Andy Hawthorne spoke at tonight’s Big Room session using Ephesians 4:1-16
Made a commitment to Christ aged 12, now aged 55. Started gunning for God aged 18 years old. My passion has never dried. What excites me the most is reaching out to the broken and the marginalised. That’s one of the main ways we will see revival in this country.
Young offenders giving their life to Jesus is like shelling peas, so easy, discipleship is a different challenge. What does it look like for them to become the centre of kingdom life, the epicentre of the kingdom. One person never gets saved, they are put in the epicentre, and we see the ripples.
Nick was put on my heart. He was well and truly off the rails, heavily into drugs, gangsterism, tried to commit suicide several times. Must have picked him up 50 times to hear him preach. Would see loads of people come to faith but never respond. Annoyingly he came to faith at Nigerian speaker! Now working with the Message, seen over 400 people come to faith. Still trying to disciple him whilst he’s still living with his girlfriend. Andrea isn’t for God but then a lady from the Message takes her to Uganda and she meets the Holy Spirit in the slums. They got married, and I was the best man. Last year, 10pm on a Sunday night, after the birth of Niko, with Alexis I was high on drugs and didn’t know how to treat Andrea and Alexis. Andrea is leading a charity sponsoring 300 children in the slums of Uganda. Yesterday she was running a marathon in the heat of Uganda for these children. The gospel can turn these into prince and princesses.
We celebrate the stories but some don’t go well. A month out of prison he came into the bike shop where he worked he said I need the afternoon off to go to a sexual health clinic. Asked whether he was sleeping around, he said I’ve been in prison for 3 years of course I have. Sat him down and discipled him, realised hadn’t told him about no sex outside of marriage. Now in the course they do tell them this!
2 cocaine addicts, beautifully transformed, and winning friends for Jesus. Both had some seemingly small stuff happen and went back on the gear and died. Kingdom breakthrough and then Satan kicks you in goolies.
Video of Message Trust including The Higher Tour for 2016 onwards.
Ephesians 4, after 3 chapters of unfolding what the gospel is and how it transforms this new society in Christ, he comes to chapter 4 where the rubber hits the road. Moving from doctrine to duty. Romans, 1-11 of doctrine, the gospel of free grace, then chapter 12, therefore. Exposition to Exaltation. We are about understanding the book but not just understanding the book but applying it.
Sometimes the way we do youth ministry the impression is about the thrill of the fill, but Paul says there’s a duty of serving the king from understanding who amazing he is. Present company accepted scared how little time youth workers spend studying the Bible. If you want to see your youth ministry transformed, get into the Bible, it’s all there to lead the best ministry in town. Paul gets it better than any theologian in history.
The goal of our youth ministries is disciples, and no one is better at telling us how to make disciples than Paul. How do we preach the gospel, release evangelists, of course we need to do food banks, debt relief, refugees support, if you remove the gospel it goes wrong.
18 months ago had a phone call from an amazing Ugandan guy called John who leads 24/7 across Uganda. Andy the Lord will take everything to a new level, everything will go through the roof, and you need to get away and seek the Lord. Managed 2 days in the Lake District staying at my mates 4* hotel enjoying hospitality. God is so good! Driving there thinking what do I listen to, pulled a CD, and heard a man speaking about Isaiah 60 and the work they’ve built in Manchester, India, Africa. If we could sell the house, ex-offenders had done it up, looked amazing, trying to sell for 14 months, killing cash flow, reduced it by £10k, and thinking wouldn’t it be amazing to give him the money. Phone goes off seconds later. The estate agent had a full asking price, in cash, before you reduced it by £10k! The Lord saying get ready! Walking in the hills, knelt down by the bed, was going to look at Romans but it fell open at Isaiah 60, had an amazing time with God. Felt like the last 25 years of ministry came before his eyes. Assemble my people, the gates will stay open. Timing is open in the kingdom, you can kill yourself doing something and then the Lord just makes it happen. Going home, put a CD in, and heard another sermon on Isaiah 60. Going to gather young people, preaching a gospel to
A calling to a King
Young people are being born wrong, come to Jesus and have the best life, come to Jesus and he will sort your problems, come to Jesus and he thinks your beautiful. But that’s only half, what about come to Jesus and take up your cross, come to Jesus and be a living sacrifice, come to Jesus and make him king. If you’re worthy of the call then live it, it’s what we have to do and help our young people to do – make God king.
Rather than calling young people to serve at whatever cost. We call them to serve the Queen, she’s a sister of the Lord, she is doing better than Billy Graham, although he might have delivered it better, could you imagine doing an altar call! 60 years ago the Archbishop of Canterbury knelt down and gave her a bible and says here’s the oracles from the Bible, and it is the most precious thing she can own. The most precious thing she owns isn’t the Bentley’s fabulous jewellery or the estates, but this Bible, the living word of God. Imagine if we had young people who were passionate to live out the word of God. We love the Queen but she doesn’t really affect the way we live, the way we spend our money, when she dies we will mourn, but she doesn’t affect the way we live.
The Eden teams are so prophetic, 41 teams living in communities around the country. The decisions about where’s the best schools for my children, where’s the best shopping centres, or even the best churches. What about where are the poor and the broken hearted? That is kingdom thinking, he’s the boss, he’s in charge,
Bill Bright founded Campus Crusades for Christ. In 1951 he was broken by what he saw the students doing and so set up a student ministry as a business man. As they were planning, they made a contract between them as a couple and Jesus. The contract said this: “From this day forward I am a slave to Christ”. 14th October 2014 signed a similar one . He came up with a tract called the 4 Spiritual Laws, but 1.5 billion people have read it, he produced a film, the JESUS Film which has been seen by more people than any other film, it’s not even the best film! Not saying if you become a slave to God that
A calling to holiness
A call to see this messed up youth culture changed. You can sniff how godly people are within minutes of walking into a youth group. Do you expect young people to watch the right stuff on their computer if you can’t. Do you expect them to get on and be united if you as a leadership team isn’t. But the opposite is true we can see groups who are changed because of their youth leader living out God’s calling. God wants to call us to repent so that we can see our young people truly repent.
A calling to unity
Do you think Paul’s quite obsessed when 7 times in 2 verses he writes about unity and the body of Christ. You can’t multiply the church, there is only one church, that’s why it is so cool to come together like this – all these different denominations here, the Lord is a lot less chipped up than we are. People used to stand outside my meetings with placards, my sin was ecumenicism, I wanted to smack them in the face. 3,500 young people going to a gig, 1,000 came to Christ and this little group were saying “Don’t go in, he’s ecumenical.” Another time they had TV cameras to create an anti-Andy Hawthorne youtube channel accusing his mum of being an ecumantic.
Dad died singing his way through mission praise, singing, “turn your eyes to Jesus”. He went to be Jesus, mum had vision of dad being carried into the garden, and Uncle Ken, and his mates were there. Because of that his mum was accused of being an ecumantic who speak to the dead. Won’t do it, so going to pursue living it out now, going to be embarrassing if get to heaven and we’ve spent all our time on earth hating each other and now we have to hang out together for eternity. It’s not just you get it, but make every effort to pursue unity. What would it look like in your situation to obey that heart cry. We could have formed our own church but we don’t need more denominations. If the 40,000 had not spent time arguing but united the great commission could have been completed. It’s tough when you see churches not doing a great job and you see you could do something better.
Two things: spend real time getting into this book. If you would make every effort to work with other youth leaders. We haven’t got this gathering together next year, God loves this, so you need to make more effort to bless youth leaders in your neighbourhood, those who are struggling, those who have less, give them some money, resources, buy them dinner. If you made every effort obeying the word of the lord to maintain unity you’d be staggered to see how it comes in your youth group. Not into prosperity gospel, but am in to sowing and reaping. Do stuff that you can’t do on your own. In it together and God turns up, it’s his idea that unity is so important.
Dennis Rigley leads the Maranatha prayer movement, he died this week. If there’s anyone in my life that embodies what I’ve talked about, it’s him, this isn’t a eulogy. Dennis when he was 18 become the youngest ever Liberal Party candidate. He stood at every elections between age 18 and his mid-60s. He never got in but invested in a young man, David Alton, for 40 years investing in justice, the persecuted around the world, unborn and so much more. Dennis great grandfather was a missionary to Ghana, when the average lifetime for a missionary in Ghana was 16 weeks. The only other Christian was a Catholic and they put stuff on together and saw revival. That’s why he was so keen to work with David, a Catholic. He set up prayer meetings all over the world. Several times he was healed, but finally time to be with the Lord. Texted Simon, his son, who works with the Message, he said back “Dad has been comforting the Doctors, when given the bad news, he told the Doctor it was good news, and broke into song, the nurses in tears, amazing moment” On Tuesday he was carried into the garden of heaven. For the first two million years can you imagine what a party of people saying thank you for his perseverance for unity. Why would you not want to live out for Jesus, turn your back on all the crap, pursue unity in this generation, it’s our only chance, this is not a trial run. I want to live large for Jesus, don’t you?
Decide what to do to get into the book, decide to be united as a leadership team, even if it’s 10% you and 90% them, bless youth leaders in your community.