Growing In Gifts In Australia

An update from Patrick Chavez, a Pastor of Sovereign Grace Church, Sydney...

If I were to ask you what you were doing on the weekend of the 19th - 21st of July in 2019, could you remember? 

I can almost bet that if you were a member of Sovereign Grace Church, Sydney and I prompted you with the word Collaroy, your face would light up and smile. I think the memories would come flooding back of fun, fellowship, and exciting and clear times of teaching and experiencing God in refreshing and gospel-centred ways. This was the reality we all experienced on that weekend.  

You see, back in July of 2019, just before our church sent out the team to plant Sovereign Grace Church, Parramatta, we went on a church retreat together. The focus of the retreat was encouraging and pursuing the gifts of the Spirit, an area that we desired to grow in as a church, in our understanding and practice. And so to lead us through that, Mark Prater, along with a team; Bill & Ramona, Dan & Jeannie, Doug, Everett & Laurie, Jocelyn, Rick & Martin; all from Covenant Fellowship Church, kindly made the 30 hour journey from Philadelphia to serve us and minister to us.

As a church, we were so blessed by these brothers and sisters from across the waters. Their love for Jesus and His Word was so infectious. Their patience in listening to us, understanding us, caring for us, praying for us and discipling us on this weekend was amazing. So much so that we eagerly wanted to continue this even after they went home, and so we reached out to Mark Prater to see if these dear folks would assist us in an ongoing growing of our understanding and practice of these gifts through monthly discipleship sessions on zoom.  And to our surprise, they agreed! 

This has been such a blessing to us! These men and women have been willing to disciple 17 of us, on the gifts of the Spirit, between Philadelphia and Sydney. They have woken up at 4:00 AM to jump on a Zoom call to meet with us and go through books, answer questions, share their experiences and pray for us. 

I asked some of our team here what it has been like to receive discipleship from these dear brothers and sisters, and here is a sampling of what they said: 

“It's one thing to be informed about prophecy through a close study of scripture or biblically sound books. But it's quite another to experience the practice of prophecy first-hand through our brothers and sisters at the Philadelphia church. Even though we are separated by the Pacific Ocean, and even through the chaos of the pandemic, every four weeks we would spend time in sweet fellowship over those zoom calls to talk about the practice of prophecy and the truths we were gleaning from the book we were studying. While the first-hand experiences were invaluable, what was often more eye-opening were the honest mistakes and the humbling moments experienced by our mentors which defined their prophetic journey. What a joy to walk together in unity, and to be spurred on towards greater pursuit of prophecy by our dear friends overseas”!

“We have been so blessed by Ramona who has invested her time and energy so selflessly for the sake of building into God’s kingdom on the other side of the world! She shares her own experience readily and is so helpful with our questions - nothing is too small or insignificant for her. She answers with such grace and wisdom and prays for us without ceasing. She has been instrumental in building up our faith and desire to grow in the spiritual gift of prophecy. But more importantly, she constantly points us to God, the giver of this gift, and helps our souls to magnify our great God and delight to use this gift to please and glorify Him and edify His bride, the church. Our hearts are filled with gratitude towards the Philly team. They have showed us a debt of love we will never be able to repay!”

             “I have been in group with Ramona, bless her, she gets up so early for us all. She has been so gentle and very knowledgeable in this area, she is easy to talk to, we can ask questions anytime, she always has an example to share with us of many of the questions we ask, and that makes learning very relatable and gives practical help. She doesn’t rush anything and guides us to keep seeking the Lord in prophecy.”

“The benefit from the Philly prophecy team has been so gracious, in the sense they've guided us and cared for us in an unknown territory for us - prophecy. They have always been gracious and warm and answered all our questions. There is so much I didn't know on the topic of prophecy”.

We are so grateful for our partnership with our family of churches here in Australia. Would many more partnerships be made around the world, all for the glory of God.