Discovering Who You Really Are | Ps Sue Irwin

Welcome to the Greenery Church podcast. We're happy you could join us. For more information on the Greenery Church, head to greenery.org.au or follow our socials at the Greenery Church. Welcome everyone. It's good to be here today and I'm glad the young adults having such a great time down there. There's such an extraordinary group of young adults and which is growing all the time. It's lovely to see what happens and I'm looking forward to the kids event. It's going to be great. We have some great kids. They will come here enthusiastically or run out enthusiastically. Great things happening there. Great things happening here with all of us. So we're starting what we're calling a challenge. The reason we're calling it a challenge is that we all have to do something about it. So I'm going to pray for us because it's easy. All of us just to sit and listen and think that's nice and to walk away and be exactly the same person that you were when you walked in. But that has not been my prayer for you today and got answers my prayers. So something's going to happen because what we want is that we come here today and we walk out slightly different. Maybe a lot different than what we came in today because really that's what we all want. That's why we're actually here today because we believe there is a God who loves us and who's way bigger than us and can do extraordinary things and we're here to encounter him. We want to see something amazing. So I'm getting prayed for that for all of us. Our Father, we thank you that we're all here today because we know somewhere maybe it's just a spark of thinking maybe you exist or maybe we've seen you and we have a life story of what you've done in our lives. But all here today because we're drawn to know you and we pray for this morning as we hear from you, you'll speak to each one of us exactly where we are and what we need to hear today and that we'll have the courage to use the free will that you've given us to respond to you and we'll see what happens when we put our faith and trust in you. In Jesus name, Amen. So we are starting this four week challenge on who you are, how God says you. Sorry I paused there didn't I think does she really know what it's about? She does know what it's about. It's actually going to be divided over. It's going to take three months because it's divided up into three subheadings. Living as people of grace, how God says you first, how God sees us as a church and then how we see others and how we operate in the world around us, we've got us placed us. So just for the next month, we're looking at how God sees you and we're talking about your identity. So I wonder if you could just pause for a moment. Now some of you, if you've known the Scriptures for a while, sometimes when I ask this question, you'll know the answer, you'll know the right answer. But I want you to think about the right answer. Why do you think about the true answer? Well, your true answer, basically what I mean is how God sees you, you can read it in the Scriptures. But is that actually how you believe in the depth of your being that this is how God sees you? So I just want you to close your eyes for a moment and just imagine, God, you're Heavenly Father is standing right before you now, looking at you. And how do you imagine what's your first thought about how He sees you? And just want you to hang onto that thought, you can open your eyes. Maybe that thought is great and it will grow. I pray that that will be magnified. Maybe there's something wrong. Maybe you know the God loves you. But when you imagine him standing before you, you might think that he's upset with you or displeased with you or you're not quite good enough for him. Or maybe there seems like a big gap. It's good to work out what you see. It's not about getting the right answer and yet, yay, I give you a Fredo frog. It's actually about you being aware of who you are and becoming aware of our identity. Now when we talk about identity, identity is actually a bigger thing than we all realize who supports the blues in the state of origin. Okay. How's your identity feeling this week? Really good. Who supports the marones if you game enough to raise your hand? Yes. Well, there you go. We've got a couple. Bit of a blow. It was a bit of a blow. But some of us were really cheering. Wasn't it great towards the end of that match? I actually got to the point where I started to read my novel again. And then I heard the cheering. I thought, well, then Graham and I went to see the night's players today. We took one of our grandsons with us and we were a few minutes late. And we heard, at first I thought it was the sound of a jet engine. And it was actually cheering because the night scored, I think, in the first five minutes or something. And no one had to say that was the nights that scored not the eels. It was obvious. So there's things that we identified with that we just love. And yesterday we think we won. I was not on the field. And I would not want to be on the field. I would have been pummeled in the first five minutes. But we won because it's part of our identity because if you live here, most of us are night supporters, but some aren't. You still have an identity somewhere else. Maybe you're down with the eels. Oh, yes, you are. Okay. Eels support a hear. Yes, I saw the laddie yesterday, Jeremy. So sorry. You're still smiling. So we have these identities. You also have other identities to do with your gender, the things that you love to do, your hobbies, what you're good at, your career, your career choice. If you're Jeremy, you can say part of my identity is the musician. That's true. If you're Ashia, you can say part of my identities are my psychologist. We all have these different parts of our identity. And we do sort of describe people like that. That's the guy who's the psychologist who preaches his older of the church, all those things, part of Ash's identity. He has four kids and two of his kids are twins or part of his identity. Okay. And that's fine. But the problem is in this world, some of the identities that we have are great and they're kind of valued by our society. So we push those people up there. Some of them are like, well, they're not there to this or they're socially awkward or they're this or this or this. And we push them right down. And that causes this problem in our society where we're struggling to have that identity that makes people valuable. And when we get their identity that people value, we have to keep it because if we lose it, we've lost who we are. Now, I'm not saying that the things that you're good at or the things that you do are not part of your identity, they are. But what we're looking at here is your greater identity in which all the other aspects of you are fulfilled, really. And so what we've got in Ephesians is the invisible realm and the visible realm actually coming together. And what you discover is that all the identities that we've been given in this world are not the main ones. The identity is actually from the invisible realm. We are very aware of the visible realm, but the invisible realm is actually more powerful than the visible realm. And we are people who really want to understand that and understand how you operate as a whole human being, not a partial human being. Because when you operate as a partial human being, you're just operating in this physical, visible realm. And you're not understanding that there is a greater realm around you. I read that the recent astronauts who went up to the moon, one of them who was an atheist, one of the first people he wanted to speak to when he came back with a chaplain. Because it's overwhelming to get out there and see the vastness of the universe in which we live. And we can live in our own little worlds and not understand this. So I just want to read the beginning of Ephesians. I'm just reading from verses three to ten. So it's a little bit of a read. But as I read it, I'd love you to look at it and see what it says about you. Look for that as I read this. This is written by Paul. He was one of the, we call the apostles of the church. He went around planting churches around the then known, we call the known world. And it's written, it's called the book of Ephesians is actually a letter or an epistle to the church in Ephesus. Ephesus is a now a ruined city in present day Turkey. And if you go to Ephesus, you'll see in the, every now and then you'll see in the stone, the stone pavings, the sign of a fish. And the sign of a fish was a secret sign that said there are Christians in this city because it was illegal to be a Christian in that city. So he's writing to this persecuted group of people who love the Lord. And this is what he says about them. Or praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He was blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to end adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do and gave him great pleasure. So he praised God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belonged to his dear son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his son and forgave our sins. He has showered his kindness on us along with all wisdom and understanding. God has now revealed to us his mysterious will regarding Christ which is to fulfill his own good plan. And this is the plan. At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ, everything in heaven and on earth. So we explain that big plan. Everything together on the earth. the authority of Christ means everything reconciled in perfect goodness, in the love of God, in the kindness, in justice, in things being set right. It's basically everything that you yearn for, that you wish you could see in the world when it comes together under Christ, that is how it's meant to be. And in this is hidden who you really are, your identity in the invisible world when you come to Christ. I was one to history about Queen Victoria. I just want to say before I tour about Queen Victoria, someone reminded me after the first service that everything Queen Victoria did and everything that happened under her reign was not good. And that is true. I'm using any leader in the world that I could use for an example, you'll be able to tell me something that they did that wasn't good, including me. And but I just want to say, this is a story that I want to use to show what happens in the, even in the earthly realm when you discover who you really are. So when she was a baby her father died and her mother, the Duchess of Kent, the father asked a man called Sejong Conroy to look after his wife and children and she was in debt and Sejong Conroy saw his opportunity for power. And so he basically controlled everything that happened in the family and including Victoria. Now when she was 11, she happened to see the line of succession plan and she said to her governess, am I closer to the throne than I realize and the governess said, you are, you are much closer than you realize. She said, well, I have no one ever told me this and she'll, nobody actually wants you to know that. They don't want to worry you with it. But she decided quietly that day that she needed to prepare herself for being the queen and at 18 when her uncle died, she ascended to the throne and Sejong Conroy had tried very, very hard to control her so that he would control the throne but she was ready for it because she knew who she actually was now and and it says the day that she went into to be the queen. She sat in a room of men. One of them was Wellington who defeated Napoleon. These were men with a lot of experience in life but she knew who she was and she quickly eliminated Sejong Conroy from the scene and she took the throne because she knew who she was. Now the point is you and I without knowing who we are in Christ can live maybe nice lives, just lives, never actually waking up to the fact of who we actually are, who our identity is in Christ. To understand your identity, you have to understand what Ephesians is saying is that you are united with Christ. Some translations say in Christ which is a way of describing something incredibly profound to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ. You see, the word Christian is actually used in the New Testament three times. It's not a very common word in the New Testament and every time it's used it's actually a label from the outside. Christian. But when it comes to the the the phrase in Christ it means something totally different. It's an identity term from the inside and so the followers of Christ as you read through the scriptures talked about themselves being in Christ, in union with Christ rather than calling themselves Christians, they called themselves in Christ. And it was a decided describing your identity from your union with Christ. You are united with Christ. So you are a man in Christ or a woman in Christ which is a better way of describing your rather saying a Christian. You are a man in Christ. You are a woman in Christ. And there's many people in the world and through history we'll say I'm a Christian who have not lived a life that bears any fruit resembling Jesus. But a man in Christ or a woman in Christ is a man or a woman who's fundamentally united with Christ given themselves themselves to Christ so that he would live and breathe into the world through them. That's actually what you're designed to be. There's many analogies in the scriptures. Jesus uses the one about the vine and the branches. He says in John 15, "Remain in me and I will remain in you." So there's this union happening with you and Christ Jesus. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. Now just think about this. If you drive up to the hunter valley when the vines are blooming, when the leaves are green and the grapes are hanging from the vines, what do you see first? You see the leaves and the grapes more than you're aware of the vine. But it's the vine that's self that is producing this beautiful colour and fruit. The vine itself is producing the fruitfulness. Jesus says, "I'm the vine. You are the branches." Those who remain in me and I and them will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. He goes on to say that if you if the branches not connected to the vine, it just withers and dies and is thrown away. Sometimes people read that as punishment. It's not punishment. It's just a fact. If a vine, if the branch is not connected to the vine, it can do nothing. And that's what he's saying. He's saying, "You're incredibly valuable to me, but unless you're connected to me, you can never fulfill the purpose for which you were created. You'll never find your true identity." Those branches that you see up in the vineyards, they are actually created to bear beautiful fruit that brings life to other people. They're not created to be chopped off in light and with it on the ground and neither are you. Seas Lewis says this, "Your real use of which is Christ and also yours and yours, just because it is His, will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him." Jesus says it like this. He says, "If you seek my kingdom first, everything else will be given to you. Just keep your eyes on me. If you just seek my kingdom first." Here's the story of the woman who had had an issue of blood for 12 years and it says in the crowd, "She just reached out and touched the hem of His garment. She just reached out for Him and healing flowed into her body." And so it's the same with our identity. If we understand who He is and who we are in Him, it will change everything in your life. So Christian identity isn't about your moral effort, it's not about your religious observance. It's about forgiveness, righteousness and transformation flowing from this union and Christ, rather than you working to earn it independently. And this new identity in Him called "In Christ," you don't earn it. You don't get it because you're amazingly good or you learn how to pray the prayer the right way or because you happen to wake up one day and realize that God is real, it's all a gift. And without understanding it's a gift, you don't get the full understanding of your identity. So see as Lewis says this, "Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes into rebuild that house. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage, but He's building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself." So I just want to unpack briefly just through some of those verses who you are and how God sees you, how God really, really sees you. And as we go through it, I want you to start imagining God is seeing you like this and getting rid of the other thoughts in your mind about how God might be seeing you. So it starts off in three, telling us that we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ or in Christ. So if you have come to put your faith and trust in Christ, if you've surrendered your life to Him, this is you. If you haven't, you are loved equally. You think of the story, the prodigal son, and you've got three pictures of people here. You have a son who is far away trying to do life by himself, eating pig food and losing his entire identity of the son of this wealthy man, eating pig food. You've got the son who stays at home who is the son of this amazingly wealthy man, but does never lose by the benefits of it and just keeps trying to work to prove who he actually is. But then you've got this son who was there, he comes back and he sits at the table with his father. He has the robe put us on him and the ring put on him and is treated beautifully even though he's done nothing to deserve it. In fact, of the two, if you want to judge them, which you're not cool to do, but if you do, we would say in our world, he's the one who ran away as the worst. But God is not judging us by who's better and who's worse. That's our problem. We are judges and as Samuel Johnson said, even God reserves judgment till the last day, we spend our lifetime doing it. You've got to get rid of it and see, God loves everyone. His arms are open wide to everyone. It's just who says, I want to come in there that you're a table. And afterwards, we're going to take communion, which is the greatest feast that we get to take. We come to his table, freely. So you have to understand this first. This is a free gift. It's for everyone. It's not for the good and the bad because we're all bad and sometimes we do good things. We're all the same. Basically one saying, this is all the same. And if you think you are superior to someone else, you probably have to need to rethink that thought. You might not be enjoying your place at the table as much as you could. So you are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly because we united with Christ. Now notice here it's the past tense. You have already been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. That is how God sees you. He sees you as one upon whom he is pouring every spiritual blessing. This word blessing from this Greek word Yulageo is the combination of good and word which means to speak well of. So when we're singing our songs of praise and worship, worshiping God it means that we're speaking well toward God. We're blessing him and when it's God towards people it's actively conferring favor protection and supernatural benefits upon you. So you who are in Christ regardless of what you have done you come into Christ union with Christ you receive forgiveness of sins everything has washed away the scriptures actually say you stand before him holy and blameless when you are in Christ. So he sees you as holy and blameless and he sees you as one upon whom he is conferring his blessing favor and protection supernatural benefits. That's how God sees you. Do you see yourself like that? Because until you see yourself like that you won't fully live as the person you were called to be. You'll be a little bit like Queen Victor as a child having no idea of the power and the influence that was going to be given to her. But from this comes a lot of power and influence. So verse four we read this even before he made the world God loved us and chose us. I've done it if you've ever pondered that verse before just that little bit of that verse. So this is what's saying your parents may have thought let's have a child. Maybe your parents didn't even think that but when they found that we're having you they were happy. Especially when they saw you cute little face. But this says that before the world was created God loved you. Before the world was created God chose you. That means none of us are random. Sometimes people have been told we're random so not it's so not true. No one is random. You were created. You were dreamed of before the world was created and you were loved before the world was created. You were loved before you did things that messed up your life. You were loved way before that. You've always been loved. You were loved and you were dreamt of and you were created with your particular DNA and your particular gifts and talents to be born at this time to bring God's goodness and blessing into the world. You have a purpose to participate with him in what he's doing in the world. That is your main purpose to participate and sometimes it's participating in your home in your street in your neighborhood with your family, your extended family, the people that you work with, the people that you do hobbies with. You are called to participate and sometimes way beyond that. Then it says he also decided in advance to adopt you into his own family by bringing you to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do and it gave him great pleasure. So it was always his plan that you would become his son or his daughter. There's many people in the world who don't even know that. Maybe you're sitting here today and you don't know that it's not his plan just to tell you what to do. It's his plan to adopt you to love you as his own child, to love you way more than an earthly parent will ever love their children. That is great love. If you're a parent, you look at your own children and you would do anything for them to help them be successful in life, but magnify that with God millions of times over. That's how he loves you. His purpose was always to be your father, not some mysterious God in the sky, be your father and give you the privilege and identity of being his child. So when you're the child of the king of kings and Lord of Lords, when you're the child of the creator of the universe, with that comes great blessing and with that comes great responsibility. And unless we understand the blessing and the responsibility equally, we can abuse the blessing or miss out on fulfilling our responsibility. As many people in the world who've been given the blessing of being a leader of something, but have not taken the responsibility seriously and have used it for themselves. So we need to ask ourselves today, do I come humbly before him and do I see myself as this child of God and the blessings that are on me because of this, but also do I live with humility and responsibility for what he's given me to do. And so then we read, we praise God for the glorious he has poured out on us, he belonged to his dear son. Grace means we didn't earn any of this. If you think God loves you more because you do better things, you are more generous with your time and your money, you are nicer person, you don't understand grace, you still think somehow you earned it, you still think you did something good to deserve it. And what we don't understand is our goodness is nothing compared to his glory. It goes under say he is so rich and kind of some grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his son and forgave our sins. Everything you've done, you will do, you have done everything you have done, you are doing and you will do has been covered with his grace. Everything I will do, everything you will do that you don't know you're going to do. And sometimes we do things wrong intentionally and sometimes we didn't even know we were hurtful with the things that we did all covered when we are in Christ by his grace. That should humble us, to think it's all covered because of his love and his grace for us. His show it is kindness on us, along with our wisdom and understanding. So when we're in Christ, if we spend time in union with him, listening to him, he gives us wisdom and understanding. And there are times when we have this great privilege, yet we never spend five minutes a day just sitting in his presence and listening to him for wisdom and understanding. Five minutes in his presence just thanking him for who we are. Five minutes in his presence building up the confidence in who we are to go and fulfill purposes in the world. That's why understanding our identity is so important. Because once you understand your true identity, it informs your purpose. We get to participate in his purpose. The way you think about yourself and others and the universe will show how you understand your purpose. If you think everything's random here by chance, then life itself is meaningless and random and everything is just by chance and it really doesn't matter what happens. But if you understood this and this is what the scripture's teachers said, everything was created through Christ and for Christ, including you, that you, your greatest fulfillment in life is when you find yourself in Christ and you live to fulfill his purposes in the world, which go right back to Genesis where it says we are to be a blessing and we have to bring his blessing into the world. That's what we're called to do. So how big is he in your world? Because he when it says, you know, everything is for Christ, something, or what about for me? Well, the wake-up call is that you're not the center of the story. And it's hard to realize that. And sometimes we feel deflated, we think, what, I'm not the center of the story that this world is in all about me. But once you realize that it's not about you, there's incredible freedom comes because you realize it's all about him and his purposes are always for good, always for good. His purposes are always for the longing of your heart. It says in some 37 verse 4, you seek your happiness in the Lord and all the desires of your heart will be fulfilled. That's what it says. And it's a promise written in different ways all through scripture. And so we choose to come to him. He wants us to choose to come to him and find our identity in him. And that informs our purpose. But it also informs how we think. Because once you see who you really are in him, you think differently. So what I'd encourage us all to do is when you wake up in the morning and you're about to face your day, say over yourself, and we're going to be practicing this in our small groups. So if you're not in a connect group, I encourage you to go and ask, how could you be in a connect group? Because we're going to practice it with each other. We're going to dig into this book a little bit more deeply because I can only go through over it very briefly here. If you're in the women's Bible study that meets every second Thursday night, you will know that we took a year and a half to go through Ephesians. And we're going to go through it in three months. So there's so, so much more. That's why I thought, okay, we need to get into it in our small groups as well. Because the riches that are there will transform your life. And I want you to get into it for an intellectual point of view or so you know what it says because some of you can already quote what it says. Makes no difference in your life at all. It only makes a difference if you believe it and you speak it out. And you'll find through the scriptures that when people speak it out, it makes a difference. You actually have to speak it out. We have this mistake of believing what we're worrying about in our mind more than the truth of the scriptures. So you're actually retraining your brain to go by truth rather than it's like following a GPS. So if you've ever been following a GPS and you're thinking, I'm sure this is not the best way. Anyway, have I thought that? Or do you just totally trust your GPS? I think I'm sure if I went this way, it's going to be faster. Okay? But you don't know what the GPS can see. The number of cars that are down that road. Or you see, we just end up following it now. Do you ever wonder how you actually followed a map? I wonder that. How did you drive along in a car by yourself trying to find some random place in Sydney with the big Gregory's map open beside you and you got to go, yes, no, you got to get a page 95 and where's page 95? I kind of remember how we did that. How did you plan a holiday before you had the internet? I can't remember how you did that anymore either. So anyway, we did used to do things like that and some of you who were born this century, that's all you know. I don't know anything else in that, but some of us had to think more once. Went to think. To think to get anywhere. Anyway. But it's very peaceful when you don't have to think. And when you find your identity in Christ, you don't have to worry. You don't have to mull over things over and over again. So it informs how you think. So get up in the morning and say, I'm blessed with every spiritual blessing. Today I am not earning it. I actually have it because I'm in Christ. Therefore, I'm going to live a very successful day today. I'm going to live a day with wisdom and understanding. And take some time aside just to be in His presence, to be aware that you are in Christ. But you also have this privilege when you go out today. Because there are people who you're sending you to to bless, to encourage. He's sending you with good ideas. He will show you problems and he will give you the answers to those problems. Because you are in Christ. You hold a very privileged position. So this is what happened with Queen Victoria. This guy, Sir John Conroy, tried to hide her identity from her. And he tried to hide the privilege and responsibility that comes with that identity because he wanted it himself. And I think this is significant to understand. There is an enemy of our souls in this world. He would love to hide your identity from you and the privilege that comes with it. So when you're fearful and you're worried and you're depressed, which we all get, we need to wake up ourselves and say, hang on, I don't have to be afraid. I'm in Christ. I have to be afraid of anything. And when you hear those thoughts coming into your mind, you haven't prayed well enough. You've messed up your life. You haven't been faithful enough. They are not from the kingdom of God. They do not line up with grace and unfaithful blessing in your life. You have to get rid of those thoughts. You have to capture what is going on in your head and get rid of it. Because this is what it's like. So John Conroy, when Queen Victoria before she was queen, when she was a teenager, got desperately ill. And he tried to get her to sign forms to allow him to run everything through her and he would tell her what to do, give him more responsibility. He tried to get her to sign it away. And basically, that's what the human race has done with the enemy of our souls. We've signed it away and it's time to take it back. And time to be the people who are in Christ, who are called to bring his goodness into this world with wisdom, with grace, with kindness, with understanding. George Moulin was a man who was born in Germany. And when he was 16, he was rebellious. And he ended up in jail by the time he was 16. Not many people would have looked at him and thought he was anything remarkable. But he encountered Christ and everything changed. He wrote in his later in his life, "I gave myself fully to the Lord, honours, pleasure, money, my physical powers, my mental powers, all were laid down at the feet of Jesus." So he moved to Bristol in England and he found a city full of orphan children. There'd been a cholera epidemic, they were living on the streets. In 1836, he took in 30 girls. He had almost no money and no wealthy backers. But he had this conviction of who he was in Christ, the kindness and grace that comes with that, but also the power and authority that comes with that. And he believed that God could be trusted. And so he decided to prove it. And the interesting thing with George Moulin is that everything he did has actually been monitored, I mean, been recorded. And people say that it's one of the most consistent and well-documented records of answered to prayer in modern history. So one day, they sat down for breakfast, he ended up with caring for many, many poor children. And an employee came in and said that the 300 children were sitting waiting for breakfast and there was nothing to feed them. He gave thanks to God for the food before any food existed. There was a knock on the door. Baker had been impressed to get up and bake bread at 2 in the morning and brought it to the orphanage. Then there was a second knock at the door. It's the milkman, he's carted, broken down directly outside. And the children had enough bread and enough milk for the day. And this story happened dozens and dozens and dozens of time. He used to pray. He is their father. And therefore, he has pledged himself as it were to provide for them. I only have to remind him of the need of these poor children in order to have it supplied. And you know, by the end of his life, George Moulin had cared for 10,024 orphans in his lifetime. And he received in donations 1.46 million British pounds, often from very poor people who gave their hard earned money. I had a long argument with AI trying to work out what that was today because I said, ask 1.46 British pounds would be worth today if someone had that much money. And they said, well, that would be a miracle beyond all miracles that couldn't happen. And so I had to keep putting in different questions to make it calculate. In the end, I said, I'm talking about George Moulin and AI, I guess, oh, that's a different case. In that case, that means that he raised $250 million, $230 million, something like that. Can check on your AI, not now. Haven't finished the message yet. That is amazing. And he never did a fundraising campaign once. He just knew who he was. And he spoke to 3 million people across 42 countries during 17 years of travel, telling people about the love of Jesus. And when someone asked, visiting one orphanage asked the matron, "Where is your good stock of funds?" She says, "Our funds are deposited in a bank which cannot break." And so, he, like you, was called to be in Christ. But he got the responsibility. And so what do we do? What do we do about this? George Moulin said this, "The first great and primary business to which I work to attend every day is to have my soul happy in the Lord." I want you to reflect on that. When you see the words, "Happy," you think, "Oh, that's a nice foot." That's a nice little saying. I want you to think about it a bit further. The first and the first great and primary business to which I work to attend every day is to have my soul happy in the Lord. And only you can do that with him. Other things may press upon you. But I deliberately repeat, is of supreme and paramount importance that you should seek above all things to have your soul truly happy and got himself, day by day seek to make this the most important business of your life. This is really wise advice from a man who raised $230 million without ever doing a fundraising campaign. So this is someone who knew their identity in Christ and lived it fully and rescued thousands and thousands of children. And maybe we should listen to him to get up every day and to understand who you are in him and get your soul truly happy in him because he controls everything. And he's looking after you, he's blessing you. You will be able to live then without fear. You see, when Jesus was called to the home of a man called Jairus, his daughter was dying and she actually died. And it says in Mark 5, "Well, he was still speaking to her. Messengers arrived from the home of Jairus, the leader of the synagogue. They told him your daughter is dead. There's no use troubling the teacher now." And some of you are sitting here today in this situation in your life and you're saying the same. Don't worry about troubling God about this anymore because this situation is dead. Or I am hopeless. I've failed. And we pronounce a lot of things hopeless. Even God could not fix this one up. This is too big for God. And that's because in your mind, you're imagining how God could do it, but you don't understand how big God is. So we're limiting God with our own people, little minds. And Jesus overheard them and said to Jairus, "Don't be afraid. Just have faith." Because faith is the opposite to fear. Oswald Chambers said the remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else. Whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else. And so we ask ourselves today, fear means what you hold in reverence and awe. And some of us hold the problems of our life in more reverence and awe than God himself. It's because we don't know who we are. But once you know who you are, it changes everything. And so now we're going to have a time of communion. And I want you to see communion now is coming to this bank-witting table where we come and we remember who we are in Him because of what He has done. So the bread and the cut remind us of what He has done. And then they remind us of who we are because of what He has done. And we declare these things over ourselves. If you read in Psalm 23, David had a habit of declaring these things out loud over himself. If you read Joshua, God said to Joshua before he went into the promised land, keep the words of this, keep the book of your law of my law on your lips as well as in your heart. You've got to speak them out. You might find that embarrassing. So do it in the shower in the car or something. But speak it out of yourself. Say it out loud. So for instance, in Psalm 23, David says, "The Lord is my shepherd. I have all that I need. Not I hope I get all that I need. I have it." Did He sometimes doubt? Most likely because He's a human being like you and me. But He declared it. He lets me rest in green meadows. He leads me beside peaceful streams. He renews my strength, present tense. He guides me along right paths, present tense, bringing honor to His name. Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid for you are close beside me. You're writing your staff, protecting, comfort me. Because sometimes we think God's blessing us when everything's great and He's not blessing us when everything's not great. This says, even when you're in the darkest valley, you're still blessing you, still caring for you. In fact, in the darkest valley, he prepares a feast for you in the presence of your enemies. You want to me by anointing my head with oil, my cup overflows with blessings. Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me or hunt me down at actual means, all the days of my life, and I'll live in the house of the Lord forever. So as you come to take the bread and the cup, say something like that, your goodness and unfailing love are hunting me down. As you come and take the bread and take the cup, take it back to your seat, we'll take communion together, but say that over and over in your mind. Your goodness and your unfailing love are pursuing me, hunting me down all the days of my life because of who I am in Christ. So the communion tables around come and take some, if one line is long, look around the room and go to another line, take it back to your seat and then we will take communion together. (gentle music) ( which was in the completely staring center ) ( and the same as the other one ) ( and see as Lewis said, "faith in the sense in which I am here using the word" ) ( is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted ) ( in spite of your changing moods ) ( that means you put your trust in Jesus ) ( but then your situation has changed so your moods change ) ( and your belief in Him is affected by your moods ) ( rather than in who He is ) ( so you might be feeling great, you might not be feeling great, but His love has not failed you ) ( you might be seeing a way through or not seeing a way through, but He has not stopped finding a way through the valley ) ( and so when we take the bread, this is what we remember, that His body was beaten for us ) ( and in Him as it says in Isaiah by His stripes we are healed, we are made whole, we are saved) ( and that word "hoor saved" comes in His Greek word "sosa" which means saved, healed and delivered) ( in every way of your life, mentally, physically, emotionally ) ( and so as we take the bread, we are reminding ourselves that in Him, in Christ, we have healing ) ( if you know that you're not in Christ now, this is an opportunity to say to your Father, "Lord, I give my life to you, I want to live in Christ, I put my faith in trust in you" ) ( if you already have done that, this is your opportunity to remember, I am in Christ and we take this bread gratefully) ( and we receive the healing that it brings us, so let's take the bread ) ( and as we take the cup, remember Jesus said, "this cup is representing His blood poured out to us for the forgiveness of sins) ( therefore we stand to reform Him as holy and blameless, stand before Him because of this and we remember this, so we don't come to Him with a sense of hopelessness, or shame, or condemnation, become with a sense of confidence because we put our faith and trust in His sacrifice for us, let's take the cup) ( and I pray blessing over all of us as we finish, I say Heavenly Father, fill us the fresh with your Spirit, open our eyes to see who we actually are in you) ( help us to become the people that you've called us to be, when we see the blessings you've conferred upon us, may we live up to the high standard that you've called us to live) ( may we live in a way that always brings honor and glory to your name, in the way we think, in the way we speak, in the way we act, may we do everything that lives to the honor and glory of your name) ( may we participate fully in the beautiful work and the powerful work, the redemptive and reconciliation work that you are doing around the world, we give ourselves to you for that) ( just as you have given yourself for us) ( in Jesus' name, in the way) (music)