So that means every person who comes who's a visitor, well you reach out to them. Why? Because you're aligned with our goal of gathering up people to Christ. Wherever you go, you're reaching people to show the friendship of God to them. Why? Because that's what we're here for, it's what we're here to do. People in your sphere or metron, you're reaching out and doing something actively to reach them. You say: well I do car park, or I do prayer, or I do administration - nonsense. That's nonsense. That's just a specific function. We're all called to the big purpose, which is people. It's always about people. It's always about people. It's always about people, and the moment you forget it's about people, you've missed the point, you've missed the purpose. You're not aligned. Okay then, so God will be working on us to get us positioned right, and aligned right, focussed right in this coming season. It's going to be exciting and it'll be good.
Here's the next one. Here's a good one now - and so you notice that Moses held up the rod of God! That is a picture of persevering prayer! He didn't just hold it up, and He had the victory. It was nice, because he held it up one day there, and the waters opened up. Then he went whoosh, and the waters closed. It was nice to just do whoosh like that. It would have been nice to stand there and go whoosh! and get rid of all the enemy. It didn't work that way - he had to remain in a place of passionate persevering prayer, upholding the authority of God, his hands lifted to heaven, lifted to throne of God, from where his power and his source comes. Listen, if we don't connect with heaven, if we don't connect with God, if we haven't got strong prayer coming out of an engagement with God, you can't win the battle! If you lose in prayer, you lose it altogether! You haven't got what it takes.
Here's the thing. For the church to change a community, you have to have what it takes on the inside, so that the community doesn't change you. For most Christians, the community changes them. We think, talk, act and behave just like the community does. Why? Because we haven't got enough inside us, and the inside us part is the discipleship, that the growing and the basic disciplines, basic walking with God, the routine stuff that keeps you strong and alive and in God, so you can be like a Daniel. Daniel went into the world of Babylon. Daniel was over all the magicians. This is a hard one to handle. Think about this: that Daniel was over all the occult practitioners. That was his position in the world. Of course we love to think of Daniel being a nice person, and a man of God; but how do you be a man of God, and be over all the occult practitioners? That's your cell group. [Laughter] I've got all the occult practitioners, and they're all still into it, and I'm supposed to be in charge of them. Come on, think about that - and you think your job's too hard. Go back and have another read of it.
But he had such a presence and life of God in him, spirit life, the life and presence of God. He rose to the top. Why was he over all the occult practitioners? Because what he had from God was better than them. He had more wisdom, more prophetic insight, more words of knowledge, more revelation. He had more than any of them. Shame the church doesn't have that these days. It has to come back to what we need to come back to. See, so we can actually have influence that way. A smart boy that one, and so he would have had to all dress up and wear eye make up and all kinds of stuff to live in Babylon in those days. You want to read the history of what it was like there - would have had face painted and all kinds of things, and eyes and rings and stuff like that. He'd look quite bad. He's over the practitioners. I think if we saw Daniel today, if you had a chance to step into time and saw him, you'd write him off. [Laughter] Doesn't fit what we think of as a man of God, doesn't look right aye? Your cell group's all the occult practitioners, I can't - come on now - and you're leading them? Eternal burn? Now no, no, no, that wasn't it. He actually showed he had better than them. I think he probably won them all to the Lord.