You know it's important we receive love. Now sometimes the love of God comes through encounter, sometimes it comes in our devotions, but you know when it many times it comes? Many times it comes through people; and you know, if we won't open our lives to people, it's hard to be restored, hard to be healed, because let me say this: if you're a stone that's burnt, and been pulled out of position, God wants you not just to get healed; He wants you back in position, relating and connected, and sometimes we need people to come around us and love us. I know in the Restoration Retreats and many encounter meetings I've had, that one of the greatest healing things, was just to put arms around someone, and love them; and just say: we love you, no matter what. We know what you've done, we know what's been going on, we love you anyway. That is such a healing thing, to come through people.
And finally, we must choose to be repositioned. A classic example of that's in 2 Timothy 4:11 with Mark. Mark was a young apostle of Jesus Christ. Mark went on a mission trip with Paul, and in the middle of the trip, it got too much for him - the conflict, the spiritual pressure, and he quit. He just gave up, because it was too hard; and Paul later on said: listen, he's just a loser, just cut him lose. We're not having him in the team. Barnabas got alongside him, and encouraged him, and finally there came a point where Paul was able to say: I want him back in my team. Now you imagine how difficult that was for Mark, having walked away from an apostolic ministry, to actually then come back to say: I'm sorry; and to commit himself to walk in that difficult path with Paul again, knowing that there was hardship, difficulties, all kinds of stresses, being committed to the cause of the gospel. So you notice the four steps in the process, or four key things in the restoring of a burnt stone.
Number one, we've got to want to be restored, not to stay a burnt stone in a pile of rubble, which once was our dreams. The second thing is: we must be willing to acknowledge our part in being burnt, and what we need to face in order to come out of that place, and be repositioned. Thirdly, we must be open to the love of God, through the Holy Spirit and through people, to heal, restore, and bring us back into connection again. Finally, we must be willing to commit to actually being repositioned in what God called us to be positioned in. For some that will mean shifts. For some it will mean the role you play. For some it will mean relationships being restored. It means different things for different people, but it always means one thing: that God has changed our life, and that we're back again in the wall of destiny, fulfilling our course, and fulfilling our part.
Jesus said: I'm building a church made of living stones. People that were discarded by life, burnt by religion, burnt by failure, burnt by troubles, burnt by disappointments, burnt by every circumstance of life; but I saw what was possible in them, and I'm raising them up, to become an army to change the world! An army to change the world! An army to change the world! An army to change our community.
Why don't we just close our eyes right now. I saw a video clip - I have it, but I won't show it right now, just because of the time - and I was stunned. There was a man who lost his leg as a child, and a woman who lost her arm in a car accident; and together, together they flowed as a team to do ballet. Isn't that amazing? They overcame the circumstance that burnt them, and began to flow together.
Prelude Visit with Pastor Kong Hee, Singapore.
Thank you for your prayers the last two weeks. The first week we were in a church in Singapore. They're going through a huge transition and change in the church, and the pastor was away on stress leave, but however we had a wonderful time with them all. God moved powerfully. It was a great time, and we were able to help them. The second week we went to City Harvest. City Harvest is also going through a very difficult time. Their pastor's having stress leave too, in some respects, forced stress leave! What's happened is, in the last few years they've been saving and believing God for a big facility in the centre of the city, been meeting right out at the airport, huge convention centre out there that seats about 8,000 at a time. We've just been recently.