Wisdom in Decision Making

TRANSCRIPT

So this morning, we wanted to take time to recap. We did this at the beginning of the year, also a few weeks into the year, and we had such great feedback from all of you just about the importance of reflecting. And we wanted to take opportunity to do that this morning. And one of our values is to reflect.

to learn and grow as people and taking the opportunity to breathe, reflect on what we're learning and apply it to our lives. There's little point, I'm sure you'd agree in showing up here on Sunday and hearing great teaching and heading out into the week and not applying it. That's right. So we wanted to just create space for that this morning.

So we're actually going to interview each of us. speakers from this series. You'll be glad you did this morning and just ask for their highlight and how they have applied that to their own lives. And in doing so, we would love you to reflect yourself on what you're hearing today. If you're here joining us for the first time or you've only caught a couple of this series, we are confident that you'll still walk away with something today that you can apply.

But if you do want to catch up on any of the messages from previous weeks, you can do that through our website or Spotify or anywhere you listen. to podcasts. Were you doing something with a Google form? Yeah, so on the back of your chair is a QR code. If you like to take notes, I created a Google form. I hope it will work.

But you can Of course it'll work. It's technology. Of course it will work. It's technology. We've had a huge of challenges this morning. It's actually a form that's just designed to capture your key learnings. And I'd love you if you would like to do that during this morning's talk is just to fill in that form and let us know what are your highlights or what's the thing that God's speaking to you about, just so we can collect that and apply it even in our programming about series we'd like to hear.

So Kev, you were the first week of this series and your message was called Connecting the Dots. Yes. Give us a one liner or a couple of sentences about what was your thoughts around your message, what's the key thought? The key thought around my message was connecting the dots, was to help people see that all of life is connected and that was the purpose behind the video at the start, to see that even what we're thinking about and what we talked about, life being connected, it's bigger than that as well.

So I really wanted people to be able to come away with that for you to understand that the choices you make as a child affects you. determines your youth years. Your youth determines your young adult years, and so forth. From there, once you get married, it's affected by how you live your young adult years.

Then what happens when kids come in, it's all connected. And as I was preparing for it, I felt the Lord just Share with me. This thing about the jigsaw puzzle, which I think is up here, is to help you understand that even all the parts of your life, sometimes we can be so disconnected with who we are. It's like, well, this is my church time, but then I'm different when I'm at work and I'm different at home and I'm different there.

It should not be that way. It's a framework. The framework is loving God, following Jesus, loving others, and then make disciples who make disciples. Now, what does that part mean? That means. Teaching people how to love God, follow Jesus, love people, go help someone else on the journey. So that's really what it's all about.

So really that was the whole heart of mine. And in preparing it, I was just reminded again the importance of the decisions that you make, and how it can impact you. I've made some poor decisions when I was younger, because I was very much in my own mind, I think, and I've learnt the importance of that.

pausing and inviting God into the equation. And you're aware that I made one even recently where I didn't listen to God and I kind of got all excited about something. And then I got myself in real trouble. So it's really important because it's all connected and the way we make decisions that actually affects everyone around us, which is your kids and everything.

So. That was me. Good. The bottom line of that message was just what you said. Your decisions aren't only about you, they impact people closest to you. And that the decisions I make today will affect tomorrow's reality. So I wonder for you if you sat through that message five weeks ago, whether there was, something that God spoke to you about.

And if so, just to make a note of that so that you can circle back to that application in your own life. Thank you for sharing. I'm going to ask Megs to come. Megs was second. Megs did an awesome message about listening and I just remember you dancing on the stage. Stop, look and listen. Yeah, that, that was impromptu.

I hadn't planned that. Can you believe? That was my key takeaway of that message. I thought, oh, that's the primary teacher in you coming out. So what was your key thought? Really it was that, wasn't it? Stop, look, and listen. Expand on that. But essentially, we were looking at how do we listen carefully when it comes to making decisions in our life?

Because a lot of the time we coming to make those next big choices or things for our own life. But we kind of have an idea in our head on the way we want it to go, but that's not actually necessarily the best for us. I like to think that I know myself really well, but I'm realizing that. You know, I don't always do the best for myself when I'm the one in control.

So I guess the whole message is really around how do we begin to listen with maturity so that when we are coming to make decisions in our life, we're not just basing it on our own bias, but how do we learn to have uncomfortable conversations with people that have the best for us in mind. So stopping, looking at what's happening and listening.

And the main part with that is the looking, what is actually happening inside you. If someone comes to challenge you on something, which doesn't fit into what your plan had been, how do I react to that? And when I react that way, why? That's really the emotional maturity part, which goes with listening maturely.

So. Yes. That was the main part. That's awesome. And tell me, when you were preparing the message, so typically, God does a work in us before we come up here to deliver it. Have you got anything you could share with us about how you applied some of that message to your own life or an example? Definitely. And mine was all around that looking more closely.

I, not in an arrogant way, but I like to feel like I make good decisions and that I know what's best for myself because I've put in the hard work over lots of years. But then if something comes up that someone brings to my attention, I'm like I spent hours thinking about that. Now you give me that idea.

Like that was something that was in there. I think some people can relate to that. And so for me, I've, I've been learning to go, hang on a minute. Why did I just get really antsy about that? What's actually deeper? So I have actually been applying that and it's hard to go, Oh, okay. I've got to try and dig that out a little bit, replace it with something that's a little bit healthier.

But I'm, I'm glad I did. And you'll be glad you did as well. No, that's so good. Yeah, so I think applying that being curious. I love the curious part, like asking myself, why did I react that way? Yeah, I do that too. It's not comfortable at first, but it's, it's so great after, to be honest, to go, oh.

Wow, look at me, look how mature I am. I'm learning things about myself. It's so good. Excellent. Thank you, Megan, for sharing. Phil, you can tag team with Phil. Phil did a message for week three. Yeah, we can give her a hand. Yeah. I so value the people we have on our platform sharing messages week in week out.

Did you know that for the most part, well nearly everyone is a volunteer. Phil works full time as a concreter and then volunteers his time to come and teach the Word of God. And yeah, it's the same for all of our communicators. So we are blessed to hear from them. Phil, you spoke about forgiveness and when we asked you to share, you said to me, that's my favorite topic to speak on.

I wasn't sure if that was sarcastic or actual, but I feel like I got the tough assignment. Yeah, you do. I, I, I do forgive you for that. Thank you. What tell us what was the core or the key thought for your message? Yeah, the key thought was for me is that forgiveness is a process and not an event. So it's something that you have to decide that you're going to do.

I am going to forgive that person who hurt me. So you have to decide to, to, and it, and it's actually an act of obedience that we know that God wants us to forgive, but sometimes we just hold that back and we say, no. It's too hard, or they've done this too, it's been too much for me, or whatever. But forgiveness is an act of obedience, and so we have to decide that we're going to do it.

And then we have to bring our thoughts and emotions and our actions into line with that decision. And we have to actually say, I will forgive this person. And I'm going, Lord, help me to do that. And it's a process that goes on. And signs of success are when you finally want to pray for that person and you want to perhaps pray for their salvation.

You, you want them, good things to happen for them. That's a sign of success. And I think I brought out the most, perhaps one of the most challenging scriptures in the Bible, which says, if you don't forgive others, then Jesus says, I'm not going to forgive you. Very, very challenging scripture. Yeah, that's so good.

It's so good to reflect on that forgiveness because I feel like it's something that comes up can come up daily in our lives and making that choice of having a posture of forgiveness like just knowing. Yeah, I feel like forgiveness needs to be part of our daily routine. It is something that should be with us daily because we're always going to get people that get up in our grill and give us a hard time or just, just Make your churn inside and you have to have that as part of your daily armor.

I'll forgive today, whatever comes up. And that's, that's something we need to do. Yeah. And I think something that was highlighted for me through that message that you shared was sometimes in our own strength, we can't forgive or something so terrible has happened to us that it's really difficult to forgive.

But. with the forgiveness given to us through the cross and Jesus in us, we can offer that forgiveness. And it's the Holy Spirit in us that enables us to be able to do that. And that's the benefit, I guess, of a spirit filled life. Having that. drive us. So Phil, did God do a work in you? I'm sure he has over many years done a work in you in this area of forgiveness, but was there anything in particular in preparing this message that you thought that was highlighted or I think the example that I did give in in the message was that Jenna and I got majorly ripped off by scammers at one point in our lives.

And that was extremely hard to forgive. But God started speaking to me about it. And then ultimately I said, yes, I want to, yes, I will. And then I went through the process and it took maybe six, eight months, 12 months to actually get to the point where I knew I was free. And I think ultimately, When you do forgive, it becomes freedom for yourself.

It doesn't let other people off the hook, but it becomes freedom for yourself. And I knew I was free and just reflecting on that was, was tough to, to be able to share that story. So, yeah. So good. Thank you. for vulnerably sharing. You can tag team with Kev. But I loved one of your points too. Yeah, thank you so much.

I think that when you come up and share stories from your heart, in messages, it's a vulnerability, and God can use that. You can always count on Phil for a solid foundation. That's right. That's the concreter in him. Worked a concrete joke in there, how about that? I wanted to say it was, Phil finished his message with pray for them, bless them, and then do good to them.

Man, that is hard. So pray for them. Yeah, we can pray, offer up a prayer. Bless them. Lord, please bless them. But do good for them. That's the active part of forgiveness. And in that there is freedom. Yeah. Yeah. You can always tell me you really processed it a little bit, as if when they, when you see them in a distance, you don't go down another aisle in the shopping centre or across the street.

Yeah. You actually just lean straight in and throw your arms around and go, How you doing? So good. And you know you're there. The fourth week, Kev, you spoke another message and you talked about going the distance and the key word here was to defer. Tell us about this message and what was the key thought?

Well, the key thought around it was, is actually the core of the gospel where we're instructed to submit to one another. Out of reverence to Christ. Submit to one another, defer to one another, look out for each other's best, put each other first. And of course I kicked it off by using that fabulous verse, I'm following it, which is, Wives, submit to your husbands.

And as I said to you then, everyone loved it, it was the same response then, you know, like, hasn't changed. But that verse, the one that I threw out first, the wives submit to your husbands, submit is not in the verse. It's in the verse. And it's interesting. I first, when I started studying, I thought the Greeks are nuts, you know, it's like, this is just crazy.

I mean, why would you just put a verb at the start and then leave it out all the way through and not put it in? But the more I thought about it, I thought That's brilliant, because they started with the verb for the whole context of what was in that passage and it was submit to one another in reverence to Christ and everything else following, they didn't have to put the verb in there because it's just an outworking of that.

So therefore, when they changed to another verb, You knew that the train of thought had changed. And now here is the application for the next trend. I thought they're actually quite smart. It's pretty good. So that was really what it was about is learning to, to put the needs of others before yourself and when the relationship starts to blur and you realize things are not quite right, you lean in and you defer and you defer by.

Submitting yourself to one another, loving one another, caring for another, putting each other first, out of reverence to Christ. Now, this is not in the notes, but I was thinking about this for this week. This is really, really important. Because this submitting to one another has huge implications. Like if you go to Matthew chapter 5, and you'll see where Jesus is reinterpreting.

He's talking to the Jewish people and he's saying, Hey listen, this is what, Moses was your guy. This is how it was under Moses. He said this, but I say this. And he said this, but I say this. He said this, but I say this. And he's kind of like pushing the boundaries towards this new covenant, but something towards the end of Matthew chapter five is, was a big pill for them to swallow because what he did was he told him, he said, when you come to the temple, now the temple, they had to go, sometimes they had to go three, four, Five days journey to walk, to get to the temple, to bring your gift.

He said, when you come to the temple to bring your gift, if you realize that you have got something wrong with a relationship, leave your gift there and then go back and reconcile to the people and then come and bring your gift. No Jew was doing this. Are you serious? I just spent three days to get here.

I'm not going home to fix up the thing. And the reason for that is because their whole life on the founding of a military nation was vertical morality. You could be okay with God, doesn't matter what's going on in other relationships. That is still the position of Israel today. As long as they feel like they're okay with God, doesn't matter what's going on anywhere else.

But Jesus is flipping the script. He's saying now, listen, don't come worship me if you're not okay with people. They're all my children. It's all connected. We're all connected together. So, you know what? You go fix that and sort it out. If you don't sort that out, you can come preach all the messages you want.

You can give all the money you want. You can sing me all the songs that you want, but it's not going to be okay between you and I if it's not okay with your brothers and sisters. you in an earthly sense. So he was flipping the script on this. It was massive, but he was saying, you got to submit to one another out of reverence to Christ.

You got to love one another. It's a powerful, powerful thought. And I love the idea that we're never more like Jesus than when we are submitting to one another and deferring to someone else, lifting someone else up, serving someone because Jesus was a servant hearted leader. And that's what he did at the of everything he did was to love and serve others.

It's not easy. Yeah, but it's, it's like, it's a working, it's like, okay, I'm gone. Who's next? Am I allowed to do that? To Pastor Len. Pastor Len. I needed a buzzer. Keep it short. Thank you, Kev, for sharing. Hello everyone. Hello. Hi, Pastor Len, you got to speak to us about living generously, a good topic. That's right.

Live generous. It's a big topic. So what the L. Y. off the end because it's a lifestyle. Live generous. It's not just about one act or major things. I think a little bit like a river, right? We all get excited when a river floods, and that's like the big giving moments, but what about the lovely everyday trickle of the water that sustains life, you know?

That kind of idea of we have enough to give because God has given us enough. And it's all about that feeling blessed by God, rather than be burdened by our stuff, blessed that we can participate in what we share with others. And so we had a little illustration from Luke's gospel where they'd gone to the temple, and all the people give their money publicly.

And some of them even blow trumpets and say, look, look at me, look at me. And then there's this one young older lady, sorry. Here's a widow and she's gotten very little to two copper coins. And she brings it and Jesus says, watch this, watch this. This woman will give more than everybody else because she gave not from her surplus, but from her need, from her poverty.

And so it just reinforced to me that am I living a life that is totally okay with what God is giving me? Am I really following him out? Now we have a quick sort of summary statement, which is, Generous living is the premeditated, calculated, designated emancipation of financial assets. So first of all, premeditated, you've got to think ahead.

If someone comes to the door and says, can you give me some money? You'll say, sorry, I'm not ready. What if you were ready? What if all the money you'd wasted before was suddenly in your hands, you know, and to, to be. Generous with. Calculated what sort of percentage rather than a dollar amount. What percentage of your income have you assigned already to be given.

Designated. Don't just spill the water on the ground. It's like pouring concrete without a form work. You know, you got to have some design in what you're putting out there. So all that just means that yeah, I saw it in the loop earlier today. Do for the few what you would do for the many. Do for the few what you can do for the many.

So be ready. That's basically it. Now, for me personally, I was reminded in the preparation of where I came from as a young guy. We're a pretty ordinary family as far as income goes. But I remember a time when I was about 20 and that we used to have altars at the front of the church where you can come and pray.

And I remember distinctly, God telling me, take your wallet out and put it there and take your keys to your Suzuki and put it there. And I did that as an act of worship. I just needed to say, God, it's yours. He let me ride home. You know what I'm saying? It's a matter of what you do. I remember God has given me and don't let it be a burden to you.

Let it encourage your heart. This money thing is not about burdens and responsibility Or we have those but it's really about okay. God. Thank you. What do you want me to do? I love that. That's so good That thought you can tag with pauline, but i'll just say Thank you pastor len for sharing about Generosity.

That thought about being generous, I was impacted as a young person in the church in Ipswich where I gave my heart to the Lord. There was an older couple called George and Clare and they would just serve always out, like always serving, always giving, always. And one day they gave me a lift. I didn't yet have my license and I was a just a teenager trying to get to church.

I would get lifts off everyone who would give me one. And I got there one day and I just said, Claire, thank you so much for taking me in your car. And she said to me simply, Anita, it's fine. My car, we are just servants. The car is from the Lord and I will do with the car what God wants me to do with the car.

And today it was bringing you to church. And I was like, Oh, and that as I might've been 16 years old and that thought of just surrendering your possessions and everything you own to what God wants to do with it has stayed with me my whole life. Just a legacy that she has a A senior saint. I thought she was senior then, but she's still going now, being a senior saint.

So she mustn't have been that senior. But when you're 16, you think everyone who's over 40 is a senior. Now I'm over 40. I don't, yeah. Anyway, you know. This is going in a bad direction. I know, right? Get it back. Anyway, all I'm saying is, dear, my time's up. Pauline's turn. Pauline, you spoke last week with a really engaging message about basically yours was tell yourself the truth.

Tell us what your message was about. Yes. So tell yourself the truth can also be translated as Be honest with yourself. Don't lie to yourself. So the whole idea was that as humans who want to avoid pain, that whenever there's something that we don't want to face, because either it makes us feel bad in some way, we feel, I don't know, guilt, shame, regret.

There's maybe something that we have to do that we don't want to do something that we haven't done that we should do, something that we did that we need to apologize for, some truth that we have to face. When it's something we don't want to face, we will cover it up with a lie, which we could also package as an excuse that means that we can sleep at night.

It's much more palatable. It's easier for us to go through our daily life. Just believing that lie that we tell ourselves which means that we don't have to dig down and see what the real issue is and deal with it. But the problem is that when we live on lies, then we are hiding a huge part of ourselves away and that impacts our relationship with ourself.

It impacts our relationship with other people and it impacts our relationship with God because we can't be fully honest with anyone in that triangle if we're hiding under a whole lot of lies and excuses that we are choosing to believe because it's safer. Yeah, that's good. And what did God do in you while you were preparing this?

Well, message. So last week I had a red, red box. Bring it up. I didn't know what we were going to do with it. And I gave a few examples of how, you know, the, the box is the lie, the outer lie that we tell ourselves. And then we went through, I gave a few like actual examples of lies that we might tell ourselves and each lie, we took away a layer until we got to the truth underneath.

And when I was coming up with those examples I had three totally made up ones and I thought, oh, gee, it'd be good to have one of my own in there to show like, oh, this is one that I really did to myself. Like, Here's me in the process of doing it. And then every time I, my brain went, what about that? I was like, no, I'm not ready to look at that yet.

Like I actually wasn't ready to face the truth of what was going on for me, let alone then publicly go, hey everybody, look at this deep, dark, horrible thing about me. So So, up until like literally Saturday morning, I still just had three made up ones and then my husband said, why don't you just do one from a long time ago that you feel okay with?

I was like, okay. So this was challenging for me just because I actually realized I have way more work to do in this area because my brain was telling me, you know, you're lying about this, this, this, this. But. facing what's underneath that is really hard. So, yep, that's what I learned. But I also, in doing it, in putting that message together, I was like, Oh, that's right.

When you first dig down and, and, you know, Meg's was talking about the same thing. When you first do it, it's only you and you, you don't have to admit it to anyone. You don't have to do anything about it. All we're doing first of all, is just you by yourself going, okay, there's more to this. And then after that you can go to God and then it's just you and God.

And God isn't going to tell anyone yet. It's just you and him. And then that's where you get some of that the relief from it, because God brings the peace and then you can decide if you want to do something about it from there and probably after a while you'll realize I can reconcile this, I can fix this, I can actually resolve this entire thing and be free from it rather than hiding it away underneath all these other excuses.

It's challenging. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing and for being vulnerable to share your thoughts and ideas around that. I wonder if there was something in what Pauline shared that you want to make note of, maybe an area that you're not ready to share with others yet, but it's you and you and you're sorting that out and putting that before God.

Take a moment to think about that as well and, or note it down, take a note in your phone so that you can reflect on it and apply the truth and move on in that area. Thank you, Pauline. Thank you.