The Declaration of Independence expresses the ideals on which the United States of America was founded and the reasons for its separation (independence) from Great Britain. It was the unanimous declaration of the thirteen united states of America in 1776 and is one of the most highly revered documents in American history.

I believe God calls His people to a different kind of declaration. This declaration is a declaration of dependence. Our world lives in defiant independence of God. It believes either that there is no god or that He is not worth our attention and allegiance. The Bible firmly asserts, however, that God is the creator and sustainer of our world (see Genesis 1, John 1, Hebrews 1) and that He is looking for people who will admit their need for him, confess that their ways of managing life are inadequate and contrary to His ways and laws and will turn back to Him in humble dependence. (Prov 3:5-6) He is looking for people who will trust Him unequivocally with their lives and who will love Him with all their hearts, minds, souls and strength. He is looking for people who will embrace the foolishness of God and who will live every day by faith and not by sight. (2 Cor 5:7)

By signing this declaration of dependence, each person turns their back on pride and acknowledges their own helplessness and impotence, but learns to lean on God’s omniscience and omnipotence for everyday life. By signing this declaration of dependence, each person renounces the worldview that says better government, better education and better justice systems will provide the answers for which we search and determines to live life in surrendered obedience to God. By signing this declaration of dependence, each person acknowledges that the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ are the only means of salvation for all people and identifies with that death and resurrection as the only way significant personal, communal and global transformation can be made. By signing this declaration of dependence, each person nails their colours to the mast and prays, ‘Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’ (Matt 6:10) – not simply in recitation but as the longing of a heart that knows nothing but God’s kingdom and God’s will ever truly satisfy mankind.

This is the declaration of dependence each Christian is called to sign. How many signatures will be added to this declaration today?

This evening was our ‘Little Big Church’ service and Garry reminded us of God’s promises to Abraham: ‘Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be”.’ (Gen 15:5) and ‘I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore.’ (Gen 22:17) He encouraged the children to count saucers of sugar – a task that was not easy since there were so many granules! We had lots of maths to do (thankfully with the aid of a calculator) and had to acknowledge that God’s promise to Abraham would result in huge numbers!

Yet Abraham had no descendants at all when God gave him this promise, and could certainly count the two that came his way – Ishmael and Isaac. Sometimes we have to wait a long time to see God’s promises fulfilled, and in fact, Abraham died before he saw the fulfilment of the promise. He lived by faith, however, believing that God would do what He had promised (see Romans 4, Hebrews 11.)

God is a God who makes promises. Sometimes these are unconditional (e.g. Gen 8:22) and sometimes these are conditional on what we do (e.g. 2 Chron 7:14) Often, we have a part to play in the fulfilment of promises, generally through repentance and confession and turning back to God. One of the many promises God gives to us is His peace. In Is 26:3-4, we see that a condition of receiving this ‘perfect peace’ is to have minds that are steadfast, rooted in God. It’s so easy to fill our minds with things other than God, but we need to be determined to fix our hearts and minds on Him. How we approach problems matters. We should not be ostriches (pretending nothing is happening or ignoring our problems) nor optimistic without foundation; instead, we should trust God to help us through every problem. Phil 4:6-7 promises us a peace that transcends understanding, but we need to understand the link between prayer, faith and the fulfilment of God’s promises. We must not forget His promises (these are ‘Yes’ in Christ Jesus, as 2 Cor 1:20 reminds us), but must soak these in prayer and faith, trusting the Promise Maker is also the Promise Keeper. If God makes a promise to us, it is attainable; He gives us the faith to believe Him!

Dave spoke this morning from Hebrews 10:22-23, reminding us that God keeps His promises. So often, we feel frustrated and even downcast because we feel that God has not yet fulfilled all His promises to us (as individuals and as a church.) Over the years, we have had many promises from God about God’s work flourishing in this area, about how God will pour out His Spirit on the Dearne Valley so that it is as if a dam had burst, that our building will not be big enough for the people God will send to us. Some of these promises have seen fulfilment, but many more have not yet, and we were reminded that delays between God giving a promise and fulfilling it are not uncommon in Scripture.

Abraham had to wait 25 years from God’s promise of a son to the birth of Isaac. Jacob and Moses spent many years waiting for God to do what He had promised them. Moses spent 40 years away from Egypt and then spent 40 years leading God’s people in the wilderness. That’s a long time! There was a long period between David being anointed as king and Saul dying. Many of the prophets did not see with their own eyes the Messiah they had prophesied about; both Simeon and Anna were very old when they witnessed Jesus’s arrival. This period of delay between receiving a promise and seeing its fulfilment can be very discouraging to us. So often, in the period when we are called to wait patiently for God, we try to take things into our own hands (Abraham sleeping with Hagar who gave him a son, Ishmael… but this was not the son of promise, and this action led to enmity between Hagar and Sarah and trouble all round, for example.)

If we insist on going our own way, we may well suffer. A lack of faith will always be troublesome to us: the Israelites lacked faith in the wilderness and many died there. If we wait patiently for God, however, we will see the fulfilment of His promises, as Joshua and Caleb did.

What should we do, then, about the promises God has given to us?

1. We should continue to pray with thanksgiving, focussing on who God is.

2. We should remind God of His promises, pleading with Him to fulfil these as Abraham pleaded with God over Sodom and as Moses pleaded with God not to blot out His people despite their sin.

3. We should confess our sins and the sins of the people of this land, repenting of these in humility. All around us we see immorality, violence, idolatry and a rejection of God. We need to pray as Daniel did (Dan 9:17-19). Daniel found God’s promises in His word and spent time calling out to God in desperation. Until we wrestle with God like he did, we will not receive the promises of God: God is looking for persistence and perseverance

4. We must remember that our relationship with God involves dialogue, and that means learning to listen to God as well as to speak to Him. Sin will stop God working in our lives (the defeat at Ai in Joshua 7 came about because of Achan’s sin). We need to spend time listening to God and doing what He says.

Today we walked around the estate near Aldi and also prayed outside Highgate Primary School. Here are some photos from today’s walk:

Estates tend to be a lot bigger than they look from the main road, often being made up of lots of streets and avenues. We were reminded that what can be seen from the outside is not the whole picture; our inner life matters so much and we need to put down roots in Christ so that we not only grow individually but also so that the life of Christ then overflows to others. We were also reminded that generations matter to God: my own father attended Highgate Primary School many years ago and we live in a community where generations often stay in the same area and the blessing of God can be passed on from generation to generation.

This van reminded us of an important truth:

We all need to be ‘part of something.’ God wants us to be part of His family, part of His church, and part of His work in the world. As we pray and walk in our area, we are asking for God’s blessing on our community and for our church to reach out to our community with the love of God and the good news of Jesus Christ.

As a student and teacher of foreign languages, I have spent a lot of time learning irregular verbs, verbs which simply don’t fit the usual pattern of conjugation and which have to be learnt. If you don’t learn these, you end up sounding very strange (think of the child’s ‘I buyed a new toy’ instead of ‘I bought a new toy’), and if there’s one thing that marks you out as a foreigner, it’s not mastering these things!

In the series ‘Yes, Prime Minister’, Bernard Woolley likens our subjective response to situations to irregular verbs, using emotive conjugation to make his point (this mimics the form of a grammatical conjugation of an irregular verb to illustrate humans’ tendency to describe their own behaviour more charitably than the behaviour of others.) He says, “It’s one of those irregular verbs, isn’t it? I have an independent mind, You are eccentric, He is round the twist.” (“The Bishop’s Gambit”, “Yes, Prime Minister.”) One of the most famous examples of this is related to stubbornness: ‘I am firm, you are obstinate, he is a pig-headed fool.’ Our subjective opinion really does influence the vocabulary we use!

In Acts 19:1-10, we see Paul preaching and teaching in Ephesus, once again attempting to persuade the Jews and God-fearers in the synagogue that Jesus is the Christ and that the kingdom of God is near. Once again, we see how the Jewish people rejected the good news. ‘Some of them became obstinate; they refused to believe and publicly maligned the Way.’ (Acts 19:9)

Being obstinate or stubborn in the Scriptures often refers to a hardening of our hearts and instantly brings to mind not only Pharaoh’s response to Moses (see Ex 8:15, Ex 9:34), but the people’s response to God in the wilderness (Neh 9:29). God’s people tend to be good at hardening their hearts, but often we see this sin more easily in others than in ourselves and tend to treat ourselves more charitably and leniently than we do other people. The writer to the Hebrews offers us sound advice: ‘encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.’ (Heb 3:13) This chapter refers back to Psalm 95, which itself refers back to the wilderness wanderings. On these occasions, the Israelites hardened their hearts and refused to believe God; the Jews in Ephesus were in the same position (and missed out on God’s offer of salvation as a result.)

We are called to let God’s Spirit soften our hearts so that we are not hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. It’s easy to feel we are simply being firm or to see our refusal to change as a positive sign, but we need to be careful lest we are deceived. Stubbornness is not always something to be praised!