Episode Transcript
Welcome to the Neuma Church podcast.
Wherever you are in the world, we are so glad you've joined us.
Our prayer is that this message from our visiting guest ministry will reveal more of who our Heavenly Father is as we all grow deeper in intimacy with Jesus.
Enjoy the message.
All right.
Let me pray before we start.
Let me pray.
And I am so excited to share the word this morning.
Let me just commit this time to the Lord.
Lord, I just thank you.
Thank you for the privilege of living in a country where it's not hard to worship you, Lord.
Oh God.
And I just asked today that you would have your way in the rest of this service.
Continue to have your way, Lord.
You know, as I've been thinking about this morning, Father, and praying, I've just constantly had this picture in my mind of not being separate from you, but being in you, being inside you, being sitting in the midst of your heart, that we would abide.
We would not be separate from you, but we would be in union.
We would have common union with you, Lord, and that as we did that, Father, we would hear your words.
We would hear your heart.
God, I just ask for your anointing on this message.
Lord, I don't want clever words.
I don't want to have clever ideas.
If I have to pause, if I have to stop, let it be, Father.
We just want your way and your will this morning, Father.
And I thank you that you are going to transform all of us as we delve into your word, that your anointing is thick in this place this morning, Father.
And I just thank you, even as we just pause right now, Lord, I just feel the weightiness of your presence, and we just say, have your way, have your way.
We love you.
We love you so much in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen isn't God good.
Well, I'll tell you what's been on my heart, and we are starting, is it starting this week, this theme of kingdom?
Yeah, I mean, look, we have, we just pray and we felt the Lord just say the next few weeks is about kingdom.
And so I want to share with you today what it means to be a kingdom family and what that actually means.
So my message is titled, "Kingdom Family, Becoming the Ecclesia."
I'm going to explain what that word means as I preach, kingdom family, becoming the Ecclesia.
And the reason why I want to share it is because I just feel this sense that as a community and then the greater body of Christ, that the Lord is shifting some ideas that we have of what it means to be the church, but also what it means to be the church inside our own families as well.
So I'm talking twofold this morning, and I love this scripture, and I want to start with this Matthew 16 verse 18, where Jesus says to Peter, "I tell you Peter, on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it."
When Jesus said, "On this rock I will build my church."
That word "church" in the Greek is ecclesia, E-K-K-L-E-S-I-A.
Now, we translate it loosely to mean church.
The Greek word means community gathering of people, but it's so much deeper than that.
And as I explain it, you'll begin to understand just like I did, that this was actually a word that was quite shocking for Jesus to use when he said this to Peter, "Upon this rock I will build my ecclesia and the gates of hell will not stand against it."
And this is because the word " ecclesia" was not normally used to describe a religious organization or describe a spiritual gathering.
It was actually a Greek word that was used to describe a governmental organization that organized and arranged and made decisions around the political and society.
So this is not even a word that was used to describe how church should look, but rather it was a word that was used to say, "This is a group of people that can transform society by changing laws, making rules, and caring about the place in which we live."
Now, I don't know about you, but I find that pretty amazing to think that.
Could you imagine the disciples when Jesus said, "Upon this rock I will build my ecclesia."
They're probably thinking to themselves, "Hang on a minute.
Shouldn't you be saying, 'Upon this rock I will build the greatest synagogue in town?'"
Didn't say that.
And in our Western mindset, we might go, "Upon this rock I'm going to build the best church.
We're going to have the best building.
We're going to have amazing conferences.
God is going to be present."
All those things are wonderful, right?
But that's actually not what Jesus meant when he said, "I will build my church."
What he said was, "I am going to build a people movement."
It's not even about a structure.
And I am going to build a people movement that transforms not just a Sunday, but transforms the city in which they live.
That's what you and I are a part of.
And I think that the greatest deception that the enemy has given us is that we think we don't have that in us.
That we are not the ecclesia.
That we can't transform society.
That we think the ecclesia to truly be the ecclesia means you have to be on staff at church.
No.
The ecclesia is you and me.
And if we, I feel, I am feeling so hot as I share this, like I'm feeling my face start to heat up with the anointing because the Lord has been challenging me with this as well.
Imagine what would happen if we began to understand that we have the power to change the laws of the land by our prayers, that we are able to transform society.
We are able to, by our prayers, reduce the crime rate in the city, that we could pray and see governmental leaders being placed that are fully and full blown, born again, sold out to Jesus.
This is the kind of people that we are.
And I am excited to say that I actually believe that Australia in particular is about to step into a new revelation of what the ecclesia means.
It's not just a synagogue.
It's not just a building.
It's not any kind of people.
It's not a gathering one time a week on a Sunday or a Saturday.
It's a group of people that live 24/7 in service to the Lord, and every day you're going to have a story to share of something that the Lord does powerfully through and in you.
And you know, when I think about the Book of Acts, when I think about the early church, they truly were the ecclesia, weren't they?
It wasn't about a service.
It was people gathering in their homes.
They were sitting around meals, it wasn't a static institution.
It was vibrant.
It was alive.
It was expected that miracles and signs and wonders would just happen.
You know, even somebody's shadow is healing someone and they're getting up to walk.
Oh my goodness, Lord, let it be so in our lives as well.
This is how incredible the ecclesia was in the Book of Acts, right?
If we read Acts 19, verse 10, Paul planted the ecclesia and he said this in Ephesus.
This went on for two years, what?
So that all the Jews and the Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.
Every single person knew about what happened to Jesus.
Every single person in that region.
Let's think about that.
Well, that region at the time had over one million people.
That's wild.
Is that wild to you?
I'm like, what?
And I love this.
Ed Silvozo has got this amazing book called Ecclesia.
And he makes this comment that he says the reason why this movement was so remarkable was because it grew without any military or governmental support.
It really was a massive people movement.
So Jesus could have said I'll build a temple, but he chose that word ecclesia.
He chose that word because he was saying, hey, I'm not interested in making church great.
Ouch, but that's true.
I'm interested in a people being so on fire and burning our hearts burning within us that we would transform the world around us.
And this word ecclesia is so beautiful because it doesn't just encapsulate your blood brothers and sisters.
You know, I've got a wonderful family.
I love my family.
But when I look at so many people in this room, they're also my family.
I've got Nat, my friend, who's come to visit.
She's one of my family members.
A lot of people say we look like sisters, so we just decided that we would be.
I've got an amine on the front.
You guys, JJ and Paulina and Jerry and Dom, and you are my family, the worship team.
You're my family.
That's what the ecclesia means.
A dynamic community bound by love, purpose, shared value.
How do I know this?
You know, this is even in the Bible.
Matthew 12, 46 to 50.
Jesus says this.
Who is my mother?
Who are my brothers?
For whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother, my sister and my mother?
So imagine this for a moment.
The ecclesia is a family where meals become sacred gatherings, where prayer is as natural as breathing, where the blessings flow freely, and where generations walk side by side, lighting each other's path.
My friends, my family, my ecclesia, this is not a utopian dream.
It's the blueprint that God always wanted for his kingdom, and you are a part of it.
You and I are a part of it.
So I want to share with you in this message four things that I think can help us grow as the ecclesia.
I think we're doing a lot of this already, but I want to unpack why we do it.
Because I think that, you know, when we have revelation for why we're doing what we're doing, it actually changes the way we live it out.
So here we go.
There's so many more that we could choose, but I'm choosing four.
So number one, eat it.
I'm very theological this morning.
Eat it.
Yes, eat.
E-A-T, eat it.
What was in existence in the earlier ecclesia?
Food.
Having meals.
It wasn't a one-time event to partake of a meal.
Meals were the place where the forum would take place.
Discussion would take place.
They'd be an assembly.
We'd talk about what the Lord was doing, what he wanted to do.
And you know, what was happening over those meals is Jesus was immersing his people in the ecclesia.
He was trying to change their mindset and go, "It's not just about the synagogue.
It's not just about the public gathering."
So we as the ecclesia, we're a family that shares meals together.
We value tables over platforms.
Don't we?
We're tables over platforms.
We don't embrace people because of what they can bring to the stage.
We embrace people for what they can bring to the table.
You know, on the stage, we become the focus.
Me right here, I'm the focus.
But at the table, everyone is the focus.
That's why I love this idea of us really starting to value those moments over the table.
The table's about relationship.
And you know, strategy takes place over tables, doesn't it?
We sit, we have our coffees.
Pastor JJ's talked about being a coffee snob.
But you sit down and have a coffee with him at a cafe and you start to talk about what the Lord's doing and how we can strategize.
And you know, do you ever do this with your friends?
You'll be sitting, talking about the Lord, and then you'll go, "Hang on, I've got an idea."
It's like the Holy Spirit just enters the conversation.
And you know, I love this.
I see it in the life of Jesus.
This is what I love.
When I started to think about this idea, you know, the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he rose from the dead, do you know what he was doing?
Let's have a read.
John 21 verses 9 to 13.
I'm sure he was Italian, but let's have a look.
John 21, 9 to 13.
When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals.
This is the disciples.
There was fish on it and some bread.
Jesus said to them, "Bring some of the fish.
You've just caught."
Verse 11.
So Simon Peter climbed back into the boat and dragged the net shore.
And it was full of large fish.
But even with so many, the net was not torn.
There's so much prophetic stuff in that, but we're not going to talk about that right now.
Verse 12.
Jesus said to them, "Come, let's have breakfast."
Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them and did the same with the fish.
I love that he appears from the dead and cooks a meal and sits with the disciples and says, "Let's have a chat."
I love that idea.
It's time to be with one another and our family members to dream, to eat good food.
I love good food, to fellowship.
Eating together is more than just sustenance.
Kingdom family share meals.
Give thanks to God.
And you know, in our own personal families, we try to make this a really important aspect of the way we live.
I grew up in a very strict Italian home.
And so we were not allowed.
I don't know if our other families do this or other nationalities do this, but we were not allowed to start eating at the table until my dad sat down.
That was just the way it was.
Does anyone else have that in their family life?
Yeah.
We were just, you just didn't do it.
It was just, or whoever the oldest person there was, you do not start eating until they're sitting at the table.
And you know, little kids, dad had just come home from work.
Children's made this delicious Italian pastor.
And we'd all be sitting there and go, "Come on, dad.
Hurry up."
And he'd be like, "I just need to go to the bathroom."
And I don't know what it was about dad in the bathroom, but he was in there a long time.
And so we'd be like, "Come on."
And we'd be holding the fork like this, just waiting for him to come.
And then as soon as he'd sit down, we'd pray, and then we'd gobble up the food.
I love that idea, but we do this in our family.
These are little traditions that we do.
We turn off the TV when we're eating.
So that we can have this relationship.
Recently, we were at Uli and Chris's for dinner, and I loved how you went around the table and just started asking people very pertinent questions.
We found out really cool stuff about each other, didn't we?
I fell in love with Eden that day.
I was like, "She's the coolest chick around.
Most intelligent 12-year-old female I've ever met in my life."
And this idea of sharing meals, having conversation, getting rid of distractions.
Let's, as a church people, I know I'm pushing this point.
Let's not make it all about meetings.
I love the meetings, right?
I love them.
But let's make room for the table.
Hey, let's make room for the nachos, as Jerry and Dom are going to do on Friday night.
That's pretty cool.
I want to go.
I think Tim calls it, you know, whenever we have, I love Tim, our worship pastor.
Whenever we have a gathering with the worship, Tim, he doesn't just go, "I'm going to go to 7pm meeting."
He's like, "Let's have a meal."
Don't you notice?
And he said, "We're going to do a pot bless."
I'm like, "What the heck is a pot bless?"
And he's like, "Don't you know what a pot bless is?
Do you guys know what a pot bless is?"
So basically it's pot luck, but he said, "We don't like using the word 'lack' so we just changed it to 'bless'.
So there you go.
And it's awesome.
So everyone comes with a meal, we sit and we chat and half the time we don't actually get to what we're supposed to talk about because we're having so much fun.
I love that Jesus lived this.
A lot of moments recorded over meals.
The last supper, in fact, is the Passover celebrated over a meal.
He says to Zacchaeus in Luke 19, verse 5, "I'm going to eat at your house."
He doesn't say, "Hey, I'm coming to your house and I'm going to transform you with my presence."
He goes, "Hey, I'm coming to your house and we're going to have a meal."
And in the middle of that, he is transformed.
Mary and Martha, that famous story in Luke 10, was over a meal.
When Mary Magdalene's pouring the oil on Jesus' feet, what is he doing?
He's reclining at the table, waiting for a meal.
The feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew 14.
There's food, there's relationship, there's anointing oil, there's miracles, and the same can happen today.
And I want to say this before I end this point, and it's a sacred cow that I want to kill on the platform today.
We don't invite people to the table because they're strong or because they're a leader or because they have something to offer.
You are here because you have a place at the table, just because of who you are.
We love you and we embrace you.
It doesn't mean we don't want change.
It doesn't mean we don't want transformation.
But you're here because we love who you are.
I was recently listening to a preacher in a Zoom call who said something so profound.
He said he was telling us a story of this man who in Texas would breed stallions.
And for whatever reason, they decided to desex some of the stallions.
Now stallions are incredible, aren't they?
Big, beautiful, glorious animals, full of confidence.
And one of the things that happen when they desexed these stallions is that they still looked the same, but they lost their personality.
They lost everything about what made them stallion.
And I think sometimes we do this in church a little bit.
We say we love you because you're a strong leader.
We love you because you've got gusto.
Just don't say anything that's going to be offensive.
It has to look like this.
You've got to say it like that.
We don't do that at Neuma.
I just want you to know that.
I don't want to say we don't desex the stallions because that sounds so wrong.
But you know what I mean, right?
Kingdom family, everyone is at the table.
All right.
Point number two.
So we just talked about eat it.
Now we're going to talk about pray it.
What does the ecclesia do?
We pray it.
It's two verse 42.
They devoted themselves.
This is the early church, the ecclesia, to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
I mean, that scripture says so much.
We see here the four markers of the ecclesia.
We see teaching.
We see fellowship.
We see the breaking of bread.
And we see prayer.
And I want to talk about the prayer component.
One thing that I love about Neuma is we love to pray.
But I'm not talking right now about our corporate prayer meetings.
I am talking about developing a culture of prayer in our families and our personal lives.
Because I think what we often do is we get too busy to make that a lifestyle.
We actually just go, we're going to have a prayer meeting and we go to a meeting and that's how we pray.
What would it look like if we cultivated a life of prayer where it's almost like we're praying all the time?
It's not a thing we go to do.
It's just who we are.
I think we get so busy in our lives that we don't cultivate this in our lives.
And I love this idea of cultivating the kind of prayer that just becomes part of our day to day.
I know many of you do this already, but I'm just encouraging you to keep doing it.
I love what Catherine Coleman said about prayer.
She said this when they asked her about her prayer life.
She said this.
I pray all the time.
Because if I limit the Holy Spirit to a certain number of hours a day, I would be in danger of using him for my own purpose.
If for instance I spent one hour a day in prayer, I would expect the Holy Spirit to reward me for that hour.
I would begin to feel that it was that hour in prayer that caused the anointing in the meeting.
I cannot use the Holy Spirit that way.
I must practice His presence all the time.
Oh Lord, may we be a people that practice your presence all the time.
Mother Teresa said this, you can pray while you work.
Work doesn't stop prayer and prayer doesn't stop work.
It requires only that small raising of the mind to him.
And where we say, I love you God.
I trust you God.
I believe in you.
I need you now.
All things like that, she said, are the most wonderful prayers.
I love that.
Let's make prayer a lifestyle like the ecclesia is supposed to do.
Let's talk to God all the time.
You know, I remember having some friends who were in full-time ministry come over for a meal.
And they'd been visiting from another country and we sat down and before we sat to eat, because we have always had this culture of let's pray before we start to eat.
I know not every family does that, but I've done that since I was a kid.
And this is kind of what I mean about this idea of building these kind of traditions into your family life.
We will always go, it doesn't matter if people are Christians or not that are sitting at a table, we just go, let's pray.
And we put our heads in prayer.
And this ministry family, the kids just looked at us like we were from another planet.
And I said to the Father, don't you do this, he goes, I know it's really bad, but we actually don't do this at home.
And I was like, wow.
Okay.
And it made me just go, it's not, I'm not judging by the way, but it made me go, I want this to be part of my culture in my family, is that we pray before a meal.
We pray on the way to church, we pray in the car, on the way to school, we do it often.
I'll just say to the kids, let's pray about the day and we'll just do a quick prayer while we're driving.
And I hope that as I do that, it becomes a tradition that my kids pass down to their kids as well.
It's just something that we do, that we develop these practices, that we don't just pray when something is wrong, but we pray prayers of thankfulness daily or I developed a Roma quote, do you want to hear it as I was putting this together?
This is a Roma quote.
I'm not quite Mother Teresa, but here you go.
Pray when things are majestic, pray when things are desperate, but also pray when things are ordinary.
Amen.
The ordinary is so valuable to the Lord.
Include God in everything.
You know, there's some research from the Harvard School of Public Health.
I thought this was absolutely fascinating.
I had to include it.
They did a study around the priorities families gave to prayer.
Now, this isn't a Christian organisation doing this study, it was the Harvard School of Public Health.
And so they did this research and how this impacted the family.
And this is what they said.
For the 198 diverse families in our national study, we found that the family that prays together benefits in more ways than just staying together.
This is what they discovered.
Young adults who prayed or meditated at least daily as children or adolescents were 16% more likely to report higher happiness as young adults, 30% less likely to have started having sex at a young age, and 40% less likely to have a sexually transmitted infection compared to those who never prayed or meditated.
Wow.
So what are some practical things that we can do in our own families?
You might have some ideas you'll share with me too.
I'd love to hear them.
I love this idea.
Create a family prayer that can be prayed every day.
You know when my kids were little, because I'm musical, I had this little thankfulness song and the kids knew it from when they were six months old and it was very, very spiritual.
I went like this.
Thank you for my eyes.
Thank you for my nose.
Thank you for my belly button.
Thank you for my toes.
Thank you for my hands.
Thank you for my feet.
Thank you for everything you gave to me.
And we would sing that all the time.
The kids knew the actions because I wanted my kids to grow up with the thankfulness in their heart.
What's something you can do that's quick, that's easy, that people can remember?
Maybe you can put it on your fridge or the bathroom or recited in the car.
Maybe a gratitude prayer for every day of the week.
Have a theme.
That stuff's fun.
You know, Miracle Monday, Transformation Tuesday, not Tarkos Tuesday, Transformation Tuesday.
What about this idea of world prayers?
You pick a country for the week and you find out all the stats and you pray that there would be transformation that comes to a nation.
That's fun things to do that make prayer really part of daily living.
So the Ecclesia praise.
All right, point number three.
So we eat it, we pray it.
Number three is we bless it.
Bless it.
Psalm 114 verses 14 to 15.
I love this scripture.
May the Lord cause you to flourish, both you and your children.
May you be blessed by the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.
You know, we often say that term.
Bless you, don't we?
But what does it actually mean?
Well, it actually is incredible when you study what it means to receive a blessing in Hebrew college culture, in Jewish culture.
This Jewish scholar, Dr.
Yosefah Rubel, she wrote this, "Blessings in the Bible suggest an intimate relationship between the blessed and blessed.
A blessing from God marks an intimate relationship between God and man, serving as proof that he finds himself in God's favor.
To bless someone was relational.
It was a relational thing.
And we see that when we read the stories, don't we, about fathers passing on blessings to their sons.
But what actually they're doing is they're saying this.
They're saying the blessing that God has given me doesn't stop with me.
I'm actually going to pass it on.
So when someone says I'm going to put a blessing on you, what they're really saying is, whatever my inheritance is, whatever I have been blessed with, now that is yours."
And that's why it tended to happen in scripture between fathers and sons.
You wouldn't do that to just anyone.
You wouldn't just walk up to someone in the street and go, "I am going to bless you with everything that I have."
Because they believed that this is actually transactional in the spirit.
I am releasing the favor of God that's on my life to you.
Now when I think about that, I love that because we're all family, we can bless one another.
With whatever we are blessed with, it doesn't have to be practical stuff.
I'm talking the anointing and the blessing of the Lord.
We can pass that on to other people.
What we're saying when we say God bless you is we're saying any success that I have, I give it to you so your future will be fruitful.
So my friends, I bless you today.
I bless you today with any fruitfulness that I've had in my life.
I bless you with that.
And as we bless others, as we live a life where we want to bless people, we remind them of who they can be, how much they're worth.
We focus on people's strengths and not just their failures.
We're actually prophesying destiny when we bless people.
Amen?
Let's see what happened then when Jesus went to bless the children.
That reframes that whole story, doesn't it, when you think of it?
Because the parents were bringing their children to Jesus going, "Would you bless them?"
Again, if we understood the culture, we'd understand why the disciples rebuked them or didn't want them there because you're like, "Hang on."
They're probably thinking, "That blessing's for us.
Like where is mate?
Like why are they getting the blessing?"
Well, what did Jesus do when they tried to stop, when he tried to stop, when they wanted him to stop blessing the children?
It says in Matthew 19 verses 13 to 15, "Then people brought little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them, but the disciples rebuked them."
Verse 14, "Jesus said, 'Let the little children come to me.'
Do not hinder them for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.
And when he had placed on his hands on them, then he went on.
What an incredible thing for Jesus to do.
Rangers, children coming up, and he puts his hand on them.
And essentially what he's saying is, "I am giving my inheritance to these children."
Wow.
When we come to Jesus, he does the same thing, hey?
He's putting his hands on you this morning as we speak.
And he is saying, "I pour my blessing on you."
You know, I'm remembering a story where I was blessed.
I'm going to try not to cry.
I'm not going to look at you, Nat, because I don't want to cry.
But about 10 years ago, my dad, who is one of my closest friends, was completely healthy, completely fine.
He went on a business trip and he died in his hotel room in his sleep.
And he wasn't sick.
There was nothing wrong with him.
It was absolutely devastating for our family.
And if you've ever lost a loved one, you'll know that feeling.
It's a pretty deep, deep feeling of grief.
Well, the first thing my friend Nat did when dad died is she was like, "Okay, when's the funeral?
I'm coming to clean your house.
I'm coming to cook food.
I'm coming to put things on the table."
And this beautiful friend of mine went out of her way, cleaned the house, left the funeral early, opened up, set all the food out so that when people came, there would be something there.
I did not have to worry about a thing that day.
And then at the end, she cleaned everything up.
And there's many times when I've gone on a ministry trip and I've come home and the house is spotless.
She's never said anything.
She's just secretly found a way to get in.
She's cleaned my house.
What a blessing to have a friend like that.
Hey, she's my friend.
She's not yours, all right?
Just say, you know, that's a blessing.
She's saying, whatever I have, I'm bringing it into the Waterman household.
And I know the Lord wants the same, not just for you, but for us to be those kind of people.
I love this scripture, Proverbs 11, verse 21, the five, Proverbs 11, 25.
The one who blesses others is abundantly blessed.
Those who help others are also helped.
That's so beautiful.
So be someone who blesses.
I'm running out of time.
I'm almost done, but I want to share with you just from a practical so you can see how we do it in our own lives.
But I'm always thinking of ways that I can incorporate the blessing in my life.
You know, one of the things, for example, that I've just lived for a long time, you know, I hate when people feel like they're overlooked.
I've had that happen to me a lot of times in my life.
You know, I worked professionally in the music industry for a long time.
And it was always about the most talented, the loudest person in the room was the one who got the gig.
And I was never wired like that.
I'm not a pushy person.
And so I just felt like I missed out on a lot of things, you know, because of that.
And I started to worry that maybe I was the kind of, you know, maybe it was me, I'm the problem, you know.
But I always felt the delight of the Lord that I never pushed myself forward is the honest truth.
I always felt like God was just like, I like that you're not like this.
But what I did is it made me go, I never want anyone else to feel like that.
And I try my best, you know, to make sure people don't feel that way.
I'm not perfect at it, but that's a way that I like to bless.
But because I'm musical, obviously, everything's a song.
It's true.
You know, people go, everything's a song.
It is true.
I am everything for me is a song.
And so when my son was little, he was having nightmares, he was having a lot of nightmares.
And I was like, Lord, what can we do?
I know into his room, I prayed over his room, but I thought, I'm actually just going to record some songs that I make up that are just for ace.
And so I wrote this song and I made him sing it with me, which he will never do to this.
He doesn't let anyone listen to him singing.
But he sang for me on this recording.
I've got a recording of it.
But these were the words that I wrote.
I'm going to sing a little bit to you.
Is that all right?
So I just sang this blessing over here.
It goes, it's time for prayers and night time.
It's time for sleep and nighttime prayers.
You brush your teeth and comb your hair.
You snuggle under covers soft and warm.
And when you pray, I'm listening.
And as you fall asleep to dream, I'll cover you with peace until the dawn.
Do you know when you sleep?
I sing this little song.
And if you're needing my help, you can always sing along.
And then I would sing, you are brave.
And I would go, I am brave.
You are strong.
I am strong.
You are smart.
You are special, special.
You can do anything.
And then he'd sing back to me.
I can do anything.
You are amazing.
I am amazing.
And I just loved it.
I just loved singing that to him.
And I still do it much to his embarrassment.
But that's actually Aces' song.
So let's be a people that bless.
It's not hard to bless when it becomes something you incorporate into something you're good at or something that you do.
It doesn't have to look like the other person that blesses.
It's not always about money.
It's not always about finances.
You know, what have you got on the inside of you that can bless somebody else?
We had June.
Where's June?
You hear?
I think she's in kids' church today, maybe.
June?
You're not here?
So, OK.
Yep.
So she, we had a conference on the last few weeks.
And my poor hubby got influenza A.
Everyone say, oh, that's very sad.
And I didn't have time to cook.
I was going to the conference, right?
June just turns up at our door with the best Asian soup I've ever had in my whole life.
She didn't do it just once.
She did it twice.
She just came and blessed us with her beautiful food.
All right.
Last point.
And then we're done.
We've done.
What have we done?
We started with...
Eat it.
You're the...
Awesome.
The last one is walk it.
We are going to walk it.
What does that mean?
Well, you know, transforming into the ecclesia is a process.
Yeah.
When we don't just arrive and go, we've all got it together.
It's a story that is constantly unfolding itself.
We don't just arrive.
We're being transformed in the way that we walk, on the way to where we are going.
So what does it mean?
What does transformation mean?
I love this.
It is seeing things that we may not have seen before, which allows us to do what we have not done yet.
And for this, we have to be open to change.
Transformation asks this question.
What is missing that prevents on earth as it is in heaven?
Can we be the kind of people that ask that question?
We're on a journey.
Both of us are.
All of us are.
I'm on a journey.
I'm still trying to be transformed.
There's things in my life I need to change.
I'm not perfect.
But we are being changed day by day.
That's what transformation means.
But I'll tell you something.
Transformation means we have to walk a different way.
We have to be open to change.
And I want to encourage you, you know, that the ecclesia is not the kind of people where we go, until you change, you're welcome at the table.
That's not how we work.
May we never be a people that only accepts people when they've got it all right and have ticked all the boxes.
That is not how we do it.
We also don't believe in replacement theology.
What is that?
Replacement theology is the idea of you get to a certain age.
And we don't need you anymore.
We've got to move the father out of the way so that there's room for a son.
There's actually nowhere in Scripture where that happens.
What would it look like if instead of living a mindset where we pass the baton, we actually light the torch?
It's a different mindset when we go, "Hey, doesn't matter what age you are, we stand side by side."
Now that doesn't mean that your position in the kingdom doesn't change or morph, just like it does when your kids grow up.
You're not always going to tell them to do certain things like you did when they were five, but you don't leave the house when it's time.
That's what replacement theology believes.
And I don't know why we have that in the Western church, but it has slowly crept in until it looks normal.
Well, I want to tell you we're breaking that sacred cow today too.
So listen to me when I say this.
You are not too old and you are not too young.
All right?
We're just the right age for what God has called you to do.
You don't have to look a certain way.
All right?
We don't need the look.
We need the love.
So we don't expect anything except for you to come as you are.
I want you, my brothers and sisters, to walk in a way that you matter, that you understand that you matter.
I want you to walk in a way that you understand the generations matter.
And I want you to walk in a way that if you weren't walking, it would impact the ecclesia.
Your walk is so important.
So I want to do two things before we end.
The worship team can come up.
I want to do this.
I want you to stand with me for a moment.
Thank you for joining us.
We hope that you enjoyed today's podcast.
And we realize that not everyone has had the opportunity to respond to the good news of the gospel.
And for this reason, in all of our services and platforms, we want to extend to you the opportunity to follow Jesus.
The Bible teaches us that we have been created for a relationship with God.
However, sin, which is essentially disobedience, independence and disbelief, or are simply missing the mark, entered the world and separated us from God.
Romans chapter 6 verse 23 says that the wages of sin is death.
And a debt was owed.
And the Bible tells us that he Jesus demonstrated his love for us, that while we were still sinners, he died for us.
Jesus paid the penalty for our sin.
John 3 16 says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
God so loved the world that he gave us Jesus, that whoever believes in him will be saved.
All that is required of anyone is that they believe in Jesus, the Son of God, who came, lived, died and rose again so that we could be forgiven, made right and given the right to become children of God and to have life forevermore with him."
Today you can begin a relationship with Jesus.
To believe in him is to simply to respond with faith in our hearts and confess with our mouths that he is Lord.
And we do that through a simple prayer.
Follow along with me.
Dear Jesus, I believe that you are the Son of God.
I thank you that you love me and came to forgive me of my sin.
I repent from my old way of life and I turn to follow you.
I receive the free gift of eternal life, and I ask that you fill me with the Holy Spirit so that I can live a life of following after you.
I thank you that I am born again as a child of God and that I am a new creation in Christ Jesus.
Amen.
If you prayed this prayer for the first time, we would love to connect with you and connect you to your next step and the local church in your area.
You can contact us on our website at neuma.church.
Thanks for listening.
