate change extinction of species wildfires acidification of the oceans economic crisis the world bank estimates that we are in the deepest recession in 150 years spiritual crisis i could cite so many examples but for example 4 in 10 u.s millennials call themselves religiously disaffiliated social crisis well look at the black lives matter movement look at riots in the street look at this pandemic 1.2 million deaths so far countless quiet tragedies affecting us all school kids with their whole lives up in the air missing their friends facing such uncertainty students isolated in halls of residence or unable to even attend university families who've cancelled family holidays couples who've had a wrecking ball just swing through their wedding plans the guy who finished furlough went back to work and was let go the man who put everything into building a business that just went bust the wife who couldn't say goodbye to her husband this then is the backdrop to our lives this is a similar backdrop to this story and elijah says into this context of such despair i hear the sound of a heavy rain there's been three years of drought there has been incalculable suffering there's been a series of disasters in the land and yet he senses the seasons changing he hears the storm clouds gathering and we read that in response to this moment elijah climbs to the top of carmel where he prays the day before i got engaged to sammy i went climbing uh we were on the isle of skye and some of you all know the coolin mountain range some of the most challenging climbing in the uk because the coolants are made of magnetic rock and of course the weather is very unpredictable and we we we were aiming to climb uh one of the mountains in in that range called skirn and gillian and we we set out uh sammy wasn't wasn't wasn't with me but i was with two other guys we set out to climb and as we climbed the weather came in and um you know it got pretty you know serious we were rock climbing up kind of chimneys and the rock i remember losing visibility because the cloud had come right down and eventually we ended up on a sort of knife edge and and it's pretty scary at the best of times but at the worst of times which is when you've got zero visibility it's terrifying but eventually we managed to get right on top of scone and gillian and we'd expect to have this amazing view but of course we didn't see a thing and then we had to get down and that might sound simple but it isn't simple if you don't have a gps because it's before sat nav if you can't use a compass because it's magnetic rock and if you have zero visibility all you can do is follow the path you see right at your footsteps because you can't see further afield so we started to follow what we thought was the path and that path began to take us down a very very sheer face really a cliff face it was like a fault line in the cliff that was zigzagging down and uh we couldn't be sure but we were pretty sure that if we slipped off to one side we wouldn't survive and yet there was this strong almost survival instinct of we've got to get down under the cloud level so we can see we were terrified and desperate we'd been traveling down for about half an hour when we reached a point where the the the cliff petered out the the the path petered out and the next bit of path we could just make out was probably about ten foot eight ten foot below us and it was narrow it was maybe i don't know two three foot wide and we were just about to try and jump down onto this next path and again i don't know what would have happened if we'd stumbled and it occurred to me if we go down we can't get back up again i said guys we need to pray we prayed and suddenly i knew with absolute clarity of what we needed to do and it was the opposite of what we wanted to do i said to the guys we need to go back up again every instinct is get down regain visibility it was getting late that just natural light was also starting to fail the night was coming in nothing in you wants to retrace your steps half an hour upwards to the top of a dangerous mountain when night is falling but we did it and i realized now it's the lord was giving us wisdom and when we got back to the top we found another path another route down it eventually brought us down and uh we we crossed to the slightly hotel at the bottom there where sammy was waiting for us terrified she had been advised because it was long after nightfall when he finally got down she was advised you're gonna have to wait till the morning for us to call out mountain rescue and and and you know i i decided not to get i originally was going to propose to sammy that night i decided maybe i should wait till the next day but i woke up next morning thinking gosh what was that and then a couple of days later i received the shocking news that my godfather michael curry wonderful man who prayed for me every day of my life until the day he died had just died climbing the same mountain range where he had tripped on a waterfall and fallen and suddenly you realize oh we really could have died sometimes life is very like that expedition you feel completely disorientated you can't find your bearings the compass seems to be spinning and your path is perilous your vision has gone and the darkness is falling fast and at those times the spirit of the lord says to us it's time to climb to higher ground when there's no hope in the valley it's time to climb elijah is facing social spiritual financial and ecological disaster he knew it was time to climb carmel he was recalling that god had said the reigns would come but he knew that bit somehow wasn't automatic it was time to climb he needed to pray it in and notice the posture of prayer that he adopts on carmel he gets down we're told with his head between his knees it's the fetal position it's fascinating to me i've read every commentary you can imagine on this because a lot of them say well this isn't the way people used to pray he wasn't kneeling down that's not how they prayed back then some are saying he was he was trying to hide his face so he couldn't see the sky maybe he was some are saying he was prostrating himself before the lord but what no one seems to have noticed is he was in the fetal position read the story and emulate it you'll be in the fetal position the fetal position is the position that we adopt when we are in extreme trauma and elijah we have every reason to believe was going through extreme trauma he's just fought for his life he has just had 450 people executed you don't just skip away from that the next chapter we read another encounter of him climbing another mountain and he said he prays that he might die this is a man going through deep post-traumatic stress perhaps so he is praying out of a place of faith sure the reigns are coming but it is a faith that is fused with fear he is hopeful yet he is hurting he is travailing he is exhausted he is desperate perhaps these paradoxes sound familiar to you as we embark upon 2021 maybe you're exhausted maybe you're dealing with trauma maybe you're facing acute misunderstandings maybe you're looking down the barrel of a terrifying medical prognosis maybe you're struggling to get free in a particular area of your life maybe you're wondering what god wants for your life because everything seems to be changing at times like this when we're disoriented it is time to climb it's time to find a higher perspective i found this unbelievably cute video i want to show you which depicts this metaphor of climbing more powerfully than anything else i can imagine so take a look at this [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the bear cub did it he made it to the top fantastic i thought my heart was in my mouth the number of times he slipped back down to the bottom and he kept going he's exhausted but one thing kept that that bear cub climbing he was focused on his mother he had no option but to get to the top even when it seemed impossible sometimes climbing the head of the lord is just we think it's beyond us we're exhausted we're disappointed we're questioning we don't know if we can do it any longer our strength is all gone at those times hebrews 12 1-3 reminds us fix your eyes on jesus focus on the father and noticed the way that he endured so much for the joy that was set before him and that will help you not to become weary you know as it says in proverbs hope deferred makes the heart grow sick but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life our people have experienced deferred hope disappointment again and again there is heart sickness in the land we must call them to climb the hill of the lord we must call them to focus on jesus the hope in jesus is the source of strength that's isaiah 40. hope in jesus is the thing that will never let us down if you put your hope in jesus you will never become hopeless your disappointments will not endure forever your longings will be recontextualized in something real the call of the lord is to cry and of course this is the story of the whole bible when god wanted to give moses the law it was time to climb sinai when he wanted to whisper in elijah's ear it was time to climb another mountain mount horeb when david wanted to build jerusalem he knew it was time to climb mount olivet when jesus wanted to give the beatitudes it was time for the sermon on the mount when he climbed with peter james and john it was the mount of transfiguration when jesus wept over jerusalem that was the mount of olives when he carried his cross that was the mount of crucifixion when he gave the great commission that was a mountain overlooking galilee and most of all i haven't even mentioned it yet whenever jesus wanted to pray whether it was early in the morning or late at night even right through the night on occasions he climbed mountains to pray and so when elijah here senses the seasons changing he knows it's time to climb it's time to pray it's time to focus on the father amid so much tragedy i believe that if you listen carefully you will hear the sound of a heavy rain in our nation i've been studying revivals for 25 years and i've noticed that they almost always come to a culture that has been brought to its knees by crisis and suffering in fact i haven't found a single instance of a revival that came to a comfortable or complacent culture it was sad that rabbi jonathan sachs died back in november he's one of the great public theologians and statesmen of our time and he said this we have been coasting along for more than half a century in unprecedented affluence unprecedented freedom unprecedented optimism and all of a sudden we are facing the fragility and the vulnerability of the human situation this is the nearest we have been he says to a revelation for atheists a revelation for atheists maybe that's why this pandemic has triggered such an explosion of prayer in the nation there was a headline in the guardian newspaper back in may maybe you saw it i had to pinch myself it said british public turned to prayer after two decades seeking to mobilize and resource 24 7 prayer in our nation that was an encouraging moment but the subtitle was equally amazing it continued young people lead resurgence in faith they estimate that about 3 million people turn to prayer in the uk through coronavirus certainly 24 7 we have never been busier prayer rooms grew by 150 percent last year we launched a little devotional called lectio365 just a year ago that's gone from zero to 145 000 phones with 85 000 regular users one nurse right on the front lines of of caring for people with covert said my one moment in the day of peace is when i pause with a cup of tea to listen to lecture 365. there was a yougov poll last month published in the times you may have seen it it said that teenagers turned to god in pandemic isn't that wonderful please note if you read the whole article it's not all good news uh we are seeing a a unusually a spiritual decline in older age groups and there has uh the yougov polls there's been a slight rise in atheism over the last year after several years of decline amongst atheists but this does challenge doesn't it the narrative that successive generations must inevitably become more secular when teenagers are turning to god in this crisis it's fuel for us in faith it's the sound of a heavy rain it's the invitation to get our head between our knees and pull in the heavy rain i um heard rick warren who leads saddleback church one of the most influential churches in the world uh they've not been publicly meeting they have more people in small groups than they do centrally is interesting isn't everyone's going to house church model now even even the um episcopal traditions that used to criticize churches like ours and churches like vineyard churches for meeting in homes are suddenly going oh no that's the way to do it uh well saddleback uh is meeting in homes there's thousands of people rick warren said 17 000 people have come to christ since covert broke out through their church and he said 12 000 of those have been through one-on-one conversations a lot of it through their social transformation work and conversations is important about jesus in the context of caring for people's felt needs the indian author arundhati roy says historically pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew this one is no different she says it is a portal a gateway between one world and the next well if this is indeed such a generationally significant moment if it is as she says a portal between one world and the next if the seasons really are changing in the way that elijah experienced it is of course essential that we pray now as well as climbing the mountain and putting our head between our knees and travailing in prayer we must also engage no one is supposed to spend their whole life on a mountaintop you know 24 7 we're about prayer but also mission and justice we have to outwork our prayers we have to come down the mountain sometimes there's a time to climb but there's also a time to run ahead of the king's chariot into the city there's a time to lift our hands in prayer and there's a time to get them dirty in the ditch there's a time to speak to god about the world and there's a time to speak to the world about god that's really important that was one of rick warren's things he said what we realized is we were doing our evangelism over here our worship over here and our social transformation over there and we'd stop really talking so much about jesus in the context of social transformation one of the keys to thousands of salvations they've seen is simply in feeding people and clothing people and caring for people telling them this is because of jesus it's one of the things i love about vineyard's compassion ministries is this fusion of the works and wonders of the kingdom with with the words and wonders sorry with the works of the kingdom it's been a boom year hasn't it for compassion ministries and i i'm i'm just cheering you guys on in all that you're doing from love christmas to boxes of hope i see that 1500 school children were given uniforms in plymouth i hear about market gardening schemes in bath fostering and adoption uh with chuck and the guys up in aberdeen 5 000 people clothed and fed and helped in cold rain and so on we have work to do shaping systems and creating cultures in our cities and so we climb the mountain and we pray and then we enter the city in front of the king's chariot we fight injustice we receive perspective and power to deliver these services on the mountain but then we turn from prayer to obedience the final thing i want to say to you is this notice the role of revelation in elijah's breakthrough he hears the word of the lord he prayed the way that he prayed and engaged the way that he engaged because god had spoken to him just read verse one of the chapter i believe god is wanting to speak to us powerfully as you guys gather together home to home in whatever context you are doing this over these days i believe god wants to remind us and to galvanize us once again with his word and with his words spoken over our lives over our churches get some of those old prophecies out over our cities at the start of this new year sadly in 2020 we saw the prophetic abused terribly in certain contexts those prophets who got it wrong need to just apologize and own up to it if you you shared a directional prophecy in a a local context that then then just deal with it there but if you shared something online that was global then you need to face up to it unless the prophetic be brought into disrepute and it's because i'm committed to the prophetic which is of course one of the hallmarks of the vineyard movement that we must at this time lean into a helpful prophetic etiquette and we must not back off the prophetic just because some people have got it right it's fine the apostle paul says we prophesy in part but let's just have a little humility when we don't get it right by the way this isn't aimed at anyone in vineyard but i'm sure you have some understanding of what i'm saying so let me finish by just sharing one or two prophetic words that are true and right and have proven proper and uh i think they'll be helpful to you in october 2019 so what is that like 15 months ago the 24 7 tribes gathered in belfast northern ireland for our 20th anniversary event and a proven prophet by the name of chris westhoff said i see a great leveling coming in the coming year there's going to be a great leveling we didn't know what that meant of course and then and i want to be honest with you i got this wrong as a leader a a man called bob ekblad that's a dear friend of ours very caught up with 24 7 a social justice uh leader a theologian bob ekblad had a dream which he came and shared with me and it wasn't until it started to come true i realized oh my goodness that was god speaking i should have done more but in his dream he saw a black man being lynched whilst white people sang sunday school songs and then after the black man had been lynched everything was made tidy again as if nothing had happened deeply disturbing deeply distressing dream and now i realize god was speaking to us this is four months before armored armory uh was killed in georgia this was five months before breanna taylor was killed in kentucky it was seven months before george floyd was killed in minnesota god was warning us speaking to us get ready get ready for the holy spirit is doing something in the realm of justice he's leveling the playing field he's raising up those who've been oppressed for the color of their skin for their ethnicity he's pulling down those who've been arrogant racially economically and in other ways whenever god speaks to us it's time to pray it's time to climb so yeah these are serious times in which we live we live in a strange land the land is in crisis socially economically racially spiritually in every other way but brothers and sisters i hear the sound of a heavy ray perhaps like me up that mountain you've lost visibility you're feeling disorientated at the start of the year the path seems to have run out the clouds have come down you feel scared you've been relentlessly reacting and the lord is saying to you at the start of this year take a deep breath listen to me it's time to climb seek my presence perhaps like that little bear cub you don't even know if you've got the strength left focus on the father keep going it's time to climb this conference i believe marks a moment for vineyard when god is calling you to retrace your steps to the essence of the vineyard movement which is encounter with god the presence paradigm it's time to return to the places where he last spoke to you and to pick up some of those old words again and contest for them and pray them in it's time to reprioritize prayer as never before it's time to seek god's face together it's time to activate god's promises over our lives our cities and over this nation my friends it's time perhaps as never before in any of our lifetimes it is time to ascend the head of the lord it's time to climb god bless you

Channel: West Auckland Vineyard

Views: 1,171

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: VNG2021, WAVC, Vineyard, Pete Greig, Time to Climb, Teaching

Id: DfybtF8DqII

Length: 33min 22sec (2002 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 29 2021