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As we encounter and experience Jesus through worship and go deeper into relationship with him through his living and active Word, we find that he wants to work in us and show us our purpose. https://youtu.be/Uag1VX2bRXo But this is most powerful when we are a part of a loving Christian family, working in community. Today we’ll see what God is saying to us through the life of Jesus in the gospels and the early church in the book of Acts. Jesus and the twelve disciples Luke chapter 6 shows us something of a pattern we might learn from Jesus: 12 One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. 13 When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles… 17 He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coastal region around Tyre and Sidon, 18 who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by impure spirits were cured, 19 and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all. (Luke 6:12-19) As we think though our 4 values in order, starting with worship we might remember that we call worship, ‘living life with Jesus at the centre.’ For Jesus himself this could be described as living life with God the Father at the centre. Spending the night in prayer was what he did just before he appointed the 12. Before he was to expand his ministry he needed to know he was walking perfectly in the will of the Father. For us to follow in this example means we will seek his face, sit at his feet, spend time with God before anything else. Today we are thinking about the value we have called oneness. I just wanted to demonstrate from this passage that perhaps Jesus knew that to bring a group of men together with different personalities in unity, his own connection to the Father was crucial. Indeed, before gathering people together in oneness, our worship and connection to God must come first. When we are connected to God and aligned to his will, we will gather around the right people. In this case it was only Jesus who spent the night in prayer, and not the disciples. From their perspective they had not necessarily been seeking God’s face. But now they are with Jesus - God incarnate. They will learn to align to Jesus’ lifestyle and teachings, and this will in turn enable them to be aligned to one another. So whether you look at it from Jesus’ perspective in this story or from that of the disciples, in order to be effective together, and stay together, we need to be close to God. This brings me to think about another of our values - work. Once united with Jesus, and then with one another, they find the work they have to do together. God has work for us to do. But he rarely has us operate in isolation from other believers. In fact it’s clear in scripture that we are meant to be together, in unity, and that is how we are most effective. Let’s clarify the pattern that can be found in this story before moving on. It starts with our connection to God - our worship, or ‘communion’ with the Father. Then we are able to fellowship with one another. We move from communion to community. As we do this, God leads us to the works he has prepared in advance for us to do, our ministry. The danger is we do this the other way around. We have a heart to do something, to be his hands and his feet, and we set out to do it with all our might, and we get on with it wholeheartedly. But we soon find we are short of resources. So our work calls for others. Then we move from ministry to look to the church community. We look for help from those who might not really have a passion for what we are trying to do. Some may help out of guilt, some because they agree it’s a good idea, those with money donate finance so they don’t have to get ...