Citizens of Heaven

Second Timothy 15:8. This is our theme for the year that we've been unpacking over the course of the last couple of months. And Paul is writing to his young protege, his young pastor, encouraging him and reminding him of what it or who it is that has been imparted into his life and spirit. And he says these words that we are now all very well familiar with: "I am reminded, Timothy, of your sincere faith." Everyone say sincere faith. All right, that was about a third of you. Everyone say sincere faith. "I'm reminded of your sincere faith which first lived in your grandmother and in your mother and I am now persuaded also lives in you. For this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For the spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love, and self-discipline. So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, or of me, his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel by the power of God."

Challenging words. Notice most pastors these days do not have the courage to give an altar call by asking people to join them in suffering for the gospel. But this is the reality that following Jesus is going to cost us and challenge our way of life. And so we've been exploring what it means to live with a sincere faith.

And connected to this idea, two big ideas. The first being what it looks like to fan into flame the spirit of God within us. And so we've talked about this inner fire that is fueled through our intimacy with the spirit of God and fueled through our participation in the community of God. And so we have learned that for this inner fire—which is a life of love, power, and a sound mind—one of the main ways it is sustained is through a life of prayer. And we've talked about here at Dayspring, we don't want to just be a people who pray; we want to be a people of prayer. And it's a big difference.

I'm thinking as a pastor, one of the things that I would love is if we as a church had a reputation of those who knew how to pray. And when someone said, "Hey, what church do you go to?" and you say, "Well, I go to Dayspring," they say, "So, I've heard of Dayspring. You guys really know how to pray. I mean, you know how to love well. You love others well. You love God well, but I'm seeing that manifest in how you pray. You love well because you pray well. You understand the presence of God because you've learned how to connect with him in prayer. And when you pray, things happen. Atmospheres are changed. Lives are healed. People are delivered and step into freedom." I would love for us as a church to have that kind of reputation.

And so, this is part of what we have been pursuing and talking about this year, that we may be known as a people of prayer. A couple of things that we've done to help cultivate this kind of culture: We've brought back our regular monthly prayer and worship nights, and it's been great to see so many people come out on a Sunday night. You know what's been encouraging as well? We've got people traveling from all over Sydney to come and be part of our prayer and worship nights. That's really encouraging to see. People saying, "Hey, I heard that you're doing this. I love what Dayspring does during prayer and worship," and they're prepared to travel, sometimes over an hour, to be a part of what's happening here on a Sunday night.

And of course that's alongside our weekly Sunday night prayer at 5:00 every Sunday night during the school term. We pray in our prayer room. Again, that is one of my favorite spaces, and I love the faithful people that come week in, week out to be a part of that. One of the benefits of pushing back our Sunday morning service start time from 9:30 to 10:00 a.m. is that we've been able to open up and create space for pre-service prayer, and we've been able to see more people come. Some are coming in at 8:30 and coming into the prayer room to pray into all the different things that we feel God is on for the morning. And then of course we see a whole army of people come in at 9:20 for our pre-service prayer. These are just some of the spaces that we are looking to open up and continue to steward so that we can become a people of prayer.

We have our Tuesday night healing encounters every fortnight, and the testimonies that come through that continue to encourage us. Some of the stories include unsaved people coming in, again people traveling from well over an hour away a lot of the time. A lot of weeks it's more people externally than it is our own Dayspring people coming to be blessed and encouraged by our team and receiving an encounter with Jesus. Can we give our healing encounters team a round of applause? It is all volunteer-led, that team, and these guys are some of the most faithful people you will ever meet.

So we have our Tuesday night healing encounters. Our Sunday services, you would know that we've created a space at the end now which we've called response time. The heart behind that is to give our hearts a chance to respond, whether that be in prayer between us and the Holy Spirit, or praying together where we turn to one another, create like a table moment, and share and encourage one another on what it is that we felt God was doing and saying to us through the message. But this response time again is part of creating a culture and an atmosphere within our own hearts. It is stirring this inner fire to continue living a life of prayer.

In a couple of weeks in September, we are going to join with people all across the world in the 24/7 prayer movement—which we've been connected to for the last couple of years—in a global week of 24/7 prayer. And so we're going to share more information about that and what that could look like. But as this approaches, I would encourage you to mark it in your calendar and consider how you might be able to join, not just with us here as a church, but churches all around our city, all around our nation, and all around the world praying and believing for a move of God in our day.

Part of what we're doing with this is working behind the scenes to find a way to get 24-hour access to our prayer room. Some significant things have happened to help us do that. So we will shortly be able to tell you how you will be able to get after-hours access into our building. Everything else will be locked up and secure, and we'll be able to give after-hours access into the prayer room. There'll be bathroom facilities and all those kinds of things. In a couple of weeks we'll be able to let you know. We're going to do that on a trial basis just to see how it goes and double-check that nothing gets stolen or broken in the process. We do have a pretty good security system and cameras watching, so no one's going to get away with anything if someone makes a false move, an alarm goes off in Russell's house, and he comes running with his baseball bat to take care of things. Here's our inbuilt security system. But that's something we've been looking at for over a year, considering how we can create more access to our prayer room. So we're going to launch this as we join in with a global week of prayer.

Alongside that same week, we have Roma Waterman coming. Anyone who has heard of Roma Waterman knows she is a great worship leader who has been connected and leading worship in churches throughout our nation and was part of Stairway Church for some time. She's going to come and work with our worship team for the weekend, but also come and speak with our women on a Sunday morning. We've asked her to speak into and stir up the prophetic gift in our church. All of this is connected to this idea of inner fire and fanning into flame the things that God is asking us to do as a church and as his people.

Second half of the year, we're going to explore the second big idea connected to real faith, sincere faith. And that is what we see in Acts 2. Acts 2 started with—in fact, the church was birthed in—prayer in an upper room. But as you continue to read through Acts, what happened in the upper room didn't stay in the upper room. It spilled out into the streets, and it was not able to be contained. It's one thing to say, "Hey, we want to be a people of prayer," but we must understand that if we become a people of prayer, our prayer will not be contained in a room. It might be happening in a room, but the whole idea is that it would spill out and have a gospel impact and influence on the world around us.

And so it's the second big idea that we're exploring: fueling and stirring up that inner fire of God's spirit within us, but releasing that fire to have a gospel impact on the world around us. Amen. We want to be a people whose life of prayer flows out into the sharing of our faith. And so that's what we're going to be exploring and teaching into after our "Prepare the Way" series: what it means and what it looks like for us as a people of God to have a gospel impact and influence on the world around us.

Now, we've already started doing some of these things that we want to continue to see strengthened and grown over the course of the year. We've been doing monthly Send Saturdays. It's been a small team, only a handful of us going out on a Saturday preaching the gospel. It was a great blessing for me as a father to see my own son come and join me last time. He was much more bold and courageous than I was. One of the things we've noticed is maybe Millennials and Gen Xers are still quite closed off to the gospel, but for whatever reason, Baby Boomers and Gen Z are curious and open. We've been able to have some stunning conversations.

Can I share a little bit of some testimonies from the three or four Send Saturdays we've done? The first Send Saturday we did at the beginning of the year, we saw someone saved on the streets, and that was encouraging. Then the second to last one we did, young Toby over here—who's just pure fire—was talking, sharing, and praying with a young person who then came to church with Toby the following day on Sunday, and they've been able to continue to pray together. So we are already seeing some great fruit just as we experiment and discover what this looks like for us.

And of course, this all kicked off last year when we had Evan and Maddie Evans come out and teach us how to share the gospel. We've continued to do that, and we're keen to have them come in and do some more teaching and instruction with us on a Saturday. So keep an eye out for the next one that we do.

We're about to start Alpha in a couple of weeks, and the beautiful Kathy Rod is so faithful in helping us run this every year. Can I encourage you? Yeah, we can give her a round of applause. It's a big commitment, but she always does it with a smile on her face and a willingness to serve those who are exploring their faith. We have a few people signed up already, but can I encourage you, church, to have a think about those in your life—workmates, family, colleagues, neighbors—who may be curious about faith and exploring the gospel in a very non-confrontational, relational way? Can I encourage you to extend an invitation and let them know about Alpha starting up in a couple of weeks?

One of the things that I've been challenged with—because sharing the gospel does not come naturally, in fact, it really scares me—is that if I'm going to ask you to do it, it's just not fair if I don't do it. Sometimes God calls us to do hard things. Thankfully, most of the really big, hard rejections have happened to Solomon, not me. Solomon's been rejected hard, but he just keeps going. It's a great encouragement to me. Thankfully, I haven't had too many scary encounters like that, but it is challenging.

Here's what I've learned: don't say somebody else's "no" for them. In our heads, we already play out how this is going to work: they're going to say no. Don't say somebody else's "no" for them. Let them say no. If they're going to say no, don't say no for them. When it comes to Alpha, they're going to be blessed just by meeting Kathy and our team. They're going to be blessed and encouraged and invited to ask some really challenging questions about the meaning of life, purpose, and what Jesus came to do. If you have someone in your life who's unsaved and doesn't yet know Jesus, extend the invitation. I know that they will be blessed.

Along these lines of gospel impact, as we said in the video, we have around 30 families coming in regularly for Hands and Feet. They don't just get groceries; they get a free cup of coffee and a beautiful conversation with our team. Again, the gospel is being shared. We're seeing people saved in that community. We're seeing people prayed for and healed in that community, and some great things are happening. We're already seeing our church have a gospel impact. What we want to do is turn up the volume and allow this inner fire that we've been fueling to be released into our world so that we can see more and more of an influence. Amen. Are we doing okay? All right.

All of this to say, I just wanted to share some of the beautiful things that are happening in our community already this year. This is what "Prepare the Way" is all about: building for our future, making room at the table, extending our faith and our generosity so that we can see our impact as a church broaden, our influence go out even further, see our missionaries strengthened, and just believe together and partner together that God has good things for us. Amen. Amen. All right. What to do now?

I can see that you're hungry for more. Is that true? I heard more nervous laughter than I did anything else.

One of the things I believe—and this is why we are going to explore this idea of what "citizens" means—is this idea of being citizens of heaven primarily, which is what Paul is talking about in this passage. I'm not going to unpack it this morning; we're going to do that over the next couple of weeks. But what I do want to do is just help us understand a little bit of where we're going.

Primarily, what Paul is wanting to do for the church in Philippi is to refocus and sharpen their vision. He had sensed that they had lost focus a little bit, understandably because of all the pressures around them, all the distractions, and all the deceptions that were in their world and indeed are in our world. This is how it becomes relevant. What we want to do as a people of God, as citizens, is just remind ourselves of our identity and who we are in Christ. Paul literally says in this scripture that we heard in the video: "Put your eyes on us as an example of those who are following Jesus." In other words, he's saying get your eyes off of those things that are distracting you and leading you away, and refocus your vision on this example so that you can see Christ clearly. Then he speaks identity over them: "You are citizens of heaven."

Here's what's important to understand: if we have a skewed vision or a skewed idea of what heaven is, then that phrase completely loses its power and meaning. If when we hear "heaven" we hear "the place we go to when we die," then everything Paul is saying is lost. The vision that he is wanting us to focus on is completely missed. Paul is not saying that we're citizens of a place that we're going to go to one day when we die. What Paul is saying is that we are citizens of a heavenly realm and reality that has been made available today and now, that we are called to pull into our world with a fresh and clear vision and live as citizens of heaven in this now-but-not-yet kingdom.

When Jesus came and preached the gospel, he said the kingdom of heaven is within your grasp. The kingdom of heaven has come near. Meaning that the future world that God is establishing and leading us into—that we see and read in Revelation 22 when the new heaven comes down and is established—is now breaking into this world. As we reach out and grasp the kingdom, we become citizens of heaven. You and I are called together to be an outpost or a colony of heaven, shining our light and saying, "Hey, this is the humanity that God created, the community and the gift of salvation that God had intended for us. Let us be examples to you of the life that Christ has created and bought back for you through his death and resurrection."

That's the vision that Paul wants the church in Philippi to catch. And it's important. Thank you, Dave. He's around there somewhere. You can come up and play. It's important that we have a clear understanding of these two words: *citizens* and *heaven*. That's what we're going to spend time unpacking.

Let me create a picture of how we sometimes get this muddled up. If primarily we see ourselves as a congregation rather than a colony of citizens, it changes everything. As a congregation member, my vision and focus is then to invite someone to church. What does that mean? That means I'm going to go and tell this person, "Hey, church starts at 10:00, and it's at 15 Salisbury Road, Castle Hill. Our website is dayspring.com.au. Our Instagram handle is @dayspringchurch. You can look us up. When you come to church, here's what you can expect: it's going to go for about an hour and a half, or if Aaron's preaching, maybe two hours and a half. We're going to sing some songs, and then someone's going to get up and preach." You're just giving them a logistical idea of what church is all about—when it starts, when it finishes, all these kinds of things. That's within our framework and vision as being part of a congregation.

When we understand that we are citizens of heaven, called to be an outpost or a colony of heaven, then our vision and our language changes. What we're doing is not inviting someone to a service; we're inviting someone into a place of belonging where they can get a preview, a visual and tangible experience of the life that they were created for, so they can come into a community. Not just that it starts at 10 and finishes at a certain time, but so they can have an experience that tells their soul the reason they were created, so that they can encounter the kind of love that they've been looking for in all the wrong places. Success and career—is it going to fill this gap? Chasing after money, relationships, sex, celebrity, fame—all of these things that we idolize and put up out there as things to attain. Jesus says none of those things are going to satisfy you. A lot of those things he created, and when we get them in the right order, they're a blessing to us.

Someone coming in to a people who understand that they are a colony, that they are citizens of heaven living with that kind of vision—they will come in and come to understand this is what life is all about. The meaning and purpose they've been looking for out there, they found in the weirdest of places: found it amongst the people of God, found it in church, found it amongst the colony of heaven. This is the vision that we want us to catch over the next couple of weeks.

You can invite our ministry team up in just a little while. Even though I've talked about a response time, we're not going to have one this morning. We do have morning tea, though. That can be our response time as we break cookies together and congregate. What I want us to do is just finish up in prayer. Why don't we stand to our feet?

My prayer for all of us over the next couple of weeks and beyond is believing that $241,000 is going to come in over the course of the next year. The reason we're believing for that is because we believe that the things we're resourcing are important for us to continue to do the things that we are called to do. But more than that, because "Prepare the Way" is not just about an offering. I'm believing that all of us will get a fresh vision of who Jesus is and this life that we are called to live as citizens of heaven.

Here's what I want to challenge you with. In my own faith, in my own life and walk with God, here's where I get into a problem: when I assume that I'm seeing Jesus clearly and I have nothing else to press into or learn; when I assume that the vision of who I think Jesus is is all squared away and sorted. What I'm doing is closing my heart to any areas of deception or any areas where I'm still projecting my image of Jesus onto him.

Joel shared a couple of weeks ago that right smack in the middle of the Gospel of Mark, Peter has this incredible revelation that Jesus is the Messiah. But Peter spends the rest of the book trying to figure out what kind of Messiah. Because as soon as he gets this revelation, "Jesus, you are the Messiah," he then goes and rebukes Jesus for saying that he's going to go to the cross, because he hadn't yet received a revelation of what kind of Messiah. In other words, he had a vision of Jesus that didn't align with who Jesus really was. I think all of us have areas of our heart that are at some level not seeing Jesus clearly.

And so my prayer for us is that our vision would be refocused and sharpened, that we would see Jesus more clearly. And by seeing Jesus more clearly, we would come to understand who we are more clearly, and that we would see a people with an inner fire having a gospel impact on the world around them. Amen.

So why don't you hold out your hands?

Lord Jesus, we acknowledge and recognize that our hearts have blind spots, that we only see in a mirror dimly. Lord, we're doing our absolute best, and our heart is that we would see you more and more clearly. Holy Spirit, we pray that you would do what only you can do. Help us to see the blind spots. Search our heart for the areas that we have closed off, where we've tried to box you in. Maybe even where we've tried to box in, "This is what a move of God looks like. This is what revival looks like," and you're wanting to take us in a completely different direction. Maybe that's something we need to let go of.

Lord, we just surrender all of our hearts, our lives, our minds, all of our ideas, and all of our opinions. We surrender it and lay it at your feet. We pray that you would sharpen our vision. Help us to see more clearly that we might have an impact on the world around us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.