Transcription
Now let's hear the teaching text, and then I he'll be up. This is John 5:19-21.
Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can only do what he sees his Father doing. Because whatever the Father does, the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. This is the word of the Lord.
And ladies and gentlemen, this is the Reverend our Gord. Please, we love America. Oh, you're so prone to exaggeration, it's not funny. Um, it is such a treat to be with you. What an honor, and um, thank you, John, for your kind words. Um, I bring greetings from London, from our community at Saint—uh, we just love you guys so much. We have such affection for this community. John has been a mentor, an encourager, a pastor to me for over a decade now, and so much of what we've learned actually is John's uh fault, really. He's been inspiring and encouraging us uh as just in so many ways. Also, you may not know this, but John is not just a pastor, mentor, a friend, an encourager; he's also an amazing travel agent. So if you're thinking of like taking a trip at any point, John is your guy. Like, book a meeting with him. I know he's busy, but he'll make time, and uh, just say, "I'm thinking of going to wherever you want to go. I need some travel advice." We were thinking of going to Iceland, and we knew that John had been to Iceland with his family, so I said to my wife, "Look, I'm going to call John, uh, and I'm going to ask him where to go." So John was like, he was like, "Hey, okay, I'll send you my itinerary." So very sweetly sent me an itinerary for like a week-long road trip around Iceland, and it was like, "Day one, go to this place," and being John, it wasn't just like, "Go to this place, um, and like climb a volcano." It was, "Go to this place; there was a church there where revival broke out in the fifth century. Lie on the grave of St. Aloicious," you know, so we did all the things, and we got to Iceland, and we landed. Rec—we hired a car, and we set off, and day one was like, "Drive right to the north of of the island," uh, and then you're going to do day two across the top, day three around the corner, and on day one, I'm like only like an inch on the map. I should be like this far, and we've only got this far. Like, something's wrong here. The road, it's like snow; it's like cold; there's a blizzard, 80 mph winds; the snow plow has driven off the side of the road, and it's heavy going. At one point, I stopped the car and made the children get out and dig. It's bad. The whole way around Iceland, it was like a survival adventure movie, one of those disaster movies, like, "Are they're going to make it?" And every night it would like be eight hours driving through the gale, through the blizzard, and then only when we got back to Reykjavik and I was leaving on the plane did I realize my mistake is that the itinerary John had given me was for the summer, when there's no ice and snow on the road. In the winter, the Ring Road of Iceland is impossible. So we had done literally a miraculous thing. So ever since then, I've been like, "John is not just a travel agent; he's also able to work miracles in the hard places." So John, we love you so much. You are amazing. Um, just so grateful to you for your leadership and your friendship, and um, today I want to talk to you about this series you're in right now on space and risk, this series on missional formation. I'm really excited about what we can look at tonight, and this is like John said, a good moment to be alive. Turn the person next to you and just look in the eyes. It's not a date, guys. Hold tight; just look them in the eyes and say to them, "It's a good time to be alive." Okay, some of you are adding a little bit more than "good time." It's not a date, guys. Later on.
Everywhere we look, God is stirring something in the church at this moment. We've seen this in London the last couple of years. We've just seen this extraordinary season of wave after wave of God's presence sweeping over the church, sometimes powerfully, sometimes really gently. We've seen hundreds and hundreds of people in the last year becoming Christians. We think over 400 now in the past calendar year have given their lives to Jesus. They give you an idea; our church is small; that's a lot of people. Like a few years ago, that was the whole size of the church. We've had meetings; like a couple of weeks ago, I looked out, and 10% of the room are making first-time commitments to follow Jesus, and we make it quite hard for people to follow Jesus. So it's like this is like not normal. We keep saying, "Well, this is not business as usual. Something's happening in London." The data is beginning to reflect this. So there's a a polling organization called YouGov, like our national—they call the elections—and here is some data that came out literally 10 days ago, and it shows the blue line shows um is basically belief in God, and you'll see right on the left of the picture, 2019, only 26% of Londoners believe in God. The green line is people who don't believe in God, and that's at 30%, 36%, 40%. But something happens, something shifts towards the the end of 2022 and in 2023 and 2024, and now the latest data of 2025, there is a huge spike. Something is happening that's beginning to show up in the data that scientists are collecting in the secular space about this, to the point where literally the last polling data from 26% in 2019, now 55% of Londoners have said they believe in God. Now, guys, this is not business as usual, like John said. There is a spiritual hunger in our generation here in the US. I've got to see it firsthand. The popcorn effects of outpourings; first Asbury College, campuses all over the place. There is a turning going on in the life of this nation. Ten days ago, I had the joy of speaking to a midweek leaders gathering at Saddleback that John was talking about, one of the largest churches in the US. Unbelievable sense of hunger among people; the presence of God filling places like this. And yet, over and over again, I come across this question: like, when God moves, how do we hold it? How do we steward the presence of God? Like, if God were to send revival today, would we be ready? Like, how do we hold it when the sovereign manifest presence begins to operate among us? How do we move from the experiential to the deeply transformative? So maybe you're like, got a bottle of water. If I open this water and I was to pour it out—on, I won't do it now because I'll get in trouble—but but if I was to pour it out outside in the park over the road, you—we wouldn't stand around and watch the water hit the ground and we be like, "Wow, look at the water," and you watch it seep into the ground because there's no container. What we needed in that moment was something to put the water in a container. So often when God begins to move, and this is sadly true of the history of renewal through the church, so often we're not prepared for when God pours out his love and his grace and his mercy, to know how to handle it. Even when we gather in churches like this in the evenings like this, what does it look like when God begins to move in your life? How do you hold it? How do you position your life for what God is doing? Leonard Raven Hill once said this: "The opportunity of a lifetime needs to be seized during the lifetime of the opportunity." In other words, if God is on the move in our moment, how do we respond? Because there are seasons, and we're entering a season of great power in the church, but let me tell you, don't miss the boat. Don't wait for 10 years to respond. So today we're going to talk about space and risk; how we wait, how we hold that moment in the presence of God. Now, New Yorkers, like Londoners, we're not good at waiting, right? Right. It's a city that never sleeps. Time is money. If your Uber promises you to be there in one minute and then you press confirm and it's six minutes, who gets angry? Right? There's an injustice that I was promised a New York minute, but nothing, six minutes. I'm standing on the corner of Avenue of the Americas waiting in the freezing cold for my Uber to arrive. The same is true of the presence of God in our lives. So often we get impatient; we get distracted; we get disengaged; we become self-reliant; we don't want to keep waiting on the Lord. So today I want to speak really practically to three groups of people in the room. Number one, I want to speak to you here tonight if you are a leader. I want to speak to if you're listening online and you lead; maybe you lead a church. You are the custodians of God's presence; you are the keepers of the flame. In the Book of Leviticus, God commands the leaders, says this: "The fire on the altar must not go out." If you lead a small group, you're part of a volunteer crew, you're on the worship team, you're part of the hosting team, you are a leader, and our job as leaders is to keep the fire of the presence of God fueled, week in, week out, day in, day out. The fire must not go out. So leaders, I want to talk to you. Second group, I want to talk to you today are those who may describe themselves as reluctant leaders. You're like, "Hey, I'm quite busy, you know. I could I could do that thing; I could lead, but I've got a lot on." Maybe you have disqualified yourself; maybe you're watching from the sidelines in the safety zone, but this is not the season to sit on the bench, friends. So tonight I'm literally tapping you into the ring. There's no—if you're a reluctant leader, that stops tonight. Third group are those maybe tonight who are brand new. You just moved to the city, or someone brought you to church the first time tonight. Maybe you don't yet know Jesus; maybe you've heard about him, but he's not a reality in your life, in your soul, and this tonight is for you almost more than anybody else, because I believe God passionately wants to call you into his adventure. Doesn't need you to wait till you've got a degree in theology. He wants you tonight to step into what he's going to be doing. So here's the plan. I'm going to share a little bit for a few minutes, and and then we're going to pray. Is that all right, Sam? I thought you'd like that. The kingdom of God, the Bible tells us, it's not a matter of talk but of power, and so tonight I'm praying that that it won't be wise and persuasive words that move your heart but a demonstration of the Holy Spirit's power in this place. And as I've been praying, I'm really expectant that God will move because he loves you; he loves you; he loves you. So we're going to pray as we begin, and just let's just take a moment, if that's okay. Maybe put your hand on your heart if you're comfortable. If that's very cheesy, then put your hand in your pocket, but it's gift day, seasons, so you know, maybe put your hand in your pocket and then get your checkbook out as well. So that's a joke; that's a joke. Father, thank you so much for this amazing community. Pray you'd fill us tonight. We want you to come in this place with increasing power. Teach us to be filled, to wait, move with great power in our midst tonight. Speak to each one of us; teach us to be brave, in Jesus' name. And all God's people said, "Amen." Okay, space and risk. Here's where we're going: four postures tonight that will help us make room for God when he moves, and we're going to do those things tonight. We're going to make space in these four ways and take a little risk, step out. The first posture is very simple: it's just to wait, just to wait. Jesus is utterly dependent on the Father. He does nothing he does by himself. Verse 19 of the passage says this: "The Son can do nothing by himself." Think about this for a moment: the Son of God, Jesus, omnipotent, incarnate, walking on Earth, able to raise the dead, walk on water, do the miracles, all the things—he can do nothing if he's doing it on his own. Huh? How does that work? So often we rush in; we're tempted to fill the gaps; we're tempted to manufacture, to entertain instead of simply to wait on the Father. You know, God comes where he's wanted, but how he comes is in the gaps, in the space we create in our hearts, in our lives. Power from Heaven comes in your life, in the room today, in the church, in the city when instead of entertaining we lift our hearts to heaven and we wait on the Lord. We're not tempted to rush in and fill the gaps and keep going, but we give up control, and we let the presence of God fill the room. This has been the operating system of the church from day one. Think of what Jesus says to the disciples, Luke 24:49. Jesus says this: "I'm going to send you what my Father has promised, but stay, remain, wait in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high." So for some of you today, the word is wait. The most powerful spiritual investment you can make in this season, in this community, is to cultivate the practice and posture of waiting on the Lord. Time waiting is not time wasted, but waiting can be awkward, right? We're so conditioned, aren't we, to move on, to swipe on, to click on, but it's not how it works in heaven. They've got all the time. Isaiah 40:31 reveals this amazing secret. It says this, in the New King James: "Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength." You know, next time you come out of a meeting or you have a meeting with your landlord or that date that doesn't work out or that tough conversation, and it's tempting to like give up and busy yourself with the worry and the anxiety, wait, wait on the Lord. You—when the service wraps up, rather than just say, "I'm just going to jump out of here straight away, get on the next thing," like, wait, wait on the Lord. Because what happens when we wait is God begins to break in. I have a friend called Ben, and he's a young guy. I have his permission to share this story. He he wrote to me an email a while ago, just said this: "I was at church, serving and loving Jesus deeply. Jesus had changed my life six years before, but then six years later, in a low-wavelength head space, I used cocaine for the first time on a night out that turned into a weekend pattern of drinking heavily and using coke. I was stuck in this pattern. My love for Jesus was shaking as my addiction was growing. I pursued the weekends to find escapism, fun, and oblivion, with a deep shame and guilt. I would cry out to God, God, for help, and I'd use again and again. I agonizingly decided I would share my struggles with close friends. I was met with love and kindness, and then about 18 months ago, we began to experience wave after wave of the presence of God," and he describes this: "There were three key services at Saint. One service, I was filled with the Holy Spirit and saw Jesus sat next to me with his arm around me. I discovered the love of the Father in a new way." Like that's amazing, isn't it? Like, praise God. We could have stopped, stopped there, but the next week he comes back. He says, "The second service, I was prayed for by one of the church leaders and a close friend, and I received God's Holy Spirit and power again. I unashamedly shared the ugliness of my situation, and I was met with love and compassion. A week later, I went sober, and I've stayed sober, but was living with guilt and shame of what my life had fallen into." You know, so many of us stopped there. It's like, "Hey, it's great; we we've got there; we've broken the power of that addiction," but we haven't deeply received the freedom God has for us from heaven. But he comes back a third time. Third time he says this: "Finally, the next gathering, these two guys, I didn't know, they prayed for me when I thought I was done. When I thought I was done, they said, 'We sense we need to keep on waiting, keep on praying for you,' and as they prayed, a deep work began. I was delivered of my addiction; I was set free. Chains were breaking; freedom was falling; the Holy Spirit moved, and away I've never experienced. He healed me from the pain of the last two years of my life. He changed my life; he chased after me, my addiction; he gave me freedom because he is jealous for us." Come on! Do you need that power tonight? What is it for you? It might not be cocaine; might be pornography; might be greed. Maybe you're like, "That sums up the whole of my row; all those guys are on my row right now." Maybe it's pride for you. Like, what is it that's holding you back? Power from Heaven comes when you wait, and it might feel uncomfortable, but let me challenge you: waiting in the presence of God is the only way historically God has revealed his power to people: Abraham, Moses, the early Church in the upper room, waiting and waiting and waiting. You see, God is able to do the immeasurably more with hearts that wait on him than he can ever do with hearts that are rushing around performing for him. So first posture tonight, church, the city, wait. Second posture: watch. Look around; what do you see God doing? Pastor John and I had a conversation earlier. Did I want to preach down there or did I want to preach up there? I'm an Anglican, so I'm like, "Hey, I love the pulpit," uh, but also I was like, "Hey, I'd I'd love to preach where you normally preach." I know John will often preach up here, but it's it's helpful because actually I can see what the Holy Spirit is beginning to do. I'm not here so you can see me; I'm here so I can watch what God's doing in the room. Jesus only does what he sees the Father doing. If you notice verse 20, he says, "I can"—Jesus only does what he sees the Father doing. "The Father loves the Son and shows him all he does." We only want to do what we see God doing. When you see him move, watch and take note, respond. You know, maybe you're in finance—uh, I don't know, hands up if you work in finance—um, or or if you're a Bitcoin baron—uh, but but I am not a Bitcoin baron, or I don't work in finance, obviously, but I'm told a real simple principle; it's this: you don't buy the stock at the top of the market, right? You buy the stock right at the bottom when it starts to move. You're like, "Hey, it's going to go—like, get in there early." Like, watch. In the same way, spiritually, when you see God begin to move, get in there early, give, serve, pray, build. And I see this each week. I watch for the signs of God at work in our community. One of the things we've begun to notice in the last like few weeks is like wave after wave of people becoming Christians, like an acceleration happening. We did baptisms a couple of weeks ago, and we baptized like more people in one Sunday than we had done in like three or four years. It's crazy. I always interview people who are getting baptized because there's so many amazing stories, and what I've noticed, the stories have gone from like if it's a scale of zero to 10, and like people often go one, two, three, maybe they come on Alpha, which is brilliant; they do a journey; they keep going; they come to church a little bit, and then eventually they're like, "I'm ready to give my life to Jesus." That's a process; that's brilliant. But I'm just noticing that somehow God is just going from zero, and they're falling into like a 10, like suddenly, spontaneously, supernaturally, in a sustained way, people are just like, "Bang!" I think of a guy called Freddy. Freddy has no contact with church whatsoever.
Young guy in his 20s; he's living with his girlfriend. They're together; they're having a baby. Tragically, they lose the baby; the relationship breaks down, and he's at his lowest. He decides to end his life. Tragically, he takes a bicycle—the only thing I've got is a pedal bike. He cycles to the edge of the freeway in East London, a big four-lane road, in the middle of the night. He's on the hard shoulder of the freeway, waiting for traffic to come, and a big wave of traffic comes. He thinks this is the moment. He pauses; he looks up at heaven, and there's nothing there. He says there's nothing; just pushes himself out on the pedals. The moment he puts his feet on the pedals to launch himself into the traffic, he describes how he felt like an invisible hand reaching down and lifting him up three meters into the air, blowing him backwards two meters onto the hard shoulder. And he finds himself not out in the middle of the road, but lying staring up at the sky on his back on the hard shoulder. And then he hears audibly, one word out loud: the name Jesus.
Like, come on, guys. Like this stuff—you read about this—this doesn't happen in East London or in Manhattan, but God's starting to do it. So what? Watch; see what the spirit's doing. It's happening around us, and Jesus is so helpful. He, he knows that we don't like—we don't get this a lot of the time, so he teaches a guy. Nicodemus comes to see him and says, "Look, explain the whole thing to me. How do we know when God is moving?" And he says, "Nicodemus, let me explain it to you," that John 3:8. He says, "The wind blows wherever it pleases, and so it is with everyone born of the spirit." Now just consider that for a moment. Jesus used the analogy of wind. Now think about wind. You know New York; you walk around the corner on one of the Avenues in the middle of last week—so cold, right? Nothing prepared me. I felt like I was in Game of Thrones when winter comes, or like in Frozen when, you know, the ice comes. I don't know which of those two is more Pagan, but both of them are pretty bad—probably the kids' one—but you walk around the corner, you don't see the wind, but man, you feel the wind. Or rather, you don't feel the wind anymore; you can't feel anything when you've had the wind on Fifth Avenue in the middle of a cold spell; like your face just goes numb. The same is true in God's works; you can't see the spirit working, but you can see the effect of the spirit working. You often—this morning I was watching people weeping and shaking, falling to their knees under the power of God. Sometimes it's very subtle. You know, if you look at a river, there'll be moments in the journey of a river where it's going over rapids and it's white water and it's exciting and there's power and it's wow—there's noise. Other times the water flows deep and calm and still. It's the same river; sometimes quietness and depth is actually the most powerful point in the river. But we've seen signs of God moving in this community, and we're seeing this in every week, like people walking to church and getting set free; people getting delivered, like spontaneous demon deliverances happening in the middle of worship, and like we have no theology for this. I'm like, I have to find the manual on, on, on how we do deliverance in the Anglican church because we're not even doing it; it's just happening. People are just getting set free; no one's even praying for them. The power of God's just like, bam. We're like, okay, what do we do? Spontaneous healings; people are getting converted; spiritual confrontations—they're fun again. No training manual for that at theological college, but let me tell you this: when God moves, it's not dull; it's not boring.
So, second posture I want to encourage you in tonight: watch; open your eyes for what God is doing. Third: stretch; stretch yourself; stretch out. God always has more for you than the limits of your faith. Jesus says this: "The Father will show him," meaning Jesus, "even greater works than these," so you'll be—you'll all be amazed. Like, I love this Jesus, like, "Hey, guess what? My dad is going to do—you're never going to believe what's going to happen. There are going to be so many crazy things," like in the next three years of this story, there's going to be stuff involving pigs and lakes; we're going to raise people to life; we're going to break bread and feed 5,000. There's so many crazy things that are going to happen. But then Jesus does this thing, as you'll know at the end of his ministry on Earth: he says, "I'm going to go now because the spirit's going to come, and you're going to get to do even greater things than this." In other words, Jesus thought it was important enough to get out of the way so that the spirit would come so that you and I would get to do greater things. You see, God is the God of the immeasurably more. Don't box him in with your faith; don't limit him in your life. Come expectant, with an outstretched hand, with outstretched hearts. St. Augustine says this: "God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them." Well, here's the thing about God: he is a gentleman; the Holy Spirit is gentle; he never forces his way into your life; he's not going to push you; he's giving you agency; he'll wait for you to stretch out to him. It's not works; you can't earn it; it sometimes just requires the smallest, slender movement. Like prayer has been described as the slender nerve that moves the muscle of omnipotence. In the same way, faith is the slender movement towards heaven that will open the floodgates.
I want to use an analogy from the Sistine Chapel. When they choose the next Pope, the Cardinals will gather under the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and it's one of the most famous works of art, painted by Michelangelo. And you'll know the famous scene of Adam, the creation of Adam; Adam stretching out towards God; God stretching out towards Adam. And there's a picture—on the left of the picture is God's hand, right? Everyone see that? The finger, anatomically, is outstretched to the maximum point; it's, it's not possible for that finger to stretch out anymore. But Adam's hand, on the right of the image, you'll notice is not touching God. Now here's the story: when this was first painted, Michelangelo actually painted the two fingers touching. He called it the moment of creation, but when the Cardinals came in to see it for the first time, they said, "Oh, listen, it's great, but there's one thing we'd love you to change. We'd love you just to make that finger slightly adjusted." And you'll notice that Adam's finger, anatomically, is perfectly aligned with the Father's finger except for one tiny movement; no movement of the finger, no change of his position, just a simple flex as he stretches upwards towards God. Literally, the tightening of the tendon without moving at all would mean the finger perfectly connects with the tip of God's finger. You see, often all it takes from us is the smallest movement, and suddenly we're touching heaven. In your life, I want to encourage you tonight: stretch out your hand to God; stretch out your faith tonight; don't self-limit or talk yourself down or, or hold back from God. This is a season, friends, to stretch out towards God because God is stretching out his trembling hand in love towards you tonight, longing to bless you, longing to free you, longing to bring power to your life, and all it requires from us is a little obedience to stretch back.
Let me tell you a story about my friend Gina. This time last year, Gina comes to faith. She's had a really hard time. She's a young woman, her mid-20s, incredibly bright; she, um, works for the top scientist in the UK. She's a PhD in virology, and in fact, during the pandemic, it was Gina who used to calculate the national—what we call the R number—every night on the news. It would say that the reproduction rate of the virus, and Gina would put her graph up on the national news; everyone would look at it. Now Gina had grown up with a, a debilitating medical condition. She'd had a cancer in the spine; 51 tumors, inoperable. They managed to treat it amazingly, and of course, God works through medicine, and thankfully she was saved, but her spine was left degraded to the point where all the bones in her spine are sort of crumbled, and it meant she was no longer really able to stand unaided, so she used a wheelchair and she used crutches to get around. And the most painful thing was that every day it would take her hours to get out of bed because the pain—the level of pain—would require constant intense painkillers to enable her to even move around. She begins to call out to God and about a year ago finds her way to church, gives her life to Jesus. And then on Good Friday last year, we have a prayer gathering with a couple other churches, and Gina is at that gathering. She says, "I'm just going to come for an hour or so, and then I'll get home; it's going to be too hard; it's, it's about a thousand people packed into a room." And she found a quiet corner and sat herself down. And then we did an altar call; we said, like, "If you'd like to be filled with the Holy Spirit, would you come?" That little stretch—Gina just got herself up, and she found her way over to the prayer—beat her way through the crowd—lovely couple of people prayed for her; just laid a hand on Gina's shoulder and said, "Come, Holy Spirit, would you fill Gina?" They waited a couple of minutes; they didn't rush; prayed for her; amen. And Gina then went back to her seat. And after about an hour, Gina said, "I really should be getting home," and she said, "Oh gosh, I've lost my crutches." Now for her, that's quite a big deal because she can't walk unaided, so she's like, "Where are my crutches? Maybe I left them up at the altar," so she ran over to the altar to find the crutches, and the crutches weren't there. So Gina starts running around the church, going up to people, saying, "Have you seen my crutches? Where are my crutches?" And she comes up to—at the end of the evening she goes, "Al, can I have a quick word?" She says, "I don't mean to alarm you; my name is Gina; I'm a scientist; I'm a very rational person; I don't want to freak you out, but I think I may have experienced some healing tonight because I can't really walk unaided. I haven't asked God for healing, but here I am. I'm not in any pain right now, 'cause most of the time I'm really cynical and have low faith." I'm like, "Really? Hi Gina, nice to meet you. Um, why don't you come back when you've seen a doctor?" So I send her away. I was literally like, "Hey, that's great, you know, come back in a couple of weeks and we'll check you out." I felt really bad afterwards. So she, she, she comes back a few weeks later and she goes, "Hey Al, it's Gina. Do you remember me?" I was like, "Yeah, sure. How are you?" She says, "You know what? I have been completely healed." She said, "The next day I got out of bed; no pain; I sprung out of bed; no—it takes me an hour." She said, "I went to check it out with the doctor." She said, "I've got three things to report: number one, my doctor's done the tests; I've been scanned; I have grown an inch and a half; they can't explain it medically, but I'm pain-free, and my spine has been restored. Number two, I no longer qualify for free parking in London." She said, "My physio saw me; he's like, 'I can no longer classify you as disabled because something has happened to your body which means you are no longer qualifying for free parking.' Number three," she says, "I have a very, very expensive electric wheelchair that I just bought on a finance plan that was going to last me for 10 years—that is the price of a car—could you make an announcement at church asking if anybody needs a wheelchair?" Like, what? She goes to work on the Monday after the Friday she was prayed for; she walks into the science team she's a part of, and over the weekend they had moved offices—this is the best bit of the story—and they'd moved to a new office where they'd had to redesign the office layout in order to accommodate Gina's additional needs. They put in a ramp; they put in a lift; they spent a fortune on a toilet. Monday morning, Gina—come on, Jesus—like, walks in; her boss says, "Gina, come and see me. What has happened?" Gina explains; she says, "I don't mean to alarm you, but Jesus has healed me." The top scientist is an atheist; she says, "Gina, I can't compute this. There are some things that you just can't explain scientifically, and this is one of them." Like, God has totally transformed her. A year on, she's amazing; working miracle now. Hey, listen, God doesn't always heal. I know that. In my life, you will get to heaven, and he'll heal every disease and every sickness. Gina didn't come looking for healing; she just came to be filled with the spirit. She made a little movement; she stretched out of her comfort zone; took a step of faith, and God did the rest.
And I know this stuff can be scary. You know, we could play it safe and not pray for healing. John Wimber used to say this: "Faith is spelled R-I-S-K." For the dyslexic people here, like me—I've done this talk and I've gone, "Faith is spelled R-S-I-K," and everyone's being like, "Right, okay, thanks." So just putting it out there. But faith is felt risk. You know, we have to step out of our comfort zones. You—when we prayed—when we started praying for healing, I remember no one got healed. I remember giving words of knowledge at church—a bunch of prophetic words—and said, "Hey, any—I've got a list of things and can read them out. There's someone here with, with a painful right leg; there's someone here with the this..." Does anybody relate to any of these things? Someone had written in this—I remember this—they'd read—like had a prayer meeting before and they like, "There's a guy called Malcolm here who, you know..." And I, I read out, I was like, "Is Malcolm here?" And that night I read out all these things; not one person in the room responded to any of the prophetic words. I was like, "I'm sure there's stuff in the Old Testament where they stone the prophets if they proved to be false, so I'm like, should I leave now?" You—here's the thing: God often will only trust you with his glory when he knows he can trust you with looking stupid for him. It's true. When you're prepared to be foolish for Christ, God knows he can do whatever he wants with your life. We have to break our spiritual pride in seasons like this and find ourselves in the desperation zone where we stretch, like, "God, if you don't show up tonight, this talk is just going to be hot air." You know, there's a point in that mountaineering when you get above a certain line; it's called the, the kind of Death Zone in mountaineering where the oxygen becomes too thin in the air, and you require oxygen to breathe or you have to get in and out very quickly. I want us to operate in our faith in the oxygenless zone where we have to rely on the spirit of God, like, "If God doesn't show up when I pray for that friend, I'm in trouble." Think of Moses being chased by Pharaoh's army, having persuaded the people of Egypt—people of Israel—to get out of Egypt, and he gets down to by the Sea, and, and the whole army has surrounded them. You know the story; you've seen the musical, and they're there, and, and God is like, "Hey Moses, there's only one thing you need to do." You remember the story? What does he do? He says, "Moses, stretch out your hand." He doesn't say, "Moses, part the water now," or "Moses, deliver the people," or "Moses, speak to the storm," or "Moses..." He just says, "Hey Moses, can you stretch out your hand a little bit?" And Moses has done this over and over and over again with God from the beginning: little things—"Take off your shoes, Moses; pick up that stick; stretch out your hand." The critical moment in Moses's journey, all God required of him was obedience and a little stretch. So tonight, maybe all God requires of you is obedience and just a little stretch for that breakthrough you're longing to see in your life.
And then the fourth posture is to drink. It's not an illustration; I'm just really thirsty. Just as the Father, Jesus says, "raises the dead and gives him life, so the Son gives life to whom he's pleased to give it." Jesus wants to fill you, but the condition here is that you come thirsty. We live in a generation that has made self-reliance a secular spiritual discipline, but the spirit is not a theory; he's not a one-time experience; he is not a commodity; he is not a tool; he's not a genie in a bottle to fix your problems; he's a person; he's a counselor; he's a friend; he's a comforter, and he wants to refresh you tonight with his life. And often when God moves, it starts like the gentle rain; you hardly feel it to start with. But as God begins to trust you as a community, he'll pour out more and more and more until it's like the blowing open of a great fountain. Remember that picture, prophetically Ezekiel has, of the water overflowing in the temple? It starts just like a trickle; then as Ezekiel goes, it becomes ankle deep, and suddenly it's knee deep; suddenly it's waist deep; suddenly it's so deep you can't even stand in the water anymore. The move of God that's coming is going to start like a trickle, and the water will flow where it's welcome. God comes where he's wanted. Community of church, the city—would you be thirsty tonight? Would you thirst in your gatherings for more of the River of Life? What God wants to do in this generation is to satiate, to fill that deep spiritual thirst that the world is busily filling with everything else. You know, we're not looking tonight for an experience, but an uncapping and an overflowing well of the River of Life that would sweep through this generation with healing and freedom and love, but it starts with, with thirst. Now we are all thirsty, right? That's brilliant; we can bring that tonight. Jesus says this: "Let anyone who's thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me," the scriptures said, "rivers of Living Water will flow from within them." You see the pattern here? Come with your thirst; God will fill you, and it's going to flow out into your home, into your family, into your neighborhood, into your block, into your workplace, into the city. It's not for us; it's for the world. We're formed so we might go into the culture. So as we come into land tonight, let me ask you this: are you thirsty? Like, really, are you thirsty? If you're not, I can't help you. If you are, Jesus is longing to meet you. Are you spiritually dry? When was the last time you were filled—not observing a vicarious experience of the power of God, but deeply experiencing it for yourself? When was the last time you were filled to overflow with the Holy Spirit? Have you ever been filled with the spirit, and would you like to be filled with the spirit tonight? Jesus doesn't make it conditional tonight on your ability. You can be brand new; you can not yet be a Christian, and God is going to fill you tonight. We're going to have a chance in a moment to pray a prayer, whereas if you're here and you don't yet know him, I don't want to make it possible for you to leave tonight without having had a chance to respond to him. The only qualification Jesus gives us is that we would ask. Luke 13—Luke 11:13—Jesus says, "How much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?" Now, in the original Greek, if you trace back through all the different translations, all the scrolls—and I did a project on this; I looked it all up—different ways you could approach this text, different texts have been found, codices and history, different ways theologians approach the word "ask" in the Greek—it means ask; it doesn't mean deserve or merit or, "like to those who are holy, I'm going to give my Holy Spirit; he'll feel right at home in your life." Anyone can receive the spirit; the only qualification is that we ask. So why wouldn't you ask? In fact, let me go beyond that and be a little bit bolder with you tonight. Can I challenge you? You must be
Filled with the Holy Spirit, it's mission critical. There's no missional formation without the Spirit in your life. There's no freedom from addiction without the Spirit in your life. There's no transformation without the Spirit in your life. You must be filled tonight.
And let me tell you this: when a group of people in a city like this move from performance and entertainment to learn to wait and watch, stretch and drink well, then my friends, a move of God isn't just possible or probable—it will have already, in fact, begun.
Why don't we pray? Would you like to stand with me?