Title: Things Learned But Not Yet Mastered
Speaker: Sam Pearce
Date: 13th September 2026
Location: Adelaide, Australia
Summary
Some lessons take years to learn, and you can still be a long way from mastering them. This episode works through three things learned but not mastered: what hospitality actually asks of us, why Jesus dealt with sin before sickness, and how to handle change in a church you love.
Hospitality is pulled away from the image of a grand dinner party and put somewhere plainer: noticing a need and doing something practical about it. The example given is a woman with very little to spare who had already put her own money towards medical care for someone she knew and was out looking for a tent for a person with nowhere to sleep. From there the talk turns to Luke 5, where a man is lowered through a roof to be healed and is forgiven first, which raises an uncomfortable question about whether our urgent list and God’s are the same list.
The closing section is about change, and it is the most personal. Daniel is told that God changes the times and the seasons. Isaiah 43 tells a people defined by one great miracle not to live only in it, because God intends to do a new thing. And a church, it turns out, is more cruise ship than speedboat.
Key Points
- Hospitality is less about hosting something impressive and more about spotting a need and doing something practical about it.
- Carrying each other’s burdens is presented as basic to Christian life, not an optional extra for people with spare time.
- The Good Samaritan is held up as the model: unglamorous help, done quietly, usually seen by nobody but the person receiving it.
- A real example makes it concrete, of someone with little to spare paying towards another person’s care and then hunting for a tent for someone with nowhere to sleep.
- In Luke 5 the forgiveness comes before the healing, which suggests our sense of what is urgent and God’s may not line up.
- For anyone unsettled by change, Daniel is given the reassurance that God is the one who changes times and seasons and sets up and removes kings.
- Isaiah 43 warns a people against living only in a past miracle, because a new thing is being promised ahead of them.
- A church behaves more like a cruise ship than a speedboat: slow to turn, but stable and able to carry everyone. If you want the direction changed, go to the wheelhouse rather than shouting from the top deck.
Reference Scriptures
- Galatians 6:2
- Romans 12:13
- Hebrews 13:2
- Luke 5:18-20
- Luke 5:22-23
- Daniel 2:19-21
- Isaiah 43:15-19