The Secret to Complete and Lasting Joy - Andy Bennett

Hey guys, Pastor James Murray here, and I want to welcome you to the Abide Sydney podcast. This whole podcast is designed to help you on the journey of discipleship, and our mission is to make disciples of the people of Sydney. But maybe you're not from Sydney. We hope this blesses you. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this podcast. We're starting a brand new series today on the book of 1 John. Called Children of God. Yeah, it's going to be fantastic. Yeah, it's going to be great. It's a relatively short book in the New Testament, but has massive power and implications for us, and so I'm really looking forward to that. Who was part of our Burning Heart Young Adult Conference last week? Wasn't that amazing? Yeah, incredible. Such a great time. It's amazing how. You know, we had about two or three weeks where there wasn't a series, but if you go back and have a look through our podcast, you'll see, like, we didn't have a series, but God really has been weaving a very intentional thread through the last few weeks with Landon's message last week. It was just phenomenal. And just the last few weeks before that, just really, really cool what God's been speaking into the life of our church. So I pray that as we come around this series that. That we open up our heart to the Word of God and let Him speak and create in us everything that He's trying to bring to life. Amen? Yeah, He's only ever got good things to bring to you. Only ever good things. So let's come to His Word this morning. You ready to have a look at this? We're looking at 1 John chapter 1, verses 1 to 4. It's a 13-week series, so we're going to sort of be zeroing in. We're going to be zeroing in on small passages of this Scripture, and we'll read this through a couple of times, because on first reading, it can be a little bit like what exactly is going on here. John was. This is the same John that was a disciple of Jesus. He was part of Jesus' inner circle, Peter, James, and John. It's the same John that wrote the book of Revelation. Yes. And you'll see. You'll see a lot of. Same John that wrote the Gospel of John. And so you see a lot of threads weaving through both of those books as well. So here we go. 1 John chapter 1 and verse 1 to 4. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at, and our hands have touched, this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared. We have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. Yeah, amazing. We're going to read through that again, but I just want to highlight a couple of things from the Scripture. He says, John intentionally is shifting our minds back to the very first words of Scripture. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. He's saying that which was from all the way back there, which we have heard and seen with our eyes and looked at and our hands have touched. How are you saying that what is from the beginning, we have now seen and heard? He's talking about the incarnation. The incarnation of Jesus Christ, that God became a man, and the power that made the universe became something that we could touch, see, and embrace, and see what this God from all eternity is really like. And so he's saying that God, the God of all eternity, the God that spoke this universe into existence, became a human being, and that life that was with the Father has now appeared to us. And we're proclaiming him to you. Does that blow your mind? It blows my mind. My mind is blown. I'm that emoji with smoke coming out the top of his head right now. Let's read it again together now with that backlight. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched, this we proclaim concerning the word of life. The life appeared. Say the life appeared. The life appeared. We have seen it and testify to it. And we proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us. He's saying we now have fellowship with that God of all creation. And we invite, we're writing so that you can have fellowship along with us with God. And we write this to make our joy. Say joy. That's going to be huge for us today. Let's pray as we come around to God's word. Thank you, Father. Thank you for your beautiful word. Father, we thank you for bringing such insightful words to us to contemplate this morning. I pray that they do become not just words on a page or ancient texts, but they become food and nourishment to our soul here and now today. Speak to us what we need to hear. Shape us in the way that we need to be shaped in Jesus' name. And everybody said, amen. Why don't you go ahead and take a seat and just tell your neighbour you're glad you're sitting next to them. If you don't have a neighbour, just feel free to sidle on up. Next to one that you might see along your row. Thank you, Philip. Can we just say thank you to our worship team? Thank you, guys. Worship production team. Thank you so much. Have you ever done something silly just because you were distracted? Yeah, all the time. Well, my wife and I have two cars between us. One of them takes diesel. One of them takes unleaded petrol. You see where I'm going? And my car was. It was the diesel car. Until we had a baby. And that was the car that could fit the baby seat. And so we kind of swapped. But we are chopping and changing depending on who's driving with Annabelle and who is not. And I was down at my normal place where I go for a walk and pray in the morning and reading scripture. And I'm just having the best morning. Just so enthralled with what God is doing in my life, what he's speaking to me. I can't believe I'm telling you this. This is so embarrassing. See what I do to help you understand the Word of God. It's so embarrassing. I told Irene, I said, please don't tell anyone this. I'm telling you. This happened long, long time ago, weeks ago. I was early in this year, I think, and was having a great morning in prayer and in the Word. And I'm on the Bible app. I'm getting ready to put some of my thoughts on there to share them. I know some of us. We do that together. We've got a one-year Bible plan we're reading together. And I pull into the service station because we need some. What I thought was diesel. And I get the diesel nozzle and I'm so distracted. They don't even fit properly. And I'm like, get in there. Go on, get in there. And I get enough of it in there just to make sure that I should definitely not start the car now and send diesel all the way through. This unleaded petrol engine. So anyway, we call. There are people that make a living off just this mistake. There are companies that exist. I think it's called like wrongfuel.com or something like that. And they come out and for the small sum of about $50,000, they'll get it all out of you. It was like not cheap. But it was only like a little dribble. And they're still like, no, no, no, pay up. Anyway, my Volkswagen Golf was made to run on unleaded gasoline fuel. And if you put anything besides unleaded gasoline fuel in that fuel tank, that car is going to have problems. Humans were designed to run on relationship with God. And if you put anything besides relationship with God in that fuel tank, that human is going to have problems. But we try, don't we? We do try. And sometimes when we're distracted, we put all kinds of things in that fuel tank and it doesn't go well. C.S. Lewis just put this brilliantly. He said, God made us, invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol. Thanks, C.S. Lewis. I wish I had read this a few months ago. And it would not run properly on anything else. I found this out firsthand. Now, God designed the human machine to run on himself. He himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn. Isn't that amazing? Or the food our spirits were designed. to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from himself because it is not there. Wow. The big idea I want to bring us around this morning from 1 John, first four verses, is the deepest and most lasting joy in life is found in real relationship with the real God. That is the fuel that we were designed to run on. Real relationship with the real God. We're going to jump straight into our points. The first point, John wrote, I write this to make our joy complete. He said the purpose of this letter is joy. Like really? You write, there's a whole book in the Bible that's there in order to give us joy? Well, you know, again, C.S. Lewis, he said joy is the serious business of heaven. Do you know strength is not a fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, self-control. Strength is not in there, but joy is. The Bible says the joy of the Lord is our strength. When you're full of joy, man, you're good. You can endure. You've got life. The first point I'm going to make is this is subterranean joy. Subterranean joy, what does that mean? In my studies this week, I came across the story of a guy who lived on this hillside and where he lived in his town, this hill was always green. It was just luscious. Trees were just fully leafy, fruit on the trees. Grass was always green. They could go months without rain and it wouldn't get brown and arid and dry. It would just stay green and lush. It was verdant. Do you know that word? Verdant. Verdant. From the. What's the Spanish word for green? Verde. Verde. Verdant. Verdant. It was always green and luscious and full of life. And when the rain did come down, he said it just flooded like crazy. It'd be like in his basement, just from a little bit of rain, it'd have to bail out of their basement, all this water. It was like there's a disproportionate amount of water in my basement compared to the rain. He found out that the place they'd just moved into had a subterranean rain, a river going underneath it. And that's like underground in that area. And all the neighbours knew. He's like, I guess I should have checked with the neighbours before I moved in to know that there's a river that runs underneath this whole area. And it made the whole place just full of life, whether the rain was coming down or whether it was dry. It was just constantly verdant, constantly alive, constantly producing fruit, bearing fruit. And I thought that is such a great picture of what. this lasting joy is meant to bring in your life, that it doesn't depend on the external circumstances. It doesn't mean just when there's rain coming down, when life is good, when things are going really well for me, that I'm happy. And when things are not going well for me, well, then I'm just, I'm miserable. He says there's this joy that is complete and lasting that is available to you. I wonder what the happiest day of your life, I did some research on that this week, and a lot of people put their happiest moment down to just the key moments in their life, like their wedding day or when their child is born or when they're accepted into a great school or they get that job that they've always been wanting to get or some massive achievement. But the kind of joy we're invited to here is complete joy. Like every bit of joy that we've ever had, like even if it's, like say you're a, I saw in the last service there was a Broncos fan. The Broncos won the grand final last year. If you're a big fan of a football team and they win the championship, that is a moment of joy. But even though you're in that moment of joy, there's always, you're thinking, man, next year, we're probably not going to be here. Someone's going to ruin this moment for us. Every, even the greatest moments of joy in human life are tinged with the ache of the fact that nothing lasts forever. But there is something that lasts forever and it's the life from the beginning that can flow into your life and is so much deeper than the circumstances that happen to us that even when the chips are down, you've got a life force that's flowing through you that always produces life and joy and vitality in your life. That's the kind of joy we're invited to have. John, the apostle, the apostle John that's writing this, he's 80 or 90 years old when he writes this scripture. So he's not idealistic. He's not being unrealistic about joy. He's not being naive. He hasn't just had a wonderful life. He's like, man, I just have everything I ever wanted. And so, you know, that would, in our mind, that might disqualify him from writing about joy. This guy, 80 or 90 years old, I can have a photo, not a photo, a painting of John. I love this painting because he looks full of life. He looks full of love. He had seen most of his closest friends brutally executed in his life. He was the last remaining apostle of Jesus of that group of 12. And the oldest friends he had, no longer around. He never married. He was a lifelong virgin. So he wasn't someone that just had every whim and desire catered for, but he still was saying, this is about having a complete and lasting joy. His source of joy was not the rain. It was the subterranean river. This is the same John that wrote about that living, that well of living water we talked about a couple of weeks ago. He said, if you only knew the life-giving water that could come from fellowship with Jesus Christ, you'd be drinking of that constantly. He was living off that well, off that river. There's a power in your life that keeps you. You know, there's a power in your life that can keep you a different kind of alive. And you meet these people sometimes. And it's like, you just get the sense that when you get around someone that has this subterranean river of joy, there's a glint in their eye. It's like they're connected to something that's just, it's beautiful and light and joyful, but it's also deep and powerful and immovable. And it's a power source that they're connected to. One of the people I've met like that is my nana, 99 years old. 99, not out. She's still going. Grew up in Sydney. And honestly, she's seen probably more loss and pain than almost maybe anyone I know. Lost her husband about 35 years ago to a very rare, terrible disease. That took him out very slowly. That was my grandpa. Lost three of her five children to terminal diseases. Yet when you sit with her, Irina and I just love getting to sit with my nan because there's this beautiful glow. She comes here sometimes when she can make it. Beautiful glow in her eyes. Her eyes radiate. 99 years old. There's this beautiful, clear, present, stable, not silly. This is not silliness. There's something that's deep. It's deep and unshakable and immovable and so far beyond just a normal level of happiness. She has that joy that is defiant at times in the face of horrible circumstances. The last child she lost was my mother. I remember she said to my little brother, she said, I've got no tears to cry anymore. She's cried so many tears. That was 13, 14 years ago. I'll tell you what. That she went through a season of such heartbreak and such loss burying her third child. But now it's like that well is still irrigating her heart and her life and it's still full of life and still full of joy. She is phenomenal. This is not, it's not just, yeah, we lost them, but I know it's God's will. Praise the Lord. It's not that silliness, those silly catchphrases that you hear. It's something that will sustain, sustain someone through pain. And when there's true fellowship, when there's a true, when you're connected to that, which was from the beginning and that life source is still flowing through your life, you will get through. You'll still be bearing fruit no matter what's happening around and about you. God invites you into that kind of life, into that kind of joy. I went through a divorce about 15 years ago and there were times like the emotional roller, rollercoaster of that was insane, like up and down every single day. Like one day you're down in the dumps, next day you're like, it's not so bad, I'll get through it. The next day you're like, I want to kill myself. And the next day, not really. It's just up and down. For me, it was like this, it was like the waves of the sea, just up and down, up and down. But underneath all of that, it was like if the emotion was the waves of the sea and the storm happening on the surface, underneath that was an ocean bed of truth and trust in God and fellowship with Him that was honestly unshaken. I didn't know how it would turn out, but I knew that God would make it good. and that gave me joy. Joy even in the darkest seasons of your life. How do we get that kind of joy? Can I tell you, it's not a myth, it's an actual reality. You can have that, you can have that. John says he writes this, he wrote this letter so that you can be invited into complete and lasting joy. Whether the rain's coming down or whether it's not. When it does, all the more joy. When it's not, there's still a life-giving power in your life. You know what he says the key to it is? Fellowship with the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. Knowing God. But look how he puts it. He says it's about that which was from the beginning, which we heard, we've seen with our eyes, we've looked at with our hands and we've touched. This we proclaim. Two ways, it's because fellowship, so joy comes from knowing God, from fellowshiping. But here's two parts, two sides of knowing God. It's the objective truth about God and your subjective experience with God, both. Both of those two. Subjective truth was we've seen Him, we've heard Him, we saw Him with our eyes, we embraced Him, we ate with Him. It's empirical evidence. But the subjective truth, he says, we have fellowship with this God. We have this personal relationship. We have fellowship with Him. There's objective truth about Him, but then there's what I personally see of Him and receive from Him. It's both of those things together. When those two things are both working in your life, you're getting to know God as He really is, as revealed in Scripture. And you're knowing Him personally, the spiritual union that we're invited into in knowing God. That's what brings joy. You're not getting to know a figment of your imagination that you're making up yourself. You're learning who He is revealed in Scripture. But it's not just culture. It's cold, hard facts. It's warm, loving embrace that affects me in my mind. It affects me in my emotions. It affects me physically. Knowing God. This is the treasure of the Christian faith is relationship with that which was from the beginning. The great eternal God that spoke our beautiful universe into existence. You're invited to be intimate with the infinite. Knowing God. This is eternal life, Jesus said. In John 17. To know God and Jesus Christ, whom He has sent. So the two sides of it. The objective truth of knowing God. Knowing God as He really is. And the objective, sorry, objective truth and subjective experience. Here we go. The first one. Point two, knowing God as He really is. As you go on with your relationship with God over the years, at some point you will ask yourself, is it all in my head? At some point. Or someone else will tell you that it is. I remember sitting, I've been a Christian for about a year. I was one person before I met Christ in high school and then I was a completely different person after I met Christ. It was still me, but I was living like a train wreck and then I met Christ and my life started to look a completely different way. And I remember my friend Lauren sitting with me on the bus on the way home from school saying, Andy, who are you kidding? It's all in your imagination. Like Jesus is not even real. He's made up. He's a figment of your imagination. And can I just say, like we might sort of take offence at that question, but it's a question that has to be asked. It is a good question. It's a question that can lead someone to truth. And it's exactly why John starts his letter the way he does. He says that which was from the beginning, all right, the untouchable, the ideal, the fantastic, the debatable, all like, you look at the universe, who knows how it would start? That has become that which we have heard, what we've seen with our eyes, looked at and our hands have touched. John knows that fellowship with God can sound vague, mystical, subjective, even imaginary. And so he says, before he talks about fellowship, he talks about facts. Before he talks about what he felt spiritually, he talks about what he felt. What he saw physically. The big idea of this point is you can only truly know God when you know him as he really is. Who has, as he has revealed himself to be. Irina and I, when we were dating, we had this song we used, Irina's a huge John Mayer fan. And we had this song we used to listen to. I think it was called, I Don't Trust Myself With Loving You. And there was a line and it said, do you love me? Or the thought of me? Me or the thought of me? Anyway, John Mayer does it much better. But we had this thing like, as you get to know someone, do you love them more or do you love them less? You've all had this experience where you get to know someone that maybe you've seen in community for a little while. And then as you get to know them, what happens? Do you like them more? You respect them more as you get closer? And we were like that with each other. Do you love me? Are you actually loving the person you're getting to know? Or are you, is it just an idea of me that you're getting, that you were in love with? It is so easy for us to drift into error when it comes to our relationship with God unless we ground our personal experience with Him in the timeless Scripture of His Word revealed to us. If we don't ground our relationship with God in Scripture, we end up creating a God that we make inept, in our own image. We know the Scripture tells us we're made in His image, but if we're not careful, we end up making a God in our own image. And that's what people still do. We shape our idols. We end up making a God that just tells us what we want to hear and becomes really just some sort of glorified reflection of ourself. It's so easy for us to drift into error in our personal relationship with God. We bring all kinds of ideas into our mental picture of God, don't we? When someone says the word God, maybe, I wonder what you think of. Do you think of like an old man with a long grey beard in the sky who's kind of been around for a long time so he moves a bit slowly now, a little bit out of touch with what's current, maybe he doesn't understand TikTok. We bring our own ideas based on our family of origin, our culture, movies. But what John is inviting us into is that Jesus actually becomes our new definition of what God is like. So we all import our ideas of God into our relationship with God. Until we meet Jesus, he's saying the one that we heard, that we saw, that we touched. Jesus is meant to be, he appeared to make the Father known. The unknowable became knowable in Christ. One of my favourite theologians, N.T. Wright, has this great quote that I'll put up here. He says, he's talking about not bringing our own idea of who God is and then bringing Jesus into that. But look at what he's saying. My proposal is not that we know what the word God means and manage somehow to fit Jesus into that. Instead, I suggest that we think historically about a young Jew, a young Lou, a young Jew possessed of a desperately risky, crazy vocation, riding into Jerusalem, denouncing the temple, dining once more with his friends and dying on a Roman cross, and that we somehow allow our meaning of the word God to be re-centred on that point. How do you know what God is like? Look at Jesus. As he's revealed in the Gospel, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, as he's revealed by those who spent time with him. The disciples' testimony of what happened when they were with Jesus. We can sometimes read those stories and maybe they don't align with our idea of what Jesus should be like. Can I say, you're better off studying and looking into what's behind the stories in those Gospels than going with your own imaginary ideas. Get to know. Dig into what those Gospels say. The disciples' testimony of what happened with Jesus was in some parts incredibly normal and in other parts just massively supernatural. And that's the miracle of God becoming flesh. They touched him. That's so normal. They ate with him. They embraced him. They saw him. They saw him physically. Well, they didn't see him get born, but he physically got born. He physically lived in near Eastern Judea. They saw him physically die. They saw him physically rise from the dead and met him, embraced him, touched him after he rose from the dead. Remember that super awkward moment with Thomas? Like, I think this must have been so awkward. Like, the first time the resurrected Jesus meets the disciples, Thomas isn't there. Like, if there's one time to show up to church, it's when people have just said they've seen the resurrection. They've resurrected Christ. Thomas wasn't there. He says, unless I see it and touch it, I'm not going to. going to believe. So Jesus, gracious as he is, shows up a week later and says, Thomas, come over here. You said, unless you put your finger in the hole and your hand in my side, you'd never believe. Like, how creepy is that? So he says, come on, do it, Thomas, do it. I can only imagine Thomas going, that won't be necessary. I can see this is close enough. But Jesus gets him to do it. It's like, no, no, go put it, put your finger in the hole. It's so weird. It says, put his hand in his side. Is there a more awkward sentence that you've ever read than that? I put my hand into his side. It's so weird. But Jesus wanted to make sure that the disciples understood that it's not an imaginary spiritual gospel only. It's a physical gospel. Jesus physically came. One of the reasons John wrote this letter was to refute a heresy in these days called Gnosticism. Gnosticism had a dualism that said the physical world is bad and the spiritual world is good. Physical world, material, is one day going to vanish. It's only really an illusion. The only thing that's real is a spiritual world. But many Christians have a similar dualism happening today. We maybe have been taught that the gospel tells us that it's just about when you die, you go away to a spiritual heaven. But that's not the gospel that Jesus and the apostles taught. They said he came physically, died physically, rose physically. One day come back physically and physically renew the whole world as heaven and earth come back together and renew all things. So it affects everything physical. It's not just in your head, in your head, zombie, zombie, zombie. I don't know how she does that with her voice. Some of us have some old religious Christian zombies we need to kill off. And our relationship with God is get out of our head and into scripture and let God actually start to reshape and reveal himself as he really is. And you know what you find when you actually allow the scripture to speak to you? You find he is so much better, so much bigger, so much more wonderful, so much more all-encompassing, so much further reaching, so much more boundless in his grace, so much more of a lover, an endless, infinite, relentless lover who will never stop pursuing you. Stories unfolded in the prophets and the scriptures, all embodied in the beautiful person of Jesus who lives on the inside of you, revealed in scripture through the Holy Spirit. You're invited into that kind of fellowship. And you realise what I'm experiencing right here is that which was from the beginning. Amen. Amen myself. So yes, read, study, learn, think, know your theology, but not merely to fill your head, with knowledge, but because it lays the groundwork for real relationship with the real God. J.I. Packer says theology is for doxology and devotion. What does that mean? Theology is for the praise of God and the practice of godliness. He's saying, learn about God so you can enjoy him and glorify him. So you get to know him as he really is. When you love someone, you don't want to just love the idea of them. You want to know who they really are. I think learning and studying about God is like gathering wood for a fire. It's arranging it really, really well. Arrange your picture of God, your theology, how you think about God. Make it scriptural. Arrange that wood and that kindling really well. And then the Holy Spirit can come and light that spark and breathe that flame of devotion into a roaring fire that actually is going to burn beautifully before God and before the world. Amen. And number three, last point, knowing God personally, becoming intimate with the infinite. The word he uses is fellowship. The Greek word for that is koinonia, to share or hold things in common, that which is shared in common as the basis of community or partnership, to share or hold things in common. Do you know what the ultimate end goal is of the gospel? It's to share or hold things in common. It's to What is the gospel? What is the gospel all driving towards? What is the gospel of the kingdom leading towards? What is its heartbeat? What is its goal? Is it so that believers in Jesus go to heaven when they die? All right, we've been saying that that's not actually the major truth. You could say it is that, but it's not just that. That's not the main thrust of the message. What is it? Ephesians 1.10 says this, it says, 1.10 says, to make all things one in Christ Jesus, oneness. God wants to reconcile you to him. And when you're reconciled to him, you can now reconcile to others. And because we've been reconciled to God, now we have, I've been reconciled. He now entrusts to me a ministry of reconciliation. So now out of the oneness I've received with the Lord, I can now help other people make oneness and reconciliation in their world. I can get my relationship right with others. I can help, I can find places in our world that have broken down and that are fractured and that are dysfunctional. And I can bring healing and reconciliation to that as well. He wants union with you. He wants oneness. He wants oneness. That's what fellowship is. He wants, he doesn't want you just to learn about him. He wants you to experience his embrace. The end goal of, the gospel is oneness. Our closest picture of that, the Bible teaches is marriage, two becoming one. Imagine on your wedding night, you just had the big wedding day, the vows, everything, the dress, so much planning. You get back to the beautiful place you've prepared for your first wonderful night together. And if you just sit back and say, you know what? I'm just going to sit back and just write my thoughts about you. I'm just going to draw a picture of you. She will kill you. You won't survive. Why? Because the purpose of marriage is oneness. The two becoming one. It's union. It's fellowship. God desires oneness, union with you. Remember a couple of weeks ago, we talked about the bridegroom looking for his bride. He's searching. He is aching for his bride. The Bible says that we are his bride. Christ is the bridegroom. He wants to know you. He wants you to experience and feel him. It's not just about you. It's about the bridegroom. It's not just about that, but it's definitely includes that. That's what he wants. Any blockages to that fellowship. We may think, God, why are you so distant? But scripture shows us that the blockages and any reluctance is not on his end. It's on our end. Maybe lack of concentration, lack of care. We find our mind too consumed with other things. Eventually all traces back to the fact that we just don't trust God enough to let go and just embrace him fully. He wants to be close with you. He wants fellowship. He wants oneness with you. That word koinonia, part of what that word means is whatever is shared between two parties in a relationship. What is it that we share? So what is it that that union with God entails? We're going to break this down. It's just three quick things. It entails sharing his life, his loves, and his voice. We share in the same life. This is how some of the old writers broke down what spiritual union with Christ is. We share in his life. In 2 Peter chapter 1, it says that through the great and precious promises God's given us, we become partakers of the divine nature. Partakers. To partake means I eat. It means that the divine nature goes into me and becomes life. Symbolised by communion. Right? We eat something that represents the broken body and spilled blood of Christ so that his life starts to flow into us. We share. And what happens is his nature, who he is, starts to grow and become one and starts to filter into our nature. It's kind of like the way this happens is we hear the gospel. The gospel is like seed and it comes into our heart. And like seed going into soil or a sperm going into an egg, it comes into our heart. And it brings about a conception, a spiritual conception. And the Bible says that we're born again by the Holy Spirit. You receive the word of God like a seed and a power happens. And now you might just be a little embryo, but now you're a child of God. You're transformed. You're no longer a son of this world or the devil. You actually have God's life in you that has joined with yours and is now bringing a new life. You have a new nature into you. Once I found this black and white photo in this little box in my house. And I'm like, it was a little boy in there about six or seven years of age. And I didn't know who it was. But as I looked at the little boy, I saw his knees and I immediately knew it was my dad because I have the same knobbly knees. And I recognised that that is unmistakable. He's a Bennett. That's my dad. That's my dad. That's my dad. That's where I got my knees from. Thank you, Alan. Charles Bennett. His life is in me. Now I have a little baby, Annabelle. The very first day she was born, she made a face that I have always made and will always make, my little concentration face. It's like a derpy little, like you forget where you are kind of face. And she makes that same face, poor thing. I call it the resting Bennett face. If she ever makes that face at you, don't be offended. She's just thinking about something else, wishing she was there instead. No, just kidding. But my nature has gotten into her. She's still herself, but she has my DNA through her. You have the spiritual life of God flowing through you. That which was from the beginning, it's flowing through you. How awesome is that? The power that made the universe, you are abiding in him. That same life, that same unbeatable power, when you're Christ, he comes into your life. His word, his seed comes in, just like the word created the universe. Let there be light. And the spirit activated the word. Same thing happens in your life. Word comes in. Spirit activates the word. New creation begins. You've got the life of God flowing through you. And he starts to create new life. You start to see new things in your character start to happen. That's the life of God flowing through you. C.S. Lewis again for the win. He says, He'll make all of us into a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine. A bright, stainless mirror, which reflects back to God perfectly, though on a smaller scale, his own boundless power and delight and goodness. That is what we are going to see. We are in for nothing less. His life, when you have fellowship with him, his life, we share in his life. Second, we share in his loves. The more I have fellowship with him, the more I start to love what he loves. The more I start to care about what he cares about. His mind, his heart starts to transfer and bleed into mine. I start to see things differently. It's like he becomes the glasses through which I see all of my life. Paul talks about putting him on, putting Christ on like a pair of clothes. I put him on so I see out through everything. Do you know, sometimes I find that his cares and what he cares about happens to me naturally. Other times, I put it on. Other times, if I don't know what to think or care about or how to think about something, I'll go, what does the Word of God say? I'm going to put that on. And I start to let his cares and his love happen. His loves start to reshape mine. Sometimes automatic, sometimes intentional. And what starts to happen is things, it starts to change what I care about. Things that I used to sort of, I just knew they were wrong, now they like turn my stomach. I remember one time sitting in a meeting with James back like 15 years ago at the church we were at in the States. And he told me about something that had gone horribly wrong in the life of a person in our church. Horrible moral failure. And he told me about it. And I just, I lost it. I was like, I was like writhing. I was like, so, no. I was on a swivel chair. I spun around. We were in a boardroom. It was a private environment. And then I regathered myself and I was like, I'm sorry. That was inappropriate. And he said, no, that was appropriate. What just happened, it was, valid and appropriate response in that setting. You start to care more about like something that would be like, oh, that's a shame to quote Jerry Seinfeld. It now is heartbreaking. It makes me nauseous to think about something going wrong. If I think about something going wrong in our church, it honestly, it makes me nauseous. It makes me sick. I care about what God cares about. Things that used to just be sad, now they're like, heartbreaking. You see someone go through something and you feel like you're going through it with them. That's what we're called to. That's why John says, make our joy. And we write this to make our joy complete because I can't, I'm not just writing this to make me happy. I have no happiness outside of yours. Now that we're connected as family, we're both, we're all children of God, which means we're brothers and sisters. If you're hurting, I'm hurting. Like when Paul in, I think it's 2 Corinthians 11, he says, who is weak and I do not feel weak. And I do not inwardly burn. That's Paul. God's put his heart into apostle Paul so that he cares and feels about his church the same way Jesus does. Isn't that amazing? That's part of the fellowship you're invited into, that the way God feels about his world would start to be the way that you feel about his world. Imagine loving Sydney the way God loves Sydney. That's what you're invited into. Imagine loving your brother and sister in Christ the way God loves your brother and sister in Christ. How many people think that? That'd be good. I would, sometimes I need the help of God with that. But that's exactly what he invites us into. That fellowship, that union is to pour his love into your heart. Not just for you to just drink it all yourself. That's the first step. But then to let it flow out of you. Let your heart beat with his. We share his life. We share his love. And lastly, we share his voice. It's communication. The interchange of ideas and feelings with God. And it flows both ways. This is a two-way communication. Us communicating our heart and feelings and thoughts to him, and then him sharing his heart and thoughts and feelings back with us. When it comes to us sharing our hearts and feelings, we share our heart with him. When you're in spiritual union with God and you're sharing his life and you're sharing his love, what arises in you is a desire to share your heart, a desire to pray. You want to talk to God about just what's going on. It's not like I come with this list of things. The list is fine. Bring the list. But that's not the main reason why I'm going. It's the difference between taking a friend out to breakfast and taking a friend out to dinner. And doing like a breakfast business meeting. Like if it's a business meeting, I want to know what's the agenda? What are we talking about? I'm going to prepare for it. Is this going to be fruitful time or is it a waste of my time? Does this work? And people come to prayer like that. Does it work? Will it get me what I want? But true fellowship, what I want is him. That's it. Paul wrote, him we preach. I can only preach him if I have him. I can only live the life I'm called to live if I have him. When I'm with God, I don't, I kind of do. I have a structure, but I'm not coming just to like be, does it work? It's, I actually just, I need to spend time with him. My heart aches to be in his presence. I know what it likes to feel physically thirsty. I've got man flu. I feel very physically thirsty and I'm almost dead. I should be in intensive care with man flu. But, but my thirst for God, if I don't get to spend time with God, I'm like, I get spiritually hangry. I just feel like I need that. I got to get that time. I want to spend that time with him. And I, if I don't fully share my heart, I feel like, man, I'm missing something. I want to get traction. I want your heart to feel mine. I want my heart to feel yours. This ease and agenda. Remember the first time that you, with, with a really close friend or, or your spouse or someone dear to you, the first time you can like sit in the car and not have to say a word to each other, how special that feels. You're like, wow, I can just be with you. That's how you can be in prayer with God. It becomes this beautiful longing to, to just pour out our heart, in the Psalms. It's, you know, read the Psalms. Let the Psalms bring out your heart's cry. In the Psalms, it says, there's one I just read this week. I pour out my complaint to you. Whether it's a complaint or whether it's a lament or whether it's praise, like just pour out your heart, share how you're feeling with him. Turn your anxieties into a prayer. Turn your desires into a prayer. Anxiety has somewhere to go when you're a Christian. You don't just have to spin in your head. Pray it. Be anxious for nothing, but in all things with prayer and supplication, make your requests known to God. And then the peace of God who transcends all understanding will guard your heart and mind in Christ. He's saying, don't be anxious. If you're anxious, prayer is the ventilation system for anxiety. Turn your anxieties into prayers, into requests, communicate your heart. And then God communicating his heart back to us. Having fellowship with him to some degree, if we're really in relationship with God, we will sense His presence at some instant. some degree. It may not be like John writing the book of Revelation. Oh my gosh, I'm seeing visions every day. That's okay. Probably healthier for most of us if that's not the case. Sometimes I think people hear it. I don't know if it's really, yeah. For most of us, it's a much more normal experience, deeply transformative, but makes us more human, not more weird. But to some degree, He will communicate His presence to you. And as I sit down and allow His Word, His thoughts, His heart, His desires, let them speak to me and let them, and just think about them. If I go to like Psalm 23 and just go, the Lord is my shepherd. I have everything I need. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters and restores my soul. I can just think about the first few verses of Psalm 23 and just sit there, see myself being led and cared for by the Lord. And I can just think about the first few verses of Psalm 23 and just sit there, see myself being led and cared for by the Lord. And what happens is that the words on the page, something transforms and they become spirit and life. Jesus says, my words are spirit and they are life. When you meditate on His Word, they transform from ink on a page to spirit and life. That is that very life, that which is from the beginning is now flowing into your heart and radiating through all that you are. That's the, you know, when words, you could, when you read the lyrics of a song, they say, they sound beautiful in the song, but if I just read them dry with no music, they sound kind of ordinary. That's the difference between Logos and Rhema, written word versus revealed, breathed word into your heart. And it happens through meditation, through thinking about and praying through Scripture, that they go from words to all of a sudden, it's like I can hear all of heaven singing these beautiful truths into my soul. And it's now, it's now feeding me. It's now dancing with me. It's taking me into a spiritual union with Jesus Christ, not based on an imaginary friend, but based on who He's revealed Himself to be in Scripture. You're invited into fellowship. The only true and lasting complete joy for the human machine, as C.S. Lewis called it, is true fellowship with the real God. That's where we have complete joy. Let's stand as we are a to the Word of God. Amen. I've put a few questions together that you can ask yourself in prayer and thought, and feel free to take a photo of them and think about them this week. Just as we think about that message and all that the Lord might be speaking to our hearts. First question, am I allowing Scripture to shape my view of God, or am I relating to my own ideas about Him? Am I allowing Scripture to shape my view of God? It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. The more you get to know who He is revealed in His Word. Second question, do I find myself caring about what God cares about? Or am I just too caught up with my own concerns and the busyness and speed of my life that I don't really have time to think about what God cares about, let alone care about it? Third question, how open and honest is my communication with God? I love that He invites us into open, honest communication. I have said things to God that I will say to no one else. And you know, maybe the reason I won't say them to anybody else is because I did say them to God. Sometimes you have to really unleash what's in your heart and pray it out. And it can feel like, am I being irreverent? Here's the thing, as seeers, I'm not going to say anything to anybody else. Lewis also said, he said, we have to pray what is in us, not what should be in us. If it's in you, God sees it anyway. Get it out through prayer. How open and honest is my communication with God? Am I regularly sharing my heart with Him in prayer? And then we'll just pray through a response prayer we have here. I'll just read it and then just invite all of us to just pray this together as a moment to respond. Father, thank You for revealing Yourself to me in Jesus and drawing me into fellowship with You. Forgive me for looking elsewhere for the life and joy only You can give. Turn my heart back to You. Help me to know You as You truly are and to walk in deeper fellowship with You. Let me share Your life, love what You love and hear Your voice more clearly. May I find my joy in belonging to You. We pray this together. Let's let these words come from our own heart and allow the Holy Spirit to speak to us as we pray. Thank You, Lord. Let's pray. Say, Father, thank You for revealing Yourself to me in Jesus and drawing me into fellowship with You. In Jesus' name. Amen. Thank You, Father. Let's just pray together. Thank You, Father. Just open your heart, close our eyes and allow our heart to just connect with the heart of God here. Thank You, Lord. Father, I pray that every single one of us, Lord, would take a step closer today. And if there's anything, there's anything between You and God right now, let me just encourage, invite, exhort, help You. It's not worth hanging on to. What He has for you is so much better. You can let it go, whatever it is. If it's holding on to a relationship, if it's holding on to a thought, an opinion, You can release it to Him and say, Father, I want Your embrace. I don't want anything between You and me. I don't need that thing. I need You. You need something much bigger than whatever that is. You need that which is from the beginning. You need the power and life that is eternal, that became human and now lives in You by the Holy Spirit. Thank You, Lord. Amen. Well, we hope this podcast has inspired you on your journey of discipleship to Jesus. If you want to know more about our church, just go to Abide.sydney. We'd love to get to know you. If not, you're from another place. Hey, why don't you share this with someone else? And hopefully it helps them as they continue to follow Jesus. Have a great week. you