I'll give you the last three quickly. The next one is: if you're going to follow Jesus, we must commit to personal change. We must commit to personal change. Let me tell you this: there is no following Jesus, without commitment to change. How can there be? If you're following Him, He wants you to change. Here's the plan of God, Romans 8. God's design is that we be conformed, become more like Christ. That means, I've got to change; because I'm not very like Christ, in a lot of areas in my life. How many find sometimes you're not very forgiving? How many find sometimes you get quite angry? How many know sometimes we've got all kinds of things that we don't like in there? God wants us to change! So what amazes me - I'll just put it straight out here - as a Pastor, we know of so many marriages which are struggling, have got major issues in them. When we do a marriage seminar, people don't come, and actually commit to change. That's foolish.
We have wonderful people here who teach on training children; and I've seen some, and they've got their kids out of control, things are not going well. Hello! Are you blind or something? Invest. Get some training, learn what to do. Church is to be an equipping centre, not a nursery, not a hospital. It has those aspects to it, but it's one thing to have like a little room, where you carry your patients, and you help them for a little, while they recover. It's another thing for the whole thing to be full of patients, and nurses running around giving IV feeds every day, trying to look after - this is not the church. Jesus says, those who follow Me, they're called to be warriors, and to be great soldiers for Him. So some people have got issues with finance, and so we get involved with counselling with them, and we find they have these massive issues of finance. The whole financial world is a total mess, they're not following Jesus; they're following the chaos of advertising in the world, and irresponsibility; yet when something's put on, they don't commit to come. What stupidity is that? We have to be committed to invest in ourselves. It's not the Pastor's job, or the leader's job, to make your life go right. You've got to own this yourself.
If you need help, you put up your hand, and find it, from wherever you can get it. If you've got brokenness in your soul, everyone has a bit of it. Get along to a course. If it doesn't do it all, go back and do it again, don't worry about it. Just own change, own this business of growing. It's your life. Don't stay a baby all your life. Make a decision to invest. Next year, as we begin to share what we'll do next year, you make the decision: what do I need to grow in? In fact, before you even get there: what do I need to grow in? Where do I need to grow personally? Where do I need to change? What things do I need to learn, to become a better follower of Jesus? Next year, when there's opportunities up, you put your hand up, and turn up, and get to change. That's how life works. Get in a group - so commit to change. Ha ha! You've gone all quiet on that one. Tell someone next to you: he was talking about you, you know; it wasn't me, I've changed enough. I don't need to change - I've arrived. [Laughs] How many know someone that's already arrived? There we are, don't need to change.
Matthew 16, Jesus said this. He said: if any man really purposes in their heart, that they will come after Me, and walk the journey with Me; this is what He said, oh, you're going to love this! He said: you'll have to deal with selfishness, and there'll be a cross, there'll be a part of your life that I can't carry for you. There'll be some stuff you won't like, where you'll have to actually surrender and yield. He said: you can't follow Me, unless you're doing that route. Now this is what we want: we want a path of following Jesus, that bypasses Gethsemane, Calvary; just take me straight to the resurrection! [Laughter] Glory! I want glory! I want buzzes, and things happening! But no, it's not going to be like that. Before every resurrection, there's a death; and I have journeyed with God long enough to know, that it goes in ebbs of flows of life and death, that life comes when something dies.