Created for this

Thank you, Father, for this amazing opportunity to come into Your presence, to come into this fellowship, to come into unity, to just come and touch one another, to strengthen one another, to enable one another, to activate, to support, to direct. Thank you, Father, that it is such a privilege to know the only living God, the Almighty God. We are here to worship You, Father. You are God, and there is none like You.

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that You paid the price, the ultimate price, the complete price. Thank you, Holy Spirit, that You are here tonight, that You give life to every interaction, every word, every thought, every touch, every smile. Just give life to it. Thank you, Father, that You enable everyone who is here tonight to receive from You and from You alone, to be touched by Your Spirit.

Thank you, Father, that Your Word becomes life in us. We worship You, Father, in the name of Jesus. Amen.

So, who of you didn't see the invite for tonight? You are just here – okay, great. So maybe this is going to come as a surprise to you, but that's good, because I'm going to talk about a few things that will touch on the invite.

The invite said, “What does it take to be Christ in this earth, in this world?” But there's more to it. I'm gathering, from the fact that you are here, that you are those who were not offended by the invite, because I received a message that said, “Surely you didn't mean, ‘What does it take to be Christ in this world?’ Surely you meant, ‘What does it take to be like Christ in this world?’” So maybe you didn't even think about that. Then tonight is a good night for you to be here.

Part of my function is activation. So the good news is: this is not church. Yay. Okay, that means anything goes. But because it's not church, I'm going to do what I need to do, and that is activation. We are not here for one person to stand in front and give a nice sermon – it's not about that. There's going to be more to it. But because my purpose is activation, the only way you activate is to make people step out of their comfort zone.

And part of making you step out of your comfort zone is that I'm going to step on some toes. So if you've got long toes, it's not my mistake – it's not my fault. It's good to use this opportunity. We don't often get to do this. The Lord told us to take a year's sabbatical, which we did, so this is the first time in a year that I'm back, and it's quite interesting.

I'm also just as expectant as you are about what the next steps are and what the Lord wants to do. That's why I asked, are you expectant? If we come together and it's a meeting or a sermon or an event or a tea and a coffee, and we go home and nothing changes, what have we really achieved? Yes, we can say we put God first and we worship Him, and we are here in adoration and acknowledgement of who God is. But surely, when we move out of here tonight, there is something we must be able to go and change.

We must go to that next level of activation, or just see a bit more of who He is and what He wants to do through us. So I want to encourage you – I want to say open your mind, but it's more your spirit. Open your spirit for what the Lord wants to do here tonight, and have an expectation that this is an opportunity: yes, to worship, to fellowship, but also to be activated.

And you are here for the person next to you. We don't just come here to say, “What am I going to receive from it?” It is: what has the Lord put inside of me to give to the person next to me? So be expectant.

I want to share about something that initially triggered the invite – something I experienced in my spirit while I was speaking to somebody. As I was speaking, the Lord gave me a particular vision, which I'll talk about just now.

What I realised is that many people fall into a trap – keep the title in the back of your mind as we work through this. What I see when people fall into this trap is that they look at other people, see what other people are doing, and think, “Man, if I could just be like that, if I could just do that.” They look at how other people do whatever it is that they are doing, and they feel inadequate.

They feel, “I'm never going to be able to do it like that.” They keep measuring themselves by what they see other people doing. Some people don't even need to look at other people to feel inadequate – they just look at themselves in the mirror and think, “Why am I here? What am I good at? What am I meant to be doing in the body of Christ? What is my gift? What is my purpose? Where do I fit into that bigger picture of the body of Christ?” I often find people pursue this for so long, trying to determine what their gifts are, what their offices are.

I say this very respectfully: I see a lot of people fill in questionnaires, and at the end of the questionnaire they try to determine what their gift and their office is. I've yet to see anyone successfully get to the place where the Lord wants them to go, and activate what is inside of them, by a piece of paper. It's something inside – but let me not jump ahead; I'll get there.

What is the result and the risk of this trap that people fall into? That's the perspective we need to start getting, because in general we need to understand: what are we busy with? We are busy with that which has eternal value. This earth is not our primary focus. The issues of this world are not our primary focus. We can get caught up in politics and fraud and whatever else – that is not what God sent us for. God said, “Submit to the government.” He said He put the government in place. You can think they are as corrupt as you want; there's a structure, and there is something we adhere to and conform to. So let's not get caught up in the things of this world. We are here for His kingdom, for His purpose, for that which has eternal value.

For that, we need to take off the gloves and be honest with each other and ask, “How much are we busy with that which has eternal value?” Remember, I said you need to put your feet under the chair if you don't want me to step on your toes – but when last did you lead somebody to Christ? And I'm going to come back to that. Remember, I'm not standing here trying to say I'm perfect at doing this. That's not it. I'm talking perspective; I'm talking about the Holy Spirit wanting to stir something in our hearts tonight.

The risk of falling into that trap is that people don't get activated. They dwell on this inadequacy, this feeling of not being equipped, measuring themselves and saying, “If I look at how that person is doing it, I definitely can't even think about doing something, because I'm not going to look like that. People are not going to appreciate me like that. People are not going to support me like that.” So the risk of measuring yourself against other people is lack of activation. That's part of my purpose and gifting – activation. It's not one person standing in front; Ephesians 4 is about every part, every part doing its share. There are no passengers.

So how do we get to that point? The risk of the trap is not being activated, and with that, the big problem is that you do not get to do what God has created you to do – and we all pay the price for that. Remember, I'm going to keep challenging your thoughts, because yes, it's good to think about ourselves and ask, “Where am I at? How do I fit into this picture?” But it's more than that. It's about how am I impacting the people around me.

One reason for this trap that people fall into is what I want to call the foundational lie. The foundational lie is our belief that becoming what God created us to be is something we should create. That's a bit more than it sounds like.

That is why so many people don't move forward, aren't activated, and don't come to walk in their purpose – because they think it's totally dependent on them to create this thing that God wants them to be. “I must do it. I must come to that place where I can fulfil, create, shape this, that God intended me to be.” Now I'll show you why I say that is a foundational lie – because as long as you believe that, you will probably end up feeling inadequate. It's like, how do you do it? How do you achieve it? People have so many questions about how to get there.

I want to swap that foundational lie with a foundational truth. But this is a secret – is the door closed? Can I share this secret with you? Okay, who wants to hear a secret? This is one secret you don't have to keep.

The secret is this: what Christ needed you to be, He has already created. What Christ needed you to be, He has already created. The perfect you has been created. The perfect purpose in you has been created.

Can you see why the foundational lie gets it right to just paralyse people, whereas the foundational truth is that the work is completed? That's it. Christ created the perfect you, the perfect purpose that He had in you and destined – He created it already.

This is the image – can we have that picture, Pete? The one on the invite as well, for those of you who haven't seen it. I was speaking to somebody, and as I was speaking to them, the Lord showed me this image, or something similar to it. It's difficult, when you see something in the spirit, to always find something in the physical, but this is close enough.

What I saw was that inside of us is the perfect gemstone that was created. In the middle of that picture, if you take that one little piece there – that is what I saw was inside you. Inside of you, God created the perfect gemstone. I don't know if it's better pronounced gemstone or gem – okay, gem, not jam, gem. So in you is the perfect gemstone, but it's inside you. If you can only receive that image in your spirit tonight, then we could actually go home – but what am I going to do with the other hour that I have? So I'm going to expand a bit on it, if it's okay.

Grab hold of that image. I think the last time I was here, I gave you the story of how you create the statue of a man out of a rock. The way you create a statue of a man out of a rock is you chip away everything that doesn't look like a man. It's the same with this. How do you get that perfect gemstone to manifest what it should be? Part of that process is just chipping away everything that is standing in the way.

So how do you become the purpose you were created for? You chip away everything that prevents you from revealing it. Chip away everything that prevents you from revealing it. Remove everything that stands in the way.

I want to make it very clear that this does not become the focus. That which you chip away must just start disappearing. That which is standing in the way of us being what God created us to be – we get rid of it, we remove it, but it's not the focus. The focus is the light, the ability, the life. But the more we focus on the obstacle, the less we can see, the less we feed the right thing.

You know the story of the two dogs – the guy feeding the white dog and the black dog, betting on it, and they ask, “How do you know which dog is going to win?” He says, “The one that you feed.” It's a question of what you focus on. What do you focus on? What do you develop?

I want to get very practical, but before I get practical, I'm going to give you Scripture that will start shaping this in your spirit.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.”

Jeremiah 1:5 (NKJV)

Again, remember, in an instant the Lord showed me that image of the gemstone inside, and I knew that is the thing I needed to share. So continue to see that, and now see how Scripture supports it and where we are going with it.

Here it says the Lord – and yes, He was speaking to the prophet, but He was speaking to you – the Lord knew you before you were born. How is that possible? You are firstly a spiritual being. You were in Him since the beginning of the world, since even before that. You were in Him. You are a spiritual being. You are a component of Him. You are more than an ambassador – you are His life. You are part of Him in this earth.

This is where you must understand that – let's accept, for a moment, that all of us need to adjust our mindset tonight to that next level of accepting who He is, who He created us to be, and how we manifest our purpose in this earth. Because this is not about theory. If we walk out of here, how do we... Somebody said to me one day, “My purpose is to help you be the best possible, with the best possible opportunity to manifest Christ.” So we need to give each other the best possible opportunity to manifest Christ practically when we walk out of here.

So we need to understand this verse speaks about who we are. We are spiritual beings who were created in God before we were physically born. It makes one think about some of those scenarios in the Old Testament where the sons of God appeared before God, and He spoke to them, and sometimes sent them on a mission. It is like we were created in the Spirit, and we put up our hands in the Spirit when God said, “Who shall I send?” And we said, “Here I am, Lord, send me for this purpose. Yes, Lord, send me,” in the Spirit.

Now we are in the process of becoming that in this world. But in the Spirit, we were already created to be that which we were sent for, one hundred percent. That gemstone was one hundred percent perfectly created. Yes, there could be a lot of things influencing it, but in itself it is perfect for what it needs to achieve in this world. God looked at you, and He knew exactly what He sent you for. He knew exactly how to create you for what He wants you to be in this earth.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”

Ephesians 2:8-9 (NKJV)

There, there's that foundational lie versus foundational truth. It is a gift of God. None of us can live good enough to become righteous – you can't. Righteousness is a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Ephesians 2:10 (NKJV)

Who of you are starting to get this picture? It's not about us determining what we are, who we are, how we get there – it's not that. It is God's plan. It is His creation. It is His perfection. It is His ability. And we need to come to the point of asking, how do we manifest that? But He had a plan. The Word is full of it.

When I wrote down all the Scriptures, I realised I was going to be here till eight tomorrow morning, so I deleted half of them. But I'm going to list them. We record these sessions and share them on the app, so we'll share the link with you, and at the bottom, where you can listen to it, we'll put the whole document with all the Scriptures. In case you missed something, you can go and read through them and see what the Lord says about you. Now let's talk about what is inside of you – this gemstone we're talking about.

“And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; and they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”

John 17:22-23 (NKJV)

So this thing that the Spirit showed me about the gemstone is not something I'm fabricating, or coming up with as a new doctrine. This is what the Word says. Jesus spoke to the Father and said, “The same glory You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one, I in them, they in Me, and perfect.” There is perfection.

So what is the gemstone in you? It's the life of Christ. It's the ability of Christ. It is His image. God said, “Let Us create man in Our image and likeness.” It is His ability, His life, His image – and it already says it is perfect.

So again, we need to separate our minds from looking at ourselves and saying, “I can't do that. I'm not good enough. What are people going to think? I can't do that. I can't speak as well.” No – it's His life, His ability, His perfection. That is what the Word is saying. It is Him that is inside of us.

“To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

Colossians 1:27 (NKJV)

Hallelujah. Amen. What is the hope of glory? What is the hope of this nation? I can tell you now, you cannot in the physical come up with a solution for this nation. But there is, in the Spirit, a solution for this nation. Christ in you.

We didn't design this thing. We didn't determine how it works. God decided that the way it works, the way salvation works, is that God takes something that is spirit – I say “something” in inverted commas – He takes part of Him, which is spirit, and puts it in the flesh in this world. That which is flesh had to sacrifice itself and become spirit again. That is how salvation works.

It's no different for us. It's His life, His ability, inside of us, that has the ability to manifest Him. There is no other solution. But how privileged are we that He decided that's how it's going to work. We can think about why – I say this very respectfully – but why, in His right mind, did He choose human beings to manifest Him? But that's what He decided. That's how it's going to work.

“For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.”

Romans 8:29 (NKJV)

Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat should fall to the ground and die, it cannot reproduce.” You don't put a seed of wheat in the ground and then expect watermelons to come up – it doesn't work that way.

When Jesus died – if you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Saviour and you have become born again – you received eternal life in your spirit, and that life is of Him. It's not a “Category B” life. Those of you in business know: you get Category A shares, you get Category B shares. You are not a Category B share – you're a Category A share. You have the same nature as what God has. Not a little bit lower, not a little bit less ability. It is the fullness of God that dwells in you.

It's His life, His ability. Can you understand that we need to have that mindset? I'm going to send you that picture – print it out and put it on your fridge. Whenever you go past it, you'll know what is inside of you. It's His life. It is His ability. This is what His Word says: we are conformed to the image of His Son. Isn't that amazing? How can you even call yourself a child of God and not expect to have the same life that He has? If I have a child, they have the same life form that I have – not a different life form. We have His life form, and He decided that it should work that way. We didn't create this methodology.

“To reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood.”

Galatians 1:16 (NKJV)

To reveal His Son in me – it sounds like blasphemy. Can you understand why they wanted to stone Jesus? It sounds like blasphemy to say, “I'm going to reveal the Almighty God who lives in me.” That's how He created it. It's His life. It's His ability.

“And has put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him.”

Colossians 3:10 (NKJV)

According to the image – not a different image. So I think I've established that first point. Is that okay? You get it. He says, “My life is in you.” That gemstone that's inside of you – it's His life, it's His ability, it's His nature. It is the fullness, the all in all, of Him who created it, inside of you.

So now we need to start dealing differently with this. We cannot stand in the way of what He wants to do. We cannot look at our own ability and say, “Like Moses – I can't speak well, I can't do this, I can't do that.” That's not the factor. It's about the ability of Him that is inside of you. That's what it's about. It's His ability. So don't try to fabricate something – it's there.

So this which is inside of us – I want to move to the next point and understand that this was purposefully created. It would be nice, it would be great, to say, “God gave us His life, amen, let's go to heaven.” Yes, that would be great, but it's more than that. He designed it this way for a purpose. That life which is in you, that life which He's put inside of you – there's a purpose with it. More than one purpose, but I'll focus narrow, and then I'll go a bit wider.

“Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 'See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah; and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, to design artistic works, to work in gold, in silver, in bronze, in cutting jewels for setting, in carving wood, and to work in all manner of workmanship.'”

Exodus 31:1-5 (NKJV)

I just wanted to put that verse in there to show you a very practical example. I know the picture is a bit bigger than that, and this was very specific, but it shows you how God goes about it. I've said many times in the past that when my life changed, I realised how much the physical life is actually spiritual. And then I moved on, and I realised how much the spiritual life is actually physical. Are you getting that?

So here, God had a specific purpose, and God manifested something in the spirit inside somebody and enabled him with that spiritual ability – it became a physical ability – so that person could go and do all these things. He could carve the wood, he could set the gold, and he could do all of it beautifully because of his purpose, because of his life, his ability, that God put inside of him.

How is it different for you? It's not. This is just illustrated very practically, but it makes no difference. Every one of us – God has this in mind. First it's God's purpose. First it's God's purpose, then God says, “Okay, for this component of the purpose, I need this tool.”

Okay, where is X tool? Oh no, there isn't X tool. Let me create you to be X tool so that you can go and fulfil that. So understand, part of why I'm showing that is to help us realise that although we have the life of God inside of us, we were all created unique. Every single one of us is unique. That is why that foundational lie has so much impact, because people don't understand that they were created uniquely.

So they keep measuring, and they're measuring against the wrong thing. The measure is not the person next to me. The measure is the life inside of me.

“In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.”

Ephesians 1:11 (NKJV)

Again, whose purpose? His purpose. I don't know about you, but it takes a lot of pressure off me to understand that it's His purpose, His plan. Maybe you are one of those people who, whenever you are in your environment, have to come up with the solutions and the plans and the strategies – dankie tog, hierdie een hoef ek nie meer vorendag te kom nie. He did it. It's His plan, His purpose, His strategy, and we just slot into that. It's His purpose. We do not need to create it.

I see this picture – if you've seen the Superman movies, he's dressed in his normal clothes, his suit, and then all of a sudden he rips open his shirt and the Superman t-shirt is underneath. But it's always been there. He didn't have to create the Superman t-shirt; he's just revealing it. And I see that picture for us in Christ. We just need to open it up and reveal what is already there. I don't need to now go and paint that Superman t-shirt. No, it's there. I just reveal it.

So we've established that general purpose, the fact that it's God's purpose. Now, obviously, we're going to pull that purpose into what the purpose is within the body. I'm not going to stand still on that too much, but I'll share probably the two or three scriptures you're already expecting me to share regarding the gifts and the functions within the body.

“And each one has received a gift, minister it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. If anyone ministers, let him do it as with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

1 Peter 4:10-11 (NKJV)

Each one. Who of you falls outside of each one? Nobody that needs counselling – dankie tog. Stewards. When are you a steward? When you didn't create the thing, but somebody entrusted it to you. So we are stewards of life, of grace, of ability. We're a steward, but it's His. He created it.

There are gifts, we know that. There are offices – apostle, prophet, evangelist, teacher, gifts of healing, prophecy, prophetic gifts, languages. There are gifts, but let's call a spade a spade.

It's also one of the issues in the body of Christ that your gift becomes the focus. People spend all this time and effort figuring out what their gift is, and then once they think they know, that's the only thing they focus on, and it becomes more important than any other gift because 'this is the gift.' When we talk about gifts, we need to have this perspective: gifts are only given for a purpose, and that purpose is establishing the Gift, which is Christ. If the gift is not establishing the Gift, we are missing the point.

It's a big responsibility entrusted to us when we start functioning in certain gifts. But the risk is that we start emphasising them in importance far beyond anything else. The whole of 1 Corinthians 12 going into 1 Corinthians 13, speaking about love and about the gifts, says you can have all these wonderful gifts – true, authentic spiritual gifts – you can have all of them, but if you don't have love, it means nothing. It means nothing.

What is love? Love is Christ. If my focus, my intent, my purpose is not manifesting Christ, don't even bother trying to figure out what your gift is. If the condition of our heart is His lordship, His ability, His purpose, His kingdom – establishing that, in that focus, that desire, that purity of heart – your gift will come. Don't worry about it. Don't make that the focus, because it isn't the focus. The Gift is the focus. If you focus on that, the rest will come.

“And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, 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, and the cunning craftiness and 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.”

Ephesians 4:11-16 (NKJV)

Do you see all of this? Every wind of doctrine, the trickery of men, trying to figure out doctrine and strategy and structure and whatever, losing focus. It's not about that. It's about that life, His life, His ability. That is the focus. Cut out everything else. The gospel is simple.

I wanted to read that for completeness, but I want to mention one or two things, specifically because we sometimes just read through it and don't interpret a specific word. So I'm going to move the focus slightly. I'm going to focus on two words. It says, 'for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry.' The proper rendering of the word 'equipping' is actually 'perfecting.' It's like a ship going to sea, and it's saying that ship has everything it requires to actually go on its journey. That is the word used there – the perfecting of the saints for the work of ministry.

But this is actually the word I want to focus on: 'ministry.' I want to read part of the Strong's definition. It says it's 'the ministration of those who render to others the offices of Christian affection, especially those who help meet need by either collecting or distributing of charities, the office of the deacon,' et cetera. The core of it is: we say we are perfecting the saints for the work of ministry, and then when we talk ministry, we think church, gifts, structure. That is not what that word 'ministry' means. That word means taking care of each other.

When we talk about our purpose, one of our primary purposes is taking care of the body of Christ. It's a physical thing. Is the person next to you taken care of? Do we know it, or do we think it, or do we guess it – or are they taken care of? We take this whole thing about gifts and offices and it becomes a spiritual thing that determines the structure of the church. But at the end of the day, it's about whether you are taking care of the person next to you, because that's God's heart. That's what that word 'ministry' means.

Right at the end of what I read, it says 'every joint' and 'every part' – I've emphasised that; it says it twice. It says the whole body is joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, and every part does its share. There are no passengers. It causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

That word 'edifying' – do you know what it means? From the Strong's dictionary, part of the definition says it is 'those that promote another's growth,' in Christian wisdom, piety, happiness, holiness, and then it also refers to a building. So this whole passage ends like a triangle coming to a sharp point right at the end: 'it causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.'

That edifying is talking about who is helping the person next to him fulfil his purpose. That's what this whole thing is about. It's as if God hedged it. I've said it so many times before: don't tell me you can fulfil your purpose unless you are helping other people fulfil their purpose. It's impossible to fulfil a purpose in isolation, because by definition it wasn't designed that way – our purpose is the manifestation of Christ. How is one person's purpose going to establish that? We need to help each other fulfil our purpose.

You can go and read Romans 12 – it goes along the same line. It says, 'having gifts differing according to the grace that was given to us.'

“And the eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you'; nor again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.'”

1 Corinthians 12:21 (NKJV)

“And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”

1 Corinthians 13:2 (NKJV)

What is interesting here is that the term 'nothing,' properly rendered, actually means 'no one' – one without identity. Isn't that amazing? When we start functioning outside of that which God created us to be, we have no identity. It's why the world looks the way it looks; it's trying to fabricate identities. There's only one identity, and that's in Christ. Without love, I'm without identity, because Christ is love.

So we've established that our purpose is within the body of Christ. We don't function in isolation. We don't function alone. One of the big threats is that we isolate ourselves, we go into our room, and we just try to sort out our own salvation. I know the Word says 'work out your own salvation,' but that did not mean go and isolate yourself. That's not what it means. So there's a big risk in that.

There's a process of transformation. You know that you were created a spirit. You are spirit, you have a soul, and you stay in a body. There are three components. You are spirit – that is who you were created to be. You have a soul, which is your mind, your will, your emotions. And you stay in this body, this package. It's going to disappear; it's not going to last. This is the temporary thing you see, the physical body. But the spirit and the soul – that is the emphasis.

So when you were created, that perfect gemstone that was created in you, the life of Christ that is in there, is in your spirit, in your being. It is being carried by this earthen vessel. Like it says in Corinthians, when it talks about our ministry of reconciliation, it's been entrusted to us in earthen vessels. This package has its limitations, but that which is inside doesn't have limitations. And it's going to last forever.

That life and that ability inside needs to play a role in transforming, too. It comes from the spirit, but it also needs to transform my mind. My mind, my will, my emotions need to be transformed so that I am better enabled to reveal that which is inside of me. Just having that life form inside of me to start with is only enough to get me into heaven.

That's why Romans 12 says, 'Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.' It's not creating – it's getting out of the way so that it can be the mind of Christ. It says we have the mind of Christ, because it's Him staying inside of us. How do we reveal Him more? Let's chip away, let's get rid of the things affecting our ability to show Him forth.

“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

2 Corinthians 3:18 (NKJV)

This portion refers to Moses going up the mountain and coming down covering his face because the glory was physically visible on him – but it didn't last; it disappeared. But it says 'we, with unveiled face.' We are not trying to cover the glory of God that is inside of us.

I'll get to it just now, but the one thing we need to establish, so as not to confuse the two, is that it's not our ability to create it, it's not our responsibility to create it – but we have a responsibility to reveal it. We play a role in that, but that's totally separate.

It's like righteousness. People confuse the two. We have received the gift of righteousness. When you receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, you receive the gift of righteousness. You can do zero to achieve righteousness in God's eyes. Your nature, the life of God inside of you, is what gives you righteousness – but that is salvation, that's one thing. You need to separate that from a life of righteousness. People confuse the two, thinking that if I live right, do good, and don't sin too badly, I will establish righteousness. You can't establish righteousness. But a righteous life, a conviction of the righteous life inside of me, compels me to start living righteously. It doesn't achieve my salvation, but it is my responsibility.

It's the same with this. I cannot create this ability, this life of God inside of me. I cannot. But there is a transformation that needs to take place, and an enablement of revealing it that I need to play a role in. But we need to separate the two from each other.

This 'unveiled face' – we with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord – it's as if we are seeing with spiritual eyes. You look in the mirror at yourself, and you see with spiritual eyes, like a spiritual X-ray, and you see what is inside of you: Christ is inside of you, the perfect being, the perfect life is inside of you. And now it says we are being transformed. The more we look, the more we become – not becoming through creating, but becoming in our ability to reveal that which is inside of us.

“The Lord will perfect that which concerns me; Your mercy, O Lord, endures forever; do not forsake the works of Your hands.”

Psalm 138:8 (NKJV)

That which He started in me, He will perfect. It's His ability, His dream, His purpose. What a privilege that the Almighty God, the Creator of heaven and earth, is interested in you, created you for a specific purpose, and wants you to succeed.

Who of you is ready for the practical application of this? I'm a practical person, and our purpose is activation – that's where we started. So this is not meant to be a nice sermon. This is about how we go and effect change in our lives.

Number one, I start with me: identify who you are. Who did God make you to be? Do not try to create yourself. This is a summary of what I've covered – we'll put this in the notes as well, so pick up what is important to you. Do not try to create yourself, do not even try to perfect yourself. It is by the Spirit, as we just heard, that perfection will come. It is exposing and revealing what has already been perfected. Have peace of mind in His perfection.

When I read through this as I prepared, this peace came over me, and I could take a deep breath and say, 'God, it's all about You. It's all Your ability, it's all Your plan. Thank you that I can be part of it. But I can submit it to You; You're the Almighty God.' So number one is identify who you are. But in context, as I've already said, that is not the focus. It will come. I wanted to say it because it's something you must desire: to say, 'Where am I heading?'

Number two, which is still part of focusing on yourself: embrace your uniqueness. I think the average person takes very long before they realise they are actually different from the rest. You go through your whole school life trying to conform, and things just don't work for you, and then you realise at the end of the day why. You need to realise that you are unique.

I showed you the example from Exodus for a reason, where God said, 'I need this specific thing to happen.' He took a man, He put something spiritual on him so that it could be executed in the physical. So there are things you have inside of you. The purpose you've been created for spiritually often plays out physically in terms of your ability, your skill set and your passions. God is not confused. He's not going to create you for a specific purpose and then make all your physical skills, desires and passions the exact opposite, so that everything you need to do for Him is a struggle and you suffer and are pathetic at it. No. There is often – I say often – a very strong correlation. The reason I say that is we need to become good at realising what is different about us instead of trying to conform.

I've had to realise in my life, even after my life changed spiritually, that there are things that trigger you in your heart that do nothing for somebody else, and vice versa. You walk in here, one person will say, 'The chairs are askew, that thing should be there' – it moves them, triggers them, irritates them if that chair isn't where it should be. Somebody else couldn't care; the chairs could lie in the corner for all they mind. It's not their thing.

When I became activated in the Spirit and started in ministry, something would often happen and I would keep quiet because nobody else was doing anything about it. Then gradually I started realising, 'I pick up on these things and somebody else doesn't.' So you need to start being an authentic steward, and you need to respond to what moves you. There are things that move you that maybe nobody else in this room is moved by, so if you don't respond, there's a gap.

We've already established that if one suffers, everyone suffers. If one doesn't bring to fulfilment the purpose created in them, the rest of us suffer. Do you think it's optional that half of us here don't fulfil our purpose? It's not. We are not going to establish the purpose in Ephesians 4 until we come to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, by which every joint supplies and every part does its share. For me, one of the biggest flaws in the execution of the body of Christ on earth is that we don't realise: if one person in this room doesn't fulfil their purpose, we are failing.

So it's important to understand there are things in your heart, things that will trigger you, things that move you, that you don't just wipe under the carpet because nobody else is responding to it. Respond to it. And yes, we don't function in isolation – we need people around us.

You need a safe environment where you can sit and say to somebody – just as an example – if you pray together, you can say, 'Did you see the angel standing in the corner there?' And people might say, 'What? You what?' Maybe other people don't see it. But whatever it is, embrace it in a safe environment. We help people form small groups, home fellowship groups, and within that it's exactly why it needs to be a small group, where somebody can for the first time say, 'Look, I'm not sure, I've never done this, but the Lord is saying this,' and shares a word.

And the person says, 'You know what? Somebody told me that same thing last night.' Do you know what that does for somebody's spiritual confidence and growth, to receive that acknowledgment? Or maybe the person says, 'No, man, I don't know what you're talking about,' or maybe next week they come back and say, 'Now I know what you were saying.' That is why you can't just look at it as an immersive thing on your own – you need to put that light on the hill, and you need to be in that safe environment where you can, if I can respectfully call it, experiment – build your confidence to say, 'Look, if nobody else experienced it, it's what I experienced.'

So embrace your uniqueness. Don't assume other people are having the same things that move you, and if you don't respond to it, that might be a gap.

Number three in your identity: activate who you are. I wrote here, 'then what?' You now know this – then what? You need to activate it.

Very long ago, before my life changed, I remember Gustav, who's sitting there, was my partner in the audit practice, and even before my life changed he prayed for me for many years – I honour you for that. He said to me, 'You can hit a straight shot with a crooked stick.' I said, 'Crooked stick yourself, I'm not a crooked stick.' Later on I realised how significant that concept is, because the risk, spiritually, is that we get so passive because we want to first perfect this thing.

I say this very respectfully – if the Lord tells you to do it, then fine. But I can tell you of the people I've seen in my life who said to me, 'The Lord says I must isolate myself for a year' – I have yet to see one that turned out a success because of that. I'm not saying it isn't possible; I have not experienced it. In actual fact, I've experienced exactly the opposite – it turns into a mess, because we were not designed that way. We were not designed to isolate ourselves.

So the goal is not: now I have some inkling of what my gifting is and what I should be doing, so I go and study four hundred books and try to perfect this, and write my own book, and ten years down the line – how many souls have gone to hell while you figured out how to perfect your gift? Remember, that's why I said the gift is for one purpose, and that's to manifest the Gift. Can I respectfully say you can manifest the Gift without any of the gifts? So what is the focus? It's not the gifts, it's the Gift. That is the focus. When my life changed in 2009, the first day I received the Spirit, I started praying in tongues, my life changed.

I had such a conviction in my heart. I said to the Lord, "Can I please just lead one person to Christ before I die?" I had such a conviction. If I were to stand in front of the Lord and say, "I have not led one person to Christ," I would not be able to face that. And when I led the first person to Christ, it was like a floodgate opening in experiencing my purpose. Within one day of being filled with the Spirit and being enabled, I led somebody to Christ.

I didn't have to go study for ten years. So once you start having this experience in whatever direction you go, don't wait for perfection. It's not about perfection, it's about activation. You don't need to be perfect. You don't need to know everything. All you need to know is that Jesus Christ died for you and He was resurrected, and He sent His Spirit as a promise to enable you.

“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.”

Acts 1:8 (NKJV)

You don't need to know anything else to lead somebody to Christ. And what is there in this life that has more value than that? We start painting and colouring and complicating things so much. That's why I say to you, respectfully, when last did you lead somebody to Christ? We sit here, we go to church, we study books, we do all of this – to do what? There are people going to hell while we are perfecting ourselves. It's not the focus, it's not the purpose.

So that was the focus on you. Now I'm going to move that focus slightly to the people around you. I call it phase two: focus on the people around you. See who those people are around you. Grow in other-focusedness. It's something we should remind ourselves of, so that I can start seeing who the people around me are. That's why this interaction is important. I can start encouraging, building up – the edification, the edifying.

How do we help each other? That whole scripture in Ephesians 4 ends in this: how do I enable you to live your purpose? That's it. So instead of focusing on myself, we need to become conscious of who the people around us are, have interaction, share, pray, whatever it is. And when people start sharing, build them up, give them confidence. If people don't have confidence in the physical, they might struggle with confidence in the spiritual until they start growing in that. But now our focus becomes them, because that is our purpose.

We build the people around us strong. We enable them. The moment our focus becomes the people around us, we start helping them to fulfil their purpose. For me, I have my shortcomings. My personality is a driver, and I'm a doer, and that comes at a price. It's great in certain aspects, but I'm task-orientated. The Lord needs to continue to give me love in situations where, even at a ministry event, I'm a driver and a doer and I will make things happen – and in the process I will not realise the person next to me is crying.

I'm like, "Let's get the job done." And I need to be sensitive. It's not necessarily my strong skill. I need to work on that; I need to become aware of it. So with all of what we do, we need to become aware of the skill set of the people around us. For me it's like, "This is how we do it – doesn't everybody do it this way?" No, not everybody does it this way. Some people are focused on other things. So once we know who we are, let's not think everybody around us should be that way.

Let's not try to make cookie cutters out of them. Acknowledge who they are, respond to it, encourage it. This is one of the things I've heard, and you've probably heard it many times too. Somebody has this conviction in their heart – this is their gifting, their passion, the thing that drives them: charity. They want to go out and hand out food, and they post on a group, "I'm going out on Saturday, I'm going to hand out food parcels." And often I experience people's mindset being, "That's not my thing."

Meaning, probably, it's not my gift, it's not what drives me, it's not what I keep myself busy with. But can we really, in the body of Christ, afford to say, "That's not my thing"? Surely, even though it's not your primary gifting or your drive or your purpose or your passion, in enabling everybody around us, should we not at least say, "Can I drive the parcels there for you? Can I watch the cars? Can I do whatever?"

I can do something to enable you to fulfil what is in your heart. Once we get to that point – we talk so easily about having died to ourselves, that it's Christ who lives in me. If I've died to myself, I belong to the body of Christ. We belong to each other. We don't belong to ourselves. We gave away our right to decide for ourselves what we want to do. Christ is now deciding, and that means if you are fulfilling your purpose, something the Spirit sent you to do, I should go out of my way to help you do that.

Even if I experience zero movement in my heart towards a passion for that, I should just, physically and logically, go and help, because that person needs to be enabled to do what they were called to do.

“As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.”

Proverbs 27:17 (NKJV)

It's interesting that the word countenance means face, appearance, presence, person. So when we help each other, when we shape each other, we are shaping each other's face. We are shaping our appearance, our ability to manifest the presence of God. It's like that picture I showed you earlier of the gemstone embedded in all that other material.

Now imagine you take two of those and start hitting them against each other, breaking off the pieces that don't belong there. The more, like iron sharpens iron, friends shape each other, the more we establish our countenance – the countenance of Christ, the glory of Christ, is being revealed.

That also means we must get rid of pride. There's no room for pride in the body of Christ. If we make a mistake, we say we made a mistake. If I don't know what to do, I say I don't know what to do. If I struggle, I say I struggle. Otherwise we are wasting each other's time. We need to be transparent. We need to be present. We need to reveal and say, "This is where I'm at, this is what I'm struggling with." The moment we start doing that and shaping each other, we enable each other more and more to actually change our countenance, to change the glory of God which we carry, to be present in this earth.

We can't do it on our own.

And that means, and I'm ending off with this, we need to spend time together. I love Acts 2:46:

“So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.”

Acts 2:46-47 (NKJV)

Amen. It's doing life, not playing church. It's doing life, and the essence of doing life is that we take care of each other – not that I isolate myself in my inner room and think that's so noble and so spiritual. Yes, you need to spend time in the Word, because that is the substance the Holy Spirit needs to work with. You need to fill yourself with the Word. You need to have intimacy. You need to hear so that you can respond and do. Yes, you need to do all that, but you can't do that at the cost of somebody's salvation.

You can't do that at the cost of a brother next to you who is suffering and you don't even know it. We need to do life together. We need to go from house to house. We need to eat together – that's what it says. It's not the stuck-up, formal structure; it's doing life together. It's knowing what is going on in each other's lives so that we can be there to shape, to form, to help, to uplift, so that your countenance can change, so that you can manifest Christ, so that we can come to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, being in unity because of the knowledge that we have of Him.

The more we shape each other and have interaction, the more that mirror – there are many things that can be that mirror. It can be your brother standing across from you, and he's actually the mirror that says, "My friend, my brother, I love you, but this thing you are doing is not from God. Can I help you get rid of that?" That's why we help people through accountability groups too, to say, don't try to go through something alone. Doesn't matter what it is you're struggling with – if you think you're going to struggle with it on your own, you are keeping that thing in the darkness, and you are feeding it, and it's growing in darkness.

Where if it's brought into the light, the light takes away all its power and destroys it. Part of bringing it into the light is to share with one another.

“The heartfelt and continued prayer of the righteous man makes tremendous power available, dynamic in its working.”

James 5:16 (AMPC)

It achieves what it was sent to do. So don't keep things in the darkness – reveal it. That's it. It's a lot, but if you only grab that image in your spirit tonight, it is enough.

If you only grab hold of that image I showed you, and understand it, move the focus from yourself. If you want to summarise tonight, you can probably summarise it in that: move the focus from yourself, move your focus onto Christ, the life that He created in you – the perfect life for the perfect purpose, what He had in mind, and He makes no mistakes.

Once you've moved your focus from yourself onto Christ, it will happen automatically that you start moving your focus from yourself and your own issues to the people around you, to say, in its simplest and most effective term: for me to fulfil God's purpose is to take care of the people around me.

Is it important to go and win souls? Most definitely. And I would love to be pulled in – to any meeting where we go and win souls, or where we go and minister, or if you have something organised, let us know. We'll come and help you. I'll send thirty people to come and help you.

So we help each other. Yes, it's important to win souls, because otherwise we are wasting each other's time – if people are going to hell while we think we've perfected something. We've perfected something, but everybody around us is going to hell. So we need to physically go and do it. Be activated to live the purpose He has established in you, and don't try to do it on your own.