prayer 29th Dec 2019

The morning layout.

I’m gonna speak for a while about this year, share where we have been & where we are now. i want to give us a couple of points for us to pray into then flow into worship.

2019

A time of change, a change of venue, It’s a great building with scope to do so much more. during the week we have different groups using the building, from a lunchtime club, a computer club to the Princes trust & the school next door Boston pioneers have used our building too & there are more who want to start using it next year.

So the building, it’s great to have somewhere to call home, where we can work out of during the week, & also not have to fill a trailer up, unpack it & then pack it all away again into the trailer ready for the next week. energy.

now speak about the different groups that use the building.

We now have the van outside run by Mark to bring an income into church so we can serve our community better.

We are now serving a local school, Tammy goes in & does assemblies & does an amazing Job. Get Tammy up to speak about it.

You know as a church we are growing in influence, not because that is what we plan to do but because we are doing what God wants us to be.

This year has been tough financially for the church, we have been paying a lot for the building but we are coming through that time, one of the reasons for that is that we have been looking after 2 buildings but in the last 2 weeks station street building has been sold & we will be using proceeds from the sale to refinance & get a better deal for us on this building.

restore Homes, this year

Ok mission outside the UK

First

In June we planted a church in Kisumu Kenya, Pastored by John & Margaret Oigo, speak about how church is going.

Romania, stana de mures, Pastored by John & julia. this isn’t a Restore Church but we are growing a strong link with these guys, sending teams out every year

But we still need to pay for it

so prayer points.

Thankfulness for this year Our home, for God bringing us through a tough year financially, the sale of Station street. The different groups that use the building, for the relationship with the schools Restore Kisumu & Stana de mures.

2020 a year of the church that’s you and me growing, developing our faith.

Growth track, 4 week course for discipleship, leadership training, growing into the people we are called to be, being on the mission.

The mission is always the same, love people & love em into the Kingdom of light, Gods Kingdom.

God has given us a place, a home from where we can be resourced & go out, that’s what this place is for, we are to be the church out there.

Church is not a building; it is a group of people who are serving side by side in the army of God. Sometimes we get wounded, and sometimes we see another get wounded. The battles can be heavy and at times, the potential for hurt can be great. What sort of soldier are you. what cost are you willing to pay to help reach others, maybe you need to give up some of your time to serve at the soup kitchen, we have spaces & want to do extra nights, maybe you could give time to help Adrian mentor the guys that live in our house, be available for a conversation, give some time during the day to help Mark on the van. maybe you could give 10 days of your time to come to Kenya or Romania & help support the mission there. help people go from a future in the kingdom of darkness to a future in the Kingdom of light.

Use the gifts that God has given you to serve the church & the community, give of yourself, give of your finance. what’s important is that you do something.

maybe

There’s a boat at sea, its war time and it gets hit by torpedoes, on fire and sinking, what happens, firstly the distress message goes out, and as that is happening the crew start to get people into the life rafts to save them from death, people are diving off the ship to escape the fire. In the panic to escape life rafts get tangled and tip people into the sea, but people are escaping getting saved, but are the people in the water just left to die or do the people in the rafts help to pull them to safety. Are they seat fillers, consumers or do they take an active part in what is going on, the saved who were once in danger of death doing all they can to change the situation of those in danger of death now? In our case spiritual death. You see 2 things, Jesus came down from Heaven on the greatest rescue mission ever to save us from spiritual death, separation from God for eternity, do we say thank you and remain in our church getting fat on teaching or do we join him on the rescue mission and do something about it.

But what is mission

Our confession of faith should start us of on the road to mission.

James says:

(The Message)

Faith in Action

14-17Dear friends, do you think you'll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, "Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!" and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup—where does that get you? Isn't it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?

18I can already hear one of you agreeing by saying, "Sounds good. You take care of the faith department, I'll handle the works department."

Not so fast. You can no more show me your works apart from your faith than I can show you my faith apart from my works. Faith and works, works and faith, fit together hand in glove.

19-20Do I hear you professing to believe in the one and only God, but then observe you complacently sitting back as if you had done something wonderful? That's just great. Demons do that, but what good does it do them? Use your heads! Do you suppose for a minute that you can cut faith and works in two and not end up with a corpse on your hands?

21-24Wasn't our ancestor Abraham "made right with God by works" when he placed his son Isaac on the sacrificial altar? Isn't it obvious that faith and works are yoked partners, that faith expresses itself in works? That the works are "works of faith"? The full meaning of "believe" in the Scripture sentence, "Abraham believed God and was set right with God," includes his action. It's that mesh of believing and acting that got Abraham named "God's friend." Is it not evident that a person is made right with God not by a barren faith but by faith fruitful in works?

25-26The same with Rahab, the Jericho harlot. Wasn't her action in hiding God's spies and helping them escape—that seamless unity of believing and doing—what counted with God? The very moment you separate body and spirit, you end up with a corpse. Separate faith and works and you get the same thing: a corpse.

Over the centuries mission has been understood in a variety of ways:

individual – saving people from eternal damnation ,

cultural – making other people like us.

ecclesiastical – bringing people into the church

However, more recently there has been an awareness that mission is God’s mission (often called by the Latin translation of this: missio Dei This is a Latin Christian theological term that can be translated as the "sending of God." Mission is understood as being derived from the very nature of God. The missionary initiative comes from God alone. But is mission God’s job or ours? If we see mission as an attribute of God’s character rather than an activity of the church, it changes our view of the church.

maybe God has put something on your heart to do, then come to me, talk to me, lets see if we can help you get it started, notice i said you, don’t come saying i think church should do this or that unless you are prepared to take the time to find people to help you run it & see it it through.

2020 is a year of stepping up as the church

This building, Building developments

Stronger ties with the schools.

Restore homes, Extra houses for families, Possibilities of bed sits later in the year.