 Great to be here, great to be in the Word with you, with our home church. God is doing great things here, but God is doing far more behind your back than in front of your face. So if the bit you know is fun and inspiring, imagine the bits that you don't know, the parts that you don't know. And you know we're all going to get to heaven completely ignorant of most of the stuff God did for us. Because one of the reasons why heaven will be so amazing, because only then will we have the benefit of seeing clearly and fully and seeing back over our lives all the things that God did for us that we never knew about. And I think that's probably why heaven and the worship in heaven and the praise in heaven seems to be what is indicated to be in the book of Revelation. I think that knowledge, that awareness of God's amazing hand all through our lives that will have the awareness of them must feel and fire that worship for all eternity. So we're thrilled at what God is doing and what we know about is amazing. I'm going to turn you to Genesis 15 verses one to five. This is a brand new message that I am speaking to you today. So I'm thrilled to be taking this car for a spin for the first time from the showroom. The showroom is my heart where I incubated this message. I'm going to take it for a first time drive with you today. I think it's a Ferrari, but I'm not sure. But when you first drive a message it's best to be careful until you get used to handling it. So that's set up front as a disclaimer in the handling of this new message today. I want to drive it well and get used to the handling of it. Something when you're a communicator you kind of understand what I just said to you. The rest of you are like, whatever, get on with it, so I'm going now. Genesis 15, one to five. After this the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, do not be afraid Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward. Abram said, O sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless on the one who will inherit my estate is a liaison of Damascus? Abram said, you have given me no children. So a servant in my household is going to be my heir. Then the word of the Lord came to him, this man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir. God took him outside and said, look up, everybody look up. God said, look up, two words, look up at the heavens and count the stars if indeed you can count them. Then he said, so shall your offspring be. In Genesis 17 and eight verses there, we won't read it for time, but quickly this is followed up as you recall by God changing Abraham's name from Abraham, meaning exalted father to Abraham, meaning father of many, father of many nations. And I will speak to you from this passage today about the power of imaginary friends. The power of imaginary friends. Imaginary friends are things we associate with children, and if you have an imaginary friend and you were a kid, some of you are not willing to admit it because that person is still your imaginary friend, and now you are in your fifties, need all the friends you can get. Some of your children currently have an imaginary friend and we talk to other parents that have gone through that stage because we tolerate it, we feel a bit troubled by it because they interact with this imaginary person around other people who don't know our children and maybe think that they're a bit weird or a bit odd because they have an imaginary friend, but I promise you, nothing you can say to that child as a parent will convince them that imaginary friend is not real. It is so real that this imaginary friend alters their behavior and interrupts their thinking and entices them into behavior you perhaps wouldn't approve of and when you discipline them, they say and mention the name of the imaginary child or friend that told them to do it. And so this imaginary friend is as real to that child as you are, as a real sibling is to them and so what children tell us when I use this term, I knew you would think of that in your mind and so rather than say don't think of that, do think of that because what children are telling us is that they are using this amazing gift of imagination that God did not give to any other species on earth. He gave this amazing gift that has amazing phenomenal power to every single human being and children use it effortlessly and without apology and without justification, but the older we get, the less we imagine. For the older we get, the more we live from our five senses, the more we live from what we can see and hear and taste and touch and feel and our realities become governed by what we can touch and experience, our reality is no further than our five senses and we get poorer and poorer at using our gift of imagination and when God said to Abraham, as a one hundred year old, not only childless but barren, the problem could have been him or his wife, these would have been the discussions today for this couple, but imagine now, he is a hundred she's in her nineties and they have not been able to have children and this had been a huge pain in their life probably for eighty plus years. There comes a time when having children is not an option anymore as you know because of changes physiologically, biologically in our bodies and they had well passed that stage so if it was ever going to happen, if they ever had a hope in all their trying for a child, there was no assisted pregnancy stuff back then and of course barrenness was a stigma in that culture as it still is in many today so all of these things were led into their lives, not just not been able to conceive a child, Abraham is significant, he is influential, he is famous, he is wealthy, he's a significant person in the community all the more reason for him to ache with no air, with no surviving air, with no one to pass on his wisdom and his fortune and his influence and his good name to knowing he'll never see not only children but grandchildren and he and his wife as they're getting up there and that's getting up there for sure, imagine imagine how awful you would be convinced God's timing was to talk to you then about children, how rude, how insensitive, how ridiculous, what a ridiculous time to speak to us about having children, I want you to know today that God's timing is not yours and sometimes it's not even close to yours, sometimes God's timing is so ridiculously out of sync with how you planned your life, I've always said if you want to make God laugh tell him your plans, because it seems to me the more I look at lives like Abraham's and many people that I've helped and pastored over the years the timing of God makes absolutely no sense and destiny cannot be understood without the benefit of hindsight, you will never understand your life standing here trying to look forward and so Abraham was in that scenario he cannot figure this out and I think that's why God said to him come outside, he had seen stars many times why come outside and look up which he'd done every night of his life and look at the stars because you could see them in that country, why ask him to move to physically move because imagination is visual, imagination requires you to see something, imagination requires your interaction and your involvement and that's one of the reasons why I think it becomes dormant because it requires effort and so God moves him and involves him in this relationship of physical movement and physically lifting his head in order to introduce him perhaps afresh to a dormant latent ability within himself because Isaac that was he and Sarah's first child and an imaginary child and all the millions and billions of imaginary friends including us in this room today we were in that looking up when Abraham looked up that night he was looking at us figuratively metaphorically we are Abraham's imaginary friends we were all once God's imaginary friends before any of us existed for any of us were conceived born into time and space and history we already existed in the heart and in the mind of God he imagined us and that divine ability that divine gift for we were all created in the image of God in the imagination of God in the imagery of God and we were all given in our created beginnings we were all given divine traits divine abilities and one of them that I think we need to talk about a little bit more in our churches in our countries in our cities and when you look at some political parties policies and manifestos you have to just say to yourself this just lacks imagination hello please is that all you can come up with and I think what happens with our politicians and our city leaders and many of our church leaders is that it's not that we can't and don't want to progress and go forward but we are disengaged and we are detached from this amazing latent gift called our imagination and God created us with imagination and this amazing gift is so underused in Genesis 6 when the people came together to build the Tower of Babel that God said in the Godhead they said to each other nothing they have imagined to do nothing not just building a tower whatever else they were incubating nothing they have imagined to do will be impossible for them imagine God saying that about your life and there's no reason why he wouldn't because that hasn't changed but when these ingredients came together amongst those people which wasn't just imagination but it was team it was common language it was one ton it was leadership it was a passion and a work ethic when all those things came together led by imagination God had to say we better step in and do something about this we better edit this we better stop this happening so God as you know gave them different languages that disabled them from having a common language that disabled them from having unity and stop them building the tower but but God would say this about our lives and our countries and our churches but rather than say nothing they've imagined will be impossible to them let's go down and confuse this God would say nothing they imagine is impossible to them yay bring it on he is not intervening or editing or blocking or stopping what we are imagining and yet we that are God's children on the planet often are some of the weakest imaginers of what is possible in and through our lives and our churches in this country and around the world imagination is the ability to form a mental image of something that is not yet perceived by our five senses it is the ability of the mind to build mental scenes mental real estate which are a preview of your life's coming attractions many of you here were my imaginary friends 20 years ago when this church had a negative growth of 300 people I didn't call it growth then but I've come to realize since then that sometimes people leaving your life is as much growth as people joining your life for people leaving your life makes room for others that cannot and should not come until some people have left again you only realize that with hindsight at the time is just painful and I'm not talking about one or two I'm talking about hundreds of people over the three-year period left this church good people who just couldn't buy in to the new ideas that we were having at that time to reinvent our church and I remember so many lonely days where all I had was my imagination and so I understand what it is to look up because I stood in my office over there and I looked across at this land here that was just rough with old concrete slabs from the woolen mill that was on this site and it was undeveloped and we'd we dug a gravel path to try and get cars up onto here and it was unpleasant and it was muddy and filthy in the winter but we parked cars up here on this rough land and I began to realize by 1998 that God wanted me to despite people leaving us and us going down financially and numerically and in our gift that was been drained from our church because leaders were leaving we lost all of our band and as I looked out of my office and looked across at this piece of land I was quietly privately thinking about a building that would be here one day and I felt like Abraham why in the world would I be imagining a 2,000-seater building when we had a 700-seater building and our congregations going into half it was ridiculous the timing of that idea coming to my mind made no sense like many things going on in your mind right now and yet I found it growing and I found God watering it not discouraging it I knew I had to be careful who I told and so must you about what you're imagining about your life today and I remember looking up looking across out of that window day in day out looking at this piece of land uninspiring bland oblique landscape and looking at it and thinking about a building I didn't know exactly what it would look like and what color it would be and what the stage would be like but hey this this room was my imaginary friend these TV screens and these TV cameras were my imaginary friends I remember in the late 90s early 2000s imagining what if we could be on television we could use the facility of television that had newly come to our country through God channel and we could be the first church in our country to go on TV a crazy idea when all the tires are going out the door and people are leaving the church and I imagined our church been on TV around the world and we had no money and we had no expertise and we had no resources and I remember so clearly I asked three people if the following Sunday they would bring their tripods to church not camera try not not TV camera tripods just you know photographic tripods they weren't even like the real deal because I didn't know where I could get them from and I had no money to even hire them and I put three tripods in that building over there that was our main Sunday service gathering point as you know some of you and I put a tripod in the middle and I put two at the sides and I said nothing about them and people were just what is this in the way what idiots left this in the aisle this morning and I just had to put up with all of that because I did I thought I would be the same feeling the same about those things there then I stood up and I said to the church you know I feel that we should be on television and I could feel this groan in the church because they all knew their friends and family were leaving and our church was in trouble and in decline what a stupid time to get up and talk about going on TV the word TV brings pound signs to your eyes when I said TV I felt money leaving me money I didn't have that wasn't coming to me money was already leaving me and now I'm talking to you about TV and I said and these tripods this morning are what I imagine it's what I imagine that we would put cameras I'm no expert but I imagine that they'd go there and I had those tripods in that room week in week out and I think people thought I was crazy like they thought Abraham was crazy because when he went around saying hey I'm the father of many nations it's interesting God didn't say to him move to a neighborhood that has a name that fires your imagination move to International Street change the name of your dog so that when you call your dog you're using a name for your dog that inspires you to imagine what I told you from the stars God said I'm gonna change your name imagination is forensically personal it is to do with you not the things around you but you it starts inside you and so God changed his name and imagine every time his name and I don't know whether it was life for him him and his wife what embarrassed about it all laughed about it I don't know what they did but he had to go around and say to his business associates and his friends and his staff and everyone in the community please don't call me that anymore call me Abraham what call me Abraham you do know don't you that Abraham means the father of many nations means the father of multitudes and you don't have any kids and can't have any kids and we have all agonized over that with you how embarrassing how awkward how difficult and yet God wanted to put tripods into his world God wanted to put something in his world that was a fixed point of triggering his imagination day in day out I had those tripods midweek one of them I asked to keep in my office so I was looking at it every single day the church only saw them and some tolerated it knowing that this was a bad time to talk about TV about a month in of these tripods in the room am I doing my silly thing as I'm sure some people felt it was and told me it was and the timing was ridiculous because of the money and people leaving and so on and I remember one Sunday morning speaking about the possibility of what TV could do and how we could get the word of God out and how we could help people and I believe that God had called me to be a communicator and so this was something that would strengthen certainly my gift and it would be something that would strengthen the profile of the church in our country and I'm talking about this and I was one week talking about and I was so weary looking at the people so beat up as was I so demoralized so discouraged because so many people will leave in the church I remember one morning dragging myself up to get on stage and dragging myself up inside to speak to the people and these stupid tripods were now intimidating me back like the stars every night intimidated Abraham well we're all still here and you've got no kids yet what's God playing at what a stupid game God is playing with your emotions Abraham these tripods every week infuriated me and yet I knew something was happening in my journey as an Imagineer as I somehow found a way to bring together my ability to imagine and re-engineer our church and I was stood at the edge of the stage in that room over there I remember it now to the right-hand side of the stage as I am now I remember talking about TV and pointing to this tripod yet again and it felt so old and so no buy-in and I could understand that and a man stood up and walked slowly forward and handed me a check in front of everyone and it was a check for 2,000 pounds and he gave me that check and he said I believe that this is what God wants us to do and I I quickly grabbed him before he went I didn't mean for more money I said I said can I can I tell the people what just happened can I tell them he said yes so I turned back and I said you know what this man came forward name was Jeff Nundi and Jeff gave me that check and I said Jeff just came forward and gave me a check for 2,000 pounds I said that's the first money anybody's ever given I've been talking about this for weeks to the church this the first money anybody's ever given towards our TV ministry and with this money we're gonna try and buy our first camera and that's what we did with that 2,000 pound check I bought a first camera I had no tripod for it because these were not right I had no one to operate it we had no one who knew how to operate cameras and I didn't realize then I do now that a camera is the cheapest part he's everything else that now you need with that to create a picture and to create something you can send off to go on TV but that was the beginning of the journey so these TV cameras and our church being in the media and online and on television were my imaginary friends as was this building as were you and during crossing over I realized that my my current reality was so miserable and this is what I want you to see today because some of your reality today is so miserable and this is what I began to realize listen to me carefully imagination itself is a huge act of courage for you to find the strength to imagine better and you know what start small can you imagine a day just one day can you imagine one day without pain in your body just start there I'm speaking now so you can sit down and talk to me afterwards if you like okay thank you you're on next week just start where you are can you imagine one day or half a day without prescription medication can you imagine one night's sleep can you imagine having one area of your life that's dead free don't bite off more than you can chew because then you'll tell yourself this thing doesn't work because though he's looking at the stars in the sky it was gonna start with one child called Isaac and imaginary friends and friends are a metaphor by the way as well this morning as you've gathered for opportunities imaginary opportunities imaginary breakthroughs imaginary ships and changes in your life but start small start somewhere because I imagine this building I imagined it fall I imagined it fall many times over I imagined agreement I imagined when this man came and gave me a check it triggered me imagining people doing that regularly because I saw it I saw it and here's what I've discovered about imagination you have to see something and you have to teach your mind to do this to capture what you see that's why God said look at the stars knowing that forever afterwards it was something he could do it will look at the stars look at something I remember the first the first time we began to reach the poor in our city in the late 90s and we began to intentionally as that song taught us we intentionally not casually or by default we intentionally went after the poor in our city and intentionally went to where they lived and intentionally went to where they slept the homeless and intentionally stepped into the mess of their lives and their awful reality and I knew that as we arrived at their world our worlds were so different to theirs and remember we decided once a month inspired by our dream center friends with Tommy Barnett we decided once a month here on site we didn't have this building just that building at this stage to once a month bring all in the homeless feed them and so we began to do that and then we decided that once a month we would also offer to them haircuts dentistry basic hygiene and then we decided that we would ask the church to send and bring in clothing so that once a month when they came the down and outs if they wanted to could get a shave and a haircut and if they wanted they could go and choose clothes to wear I'll never forget that the first time I saw one of the roughest smelliest dirtiest down and outs you ever seen and I went into that building when all this stuff was going on and I saw him mid makeover and I saw the hair coming off his face and I saw his hair getting tidied up and his skin being washed and I saw someone cleaning out his ears there was so much stuff in his ears it was unbelievable and I saw him getting this makeover and then I remember so clearly watching him see himself for the first time in a mirror and I I didn't look at the mirror I looked at him looking at him in the mirror and I remember saying to him first thing came to my head I said hey it looks like you're going for a job interview and you know what he said to me he said I might just do that I might just do that why why not say why not say I might just do that in the last five years that's always a good idea improve yourself get up get a job change your life why not do that in all these years earlier because he needed to look up to see the stars to see the tripod to see the man coming forward to help him and he saw himself in the mirror and I could see his imagination walk up and went into this raging flame inside him as he saw himself and you know what he did he did go for a job interview and he got a job and within one month he had a job working at a local garage cleaning cars and he absolutely loved it his name was Michael and Michael became became my imaginary friend and I knew there were hundreds like him in this city but as I watched how he changed I knew that change would not come by me wishing it on him change would not come by just being around people that want you to change that Michael had to see himself imagine himself different to how he saw himself and that triggered him to get up and pick up and begin to change his life and I realized for him and for some of you today imagination is gonna be a huge act of courage for you today when your current reality is so miserable I mean God forgive us God help us the stuff we win about we should drop you in Syria for a week it would cure you for life when you when you contemplate how harsh how demoralizing how depressing most of the worlds daily reality is I think all we can start the only place we can start with them is their imagination I remember walking through Cape Town years ago and and cause people begging everywhere if you've been to that part of Africa I remember walking from where I got dropped off in a car to the hotel past a bus shelter and a homeless man was sleeping in the bus shelter and I walked past him and I trained myself by then and so must you not to be afraid of these people they're human beings they are perhaps your imaginary friends and you never know the circumstances that put them in that situation I remember looking at this man and I walk past him and I decided to engage him in his eyes and he looked at me from a sleeping bag and gave me the hugest smile and as I walked by his smile lingered in my mind and I said to myself if he can smile then perhaps he can laugh and if he can smile and laugh perhaps he can change his inner disposition perhaps he can trigger something chemically internally and perhaps that will create a new idea a new thought maybe maybe the greatest shifts in life you will ever have start with a smile when your reality tells you you have no right to smile and your reality shouts you back into line and says to you who do you think you are you're in a culture and an economy and in his case a racial group and a system that is all against him and yet he found the ability to smile I'm absolutely convinced that Jesus lived his days with a completely different reality to the people around him because you cannot on any regular basis you cannot sustain mentally what it requires to open blind eyes and see the sick healed and people delivered and liberated and life's change you cannot consistently sustain that unless you enter people's reality with a different reality in your mind about what's possible for them so when Jesus said to the blind man be healed or Jesus deliberately intentionally stepped into people's mess he was not afraid that their reality would overwhelm his imagination perhaps in the three decades when he heard nothing about him in complete anonymity people say I want to be like Jesus they don't mean that bit I want to be anonymous for 30 years one of the other limelight for 30 years I want to just figure some stuff out before I go public as it were maybe someone in that three decades he had trained his imagination he had incubated imaginary friends because he could do all that stuff prior but he didn't he held it and Mary knew who he was and he had to hold it Mary could have said look you can do amazing things don't let your dad die clearly Joseph died and Jesus could have healed him or raised him from the dead but he didn't but I think he saw it and must have let him fire something in his imagination about there'll be others in your life that you will step in and intervene in and the pain and the pressure that he went through in losing his own dad he could feel that in other people's lives as they lost people close to them and knew that they would come a day when he would step into their world intentionally not by accident intentionally stepping he intentionally got himself in the way of people's awful reality because he had something else on board that they didn't have and it became his gift to them gonna put a picture on screen and I finished this is a lady called Amy Purdy there she is Amy lost both legs at 19 years of age to bacterial meningitis she went into she says a deep depression which we can all understand she said I slept for months with prescription medication to help me to just get away from this living nightmare of losing both my legs because not only was she a natural normal fit healthy 90 year old she was a brilliant snowboarder and she had dreams of being a champion and snowboarder and at 19 she lost both her legs and that was cruelly snatched from her as has been for some of you or people you're thinking about today that are not here Amy says she realized eventually months into this five senses brutal reality she realized that to move forward she had to let go she says of the old Amy and embrace a new Amy and the new Amy didn't have legs then she says I realized that when a first ugly bulky the most ugly bulky prosthetic limbs you've ever seen were delivered to her house when she saw how ugly and terrible they were she went into weeks beyond that of depression a month in she says I began to realize hey I can have prosthetic legs I don't have to be 5 4 4 anymore my feet will never get cold anymore when I'm snowboarding and she began to imagine herself skiing and snowboarding at a competitive level and she said if if my life was a book and I was the author how would I want it to read and so she imagined chapter after chapter in that book look up look at the tripod look in the mirror she imagined herself been a champion snowboard within three months she was back on the snowboard and she recalls one day on the slopes freaking out all the skiers when she fell and her snowboard carried on down the hill with her legs attached to it she said I realized that my obstacles can either stop me or force me to become imaginative and creative in my mind she went on to will to win two world cup snowboarding gold medals she is still now she is still now the world's highest ranking female adaptive snowboard is called in 2006 she founded a charity for disabled athletes that have been helped all around the world she said the loss of my legs did not disable me it actually enabled me to live a life at a level I never dreamed possible what are who are where are your imaginary friends today because if you can just hold on to another day another week another month and continue to keep company with them your life weeks months years from now your life will look differently I'm standing where I imagined I'm looking at what I imagined what should equivalent of those things in your life let's stand together this morning times gone over time thank you father I pray so much into the brutality of people's current reality in this room today I pray for every one of you here today that have just had a terrible diagnosis from the doctor that are going through awful financial difficulties awful problems in your work life in your home I just pray that today you will catch a glimpse of a different you in a mirror in the mirror of God's word in a mirror of seeing someone else living a life that you realize I could do that I could be that I could become that and I pray that those images as you look up as it were at the stars of your sky will become imprinted on your soul and that that will become your North Star that will become your inner GPS helping you to navigate your way out of that terrible reality into a new preferred life but God has waiting for you I imagine now as I'm speaking to you I imagine people all around this room now lifting their hands to get their lives to a God that loves you so much there is a life that you don't know about that's waiting for you some of you have glimpsed it some of you imagined it but I promise you today it can become yours completely if you will step in to a brand new relationship with a God who loves you to bits well eyes are closed all around you I'm saying to you today if you're here and you've never made you peace with God or you once lifted a hand and prayed but you just weren't ready but you are today when you all across this room right now just where you are forget anyone around you just begin right now where you are to lift your hand your hand saying that's me today it's my new start today I imagine this I imagine myself to come on someone here someone down here someone down here someone over there come on just get lifting your hands where you are someone over there you imagine yourself doing this you saw yourself doing this and so this is your reality today come on a few more seconds someone else in the house someone down here someone right over there someone down here someone here others just lift your hand where you are come on who else a few more seconds don't be afraid fear will stop you stepping in the room today that we're missing lift your hand up I someone down here I can see you there come on who else few more seconds not yet lifted your hand but you know this is your time this is your imagined moment is that someone else we're missing for these hands been raised that was us friends and now we are no longer that we thank you today additions to Abraham's imaginary friends that his life was not in vain he's looking at the stars that night was not in vain friends let's go