Teams night Grimsby

A Healthy Culture

OK lets see where this goes Healthy culture what is it and how do we get there for us and Church.

i will talk about church culture a bit but most of this is about us because if we get a healthy culture within us, then that culture will have an impact in the church. it’s like if you have bad breath it spreads and people stay away, but if you have good breath people will come closer and engage with you, you get a chance to speak.

first of all we need to know that we are a child of God, don’t mean you've read it, you can say it, people have told you that you are, you have to know it. Know that you know, because then nothing can shake it.

things may come, words spoken over you and about you.

Why is this an important aspect of healthy culture because it’s foundational and because for there to be a healthy culture here, there needs to be a healthy culture in here, otherwise every time you say or do something you will unleash sickness around you. we need to know who we are and whom we serve.

OK secondly we need to have a culture of Grace, Grace as you know quite simply is undeserved favour. we deserve Hell but because of God’s Grace we receive eternity with God, not Hell without Him. so how do we have a culture of Grace.

Something I want us to get from this to understand:

God’s Grace is not limited by our understanding of it.

Grace is available to everyone

A changed heart is evidence of God’s Grace on the move

27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

&

20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

It’s a decision every day you have to make a decision to live this way.

Grace isn’t about waiting for someone to be nice to you, Grace is acting first.

courtroom:

The fact that God decides to overlook our sin is amazing.

Everyone needs Grace regardless of circumstances, there will be some people who go through life doing all manner of things, good and bad, helping the poor, the widows, the lame, but cheating on their tax returns. There are murderers, there are good people, people who help others, who give all their money away but do not know Jesus.

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

We all fall short of the glory of God none of us are perfect, none deserve heaven but the greatest rescue mission started when Jesus was born, freely given to us from God by His grace we can find redemption through Christ.

We have been bought and paid for when we live under grace when we accept Jesus we are free because the price has been paid.

Everyone needs grace wherever you are from, rich poor, young or old, whatever creed, whatever colour.

We talk as though we understand the term. The bank gives us a grace period. The seedy politician falls from grace. Musicians speak of a grace note. We describe an actress as gracious, a dancer as graceful. We use the word for hospitals, baby girls, kings, and pre-meal prayers. We talk as though we know what grace means.

Especially at church. Grace Graces the songs we sing and the Bible verses we read. Grace shares the church parsonage with its cousins: forgiveness, faith, and fellowship. Preachers explain it. Hymns proclaim it. Seminaries teach it. But do we really understand it?

Here’s my hunch: we’ve settled for wimpy grace. It politely occupies a phrase in a hymn, fits nicely on a church sign. Never causes trouble or demands a response. When asked, “Do you believe in grace?” who could say no?

This book asks a deeper question: Have you been changed by grace? Shaped by grace? Strengthened by grace? Emboldened by grace? Softened by grace? Snatched by the nape of your neck and shaken to your senses by grace? God’s grace has a drenching about it. A wildness about it. A white-water, riptide, turn-you-upside downness about it. Grace comes after you. It rewires you. From insecure to God secure. From regret-riddled to better-because-of it. From afraid-to-die to ready-to-fly. Grace is the voice that calls us to change and then gives us the power to pull it off.1

When grace happens, we receive not a nice compliment from God but a new heart. Give your heart to Christ, and he returns the favor. “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you” .

You might call it a spiritual heart transplant.

to start cultivating a healthy culture then we have to decide to stop living life as if the sole purpose is to arrive safely at death, that’s not why God came. says I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

Matthew 28:18–20 ESV

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Matthew 28:18-20

what this says to me is this:bus journey story.

OK in Boston when we first started on the journey of taking on the leadership of the church, what we came across were a group of great God loving, faithful people who had kept the church going.

They loved Jesus and were mainly elderly people, now although the music wasn’t great the times of worship were of the charts and they had Bible studies and prayer meetings but there was no out reach.

they used to give money to a mission in the Congo, they had a coffee morning that had been running for 10-15 years, 6 ladies had been coming all that time who were not from the church, not once had they been invited to church they were faithful in holding onto what they had.

which can become a poisonous atmosphere, you become very clique, very inward looking, not very welcoming.

lesson i learned from them is that we need to be faithful to God, but we cannot only have a one way focus, we need to have a two way focus.

one on growing ourselves and the second on others.

But faithfulness isn’t holding down the fort, faithfulness is chasing your dreams, we did a series over 5 weeks called chase the lion, where we said our dreams need to be like 500lb Lions, in other words scary. if you get face to face with a 500lb Lion your natural instinct is to run, but a 500lb Lion can jump 30 ft and run at 50 mph, your not going to get very far. but that’s what normal people do. you see a dream isn’t really a dream unless it’s scary, the only way it’s going to become a reality is if God makes it a reality. A dream is only a dream if it seems impossible, it’s destined to fail unless God shows up.

i want to be a Lion chaser, a dream chaser, what do they do.

2 Samuel

2 Samuel 23:20–23 ESV

And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was a valiant man of Kabzeel, a doer of great deeds. He struck down two ariels of Moab. He also went down and struck down a lion in a pit on a day when snow had fallen. And he struck down an Egyptian, a handsome man. The Egyptian had a spear in his hand, but Benaiah went down to him with a staff and snatched the spear out of the Egyptian’s hand and killed him with his own spear. These things did Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and won a name beside the three mighty men. He was renowned among the thirty, but he did not attain to the three. And David set him over his bodyguard.

They don’t see 500lb Lions as a problem, they don’t take flight, they fight to the death for their dreams, they see an opportunity for God to show up and show his power.

To create a healthy culture we need to be Lion chasers.

This is a quote from Mark Batterson a Pastor in Washington “most people believe God is real, but few people actually live like it, the result is a widening gap between their theology and there reality.”

They basically allow there circumstances to get between them and God, instead of letting God get between them and there circumstances.

we cannot let fear rule us, we cannot be driven by fear.

armour of God, the shield of faith explain.

A big thing that we need to tackle in us to have a healthy culture

is our ego, we have to get rid of it.

Ego says it’s all about me, that’s mine, they were mean to me, my feelings, my wants, my needs when really we need to live for others.

it would be so much easier if we only had to think about ourselves but then we wouldn’t be Christ followers. meaning we follow Christ’s example.