Redeemer Central

Solitude 03 - Encounter with Our Self

Solitude can be deeply refreshing, but just as often, it can feel like painful emotional surgery. We can get away from people, but we can’t get away from our self. And often what we carry into solitude is our pain.

In the third teaching Stephanie Wilson encourages us to follow the example of Jesus by finding a quiet place and going to the place of pain because it is there we meet God. Through this simple but difficult practice of noticing and naming our emotions before God in prayer, and offering them up to God in raw honesty, we can be deeply formed into the people God has always desired for us to become.

Part of the Practicing the Way Series. For info and resources on this series go to redeemercentral.com/ptw

Solitude 02 - Encounter with Our Enemy

In the second teaching John Herron looks at the goal of being alone with God in the silence: ultimately to hear God’s voice over all the other voices in our head, Jesus and his early followers fought battles in solitude. As we face resistance from three enemies of our soul — the world, the flesh, and the devil — in solitude, we learn to fight lies by listening carefully for God’s voice and using scripture to anchor ourselves in God’s truth.

Part of the Practicing the Way Series. For info and resources on this series go to redeemercentral.com/ptw

Solitude 01 - The Quiet Place

Distraction is one of the greatest threats to spiritual health in the modern world. We all feel it — we’re bombarded by noise like never before. Jesus has an invitation for us: Step away from it all to be alone with him, for the sake of our souls and the sake of others. 

In this first teaching David Armstrong looks at how Solitude is not a place but a practice, one that follows Jesus’ pattern of retreating from distractions to be fully present with the Father and returning to serve in community.

Part of the Practicing the Way Series. For info and resources on this series go to redeemercentral.com/ptw

Note: Sermon begins at 8mins

The resurrection is not a happy ending. It doesn't depend on you or need your permission. The resurrection sees Christ standing in the garden alive on that Easter Sunday morning — having walked through the brutality & death of Good Friday and the forsakenness & silence of Holy Saturday — and he stands present and alive speaking your name, and a word of possibility laced with grace, love and hope.

David Armstrong teaches from Matthew 21 on the events of Palm Sunday. The arrival of Jesus and his disciples into Jerusalem for the Passover Festival is the moment that Jesus project goes public. Jesus entering the city on the donkey — the fulfilment of a 500 year old prophecy — is a form of guerrilla theatre that makes a mockery of the dominant forms of power displayed by the Roman Empire. In one act of parody he exposes this kind of power for what it is; fearful, insecure, oppressive and violent…and simultaneously embodies the very kind of alternative power of the Kingdom of God… co-suffering love expressed in humility and forgiveness.

“Two processions entered Jerusalem on a spring day in the year 30. . . One was a peasant procession, the other an imperial procession. From the east, Jesus rode a donkey down the Mouth of Olives, cheered by his followers. . . On the opposite side of the city, from the west, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Idumea, Judea, and Samaria, entered Jerusalem at the head of a column of imperial calvary and soldiers. Jesus’s procession proclaimed the kingdom of God; Pilate’s proclaimed the power of empire.” — John Dominic Crossan & Marcus Borg

Fasting 05 - Q&A

David, Armstrong, John Herron & Stephanie Wilson discuss the series on fasting and share some of their learning along the way.

Part of the Practicing the Way Series. For info and resources on this series go to redeemercentral.com/ptw

Fasting 04 - To Stand with the Poor

“Give to the hungry what you deny your own appetite.” —St. Gregory of Nyssa

In the West, many of us struggle with the problem of food abundance — having too much food to eat. Our cupboards overflow with snacks; we have so much food in our fridges it goes bad before we have a chance to eat it; apps on our phones can put any food we want just a few swipes away.

Dieting is a constant fad, and most of us live in a daily war of attrition against sugar, processed carbs, and over-indulgence. But most of the world, and many more people than we realise in our own neighbourhoods and cities, live with food scarcity — not having enough to eat. Often, they are hiding in plain sight in our own churches and communities.

Fasting is a way to bridge this gap, between “the haves” and “the have nots.” Going back at least as far as Isaiah 58, it has long been a vehicle for biblical justice, a way for those with too much food to share with those in need of food.

Early on in the history of the church, fasting was tied to what Jesus and the early Christians called “almsgiving” — a practice that combined generosity, serving, and justice. On fasting days, Christians would take the food or the money they would have spent on food and give it to the poor. Often, they would also give the time they would have spent cooking, eating, and cleaning up to serve the poor.

In Part 4 Stephanie Wilson shows us how this simple practice of giving away the money we would have spent on ourselves has the potential to transform not only the lives of the poor, but also our own lives and communities.

Part of the Practicing the Way Series. For info and resources on this series go to redeemercentral.com/ptw

***Note: This recording took place on Mother’s Day and includes communal prayers to mark this occasion for all.

Fasting 03 - To Amplify Our Prayers

Fasting and prayer go together. Like two wings of a bird, together they take flight. You can pray without fasting, and you can fast without praying, but when you combine the two, there’s a noticeable amplification of our prayer before God.

This comes as no surprise, since fasting is a kind of praying with our body. When the request of our heart is coupled with the yearning of our body, our prayer is purified of its dross and presented like a precious metal before the Father, for him to do as he will.

“Prayer” is an umbrella term for the medium through which we communicate and commune with God and it involves both speaking and listening. Fasting is a key companion in both.

In Part 3 John Herron helps us see the role fasting has in both hearing God and being heard by God. Firstly it is an aid in discerning the voice of God through the noise and distraction of our lives that we might hear how God is coming to us and his will and direction for our lives. Secondly, fasting is an aid to being heard by God, helping us break through the walls that stand between us and the release of God’s plans, purposes, and power. Story after story — in Scripture and church history — attest to this reality: When prayer and fasting link arms, it’s often the tipping point in the struggle to release God’s Kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven.

Part of the Practicing the Way Series. For info and resources on this series go to redeemercentral.com/ptw

Fasting 02 - Grow in Holiness

Fasting is one of the most essential and powerful of all the practices of Jesus and, arguably, the single most neglected one in the modern, Western church. The Fasting Practice will train you in this ancient discipline, integrating your whole body into life with God.

In Part 2 David Armstrong shares how fasting has many physical benefits for our bodies that mirror how it benefits our souls.

Part of the Practicing the Way Series. For info and resources on this series go to redeemercentral.com/ptw

*** Note: This sermon didn’t record live on Sunday so we re-recorded it later .***

Part of the Practicing the Way Series. For info and resources on this series go to redeemercentral.com/ptw

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Note: The first half of the sermon didn’t record live on Sunday so we re-recorded that part later .

Fasting 01 - Offering Ourselves to Jesus

As powerful as the mind is, because we are holistic beings, we can’t simply think our way into spiritual maturity. Our discipleship to Jesus must take seriously our body, as it is “the temple of the Holy Spirit” — a home where we make room for God to dwell.

Most of us are used to approaching our spiritual formation and life with God through the door of our mind — by thinking, talking, praying, reading, or hearing teaching and preaching. But very few of us are comfortable approaching our spiritual formation through our stomach, or our body as a whole.

In this first teaching David Armstrong looks at how Fasting is one of the best disciplines we have to reintegrate our mind to our body, and offer our whole selves to God in surrender.

Part of the Practicing the Way Series. For info and resources on this series go to redeemercentral.com/ptw

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Note: The first half of the sermon didn’t record live on Sunday so we re-recorded that part later .