In addition to our usual weekly clubs (youth club for 5-11 year olds on Monday evening and Parent & Toddler group on Friday morning), we have a busy week ahead. The ‘Frontlines’ Bible study group is meeting on Tuesday evening and so our other midweek meeting will be on Friday morning when we will have a prayer meeting at 11.30 a.m. It’s so important that we pray together and listen to God’s voice as we share our hopes and fears with Him. As Oswald Chambers reminds us, ‘prayer is the greater work.’

On Wednesday 15th January, the Dearne Community Arts’ Festival community mosaic will be unveiled by Ian McMillan at Goldthorpe Library at 11.00 a.m. The mosaic was begun at our church on 1st June last year and in total, 15 community organisations and 252 people were involved in creating this stunning piece of artwork, designed by Thurnscoe artist Ruth Waterworth. If you’re free, do come along to the library (we’re upstairs!) to see it in its permanent home and share with those who created the mosaic. Free refreshments provided afterwards. If you’d like to be involved in this year’s Dearne Community Arts’ Festival (scheduled for Saturday 26th September at Astrea Academy Dearne), there’s a planning meeting on 15th January at 1.00 p.m. in the Snap Tin Cafe. All welcome.

On Saturday 18th January we’ll be holding our third Team Building Day between 4 and 6 p.m., led by Sarah Davey. The acronym ‘Together Everyone Achieves More’ is so true, and the church is a place where we all have a part to play in what God wants to do in our local community. This time, we’ll be looking at communication and vision as we think about how to share the gospel effectively in our particular setting. There’ll be fun, games, challenges and the opportunity to reflect on what God is showing us and how we want to take that forward. Afterwards, we’ll be eating together, so either bring some food or some money for a takeaway and enjoy getting to know people better in a very relaxed atmosphere!

In addition, we’ll be having some new front doors fitted on Friday and hopefully some new window panes to replace those which have been broken or ‘blown’ in recent weeks. Please pray for all that is happening in the building this week and for our area at this time when vandalism and crime seem to be flourishing. May God move by His Spirit and use us to be His hands and feet in our area, ‘with God in the community and with God for the community.’

Dave spoke tonight from Acts 8:26-39, the passage dealing with Philip’s evangelism of an Ethiopian eunuch, one of the first non-Jewish people to accept Christ as Saviour. Philip was involved in evangelism in Samaria following the martyrdom of Stephen, but an angel appeared to him to direct him to a deserted path where he was to meet with the equivalent of the Chancellor of the Exchequer from Ethiopia!

We know very little about this black African who was reading from Isaiah in what was not his native language. Presumably he was a God-fearer, but the fact he was a eunuch meant he could not be admitted into the temple. Perhaps he longed for acceptance and affirmation and this journey home may have seen him feeling rejected and no wiser than when he arrived. It is significant that the passage he was reading (Isaiah 53) spoke of suffering, rejection, humiliation and abandonment. God is able to draw alongside us, no matter what we are going through.

This passage teaches us many things. In Philip, we see a willingness to obey God, no matter how bizarre the angel’s instructions must have seemed. That obedience led to the salvation of one man, reminding us that God went to great lengths to speak to the Ethiopian. Each individual matters to God. He gives us total, unconditional acceptance and love, reaching out to us. God took the initiative in this encounter, demonstrating the depth of His love and concern. When we know ourselves to be totally accepted and totally loved, we can continue our journey as the Ethiopian did: rejoicing in God!

Stephen spoke this morning at Cherry Tree Court from John 9:1-3. Here, we find Jesus encountering (and ultimately healing) a man blind from birth, and the questions asked about his blindness still reverberate in our society. When something bad happens, the tendency is to look for someone to blame, and so people asked Jesus if the man or his parents had sinned, implying that his disability was a direct consequence of sin. The question was simply whose.

Blaming others is a natural human defence mechanism, going back to the first sin (Gen 3:11-13). We like to find fault or to blame others, and even God does not get away scot-free, for we are self-centred – and when we suffer tragedy, illness, suffering, pain, sorrow and loss, our first question is often, ‘What did I do to deserve this?’ Jesus challenges this tendency to blame ourselves or others, refuting the direct correlation between sin and problems. He told the people that ‘this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him’ and we are forced to see in this encounter that God can be glorified in all circumstances of our lives, even those we struggle to accept. Jesus performed a miracle and restored the man’s sight and He can perform miracles for us too. God makes the difference in our lives and is the presence we need to face every problem.

God wants us to move beyond blame-shifting and even beyond our relentless need to have answers to all our questions. He wants us to be confident He is on our side (Rom 8:31-32) and to walk in daily dependence on Him. God is the solution to everything we face in life; He is the presence who truly makes a difference.

It’s easy to be as dazzled by the enormity and power of God when we read of Saul’s conversion as Saul was dazzled by the light from heaven. However, tucked away in this miraculous conversion story is a tale of everyday obedience which had remarkable consequences. This is the story of Ananias (Acts 9:10-18).

Ananias was a disciple based in Damascus. We know nothing of him other than what we read in these few verses, yet he was the person God chose to go to Saul and bring him into fellowship. He was clearly a person who listened to God and who was close enough to him to be honest and open in his responses to Him. When God told him to go to a specific place to meet a specific person (the detail is reminiscent of Philip’s experience in Acts 8), he objected, knowing Saul’s reputation as well as anyone! Nonetheless, when God gave him further instructions – including the revelation of Saul’s future purpose as an apostle to the Gentiles who would experience much suffering (Acts 9:15-16) – he shows the depth of his servanthood through his simple obedience.

Ananias’s greeting to the persecutor-turned-believer demonstrates he had fully grasped (and fully trusted) what God had told him: ‘Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’ (Acts 9:17) In welcoming Saul as a brother, he showed an acceptance we are all called to emulate (I wonder if Paul thought of Ananias as he told the Romans, ‘Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.’ (Rom 15:7)) In modelling obedience to Saul, he became the living embodiment of what Christian discipleship looked like. He reached out to touch the blind man and immediately Saul could see again. We don’t know what happened to Ananias after Saul’s baptism, and if you are like me, you itch to know the details of the life of this remarkable man. What we do know from these verses is that Ananias played a key role in the acceptance of Saul as a true believer and he demonstrated an obedience that went far beyond his doubts and questions.

In my own life, I wonder about the combination of the spectacular and the ordinary. The spectacular and miraculous happen much less frequently than I would like; the times when I have heard God’s voice in the way Ananias did are not that common. But at the same time, I know that the ordinary and everyday are just as much part of God’s modus operandi as the miraculous and stupendous. Ananias will forever be remembered for his everyday obedience, but for Paul, this was yet another turning-point orchestrated by God. Even our everyday conversations and chance encounters can be vehicles for God. Do we have the same kind of listening ear that Ananias displayed? Do we have the same willingness to obey?

In the book of Acts, the story of Paul’s conversion is actually told 3 times: once in Acts 9 and twice more in Paul’s speeches defending accusations against himself (see Acts 22:3-16 & Acts 26:4-16). The fact that this story is told three times shows its significance in the eyes of Luke and reminds us of the power of telling our stories (giving our testimonies) in witness and evangelism. Ps 107:2 says, ‘Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story – those he redeemed from the hand of the foe.’

Many of us may feel wary about evangelism, believing this gift is reserved for those who have been trained or who are evangelists (like Billy Graham and his son, Franklin Graham, who will be preaching at various venues in the UK in 2020, including Sheffield on 6^th June) or feeling inadequate to this task, unsure what to say. The Great Commission, however, was given to us all (see Matt 28:18-20, Acts 1:8) and we are all called to ‘always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.’ (1 Pet 3:15) There is great power in telling your story, in speaking out to other people how you met God and what God has done – and continues to do – in your life. As for the training, if you are interested in learning more about how to do this, there is a training day for the Franklin Graham mission on Saturday 29^th February at Maltby Full Life Church (9.30 a.m. – 12.30 p.m.) which covers the basics of explaining the gospel to people.

Each one of us who know God has a story to tell, a testimony to share, good news to pass on to others. Let’s be excited rather than daunted about telling our stories and willing to tell others about the goodness and love of God.

When I was at university, the Christian Union ran a series of meetings entitled ‘Mine Was No Road To Damascus.’ In these meetings, students and staff members gave their testimonies, talking about how they had become Christians. Some, who had been brought up in Christian families, felt rather inadequate doing this, as they felt that they had very little to tell: theirs was not the radical about-turn experienced by Paul (or those whose conversions from alcoholism or drug addiction made for dramatic news.)

Conversions can be sudden and dramatic, like Paul’s, but they can also be gradual and apparently ordinary. Some people can pinpoint the precise moment they gave their life to the Lord (I became a Christian on 27^th October 1983 at the age of seventeen, and can vividly remember the battle that had gone on within me for days leading up to this as I wrestled with God); others can’t remember a time when God was not part of their lives. I don’t think the outward appearance of our encounters with God really matters, but I do think it’s essential that our lives are turned around by God. Without a conversion experience, we are dead in our transgressions and sins (Eph 2:1); we need to experience God’s mercy and love for ourselves and be radically changed as a result (Eph 2:3-6). As John Stott puts it, ‘We too can (and must) experience a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, surrender to Him in penitence and faith, and receive His summons to service.’

The hallmarks of conversion can be seen in Acts 9 and it’s worth considering these aspects of all encounters with Jesus:

1. God is working and is in sovereign control. He is the One who encounters us! Saul was not looking to meet Jesus, but Jesus knew the precise time to reveal Himself to Saul. We need to be convinced of the fact that God is wanting to meet with those who don’t yet know Him and be aware of God’s active role in evangelism.

2. We can’t be saved if we don’t recognise our own sin. Saul had thought he was doing by God’s will in persecuting the church and had to realise his own sinfulness before he could be saved. His three days of fasting and blindness vividly symbolise the fact we have to come to the end of ourselves and our own resources and ability to save ourselves before real change can occur. For many people, this becomes the stumbling-block, the wrestling-point. Salvation means a handing over of control to God.

3. Once saved, our spiritual sight is restored and we perceive life in an entirely different dimension! Jonathan Edwards’ hymn captures this beautifully:

“Heaven above is softer blue,
Earth around is sweeter green;
Something lives in every hue
Christless eyes have never seen:
Birds with gladder songs o’erflow,
Flow’rs with deeper beauties shine,
Since I know, as now I know,
I am His, and He is mine.” (“Loved With Everlasting Love”)

4. An encounter with Jesus will result in changed priorities and purposes. Saul described himself as ‘circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶ as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.’ (Phil 3:5-6) That was his life summary before encountering Christ. Afterwards, his purpose was defined by God: ‘This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel.’ (Acts 9:15) He repeatedly taught others that our faith means radical and lasting change: ‘I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.’ (Eph 4:17) He urged Christians to examine themselves to see whether they were in the faith. (2 Cor 13:5) We cannot encounter Jesus and remain the same.