This is a time of transition. This is a time of great change, Church. I believe that God is bringing us to a place of crossing over. We won’t be the same up there as we are here. It’s going to be bigger and it’s going to be better, but it is going to be very different.

I feel like we have been like Israel, walking through the desert, looking for what God has given to us. It is good to look back and see what God has done on that journey but it is also good to look forward. I believe it is time to start to look forward to what God is going to do with us as His people.

The desert was not a dry, barren place. It was the place of the miraculous. It was the place where they had nothing, but where God gave them everything. It was the place of unbelief but it was also the place where God tore their unbelief from them and turned it into a place of faith. It was not Moses, it was Joshua who finally took them into the land that God had promised to them.

I believe, Church, that you are in a place of crossing over. You have to cross a river to where you are going: literally, geographically, and it has been there in the prophetic, this crossing over a river, this iron bridge. But you as a church are the ones who have to do it – the Area doesn’t have to, it is you! – and that is why I believe that this word is specifically for you.

Early in the morning Joshua and all the Israelites set out from Shittim and went to the Jordan, where they camped before crossing over. After three days the officers went throughout the camp, giving orders to the people: "When you see the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, and the priests, who are Levites, carrying it, you are to move out from your positions and follow it. Then you will know which way to go, since you have never been this way before. But keep a distance of about a thousand yards between you and the ark; do not go near it." Joshua told the people, "Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will do amazing things among you." Joshua said to the priests, "Take up the ark of the covenant and pass on ahead of the people." So they took it up and went ahead of them. And the LORD said to Joshua, "Today I will begin to exalt you in the eyes of all Israel, so they may know that I am with you as I was with Moses.

Joshua 3v 1-7

I believe those verses are very key for us. I believe God is taking us over, we have not been this way before. This is a new way in God and there is a crossing over. When we cross over, there are things that we must leave behind, but there are new things, and new dimensions that God wants us to take on board.

In chapter 5 there was a circumcision that took place, and I believe that God wants to take us deeper as a church and more intimately into him. The more depth we have in Christ and the more depth we have in our relationship with Christ will cause the branches to reach out further and the fruit to be more abundant. God is not just interested in a tree with deep roots, He is interested in a tree that will bear much fruit for Him. God wants roots that are deep in order that He can have branches that are full of much fruit.

And it is not an apple tree. It is a multi-fruit tree! It has bananas and apples, and pears and oranges, it is a tree that defies the chemical, one of those trees in God that has the variety of the creator in it. I believe that God is saying to us that this is going to be a church of multi-racial variety and we are going to see it, not only in the church but in the leadership as well. God is going to have His people to say something prophetically to this city and to the surrounding area and to the establishment of education.

The manna stopped the day after they ate this food from the land; there was no longer any manna for the Israelites, but that year they ate of the produce of Canaan. Joshua 5:12

Going to our building, one of the challenges will be that there will be things that we have to take off. God wants to take off from His body unbelief, God wants to take off from His body respect. Not that we become disrespectful for the sake of it, but that we are willing to lose our reputation. Wesley was once asked not to go into the fields to preach for fear of losing His reputation, he replied “When I came to Christ, I lost everything, in order to gain everything in Christ”. God wants us to be those people, God wants to set Oxford on fire.

I have had two words burning through my mind for the last two weeks concerning Oxford, one was a thousand, and one was a hundred. I believe God wants us, when we go to that building, to see a church of a thousand people, I believe that should be our praying, that should be our aim, that should be our goal.

I asked the Lord, “What were you trying to say through the hundred”? And I believe God wants to see a hundred house groups and Fusion groups in the city. I believe we have got to start to take off the small-mindedness and start to take on the helmet of salvation but also the shield of faith. It’s as though we have got to throw caution to the wind, we have got to launch out into the deep, I believe that is the word God is saying.

We can think, “We’ve had some success”, and we have – but I believe we have only seen the first fruits of what God is wanting to do amongst us. Don’t be satisfied! Be totally dissatisfied in order to see God do more. And when I think of these hundred community groups and Fusion groups, I feel that God wants to do something in the university. I believe we are going to see an explosion of Fusion Groups in the next 12 years the likes of which we have never seen in the city before. I believe it will have an effect, not only on the gown side but on the town side. There is something new that God wants to do mid-week in Oxford. God wants us to see that they are not groups to go to, but they are groups where we will see God really ploughing deep and bringing forth much fruit.

I believe we are in a new season in God. I believe God is calling us to cross over. I believe God is saying it is time to think even bigger than we have before. Why should we think big? Because our God is big and He can do great things. He is the one who says: “Nothing is impossible with me”. I believe we are moving into a new season, I believe that there is faith being dropped into people’s hearts, we need to think differently when we get down the Botley Road because God is going to do different things. The time in the desert is over Church and the land that God has promised to us is ahead. Leaders, we need to look over what God has been saying to us as a church here in Oxford over the last decade, we have to live off the prophetic word, the present word. The New Testament is full of this: “Him who has ears to hear, let him hear”. We have got to open our ears to hear and when we follow what God is saying, that is when we become successful, because that is where God wants us to be. If you are in the right place, you’ll find that God will give you the right results. It is exciting days, and God is doing exciting things.