Gateway Church Sermons
Saturday 13th July | Session 2 | Grace Hosier | Psalm 34
But what I'm going to do today is talk to you about how God is my refuge, but in a way that I hope is kind of practical, because God is my refuge through the way I worship, through prayer, through the Word, and the only way I can really talk about it is to kind of walk you through the Word in the way that I would approach it if I was wanting to come to God. So that's kind of what I'm going to do, but this starts with a picture, and the picture is brilliantly very light the picture that Richard ended his talk with, which is about how God guides us along roads. And kind of my thinking about this talk started with Becky Carrier, who unfortunately can't be here today, talking to me about how she had this image when we were meeting as a little bread group, an image of a path. We all get, if we give our lives to Jesus, we all get to stand before him and get into heaven. So the information is the same, but the way you take the journey can be profoundly different, and the picture that she had was of a child, one of her children, walking along a beach like Kimmaridge Bay, which is muddy and rocky. And you've got a parent there saying, "I think it'd be a really good idea if you hold my hand. It'd be a really good idea if you walk this way," but that child goes, "La, la, la, la, no, I'm doing it my way." They still arrive at the destination, but they're muddy, they're bruised, they're ripped to pieces. And I think what I want to try and encourage you about today is to maybe consider how you're walking, because God's offering you refuge, and he's actually offering you a path and a burden that's easy and light if you'll take it, to deliver you with as few mistakes of your own making as possible. You might arrive having gone through trouble, but you want to be sure that that trouble has come from the Lord, and the Lord knows about that trouble, and it's not just a mess that you made, because that's going to affect how you arrive. So that's kind of how this starts. So what we're going to look at after Becky's pictures, we're going to look at Psalm 34, which is something that we read. I'm literally taking something that we've read recently as part of our bread group, and I'm going to read it to you, and then I'm going to do the English teacher thing and give you a poetry lesson. Okay, because I'm comfortable in that space. This is Psalm 34 of David when he pretended to be insane before Abimelech, who drove him away, and he left. "I will extol the Lord at all times, his praise will always be on my lips. I will glory in the Lord, let the afflicted hear and rejoice, glorify the Lord with me, let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord, and he answered me, he delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called, the Lord heard him, he saved him out of all his troubles, all of them. We heard a lot about that from Victoria just now. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them. Taste and see that the Lord is good, blessed is the one who takes refuge in him, fear the Lord, all you, his holy people, for those who fear him lack nothing." There are lots of superlatives in this. This just means like the absolute nth degree of something, in this poem there are lots of those. "Lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack know good thing. Come my children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord, whoever you love's life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from telling lies. Turn from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it. The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their cry, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil to blot out their name from the earth. The righteous cry out and the Lord hears them. He delivers them from all their troubles, repetition, that's a rhetorical feature for those of you who like English literature. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. The righteous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all. He protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken. Evil will slay the wicked. The foes of the righteous will be condemned. The Lord will rescue his servants, for no one who takes refuge in him will be condemned. Amen. Lord, we pray that you will just draw some truth, practical truth out of this psalm for us, as we would learn to encircle ourselves in you, that we would learn to rest in you and make sure that we are fully hidden in you, which is your desire for us, our men. So, this poem, you've got to start in English literature with context. The context of this poem is that David was alone. He was afraid. He had run away, and he was actually pretending to be mad because he was so fearful of the king whose presence he was in, and he prayed to the Lord, and the Lord rescued him, but maybe not in the way he expected. What happened was the king said, "You're mad. Why would I have you here? Go." And he got out of a place that was unhealthy and ended up in a little place of refuge called the Cave of the Dallom, where he gathered a group of people around him. That's the context, okay? You just need to know that because you need to understand what David might have been feeling when he wrote this in the first place. He wrote this sometime afterwards, but you will see in this poem that there is a reflection on the past, there's an acknowledgment of the present, and there's a look into the future, and English teachers just love that kind of pattern. It's just great. So, the other thing you need to know, which is me geeking out as well with the kind of poetry thing, is that it is an acrostic. Now what that means is that every line of the poem begins, the first word at the beginning of the line begins with the letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It is literally David's ABC of worship. Now I think acrostic, there are lots of them in the Psalms, I think they're a really easy way for somebody who's in trouble to remember something. You literally go A, B, C, and remind yourself. And so because that's what David's done, I've decided to do the same. But we're going to take every letter of the word refuge, and I'm going to try and walk you through the psalm again, and show you an easy way to remember how to circle around in God's grace. And the thing about this is you will hear loads of repetition, because it's not rocket science. Basically, Jesus called you to worship, he called you to read his word and to pray to him, and to utterly surround yourself with your brothers and sisters in Christ. You're not really supposed to be like David alone, trying to do it on your own. We need each other, okay? So we're in a moment of refuge, but you can have daily refuge, and that's kind of what I want you to see. So the first point is R stands for rejoice, and you'll see it here in the first few verses. I will extol the Lord at all times. His praise will always be on my lips. I will glory in the Lord, let the afflicted here in the joys glorify the Lord with me. Let us exalt His name together. We were made to worship. We were made to worship, and I just want you to notice the plural, personal pronoun we, English teacher, it's a collective thing, come and worship with me, we will worship together. And I would say that one of the first places I've found refuge when I've been in times of difficulty is if I'm on my own, it's to put worship music on and join with that group of people. There is a reason we like choirs, it's because it's lots of us singing together. There is a reason, choir sounds so good. There is a reason why lots of football supporters cheering at a game sound good. It's because they're together, and they're agreeing together. So you do need to worship. You were made to worship, and you will never feel like you're in the refuge of God if you ignore the opportunity to worship. The second letter is E. Now for E, this word is expect. I think there's a real sense of expectancy in this poem, there just is. The word isn't there, but the feeling is there. So the first one rejoices, that's kind of a command word, I'm telling you, you need to rejoice. The second word is the same, it's a command word, expect, what are you expecting? It goes with these verses four to nine. I sought the Lord, and he answered me, he delivered me from all my fears. Those who looked to him are radiant, their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called, and the Lord heard him, he saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them, tastes and see that the Lord is good, blessed is the one who takes refuge in him, fear the Lord you his holy people, for those who fear him lack nothing. And I think what I want you to see here is that David kind of refers to the past, what's happened to him, I looked to the Lord and he helped me, he delivered me in the past. And then he reminds you that if you join in with that, you will also experience radiance and your face need never be covered with shame. He's been saved, but then look at the change, in verse seven he says, the angel of the Lord encamps around those who feared him, that is the present tense, that's not in the past, that means it's happening now, and the S on the end of encamps literally means it's ongoing, it's what's called the present continuous, it's now, and it's continuing, he is around us all the time, not just in the past, not just now, not just in the future, but all the time, if you fear him, and we'll get to that in a moment. So how do we make sure that our faces are never covered with shame, well it does say we need to look to him, and I think it's really important that we spend time looking to God, we spend time worshiping, but we need to spend time in the Word, looking at, actually looking at him, expecting him to do something, we need to come to him knowing he's good, but knowing that he hears us, and when we look to him he will answer our prayers. So there were so many warnings in the New Testament when Jesus came about the blind, and he healed many people who were blind, why was that? Well it's because people needed to see who he was, he wanted those who were literally blind to open up their eyes and see him, but he doesn't want us to be spiritually blind either, and the way we do that is by leaning into the Word. Now right at the end of there verse 9 it says, "Fear the Lord," that's another command word, and that is going to be the F for refuge, we need to fear the Lord. Now fear of the Lord is wonder or worship, putting him first, thinking about what he wants from us, not just following our own plan, and the promise is if you put him first and look to him first, you won't lack anything, okay? The angel is around us, but only for those who fear him, which means we need to be hand in hand with Jesus, not fingers and ears, I'm going to do it my way. It's actually about looking to him, and we need to expect him to meet with us, but we also need to fear him. There is a warning, the tone, round about verse 10, changes, "Lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. Come my children, listen to me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord, who wherever you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from telling lies, turn from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it." Now I think there's a slight warning there, there's something in there that we need to be a bit careful about. We get tired, but we must keep seeking the Lord, and I've really felt as I was reading this particular verse, "Come my children, listen to me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord." That's David, who's now got a group of people around him teaching his band to follow us, and I feel we need to have a higher honouring of our elders and the word of God that they preach faithfully every week. That is our moment to come as the children of God, and listen to the Father speaking to us, we must not neglect to do that. It's like a shot in the arm to us, we've got to submit to the word of God, and I'll get onto this in a moment, but you can't just read the word on your own because we can drift and we can get into error or we can get into our own head and what we think it means. We need people who've really studied it to talk to us and to bring the word of God inflamed by the Spirit into our lives, so do not neglect to listen. Now the reality is you have to position yourself to listen, you have to decide that you're going to submit to the word of God, so just want to throw that in there. Make sure you are fearing the Lord and you are listening to those who are trying to teach you. I just want to say here that one of the ways I've been really blessed because the second warning a bit further down is keep your tongue from evil and your lips from telling lies. I felt really challenged about the fact that we tell ourselves lies all the time, and we need to remember that our enemy, Satan, is called the father of lies, and God is the God of all truth, and I just felt that sometimes if we isolate ourselves, we end up listening to lies, and I just wanted to challenge you about maybe some of the lies you listen to. I've just wrote a few of them down if I can find them. So for instance, yeah, the gospel's really great, but I need all these other things in my life as well. I'm not loved. God doesn't care about me. My happiness is actually the most important thing. I don't need to apologise. I don't really need the Lord today. I can get by on my own. All of these are lies that we need to tackle, and in order to be able to do that, we actually need people around us. So my good friend Lou, who's sitting at the front to give me courage as I speak today, we're in a bread group together, and she had this brilliant little chain of Bible verses about how to get the truth into you, and I'm just going to read them to you. The first one is in Proverbs 4, and it says, "Above all else, guard your heart for everything flows from the heart," right? So if your heart is full of lies and bitterness, and actually we had that picture this morning, didn't we? It was a word last night that if you are full of bitterness, there's not much room, really, for the grace of God. So you want to look at what's going on in your heart. Well, how do you know this is a lovely little chain? The next part of the chain is, well, where your treasure is, that's where your heart is. What are the things that you think about when you're in an off-moment? What are the things you're giving your time to? What are those things? And that's in Luke, and then the next little chain is, well, because whatever ends in your heart is going to come out of your mouth, for the mouth speaks, what the heart is full of. Okay? So that's like a not virtuous circle. That's a spiral down, isn't it? Oh, goodness, my heart is full of all these things, and that's what's flowing out of me. But look at this one, Philippians 4, verse 8. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things, and if you do that, look at this, your treasure, your heart will be full of those things. That will be what you treasure, that will be what your mouth speaks, and then you carry on thinking about it. There's this lovely, what I call a virtuous circle, where you can, and the psalm, actually the psalm acts like that. It starts in a place of worship, and you'll see in a moment it ends in a place of worship, takes you right back to the beginning. Pray the psalms, pray the scripture, it will actually fill your heart. But if you don't put it in, it's not going to come out. If you don't put it in, it's not coming out. You can't magic up scripture, you need to really know it. So I would urge you again, fear the Lord, fight the lies, two Fs, okay? Our ability, where are we up to? You, my favourite one, this one is not in the psalm, okay? But hear me out, this is something to do with where the psalm positions us. You have heard a lot about refuge and how it's being surrounded by God, okay? And this, my first idea, I couldn't get that old song out of my head, you are my hiding place. Yeah, do you remember anyone remember that? You are my hiding place, and it's about being filled, isn't it? With songs of deliverance, and that's from Psalm 32, verse 7, "You are my hiding place, you will protect me, and you will surround me with songs of deliverance whenever I'm afraid I will trust in you." That's kind of what pinged in my head when I was thinking about what to say, and actually what it speaks about is the ubiquity of God, God is ubiquitous, that literally means he is everywhere, he's all around us all the time, and it's verses 15 to 16, I particularly want us to look at here. The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, he can see you, and his ears are attentive to their cry, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil to blot out their name from the earth. Now, the Lord is looking at you, he is surrounding you if you put your trust in him. There's an if, it is conditional, you need to trust him, and I think here I just felt there is this sense in which you can run away from the truth of God, you can be holding on clinging to the wrong thing, and there's a verse in Jonah that says those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God's care for them. If you're holding on to something else other than the gospel, it is possible to be outside of the refuge. I just warn you, it is cold out there, it is lonely out there, and you will drift off, and Jesus gave an amazing example, if you don't stay in the sheep fold, there are wolves waiting to pick you off. You've got to lean in, you must lean in. There's a psalm in Proverbs, it's one of my life psalms, whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire and breaks out against all reason. It is madness to not show up on a Sunday, it is madness not to surround yourself with your Christian friends, it's mad, don't do it, because if you isolate yourself, you go mad. You don't want to be mad, lean in. You need to think, just a little challenge, really speeding up here, what are you surrounded by? What do you feel your heart and your life with? What is it you're looking at? Literally, I'm very aware, especially in the school I work in, where we've banned phones now, but I'm very aware, everywhere I go, and last Monday Matt and I were having a lovely coffee in Swannich, a couple on the table next to us, not talking to each other, completely scrolling through their phones. You look through into the cafe, everybody on tables, scrolling through their phones, get off your phone. Some of the time, okay, my rule with boys at school is challenge yourself, an hour a day, that means waking hour, not overnight, an hour in a day, turn it off. An hour a day, a day a week, how about Sunday? A week in the year, how about that, just challenge yourself, it's an addiction, TV, maybe, phones, social media, yourself, some of these things make us sick and you don't want to cling to a worthless idol that isn't going to do you any good, but if you're clinging to it, you've got to put it down to embrace God. You can't have the gospel and, doesn't work like that, you've got to put it down and you might need to step back into the sheep fold. So I'm just going to give a very quick illustration of this. I was really struggling to pull this together and I went for a walk on my own, I have my own plan about the walk. On this walk, I, my foot, and I have got a really bad bunion on my foot, but it doesn't normally hurt when I'm walking, it really started to kill and I had to stop and I had to stop and have a coffee and make a plan about changing my plan. And I really felt, right, I've just got to go home the quickest way, which is up this really steep hill and then down into Southern Village and so I did that and I thought, right, I'm just going to do it, I've got to go home, I can't carry on. So I started and as I started to go up this hill, I found a lovely dear 75-year-old lady who had just fallen over, completely on her own, trying to bum shuffle down a really steep, steep hill and she needed help, she needed rescue. So what I did was I prayed for her, okay, I thought I'll pray for you that it feels better and it's nothing, nothing bad's happened and I'll leave you and you'll be fine. Well, I prayed for her and she said thank you very much, but she's still in pain. I tried to get her off the ground, couldn't get her moving. Two people show up to help, we all try to carry her not working, feel sick and faint, down on the ground. It took the Coast Guard full rescue team, about seven of them with a stretcher come in from two parts of the hillside to make sure they didn't miss us, to fully surround that woman, make her safe and carry her off the hillside. She needed saving, she didn't need just a quick prayer and a move on. She didn't need just a quick hello on a Sunday and move on. She needed surrounding and she had broken her ankle in two places, so there was no way she was coming off that hillside without full rescue. Sounds a bit like a story we read in Mark this week. Sometimes it takes a whole bunch of people to get someone into the refuge. Some people come walking on their own, but some people we need to go on a rescue mission to get them in. Right, nearly done. Speeding up. Gee, it's for Grace, and my little link is that she needed me in the right place at the right time, but she really needed the Grace of God. That's what she really needed. The Grace of God, who is the rescue plan, he's the rescue plan. He's already done it all, to present your soul perfect and unbroken and unmashed up before him. If you've already done all the work, you just need to step into that Grace flow. Verses 17 and 18, "The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them. He delivers them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. It's all grace. The only reason you can call yourself righteous is because of Jesus." We know that, don't we? We know that, but we need to lean into that. We are hidden in Christ, our lives are hidden in Christ. Colossians tells us that. You died and your life is now hidden in Christ in God. That is God's promise to you if you put your faith in him, okay? But there is common grace available. That's your saving grace. Common grace is us looking after each other and being in each other's lives. So I would urge you this weekend, please be more than just the prayer emoji. Be more, be more than just, "Hi, how are you?" Fine on a Sunday, move on. Be more than that. Honestly, this year has revolutionised my life because of Lou and Becky, because we decided in January, we are going to give an hour a week to calling one another on a video call. We're not just going to do the WhatsApp. We're going to actually look at each other's faces and talk to each other every week. And every fourth week, we get together in person. It's changed everything. I feel like we've gone a bit deeper. I think we need to do that a bit more, go a bit deeper. So the final E is extol. I'm just going to read the very end of the Psalm for you, 19 to 22, sorry. The righteous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all. He protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken. Evil will say the wicked. The foes of the righteous will be condemned. The Lord will rescue his servants. No one who takes refuge in him will be condemned. That is enough reason to praise, isn't it? Now the thing about breaking bones there, I've broken my ankle and my new friend Liz, she broke her ankle in two places. So what is that talking about? That is talking about the perfect righteous work of Christ that will present you pure, spotless, uncrushed, unbroken on the final day. Because it can't mean you won't have trouble because the next verse says you will have many troubles, but you'll be delivered from all of them. All of them, all of them, you will be delivered and you will be rescued. That is reason to extol the Lord. What does extol mean? Well, we go back to the very first verse because it is circular. I will extol the Lord at all times, which means praise enthusiastically. So that's what we're going to do. I'm going to ask Steve and the band to come back up. We're going to praise enthusiastically and then we're going to have a quick chat to some people who have known God as their refuge in their lives. Let's praise him. [applause] Let's go back over there. A little bit more relaxed, isn't it? There you go, and take a microphone between couples. My fill and bread on this side. You have that one. Great. So, by way of introduction, most of you will know fill and bread. They were elders in the church some time ago, I can't remember how long ago it was that you stopped being an elder field, but it was a while ago now, and I don't get a chair. Oh, no. Here it comes. [laughter] Brent stole my chair. It's fine. And then Paul and Belinda have been with us a short while, but Matt and I actually knew them quite a while ago in a church in Kingston where they served on the eldership team as well. So, I'm going to start with Phil and Brent. Can you just tell us a little bit, Brent, about how long you've been a gateway and maybe a bit of when Phil was an elder, if you can remember? We've been at Gateway as long as it's been Gateway, but we've been at Old Road Baptist Church before that, so 39 years in total. So, Phil, when were you in elder, and can you tell us a little bit about how long that was? I looked at the dates, couldn't remember, but it's only like 1988 to 2011, which I think 12 or 13 years. Yeah. Long time, excellent. Lucky for some. What about you, Paul? We'll start with you, but when were you an elder in for how long, can you remember? Well, we were at Wimbledon every day church back in the day, and they planted a church into Kingston, and I was an elder of that, and I was an elder of that for 25 years. And then we had a guide that had gone to Richmond, and they were kind of struggling a bit, so we then went there, and we were there five years, and I was an elder there, as well. Wow. Long time. See, lots of lovely experience. And Billin, how long have you been at Gateway? We've been at Gateway since March this year. Brilliant. And we've been loving having you here. Yeah. We visited when we were house hunting last summer, and then we moved in March, and we've been with you since then. Brilliant. So, what I thought we'd do is just, we're going to talk very briefly about just why, what it is about God as a refuge in these people's lives. So I'm going to start with the McCardles, and I just want to ask you, can you describe a time when you really needed to take refuge in God, and what helped you in that season? That's absolutely fine, yeah. Yeah. When I was about 41, I was working, I've always worked in the city of London in financial services, and I was working there, and I got sacked from my job. Now, they dressed it up as redundancy, but it was a sacking. And so, that sort of sent me into a bit of a tailspin, really. It's not very fashionable to say this, but I think the sort of men and job, there's a strong identity thing there, so you kind of pulled that from under me. You'd four young kids, I had a big fat mortgage, we'd booked our first big blowout holiday to Florida, and that was coming up, and I lost my job. It was November, it was Christmas, I lost my job, it was just a disaster. And it really, it really threw me, you know, totally. And so, obviously, you kind of pray about these things, looking for God in this, and people would come up with sort of irritating platitudes about, you know, about what it was like. It was just a tough old time, I just felt desperate. And you know, I was very aware that you kind of, you sort of rationalize it, and you seek God, and aware of waiting on God, in a kind of, almost in a sort of rational way, where you go, I'm waiting on you, I'm praying, I'm waiting on you. And then other times, I'd just kind of, I'd be shouting to God, I remember driving up the motorway to see my parents, I was in the car, and the windows were all closed, I'm on my own. I was shouting, you know, it was just, it was, it was a powerful time, it was amazing. I'm just going to read a couple of verses from Psalm 123, which is incredibly helpful. It says, "To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens, behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters, as the eyes of a maid servant to the hand of their mistress. So our eyes look to the Lord, our God, till he has mercy upon us." And that's kind of for me, that's the kind of rational side. You go, I'm going to, I'm going to look to Jesus' hands, I'm going to fix my eyes on him. How long, until he has mercy, I'm going to wait, I'm just going to wait. And it's kind of about waiting on God. And then the next verse goes, "Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us." And that's me driving up the motorway in the car, sort of flipping out. And it was just, you can kind of look back, and I just think what God showed me there was something about waiting on God. And so for me, that was just a refuge, waiting on God, such a refuge, you know, how do you do that? Well, how I did that was, I just, I prayed, I fixed my eyes on Jesus, and then I just let it all out as well, I just gave him my heart and threw myself on him. Brilliant, that's so encouraging, thank you, Paul. And how about you, Belinda? I hope I express this right, I sometimes get my words a bit muddled like President Biden. I don't think anyone quite like President Biden. A while ago, I was diagnosed with cancer, and when you get that diagnosis, you ask lots of questions, you're thinking, has it spread? Is it operable? Am I going to need a punishing, grueling treatment schedule? Is this the end, is my time up? But instead, I asked the questions, "Am I a beloved daughter of the King of Kings? Does having cancer make any difference whatsoever to that question?" So, is the Creator God the living God interested in the details of my life? Does having cancer make any difference to the answer to that question? Can anything separate me from the love of God? Does my father, does he have a room prepared for me in his house? Is the Holy Spirit my friend, my comforter? Having cancer makes no difference whatsoever to the answers to these questions. So just so you know, in my case, the answers weren't onerous and they whipped some bits out that I don't apparently need anyway. But honestly, the answers to the other questions were my refuge before the cancer answers were worked out. That is so helpful. Thank you so much for sharing that. I did not know that. You can give that back to Paul. Thank you. Thank you. So helpful, isn't it, that you've got to fill yourself up with truth. You have to fill yourself up with truth, you have to have that foundation. That's what's going to withstand those storms. So, Finn and Ben, we're going to turn to the present with you guys. And my question to you is, are there any sort of stormy moments in your life at the moment? Are there any particular challenges? How are you surrounding yourself with God just presently in this present season? I think probably I need a little bit of the past in there. Our younger daughter, her husband and our grandson, just over two years ago, one was in hospital in Bournemouth in a life-threatening condition and the grandson was in Paul Hospital in a life-threatening condition and Katie was trying to run between the two hospitals and supporting both of them and really struggling with it all. And it was really painful watching were they going to survive or not? And that was really difficult. And praise God, they did both survive and they are both in a much better place now. But that was really tough for Katie. And she is now in quite a difficult situation with her own health and her own circumstances. And I think the thing that overall has been my base position is that God loves them more than I do. And he has them in his hands and they all know and love Jesus and therefore their future is secure and I have to let them be in the place that they are in that he has put them in. And that is quite hard to deal with but he is faithful. I am not very good at expressing myself but I do know deep down in my know that God loves them and he has got them. And my security is staying in that place of knowing, getting to church each Sunday, worshiping God, listening to truth, getting into his word has stopped me from going mad. I think the other thing that I have found quite difficult and I have to trust God for is that my own memory has got pretty rubbish. People like to tell me that it is because of what is going on also with my parents and maybe it is but a lot of it I do not think it is. So when you have told me something and I come back and ask you the same question in 10 minutes time or next Sunday, it is not because I do not care, it is because I do not remember. And God knows that too, he is the one who has put me where I am but the thing I have never lost throughout it all is that he loves us, loves me and my security is in what his word says. Thank you, Brian. Thank you so much, Brian. She has forgotten all my thoughts. Just give us one thing about, because those of you who know Phil and Brenwell, that is a lot they are carrying, but they love people and they are always alongside the broken heart is always. I would highly commend them to you, if you do not know this couple, you should get to know them. They are so loving, they are faithful prayers and they will be the first person at your door if there is difficulty, she has been carrying all that and still reached out to me when we were having similar struggles with one of our kids last year. And I really, I mean, who has time for that when you are carrying so much? So I just commend them to you, get to know them. They love the Lord so much and this man loves the Lord. So just one thing, maybe you want an even daily discipline that you want to share with us that makes you feel like you are surrounding yourself in God. I think it is prayer and remembering to pray specifically and I think for me, I try to be specific. I know God wants to bless me and God wants to bless you and I think you need to believe it, God wants to bless you. And so you pray, Lord bless me and that is great and you will, but it is so much better if you can think what does that mean, what does that mean, what will that look like asking for it? Somebody referred to Becky Durbin earlier in South Africa. She was being prayed for the advanced conference and she asked for 15 more years. That was what she wanted, she wanted 15 more years. Let's get specific in our prayers. That way we know if God is answering, he is going to answer. And then we have got reasons for boasting and we can rejoice. Ah, he answered that prayer. Yes, he blessed me. That's true. What did he do? Tell somebody, tell him you are grateful, boast to somebody who is not yet a Christian. If you have asked for an answer to prayer and you have got it, you can tell them and that is glorifying to him. So I would love to see more people praying, coming for prayer, ready to pray, pray for your neighbours, pray for lots of things and give God the glory, boast about him. Yes, wonderful, that's wonderful, Phil. We need to listen, listen to that wisdom. So final, quick-fire round, the future. What I want from each of you is just one thing that you see that's really positive about Gateway Church that gives you real hope for the future because these guys, they've been in leadership, they've stepped out of leadership and they're still passionate about the church. So I think you need to hear that. Sometimes people step out of leadership and disappear. These guys are still in the room. So Alan and Kate, there are people in the room who are still with us. So what is it that you see that is positive that just keeps you pushing into that refuge? Specifically about Gateway Church. Yes, I think so. Or just generally, the church in general. Yes, okay. So specifically about Gateway Church, if you've read the book, "Why Men Don't Go to Church?" It's a really good book. And the author, whose name I forget, says, you know, "A couple walk into church for the first time." The woman is like, "The fact is that considering many things, there's this, there's that, there's the other, there's the other." She's taking on a broad range of things when considering is this a good church to go to. The guy is like, "Can I follow him?" And I think that's what we would say. You know, we came because of Matt. And so I just want to commend Matt, pray for him. I think it's a great church and it's incredibly well led. So that's kind of a huge factor for why we're here. Excellent. Thank you so much. We've stuck with church, you would, that's the angle you were coming from. Because the church family is the local expression of the body of Christ. And that's the context where we can worship together and have fellowship together. And that's the context where we can do the one anothering, loving one another and encouraging one another and bearing with one another and all the other, one anotherings. So we feel very happy that we can worship and fellowship one another with the people at Gateway Church. Wonderful. Thank you, Blinda and Phil and Brad. My dream is to see kids praying. I gave it to me a little while ago. And I believe that in the long term we will see our kids coming in and praying for us as adults. Excellent. I'm loving seeing lots of people join the church and lots coming from other churches and that's great. I'd love to see far more people coming to know Jesus for themselves for the first time. And yeah, so please Lord. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Can you please give them massive, gateway, thank you. So appreciate your wisdom. (applause)