Re-appraising what’s valuable

Feb 20, 2024

Today’s household object from ‘At Home In Lent’ is something not every household may have: a safe. Our Bible passage is Matthew 6:19-23.

A safe is used to keep valuable things safe! Money, jewellery and important documents are items we often keep in a safe, which is protected by a lock and often needs an access code to open. The idea of a safe is that even if a burglar or fire were to devastate the sanctuary of our homes, our precious belongings would be protected.

Jesus reminds us in these verses, however, that we need to travel light through life and understand the importance of eternal treasures. As Chris Tomlin reminds us in his song, ‘Father of Lights’,

‘All the best things in this world
Money just can’t buy;
They come down from the Father, down from the Father.
Down from the Father of lights.’

Lent is a time for re-appraising our values and looking afresh at what is valuable in this life and the next.

The Kitchen Sink

Feb 19, 2024

I’m really enjoying my Lent study book, ‘At Home In Lent’ by Gordon Giles. The book looks at 46 household objects and connects them to our journey of faith. We are studying these passages and objects at our Lent lunches at church, starting on Friday, and each day during Lent on our church Facebook page and website, I’m sharing thoughts on these.
I believe firmly that faith is rooted in the ordinary and the everyday, that God is real in both our mountain-top experiences and in the valleys low! So today I offer my own household object: the kitchen sink.
I came down this morning having clearly not tidied up properly last night to find my sink looking like the first picture. Food remnants were clogging up the plughole. It looked disgusting.
I had to clear it all out and wash it (which obviously I should have done last night) before it was restored to its usual state.
As I did this, it reminded me of how sin so easily clogs our life and blocks the flow of God’s Holy Spirit in us. The sin may not seem very big (shreds of carrot and tiny onion pieces were not huge, after all), but it can easily build up to block our lines to God.
In order to have those communication lines restored – for if sin and unforgiveness remain, we are cut off from God – we must be cleansed. We have to confess our sin and turn away from it and allow God to cleanse and restore us.
So my morning cleaning job turned into a parable of its own!

Keys

Feb 19, 2024

Today’s household object are keys and the Bible passage is Matthew 16:13-19.
Keys are essential to unlocking doors, but the concept of keys applies not only to a physical lock but to other areas (a piano or computer keyboard have keys, diagrams and maps have keys and ciphers to explain what we see and of course music is said to have a key signature to help us know what the music will sound like.) A key unlocks something, giving us access to something or to some place.
Jesus came to give us access to God. (John 14:6) He entrusted the keys of the kingdom of heaven to us. Now we can approach God with confidence and boldness, knowing we will find help and mercy from Him. (Hebrews 4:15-16)
I have a habit of losing keys. No matter how many designated safe places I have to put them or how many lanyards I buy to keep them safe around my neck, I still lose keys on a daily basis. Sometimes J feel equally lost spiritually, ‘locked out’ of God’s presence because of wrong attitudes or temper or other sin. The key back to God’s presence and peace is always repentance and reliance on God’s love, mercy, grace and forgiveness. (1 John 1:9)

Prayer Is God’s Power House

Feb 18, 2024

Joy Gascoigne from Grimethorpe Pentecostal Church spoke tonight on the subject of prayer. Prayer is a mark of God’s people, His plan that His kingdom operates through prayer. When we pray, we should expect God to answer.

Luke 5:16 shows us Jesus as a praying man, who often withdrew to solitary places to pray. He prayed with HIs disciples as well as on His own; He prayed in all situations at all times. He was a busy man, but He made time for prayer. People who want to pray must find a time and a place to pray. Like Jesus, we must pray for other believers (see John 17), but we must also learn to pray as He did: sincerely (being genuine and honest, not putting on an act – see Matt 6:6), praying with faith (see Matt 21:22) and with forgiveness (Matt 11:25).

Praying with faith means accepting that God’s answers can be ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘not yet.‘ It can be difficult to wait for God to answer at times, but we are not at the end of the story yet. Praying with faith means we trust God even when we cannot see His answers yet. Forgiveness is essential to seeing prayer answered. A lack of forgiveness creates a road block in our relationship with God and stops progress. It limits our access to God. Forgiveness is not a feeling, but a choice, a decision of the will which will always open the door to God’s blessing.

Prayer is essential. We need to pray.

Paul’s Prayers

Feb 18, 2024

Garry continued his series looking at the prayers of the apostle Paul by focusing on Eph 1:17-20 where Paul prays for God to give them the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that they may know Him better. Wisdom is obviously important in life as the book of Proverbs makes clear; the words of the wise ‘prod us to live well… like nails hammered home, holding life together.’ (Eccl 12:11, The Message.) We all need to live as wise not unwise (Eph 5:15-16), but wisdom is more than mere knowledge. In John 4:35, Jesus talks about opening our eyes to see the fields ripe for harvest; this is knowledge, but wisdom is recognising that we must harvest now as a result of this situation.

James talks about different sources of wisdom and the difference between heavenly and earthly wisdom. (James 3:13-17)  Wisdom starts with a right fear of the Lord (Ps 111:10), where we put God first, trust His word and rely on His Spirit. Natural wisdom obviously has its limitations, since it neglects the spiritual dimension.There is also a demonic source of wisdom which is completely opposite to God’s ways. We learn spiritual wisdom by meditating on God’s words (Ps 119:97-99, 2 Tim 3:14-15). God HImself gives wisdom at times (see 1 Cor 12:7-8, James 1:5-6).

The spirit of revelation which Paul prays for has a substantial crossover with wisdom. God reveals HImself (see Gen 35:7, 1 Sam 3:21, Is 65:1) and makes known His ways to us (see Matt 11:25). Paul believes that this revelation will lead us to know God better; an ever-deepening knowledge of God is what we all need (see Phil 3:10).Natural knowledge and revelation are useful, but often, God speaks to us to show us things that we could not know without divine revelation (as happened to Joseph when interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams, for example.) Words of knowledge are this kind of revelation (1 Cor 12:7-8) which we see frequently in the Bible (Dan 2:18-19, Amos 3:6-7). Paul prayed for the Ephesians to receive the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that they could live better, more effective lives. This same Spirit is available for us too to give wisdom and revelation/ knowledge so that we know God better, experience more of Him at work in us and so we can be aware of what He is doing.

Distractions

Feb 17, 2024

Today’s Bible passage is Matthew 4:1-11 (the temptation of Jesus) and the household object is the mobile phone.
You might wonder at the connection between the two, but the author of ‘At Home In Lent’ (Gordon Giles) reminds us of the distraction which a mobile phone can cause (especially while driving) and how the devil wishes to distract us from doing God’s will.
Often the devil’s ‘distractions’ seem plausible, even laudable (he even quoted the Bible to back them up!) But Jesus was not deceived or led astray. He was rooted and grounded in the whole of God’s word, as we need to be. He continued to trust and obey God and to worship Him alone, even in the wilderness. We too must not shy away from the issues and challenges that face us, but must also not exclude God from the everyday. Technology has not, and never will, replace the need for ongoing communication with God, a communication we call prayer.