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Life Church Bath | September 14, 2025
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When was the last time you heard God's voice? It's a question we don't ask ourselves or each other enough. But it's crucial, especially today.
In 2025, we are living in an age where the amount of voices competing for our attention is probably at the loudest it's ever been in all of humanity. There is a competition going on right now to get your attention, to get your ears, to get your eyes, to get your heart—to tell you a story that will either lead to the kingdom of God or to the kingdom of darkness.
Jesus said in John 10:10, "The enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but I have come to bring life and life to the full." Every single person here who is born again, who knows that Jesus is their Lord and Savior, who has committed their lives to follow him, has not lost the ability to hear God's voice. But there is intense pressure to sound out that voice in your life.
When we hear words like "wake up, church," it means recognizing that we have been born for such a time as this. None of us know how long we have on this earth. But because of Jesus and because of our faith in him, everything that we do is connected to our eternity with him.
If we know that the space we have here is nothing compared to an eternity with the Lord, then we need to ask: Who am I listening to? Because who you listen to will lead you.
This church's mission is not to have an amazing Sunday service alone—though we love when we gather. Rather, this is our team talk. This is the moment where we gather together to:
When we depart from this room, we are all driving in different directions, placed uniquely by the Father next to our neighbors, in our streets, where we work, where our kids go to school. Think of how many people you are in contact with this week. Every one of those people was made by God.
As a leadership, we have never had the intention to just play church or get excited about programs. We are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Our mission is to go and make disciples in all nations.
When we say, "Lift up your heads, oh ye gates," we acknowledge that we are in a battle. But how do we get out of it? We don't fight on the ground. We go up higher. When we fix our eyes on Jesus, we get detangled from:
It stops you from hearing the very gift that every single one of us can have: receiving the words from the Lord.
Sometimes we need to ask ourselves: Am I sharing opinions that I believe God agrees with, or am I speaking the very words of God?
Consider a phone: it was designed and made from blueprint to product for one purpose—to receive communication from another device. Everything about it is for communication. You, as the people of God, are designed the same way. It's in your nature to be able to hear from the Lord.
You can stand on this because it is only by hearing the voice of God that you came to know him in the first place.
Listen to what Jesus said in John 10: "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheep sheepfold by the door, but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out."
You heard Jesus call your name. When Jesus has brought out all of his own, "he goes before them and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow but they will flee from for they do not know the voice of strangers."
It is in our nature to know the voice of God. There is a familiarity—we just know when we hear the voice of the Lord. It's inside of us. But Jesus also said that when anyone else says, "Come, follow me," the sheep do not follow because they know that is not the Lord.
Every single one of us can know the difference between the voice of the enemy and the voice of the Lord. We have discernment. We also have the ability to judge fruit.
When God speaks, the fruit is never:
Because Jesus said the enemy comes to do those three things. But when the heavenly Father speaks to you, there is so much life in it. There is hope, direction, vision, action, and encouragement. Everything about what the heavenly Father is saying to us this morning carries life.
Yet we must become shrewd. We must wake up to the fact that we could so easily hear voices of:
These try to come into this house to direct God's people, and we must wake up.
We are living in an age of so much information. I don't actually believe we as people were designed to carry the amount of information in our minds that we have today. I find myself more aware of who Taylor Swift is marrying than I do my neighbor. I know information that has no value, no significance. We're told things about people's relationships, governments, politics—but very few of us actually have the authority to do something about them.
This might sound like we should just stop watching the news. No. Should we be unaware of what's going on? No. But I think a trick of the enemy is to get us concerned and carrying burdens we were never meant to carry, or being aware of situations we are not called to bring God's rule into. You can give those back to the Lord.
We can get so distracted and so involved in fighting things the Lord never asked us to fight for. And because we're fighting, we believe it's the Lord. But the safest place to be is in that heavenly connection with the Father where we live day by day by the word of God.
Jesus gave us a command to pray what we call the Lord's Prayer. In Matthew 6, he said: "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread."
The daily bread that Jesus has for you today is everything that you need. And I want to suggest that this is your invitation every morning. Not BBC news. Not social media. The very first thing that we consume and eat is our daily bread. Because in here is the life that he promises.
There's something beautiful about fresh bread. I've not met anyone who doesn't love the smell of fresh bread. In our city, we have incredible bakeries. One is an incredible baker from France called Richard Bertton. But you know, the life of a baker starts when you all go to bed. While you are sleeping, there are bakers across this city, this nation, throughout the whole world, who are investing time and energy, putting in the right ingredients, doing everything perfect and right so that when you wake up in the morning, there is fresh bread waiting for you to consume.
This image of a loaf made while we were sleeping speaks to us: when Jesus says, "Take this daily bread that I give you," this bread symbolizes a gift for you every single morning. In this bread is:
The answer is found in this loaf, not in your mind. If we prioritize receiving what Jesus has for us, the more we devote ourselves to him, the more answers, strategies, and needs are going to be met because the Lord will feed you.
Jesus is our great intercessor, lifting you up right now before the heavenly Father praying for you. He knows every single thing about you. He knows what you're carrying. He knows what's happened. The good shepherd knows you intimately.
I want to encourage you to eat the bread that he's made for you this morning.
This bread is not just for you. The bread that you consume and eat—the words of God and his presence, the very things that he's giving you—ends up becoming a blessing to the world. So many times Jesus, on his travels, people tried to trip him up, tried to make him say something they wanted him to say. But Jesus modeled something crucial: "I only do what I see my Father doing." Jesus modeled to us that he only said what he heard the Father say. He didn't respond to anything else.
How many of us are thinking about the week to come? Maybe you've got a meeting or a situation you have to go into. Have you considered that actually this morning, the Lord might have the very words that you need to say for that meeting? A decision you need to make? Something in your life where you have no idea what to do next. Could it be the daily bread? The answer is here for you. It's down to what are you listening to?
Months ago, I went to the Lord with a parental challenge—teaching one of my daughters resilience and endurance. One of our family values is that we do not give up. I didn't know how to instill this value in her life, so I asked the Lord for help.
The Holy Spirit spoke to me and said: You two need to climb a mountain.
I thought, "Okay, what kind of mountain?" In the next couple of weeks, we're going to walk up a mountain. With that picture, the Lord showed me that I'm to take my daughter, stand at the bottom of the mountain, point to the very top, and say: "You were born to conquer these things. What's inside of you—whether you believe it or not—you were born to climb over mountains. And because of who's inside of you, and because of who God's called you to be, no mountain is too big for you."
I want to teach her that when you look at the top, it seems very big and very challenging. You don't know how you're going to get there. But if you focus on just taking one step at a time, and you do it with me—as you're chatting and walking—suddenly you find yourselves at the top.
Then, recently, as I was thinking about why we're doing this, I asked the Lord. He said: "Jonathan, this is exactly how I've been fathering you. I've called you to climb mountains, but you must remember that you're not to do it alone. You're to do it with me. And the joy is not to get to the top—it's actually to walk with the Father in partnership, day by day, walking together and leaving the summit up to the Lord."
As followers of Jesus, we probably pray too much: "Lord, would you remove this obstacle from me? Lord, would you remove this challenge? Lord, would you move me to another nation because I don't like where this is going."
I think the Father is saying: You don't need to go anywhere. You just need to walk with me every day, step by step. Let me speak to you and will you hear me?
At the beginning of Joshua, God says to Joshua: You're going to do great and mighty things. You're going to take back the land. You're going to do all these things that seem impossible. And do you know how you're going to do it? You're going to just meditate on my word day and night. You're going to steep yourself so that my word becomes so in you that what you say and do comes out from me, from your relationship with me.
Nothing is impossible with God. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.
We need to remind ourselves, Life Church Bath, that to actually receive this fresh bread that has been baked for all of us, this is less about: How do we eat it? Instead, it's asking us the question: Are we positioned to eat it? Do we even know that there is bread for us today?
Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 3:16: "But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed." How we turn to the Lord each day determines the bread that we eat.
When I talk about position, I'm not talking about how you sit on a chair. I'm talking about us walking out the commands of the Lord. One of them is confessing any unconfessed sin to the Lord and to others. Sin will be a barrier between you and the Lord.
Other barriers include:
The prophet Samuel said something beautiful in 1 Samuel 7 when speaking to the Israelites after the ark of the covenant had been stolen and the presence of God had left them:
If you're really serious about wanting to return to the Lord, then get rid of your foreign gods.
So simple. Just get rid of all the things you're worshiping and put God back in the center.
It takes us to make the first move because he made the ultimate move by dying for us on a cross, removing sin—that separator between us and the Father. If there's anyone here who has either heard this before or have never heard this before: Jesus loves you. And he loves you so much that he died for you. That connection to the Father is why he went to the cross.
I said at the beginning about the word recalibration. We need to be okay and recognize the times we're living in. No matter how high or how loud the waves get, we can be like Jesus—able to sleep through any storm because we know that we are not coming under what's going on in this world. We're to bring the light. It's being able to speak into chaos and say: "It doesn't have to be like this. Let me tell you about Jesus. Let me tell you what Jesus said."
Turning is just another word for repentance. I want to ask us to consider if there are any areas in our lives today where we've turned in the wrong direction. This morning, the Lord is wanting to replace that act of disobedience with some fresh bread—for the very thing that you're crying out for—to be known by him, to walk with him, and for us to become who God's called us to be.
If Isaiah 2 says the world will run to you saying, "Teach us your ways," can I suggest that as the waves get bigger, the cry of the people are going to turn to us and say, "Teach us your ways." Because we carry the light of Christ.
Father, we just acknowledge that your daily bread this morning—the word from you, the word that you've given to all of us today—Father, we receive it. And Father, if there is any way, Lord, that we have turned our back on you, where we have picked up other things and eaten stale, fake bread that feels good for a moment but leads to death, Father, we turn back to you.
There are situations. There are even idols that you need to confess to the Lord this morning. The Lord is saying: if you give it to me, I'm going to replace it with my life.
Jesus, we thank you that we know your voice and that you are our good shepherd and that your voice is the only voice that matters. It's the only one that leads to life. And I pray, Father, for just today and tomorrow and the weeks to come, Lord, that there would be a grace on all of us of stepping into the privilege of walking with you day by day. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
