Sermon Notes: Pathway to Miracle

PATHWAY TO A MIRACLE
The circumstances that surrounded the birth of Jesus Christ define the very core values of Christian Faith

The gospel of Luke Chapter One

26 In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. 31 You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”
34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. 37 For nothing is impossible with God.”
38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.” Then the angel left her.


CHRISTIAN CORE VALUES

The supernatural happens in the midst of very ordinary natural circumstances

The eternal purposes of God work through very concrete temporal experiences

The profound and mysterious ways of God involve what is essentially simple and straightforward actions

The special activities of God’s sovereign purpose happen through ordinary people in very ordinary circumstances

The majesty of God is deliberately bonded to what is insignificant by human standards

This is First Corinthians Chapter One:

Cutting the ground from human pride


18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
20 Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.
26 Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”
1 When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.

THE DEMONSTRATION OF THE POWER OF GOD

Foolishness
Weakness
Uneducated
Common
Nothing
Weakness and fear and trembling



PARADOX NUMBER ONE:
WHEN SOVEREIGN CHOOSING involves what is the MOST IMPROBABLE


“Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.



Mary was the unlikely choice, it could have been anyone in the Davidic line. Mary and Joseph were a couple of nobodies by every other basis of reasoning

The purposes of God in these days or any other days will rest on ordinary people.


But Mary was no ordinary person in other ways: she had made choices in her circumstances that qualified her to be involved in something that would only happen once in the whole of eternity.

She had chosen to be righteous

She continued to choose to believe God

She loved God and was willing to serve him



The issue is not one of status but it is one of qualifying. Mary had not had the opportunity given by privilege and wealth and status. She decided that regardless of who she may not be in the eyes of the flesh, she was going to serve God with all of her heart.


God has always chosen unlikely people from human point of view……but that was only because we continue to put up a bunch of measurements that don’t mean anything to God.


The fact that Mary was troubled only heralded the fact that the visitation of God was and would always be to her a surprise of divine grace. This is so refreshing in the culture of the superstars and the penchant we have to represent a certain image that may be associated with status whether we are talking about worldly status or status in the world of the church of our day: “by their suits you will know them.”


The main qualification for a miracle intervention of God is to be humbly ready for anything God wants to do in your life….no matter what it means and no matter what it costs. IF you are ready, God is willing.

PARADOX NUMBER TWO:
THE IMPOSSIBLE being the MOST GUARANTEED


But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. 31 You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”
34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”



1 Miracle intervention always has to do with what is impossible. We don’t usually think in terms of the impossible

1 Australian Story - the tragedy of a deep hole diver who died trying to go somewhere no one had ever been. His wife spoke about the fact that if it weren’t for people like him we would be riding on donkeys and every frontier would be a prison wall.

a. Earlier this year Australian diver Dave Shaw made headlines around the world when he lost his life in a remote cave in South Africa. An international airline pilot, Shaw had everything going for him – a successful career, and a happy family life. But he always loved a challenge. After taking up scuba diving only seven years ago, Shaw soon decided it was too tame. He then discovered the most extreme of all sports, technical diving – a system using “rebreathers’’ which recycles air and allows a diver to go deeper and stay below longer. On October 28 last year Shaw established himself as the world champion extreme diver with a death-defying dive to 270 metres in one of the world’s deepest caves – Boesmansgat, or Bushman’s Cave, in South Africa’s Northern Cape. However, the world record was overshadowed by Shaw’s discovery of the body of another diver, Deon Dreyer, who’d been lost there some 10 years previously, having blacked out at 70 metres and subsequently sunk to the bottom.
Before even reaching the surface, Dave Shaw had decided on a dangerous mission to retrieve Deon Dreyer’s body. Nothing like this had ever been attempted before at such depths. Australian Story travelled to South Africa with Dave Shaw’s wife Ann and daughter Lisa, to retrace his last days. Also interviewed are Dave Shaw’s son Steven, his dive partner Don Shirley, dive co-ordinator and women’s world champion Verna van Schaik, cameraman Gordon Hiles who filmed Dave’s last days, underwater cameraman and deep diver Derek Hughes who was the last to see Dave alive, and Deon Dreyer’s father Theo. The program tells the inside story, with exclusive footage of the champion diver’s final days, including remarkable pictures of his last fatal dive filmed by Dave Shaw himself, using a helmet-camera mounted on his head.

1 I would not herald the virtue of deep diving. I would challenge myself and every believer to hear the message that the birth of Jesus proclaims through the experience of Mary, the mother of Jesus. That message is to keep on believing that we are citizens of the natural world and the supernatural world. What is supernatural is the most certain. We need to live every day in the light of what is eternal, spiritual, real. That world is not the stranger that our world has become to the common direct intervention of the God of heaven and earth.

PARADOX NUMBER THREE:
THE PATH OF FAVOUR being the PATH OF CONTROVERSY

35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. 37 For nothing is impossible with God.”
38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.”


When Mary was told that she was favoured by God, I wonder what she might have thought. I wonder if it was like the news of winning lotto might be to anyone whose only relationship with reality is the form that assumes only the material world and nothing more. We often think of favour in that way.

This favour h ad to do with honour. I said earlier that she qualified to participate in an event that was only going to happen once in the whole of eternity. I wonder if you could think of that kind of favour in terms of that kind of honour.

You would need to because the events that followed this were far from being filled with honour as far as human attitudes were concerned.

Telling her parents she was pregnant
Telling Joseph she was pregnant but obviously not to him
Growing up in a society where moral failure was accompanied by punishment that could involved being stoned to death.

Going to Judea to meet with her cousin Elizabeth and experiencing all kinds of prophetic confirmation and amazing encounters.

Returning at three months through her pregnancy and living in their village for the next six months.

Going to Bethlehem with Joseph - why did she do it?

Laying down for the night in the stall usually reserved for a donkey. Nothing around her signaled that she was about to give birth to the King of Kings.

But being willing to “let it be” according to the Word of the Lord.

Early Morning Prayer This Week

I will be in to pray on these mornings:

Tuesday 5:00 am
Wednesday 5:00 am
Thursday 6:00 am
Friday 6:00 am

There is a new code for the downstairs door, so give me a call to get the update

0407431793
62519159
62306270

Brian

Pray for the City Notes:Ten Great Christmas Ideas

Some years ago I was kayaking my way down the Nymboida River in northern NSW. I wasn't all that good at it but enjoyed the risk and the challenge immensely. I came to a left hand bend in the river and, as happened regularly, I tipped out. The canoe didn't have floatation stuff in side and as water began to enter the craft I suddenly realized I was being sucked down in a whirlpool that was much stronger than my power to swim and hang onto the boat. I must have been between six and ten feet under the surface when I realized I had to make a decision to let go the boat OR drown.

I am still breathing at this moment because of that simple albeit desparate, split second decision. As I write I can still feel the tension between the idea of losing the kayak and drowning. I looks very simple from this distance and the wonder is that I should have had to consider which decision I would take. The kayak didn't belong to me and the guy who built it had just finished it. I was very embarrased to clamber back to where I had left him on the bank and tell him the news, but grateful that I was able to clamber.

I think Christmas has become a little like that rather innocent looking bend in the river. On the surface there was much to rejoice about. A few feet under the surface, death was lurking.

The following ten ideas are ones I think may keep us out of the trouble that lurks below the surface of a culture that includes a few Christmas carols in the park and the opportunity to see a few people you haven't seen for a while. Lurking below the surface is a whirlpool of "death" created by the materialistic madness we are sold thousands of times a day at this time of the year.

I want to start a Christmas revolution. I have heard the famous quotation of a Chinese proverb by Adlai Stevenson (United Nations address in 1962), "It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness." So here are a few candles that may well light a brighter candle this Christmas time.

TEN GREAT CHRISTMAS IDEAS

1. Put a nativity scene in your community space. Take a little nativity scene or something that places the real reason for the season as a proclamation around you. I know you might risk being told that its polically incorrect, but Jesus didn't really command us to be politically correct, he commanded us to speak liberating truth. Put something on your desk, in the back window of your car, in your house etc.

2. Become a conscientious objector to the gross immorality of many Christmas functions. This year marriages will be damaged, families will be shamed and people will degrade each other just because they attend the never ending string of so called Christmas parties. I am all for building better relationships and I am totally committed to celebration, but getting drunk and/or ending up morally compromised is a celebration of nothing other than darkness. The wages of sin are always stealing something, killing someting and destroying something. Jesus is the reason for the season. It's a celebration of light, not darkness.

3. Make your neighbours a little Christmas cake. A couple of friends of mine decided to cook little cakes and wrap them nicely with a little home made card and took the opportunity to conn ect with all their neighbours by giving them the personal gifts. It was a Christmas act that paid dividends for the rest of the year as their friendships were built to a new level. It wasn't enough to make people feel bad. It wasn't printed,impersonal computer derived or empty. It was small and loving.

4. Make a decision to do a ONE FOR ONE gift deal with your families. Put all the names in hat and have a list of all the people in the hat. Draw out a name and put it next to the first name on the list until everyone is down to give one other person a modest gift ($50 or so). That way you won't end up buying rubbish for people who don't need what you buy. That way you won't have the emotional drain of figuring out what to buy people who don't need anyting. Each person can then ask the member they are buying for, what they really do need. Take the mystery out of it and leave behind the plunge into debt or heedless extravagance.

5. Get the TEAR fund catalogue. With this catalogue you can buy anthing from a goat to a water tank for people in the two thirds of the world where they really do have deep and essential needs. Just think of the joy of giving a present that a village or a family will be blessed by every day of the year, not a bunch of presents that will be broken before new year's day. Look it up on the Web: http://www.tear.org.au/giftcatalogue/action/songs.php

6. Get your extended family to sponsor a Compassion/World Vision child instead of giving each other presents. Just imaging what it would be like for a whole family to put together to make up the $500 or so that it takes to sponsor a child. There are great organizations that do this and it immediately relieves everyone of the normal burden of buying for each other. This child can receive the love from all kinds of members of a single family group. Untold light will shine every day for years.

7. Round up the whole of your local family and organize them to go to church together this Christmas. Make it a family event by putting a gathering at the start or end of it. But press those members who don't go to church to make the effort. People are more open at times like this. Why not make use of that openness.

8. Have a birthday breakfast for Jesus on Christmas morning. Why not preceed the self obsessed present opening time with a family act that honours Jesus on his "birthday." In our family we have breakfasts for family members on their birthday. We have a special but not elaborate nosh up with bacon and eggs and juice and croissants and a few things like that. You can sing happy birthday to Jesus if your bold enough. Why shouldn't the members of your family do things like this for each other on their birthdays but not for Jesus?

9. Invite a lonely person to your household for your Christmas celebrations. Share the love of your family with someone who doesn't have family love on Christmas day. Invite more than one if you can. For some people just the normal experience your household offers would be worth more than money could buy.

10. Make a gift to Jesus on his birthday of your total and uncompromised allegience. Give your life to Jesus and make that commitment your birthday gift to HIM>

Brian Medway

Pastors Breakfast today

This morning we had a breakfast for the pastors from the group calling themselves, "His Fame." It is a group of more than twenty five pastors who have been praying together for more than a year. It is not the same as Canberra Christian Network, but CCN is supportive of the group.

I think there will be all kinds of groups that form up for various strategic reasons. This group has established a goal of doing two events each year. One prayer event and one teaching or outreach event. The prayer each week has been a feature of the advance created by the group. It is certainly Pentecostal in its flvaour but not by any means exclusive. Steve Janes from CCC in Kambah is the leader and Glen Barker from CLC Erindale is an associate leader. Some of the rest of us make up a core team.

From the GCF point of view I wanted to take the opportunity of blessing and serving the pastors and making them feel a bit special and appreciated. I can't help but say how wonderful our own team worked away for this event. Just about the whole team had some part in it.

Monika did the oversight work for the catering and set up the room to make it look nice. She did a great job and the food was well set out, lovingly served and every part of it worked well.

Daryl supported her and worked hard from early this morning to set up the barbecue and cook the bacon and eggs.

Richard served in the dual role of barbecue and worship leading and did a great job with both responsibilities. They were able to serve good bacon and eggs kept hot and ready to eat. No mean feat

Karen organized a bunch of shortbread and white christmas to be packed in beautiful little paper containers with a really beautiful card saying that we appreciated the pastors for their fellowship. It was just terrific.

Geoff picked up a few of his young guys who came and served the food and generally looked after everyone. they were dressed up in white shirts and looked a bit like Mormon missionaries. But as I said, they did a great job.

What a great opportunity to serve some very precious brothers and sisters in Christ. All of them were impressed by the work and it all goes toward building relationships in the city that are built on a desire to serve not to be served. Sounds very familiar doesn't it.

Great work people. I was very proud of what you did.

I think the people of GCF should also be aware of the quality of servant hearted people we have around the place.

Brian Medway

Prayer this week

I plan to be at prayer at the following times and days:

Monday from 5:00 am
Tuesday from 5:30 am
Wednesday from 6:00 am
Thursday.....I will not be going to pray
Friday.. from 6:00 am

Love to see you there. Phone me for the code. It has changed. OR phone me from downstairs and I will come and let you in.

Love to all who are passionate about prayer

Brian Medway

Three Mandates in Christian Ministry - Sonship #6

Last Sunday I preached about three spheres in which God gives authority to his sons (and daughters). Exercising this authority is a mark of sonship. Not to exercise it is a denial of sonship. All of these come from John 17

1. Authority to fully complete the task (1-5)
Jesus has given us work to do. You just need to see some of the things he commands his own disciples to get an idea about the kind of thing we are also called to complete. This completion demands power from heaven. When Jesus asked the Father to glorify him at this "hour" he wasn't just being nice. He knew that supernatural power was the only thing that would get him to the cross as well as through the cross. God has a supernatural purpose for us to complete. We should not consider a calling unless it demands supernatural power. There is so much ministry happening that depends on human abilty and human manipulation rather than the power of God. When you consider what God has called you to do it must be beyond your ability and beyond your "working it out." Anything less is unworthy of God. Anything less is unworthy of your relationship with God.
2. Authority to protect your disciples (6-19)
Here are some of the aspects of a minsitry that protects the people God has "given you." Don't think that you are not responsible for people's discipleship. Some of the best discipleship you can do will be with people who are not yet believers but are in your sphere of ministry influence.
a. consider that they are given to you by God and take personal responsibility for their relationship to Jesus(6)
b. make sure they know that what you give comes from God and not just from you (7)
c. make sure you give them what God has given you, not what you think on your own (8)
d. exercise the authority God has given you to protect them from the evil one (11)
e. make sure they know the joy of the Lord, not just the words (13)
f. bind them to God in a solemn covenant bond and see that they are divorced from the world (14)
g. sponsor and commission them to fulfill God's purpose in the world, not just the church(17)

3. Authority to bring the body into supernatural oneness (20-23)

This is profound and deeply challenging. Jesus has a mandate from heaven to draw the church into a supernatural experience of unity. It is a work of the power of God but a responsibiity of Jesus to pursue on behalf of all beleivers. The measure of the unity is that of the Father and Son. Think of what we are experiencing and understand how much we need miracles of revelation and grace. When you realize what Jesus was asking the Father we just realize just how much power from heaven we need. We need power to believe that God could do it, let alone faith to walk boldly toward it and persist until it breaks in on us.

All of these three areas where God has given all of us authority because we are sons and daughters of our Father God are keys to understanding the spiritual warfare strategy of heaven and the targetted areas of Satan. If given opportunity, Satan will want to turn you from the fulfillment of your God ordained destiny. He will get you to believe something else, something less. He will try and get you to rely on yourself rather than on God. He will get you to believe that what God wants for you is way beyond belief. RESIST by crying out to God to glorify you and empower you to complete the task.

If we do nothing, Satan will go after our disciples. He will try to turn them from us and from the faith. We must do the things that Jesus did so that we my "lose none of the ones God has given us." What a challenge!!

If we do nothing, Satan will keep the church from becoming ONE. He will help us to rationalize and justify our disunity. He will use doctrine, personalities, human frailties and weaknesses, disputes over all kinds of unimportant issues. All the while we will be powerless to break the strongholds of the world that will only be smashed by the power of ONENESS in the church.

Brian Medway

Prayer in the Mornings This Week

I will be at the early prayer meetings on

Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday and
Friday mornings

Call me if you need access codes: 0407431793

What A Great Sunday

We had an amazing Sunday. We had decided to set up a pool in the auditorium for baptisms. There were a number of people who wanted to be baptized so we set it up for the whole day. I decided to preach on the subject and in the prayer meeting on Friday morning I sensed a strong urge from the Spirit to preach about the rolling away of reproach. I didn't see how it was connected to baptism but when I looked at the references in Colossians 2 it was all there. It clearly says in that chapter that we have been "circumcised" by Christ and that the covenant sign is being buried with him in baptism.

Its a little strange that the covenant theology of people who baptize infants talks about being buried when they usually sprinkle a bit of water on a baby's forehead. But never mind all of that. When I looked at the circumcision event at Gilgal in Joshua 5 I was amazed to be reminded that God said, "This day (i.e. the day they took upon them the sign of the covenant) I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you."

So I preached my heart out. Little did I know that Benjamin, my son had come into the church. He wasn't going to be there because he was working at a job. When he heard the preaching he felt God speaking to him about being baptized and some of the words I spoke about the reproach being taken away were strong in him. Jimena was there so when he said to her that he felt he should be baptized she encouraged him and he went and talked with Daryl James. The first thing I knew was that he was standing there next to the pool waiting to be baptized. I lost it at that point. How amazing.

I had been using the famous words Martin Luther King Jr. quoted in his Capitol steps speech, from an old negro spiritual: "Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I'm free at last." After his baptism (and the others as well) we all shouted those words. It was true for everyone of course. But it was even more amazing for Ben. When he came up from the water everyone just cheered and clapped like mad.

In the evening about 13 young people (well, all except two were young people) were baptized. It started out the same. About five or six had said they wanted to be baptized but when they extended the invitation thirteen ended up in the water. Some great testimonies and a powerful time.

The only thing that was sad was that Nola wasn't there to see it. She had gone to work because of the overloaded situation at her workplace and when I tried to call her on her mobile, she had left it at home. I didn't know where she was and it wasn't until the afternoon that I figured out which number was her work number and gave her a call.

What a great day

GCF Staff

We have just had a great time together at a staff retreat for GCF full time and part time paid staff. There have been a number of changes in the staff during the course of this year. Bronwyn Hatherly left to have a beautiful baby girl. Natalie and Josh Shingles returned to Brisbane where Josh was offered a job in a consultency firm. Neil Kellie took up full time employment in the public service and reduced the time available to work as a youth leader.

God has been so generous toward us as a church. Natalie's job has now been taken up by Graeme and Karen Hush. Graeme is a long standing friend and has worked in ministry leadership with young people in particular in Wollongong, Hobart and Canberra. Karen is from Brisbane where she was part of the staff team of Calvary Family Church. They were married at the beginning of October. They are great people had have shared a strong commitment to Building Monday's Church ministry. I think Graeme has always had a burden for equipping people to make a difference in their community spheres.

Renee Ritchie has taken up the hours that used to belong to Bronwyn. She is doing a terrific job in the financial management of both GCF and Crosslink as well as working in general administration. Renee has a passion to serve Jesus and is involved in Youth and Children's ministry in the church as well as her work in the office.

Geoff and Jess Roberts have been part of the church for nearly a year and are now sharing leadership of the Youth Ministry. They were part of Graeme's Heartland group and are involved in Schools and are generally obsessed with seeing young people saved and equipped for ministry. Goeff is completing an Industrial Design degree at Canberra University and Jess is doing a Music degree. They make up a very passionate addition to the team.

So apart from the new members, we have Claire Ellis still doing a great job with Children's ministry, Neil is still working one day a week in Youth Leadership. Richard Gallagher is still working with Worship, Daryl James in pastoral care. That makes us a ten member team at the moment.

Our retreat time happened at my parents sheep property in Gunning, about 70 km north of here. My brother works the farm these days and my parents still live in the house they built (well most of it). Its a great place to relax and be away from the rush of normal life.

We spend a lot of the time getting to know each other's stories and finding out what drives us and what our hopes and dreams are for serving Jesus.

In between the sessions together we were playing a few games of tennis, swatting mossies and sharing a birthday tea with my Dad who turned 84 on November 30.