What do you see? It’s the start of everything.

By Dermot Cottuli

(A message preached in our church at the start of 2023)

It’s the start of a new year and whilst I’ve become far less excited about New Year resolutions than I may have been when I was younger, I have a sneaking suspicion that this year will mark a significant turning point for us as a church and for a good number of you personally. I think that 2023 will be a year we will all look back on and say that was the year that things really started to change for us here at Grace.

Over the past 7 years we’ve been positioning ourselves as best we can at the very heart of our local community. If you want to reach your community authentically and with love, then you have to be involved in what you’re community is doing and the challenges that your community faces.

We purchased the old Rokeby pub in late 2015 which we’ve been transforming into a beautiful meeting hub used by our community throughout the week and also on weekends with the Clarence Plains Market now a monthly fixture.

One Community Together is based at the Grace Centre and we’ve managed to get ourselves on the Clarence Plains master plan for our area as an important community gathering point.

I’m involved in multiple community working groups and members of our church have served within our community through chaplaincy, volunteering and helping at various community events.

We host the annual Clarence Plains Community Awards and we’re the go-to venue when our community needs a place to come together around various projects.

We’ve run a youth program on a Friday night that has seen 100’s of local kids reached and has become a talking point with Council and local service providers. Our youth team have run a program that any of the young people in Clarence Plains would feel comfortable attending. A program that makes them feel valued and important.

Our Boys and Girls brigade program have been active in our community through their volunteering and have turned up at our annual Clean the Plains event as well as Festivals and have shown through their service that they care about our broader community culminating in an Award at our recent Community Awards night.

I’m connected with and have built great relationships with key community members and organisations who have a similar heart to see our community flourish.

When the senior pastor of a local church is well connected in their community and is seen through their presence as supportive and invested, then the community thinks that the whole of their church is behind them as well. That sends an incredibly powerful message to our community about the Jesus we serve and the type of church that we are. It tells people that we care about them which is the first step towards building authentic relationships.

We’ve done all of that because we believe that Jesus wants to be at the very heart of our community. How do you take Jesus into the heart of a community? If we’re Jesus hands and feet then the answer to that question is we need to go. We need to be involved. We need to turn up.

That’s something that we’ve done faithfully over the last 7 years. We didn’t come with an agenda other than to serve and let our good works point people to Jesus.

Too much of what is done by churches in the name of evangelism has been seen by the broader Australian community as a marketing tactic. We’ve made love, transactional. We’ll do this for you but we want something from you in exchange. When love becomes transactional it ceases to be love and starts to become manipulation. Because of that we decided we wouldn’t start up anything ourselves in our local community but rather we’d find out what our community was doing and then help them do it even better. We would love them with no strings attached the way we believe God does. And in the process of forgetting about ourselves and serving others we’ve found ourselves becoming embedded in the heart of our local community in the easiest possible way.

2023 will see a slight change in our approach in that we will start to initiate things ourselves. A big one is the kitchen that we’re partnering with Loaves and Fishes to see operational on the 14th of February this year. 6000 meals a week will be produced at the Grace Centre ($30,000) that will go to Tasmanians doing it tough, and place-based traineeships will be offered for local young people wanting to get a foot in the door with a career in cooking and hospitality.

We’ve also managed to get the Clarence Jazz festival to do a gig at the Grace Centre with international artists on the 3rd of February this year. This is the first time that they’ll be performing in Clarence Plains and I’m hugely excited about it because our goal has been to position ourselves at the very heart of our community and festivals and celebrations are an integral part in the development of a community’s identify and their soul. 2 things that Jesus is super interested in.

The kitchen and the Jazz festival are hugely significant and I believe that they will open up even more doors for us to do good in our community.

Just before Christmas I came across a quote by William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. I initially found his quote quite shocking.

He said,

I’m not waiting for a move of God. I am a move of God.

At first I thought that that was a fairly presumptuous thing to say but then it hit me between the eyes. He was absolutely correct in saying what he said. And the reason he was correct was because he saw something that far too many Christians miss.

How do we bring a move of God to our community? Do we pray it in? Do we run evangelistic crusades and go door knocking? Do we hand out flyers at our local supermarkets telling people about Jesus? No, because too often the aim of those activities is to draw people out of our community and into our silo. Jesus had something to say about the evangelistic efforts of the Pharisees that should send chills down our collective spines.

How do we bring a move of God to our community? We go into our community and we serve them, we do life with them. That’s how you bring a move of God to any group of people anywhere in the world. We feed the hungry and give water to the thirsty. We clothe the naked and care for the sick, we look after widows and orphans and we do it all in love.

We volunteer at their local festivals. We help pick up rubbish at their clean up days. We provide them with a venue to hold their meetings. We serve on their committees and help them do the things that they think are important.

Along the way their things become our things and we realise that this community that we wanted to reach has now become a part of our family and we finally start to see what’s been in God’s heart all the way along this journey that we’ve been on. He loves everyone equally.

And obviously it goes without saying, that in that process, those who are ready to respond to the gospel will see through our example why having a relationship with Jesus is the very best decision they could ever make. And where will we be when that happens? We’ll be right there with them, because we care about them. Because we see them as family members not outsiders.

When Peter was talking to Cornelius’s household about Jesus’ time of ministry throughout Israel he said that Jesus went around doing good and healing everyone oppressed by the devil. It’s interesting to note the order of things in Peter’s statement. He said firstly Jesus went around doing good and as he did, he came across the work of the devil in people’s lives which he then dealt with.

When our heart and actions align with the heart of Jesus, then we become a move of God.

I’ve stopped praying for a move of God here in Clarence Plains because we already are a move a God and the sooner we realise that the greater our impact will be.

This is how the church revolutionises society. This is how the early church defeated the Roman Empire. Salt and light.

What we’ve done and what we’re going to do is what a move of God here in Clarence Plains looks like. This is how it starts.

What an incredibly freeing revelation to have.

If you SAW our church as a move of God in Clarence Plains and not just a place you attended on the weekend to earn brownie points, how would it change things for you? How would you feel about yourself?

If you SAW yourself as a move of God in your family, in your workplace, at your school, how would it change things for you?

If you’re trying as best you can to follow Jesus and obey his command to love the people in your world then you are a move of God wherever you go.

What do you SEE in the world around you, in yourself and in what you do each and every day? That’s a really important question to ask yourself at the start of 2023 because it will then lead you to another even more important question, “What does God SEE in the world around you and what does He see in you?

A couple of weeks ago during Josh Hilton’s message to our church he talked about a prophesy by the prophet Ezekiel to the Elders of Israel who were in captivity in Babylon at the time. The prophesy was all about a valley full of dead dry bones.

Those dead dry bones represented Israel at the time and how they saw themselves.

What’s so powerful about this prophecy is that in it, God gave them an alternative picture for themselves and their future to replace the one they were currently seeing.

Ezekiel 37:11-14
Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones represent the people of Israel. They are saying, ‘We have become old, dry bones—all hope is gone. Our nation is finished.’ Therefore, prophesy to them and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: O my people, I will open your graves of exile and cause you to rise again. Then I will bring you back to the land of Israel. When this happens, O my people, you will know that I am the Lord. I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live again and return home to your own land. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken, and I have done what I said. Yes, the Lord has spoken!’”

Maybe you’ve felt a little bit like the Israelites over the past few years. God wants to change that in 2023. He wants you to see something different. You’re not just going through the motions of being a Christian, you are far more than that.

In the book of Habakkuk we have an exchange between the prophet and God where Habakkuk tells God what he’s seeing and then God responds by giving him another picture to replace the one he currently has in his heart.

Habakkuk –

How long, O Lord, must I call for help?
But you do not listen! “Violence is everywhere!” I cry,
but you do not come to save.
Must I forever see these evil deeds?
Why must I watch all this misery? Wherever I look,
I see destruction and violence. I am surrounded by people
who love to argue and fight.

God’s reply

Verse 5
The Lord replied,
“LOOK around at the nations;
LOOK and be amazed! For I am doing something in your own day,
something you wouldn’t believe
even if someone told you about it.

Habakkuk then complains again and finishes with these words

Habakkuk 2:1
I will climb up to my watchtower
and stand at my guard post.
There I will wait to SEE what the Lord says
and how he will answer my complaint.

God’s reply

Then the Lord said to me,
“Write my answer plainly on tablets,
so that a runner can carry the correct message to others.
This VISION is for a future time.
It describes the end, and it will be fulfilled. If it seems slow in coming, wait patiently,
for it will surely take place.
It will not be delayed.

God goes on to outline what He will do

And then Habakkuk replies with this in chapter 3

I have heard all about you, Lord.
I am filled with awe by your amazing works. In this time of our deep need,
help us again as you did in years gone by. And in your anger,
remember your mercy.
I SEE God moving across the deserts from Edom,
the Holy One coming from Mount Paran. His brilliant splendour fills the heavens,
and the earth is filled with his praise.
His coming is as brilliant as the sunrise.
Rays of light flash from his hands,
where his awesome power is hidden.

Because Habakkuk positioned himself to hear from God he started to see something different to what he saw in the natural.

It’s his final words that tell us that what God has shown him has completely eclipsed what he has seen happening around him. What he saw changed how he felt and what he then did.

Even though the fig trees have no blossoms,
and there are no grapes on the vines;
even though the olive crop fails,
and the fields lie empty and barren;
even though the flocks die in the fields,
and the cattle barns are empty,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord!
I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!
The Sovereign Lord is my strength!
He makes me as surefooted as a deer,
able to tread upon the heights.

Over and over again throughout the Bible you will find God’s people being encouraged to open their eyes and see something different to what they can see in the natural all around them. The job of every one of the prophets in the old testament and in the new testament was to help God’s people see what God saw, because what we see directs what we do and what we do leads towards the outworking of God’s will for our lives and our world.

I want us to enter into 2023 with this realisation and conviction in our hearts…