Navigating Your Journey of Faith | 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. I'll follow our socials at the Greenery Church. Okay, so if someone could give you a map of your life, would you like it? I said that in the 830 service, I'm like, "No, sorry, you're about to get one." That's what you're about to get. So the ashes are about to hand out this little thing. But when I say a map of your life, it's not a map of predicting what's going to happen. It's not a fortune telling map of your life. It's actually a picture of your journey of faith. And over the next six weeks, we are going to be unpacking this whole idea of your spiritual journey. Because your spiritual journey is your life, basically. Everyone in the world is actually on a spiritual journey. Oh, sorry. Use your going out now. Sorry. That I'm glad you're really enthusiastic. If you're a new teenager here today and you want to join, just go out that way. And if you're a parent of a teenager and you want to know a little bit more about them, go that way and they're all heading into the youth room currently. So if someone said to you, "Why do you follow Jesus and what's the goal of your faith? What would be your answer? Would you have an answer?" And the story of the journey of our faith has a lot of ups and downs along the way. And sometimes in our journey of faith, because we don't know what the goal is, we actually throw the whole thing away. And so what we're going to do over the next six weeks is look at, "I'm this spiritual journey. What is involved in it?" And why we're actually all on it together. And how to do the journey really well. Because if you don't know the goal, if you don't know we, and sometimes deep in your heart, you may not know the goal. It's like, "Dallas Willard, who's a Christian author, philosophers, says that a lot of Christians think it's more important to be right than to be Christlike, because we will try to argue things to prove our point, but lose friends and never even help people see things differently. We're actually called to be like Jesus." So we're just now going to look at a story, video story of Pippa, who was just up here doing announcements, thanks Pippa for sharing this. It's just one aspect of Pippa's journey in knowing Jesus. I'm Pippa, my real name's Phillipa, but only when I'm in trouble. I've been here at the Grainery, I think it's around 10 years. I'm married to a beautiful man Andrew. I often wonder how people do life without a church family. I have been on quite an interesting journey throughout my whole life. I've had lots of different things that have occurred. I think the most significant one that had the potential to really shake my faith was losing my son. I've come up to seven years and I lost my beautiful boy Dominic to mental illness. On January the 3rd, 2019, our beautiful boy went to heaven. Losing a child is unbelievable, but to lose a child with mental illness, it creates a very different way of having to process. So even though as a society, we've changed a lot of the stigma around mental illness, there is still as apparent that moment of what if what should I have done. And the best way I could summarise it is that I basically went through every minute of Dominic's life. From the moment I gave birth to him, to the moment I lost him and every day I would play it through my head, how could I have changed it what should I have done. I actually started to have time with God where I said, "Please heal my heart. Please, this shame and this guilt and this absolute torment that I'm carrying every day is not of you and I know God. You are a loving father. You are a father that you put your son on that cross to take this." So one day I sat down and I did a very unorthodox thing. My husband told me that sometimes you can type into AI some things. And so I actually wrote down. I said, "I am a 48 year old." Yeah, I'm 48. A 48 year old woman, a Christian woman who is struggling with the torment of losing a child. I need my God given perspective on how to move forward. The first thing that came back was, "This must be hard for you." And then the second line said, "Pip, you are not God." And that was the moment that my heart was released. I am not God. And from that moment I then put on some worship music and God began this journey of showing me that I don't get to number people's dates. I don't get to decide when people live or die. God had all that in his hands. And so when I grew my beautiful Dominic inside my tummy, it wasn't up to me to decide whether he got five years, ten years, a hundred years. That's up to my father in heaven. And so now I'm in a place where I will still grieve. I have not lost the pain of losing my beautiful boy. But I actually now, I'm no longer this woman carrying this burden every day of every moment of guilt and torment and that I should have done more. I should have known. I should have done this. I should have done that. Whenever those tormenting thoughts come to my mind, all I say is, "I'm not God." And if that's not so cool, it's so simple. I am not God. And I don't have to be. My hope and prayer is that my story can encourage others to know that God never wants us to be stuck in our pain forever. He wants to walk through that valley with us and be able to then climb to a mountain top. Thank you. Thanks Pip for sharing that. It's actually a big thing to share the depth of your soul to people. And people and I were talking about this before. She said, "I can say this about going over and over things in your mind." When you share that publicly, you think, "Am I the only person who thinks like that?" Who here has never ever gone over things in their mind? But we don't say it very much. And I've been there where you just replay, replay, I should have done this, I should have done that. And condemnation and shame and guilt come upon you in such a dreadful way that I think it's a little picture of what hell is like. That's tormenting. But Jesus comes to set us free to release us. There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus. And that was a little part of Pip's journey that you saw with spiritual journey. So if I asked you, "What is the goal of your faith? What is it?" This is why I've given you this little card because it's to show you that this is an actual journey with trials and difficulties along the way. And there's some key verses there. John 173, "Now this is eternal life that they know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ in me have sent." And this is Jesus Himself in a prayer to the Father. This is Jesus saying, "This is eternal life." An eternal life is not just about when you die, but it is about that, but it's not just about that. It's about your life, the essence of life in you, your soul comes to life by the power of the Holy Spirit. It's about equality of life. It's about what the way you were actually meant to be alive. It's about abundant life. It's a fullness of life. And he says, "You turn a life." It's not about what you do. It's about knowing him. It's about being one with him, living fully in his presence. It's all about knowing Jesus. Possible says that in Philippians chapter 3, "That I may," his whole goal is to know him. That's his reward to fully, fully know him, to be fully known by him. And then in 1 John 4, we read this, "If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God." So, know you get this picture again of being in this beautiful, intimate presence of God. And we know and rely on the love God has for us. What we do, most of all, is rely on the love God has for us. We rely on that love. That means faith. That means trusting him. God is love. Whoever lives in love, lives in God and God in them. You can go and free-flect on this for a long time. This is actually the goal of your faith that you might live in him and he lives in you. And this is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment. In this world, we are like Jesus. So, the goal of your faith is actually who you're becoming more than what you're doing. And we tend to like to turn it into what I do and is that good or is that bad or is that enough rather than who am I becoming? And we create formulas for our faith as if it's a exercise in learning maths or science or something like that. When it's actually all about a relationship and it's all about knowing him, living in his presence and becoming like Jesus, or you could put it as to be with Jesus, moment by moment, day by day, to become like Jesus and to do what Jesus does. And what we tend to do is to turn it into a formula and a list of rules and it's about a relationship and it's all about who you are becoming. So what I want to do is that little image that you've got there, you take that home and reflect on it and we're going to go further into this in our connect grips, but up on the screen at the moment you're going to see stages of faith. Now you could outline, look at this and go, "Well, it didn't work like that for me," etc. etc. So don't be too analytical of it, just listen. Okay. Because this outlines the different stages of faith that people go through in their journey and we're going to unpack them more fully in the next six weeks today towards the end of this. I'm going to just unpack a bit more to understand the recognition of God, but I just want to do a brief overview so that you know where we're going and I think you'll see yourself in it as we go along this. Okay. So the first stage is called recognition of God. It's like a revelation where you actually discover that God is real and you discover His grace and His mercy. You see Him for who He is and you see yourself for who you are and you see and you'll have these revelations multiple times, like Pip describes one. She saw, she was down on herself and hard on herself and trying to forgive herself and then she discovered the grace, the mercy, the kindness of God and it changed everything. You see that, you see yourself more clearly and you see that, "Wow, you have more weaknesses, more failures than you ever saw before and you see yourself next to this perfect and most beautiful and loving God and you are humbled, but you come to Him and He's full of grace and forgiveness. His arms are open wide. You discover that He loves you and you experience His love. You experience His love for the very first time." I believe that there are people who sit in our churches and our youth ministries and things who haven't had that personal experience and they've experienced the love of the community. But they haven't had that personal experience and this experience is so important in your spiritual journey because you can't take an experience away from someone and sometimes people say, "Well, it's not about experience, it's about knowledge." When we'll go into stage two where knowledge of the Scriptures is incredibly important, but if you just have knowledge without an experience, it's like when you fall in love, you have a baby, you have a baby and no one has to give you a book to read to say, "As soon as you see the baby, you should try to love it." Because you do. Because there is something in us that it's a love experience. And we're talking about this encounter with Christ where you realize He loves you and you love Him and many of us He will have had that experience. Sometimes this life goes on, you forget that experience and in Revelation Jesus actually says, "This is what I have against you. You've lost your first love. You've forgotten." And so part of what we're doing today is to look at what was that first experience? Or, "Do I ever have that?" Or, "Is it just all head knowledge?" "If I never experience that." Because God actually wants that to happen for you. Some of us, for some of us, that happens when we're very young, for someone we're old, and then you will have experiences, a revelation of Him over and over again. It's like you start to see. It says in Ephesians 1, Paul prays that the eyes of your heart would be opened. And it's like that's the depth of your soul. You don't just see with your own eyes, you've physicalized the depth of your being sees who he really is. It says, Paul says in Ephesians 3, "May you experience the love of God though it's so great you will never fully understand it." But then you move on to stage 2, because what you need to learn then is some eternal truth. The truth. It's in the Scripture. And if you've been through this journey to this stage, you will remember when you first discovered the truth in the Scripture. So I was raised in a very traditional church. Until I was 16, I'd never seen a Bible study, even though I was in church every Sunday, and I didn't know people read their Bibles together or learnt them together. And then when I was 16, I was invited to a Bible study, an all-age thing in someone's home. And I saw for the first time people actually unpacking Scripture. And my heart just came alive. I did not know God spoke to you so powerfully through the Scripture. And I was absolutely loving it. And I got to be with this beautiful group of people who led me and helped me understand it and explained it to me. And I, I still remember, I went to Christian Bookshop and I got myself, I had a little Bible at home, which I read myself, a New Testament, J.B. Philips' translation, which I'd been given for my first communion. And when I was 14, I thought, I really want to know what's in here. So I read it, but I didn't fully understand it. And I've still prayed every night, still went to church every Sunday, but hadn't learned how to unpack the truth that you find in Scripture. And then when I went to this group and I went to the Christian Bookshop and bought myself probably a good news Bible, a living Bible or something. And it had in the start, is sometimes in the front of the Bible, is as if you want to know more about this or peace or joy or whatever. Read this passage. So I did that. And I went back the next week and people were sharing what they'd read the week before. And I said, I discovered, I discovered one Corinthians 13, which is all about what love is. And I didn't know people knew their Bibles really, really. I had no idea. So I thought, they all go, that is beautiful. They all responded as if they'd heard it for the very first time. They said about three weeks in that Bible study, I realized, they all knew that off by heart. They just were beautifully taking me on this journey and enjoying my journey of discovery. So we discover the Scriptures, but we discover it together and we share ideas together. And we need this because in the Scriptures are words of eternal truth that you need to hang on to because as life goes on, things won't always work out the way that you thought they would. And you've got to hang on to them. And we've been seeing this morning, you're always with me. We're seeing it. And because there's times in your life when you feel like he wasn't with you, but the eternal truth of the character and nature of God is that he is always with you. And so to do the journey, well, you've got to be equipped well with the Word of God, which is what the kingdom of heaven looks like, even though sometimes it doesn't feel like it. And it's an important tool to have, which will unpack more next week. It's an incredibly important thing because you will fall away if you don't have the truth of the Word of God. So if you just have the experience of the love of God, but you don't have the truth of the Word of God, it's like grace and truth together. You will probably fall away. And if you just have the truth, but you don't know him personally, you will also probably fall away. So you have to have both those things together. But then it moves on to stage three, which is called the productive life. And this also is a really exciting stage because in this stage you discover that you are unique. No one on the planet has your fingerprint. You have gifts and talents that suddenly sometimes you didn't even realize you were good at certain things. And then sometimes people say, "Are you so good at that?" And you think, "Can't everyone do that?" And the answer is, "No, they can't. You can. You can do it really, really well." And you start serving people. And you start to come to some of you find out, "I really love talking to people." And you go on the welcome team and people feel really welcomed when they come to church. And some of you think, "Don't ever put me on the welcome team." Because I don't even know how to say more than hello to someone. And but some of you are very good at singing and some of you are great with children and some of you are great with organization. And suddenly we discover, "I can actually, I have gifts that I can serve people with." And what's more, when I join this team, I find people who think like I think. And that's an exciting thing as well. Those who put on the Christmas production will find that as well. Some of them are being on stage and some are being backstage, but they find people who think like they think and you dream together. And then what's more, you're filled with the Holy Spirit and you discover you have spiritual gifts as well. Things that you just weren't born with. Suddenly you discover that you can hear God speaking and you can have a prophetic word for someone, a word of knowledge or a word of wisdom. I mean, "Where did that come from?" Or you discover that you can pray for people to be healed. And you discover that you have these amazing gifts that come from the Holy Spirit and you realize that it's all the benefit of someone else. It's all to help everyone else in the room grow. Or it's also your spiritual gifts are also to help those who don't get no Jesus to see him. It's a sign to people who haven't encountered him yet that he is real and he is powerful. And you get all these things together. Now, that's stage one, two, and three. And generally, I think, I know others do as well, but I'm saying this is what I think and you can disagree with me if you want to, that we generally say that's the end goal of your faith to live the productive life. And it's all about what you do. So, you can't a Jesus, you learn the Scriptures, or you come to church, you give your life to Christ, you're baptized, you join a small group, you start learning the Bible, you discover you've got gifts, you join a team, and that's it. And I think that's actually the start of the journey. I actually think those three things are actually your tools to do the journey incredibly well. And if you don't know the goal of your faith, you will think that being productive is the start, is the end goal of your journey. Being productive will happen. It's an incredibly important thing, but it's not the end goal of your journey. And this is where a lot of people fall away because then you hit stage 4, which is called the journey inward and there's a wall and something doesn't make sense anymore. Like Pip, she hit a wall, her son died. He'd hang on, that wasn't in my original formula. Because what we tend to do is we tend to create formulas for ourselves to say, if I do this and this and this and this, this will always happen. And then it doesn't. And then you go through a financial crisis or a relationship crisis or you see the troubles of the world and you see suffering and people are just mean to you and they're in the church and they're mean to you. And you say, you saw saying like, I thought all Christians were meant to be nice. They might have meant to be nice, but they're not always nice. And but that, if your faith is built on any of those things, rather than knowing him, this is where you'll start to be derailed. So I was talking to a woman and her little girl recently who was sort of in the very early stages of discovering Jesus. And the little girl said to me, I made a saying castle recently and I prayed to God that it wouldn't wash away and it didn't. Wow, that's amazing. And then the mum said, and I prayed that my baby would, I said, God, if you're real, please make my baby sleep to the night. And he did. I went, wow. I raised four children and a betper was never answerable once in my entire life for years and years and years. So that's interesting because see the thing is, you can create formulas when the saying castle doesn't wash away, that if I always do that, my saying castle will never be washed away. But the fact is, saying castles will be washed away. And if your faith was so that your saying castles would never be washed away, you are going to be disappointed. But if your faith is so that you can know Jesus and become like him and be like him in this world, then your faith will never be washed away. It will stay strong because it says in one Peter this, you're going to face trials. And we don't always tell people this when they start the journey. These trials are only to test your faith. To see whether or not is strong and pure, it's being tested as fire, test gold and purifies it. And your faith is far more precious to God than mere gold. So basically one, two and three, stages one, two and three, you get the equipment for this journey and you get faith. You've got this precious gold. If you've ever been a gold miner, which probably very few of us have been, maybe someone here is, when it comes out, it doesn't come out like it looks like on my rings. Had to go through a lot to get there. And that's what your faith is like when you first get it. And your faith is the thing that heals you, restores you, forgives you, your faith in Jesus, is all those things. Your faith is in his love. Your trust in his love is the thing that will heal your wounded soul, restore relationships. Your faith is the faith that you need like Jesus. If you're becoming like Jesus because stage six is the life of love. It's your aim. And then you might say, what about power? Power without love is very dangerous. There's a lot of people in the world who have power but they don't have love. So even Jesus using his power came out of his love for people. And when you are consumed with love for God and love for people and you're filled with the Holy Spirit's power, you will practice how to use faith in all the different circumstances of life. So you can be someone who brings hope, and joy, and healing, and restoration until I, you won't know what faith you have if you never have to use it. And when you see a wall in front of you, as when you have to use it, we don't love it, but that's what happens. And then it says in 1 Peter 9, your reward for trusting him will be the salvation of your souls. So what people is talking about when she talked about the torment was the torment of her soul and her soul needed to be rescued from that. When you and I all have this, we all have souls that need to be rescued. Sometimes they need to be rescued from pride and arrogance. And sometimes from brokenness and despair. And sometimes from an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame. And sometimes from hopelessness. When you read that verse, it's a present participle which is receiving, which means that it's a process. And you go on this spiritual journey, it's a process of becoming like Jesus. It's a process of your soul being healed. And those first three stages, are you getting the necessary equipment to go through this journey? It uses the word "sotaria," which comes from the verb "soso." They're Greek terms for salvation. Sozo means to save, heal or make whole. That's what the Holy Spirit is doing in your life as you go on this journey with him. To save you, to heal you, to make you whole, to deliver you from the things that sins, the sickness that fears, the anxieties, the worries of this world that torment us, the things that have been done to you, that have wounded you, that have given you a lower view of yourself than you really should ever have. And this term "sotaria" is the resulting state, deliverance, preservation and safety. So essentially, sozo is the action of saving performed by a Savior. That's what he's doing in you and your journey. So "sotaria" is the state of being saved. But both terms represent an all-encompassing, comprehensive rescue that includes spiritual, physical and emotional wellbeing. So you're on a journey to become like Jesus. That's what you're on a journey for. And so that's why when you go through walls, we need each other. But we really need this. We need to remember that experience we had of his grace. We need to know the eternal truths that you find in Scripture. We need to have our gifts ready to use for someone else when they're going through their trouble. Some of you are the gift of compassion and mercy and you are desperately needed at certain times. Some of you have the gift of helping and serving. You are desperately needed to help people. We're all meant to help each other get through that wall. So then just back to that diagram, Ian. And so after we come through the wall, we go through the stage called the journey outward. And this is where you get to a stage where you see striving as much and you start to relax more in the presence and the power and the love of God. And you are happy to live with ambiguity. You don't have a black and white answer for everything. Maybe it doesn't know why his son died and she is contented now to live with that unanswered question. And I've learnt in my life that there are things that, well, you don't ask why because why is a downward spiral with no bottom? You just keep going down and down and down into a dark pit. But you ask, "Okay, Jesus, you're with me and where do I go next?" And how do I use what I've been through to love someone else and to restore someone else and help someone else? And how can I trust in you more? Because as a child of God as you learn to trust in Him, you don't always understand why. I could trust their parents. They don't always understand why. But when we grow up, it means when we finally see him face to face, that's when we grow up, by the way, nothing to do with your age, you'll suddenly understand why. And you'll be glad that you learnt to put your faith in trust in Him, even though you didn't understand. And that leads you then to the life of love where you are like Christ in this world, and that is our aim. And this is what I would call a spiral curriculum because you will have your first recognition of God, but then you'll have more and more as life goes on. Have you ever had those moments where I've had them? I'm sure someone else has where. You suddenly have this amazing revelation of God and He's loved for you and He's, "Wow, was I even a Christian before? I suddenly see you in a whole new light and it goes on and on and on and on and it will go on that day you see Him face to face." So that's the journey that we're on. It's a beautiful journey. It's a journey of gradually letting go. It's a gradually trusting Him and you becoming like Christ. And so we keep saying to ourselves every day whenever we go through things because you go through massive walls, but you actually have walls every day of your life. And in the middle of them, when you feel those feelings that you unwanted feelings, you pause and say to yourself, "And who am I becoming at this moment?" Am I becoming more like Christ? Because every moment the way you respond to something, you start practicing a new habit. So if you have a habit of yelling at your children, every time you do it, you make it easier for yourself. And then you need to stop and say, "Who am I becoming? I'm becoming someone who yells at their children." And you should ask yourself this question. If my neighbour walked in now, would I keep going on the way I'm going on? Who am I becoming? Because we're either becoming increasingly like Christ. Or we're not. And no aim is to become like him and to trust in his love and rest in his love. So just before we finish up, I just want to go through a few revelations. Now, when I was looking at this, I was thinking, okay, now who can we unpack? Revelations in Scripture of people discovering Jesus and thought of one, then another, and then so many. I could go on for a very, very long time and I actually can because for some reason my electronic watch is nine minutes slow. I've got no idea why that is. I can't fix it up, so we might have to add nine minutes on to this. Here are some revelations and you'll notice a few key things about these revelations. Firstly, there's this Roman centurion. Now the Roman Empire had conquered a lot of countries and the Romans in this time in Israel were the people who were the oppressors. And this centurion is there to kind of keep everyone in order. But he, the disciples bring him to Jesus and say he's actually a really nice man. And he comes to Jesus because he's got a servant who is desperately ill and he has watched Jesus. Now he's not a Jewish person, he doesn't have faith in God like the Jews do, but maybe something is happening as he watches Jesus. And so they say, Jesus, would you pray for his servant because he's sick? And Jesus says, and the officer says, Lord, I'm not worthy to have you come into my home. Just say the word from where you are and my servant will be healed. I know this because I'm under the authority of my superior officers and I have authority over my soldiers. I only need to say go and they go, or come and they come and I say to my slaves, do this and they do it. Jesus heard this. He was amazed. How would you like it? If Jesus had your faith and he goes, whoa, I'm amazed by you. Jesus was amazed and he turned to those who follow for following him and he said, I too the truth, I've been seen faith like this in all of Israel. Where did this guy come from? This guy has had his profound revelation that suits his context. Okay, so he is a centurion, which means he has 100 soldiers under him, but he has authority he's answering to. So he has a big understanding of how authority and power work. But somehow he has a revelation that Jesus has spiritual authority. He has that revelation. Even the disciples don't have that yet. And he comes and says, you never have to come to my house because you've got this authority. You say the word and it's going to happen. And Jesus says, I haven't seen faith like this in all of Israel, but everyone, this is what I'm looking for. This is what I'm looking for. This is what I'm looking for in you. That sort of faith. He even says, but when the son of man comes back, will he find faith? He's looking for people who have this incredible trust in him to overcome walls in life, to use their faith to push through that work for that centurion. But then there's this story when Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi. He asked his disciples, who do people say that the son of man is? Well, they replied. Some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets. So they're telling you whatever else this. Then he asked them, but who do you say I am? It's a very important question. I think there's a lot of us who can come to churches and love it and learn about it and learn the Scriptures. We've never asked that question. Had that question asked for ourselves, who do you say I am? And each one of us needs to answer that question. And if like Peter, you have this revelation where he says, you are the Messiah, the son of the living God, that changes everything. You are the son of the living God. You are the anointed one, the son of the living God. And I'm walking with you. That changes everything in your life. And if you take that one lightly when you've said, I believe Jesus is the son of God, you actually believe Jesus is the son of God, the Messiah, changes everything when you really believe that in your heart. And Jesus said, you're blessed, Simon, son of John, because my father in heaven has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being. And Peter actually walked with Jesus for quite a time before he had that revelation. One key to having a revelation is just to keep walking, being here, going to your connect group, just keep hanging out there. If you really want to seek God, don't just go away and try and find the imbibes of be there where you might see something and ask God to give you that revelation. Everyone needs that personal revelation. Then there's another story of Jesus talking to a woman, which you don't do in a Samaritan woman, which is even worse. And she was a very rejected woman with a huge, huge abandonment in her life. And Jesus disciples came and there was surprised to find him talking with a woman, but no one asked what do you want or why you're talking with her because no one they realized by now. He does unusual things and we're not going to ask these questions. And then leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, come and see a man who told me everything I've ever done. Could this be the Messiah? They came out of town and made their way towards him. Jesus met her just where he was at and she had a revelation. This is the Messiah. And she was a Samaritan and despised woman, but she saw him. And because of that, everything changed not just for her, but for the people in her village. And then there's a story of Paul who was called Saul and he was a murderous, murdering zealot who hated Christians and hated the church and had made it his mission for God to go and destroy every Christian he could find. And that's what he was doing and he was basically employed to do that. And he was on the road with his followers to Damascus, going to Damascus to find more Christians and have them thrown into prison. And suddenly a bright light from heaven knocks him down, he's blinded and he hears the voice saying, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he says, who are you, Lord? And the voice says, I'm Jesus the one you're persecuting. And so he has a revelation. Jesus is actually real. And in my zeal that I thought I was doing the right thing, I was actually doing the wrong thing. I was fighting against the living God and he's humbled and everything changes and he becomes a man who was a murderer to a man who was known by his love. Everything changes and your life in mine has changed because of him. And so on the way you will find so so many more examples of this, you'll find the example on the road to a mayor, after Jesus had been raised from the dead, two guys were walking along, chatting and then Jesus, they didn't know it was him, the risen Christ came up and said, what are you talking about? And they say, you the only person in the world hasn't heard about this story about Jesus. And he starts to unpack scriptures to him, to them. And then they get to the point where they're sitting down and breaking bread together and as he breaks, as Jesus breaks the bread, they suddenly realize who it is and he disappears. And they say to each other, did now hearts burn with his in us as he talked with us on the road and explained the scriptures to us. What I love about that is that I think sometimes you're experiencing God and it's not until later that you realize, that was God. I didn't realize it. That was God. And so particularly in your connect groups, but just briefly today, I wanted to give us an opportunity to say to ourselves, have I ever had a revelation of God, like a, of experience, a revelation of the love of God in my life that can't be taken away. And maybe I've forgotten it, but maybe I haven't had one and you can ask the Lord to reveal himself to you. But to also think of the things in your life, you might have, God will give you more revelations than you, has given you more revelations than you realize. I had a profound one when I was a child and my dad came into a room every night and to it as to pray and we all pray together and we learn all our prayers off by heart. And then for some reason I got a little Sunday school book about the Lord's Prayer and it was each verse, each, it, it unpacked each line like into a little poem and I realized, okay, you can actually understand what these words mean. It's probably about Bible six. And so then I learned to pray those, some of those prayers from my heart, what it means to say our Father and I was lying in bed one night in the dark and I said, suddenly I said, "Jesus, I love you." And I felt this overwhelming filling of the love of God came from a very traditional, I'm no one ever explained that to me. And I woke up the next morning and I could feel him walking by my side, no one ever explained that to me. But I didn't even tell anyone that till about 10 years later because it was just, I didn't even think of telling anyone, I just thought, this is lovely. Jesus is with me. What an experience. You got to remember those experiences because as time goes on, you can become hardened to life and you can forget your childlike experiences. You don't have to be a little girl to have that, a little boy. You can have that when you're older. But those experiences of his love are so important. But I also wanted to explore, I was praying about this recently and I felt God saying, but there are so many more experiences you've had of me loving you. For instance, you had a good education. It was my love for you. It trained you up to do particular things and to understand things and to enjoy things in the world. And most of us sitting here had a good education. And how many of us are sat and thought, "Thank you God that I live in this world." in the country where I've had a good education. There's some people who would give anything to have the education we get here. We don't think of that as being the love of God for us. Well, yeah, I got to learn musical instruments. And I got to go to ballet and you might think, I'm glad I never learned to musical instruments when I go to ballet because I wasn't even bored silly, but I would prefer to be out on a soccer field or riding a motorbike or something. Whatever you got to do that you love, that was from God. That was a gift to you from God when you went for a day at the beach. And it was just beautiful. That was a gift to you from God. That was an experience he loves. When you had nice parents or grandparents or cousins or neighbors and they're gifts from God. They're all gifts from God. And do we take the time to sit down and think, that was a gift from God. You have lovely memories of it. Things like coming home on a hot summer's afternoon after school and you put the sprinkler on, you get to run around under the sprinkler and you have fun and you smell the freshly mone grass. It's a gift from God. There's so many little things along your way that are gifts from God. It may be like the guys on the way to Emmaus. In retrospect, you look back and you think, are you always there? You're always loving me. And some of the experiences he's given you are things that you now use now for the sake of others. And they will only mean something to you not to someone else. My mum always made sure I got to see musical theatre. And I still remember being four or five and going to see Oliver and my Philadian Sydney and just being blown away by the theatre. And I'm still blown away by it. And some of you won't be. And that's okay. You'll be blown away by something else, like a golf course or something. That's boring for you, for me, very, very boring for me. But not for you. So we all have our own things. But look at what God has been doing, weaving through your life. See God all through your life. So Stu's going to come up now and sing. And as he sings, this is just an opportunity to sit quietly and consider blessing the recognition of God in your life or to ask him to reveal himself more to you because he so long, so long to do that for you. And to reflect on the fact that your whole life is to know him, to become like him and to do what he does in this world. [MUSIC PLAYING]