When the Church's Need Becomes Your Need

Sermon outline

There is a blessing in partnership: when you move from visitor to member to partner, and the church's need becomes your need, you are in agreement with the house and tap into its anointing and the ability God has for your life.

1. Beliefs, values and practices

   Values are what you prioritise, practices are the traditions and culture we make excuses for, and wrong beliefs leave a person without godly direction, up one day and down the next, "the yo-yo syndrome". The double-minded man receives nothing from the Lord. The word of God must be the absolute, not the last resort, and our emotions must follow our faith, not our problems. Sometimes the war is keeping quiet and walking away with what you could have said.

   Illustration: If Arsenal and Manchester play at six on a Sunday morning and you choose the match over church, "we understand where the values sit."

   “The word of God should never be the last resort. The word of God should always be the absolute.”

   • Romans 10:17
   • James 1:6-8
   • Ephesians 1:17-18
   • Proverbs 25:28

2. What partnership is

   Partnership is your commitment to the kingdom and the way it is advanced. Women who had been healed provided for Jesus and the twelve out of their own substance. Behind it stands the command not to muzzle the ox while it treads the grain, which Paul uses to teach that those who labour in ministry should be supported materially. The kingdom requires everyone to be involved, and a YouTube Christian must still be connected to a local church; Israel pitched every tent facing the tabernacle, so that God was the beginning and the end.

   “If you don't partner with anything, then God cannot bless you.”

   • Luke 8:1-3
   • Deuteronomy 25:4
   • 1 Corinthians 9:9
   • 1 Timothy 5:18

3. Partners hold up the man of God's hands

   The distressed, the indebted and the discontented gathered to David at Adullam and became his mighty men. Before his wedding his father warned him that a husband takes on responsibility for his wife's life; marriage is partnership, not two people doing their own thing. Only the Philippians partnered with Paul in giving and receiving. Aaron and Hur did not hand Moses an energy drink and promise to pray; they held up his hands until sunset, and all Israel won.

   “They put their money where their mouth was. They put their energy and their resources where their mouth was.”

   • 1 Samuel 22:1-2
   • Philippians 4:15
   • Exodus 17:8-13

4. Partnership leads to agreement

   Where two agree, it is done, so partnering with the local house puts you in agreement: your needs and prayers become ours, and the anointing on the house for miracles and the grace for finances are available to you. You partner through your skills, qualifications, talents, finances and resources. Every pastor needs accountability, and he tithes personally as the church tithes; but tithing, which Abraham practised before the law, is elementary, and partnership goes further. You become partakers of the grace on the ministry.

   Illustration: Unhappy with how a ministers' luncheon was run, his first response was not to complain but to phone the host and pledge that the church would sow R40,000 into it the next year.

   “When we partner together, it means the anointing on the house for signs, wonders, miracles, and healing, it is available to you.”

   • Matthew 18:18-20
   • Philippians 1:6-7

5. Leave the old culture at the door

   Superstitions brought from where we came from, about jinxing a pregnancy or keeping eyes off a newborn, are old wives' tales and pagan practice; children are a blessing of the Lord. They must leave the house just as pornography and filthy music do, or children will see the inconsistency and not listen. Parents set the vision and the rules.

   “Your child is not your friend. Your child is there so you can put the principles of God so they can carry that legacy. The legacy is Christ, not money.”

6. From visitor to partner

   He walks through the levels. The casual visitor arrives suspicious, perhaps not liking the volume or the pastor's bald head, because nobody knows how they were hurt before, and that is fine. The consistent visitor comes every week but is still weighing options. The member has stopped church hopping and is learning to tithe. The participating member joins the Tuesday prayer meeting, the discipleship class and the worship team. Many stop there. The partner is the one for whom the church's need has become their own.

   Illustration: A man in a grey T-shirt, whom he will not name, has never needed to be asked, phoned or pleaded with about the church's electricity; he simply comes with his time, skill and resources. A partner picks up the paper on the floor instead of calling someone to do it.

   “The difference between that person who is a member and a partner is the minute that I see a need in the church, the church's need became my need.”

7. It is about tapping into the ability God has for you

   Partnership is not about money. If you have no money, sow your skill; people who fixed the church roof while unemployed have never been without work since. He tells how, already millions in debt, he used a new R20,000 credit card to buy a watch for his father, now as a partner of the ministry and not only as a son; within a month the card was paid off, and within the year the whole debt of five to seven million rand was cleared. Make good on vows made to God, as Hannah gave Samuel. The covenant blessing is not tied to a currency or an economy: it prospers in a land of drought.

   Illustration: Holding the euros his daughter brought back from a school trip, each worth many rand, he says every seed sown into the kingdom is worth far more than its face value, and the blessing does not move with the VAT rate or require emigrating to Australia.

   “It's not about money. It's about tapping into the ability that God has for your life.”

   • 1 Samuel 1:11

In this message