Thoughts and Amusings

I spoke yesterday at church. I wasn’t all that nervous, had an overwhelmingly sense of peace which I think comes from the fact that when you know that you are in the right place for your gifting God lets you know. This doesn’t mean that you won’t get any nervousness it just means that you feel at peace on the flip side when you are in the wrong place for your gifting you know it, God knows it and everyone else around you knows it. I think as a body of Christ we have to start to make sure that we acknowledge this. I was telling someone yesterday for example that I am particularly ungifted in intercessary prayer and get really nervous when I am asked to prevail in this area, however if someone asks me to use my GIFTS in other areas where I AM gifted I know I will be fine because that is where I will flourish.


So the sermon its self was part of our 'Potent Parables' series and was on Matthew 25: 31-46 aka the 'Sheep and Goats' Parable. I focused on us doing simple things that hold eternal significance for God and Reaching out to those around us in our immediate realm of influence. God is looking for doers not talkers. The three points were:

1. The sheep (ones who had followed what Jesus said) provided others with simple acts of kindness.
2. The sheep used what they had to be a blessing.
3. Both groups were surprised by how significant their actions were.

Anyway the sermon was absolutely amazing. Amazing because afterwards we did something different to what we normally do at our church and we had an ‘open floor’ where the senior pastor got people to feedback on what the sermon meant to them. There was some really weighty stuff I bought up (i.e. how we behave outside of church is way more important than how we behave in church) that people were pondering on and really seemed to want to discuss which is great. After church a whole lot of people came up to me and wanted to discuss stuff too that I had talked about and particularly the practical implications of reaching out in our immediate situations to those around us.. so was pretty ka pai!