25th October 2026 : 1 Corinthians ch 12 v 12 - 31

1 Corinthians ch 12 v 12 - 31

All right, everyone.

Father God, I just dedicate today to you, Lord. And Father, you know exactly where my heart is, Lord. So Father, I pray, Lord, that every word that comes from my mouth is only of you, Lord. And Father, I pray, Lord, that you give the people the eyes to see, Lord, and the ears to hear. And Father, more importantly, the feet to walk within. In Jesus' name, Lord, let this come forward correctly. Fill this place with your Holy Spirit, I pray and anoint in the name of Jesus, every word. Amen.

Do you know, I really don't know where to start today. I've got to be honest with you, I don't. I don't. And well, I'll tell you what, how it did start. Two weeks ago we was in here. and I was burdened with this. The body is a unit and the scripture here. And as I'm looking at it, I'm burning. Long story short, at the end of the meeting, I shared it with everybody. I feel like the Lord is saying to read this out over the meeting and we read it out. And then I felt to pray over the meeting. And to be truthful with you, people that was closest to us at that time there would have probably heard me say to Roger, Roger, is this okay to pray out over the thing? And he went, yes, okay. And I prayed it out over the meeting.

An illustration that God has always given me. Put a log on the fire. The Friday group will probably know a bit about this. Whatever God tells you to do, the enemy will immediately try to stop it. So if I said to Kirsty now, Kirsty, put a pro log on fire, darling. By the time she picks the log up to go to the fire, because God has said, literally, you'll be going to that fire and the doubts will come in. Oh, you don't want to put that on the fire, it'll be too hot. What you putting that on there, how are you going to fit it on, you'll put ash everywhere if you open that door now, put it on in an hour. And all the doubts will be there because God has said do it.

So I knew when I asked Roger to, is it okay to pray out over the meeting? I knew that straight at the back of it, attacks would come like the log on the fire. Margaret's going to read for us.

So it's First Corinthians 12, verses 12 to 31. For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptised into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free and have all been made to drink into one spirit. For in fact, the body is not one member, but many. If the foot should say, because I am not a hand, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear should say, because I am not an eye, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing. If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling? But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as he pleased. And if they were all one member, where would the body be? But now indeed there are many members, yet one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. No, much rather, those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary, and those members of the body which we think to be less honourable, on these we bestow greater honour, and our unpresentable parts have greater modesty. But our presentable parts have no need. But God composed the body, having given greater honour to that part which lacks it that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. Or if one member is honoured, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are the body of Christ and members individually, and God has appointed these in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, varieties of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? Do all have gifts of healings? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the best gifts, and yet I show you a more excellent way.

In that with what Margaret's just read out there, it speaks about the gifts of the Spirit, speaks about the body of Christ, speaks about being one unit. Before I got up today, my 70-year-old it looks [this comment was complementing someone whose 80th birthday it was], young lady here, she said about Pentecost. And the biggest thing to me within Pentecost that stands out more than owt is that they was in one accord. Unity. If we want the gifts of the Holy Spirit to flood out, then we have to be in one accord. We have to be together in one mind.

There's going to be today a lot of examples, a bit like the log on the fire. This is to explain it more to me than you probably, because you're probably cleverer than me. But hopefully we'll get there. In the body of Christ, each and every one of us now, let's say now, I mean our own body. We are the body of Christ. Each and every one of us has a member. One's a hand, one's a nose, one's an ear, one's an eye, one's a... We're all members of that same one body.

But tomorrow, if you're walking down the street or you're climbing a tree, say, and a splinter went in your hand, the whole body stops. The whole body stops naturally because you've got a splinter in your hand. Now when you've got a splinter in your hand, you have a choice from there. Do you take the splinter out or do you leave it in to go septic? Because if you don't remove the splinter, it will go septic.

Long, long, long, time ago, before I was a Christian, in fact I must have been very drunk at the time to be truthful with you, because I didn't feel the cocktail stick going into my foot. But I literally, I must have been off my head. That's all I'll say. Long, long, long, time ago. Well, last week actually. Well, no. I literally walked on a cocktail stick and I didn't know I'd walked on a cocktail stick. The next day I'm like, what's a bit weird? But I thought nothing about it and I looked at my foot and I could see no mark going in, nothing. I just carried on my life. And it was about three months later, I stood on a step, a hard step like that, and it went. And the cocktail stick shot out of my foot with all this green stuff at the back of it. And I was like, I didn't even know that it was in my foot. I didn't feel it go in my foot. And I didn't know it was septic because I can't see my foot underneath. I was just feeling a bit weird.

The point I think I'm trying to make with it, if we leave something there to fester, it festers. We have to deal with things within the body of Christ. I look at the body of Christ as warriors. We are all warriors to Christ. We are all the body of Christ. We're all actually at a war, but the biggest part of people don't realise we're at war. But we're actually at war. That's the truth. And we have a real enemy called the devil. And we're at war.

What I'm trying to explain, if we go back to the old war days, to Roman times or that kind of time, when there was a war on, they used to make a shield. and then another shield. And in Viking times, they called it the shield wall. And they called it shield wall, and all the Vikings would come together, and the shields would go do, do, do, do, do, do, all the way around, and then all the way on top, and then all the way here. That should be like the body of Christ. For us, we have a shield of faith. And that faith shall be united together in unity. It should be together in unity. Together. That's what it should be. But we're too busy. We're too busy gossiping. We're too busy tick-tacking. We're too busy getting offended. We're too busy getting angry. We're too busy taking offence.

If somebody offends you, go to them. Let's say, listen, Cocker, I'm sorry. You know what I mean? Listen, you've just offended me. You're a bit out of order. I'm sorry. And that's what you get. And it stops there. It stops there. If you do wrong, apologise. If somebody does wrong, put it out in the open. If it doesn't go out in the open, it will turn septic. Definitely, it will turn septic and toxic.

So the shield, the shield wall that's going all the way around us. And we look at that shield and I imagined a load of hairy warriors going back in that time, all with the shields, all been marching for a week, no showers, no nothing, bit of a bloodbath the day beforehand, hot weather, no toilet facilities, And they're all underneath this lovely shield with their arms up, right, holding it. And their elbows in each other's faces, the knees or the feet in other places, because they've got a shield wall. They've got a shield wall. There's a protection. But within that protection, there's bad smells. There's an elbow in your face. There's things that you don't want to hear, things that you don't want to think of. You're in the shield thing here and we've got loads of people in there going, what's for tea? Shut up and get your eyes over for them. You know what I mean?

You've got all this sort of thing that's going on that, well, what can I say? And then imagine, imagine, right, if when you're in the shield wall and you're all up there, you sweaty armpits and all that sort of stuff, and you're all up there, there's a rustlin' in the bush. There's rustlin' in the woods. And the left hand side can see it, but the right hand side can't. What would happen is go, 10 o'clock, we have a problem. And the bush is shaking about everywhere. 10 o'clock. And the shield would turn. They'd all get to. And the strongest people would come to the front to hold it because they're about to be attacked against the arrows that are coming in. Straight away they do that. But if in that shield wall, so much I say, do you know this is not for me? I don't think I won't be here. So they just get up and they walk away. How strong is that shield wall then? And this is why we need to correct things as things take place and as things happen. Going off, aren't I? I'm going off again.

So how do we get over the things in the body of Christ? How do we walk forward as Christians? The Word of God tells us to take every thought captive. And when we take that thought captive, that brings us to a place. That brings us to a place of, what do I do with that? When Margaret turns around and says, oh, Brian, shut up, you plonker. She never said that, by the way. I'm making this up as I go along. But she turns around and she says that. I can have either go, plonker, that's not very nice, and take offence, or I can say, what have you said that for? And before you know it, that little thing that is a little thing becomes a big thing. before it.

Because what happens when we don't take every thought captive, the enemy comes in and he goes, Margaret thinks you're an idiot. Does it? And you know what? The truth of it is, the enemy only has to speak once. We do the rest. We actually do the rest. When the enemy speaks this, Brian, you're a plonker. Am I? And before it, I am, I'm useless, I'm hopeless. And yeah, I'm going down. And the enemy shrinks you. On other situations, it divides you. And you've got one person over there or one person over here and they've removed themself from the shield. They've removed themself from that barrier of the body of Christ. They've removed the self from that. And that's what that is really.

But somewhere within that, the enemy is in the middle of it going, got you, got you an all, got you. The enemy wins. We have to put things right as things happen, otherwise things develop. And that's where taking every thought captive matters. It matters because the word of God says it matters. So it does matter. And when we take it captive, we've then got to question it against the word of God. With the thoughts that we have, we've got to do that. Otherwise, the unity breaks down. And Pentecost doesn't happen. Basically, Pentecost doesn't happen.

So if somebody offends you, put it right straight away. If somebody offends you, put it right. I'll say now to each and every person in here, if I've ever offended you, I'm really, really sorry. I don't mean to. I'm just me. So if I have offended anybody here now, I'm deeply sorry. I don't want to offend anybody. So that's the first one, isn't it? That's quite good, isn't it? But the body of Christ needs to do that. The body of Christ needs to maintain itself and take it seriously, because that's what we are, the body of Christ.

Wedges. The enemy. The enemy comes with wedges. And he comes with wedges of, for example, and I'll change the subject a little bit to it. And he puts his wedge in. And then the word of God says, he surrounds us and walks around us waiting for another opportunity to jump on you, waiting for another opportunity to divide you, for any reason to hurt you. I hate to say this, I hate to say this. The devil has got 100% unity. His actual thing is to destroy you. His actual motive is to put every hurt upon you. He wants to destroy your life. That's what he wants to do. So he puts a wedge in and then he walks round and he waits for another opportunity to put another wedge within. That's what he does until your wedge has gone from here to here to the head.

If you can't control, we've taken every fault captive, if we can't control our brains and what's going in, we can't control the rest. Because whoever controls your brain and your thoughts control you as a person. Whoever control your throughts control you as a person.

I'm very much coming to an ending and I'm so glad to be truthful.

But offence. When I was writing this out into this new thing, Paula came in and she went Brian. You just talked about offence and not to take offence but to walk in God's power and God's love. So she Googled what the word offence means and what it actually does spiritually to us as Christians. Bear with me because I'm not the best at reading. A spirit of offence acts as a spiritual trap that hinders a Christian's relationship with God and others. Spiritual consequences. It blocks prayers and fellowship, holding onto unforgiveness and bitterness. Hinders a believer's connection to God causing prayers to feel blocked and unanswered. It brings bitterness and root defilement because unresolved offences easily fester, bit like the splinter.

[Interrestment | suspected should be resentment], hatred and bitterness, which the Bible warns can defile the heart and spread to others. It invites other negative spirits because it acts as an open door to strong goals, often attracting related destructive mindset like pride, envy, strife and a critical or accusing spirit. It stumps spiritual growth. An offended person shifts their focus away from self-reflection, abiding in Christ, focusing instead on monitoring faults and action of others.

Finally, it causes isolation and division in the body of Christ. It destroys unity and causes believers to isolate themselves from the church communities. If you want that full reading, speak to Paula later. She'll give you it on Google, because I'm a terrible, terrible reader. But at the end of the day, it's about us being right in God. It's about us walking together in God as one and Christ being the head of it.

Just some pointers here and then I've done.

Number one, put your wrongs right straight away so people are not hurting by your words or your actions. Take every thought captive. Whoever controls your mind, controls your body. We don't want to be controlled by the enemy. We want to be spirit led by God. That's where we want to be. But to do that, we've got to distinguish, is that me, is that God, or is that the enemy? We've got to distinguish which one that is and then move with it correctly. I would advise, if it's something big that God's telling you, to make sure it backs up with the word of God.

Remove all wedges and fiery darts so the enemy has no foothold. Ask God to show you where the wedges are. And what I mean by that, there's been times in my life where I thought everything's all right and then I've prayed to realise that I'm completely wrong. And God's shown me that I'm wrong in this area. I've gone, oh, sorry. And then I've had to repent and move on. I thought that something's been right, but I've moved on. If you ask the Lord, he'll show you. He'll show you where your strengths are. He'll show you where your weaknesses are. He'll show you where you're going right. He'll show you where you're going wrong. And one thing he will definitely do is direct you in the right path. He'll direct you in the right path. In whatever area of your life that is.

If you can't put things right in the body and have a problem in the body, maybe sometimes you have said or heard or basically, if you can't put something right, if you can't, you know what, I'm sorry about that. You know, I'm sorry about that. Breaking bread is not a good idea. You shouldn't be breaking bread because it brings down other things upon you. You shouldn't be breaking bread. When it says to put it right, it's putting it right for a reason, otherwise it can create illnesses, etc. Without going into that. The enemy has perfected how to weaken and destroy churches, the body of Christ. So ask the Lord where the enemy has got a foothold and remove it. I think I've just explained that with my own life really, where the enemy has had footholds in my life and I've asked the Lord to remove it.

The truth of it is, Brian Hesketh is not perfect, he's far from it, but he's trying to be, in God. But that's hard. That's hard to get right. That's the truth of it. It's hard to get right. And it's only by God's instruction and God's grace that he guides you to be able to do that.

Last one. Hallelujah. Walk in love, walk in forgiveness. Walk wanting God in your life. At the front, at the back and at the sides. Walk in the way, the word of God says.

Amen.