5 May 2024 Lyle

The speaker introduces himself as Lyle and mentions that he will be discussing church values. He emphasizes the importance of creating an environment where people feel like they belong. He also talks about valuing the presence of God and the need for His anointing and grace. The speaker refers to biblical examples such as David, Moses, and Solomon to illustrate the significance of God's presence. He explains that experiencing God's presence is not just a religious concept, but a tangible encounter that can transform lives. The speaker mentions a scripture from Genesis about Jacob's dream and how it signifies recognizing God's presence in the house of God. He highlights the power of God's presence and warns against taking it for granted. The speaker also discusses the significance of the church building as a place dedicated for worship and encounters with God. He acknowledges different trends and movements in the church and how they have impacted the experience of God's presence. especially those who are visiting with us. My name is Lyle. I will be ministering the word today. Hallelujah. As you are well aware, we are teaching on our church values over the next few weeks. There are five values that we're going to cover and Pastor John started last week on the first one. He's spoken to the whole value of belonging. We want to create environments where people feel that they belong. Amen. It's part of our DNA that we as a church value the fact that we want an environment where people fit in, where they belong, where they can be their genuine self without any sense of, you know, trying to fake it to make it that in this place you're free to be vulnerable, to be open and to be real and know that you belong in a house where you are loved by God and by his people. Amen. The next value that we want to speak into today is we value the presence of God. We value his presence and for those of us who have a Pentecostal background or maybe even a charismatic background where we are familiar with the presence of the Holy Spirit and church services that speak about his presence and all of that, this is a no-brainer. We get this. We understand this. But I want to unpack this this morning so that those of us who may have come from a more traditional background can understand what we mean when we talk about the presence of God, what we mean about creating an environment where people encounter God and have an experience with God. Because I think we take it for granted sometimes, you know, even in the modern Pentecostal church, you know, there is a loss of the reality of the presence of God. I want to speak into that this morning as well. But we value the presence of God because we can't do this without God, right? We need God. We need his anointing. David knew that when he went into battle that he said to God, I'm not going into battle unless you're with me. And he inquired of the Lord. He was diligent in seeking the Lord and knowing God's hand upon that which he's about to endeavor. And he moved forward knowing that God was with him. He valued the presence of God. Even Moses, when he was in the desert, he had symbols of God's presence. And he would move when those symbols moved. When the pillar of fire moved, when those symbols of his presence moved, they moved with it. They knew that they had the covering of God over their lives. Even when Solomon built the temple, you know, the presence that was on the ark of God came upon the opening of the temple and his glory fell. It was weighty. It was the glory of God where his presence was not only tangible, it was so heavy that the people had to fell flat on the floor because they couldn't stand in the presence of God. In scripture, there's understanding, there's realities of knowing the tangible presence of God. We know that God is with us. The Bible says that he'll never leave us nor forsake us. So we understand when we talk about the presence of God that he's always with us. As I said in the prayer, we can't escape from God. You know, God holds everything together. If Jesus was to withdraw, if his presence was to withdraw, all of the molecules that holds everything together is held together by God. If he was to withdraw, everything would just float away into nothingness. The presence of God is in all, through all. We understand that. We know that. When I talk about the presence of God in this context, I'm talking about knowing his tangible presence in a gathering. The why behind the what. Why do we do what we do? We want to create an environment where people experience the presence of God, where the hardest of hearts may come into the house and they are melted like wax in the presence of the Lord. We value the presence of God, his anointing, his grace. And I understand that throughout church history, there's different terminology that is used to explain, I guess, the same thing that I'm trying to unpack this morning. And sometimes those terminologies can get confusing and sometimes those terminologies can carry a stigma of something that has a negative connotation as opposed to the truth of what it really meant in the time in which that terminology was used. But I'll unpack that in just a moment. The scripture that I always go to when I talk about the presence of God is one that you've heard me speak from time and time again already. It's one of my go-to scriptures. It's Genesis 28. And it talks about Jacob, how he's on a journey and he's going from one place to another. And the distance is too long for a one-day trip, so he had to stay overnight on the way. And as he did so, he has a dream. And in the dream, he sees a ladder extending from earth to heaven and angels going up and down the ladder and God at the top of that ladder in heaven. And God speaks to Jacob and reiterates the prophecy that he gave to his father Abraham. And he wakes up in the morning and the scripture, the verse that really gets me every time, was he wakes up in the morning and he sees that he was fearful, he was awe, that he was in a place that was holy. And he declared that that place was none other than the gateway to heaven, that it was Bethel, the house of God. And that whole encounter and that whole experience, for me, it describes how coming into the house of God, that's their ideal, that people come in and they recognize that God's in the house, yeah, that God is here. That I knew this church was here, but I was unaware of the fact that God was in it. I came into this place thinking that I would just meet a group of people like I'd meet at the bowling club or I'd meet, you know, at the bar down the road. But I met a bunch of awesome people, but also I met God. He was in the house with them. When the Bible talks about in those days, a foreigner will come and grab your sleeve and say, take me up to the house of the Lord because I hear that God is up there. Those are the days that we are living in, we are longing for, that we want people to experience. That's why we talk about the presence of God, that people come into his house. And sometimes we come here week in, week out, and it's part of our discipline, part of our habit of Christians, that we come into the house of God, but don't become familiar of his presence because what we take for granted sometimes is so powerful for somebody who's never been in it and they step into it. That's why I love that song we just sang that never let me forget the awe of your presence because it's the awe of his presence is what we value because we do not want to ever come to a place where we think that it's because of us, that it's because of our skill and our professionalism and our human ability. It is the presence of God himself. It's because God is there. You see, the house of God is a gateway to a whole new dimension where people come into the house of God. They experience God's presence. We experience God's presence. We're challenged by by his word to live lives sacrificially. We come to the altar at the front of church and we and we pour out our hearts to the Lord. We submit our finances at times. We submit our children. We dedicate them to the Lord. We submit our lives. We come and make vows to our husband or to our wife at the altar before God because this is the house of the Lord and this is the place where we have made exchange with God. I know, you know, we can say, oh this is just a building. The church is his people and I get all that. Yes, the church is his people but there's something about ground dedicated for kingdom purpose where people come and meet and reside and we can brush aside some of the religious, you know, platitudes that go along with some of all that stuff but the reality is God is in the prayer of consecration. God is in the prayer of when people pray, Lord we need a place to gather and people see miracles bust out as land becomes available and then we pray and we work to build a building and to create a structure that represents heaven and people in the city look at that structure and they see an image of worship that's lifting up towards heaven and gives an illustration of who God is and what our worship is all about. People are drawn to that. I'll unpack that there in a bit more detail in just a moment but I want us to understand something. There's something powerful about the presence of God. See, the modern church, let me unpack this. I've got to be very careful how I do this. Let me bring a scripture first as a place to start. 1 Samuel chapter 16 verse 7 says this, but the Lord said to Samuel, do not look at his appearance or his physical stature because I have refused him for the Lord does not see as man sees for man looks at the outward appearance but the Lord looks at the inward, at the heart. I've been a Christian now for, I've been in ministry for over 30 years, been in church not constantly since all these 30 years but before that I was in and out of church, church since I was four years old, so 50 odd years I've been connected to church. I've seen because of my age and I'm not old, I'm still young, there's those of you who have been around church things for centuries. But you become aware of the ebbs and flows of God's presence, you become aware of of different trends and different things that take place. I came into the church in the middle of the era of Bill Sebrisky and Derek Prince and deliverance was a huge deal. I remember coming to church and there were people manifesting at the altar on the ground and demons being cast out, noises and everything, it was awesome. Then we went into the season of the church, we came into the spiritual warfare sort of scenario where you had the rick joiners and those of the vineyard and various movements emerged and there were spiritual warfare, the prophetic came to the fore and it was again awesome. We saw some crazy things take place and that's only, it's in the Pentecostal circles and then you know obviously there was the charismatic renewal and earlier before that in the 70s, 60s, 70s, late 60s, 70s and significant things took place of supernatural manifestations. And then we went through a season where where there was a bit of a lull because some of those things went to excess and like anything that's trendy, there's an excess. It's trendy for a season but there's always those who like to hang on a bit longer. It's like fashion isn't it? Skinny jeans were fashionable yesterday but some people like to keep wearing them. You understand what I'm saying? Oh they're wriggling a bit, oh. So yeah there's some excesses and the church growth wasn't going at full throttle as it was in previous years and then the Hillsong phenomenon took place and I gotta tell you it was a revival, no doubt about it. It was a move of God and there was a message that came out from, I think it was the executive pastor Donna Crouch, amazing message. She spoke on the five-star church, the five-star church. And that was a game-breaking message that churches around the world took hold of and they began to model themselves on being a five-star church where they removed the cringe factor from church and began to bring in the you know the professionalism of of actually honing the skill of your craft. If you're a worship leader, get before God and worship him. If you're a singer, learn the songs. And they removed everything, there was an obstacle on the stage and they created a professional expression, lights came in, technology began to get involved. Right from the door they understood what it was to create a welcoming environment, people in the car park, car park attendants, people serving. Her message was based on the fact that she had a five-star experience in a five-star hotel and she thought and God spoke to her through that experience, why is my church not operating at a five-star level? And she began to unpack this message and it was unpacking the why behind the what that they were doing and they saw God move upon it. Then the modern church grabbed hold of that and started to emulate to try and get the same success but you can't emulate something without still praying. You can't emulate something that's still without having their sacrifice before God. The human heart is what God deals with and we got to go through those dealings in order to know the anointing and the presence of God in our lives. We can't go through and copy what someone else is doing without doing what they did in the back room. We're only copying what we see on the stage but we're not copying what's happening in the background, getting before the Lord, being contrite, being broken, having a sacrificial life, getting before the Lord where we have laid it all down. God blesses that, touches that, you come out of that place with his presence on your life, with the grace on your life. When you begin to do that which you're called to do, it has weight behind it and God blesses it and people are touched and things begin to shift. But if we are just copying the outward appearance then we don't get the same results. You following me, Church? And the key to the scripture that I read out about Samuel was this, is that in order to win the lost, people see the outward appearance. God sees the heart but people see the outward appearance so therefore we need to create an outward appearance that attracts people because people are attracted to what they see. That's the human condition, we are drawn to what we like, we're drawn by what we see. So they weren't taking away the heart issue where God deals with the heart, they just understood, there was a revelation around creating an environment where people come in. Along the same time there's the Hillsong phenomenon, was the Willow Creek phenomenon where we had the seeker sensitive experience where you're creating an environment of church where people can come in and they can be comfortable in the house of the Lord without being upset by anything that's cringy. Yeah? So we try, so in that move, again a move of God, in the Willow Creek scenario they are seeing souls saved, things are happening once again, same thing, things are happening in the back room that we don't know about, the guy's working on art and they come out with a strategy which they use and God bless. Again, we want the same success as Christians, we want to see growth so we come and copy and do the same thing without the same back room experience. And then we create an environment where we've got church that is looking pretty good but it doesn't have any presence. It doesn't have any presence. Yeah? Souls aren't getting saved, people's lives aren't changing, habits of the world begin to infiltrate the church and people are wondering why people are falling over, things are happening, church is looking good but it's not growing, there's no presence. It's like, it's like Samson, he got up and he shook himself to take on the Philistines after being with Delilah, expecting God to be upon him and the saddest verse in all of scripture, he did not know that God departed. We know of churches where God's left the house, God's left the building folks and all that's left behind is a remnant of people going through religious motions thinking that they're doing something significant for God but they are not because God is not in the house, his presence is not there. We value the presence of God people, we value the presence of God. The reason why many churches have swung towards the Hillsong, the Willie Craig sort of phenomenon is because of a reaction to the excesses of the of the prophetic movement or the modern mystics as they call it, where they saw weird things taking place and those of us who've been part of the Pentecostal experience know of some really weird stuff. Yeah we can tell you some weird stories okay that's interesting that we just keep moving on and whereas yeah others will look at that and think oh gosh those guys what are they on man yeah very questionable anyway the reaction towards that stuff to flip to the other side has been very real and really understandable and in my role as a prophetic person is trying to keep true to the prophetic nature of who we're called to be as a church and as a people and because I've been around a while I understand the excesses and I understand the reactions and this morning I want us to understand the reality of what it means to carry the presence of God. So let me give you some theology around that because with anything like this there's a theological teaching or understanding around it all. So I'm going to speak about, I'm going to talk about the mystics first right when we think of mystics we think of you know hippies probably and we think of you know you know dream catchers and things like that I'm not talking about that sort of mystic I'm talking about the original mystics back because again in church history you know there are times when God's presence was very real in the birth of the church the day of Pentecost the spirit fell there was fire upon the church and for 300 years Christianity booms until Rome itself got converted and the emperor got got saved and made Christianity a national religion and things happened and we need to understand that 500 years ago all Christians were Catholics right yeah all Christians were Catholics a lot of things happened the last 500 years but prior to 500 years ago there is a season called the dark ages it's called the dark ages for a reason God's presence was a long long long long way away it was dark and we understand that in scripture there are periods of dark times as well we know when the Israelites are in Egypt for 400 years they guys seem to be a long way away between Joseph and Moses they'll ask him where are you God then Moses turns up to answer the prayer 400 years later we know that when Samuel was called you know he was a small boy his mother was barren unable to give birth she was in the temple praying crying out the Lord Eli the priest comes out hears her praying and says to her God's heard your prayer she goes home and she's with her husband and nine months later she comes back with a baby named Samuel and because she's so so uh thankful to the Lord for giving her the ability to produce a son she comes and brings her son to church and leaves him at the altar and Eli brings up Samuel and Samuel's a little boy in bed and he hears God calling him he's a boy Samuel Samuel and he runs to Eli and says you call me sir and he says no I didn't call you and three times he comes back to Eli saying did you call me did you call me and Eli understood ah ah he didn't realize at first because the the voice of God was so rare in those days the Bible says and he says go back and respond to God he is calling your name and the prophet Samuel was called to ministry so we know in scripture that there are times where the presence of God or the voice of God is is rare or dormant and there's people that God raises up that he speaks to and God moves significantly upon them and through them we know in the life of the church since the birth of the church there have been ebbs and flows of God's presence we know since the reformation there have been a number of things that have taken place and I want to start there this morning just quickly in the reformation you've got uh the let me start back of a method of a of a and talk about the mystics first so that you can understand what I'm talking about so a mystic mysticism is the transformative presence of God in early christianity the term mystical referred to three dimensions which soon became intertwined namely the biblical the liturgical and the spiritual contemplative the biblical dimension refers to the hidden interpretations of scripture in other words the the mystics understood that God the mystics understood that God speaks to us through the mystery of the scriptures we read the word of God and God speaks to us out of the scripture right I mean that's fundamental we understand that it's easy right yeah yeah yeah so this is this is how they termed being a mystic it and the other one was uh the liturgical dimension refers to the liturgical mystery of the Eucharist the presence of Christ at the Eucharist in other words they understood and I'm not taking to the extreme where the Catholics believed that the bread became the actual body of Christ and the blood became the actual blood of Christ I'm not talking about that I'm talking about the very fact that the symbols represented something of God and when they held them and they meditated on that God would speak to them and there was a sense of connection with God through those various traditional liturgical practices this is making sense yeah they understood that that in they had a thought that when you look at a stained glass window and saw an image God could speak to you through that image and give you some insight on of the heart of God they understood some of that they understood that that there were elements in life that that God speaks through that that you can hear God and and and you are drawn closer to God the bonfire of the vanities you know where those who were not into that burned all those things because they thought they're idol worship God only speaks to us through the Bible doesn't speak to us through everything else they were called sensationalists not sensationalist with an s sensationalist with a c they didn't believe in hearing God's voice and believe in God speaking through things they only believed in reading the Bible and God spoke and his presence is in the in scripture no wonder it was called the dark ages yeah the other thing that God spoke through the third thing was was uh was this was that is in contemplation or experiential knowledge of God the contemplation is this is where where you would meditate and you contemplate on the word of God or on the word of God or on him and and God would begin to minister and speak to you in times of fasting and praying now the extreme and the excess was this is where the monastic priests came out of that place and they thought that they need to go and be hermits and and hide in solitude and just stay in the place of contemplation and they missed the power of the presence of God lifting us up and taking us us into mission carrying the power of God to change lives amen I'm unpacking some of this because history is written by some people who have these understandings in the reformation I read a book by Jack Deere that talks about the the Presbyterian prophets Presbyterian prophets in the reformation who were able to go into a town and prophesy at a wedding they go to a wedding prophesy over the husband wife saying your husband will only be with you for three years and then he's going to be taken home to the Lord how about how about that prophecy at your wedding day yeah yeah so the husband wife they believed the will of the Lord they had a fantastic three years the prophet was at their house the day that that it all took place the death of the husband he left first because of various reasons and then they came got the husband because he was a protestant and he believed in what he believed in he was martyred for for the Lord he died the prophecy came to pass took out he talks about another Presbyterian prophet that prophesied in a village where where they want to kick him out because you know he's getting so much popularity that the politic the politicians do not like this guy because he had bigger crowds at his meeting than they had at their meetings so they made a law and kicked him out of the town and he says I'll only come back when you invite me then a wee while later a plague hit the town and a significant number of people got died and then they invited the man of God back into the village he came in and began to minister and people got healed and things began to get made well put back into order there's a number of stories like that and Jack Deer says that these original stories were written in the 17th century unpacking the truths or what happened through the reformation but after the 17th century a lot of these stories began to get lost because those who were sensationalists did not believe in the presence of God or that the power of God or the gifts of God lasted beyond that beyond the apostles began to write them out of history I want us to understand something the presence of God is under assault by the enemy we value the presence of God but we need to understand the enemy does not want us to have the presence of God he knows that the presence of God in the house of God upon his people upon the people of God is significant to see God's mission achieved in the name of Jesus so he'll do anything to rob the presence of God oh the music's too loud oh why do you talk about that all the time oh Darren he talks about his experience of coming to church almost every week what is that all about because he experienced the presence of God he came home when he was 31 I love that testimony Darren I love it I love it I love it we want everyone to come home but there's always those who are grumpy about some element of God's presence oh the worship goes too long oh why do we do that why do we do we do it because we value the presence of God and we want people to come to God and if you don't like it go somewhere else go down the road and sit with the company of people where God's left the house or repent there's something you're carrying in your spirit that you need to repent of if something about the presence of God gets you angry gets you into a place where you're yeah you're grumpy there's something seriously wrong going on on the inside go before the law and say God check out my heart seek whether I am right is that all right but we value the presence of God you see I was at a significant church a Pentecostal church just a few years ago and a prophet came into the house his name was uh his name was who was his name Michael Maiden Michael Maiden phenomenal man of God he was a prophet preaching in this church massive church significant church and as he was preaching he prophesied of a woman and as he began to prophesy she began to manifest there was a spirit within her that was reacting to the word of the Lord and she began to scream I'm talking about in the house I was on the edge of my seat doing church now but what surprised me was this there was a massive breath in the room going it's like all the air left the room and everyone in the room was wondering what on earth is going on and I had a bunch of young people asking what happened what was that all about and I began to unpack the whole deal of deliverance and I realized there's a whole generation of people who do not understand the power of God and his presence and deliverance because we've been busy building secret friendly churches with professional presentation keeping away from anything that seems uncomfortable and perhaps cringeworthy that that comes in the guise of the presence of God because we are trying to keep a safe environment I want to tell you as a church we don't want to have an environment where we try to put boundaries around God and how he should operate God you can be here but you gotta do it like this like that God you just come do what you do do what you do do what you do and we're living in days where where people are in dire need of being set free and and I love counsellors don't get me wrong and I know there's heaps of counsellors in the room I know there's heaps and I might get myself into trouble in fact I might come to you after we get counselling but but I I just wonder if your job as counsellors would be made easier if the power of God would turn up and just set some people free yeah just set some people free I mean navigating through the mind and and trying to get people to a place of a of a different way of thinking can be eliminated that whole work that whole process of days months even years can be eliminated by one touch from God where people are set free from a stronghold of a devil in Jesus name I long for the days when the presence of God will move again as it's done in the past setting people free people coming in getting saved they don't understand the gospel all the words that I've used they're going what the heck I don't understand a single thing he said but I know one thing God's in the house and he did something in my heart yeah the days where you're sitting amongst the boring I remember being in church and the message was delivered in a way that I thought oh Lord help me I want to go home then he does an altar call and half the church is at the front including me I'm sitting oh Lord I want to go home and next minute I'm at the altar how do I get here screw the God you see you know I remember being in church and watching a skit the acting was bad even the theme was cringeworthy they're going oh Lord I'm glad I didn't bring a friend then they do an altar call for salvation and bam people up the front didn't ask the Lord it's either we've gone for the professional awesome um presentation of awesomeness without the presence and I remember days where things were bad presentation bread delivery things were awful but the presence is powerful yeah what one would I'd rather have the nice presentation without the presence the awful with the presence the awful with the presence but I'm not saying let's be awful right you're right Pastor John I'm not saying come on let's bring back the awful come on we need to get the best of both worlds and go for the presence and the power of God upon that which we do in Jesus name we value the presence of God now I had a Damascus road experience you all have heard my testimony where God walked in the room God walked in the room I wasn't looking for God I wasn't even in church but God walked in the room and he touched my life and transformed me he led me into a church where I began to to develop as a as a as a Christian who had a call on his life God connected me with people who helped draw that out and groomed me I've been in different environments where the Holy Spirit has used people and environments where God just came upon me at the altar or different things I've experienced some significant encounters with God because I sought after him and his presence many of you in the room in the house of God today because you've experienced God his presence came upon your life you've encountered him in a real way people might say why do you go to church why are you a Christian you may not even be able to articulate why but you know one thing I'm not going anywhere else because God has encountered you you see we don't want to I don't want to be a preacher that has the ability to talk people into getting saved I want God to do the saving because if God I can't keep you my words can't keep you he can and his presence and so this morning I hope I've done some justice I got another five pages of notes on the whole deal but I I really this is our DNA this is I know Jono's heart and uh and now as an eldership we've we've uh we've been through uh well I went through the process of Pastor Jono as I've tried to articulate or put into words what he had on his heart which is not easy he's got good England as you know but it wasn't that hard because really it's not something we try to put on it's something that we are yeah yeah we value belonging we value presence and over the next few weeks you'll hear the other three but they are values that are part of our DNA and I just hope this morning that I was able to convey why presence is a value that we carry in Jesus name let me pray for us father I thank you that you're here in this place Lord we come we gather because we know that when we come to this place we will meet with you and Lord we ask this morning that Lord you'd continue to intensify your presence in our lives in our church services in our homes in our life groups in our youth ministry in our children's church whatever places we gather Lord we ask that your presence go with us and father as we articulate with others what you are doing what you've done in our lives father let that which is on us go on others we pray for salvation we pray for people to find freedom because we are carriers find freedom because we are carriers of freedom father we pray Lord that you would use us significantly in our city to touch lives in the name of Jesus we pray amen