[00:00:01] Welcome to the River Church podcast. We're all about bringing the life, hope and love of Jesus to everyone around us. For more information, check out our
[email protected] right, question for you.
[00:00:15] So, well actually, yes, question for you. What motivates you?
[00:00:23] What gets you out of bed? What would cause you to, to do something with your spare time, your free time?
[00:00:32] What gets you to get your wallet out of your pocket and spend money?
[00:00:37] How is it that you kind of are attracted to a cause or to spend the resources that you have at your disposal?
[00:00:48] It's so often the new thing, isn't it?
[00:00:52] It's the shiny thing, isn't it that we are attracted to?
[00:00:57] Maybe it's the new ph.
[00:01:00] Do you know this thing about the phone advert, right, that was, I don't know, last year sometime when it was all about peeling the sticker off the front of the phone. Does anyone remember that one?
[00:01:12] I don't know. Anyway, there we go. Someone's own. It was all about the new experience of getting a new phone. The advert wasn't even about the phone, it was just the experience of getting a phone. But you know, maybe it's a car, tv, whatever. If you're geeky like me or, or fashion or whatever, that's what often gets us to spend our money. Maybe the time that you put in is towards this new revolutionary five step program to absolute bliss and happiness in your life. Whatever it be, you get to do that, whatever. There's new fads.
[00:01:49] We are attracted to the new, aren't we?
[00:01:52] We are attracted to the novel thing, this thing, thing that's come out and it's interesting to think why are we attracted to the new?
[00:02:02] What is it about the new and the novel that attracts us now? One of the things is we are in an age of progress.
[00:02:13] Do you know? So ever since a couple of hundred years ago, science, the enlightenment, all that kind of way that our culture has changed, we are attracted because we think that humanity is moving towards this utopia, this grand thing of when everything, life is perfect. Maybe you've watched Star Trek and they say about how it's funny, isn't it? I was reflecting on Star Trek and how they solved life's problems of humanity. And so they go up towards the stars. But what do they. They seem to have so many arguments on the spaceship all the time, don't they?
[00:02:50] It's like if that's the case, yeah, they've obviously chucked the people that they don't want on a spaceship anyway. But that whole Thing, we're attracted to the novel because it promises the good life, right? It promises something.
[00:03:05] And so we're attracted to the novel because it's going to be a better place.
[00:03:10] But the novel offers a hope of an easier life, doesn't it?
[00:03:14] I don't know. The invention of the washing machine and the microwave and the dishwasher were all supposed to free up our time and the robot Hoover. So that housework is a thing of the past, do you know?
[00:03:27] I don't know. It's still a thing, quite a big thing. But all of these things of technology, they don't deliver.
[00:03:35] There's so many promises, isn't there? But they don't deliver on it, they fail at it. And capitalism, let me rant, capitalism perpetuates this message. It depends on this message that the thing that you had last year is outdated and you need the new thing for it. So that every new thing is a revolution, isn't it?
[00:03:59] Phone adverts. I mean, yes, maybe I've ranted too much, but Phone adverts, right, the new thing, it's a revolution.
[00:04:07] You can't possibly deal with the old thing.
[00:04:10] Maybe if they did the advert, like the new phone is 3% brighter, it's like 8% faster than your old one and maybe the Battery life is 10% worse. Would you get a new one based on that marketing?
[00:04:26] I think we'd all say, it's all right, I'll pass on that one. But this one is a revolution. It's going to change your life.
[00:04:34] You're going to take slightly better pictures with this one.
[00:04:39] That's. I mean, who cannot, who can cope without that in their life?
[00:04:45] But I think all of these things, with a novel and a new, they are a smokescreen.
[00:04:52] They are a distraction from perhaps, I think, the hardships of life, the difficulties maybe from our unhappiness of life.
[00:05:02] A guy called sociologist called Neil Postman wrote back in 1985, I quoted from it before a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death.
[00:05:10] He was lamenting the rise of the entertainment industry.
[00:05:14] 85 so TV and film, you know, the proliferation of TV channels as they were growing and growing, especially in America, you know, 85 I think we still had four channels in the UK at that time, but in America they probably had 200.
[00:05:29] And he was writing how this was distracting from the grand activities of life, from actually achieving anything in society.
[00:05:38] And that was all before YouTube, social media and all of that has come up and really now we don't need an entertainment industry because we have all become entertainers.
[00:05:54] We're just entertaining ourselves with.
[00:05:59] I don't know, but there we go.
[00:06:03] And, you know, the thing of distraction, it's really just taken us away from life.
[00:06:10] I think that the perpetual cycle of chasing this new and a novel through this new entertainment, this new thing, this thing, it stops us from achieving the goals and ambitions that we have in life.
[00:06:26] It stops us from achieving things that we really want that could be meaningful within our life. And more importantly than our own goals, it stops us from achieving God's goals for your life.
[00:06:40] God has goals and ambitions for your life.
[00:06:46] Paul writes in Ephesians, for we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to do.
[00:07:01] God has goals and ambitions for you and for me.
[00:07:07] He's got things planned for us.
[00:07:12] Are we chasing them or are we distracted now?
[00:07:20] I do a bit of cycling and a bit lately running, and I'm a bit geeky when it comes. Well, okay, I was going to say geeky. When it comes to cycling, running, I'm just a bit geeky anyway, so I just don't. I want to find out the best way.
[00:07:36] How can I, you know, I want to be the best that I can in that, you know.
[00:07:43] Yeah, I'm performance driven anyway.
[00:07:47] And so I look for YouTube videos and literature and websites and stuff about how to train the best, right? How to get the best out of what I can.
[00:07:58] And you've got all of these, you know, you look on YouTube and you've got all these videos that say, hey, this is the secret method for the US Marines to get the absolute best core you can.
[00:08:11] Or this is the one secret method that you need to run your best 5k time. You got all of those videos promising so much with this secret. The problem with secrets is, hey, if anyone actually had a secret, they'd sell it for a lot of money, wouldn't they? So it wouldn't be a secret very long. But despite all of those rights, there's actually one thing that any coach, when it comes to it, will say is the key to training.
[00:08:44] Do you know what this is the one thing that you need?
[00:08:50] Consistency.
[00:08:53] If you haven't got consistency, it doesn't matter what you actually do, you need to keep on going. And that means that turning up and training when you don't feel like it, when the weather's a bit bad, when your muscles are a bit sore, when you feel a little bit under the weather, when you've had a bad night's sleep. When work is hard, it means turning up and training. Despite all of that, you've got to keep plugging away.
[00:09:28] Who likes doing that?
[00:09:31] But we know that this is not just for athletics or anything like that. Physical. We know that consistency is key to getting anything really out of life, isn't it?
[00:09:41] We need to keep on plugging because we've got so many phrases, haven't we? We've got so many phrases in our language about keep on going, haven't we? Things like one step at a time.
[00:09:55] Things like, Rome wasn't built in a day. Brick by brick, slow and steady wins the race. How do you eat an elephant?
[00:10:03] One bite at a time.
[00:10:06] You just got to keep going at it.
[00:10:09] And, you know, it's the thing of, you will eat an elephant, please don't eat an elephant, but you will eat an elephant if you keep going.
[00:10:19] And that's the thing we need to keep going. Consistency is the key to achieving anything, really progressing anywhere in life. And we know this is true.
[00:10:29] But we all fall for the fads and the novel and the distractions and the rest of it.
[00:10:34] Do you know if you want to grow in your knowledge of the Bible, It's a great time of year to start a Bible in a year plan, right? You could take a week off work and just read the whole Bible in one go. That is great, but it's not going to do you as much good as reading a little bit over the course of the year. If you prayed for 10 minutes every day, do you know how many hours that would be at the end of the year?
[00:11:02] It's about 61 hours.
[00:11:05] Now, you could take a week off work and say, I'm going to get all my years praying done in one week.
[00:11:13] Who's up for that?
[00:11:15] You could get that done.
[00:11:17] But do you know what? That is not going to do you as much good as praying 10 minutes every day.
[00:11:24] It's not.
[00:11:25] It's not at all.
[00:11:27] So please don't do that. Please pray. You can pray 61 hours every week. That would be fantastic. Well, actually, you could get out and do some of God's work out there as well. I think that would probably be better than 61 hours of praying, but. Oh, well, some people are called to it. There we go.
[00:11:44] But why am I saying all this? We come to a week of prayer and fasting, right? This is a week we're dedicating, we're trying to put some more effort, focus onto prayer and fasting. And, you know, it's really tempting for me for the leadership of the church to think, hey, we've got to think of something new and flashy to engage people into, right? Because it's like, hey, we've got to say something new because that's what attracts people into it.
[00:12:13] And I fall for that as well. But the reality is God has given us a path to go down.
[00:12:21] God has given us direction as a church, as a group of people that we are progressing down. And that's what we're called to do. And that's something that we've been working out over the last five years. We've been talking about spreading out as a church over Dartford and Gravesend, desiring to grow, to affect our communities around us and, and plant through planting sites and more.
[00:12:46] And so we want to continue to do that.
[00:12:49] And we've got consistency is what is what will help us, what will enable us to help to be part of Jesus building his church. That is the thing that we've got to keep on plugging on. Keep on plugging on. So this week of prayer and fasting, there is not going to be anything revolutionary. We are still praying into what God has got for us. And so, you know, this is our faithful obedience, this is us keep plugging away the consistent hard work and we can fall into that trap. Before I get into what we're praying out, we're just saying we can fall into that trap, that our faithful obedience is part of our willpower.
[00:13:34] We've got to keep, you know, it's us, we gotta change our mindset. We've got to keep, you know, if we do it, if we think about it, if we keep plugging away, that's it. It's part of our willpower. But do you know that? God invites us?
[00:13:51] God invites us to pray to him so that he would work out his will in our lives.
[00:14:00] Did you know that?
[00:14:02] Let me say that again.
[00:14:03] God invites us to pray to him, asking that he will work out his will in our lives, because we sang it just earlier.
[00:14:15] Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, us as it is in heaven.
[00:14:24] God invites us to pray to him that he would work out his will in our lives.
[00:14:31] Isn't that amazing?
[00:14:33] He doesn't say, you're on your own. Here's the mission. Go sort it out. I will be marking you, I'll be marking your homework. Do you know when you turn up at the pearly gates? No, that's not what's happening.
[00:14:46] God's saying, I'm coming down and I'm gathering you up as my People enabling you by my spirits, just as we've been singing this morning to do my will, to be the glory, to be my crowning glory. That's what he says.
[00:15:07] So we're going to be praying this week.
[00:15:09] We are going to be praying for his will to be worked out. So three things I'm going to give us three things this morning that we are going to be praying for, and I'm going to stop in between each one and just guess what. We're going to be praying this morning.
[00:15:28] There was a little whoop over there. That was great. We're going to be praying this morning. So I'm going to give you one thing. We're going to get into small groups, two or three have a few minutes to pray, then we come back. Okay. And do number two and number three. You okay with that?
[00:15:45] You sure?
[00:15:47] Okay, good. It will get us. It's a little bit cold in here, isn't it? So get us a bit active. You could even stand up and move around. But there we go. So first thing back in the week, back in September, week of prayer, we prayed to be a stronger church family. We are continuing to pray for it. We are a church family. Not because I say so, not because you say so, but because God says so.
[00:16:11] It's the most common greeting in the New Testament is brothers and sisters, you are brothers. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. It's the most common of Paul's references in all of his letters. Brothers and sisters, you are with me in Christ.
[00:16:32] What does that mean?
[00:16:34] Do you know? What does that mean about our identity?
[00:16:38] Sorry, I'm going to be a bit cheeky. What does it mean?
[00:16:41] It means you're stuck with me forever.
[00:16:46] Did you know that?
[00:16:49] You're not stuck with me just for this life.
[00:16:52] I'm going to see you in the next. Do you know?
[00:16:56] But it makes me think, right, because we've got a short term, we've got a short time on this earth.
[00:17:04] We've got a short time to do God's work on this earth before we get our rewards, before we get to see him in glory, before heaven comes down to earth and all things are made new.
[00:17:16] And so I am really challenged to use this life.
[00:17:21] And so when I see you in glory, when I see you in glory, that I might say, hey, I genuinely use my time to see you grow in Christ.
[00:17:35] That's what I want to do.
[00:17:38] Not that we put on a big program or strategy or whatever, but I want to see you and say, hey, I know that I generally put into your life to see you grow.
[00:17:50] And I think that should be a desire for all of us, shouldn't it?
[00:17:54] And, you know, it's really great. I'm going to talk about kids work later, but it's really great, isn't it? Kids work is just a fantastic way you can input into children as they're starting out on their journey to input into their lives, to see them grow in youth, in connect groups, in all the different ways.
[00:18:14] So, you know, is that something, an ambition that you have?
[00:18:20] Is that something that you think shapes your week, your month, your year, hey, I'm going to invest in someone else.
[00:18:28] I want to see them grow.
[00:18:30] And it's to going again. It's not something that we just need to work harder at.
[00:18:36] It's something that the Spirit comes and helps us. I found this fantastic comment. A guy called. I'm going to ruin his name. Sigurd Grindhelm. Right?
[00:18:47] He was commenting on the passage in Acts when it says, the church, the early church in Acts 2 and Acts 4 got together. They sold some of their possessions and. And they gave money to help those in need within the church.
[00:19:01] And he writes this. He said, the Holy Spirit did a miracle in the early church. He made the believers want to give away their possessions and share everything with those in need.
[00:19:14] Their economic fellowship was a result of the spiritual fellowship that existed among them. God had given them a new life and a new identity.
[00:19:26] They all belong to him now, and they were fully united to one another.
[00:19:33] And that is where we can pray to God to come and help us in this.
[00:19:41] You know, we all find it difficult, but we can pray to God to say, come, help us grow together as a church. Help us to be there to disciple one another, to grow, to input into each other's lives.
[00:19:58] Amen. Amen. Let's take a couple of minutes. Let's pray into this.
