WEBVTT 00:00:00.460 --> 00:00:05.700 Well, good morning folks. Are we well? Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming today. 00:00:07.200 --> 00:00:11.759 It is a real joy to see you here. And it's a real joy to see you. Can we just have a 00:00:11.759 --> 00:00:17.660 show of hands once more if this is your first day away? That is very exciting to see. That's 00:00:17.660 --> 00:00:22.179 probably about a third of the hands in this room are up, which is a real thrill for, I 00:00:22.179 --> 00:00:25.539 guess, us as a leadership team and us as a church family to welcome so many new people 00:00:25.539 --> 00:00:30.780 here. But it's just a real testament to God's goodness to us as a church. And to that we 00:00:30.780 --> 00:00:39.519 are forever thankful. This is my third day away. And I'm always struck, I don't know if 00:00:39.519 --> 00:00:44.120 you noticed this as you came in the front door, by the inscription that's above the door. 00:00:44.200 --> 00:00:48.980 Did anyone see it? Yeah, prepare to meet your God. That's really cool. And I guess I hope 00:00:48.980 --> 00:00:53.659 that that's my prayer for this day is that that would be true for us as a church today. 00:00:53.659 --> 00:00:58.679 I love these days away because they are great just to spend time with family and to make 00:00:58.679 --> 00:01:03.079 new friends, to reacquaint with old friends, to just spend some time in the busyness of 00:01:03.079 --> 00:01:09.620 life just away with church family. But I tell you that the real reason, not only why I enjoy 00:01:09.620 --> 00:01:15.420 these days, but the real reason that I need these days. And I'm always reminded a couple 00:01:15.420 --> 00:01:19.959 of years ago, we, Alex and I, our first car when we got married was a Volkswagen Fox. I don't 00:01:19.959 --> 00:01:23.959 know if anyone knows what Volkswagen Fox is. Tiny little car. And we used to absolutely 00:01:23.959 --> 00:01:28.039 love that tiny little car. And you could feel it when it used to go above 60 in the motorway. 00:01:28.079 --> 00:01:31.219 It was one of those kind of cars. Loved it. But we took it for, I remember a couple of years 00:01:31.219 --> 00:01:38.399 ago, four years ago, taking it for an MOT. And the garage phoned me back and the guy goes 00:01:38.400 --> 00:01:44.219 on the phone and goes, right. And you think, that's not a way that you want to start that 00:01:44.219 --> 00:01:49.660 conversation, is it? You're just thinking, how much? How much is it going to cost? And 00:01:49.660 --> 00:01:54.000 it was all right in the end. But one of the things that he pointed out is that the wheels 00:01:54.000 --> 00:02:01.480 on this Volkswagen Fox, our wheel alignment was totally out. What it meant with the car wasn't 00:02:01.480 --> 00:02:06.900 quite going straight. And I realized this when he talked me through it, that actually I was 00:02:06.900 --> 00:02:11.700 having to oversteer to make it go straight. That's not good for your tires. And the guy 00:02:11.700 --> 00:02:15.759 said, listen, one of the things we need to do to this car is we need to realign it. We 00:02:15.759 --> 00:02:21.860 need to realign it so that it goes straight and it works. And I guess I reflect on that 00:02:21.860 --> 00:02:27.780 episode all the time. And it reminds me a bit about my life as a Christian. Because I should 00:02:27.780 --> 00:02:31.659 have explained as well, we live in this area of Edinburgh that's just got cobbles everywhere, 00:02:31.920 --> 00:02:35.620 cobbled roads, and it's the cobbles that had knocked the alignment out. And actually it 00:02:35.620 --> 00:02:40.620 makes me think just about my life and the cobbles of life that can come along and just 00:02:40.620 --> 00:02:44.439 maybe the busyness of life, the things that go on and just slightly knock us as Christians. 00:02:45.580 --> 00:02:51.060 And they take our alignment, our focus away from what we're trying to do. And I guess I 00:02:51.060 --> 00:02:56.240 love days like this because they are time away from the busyness of life, time away from the 00:02:56.240 --> 00:03:03.420 city that allow us to realign ourselves with what we're trying to do as a church. And I guess 00:03:03.419 --> 00:03:09.019 I just wanted to spend five minutes this morning just thinking about what it means to align 00:03:09.019 --> 00:03:12.060 ourselves with what we're trying to do as a church. So Deb, do you want to put the first slide up? 00:03:12.619 --> 00:03:18.959 Here's our vision statement as a church. This is what we're all about. Just take it in a little bit. 00:03:19.060 --> 00:03:26.799 Brunsfield Evangelical Church exists to glorify God through life's being transformed by the grace of 00:03:26.800 --> 00:03:31.820 Jesus Christ. So we want to glorify our great God because he's worthy of all praise. 00:03:33.140 --> 00:03:36.939 Worthy of all praise. And one of the ways we recognize that he is at work in our lives, 00:03:37.040 --> 00:03:43.939 he's adopted us as his sons, he's saved us, he's put a spirit to live in our hearts. And the process 00:03:43.939 --> 00:03:48.500 that he's involved in in our lives now as his people is transforming us more into the likeness of 00:03:48.500 --> 00:03:53.120 Jesus Christ for the glory of God. That's how great our God is. That's how we want to glorify him. 00:03:53.120 --> 00:03:57.960 Now I'm really, I'm really simple. You may have noticed that in my sermons. I like things that 00:03:57.960 --> 00:04:02.120 alliterate. I like things that make sense to me. And one of the things I love about this vision 00:04:02.120 --> 00:04:07.400 statement is that we try to really simplify it into inputs and outputs to help us visualize what it 00:04:07.400 --> 00:04:11.659 may look like in our everyday life. So if you've got your booklet, I should say that'll be on your 00:04:11.659 --> 00:04:16.840 front of your booklet as well. Deb, do you want to just pick up the next one? So here's really just the 00:04:16.839 --> 00:04:23.199 the outworkings of that vision statement. Here are the three things on the left that we're going 00:04:23.199 --> 00:04:26.500 to devote ourselves to as a church. It's not something that we've come up with. It's straight 00:04:26.500 --> 00:04:33.879 out of Acts 2. We're going to devote ourselves to prayer, to words, and to fellowship. So we're 00:04:33.879 --> 00:04:38.959 going to devote ourselves to seeking our great God in prayer, to devoting ourselves to his words, 00:04:39.419 --> 00:04:45.639 and to devoting ourselves to each other as a church family. And we hope and we pray and we know 00:04:45.639 --> 00:04:50.939 that as we devote ourselves to those things that we should begin to see outputs. We should begin to 00:04:50.939 --> 00:04:56.779 see fruit in our life. So here are the five things on the right that we believe we should see as fruit 00:04:56.779 --> 00:05:02.579 in our lives as we devote ourselves to prayer, word, and fellowship. To cherish God's word more deeply. 00:05:03.579 --> 00:05:07.060 Remember all these things are individual and corporate. Cherish God's word more deeply. 00:05:08.180 --> 00:05:13.159 Serve God's people more graciously. Fulfill God's mission more thoroughly. 00:05:13.160 --> 00:05:20.600 Walk with God in prayer more dependently. Be conformed to Christ's image more fully. 00:05:21.800 --> 00:05:26.700 Now I just want to, this morning, all we're going to do today is we're just going to take one of these 00:05:26.700 --> 00:05:31.460 outputs and we're going to think a bit about what that will look like in our lives. So here's the 00:05:31.460 --> 00:05:36.420 output here. Here's the fruit to fulfill God's mission more thoroughly. 00:05:36.420 --> 00:05:38.680 There we go. 00:05:41.120 --> 00:05:45.020 Well then, you go ahead and do it. 00:05:45.240 --> 00:05:46.660 I want to be able to go. 00:05:47.420 --> 00:05:47.920 Let's see what happens next. 00:05:48.120 --> 00:05:51.960 If I get a Jewish teacher, my name is Andrew Lucas, welcome to this test. 00:05:52.360 --> 00:05:54.780 You've got a Buddhist Sh favour of people named Michael Keisheis también.