Rob just spoke at the 6pm FUSE service at Figtree Anglican. I caught up with Rob after the service, to see what happened.
Hi Rob, who did you speak to tonight?
Tonight I spoke to the evening congregation at Figtree, which is 30% youth, some students, and 30% retirees. There was somewhere between 2 and 3 hundred people.
What was the message for the congregation tonight?
We were looking at Matthew 11:28, and Jesus’ call to come to him for rest, even in the context of our failure, which weighs us down and burdens us. It was about the gift of rest that Jesus offers everybody.
Why is this message important?
It’s important because ultimately our guilt now is not just something that makes life difficult. When you set it in context of Jesus’ return on judgement day, when everything will be brought to light, things we deny, things we hide from other people, our guilt becomes more than a problem for me now, but our biggest problem we have to deal with in life.
And so speaking to people about the offer Jesus makes to take that burden from us, to pay for all of our sin and guilt at the foot of the cross, and to give us rest now and into eternity as a gift, is the most important thing you can say to anybody.
As you prepared this talk, where did this message connect with your own life story?
I thought about the talk in terms of what Jesus is offering. I feel like as I was growing up, I thought he was a crutch for the weak. He was just there just to help out if life was a bit tough, but I felt really strong, I didn’t feel like I really needed him very much. And so coming to the passage, these astonishing verses, this wonderful offer, it just makes really clear that was totally different to what he was about. He was about something far more amazing than a crutch for the weak. He was about rest in all its fullness now and into eternity. It’s a promise not just to people who are having a hard time, but broken by their failure to be the people God made them to be.
What can we be praying for now?
My biggest prayer is that God would use my weakness and my talk to help people see their guilt, to understand its seriousness, and that there might be some walking around right now who came to Jesus for the first time tonight.
And if that’s not the case, then there would be people leaving the building feeling really unsettled. And particularly at the start of this week, that lots of those here tonight, who saw and understood something of what Jesus offers, that they would come back this week, and they’d get to hear more. And I pray God would have mercy on them, and bring them into the kingdom.
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