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Hi , thanks for listening to this episode of the Goodly Talks podcast . Let's jump

Equipping Believers for Unity and Maturity

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in .

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Alan had talked last week about . We were wanting to spend the first four weeks on foundations , and foundations being what the Lord had talked to us about over a year ago Like , hey , this is what this church is going to rest on . Are these things ? And you may notice that we have some problems counting , not because I'm Canadian and he's Scottish and we do it differently , that's not what it is , but it is more that it seemed appropriate than on Easter to speak on the majesty of Christ , and so we sort of reordered how we were going to do the topics in order to make that work . But where that leaves us today is that I actually get to talk about the equipping of all believers , which is so cool , I think . What kind of makes me the most excited about getting to do this topic is one of the things that makes me most excited in ministry is to equip other people to do things . I mean I think that's like the deal . You know , that's what I get excited about . I remember sitting in this group of people and they had encouraged us , asked the Lord , what did he make you to do ? And ask him for just one line , and I was like , okay . So I was , you know , sitting there and I wasn't really sure what I was going to hear , but all I heard was I've built you to build people . And I was like done , I'm all about it , you know . So I'm super excited to talk about this today .

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So let's go ahead and start by going to Ephesians 4 . If you have your Bibles with you , or if you want to look on your beautiful device , we are going to be Ephesians 4 , starting at verse 11 . So it says and he gave some as apostles and some as prophets , and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints , for the work of service , to the building up of the body of Christ , until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man , and to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man and to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ . Wow , that's a lot right . So let's break it down a little bit . First of all , the he here is Jesus , right ? So he gave some as apostles and prophets , evangelists , pastors and teachers . We commonly refer to those five things as the fivefold . How many of you have heard that term ? Right , so he has given the fivefold gifts to individuals as a gift to the church . And then it says why he did it . It's for the equipping of the saints for service , to build up the body , to walk in unity , to know Jesus and to mature into fullness . That my words looks like , smells like , feels like Jesus . You with me so far . So I love this passage . It's really clear . What is the fivefold ? What does leadership exist for ? To build the church on every level . Yeah , I also love this passage in the message .

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Do you ever go back and forth between different versions of the Bible ? I do it all the time . I have a parallel Bible so it actually runs with the NASB and the message right next to each other all the time and they're pretty different . But what I love about it is often I will read a passage . I'm very familiar with the NASB , when I got saved many years ago I won't tell you how many years ago , because then you'll start doing math , but many years ago I got saved and I read the NSB and I love the NSB . And so most of the time , when do you ever do like memory verses or somebody says , hey , do you know this verse ? Most people I know recite it from the NIV . I only know NASB . Like in my head it's NASB . So I always think NIV sounds a little bit off . Sorry , but we read the NIV with our kids , so I'm getting used to it . So often you will see something there that you didn't see before , because it's worded just enough differently to make you notice something . Have you had that before ? So that's partially why I like to go back and forth . So this passage in the message says rhythmically and easily , with each other , efficient and graceful , in response to God's Son , fully mature adults , fully developed within and without fully alive like Christ . Isn't that cool . I think there's a lot about the wording that I love . I think much of Ephesians .

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Paul is speaking about unity , because there's so much disunity in the church and unity is an important representation of what Jesus looks like . Unity is important to God . Yeah , I think one of the best examples that I have seen of unity is river dance . I'm sorry , it's true , though , right , how many of you have seen Riverdance ? Whether you liked it or not , you know what I'm talking about , right ? You have 40 or 50 people out there that are tapping so on point with each other that it sounds like it's like you know one shoe , basically right . If there was one lone guy out there that was doing their own thing , it would sound like a mess , but because they're perfectly in unity , it's impressive . If they weren't in unity it wouldn't work at all . You'd just be like go , just go . Now , certainly there's moments where somebody gets a shining thing and they're doing their own little dance and you're like that's cool , and then they come back into unity and I think it's much like that for us as well . There's going to be moments where the Lord's asking us to do something that isn't exactly the same as what he's asking everybody else to do , but we're still in unity . Does that make sense ? Anyway , I'm sorry you don't like Riverdance , darling , it's over now . I won't talk about it again for the rest of today .

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Maybe I also love the wording of efficient and graceful in response to God's son , of efficient and graceful in response to God's Son , and then fully developed within and without . Wouldn't that be good ? If we were fully developed within and without , I wonder how different we would look . The church would look . I think it's good . So in pondering that verse and looking at those different roles I wanted to sort of specifically talk about that a little bit the whole thing of apostle , prophet , evangelist , pastor and teacher . So they're all different roles . They have a different equipping mandate and different skills that are involved in each of those roles . Would you agree with that ? And I think , not so much in recent years , but really for many years , we expected pastors to be able to do all of those things , whether they had that skill set or not . Yeah , everything was pastor . The pastor does that . But they're actually very different things and they produce different things in the body .

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So , apostles , they equip us to serve with perspective and vision and wisdom and they help the body see the big picture , which helps us to move forward into unity . Remember , all of these roles are looking to mature the body , to bring us into unity . Yeah , to bring us into unity . Yeah , the prophets they equip the body to hear the voice of God . They train us to use our gifts to encourage , to lift up and to build up one another . Evangelists equip us to see the broken around us and to get his heart for people who don't know him yet right , which is wonderful , isn't it ? Pastors , they equip us to love well and I think that's both ourselves and other people To see and to serve the needs around us and to be present with the person in front of us . Teachers equip us to read and understand God's word and how to walk it out , to let it sift us and call us higher .

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Probably we can see some of these gifts in ourselves , right , hopefully , at different times , and sometimes I think it's seasonal . Have you ever at some points thought oh yeah , I feel like I have leaning more towards evangelist , or leaning more towards being prophetic , and then other seasons you're leaning more towards like , oh , I just can't get enough of the word and I just wanna share it . Do you know what I'm talking about ? So I think that is perfectly normal to have different seasons and different passions . I also think that people that are called to full-time vocational ministry often will really stick within maybe two or three of those things , and they kind of really focus on those things , which is good , because then we can play towards our strengths .

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Regardless of which of these five roles we're talking about , though , the purpose is still exactly the same . So the role of all of the offices is to equip for service . I'm going to say this a lot today to build up the body , encourage unity and lead believers into maturity and the fullness of Jesus . So I think what's really cool about this , though , is that there's a secret hidden in here , and the secret is this If you're looking at how to grow , then the first thing you actually need to do is to figure out how to serve , right ? If we are looking to grow , you serve . I can give you a practical demonstration of this . How many of you have ever had to prepare to lead like a small group or a teaching , right ? So you have to like , get in the word , put the whole thing together . Then you need to share it . Did you have to grow ? A whole lot in the doing and the preparing of all that , and then the sharing and the being vulnerable . You do , but you're serving , and in serving others , you get to grow , and you'll see that over and over again .

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It's one of the things that my spiritual dad , my spiritual parents , are John and Carol Arnott from Toronto , and if you don't know them , they're amazing . If you ever get a chance to hear them , hopefully we'll have them here soon . They are wonderful , and they led a revival in Toronto for decades , and John started in ministry in Children's Church and he says that's when he started in ministry , not when he started pastoring . He says he started in ministry when he started volunteering in Children's Church and he says he learned to preach in Children's Church because if you can keep kids' attention , you can keep adults' attention right . So he would always tell us like when people would go oh , I feel called to preach , and blah , blah , blah . I remember talking to him when I was like I really feel like the Lord might be calling me to ministry and he's like great , where are you going to get connected and serve ? And I got connected in with youth and he's like lead a small group . You're going to learn how to speak by doing that .

Growing Through Serving and Unity

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So in serving we grow , and often I think the reverse is true If we choose not to serve , we also choose not to grow . I'll leave it at that for now , thanks . I also think that we grow by practicing unity . Now I'll sort of flesh that out a little bit , I think as people and I don't think it's just me , but I'll just say this I really like to be right . Does anybody else have that issue ? Right , I like to be right , but Jesus likes unity , and so I'm trying to practice dying to myself .

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On the non-essentials If somebody's talking about the essentials , like you know Jesus , okay , I'm probably going to have another couple rounds of conversation there , right ? But on the non-essentials , what if I wasn't trying to stir the pot , but I was actually just trying to connect and get to know someone and see something from their point of view ? Does that make sense ? What if we worked on unity and grew in that ? I just think we would look different . I think we'd actually look more like the Lord . I think other people help us mature . I think just being in relationship with other people helps us mature , right . So being in a body helps us mature . Choosing to be outside of the body often , again , we sort of stay exactly where we were until we rejoin the body . Does anybody know what I'm talking about ? So there's lots of ways that we can mature and there's lots of ways that we can grow .

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I just think the first one that is mentioned is service . And again , often when we talk about topics like equipping , we talk about the flashy things of the kingdom . We want to be equipped in the heal the sick , raise the dead , cast out demons , cleanse lepers . I don't . We don't really see that much anymore , but it'd still be really cool . We love that sort of what John calls the beginner's list . You know , hey , you're new here , you just met the Lord . Oh , here's the beginner's list . Go ahead and just heal the sick and raise the dead and cleanse . You know that's just go do that stuff . Okay , sure , great , right , we love prophecy , we love the things that look just really cool , right ? Again , I'm not trying to be critical . I think it's great that we love those things and that we want to be equipped to do amazing things . I just think that we still need to keep checking our hearts about why we want to do them . Does that make sense ? Y'all are very quiet today . I'll just keep going .

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I think also , there's something really important at the end of this verse that we almost never think about , and that's these two little words freely give , you're right . Back to service again . Back to service again . Hey , go , do all the fancy stuff and freely give . Freely give what ? Probably everything , knowing Jesus right , freely give , live out of generosity . We're encouraged so many places in scripture to live generous lives .

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Again , I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to heal the sick . We train people to heal the sick . I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to heal the sick . We train people to heal the sick . I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to prophesy . We train people to prophesy . I love seeing people figuring out that they can hear God and actually prophesy over people . It is so fun and we will do that for sure . I just think that if it's not laid on a healthy foundation , something's likely to go off , and so I think that's way more important . I think if we want to prophesy and heal the sick because it's our inheritance and we want to point the way to Jesus with it , great . But again , if we're wanting those gifts just so that we look good , then I think we're on really dangerous ground . I'll circle back to that .

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I have tremendous sadness when I look at the church today and I mean big C church , the church as a whole I see the things that have been happening in churches , as prominent leaders with huge ministries have fallen , and it feels like potentially that's because those ministries maybe were about them or meeting their own needs , but it doesn't seem like it was about serving other people , and I think the result is you have people that are confused about Jesus now , not just church . They're deconstructing their faith . I think Jesus has been misrepresented and it's just caused confusion to happen in that sort of unraveling . It makes me super sad and I think honestly , a lot of that's all going to come down to inner healing dealing with your own stuff in your heart , not shoving it down , not running from it . I know that both of those things are tempting and I've done both of them in different seasons . I'm just being honest I have I've shoved it down and I've tried to pretend it wasn't there . But if we actually don't get our hearts healed up , we're just ticking time bombs for something right so it can look good for a while , but in the end we're probably going to end up with a result that we don't actually want . I think this equipping to serve the body cannot just be about all the big stuff . It has to be about character . And if we were to focus on character first , I think we'll actually get the results we want to get , because I think the Holy Spirit wants to come and rest on us and do the flashy stuff no problem , and if we have the character in place , then we don't end up being the next HBO Max special , basically HBO Max special . Basically , I think it's interesting

Importance of Character in Leadership

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I don't know how many people know this , but before the revival started in Toronto , which was in 94 , in the summer of 93 , john and Carol we were only a church of about 250 people at the time and John and Carol invited in John and Paula Sanford who were like inner healing I don't want to use the word gurus , but you know what I'm talking about . They've literally wrote the book on inner healing called the Transformation of the Inner man , and it is a tome . And I remember them saying hey guys , like whoever wants to come , we're going to do this thing . It's going to take a couple of weeks . I remember taking time off work so that I could go do this thing . It's going to take a couple weeks . I remember taking time off work so that I could go . I didn't even know what I was coming to , but they thought it was important . So we showed up and there was probably about 80 of us that came and did this thing .

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Inner healing camp , you know , came to church with our packed lunches and learned about inner healing and so we learned about , you know , inner vows and ungodly beliefs and generational curses and all that kind of stuff and we did a whole bunch of work and a whole bunch of freedom and then five months later , the Holy Spirit landed in our church in just a remarkable way and all of a sudden we have thousands and thousands of people . Quite literally , we had , in the first couple of years , 6 million visitors come through that church and he already had a ministry team ready to go , because there was 80 of us that had done this inner healing work . So it was literally when everything started going crazy . He said hey guys , if you were here in the summer at the summer camp thing , y'all are ministry team , start praying , let's do this thing . And it was ready to go . I don't think I'm going to get to heaven and get to ask like , the question of like , was that important ? That happened first , but it felt like it was . You know . It was like okay , we were set up , you're ready . I don't know . I just want to be ready for whatever's coming . I want to be ready to walk it out . Well , and again , I think it's always going to come back to character .

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I remember being at a conference . Again , this is a number of years ago probably . Well , it might be 20 years ago now . But we would have conferences in the church in Toronto as well and one of them was a pastor's conference . And I remember being at the pastor's conference and sometimes at pastor's conferences you hear a lot of conversations about how many people are in your church and you know all that kind of stuff . And they always have some people come in and speak that have , you know , been in ministry for ages and whatever . And I remember being in the green room and hearing just some of the conversations going on and just sort of thinking , huh , that's interesting , you know .

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But one of the speakers there he wasn't really engaging in the conversation , he was just sort of getting ready to go and when the time came for him to get up and speak , he'd been in ministry for 40 years and he's an awesome teacher and he does like family counseling and all that kind of stuff . So he gets up . He said I love doing pastors conferences , I love listening to all the side conversations and he's like you know , and everybody's sort of jostling and trying to figure out where do I fit ? And you know , cause you know pastors have insecurities too , right ? So you know they're all trying to oh , am I okay , am I okay ? And he stands up and he says to this group and I can't remember how many , was there 800 or 1,000 pastors ? He said guys , I don't care about the numbers in your church , bring me your wife and kid and I'll tell you the measure of man you are . You could have heard a pin drop . He's like .

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It can't be about numbers . It has to be about who you are when you're at home . That's what's going to make a difference . If our families are getting a different version , then they are getting who we actually are . I'm sure you've heard an expression that goes something like this who you are when no one is looking is who you are . Your character is who you are when no one is looking . I think God carries a character way more than he does about anything else . And again , I think all the other stuff is going to come along . But if we work on the character , it has something firm to sit upon . Yeah , I think if we would work on who we are at home and who we are with our families and we would get help when we need it , then we would actually get where we want to go a lot faster and we get that foundation in place . And so when I talk about help when we need it .

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If , for example , the pipes burst at home , who do you call Plumber right ? Why don't you just do it yourself ? What right ? So there's one or two people in the room that could , but I'm not a general contractor and so I'm not going to try and fix the plumbing . You know , if the electricity breaks , you're going to call the electrician right . If something in your heart is having a hard time , why is it that we all of a sudden like bow down to shame and are like I can't go get help ? Why we could get help with our pipes or the electricity or whatever ? Alan and I are big believers in therapy . We've both been through therapy for years . I don't mind asking for help . I think if we can't ask for help we'll stay stuck right , but if we can go , okay .

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I'm in a season where I actually realize , just like a plumber or an electrician , I need somebody else to come and help me and pay somebody professional that knows what they're doing to do it . Just like , not you know , hiring Bob , whoever Bob may be , who's like you know , I can fix that with some duct tape and gum . Like what are you MacGyver ? Oh , I just aged myself . Does anybody know who MacGyver is in this room ? Okay , just checking .

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Sometimes I honestly wonder if some of the shows that I reference are Canadian shows , but I think that was an American show . So I think we're fine . Listen , the deal is none of us are perfect , right ? I'm not perfect . I'm far from perfect . I still have all kinds of stuff that I'm working on and dealing with , but the point is , we're working on it and we're dealing with it . Right , and we're learning .

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I think it's important to determine to be a lifelong learner . If you think one day you're going to arrive at the moment when you don't have to learn anymore , I think you're going to be disappointed , or you're going to stop learning , like you hoped , but you're going to miss a whole bunch of stuff that God had for you in the midst of it . Does that make sense ? So I think what I'd love to encourage us to do is decide today to continue to grow , to continue to mature , to be open to feedback , and I think in doing that , we'll actually become more like Jesus . Yeah , and again , I still think we get to do all the cool stuff . I just think we might need to refocus what we're looking at yeah , 1 Timothy 3 , verses 1 through three .

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So it says if anyone wants to provide leadership in the church , good , oh yeah , it's good , are you glad ? And then it says this but there are preconditions , wonderful . Let's look at what those might be . A leader must be well thought of , committed to his wife , like it , cool and collected , accessible , hospitable . He must know what he's talking about , not be over fond of wine , not pushy , but gentle , not thin skinned and not money hungry . Good , I like lists . Does anybody else like lists ? Like it helps me , helps me , okay , good , I can . That's I can work on that , that's good .

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He must handle his own affairs well , attentive to his own children and having their respect . For if someone is unable to handle his own affairs , how can he take care of God's church ? He must not be a new believer , lest the position go to his head and the devil trip him up . Outsiders must think well of him , or else the devil will figure out a way to lure him into his trap . Okay , so there's like you know . Good , that's what it is to be a leader . Oh , I'm so glad I've decided not to be a leader , but wait , it keeps going .

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The same goes for those who want to be servants in the church , right , serious , not deceitful , not too free with the bottle . I like how they switch up , how they say the same thing over and over again Thank you , message Not in it for what they can get out of it . Ouch , they must be reverent before the mystery of the faith , not using their position to try to run things . Let them prove themselves first . If they show they can do it , then take them on . No exceptions are to be made for women . Same qualifications we can now say that like eight different ways are to be committed to their spouses , attentive to their own children and diligent in looking after their own affairs . Those who do this servant's work will come to be highly respected . A real credit to this Jesus faith . I love that . There's no exceptions . Let's just put it this way there's no exceptions really for anyone . Anyone right ?

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If you want to be a leader , a man or a woman or a servant , here's the criteria . It's pretty much all the same and it's all about character , right ? I think it's just way too important . I also love this line about outsiders must think well of him . In the NASB it says he must have a good reputation with those outside the church . That's interesting , right , in which case it's not going to just be about putting on a shiny happy face at church .

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It's the people that we encounter when we're running late , when we've had a bad day , when the person who maybe rear-ends us , all that kind of stuff the outsiders . Do they think well of us , the people at work that don't believe in Jesus . Do they encounter someone that makes them think they want to know him ? Does that make sense ? I think I mentioned this a few weeks ago , but we may be the only Bible those people will ever read , right ? So I know we live in the South and there's a church on every corner , but not everybody has heard the message . Or they may have heard the message from somebody who didn't have the character piece going on . Does that make sense ? And it just became a confusing message . What would it look like if a body of believers full of character went out there and encountered the world ? I think they're going to want to follow us home , which sounds creepy , but you know what I mean . They're going to want to follow us and find out who we know as a body . In terms of the big C church , I think this is something that also concerns me , but also as individuals . So I think it's important how we behave and what people encounter within us .

Authenticity and Growth in Christian Living

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In almost every secular job that I've ever had and again , I've been in ministry now for 20 years , a little over 20 years I used to work in restaurants . I worked in car rental Mostly I worked in well restaurants and car rental but in every restaurant or every secular job I've ever had , I've gotten to lead people to the Lord and I would never have called myself an evangelist , but somebody who knew what it was like to live in darkness and knew I didn't want to be there , and somebody had told me listen , the best way to evangelize is go out and be as authentically excited about Jesus as you can be and talk to people like they're excited until they want to be . I would go to work and , whether you believed in Jesus or didn't , I had the same level of excitement as if I was talking to my friend about what I saw God do the night before . Does that make sense ? Because of that , I got to have some wonderful conversations .

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Now , did I also have people that were like , just you know back off ? Yes , I did , but I wasn't like in their face . Do you know what I mean ? But I'd have some people that would make like little comments . Mostly they were kind teasing comments , but sometimes I'd get the other kind .

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What I noticed was even from those people when everything hit the fan in their lives , I was one of the people they were coming and talking to about whatever it was right , because when everything hits the fan , you're looking for somebody who knows somebody bigger than you , right ? So if we are people of character that are walking around and it is obvious who we know and who we live for , you're again going to find people coming to you because they know you have the answer that they don't have . Right , that's the stuff right there . Right , that's the best kind of flashy ever . I think the goal for all of us , and certainly for Alan and I , is to be authentic and to be vulnerable , be enthusiastic lovers of Jesus who are working on our stuff and we're honest that we're working on our stuff and that we have stuff and then we're doing our best to help other people grow right , if we look like we have it all together , we are unapproachable .

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And the secret is nobody has it all together , right , which maybe isn't a secret anymore , but I think one of the things that I saw John and Carol do so well is be the same people on the platform in front of thousands of people as they were at home in their living room . The way they talked didn't change . The kinds of conversations that they had didn't change . The way that the way they talked didn't change . The kinds of conversations that they had didn't change . The way that they interacted with people didn't change . Their style of speech didn't change . Nothing changed . John and Carol on and off the stage were exactly the same people and to me I was like I want to do that In Toronto .

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We'd have tons of guest speakers come in because they'd have conferences all the time and sometimes you'd have very I'm trying to think how I want to say it stylized speaking . Do you know what I'm talking about ? You know the hard D's on God , god , and I think he didn't talk like that before . But you know , like I , I don't understand . But then I didn't grow up in the church and I didn't grow up in the south , and then I grew up going to a church where John would like drink a coke while he's speaking with a couple thousand people there . So it was kind of laid back not laid back about character , but definitely laid back about show Matthew 7 , verse 15 to 17, .

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It says Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves . You will know them by their fruits . Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes , nor figs from thistles , are they ? So every good tree bears good fruit , but the bad tree bears bad fruit . So , basically , you will know them by their fruit , right ? If we look at this passage in the message again , I love the way that they say it . It says be wary of false preachers who smile a lot , dripping with practiced sincerity . Chances are they are out to rip you off some way or the other . Don't be impressed by charisma . Look for character . Who preachers are is the main thing , not what they say .

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The verses that follow this passage , obviously , no matter what version you read it in , are the ones where it talks about judgment day and them saying but Lord , we did all these things in your name and he says , away from me , I never knew you , I never recognized you , right ? So I think in the end it's really not going to come down to what we could do other than that we know him and I think if we live out of knowing him , it changes everything anyway . Yeah , I think the challenge of Ephesians 4 to leaders is to equip people for service . That comes out of maturing , living in unity and being transformed and renewed or built up and being transformed and renewed or built up to look like Jesus . And I think the challenge for the believer from Ephesians 4 is to allow ourselves to be taught , challenged and encouraged or again built into maturity and unity so that we represent him well . So practically , I think it comes down to this him well . So practically , I think it comes down to this let's determine in our hearts and in our minds to look for godly input and then implement it .

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I want to stop here for just a second . If you ask for godly input and then don't implement it , it doesn't do you any good . It's like buying vitamins and you leave them in your cupboard . How many ? It's just me , maybe it's just me . You're like vitamins , good for me . I'm going to get those vitamins I do great for like a week and then I forget about the vitamins . If you need any , I probably have it in my cupboard . Let's stay curious about ourselves and how we are being experienced and then choose to pursue healing and health first , then I think we have something to offer to a world that is looking for life .

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Yeah , if we do these things , my hope is that we will be able to represent him really well . Again , we won't be perfect I think we need to give that up as like the thing that we're going for , but we're going to do our best to represent him well , and I think the more that we practice , the better that we get at forgiveness and repentance and working through things . The more that we try , the faster it happens , the easier it gets right , and so , again , we start to look more and more like him with each one of those cycles of working things through . Here's what I want to do I want to actually take just a few minutes and I want us to each have some time to just hear from the Lord about a few things for ourselves , because I think , as adults , life is super busy , yeah , and it's really easy to leave church , and then life comes up and we don't actually get a moment to even process what just happened , yeah .

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So I have a couple of questions that I would love you to ask the Lord , and the first one I would love you . To ask the Holy Spirit about is just say Holy Spirit , where could I serve right now ? Holy Spirit , where could grow in unity right now ? So , holy Spirit , what areas of my life am I not maybe walking out unity as well as you'd like me to ? What areas of my life would you like to grow unity in me ? And the last question is , holy Spirit , where are you trying to mature me currently and how can I partner ? With you .

Speaker 2 37:59

You could say in what area are you trying to mature me ? And again , you're listening for that still small voice . It may sound like a thought , it may look like a thought , it may look like a picture . Lord , I thank you that you know us so well , lord . You know our struggles , you know our backgrounds , you know all the things that got us to this point today . And , Lord , I thank you that you still choose us . Even though we are far from perfect , you still draw near to us , you're still interested in the details of our lives .

Speaker 2 38:57

And , lord , today we just say we want to grow . We don't want to stay stagnant . We don't want to look the same way next year as we do this Lord . We want to grow in you and we want to look the same way next year as we do this Lord . We want to grow in you and we want to look more like Jesus year over year .

Invitation to Accept Jesus as Savior

Speaker 2 39:21

And so , holy Spirit , I ask that if there's things within us that are holding us back , if there's things that we need to seek help for , then , lord , that you would talk to us about that . If there's things that you want us to lay down so that we can step past those things , then , god , I ask that you would speak to us about that Again , god , I thank you that you are God of the details and you know everything about us . You know every hair on our head . And so , lord , we invite you to take an interest in us again today . Invite you to take an interest in us again today . And , lord , we don't want to do anything crazy like sing refiner's fire , but , god , if you would come and you would sift us and show us the things that you want to do in us and free us from , then , lord , we're up for it . Show us the things that you want to do in us and free us from , and , lord , we're up for it . Yeah , have your way in our lives . In Jesus' name , amen .

Speaker 2 40:48

But I also wanted to do one thing before we have the prayer ministry team up , and it's this I don't know all of you , and I think it's really tempting in the South to assume that everybody who's sitting here already knows the Lord and has a relationship , because it's the South , right , and in Toronto , we would ask every single service if there was anyone there that wanted to meet the Lord , and we want to do that because I think it's super important . So if you are here today and you are because I can see you and you either have never given your life to the Lord before and you're wondering what it is that you wandered into , then I would love to introduce you to Jesus that you wandered into , then I would love to introduce you to Jesus . Or if you're here and you've been away and you need a homecoming , then I would love to pray for that as well . So I'm going to ask if everybody could just bow your heads and close your eyes . And if that is you today , if you're like I either would like to give my life to the Lord for the first time or I need a homecoming I'm going to ask you to just raise your hand so that I know that you're here and I'll pray with you . So good , wonderful , we're going to all pray together . How about that ? So would you guys stand , because we've been sitting a long time and I'd love you to just pray with me .

Speaker 2 42:17

For most of us , this is a prayer of remembrance , but pray with me . Lord Jesus , I acknowledge that I need you . I am a sinner in need of saving . And , lord , today I say I believe in you and I choose to return to you today . I commit my life to you and I ask you to be both Lord and Savior In Jesus' wonderful name , amen .