13th July 2025

Sunday 13th July, 2025. - Susan Beddows.

OPENING Psalm 105

1  Give praise to the LORD, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done.

2  Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts.

3  Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice.

4  Look to the LORD and his strength; seek his face always.

Philippians 2

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10  that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11  and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Amen

Now I know you’ve heard both Martin and myself mention quite often Lectio 365! Pete Greig is the leader of Emmaus Road Church in Guilford- aptly named after Emmaus Road - the path where people awoke to the presence of Jesus! Through him and his church they founded - 24-7 Prayer- an international, prayer movement, with a vision to revive the church through non-stop night and day prayer.

Their Vision is Jesus - We pray and obey

Pete is also the author of the Lectio 365 Bible devotionals – and my prayer this morning is that the Spirit will motivate every regular member of this church to use Lectio 365 at least every single morning!

It’s possible three times a day if you’ve got the time!!!

This morning I want to focus on a message Pete Greig shared just a few weeks ago – it’s all about waking up to God!!

Tess is going to send out the video so that you can if you want to – listen to Pete’s whole message – its around an hour long but you’ll be pleased to know I’ve considerably shortened my message this morning!

Last week Martin spoke about messages from angels and during our bible study sessions we’ve read bible passages and shared thoughts on prophecy in the old and the new testament – and in todays church!

The message that Pete Greig shared came from the Pastor of his church in Guildford who heard the audible voice of God – yes the audible voice of God – telling him that the church and individuals in all churches need to wake up!

Two weeks ago I shared at the Songs of Praise service and Martin has shared this too over the last few months – the church across the world is growing at a rapid rate!

It’s growing with young people – there’s a revival happening out there and my question for you today is: Is there a revival in your relationship with God? Is Jesus happening in your own heart right now?

Are you awake to God or are you sleepwalking through this life? Perhaps too busy with life events, out there buying stuff, just walking past God and not really listening to Him! We need to wake up to His call – create time every day to slow down and be attentive to Gods call on our lives. If we’re not reading God’s word every single day – we’re not in touch with God! We need to come together as a church to study God’s word – to listen to His message to us as a church – to pray together AS A CHURCH!

At the COG meeting on Wednesday – we agreed that every Sunday morning at 10,30 we will pray together for 15 minutes before the service – anyone and everyone is welcome to join us – we want to pray and listen and obey!

The Holy Spirit is saying to individuals, to churches, to wake up! As Gillian read for us in Ephesians 5: 8  For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light 9  (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth)  10  and find out what pleases the Lord.  11  Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.  12  It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.  13  But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.  14  This is why it is said:

“Wake up, sleeper,

    rise from the dead,

    and Christ will shine on you.”

Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

This is the joyous invitation of the Spirit! He wants the light of Christ to shine on our lives he doesn't want us sleep walking through our existence There’s a revival happening and we need to be awake to it and be part of it! We are living in dangerous times – and its not a time to be sleepwalking!

There's a chaotic world out there – many different crisis's economic, medical, climatic, millitary - and they're all making each other worse!

However, we’re seeing headlines like ‘ Has Christianity regained the underground appeal of its earliest days? Signs are that Britain's ‘Gen Z’ are turning to faith - Generation Z refers to people born between 1996 and 2010. The terms used these days, just boggle the mind, sometimes! They're the second-youngest generation, and are 50% less likely – yes, less likely - to be an atheist than their parents – its not appealing or edgy to be an atheist, so young people are returning to church  in very significant numbers. Bible sales have risen by 87% in the UK over the last eight years and in France this last Easter 17,000 people were welcomed into the Catholic Church through baptism. That is a 31% continuing growth and again it's driven by young people!

There are reports that everyone's talking about - it's been picked up by all the big newspapers by TV news about the quiet revival - we see church attendance has risen by 50% - five 0 - 50% over the last six years and the most dramatic growth is amongst young adults! The biggest Shock – many many young men! This is the moment to be engaged in God’s word, and alert in prayer as a church I’ve never really realised before how often scripture compares sleeping to spiritual sluggishness and wakefulness to prayerfulness – as we heard in our reading from Jess of Isaiah 62.

I have posted watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem;

    they will never be silent day or night.

You who call on the LORD,

    give yourselves no rest,

7  and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem

    and makes her the praise of the earth.

It's a beautiful image that Jerusalem is sleeping and there are these watchmen - alert when everyone else is asleep, seeing if theres an enemy coming - and they are a picture of continual prayer. In the garden of Gethsemane - when Jesus is at the beginning of his very darkest hour. He gathers his three best friends and with real vulnerability says - please will you stay awake and pray for me ?

He said I've never needed prayer and a sense of fellowship more than I need it right now and he goes off - and we know he's sweating blood as he wrestles with the imminent prospect of his own suffering and death. Three times he comes back to Peter James and John and finds that they are asleep!

Sometimes coming to church is incredibly reassuring and soothing and sometimes I think it's meant to be challenging!

So I think this challenge from the Holy Spirit, this invitation to wake up is an invitation for us here. Sometimes we move into autopilot , you sort of outwardly ‘go through the motions’ - people wouldn't necessarily know that you're maybe hibernating inside, like sleepwalking. There's many things that can move you into that sort of sleepwalking state - one of them is exhaustion and extreme stress - life's stresses and getting tired is a natural thing and when you get tired it's healthy to go to sleep.

But if you're living under continual stress it will do things to you that can't be sorted by one good night of sleep and it can push you into a bit of a helpless state of numbness

I know that only too well at the moment………………………..

Another thing that can move you into sleepwalking, I think, is boredom - in life, work, faith, relationship. If you are bored of your faith - I’m sure that God is also bored of your faith! We can lose our ambition and our motivation, we can lose our spiritual hunger. We used to long for God, but, perhaps our heart gets a little hardened, our prayers get dull – or - don’t happen, our consciences get sloppy

The Holy Spirit is saying Wake up – exciting things are happening wake up we need the light of Christ to shine on our lives! This is our moment to cry out to Jesus and tell him what we need him to do - this is our moment to lift ourselves, this church, to God and pray for revival here!

But it's got to start here in our ‘HEART’ in me, in you with a revival in our own relationships with Jesus.

I think the spirit of the Lord isn't just saying to some individuals hey you you need to wake up i think he's saying it to us as Mirepoix Church - wake up!!!

BIBLE STUDY

This year we have completed a 10 week series on ‘Who Is This Jesus’ and we are half-way through a study of the Creed. If you haven’t attended any of these - YOU ARE MISSING OUT!

When we studied ‘Who Is This Jesus’ we used video materiel from Chris Sinkinson – a Theology lecturer at Moorlands College, an Archeologist who leads student tours to The

Holy Land. He was previously the pastor of a church, he’s a writer and he’s a board game player too! I met him three years ago when I first visited Le Pas Opton – the French Spring Harvest up in the Vendée. His material used video’s of the places where Jesus walked when he was here on earth, and it really provoked questions about our understanding and beliefs! This was the reason we decided as a group that it would be good to dig down into the Creed, to again deepen our understanding and answer questions we had about the content of the Creed. We had and still have many questions!

We’re about half-way through the material and will begin again in September after the pressures of summer activities and visitors has finished. Anyone is welcome to join us – you can have sight of the first sessions very easily – they are on our website and could make excellent summer reading!!!

We don’t exist to give ourselves a nice time, we exist to fulfill the great commission of Jesus. To share the good news that he's alive to people who don't have a clue about him and it feels to me like this is an exciting time to have that commission because as I said earlier, young people are looking for answers

BUT

Older people are looking for answers too – we know what is in store for us when we leave this earth - is it fair to keep it to ourselves? Don’t those people WE know deserve to know it too? This became so, so real for me yesterday – I had a message to contact my friend Maureen, whom I met through the café quite a few years ago and from time to time her and her husband David come here to church (they live outside of Bram) but they were here for our AGM a couple of months ago. She told me he’s recently been in hospital but was sent home with a diagnosis of renal failure, there is nothing more they can do for him. She asked me if our priest could come by and see him, spend time with him before he passes away……..obviously Martin is on holiday so I’m going to see them this afternoon to do what I can to support Maureen and for David………it won’t be easy but I will be there for them and with them.

You see, We’re not just here to sort of survive as a Christian, the call of the Lord is on us to lead! Every one of us has got what it takes to be influencing the lives of others in an incredible way.

Just a few weeks ago Martin spoke about it, I prayed about it - in Acts it said of the early church that people were added to their number daily! This was because they prayed together, they studied Gods word together, they listened to God and His Spirit moved! I think the spirit of the lord is saying to us, wake up to the fact that we are made by God and so loved by God He thought we were worth dying for, that's the value he puts on our lives! How much is Jesus worth to us? You are a gift to your friends, you're a gift to your family, you're a gift to the place where He's put you.

You're not just an ordinary person because you're filled with the spirit of the creator God!

You are able to be more forgiving than ANY of your other friends who don't know Jesus, you're able to be more generous, you're able to be more joyful, you're able to be kinder because you have the spirit of the living God in you! We have energy, we have resources, we have wisdom, we have each other!

Martin used Psalm 1 last week – one of my favourites

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take, or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the word of the Lord, and who meditates on his word day and night.

Day and night might be a tall order but once a day for us individually is surely not too much to ask? Use Lectio! It’s great! It’s so easy to use! Our church should be sharing the same word!

Once a week to come together as church to worship and to pray. To share God’s word together when we re-convene in September – is that too much to ask?

LET’S PRAY

Lord let us be wiser than we are naturally, let us be wiser than our own wisdom let us be kinder than our own kindness. Wake us up to who we are, who You are God , and what You are doing in this present moment!

The spirit of the lord is saying to us wake up - our world is in a mess - the spirit of the Lord seems to be doing something that we've been praying for for decades Lord thank you that you continue to speak to Your church today – revive our relationship with You Lord, strengthen us in our prayer life together, in our study of your word, and in our ability to listen and hear your message to us – let us ALWAYS seek you first in all that we do and say!

Amen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXMY6fyeXRQ