In Titus 1:7-9, Paul lists the qualities needed for leadership in the church; it’s interesting to see that these qualities have more to do with character than competence. As always with God, being must come before doing. One of the qualities listed is being able to hold ‘firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught.’

It’s important for us all to realise that the message of the gospel is trustworthy, because God Himself is trustworthy (i.e. worthy of our trust.) There are many trustworthy words in the Bible (e.g. ‘Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’ 1 Timothy 1:15); we are told that ‘all Your commands are trustworthy.’ (Ps 119:86) John tells us twice in the book of Revelation that ‘these words are trustworthy and true.’ (Rev 21:5, Rev 22:6) We live in a cynical age which finds it hard to trust anything that is said, but a life of faith must involve us holding firmly to the trustworthy message we have been taught.

A man went to a psychologist and said, “Doctor, sometimes I feel like a Tepee and at other times I feel like a Wigwam.” The doctor thought about it for a moment and then he said, “I better treat you for anxiety. You’re two tents!”

Anxiety and stress are no joke, however. As Charlie Brown once put it, ‘even my anxieties have anxieties!’

There is always something to worry about, and with the current situation in Ukraine and the past two years worrying about Covid-19, anxiety and stress are at an extremely high level. Dave reminded us on Sunday morning, however, that Jesus’s response to this was ‘do not worry.‘ (see Matt 6:25-34) We may feel this was unreasonable of Him, but in fact, He reminds us all that there is more to life than the material and that God is our Father who cares for us and looks after us.

If we are going to conquer worry, we must come to the realisation that God loves us and that He will take care of us but so many people are simply not convinced of this fact. Many of them are Christians. But if you really believe that God is in charge, and that He loves you and will meet your needs, then you can relax in faith. If for some reason you do not believe that God will take care of you, then you will be unable to relax. You will feel that it is up to you to take care of all your needs, physical, emotional, and even spiritual.

Jesus calls us to seek God’s kingdom first and to live one day at a time. If we do this, then we find we have strength (and grace) for each day and can live without the crippling burden of worry. We are ultimately faced with a simple choice: will we trust God or not? We can choose to borrow trouble from tomorrow and live life as if God is not there, or we can trust Him and seek Him with all our hearts. If we will do this (see Prov 3:5-6), we will find an alternative to anxiety and stress and will be able to praise God in all circumstances, as Habakkuk did (Hab 3:17-18).

This week’s Lent theme is ‘trusting’. We start with quite an unusual passage, the story of Naaman’s healing. (2 Kings 5:1-3, 9-15). Naaman was a commander of the army of the king of Aram, a person with high social standing, but his life was blighted by a skin disease. In desperation, he listened to the word of his slave girl (taken from Israel) and went to the prophet Elisha, seeking healing. It can’t have been easy for him to trust the word of a slave, and when he got to the prophet, he was offended by the fact he did not come to meet him personally but simply gave him instructions to wash in the river Jordan. Naaman had to let go of his pride in order to trust this word from God’s man; the result was cleansing and healing.

Listening to the words of other people and trusting them enough to act on them are not easy things to do. We have to open our hearts to the words of God, being prepared to listen for them, whatever their source (for God can use anyone to speak to us, even a donkey in the case of Balaam!) and then act on them. Trust is not easy for us, but if we can let go of our pride as Naaman did, we can see healing and deliverance.

Hebrews 6:13-20 talks of hope being an anchor for our soul. The reason we can have this solid anchor is because of the faithfulness of God. The God who makes promises to us is not fickle or fallible, frail or futile. We can look back at the many promises He has made (such as giving a son to Abraham and his wife, Sarah when they were old and unable to have children) and see that God’s promises are certain and unchangeable. This gives us great encouragement to hold on to God’s promises to us.

Biblical hope is more than cheerful optimism and longer-lasting than a grim-faced attitude of endurance. Sally Welch says, ‘it is a steady attitude of joyful certainty that the endgame has already been played and we are all winners.’ (‘Sharing The Easter Story,’ P 98) Instead of focussing on the times when someone has perhaps made a promise to us and then broken it, we can have hope as an anchor for our soul, keeping us tethered to God in the fiercest of storms.

What are you hoping for? Have your hopes been dashed? ‘Hope deferred makes the heart sick’, we are told in Proverbs 13:12, and most of us have had many of our hopes, plans and dreams crushed in the past two years. Weddings have been postponed or taken place with only a handful of people present; holidays have been cancelled; we were perhaps unable to visit friends and family as we had hoped to do. Yet humans have a tenacious capacity for hope. Even when our hopes have been dashed time and time again, we still tend to rise up from the ashes and hope for new things!

Paul wrote to the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 2:17-20, speaking of his desire to visit them again. He really hoped to be able to return to Thessalonica, but circumstances just weren’t favourable; ‘Satan blocked our way.’ For Paul, these people whom he had led to faith in Christ, were his hope, his joy, his glory and even if he never sees them again, he can have hope for their future as Christians and all that they will do and be. ‘By sharing our hopes for each other and our communities, we can plant seeds of new life, nurture them and see them grow into something beautiful,’ Sally Welch says in her book ‘Sharing The Easter Story.’ (P 94)

I believe passionately that God has good plans for our communities, that we should learn to love where we live and see the Dearne Valley area with God’s eyes. Our hopes and plans may well be dashed, but God’s hopes and plans will thrive and endure.

In Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, he speaks of ‘your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.’ (1 Thess 1:3) Endurance doesn’t always get a good press these days; it has a dour, prosaic sound to it and doesn’t seem very appealing! But the ability to endure, to persevere, to carry on is an invaluable quality, especially when it’s inspired by hope.

Inspiration sounds much more exciting and inviting to us; it reminds us of the artist, the musician, the author. But the Christian life involves combining endurance and inspiration. We can’t just afford to be inspired for a moment; every artist, musician and writer knows that those flashes of inspiration have to be fleshed out in the monotony of practice and the grind of self-discipline. So too our faith has to be lived in both the valleys and the mountain tops, in the everyday and the mundane as well as in the drama of the miraculous. Paul wrote to believers who were facing death and were not quite sure how to reconcile this with the resurrection of Jesus. He reminded them that they had hope beyond the grave, that their grief was no longer the same as it had been. (1 Thess 4-5) God’s grace is there for us in every situation, ‘there on the wedding day, there in the weeping at the graveside’, as Matt Redman says (‘Your Grace Finds Me’). We have hope beyond the grave, and therefore can endure!