LoveKey Church
First Things First
Hello everyone and welcome back to church! It's our first service of this brand new year and we are starting a new series called "First" and our first message is "First Things First" - let's do this! https://linktr.ee/lovekeymission info@lovekey.co.za
Locations & Times
Somerset West Primary After-Care Facility
2 Short St, Audas Estate, Cape Town, 7130, South Africa
Sunday 10:00 AM
LoveKey Church
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Be encouraged, inspired, and challenged with our LoveKey Church Message of the Week, and our Love Unlocks Live Sessions.Please subscribe and write a review.
https://linktr.ee/lovekeypodcast
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Contact Details for Connect Group Leaders
What is LoveKey Church All About?
Our name comes from the fact that we believe that the KEY to salvation (giving your life to Jesus, becoming a reborn Christian) is the revelation of how much God LOVES you. And the KEY to living the life He has for us is to LOVE him back. That’s why LoveKey Church is a local expression of a part of the body of Christ with a focus on creating a place, opportunity and atmosphere where all people can encounter God, align with His purposes in order to reign in life, and help others to do the same.
ENCOUNTER, ALIGN REIGN, HELP OTHERS DO THE SAME - easy way to remember it.
We believe the Bible is the word of God and we commit to be obedient to it with the leading of the Holy Spirit
We believe that marriage and family is God’s idea and His way of doing it is the right way and the best way. We want to see marriages thrive and families be healthy in Jesus. Because healthy families build a healthy nation - notice I didn’t say “perfect” families, I said healthy - whole in Jesus, reconciled in Jesus, redeemed by Jesus, focused on Jesus.
We stand for unity in the body of Christ - we can be diverse but not divided, and celebrate our different gifts and roles in the greater body of Christ. We really resonate with Jesus’ prayer in John 17 where he asks that the Father will make us all one as He and the Father are one so that the world will know that He sent Him. Our biggest evangelical tool is unity!
We want to help eradicate fatherlessness and shine a light on the crisis of cultural Christianity - South Africa has a physical fatherlessness rate of 62% and other forms of fatherlessness in the remaining percentage - it truly is a huge problem.
Cultural Christianity is where people grow up in a so-called Christian home or culture and believe that that makes them a Christian, when in fact it is very possible that the culture they’re in has adopted a version of God that is convenient, made it apart of their culture and they’re actually worshipping their culture.
We want this to be a multi-generational, multi-cultural church that lives to know Jesus and to make Him known.
ENCOUNTER, ALIGN REIGN, HELP OTHERS DO THE SAME - easy way to remember it.
We believe the Bible is the word of God and we commit to be obedient to it with the leading of the Holy Spirit
We believe that marriage and family is God’s idea and His way of doing it is the right way and the best way. We want to see marriages thrive and families be healthy in Jesus. Because healthy families build a healthy nation - notice I didn’t say “perfect” families, I said healthy - whole in Jesus, reconciled in Jesus, redeemed by Jesus, focused on Jesus.
We stand for unity in the body of Christ - we can be diverse but not divided, and celebrate our different gifts and roles in the greater body of Christ. We really resonate with Jesus’ prayer in John 17 where he asks that the Father will make us all one as He and the Father are one so that the world will know that He sent Him. Our biggest evangelical tool is unity!
We want to help eradicate fatherlessness and shine a light on the crisis of cultural Christianity - South Africa has a physical fatherlessness rate of 62% and other forms of fatherlessness in the remaining percentage - it truly is a huge problem.
Cultural Christianity is where people grow up in a so-called Christian home or culture and believe that that makes them a Christian, when in fact it is very possible that the culture they’re in has adopted a version of God that is convenient, made it apart of their culture and they’re actually worshipping their culture.
We want this to be a multi-generational, multi-cultural church that lives to know Jesus and to make Him known.
Offer to Serve
Offer to Serve Link
OFFER TO SERVE INVITEIf you feel led by God to be a part of this vision and mission, please contact us at info@lovekey.co.za or fill out our Offer to Serve form on the Church Center app, or online:
https://forms.gle/ufM5cD8KYabn365s6
Please Pray for our leaders, members, marriages, families and our nation
Partner with LoveKey Church
What You Partner With:
Thank you for partnering with our ministry so that we can: 1. reach more people with the gospel message 2. Positively impact marriages and families 3. Play a role in eradicating fatherlessness 4. Shine a light on the crisis of cultural Christianity 5. Minister Unity to the body of Christ 6. Sow into what we hope to be future social justice projects in our local community 6. Sow into trusted organizations preaching the gospel in Israel to Jews, and helping Jews relocate to Israel.- FIRM Foundation and One For Israel
https://lovekeymission.com/partnerEFT: Banking Details: LoveKey NPC, FNB, Current Account Number: 62824888525, Branch code: 250655
Card Payment link: https://pay.yoco.com/lovekey-npc
PayPal: partner@lovekey.co.za
Card Payment link: https://pay.yoco.com/lovekey-npc
PayPal: partner@lovekey.co.za
Ways to Partner
Prayer and Fasting week
Praise and Worship Scripture
"First" Series
First Thing First
MAIN MESSAGE:
FIRST - “FIRST THINGS FIRST”
Main SERIES scripture:
Matthew 6:33: 'But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.'
Introduction:
I love God with my whole heart, mind and strength. I love you all as I love myself.
I am grateful towards you for being who you are and for being here. Your presence blesses me and I am honoured to be in your presence. I am especially honoured that you are here to listen to me share the word of God. I simultaneously feel a sense of immense excitement and privilege, as well as the profound weight of that responsibility. By the grace of God and the leading of the Holy Spirit, when we gather, we will always encounter God, align more with His purposes in order to reign in life and help others do the same.
Because I love God and because I love you, I will always share the word of God with us in a way that is saturated by the love of God and never compromises on the truth of the word of God.
This means that you may hear the Sunday message in this church and be offended. Do not fear this emotion - You know how gym instructors say sweat is just fat leaving the body? Offence is just selfishness leaving the body.
My aim is not to offend. It is to obey God’s voice and God’s word. And in doing so I trust that all of us will be convicted, not condemned - convicted - by the Holy Spirit by the truth of the word of God so that we can mature in Christ and become Holy as He is holy, perfect as the Father is perfect. Because, if we are truly born-again we are part of a royal priesthood and a holy nation and we have access to living a supernatural life.
I am sharing this caveat with you (not caviar, caveat - a legal term for a provision or disclaimer) to prep you for today’s word. If you do not hear this truth in love it is possible that you may be offended or make wrong assumptions. I do not want either. My hope is that at the end of this message we will all be so hungry to obey God and have more of Him in our lives that we will walk out of here with a passionate zeal and an excited expectation of what God will do in this week of prayer and fasting and in this year.
“FIRST”
The new series “First” is in broad terms all about putting God first in every area of our lives. It is about what this means and what this looks like practically in our lives.
To say God is first in our lives and to actually make Him first in our lives can be two different things.
Actions speak louder than words, as they say. And in the book of James we see that faith without action is useless. Paul on the other hands helps us see that works without faith is dead. So the truth is we need to have faith in God and because we have faith in Him, we do His will and it is visible in our lives.
Today we will look at how important it is to God that He is first, and by extension his temple is first and by extention his church is first in our lives.
FIRST THINGS FIRST:
GOD
TEMPLE
CHURCH
Let us read some powerful scriptures together about this and then discuss how this should impact and affect our lives.
Prioritising our homes and comfort above the temple of God:
Haggai 1:2-12 - '“Thus speaks the Lord of hosts, saying: ‘This people says, “The time has not come, the time that the Lord ’s house should be built.”
Then the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet, saying, “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, and this temple to lie in ruins?” Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: “Consider your ways!
“You have sown much, and bring in little; You eat, but do not have enough; You drink, but you are not filled with drink; You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; And he who earns wages, Earns wages to put into a bag with holes.”
Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Consider your ways!
Go up to the mountains and bring wood and build the temple, that I may take pleasure in it and be glorified,” says the Lord . “ You looked for much, but indeed it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why?” says the Lord of hosts. “Because of My house that is in ruins, while every one of you runs to his own house. Therefore the heavens above you withhold the dew, and the earth withholds its fruit. For I called for a drought on the land and the mountains, on the grain and the new wine and the oil, on whatever the ground brings forth, on men and livestock, and on all the labor of your hands.” Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent him; and the people feared the presence of the Lord. '
Haggai 2:3-9 - '‘Who is left among you who saw this temple in its former glory? And how do you see it now? In comparison with it, is this not in your eyes as nothing? Yet now be strong, Zerubbabel,’ says the Lord; ‘and be strong, Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest; and be strong, all you people of the land,’ says the Lord , ‘and work; for I am with you,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘ According to the word that I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt, so My Spirit remains among you; do not fear!’ “For thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land; and I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘The glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘And in this place I will give peace,’ says the Lord of hosts.”'
Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit
I Corinthians 6:15(a),19-20:
15a 'Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?
19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.'
Together we are the church of Christ
Ephesians 2:19-22 - 'Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.'
Each join has a role
Ephesians 4:11-16 - 'And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.'
FIRST THINGS FIRST
In Haggai we see some of the first remnant of God’s people returning from captivity in Babylon to Jerusalem.
Why were they in Babylon? Simply put - They did not put God first. They were warned, they did not listen. They worshipped other gods and disobeyed their true Father in Heaven and eventually they suffered the consequences of their own actions.
Now they have returned. And what happened in the book of Haggai is that we see God speak to his people that he had just set free from 70 years of captivity about getting their priorities right.
God speaks through the man of God and points out the fact that “This people says, “The time has not come, the time that the Lord’s house should be built.” - This implies that they know it needs to happen, but they are justifying putting it off, convincing themselves it is ok.
Have you ever done that? Put off what you know is right to do, but you justify why it doesn’t need to happen right now and eventually you believe yourself… This is what this remnant of Israelites are doing. They are back from bondage. They are just happy to be back and start their lives up again in the homeland, but their focus is their own nice houses, their own comfort, their own convenience, their own dreams, desires and plans.
Then God speaks through Haggai to give the people a wake up call - you live in luxurious houses while my temple lies in ruins! This is not right. You have your priorities completely our of synch.
Then God explains the consequences of having their priorities all wrong -
Look at what’s happening to you! 6You have planted much but harvest little. You eat but are not satisfied. You drink but are still thirsty. You put on clothes but cannot keep warm. Your wages disappear as though you were putting them in pockets filled with holes!
Then He tells them what to do - go get timber and rebuild my house - WHY? Because then He will take pleasure and be honouered - WHEN WE PUT GOD, HIS TEMPLE AND HIS CHURCH FIRST, HE TAKES PLEASURE IN IT AND IS HONOURED - plus, we can see that He also implies that if that is in order, everything else we do will be blessed.
He even goes further and states that the drought and other disasters were caused by Him because His people are not putting Him first.
Have you ever felt you’re stuck, or things are just not going your way? Are you plans failing or when you try a sure fire way to do business it somehow fails? Have you paused, taken a moment and considered whether you really put God, his temple and his church first in your life?
We saw in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians that when we become truly born-again, dead to sin, filled with the Holy Spirit, on our way to heaven Jesus followers, we belong to Christ, that our bodies become a TEMPLE FOR THE HOLY SPIRIT, that we are not our own but that we have been bought at a price.
In the New Covenant with God that Jesus ushered in, the temple of God where the Holy Spirit dwells is no longer the ark of the covenant in a special tent - it is us! It is our bodies! Wow!
I believe that God wants us as the new covenant believers that are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, of which Haggai is one, to realise that since he is the same yesterday, today and forever, the principle that His people should put Him first and therefore prioritise His temple still stands.
Therefore, we need to take a deep, intense look at our lives this day as we kick off this year and start it with a fast - and ask ourselves a very important question - does God truly come first in my life and therefore by extension, do I live each day with the constant consciousness that my body is now the temple of God and needs to be prioritised above my house, work, marriage, family, holidays, opinions about vaccines… Is the Holy Spirit’s temple in order?
We need to realise that everything else in our lives flow from this priority. How fruitful and successful we are in each area of our lives is directly connected to how much we put God first and by extension the fact that our bodies now host the Holy Spirit.
Then, from Eph 2 and Eph 4 we can see a direct link between how each individual believer who host the Holy Spirit, is also part of the local church and the broader body of Christ.
We also see how each one of us, filled with the Holy Spirit, is an important and significant joint in the body of Christ with something special and unique to offer that edifies and uplifts the rest of the body.
Therefore, we need to all catch the revelation that if we profess to put God first, and if we profess to host the Holy Spirit in our bodily temples, then one sure way this will show in our lives is in how we serve our local church.
Each one of you have an important role to fullfill in this local church. God has placed you here for a reason. We all need all of us to live out the fullness of our individual callings in the local church. This way we edify and uplift each other, and know this - it will flow over into all other aspects of your life and you will see supernatural fruit because of it.
Seek first the Kingdom of God and it’s righteousness.
Now this is where it can get offensive… Please know that I did not make up this message in order to manipulate you to come and do something or more for this church. Trust me on that or don’t, but it is the truth.
I truly felt led by God to bring this message to us today. It is almost like God said “do this and this church will grow supernaturally suddenly”.
Imagine LoveKey church where all of us are walking in the fullness of what God has called us to do. We are all completely sold out to see all people around us - family, friends, co-workers and strangers - encounter God, align with His purposes in order to reign in life and help others do the same.
Imagine LoveKey Church filling up so quickly with marriages and families that are hungry to do things God’s way that we need a new venue in one month from now.
Imagine 50, 100, 200 Connect Groups operating on a weekly basis in the Helderberg and northern suburbs changing homes, communities, schools and towns from within.
It is possible if each one of us make a decision to commit to put God first in every area of our lives, and that that, by extention shows in my personal walk with God and in how I serve my local church with my time, money, gifts and spiritual gifts.
I should not have to come and ask or beg you to do something, you should run to us and overwhelm us with your help, contribution, initiatives etc.
We should not have any families struggling financially in our midst because the benevolence fund is so strong.
We should be able to build our own building within a year from now because of you all catching the vision and prioritising God’s house above your own.
IT IS ALL POSSIBLE!
REFLECT AND RESPOND
FIRST - “FIRST THINGS FIRST”
Main SERIES scripture:
Matthew 6:33: 'But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.'
Introduction:
I love God with my whole heart, mind and strength. I love you all as I love myself.
I am grateful towards you for being who you are and for being here. Your presence blesses me and I am honoured to be in your presence. I am especially honoured that you are here to listen to me share the word of God. I simultaneously feel a sense of immense excitement and privilege, as well as the profound weight of that responsibility. By the grace of God and the leading of the Holy Spirit, when we gather, we will always encounter God, align more with His purposes in order to reign in life and help others do the same.
Because I love God and because I love you, I will always share the word of God with us in a way that is saturated by the love of God and never compromises on the truth of the word of God.
This means that you may hear the Sunday message in this church and be offended. Do not fear this emotion - You know how gym instructors say sweat is just fat leaving the body? Offence is just selfishness leaving the body.
My aim is not to offend. It is to obey God’s voice and God’s word. And in doing so I trust that all of us will be convicted, not condemned - convicted - by the Holy Spirit by the truth of the word of God so that we can mature in Christ and become Holy as He is holy, perfect as the Father is perfect. Because, if we are truly born-again we are part of a royal priesthood and a holy nation and we have access to living a supernatural life.
I am sharing this caveat with you (not caviar, caveat - a legal term for a provision or disclaimer) to prep you for today’s word. If you do not hear this truth in love it is possible that you may be offended or make wrong assumptions. I do not want either. My hope is that at the end of this message we will all be so hungry to obey God and have more of Him in our lives that we will walk out of here with a passionate zeal and an excited expectation of what God will do in this week of prayer and fasting and in this year.
“FIRST”
The new series “First” is in broad terms all about putting God first in every area of our lives. It is about what this means and what this looks like practically in our lives.
To say God is first in our lives and to actually make Him first in our lives can be two different things.
Actions speak louder than words, as they say. And in the book of James we see that faith without action is useless. Paul on the other hands helps us see that works without faith is dead. So the truth is we need to have faith in God and because we have faith in Him, we do His will and it is visible in our lives.
Today we will look at how important it is to God that He is first, and by extension his temple is first and by extention his church is first in our lives.
FIRST THINGS FIRST:
GOD
TEMPLE
CHURCH
Let us read some powerful scriptures together about this and then discuss how this should impact and affect our lives.
Prioritising our homes and comfort above the temple of God:
Haggai 1:2-12 - '“Thus speaks the Lord of hosts, saying: ‘This people says, “The time has not come, the time that the Lord ’s house should be built.”
Then the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet, saying, “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, and this temple to lie in ruins?” Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: “Consider your ways!
“You have sown much, and bring in little; You eat, but do not have enough; You drink, but you are not filled with drink; You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; And he who earns wages, Earns wages to put into a bag with holes.”
Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Consider your ways!
Go up to the mountains and bring wood and build the temple, that I may take pleasure in it and be glorified,” says the Lord . “ You looked for much, but indeed it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why?” says the Lord of hosts. “Because of My house that is in ruins, while every one of you runs to his own house. Therefore the heavens above you withhold the dew, and the earth withholds its fruit. For I called for a drought on the land and the mountains, on the grain and the new wine and the oil, on whatever the ground brings forth, on men and livestock, and on all the labor of your hands.” Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent him; and the people feared the presence of the Lord. '
Haggai 2:3-9 - '‘Who is left among you who saw this temple in its former glory? And how do you see it now? In comparison with it, is this not in your eyes as nothing? Yet now be strong, Zerubbabel,’ says the Lord; ‘and be strong, Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest; and be strong, all you people of the land,’ says the Lord , ‘and work; for I am with you,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘ According to the word that I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt, so My Spirit remains among you; do not fear!’ “For thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land; and I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘The glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘And in this place I will give peace,’ says the Lord of hosts.”'
Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit
I Corinthians 6:15(a),19-20:
15a 'Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?
19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.'
Together we are the church of Christ
Ephesians 2:19-22 - 'Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.'
Each join has a role
Ephesians 4:11-16 - 'And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.'
FIRST THINGS FIRST
In Haggai we see some of the first remnant of God’s people returning from captivity in Babylon to Jerusalem.
Why were they in Babylon? Simply put - They did not put God first. They were warned, they did not listen. They worshipped other gods and disobeyed their true Father in Heaven and eventually they suffered the consequences of their own actions.
Now they have returned. And what happened in the book of Haggai is that we see God speak to his people that he had just set free from 70 years of captivity about getting their priorities right.
God speaks through the man of God and points out the fact that “This people says, “The time has not come, the time that the Lord’s house should be built.” - This implies that they know it needs to happen, but they are justifying putting it off, convincing themselves it is ok.
Have you ever done that? Put off what you know is right to do, but you justify why it doesn’t need to happen right now and eventually you believe yourself… This is what this remnant of Israelites are doing. They are back from bondage. They are just happy to be back and start their lives up again in the homeland, but their focus is their own nice houses, their own comfort, their own convenience, their own dreams, desires and plans.
Then God speaks through Haggai to give the people a wake up call - you live in luxurious houses while my temple lies in ruins! This is not right. You have your priorities completely our of synch.
Then God explains the consequences of having their priorities all wrong -
Look at what’s happening to you! 6You have planted much but harvest little. You eat but are not satisfied. You drink but are still thirsty. You put on clothes but cannot keep warm. Your wages disappear as though you were putting them in pockets filled with holes!
Then He tells them what to do - go get timber and rebuild my house - WHY? Because then He will take pleasure and be honouered - WHEN WE PUT GOD, HIS TEMPLE AND HIS CHURCH FIRST, HE TAKES PLEASURE IN IT AND IS HONOURED - plus, we can see that He also implies that if that is in order, everything else we do will be blessed.
He even goes further and states that the drought and other disasters were caused by Him because His people are not putting Him first.
Have you ever felt you’re stuck, or things are just not going your way? Are you plans failing or when you try a sure fire way to do business it somehow fails? Have you paused, taken a moment and considered whether you really put God, his temple and his church first in your life?
We saw in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians that when we become truly born-again, dead to sin, filled with the Holy Spirit, on our way to heaven Jesus followers, we belong to Christ, that our bodies become a TEMPLE FOR THE HOLY SPIRIT, that we are not our own but that we have been bought at a price.
In the New Covenant with God that Jesus ushered in, the temple of God where the Holy Spirit dwells is no longer the ark of the covenant in a special tent - it is us! It is our bodies! Wow!
I believe that God wants us as the new covenant believers that are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, of which Haggai is one, to realise that since he is the same yesterday, today and forever, the principle that His people should put Him first and therefore prioritise His temple still stands.
Therefore, we need to take a deep, intense look at our lives this day as we kick off this year and start it with a fast - and ask ourselves a very important question - does God truly come first in my life and therefore by extension, do I live each day with the constant consciousness that my body is now the temple of God and needs to be prioritised above my house, work, marriage, family, holidays, opinions about vaccines… Is the Holy Spirit’s temple in order?
We need to realise that everything else in our lives flow from this priority. How fruitful and successful we are in each area of our lives is directly connected to how much we put God first and by extension the fact that our bodies now host the Holy Spirit.
Then, from Eph 2 and Eph 4 we can see a direct link between how each individual believer who host the Holy Spirit, is also part of the local church and the broader body of Christ.
We also see how each one of us, filled with the Holy Spirit, is an important and significant joint in the body of Christ with something special and unique to offer that edifies and uplifts the rest of the body.
Therefore, we need to all catch the revelation that if we profess to put God first, and if we profess to host the Holy Spirit in our bodily temples, then one sure way this will show in our lives is in how we serve our local church.
Each one of you have an important role to fullfill in this local church. God has placed you here for a reason. We all need all of us to live out the fullness of our individual callings in the local church. This way we edify and uplift each other, and know this - it will flow over into all other aspects of your life and you will see supernatural fruit because of it.
Seek first the Kingdom of God and it’s righteousness.
Now this is where it can get offensive… Please know that I did not make up this message in order to manipulate you to come and do something or more for this church. Trust me on that or don’t, but it is the truth.
I truly felt led by God to bring this message to us today. It is almost like God said “do this and this church will grow supernaturally suddenly”.
Imagine LoveKey church where all of us are walking in the fullness of what God has called us to do. We are all completely sold out to see all people around us - family, friends, co-workers and strangers - encounter God, align with His purposes in order to reign in life and help others do the same.
Imagine LoveKey Church filling up so quickly with marriages and families that are hungry to do things God’s way that we need a new venue in one month from now.
Imagine 50, 100, 200 Connect Groups operating on a weekly basis in the Helderberg and northern suburbs changing homes, communities, schools and towns from within.
It is possible if each one of us make a decision to commit to put God first in every area of our lives, and that that, by extention shows in my personal walk with God and in how I serve my local church with my time, money, gifts and spiritual gifts.
I should not have to come and ask or beg you to do something, you should run to us and overwhelm us with your help, contribution, initiatives etc.
We should not have any families struggling financially in our midst because the benevolence fund is so strong.
We should be able to build our own building within a year from now because of you all catching the vision and prioritising God’s house above your own.
IT IS ALL POSSIBLE!
REFLECT AND RESPOND