It's an amazing thought isn't it? That God is interested in you. That He loves you.
That you can know him. So much so that he reaches out to you and me through his Son Jesus and offers to fill us with His Holy Spirit. It's a stunning concept for a way of thinking about life.

Now, here's a thing, not only is God interested in you, not only does he love you and reach out to transform your life, one of his primary ways of doing so is through other people. He is using me to speak to you, the worship leader to lead you into his presence, your housegroup leader to confront you about something, your friend to pray for you when in need, a great author to inspire you to understand a difficult idea in a new and helpful way.

But my theme for today is to go one step further: not only does God love you, not only does he transform you through other people but, also, crazy as it may sound, believe it or not, he uses you to touch to others. He uses you to minister to others. He uses you to bring transformation.

Matthew 10:1-8

Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and illness. These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: ‘Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. As you go, proclaim this message: “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Heal those who are ill, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy,[a] drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.

The bible is full of accounts of God speaking to people, healing people, confronting people, generally doing business with people - through other people.

• Fred is in trouble
• Bernie gets nudged by God
• Bernie prays for Fred
• Fred does business with God

 
When I look back over my life to the significant times when I heard God speak to me about various things - they are nearly always in the context of being with other Christians - being prayed for or spoken to. In housegroup or in church or in conference.

I remember Mark coming up to me at the back of church in South West London Vineyard one Sunday. I don't remember anything else about the service except God speaking to me as Mark prodded me in the chest and said, "Why aren't you in a housegroup?"

I remember being in a housegroup in SWLV when we were generally praying for each other. Various people were praying for me, can't remember who, but I felt the presence of God really powerfully in my body and he spoke to me clearly about trusting him and taking risks. The next week we were sent out to start a housegroup for the first time!

I was praying at the Bunker in Leeds Vineyard a few weeks ago and Matt came and sat by me and shared a word he had for me which was really helpful and directional in a decision I was trying to make about the church.

Lots of random people, knowingly or unknowingly, have been used by God to help me and bring transformation in my life. And hopefully I have been used by God to help others. This is part of what following Jesus is about.

Some of you are thinking, who me? You must be kidding. My life is enough of a mess on its own. I can't help anyone else. That's true for most of us but I am here to tell you that God can use you. And here's how.

Four simple steps to being used by God

1. Be in community
2. Be prayerful
3. Be available
4. Take risks

1. Be in community

Although a lot of our prayer life is a conversation between us and God, much is actually about others too isn't it? This is the mystery of prayer. God choosing to hear your voice on behalf of another and God choosing to speak to you through another's voice. God hearing someone else's cry on your behalf and God speaking through you to open up another person to His presence.

And different people find different parts of this more or less easy. Some find it natural to slip into an internal and intimate conversation with Jesus, often using other languages if they have that spiritual gift. Others find it easy to ask and say things to God but don't think they can hear him so well. Others do fine with God but struggle to speak about such things to another person - to offer the word of God to them. And still others find it difficult to allow God to speak to them through other people!

This is part of what being in a community of faith is all about. It's a continual circulation of thoughts, words, prayers, encouragements, blessings, truth-telling and petitions to and from God and to and from each other. I Corinthians 12 is all about this mutuality and communication between us.

When you choose to prioritise other things over going to your housegroup or joining with everyone else on a Sunday, you are stepping out of this amazing maelstrom of being used by God and of having others used by him to minister to you. You are cutting yourself off from one of the main ways in which God chooses to transform the world - speaking to you and through you.

I am sure people will have said to you something along the lines of, "I don't need to be in a housegroup, I don't need to come to church, I can grow and flourish as a follower of Jesus on my own, I can see transformation in the world on my own with God."
They are deceived. The enemy has conned them. It can't be done. So, if you are able, encourage them to take the risk and get back into a housegroup and back into the family of the church.

God uses you in community.

2. Be prayerful

I preached on this two weeks ago, "Short Prayers Count" and I would refer you back to that talk. In summary:

• Short prayers count - a lot.
• Everyone prays differently: pray as you are, not as you are not. Pray as you can, not as you can't.
• The things that might frustrate us or which we might think of as obstacles to prayer: events, thoughts, feelings - can actually be scraps of wood to throw onto the fire.
• Prayer is a conversation in which you can bring anything from your life & what's going on in your head to God - good & bad. It is a time of speaking & listening.
• Prayer is a place where you are with God, he is just there with you, prayer is always going on, like breathing.
• Prayer is a state of being, you can become a prayerful person.

Be available

This works itself out in several ways:

1. When people come to you.

   When you end up in a conversation with someone who says they are ill or that their marriage is in trouble or that they are in a debt … what is your response? Are you available to be the person God uses to hear their cry and transform their world? You probably can't fix their problems - we're not here to fix people's problems (although we sometimes make the mistake of thinking that is what we should be doing). But you can pray for them. You can help them express their need to God as you pray with them. You can bring God's power and presence and healing as you speak his word to them.
   
   Last Sunday morning, as we were locking up a young homeless man called Josh turned up. Ben got chatting to him but realised he couldn't fix his many problems. What he could do was pray for him.
   
   Maybe you are not confident about responding on God's behalf to others' cries for help. That is why we train and teach on this here on Sundays and in your housegroups. These are places where we can learn, be trained, practice.
    
2. When you are sent to others
   
   In Matthew 5:1 we are told that Jesus sees the crowd, he sees the people. Jesus is frequently described as having compassion on people. We are to cultivate a heart of compassion not judgement or anger. 
   
   I had to grapple with this last Tuesday when I went to take one of Gwen's CAP clients to open an account at Yorkshire bank. I was sitting there with Fred (whose life is chaotic and in a mess) and the bank manager. I realised I am perfectly comfortable with a bank manager but I definitely needed sending to be with someone as needy as Fred. 
   
   Part way through the interview the bank manager asked for his last 5 years' addresses and Fred said, "Please don't judge me but I was homeless most of the time." I was glad that I had prayed before I went that Jesus would help me love Fred the way he does, to have compassion for him. And afterwards I was able to pray for him and ask God's blessing on him.
   
   You will meet people, quite possibly every day. People who are loved by Jesus and precious in his sight. As prayerful people let us allow Jesus to (1) give us his compassion for them and (2) to send us to them. In in Matthew 10 it is out of this context that Jesus, the one who sees and who has compassion, sends the disciples off to preach and heal.
    
3. Watchful for revelation
   
   In John 5:1-9 we read about how Jesus went to one particular person in the hospital and healed him. Why did he do that? Why that one man and not another? Later, in verse 19, Jesus explains, "I only do what I see my father doing". God, his father, gave him some sort of revelation that guided him to minister in one particular way to one particular person 
   
   Last Friday Alison and I visited someone in prison. On the way out we were stuck in a corridor for 15 minutes with about 20 or 30 other visitors before being let out. I was not comfortable in that environment but had a sneaking suspicion God put us there for a purpose. So I prayed Lord, show Alison what we are here for. Sure enough, a few minutes later Alison felt God's nudge to talk with the woman in front. She swiftly confided in Alison that she had just been diagnosed with cancer and Alison was able to pray for her right there.
   
   In Acts 9:10-19 we read how God gave a man called Ananias a specific instruction to go and pray for Paul to be healed from blindness. How did Ananias know what to do? God spoke to him in such a way as to reveal what he was doing.
   
   We too need to be watchful for revelation. There is a good description of some of the gifts that the Lord releases in 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4 and Romans 12 - expecting God to speak to us and learning to hear his voice so that we know what he wants us to do.

Take risks

Be in community, be prayerful, be available and then be ready to take a risk.
How nervous do you think Ananias was?
How much of a risk was Peter taking when he spoke healing to the lame man at the gate of the temple in Acts 3:1-10?
How nervous was I trying to get Alison to pray for a stranger?
Yes it is nerve-wracking sometimes. What if nothing happens? What if it all goes wrong? But what if it goes right? What if we do see God's intervention and his Holy Spirit at work healing & bring deliverance?
If you aren't in the risk zone when you are praying for people and being used by God then you won't see as much of his power. Because it is God who is speaking the word, because it is God whose presence we seek, because it is God's power that brings healing and change - it doesn't have much to do with us. We are required only to be prayerful, available and to have faith, faith in him which enables us to take risks.

As we often say round here, faith is spelt R-I-S-K. It is when you take a risk that your faith is expressed. If you are keeping it safe and never stepping out of your circle of comfort - then you never have to exercise your faith. Robbie Dawkins talks about turning up the dial of risk - the more we are willing to risk, the bigger the step of faith, the more opportunity there is for the Holy Spirit to do an amazing thing.

When the disciples return from being sent they are full of excitement, "even the demons submit to us in your name" and Jesus was equally excited about their risk-taking, "Jesus, full of joy said, "I praise you Father that you have hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to little children"." Taking risks is exciting because we see God do things and know that it wasn't us.
 

God uses you

That's not a "could use you in theory" - it's a formal strategic plan God has for saving the world. He has a plan to transform Headingley and Leeds and the people within. He has plan to bring good news and salvation, healing and deliverance to the people walking past our doors and living across the road. And his plan is to use you.

1. Be in community
2. Be prayerful
3. Be available
4. Take risks

And God will use you to do amazing things and to transform the world around you.