Update from India

We have had news from India, where we support Fredrick and Reeba’s ministries in Bangalore and around other areas in India.

Fredrick writes, “Pastor Tamilselvam lost one of his legs in an accident while he was on a ministry journey last year and still continues to walk with the help of crutches and walkers. He travels great distances preaching the Jesus to the nearby villages; some of the villages are without roads, hospitals, or bus services.

Tamilselvam sold all of his belongings and bought a small land to build a church 15years ago, in Synagunda village, Gudiyatham District. His ability to purchase a piece of land on a rocky hill was made possible by God. Today he conducts prayer meetings in his small house packed with people, but many of those who attend don’t recognise it as a place of worship and leave after their first visit. He has been worshipping in his small house for years.

Two years ago, in a Village Pastors meeting I met Pastor Tamilselvam, spoke to him personally and prayed with him. I had an opportunity again to visit his village last month. Personally, I paid a few visits to the Synagunda village and shared with our church elders and leaders, and prayed that if God leads we would support. Since 1st August our church congregation and elders were positive to go ahead in helping this church building. The foundation work started on 1st August. With all the offerings & gifts we receive from our friends and get in our church offerings we are sending to the church construction. To complete this church construction, yet we require 2000 pounds.

Since this village Church need our help we started special prayers and God’s direction and we believe that God would us to help Ps. Tamilselvam to complete their church in that village before the end of this year 2023.

Your prayers will surely, make a difference in these villages in the coming days. Thank you.”

Please let us know if you wish to support this church building project.

Fredrick also updated us on Amshika, the girl we support financially in India. Amshika is severely disabled and needs a wheelchair. Please pray this will become possible.

Ordinary People, Extraordinary Healing

This evening we looked at the healing of a lame man in Acts 3 and at the response to this miraculous act of God in Acts 4. What is so amazing about the miracles in the book of Acts is how the ordinary disciples we have come to know from the gospels are transformed by the Holy Spirit to become co-workers with God! Peter and John heal a man on their way to worship and are keen to point out that it is not their own godliness or power which has done this, but healing has come by the power of Jesus and faith in His name.
The miraculous opens the door to an amazement in the crowd which leads to evangelism and the result is many people coming to the Lord. But as we have seen so often in the gospels, miracles divide opinion. The man is able to walk, jump and praise God and many are convinced that Jesus is the promised Messiah through seeing this miracle. The Sadducees and other religious leaders are not so impressed, and end up throwing the apostles in jail while they debate the issue. Miracles interrupt our ordinary lives, our preconceived ideas, and we do not always find it easy to adjust.
Peter and John – ordinary, unschooled men who had been with Jesus – refuse to back down or follow the edict not to preach in Jesus’s name again. They are adamant that there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved and are unequivocal in their passionate focus on Jesus. We too must be so filled with the Spirit that we do not swerve from focussing on Jesus. Miracles are not there to glorify us or make us feel better; they are there to help individuals and point people to the Saviour.
In the end, the authorities release Peter and John, partly because of the irrefutable evidence of their own eyes: the man is healed and there is no disputing that fact! God is still doing miracles to this day (and still using ordinary believers filled with the Spirit to do so.) Miracles can happen in Goldthorpe, in Thurnscoe, in Bolton-on-Dearne and in all the surrounding villages. Our God is a God of wonders. ‘What god is as great as our God? 14 You are the God who performs miracle; You display Your power among the peoples.’ (Ps 77:13-14) May we see God performing miracles and displaying His power among the peoples; may we have the words and courage to speak of Jesus as Peter and John did at this time.

Jesus The Messiah

This morning Garry spoke from Genesis 49:1-2, 8-12 about the Messianic prophecy given by Jacob. To prophesy is to speak for God (see Numbers 23:11-12) and in these verses, Jacob speaks of how the blessing of Judah will include the Messiah to come.
God turns situations around, even turning defeat into victory, as we see at the cross. Phil Wickham reminds us that ‘Friday’s good ’cause Sunday is coming’, and these prophetic promises of the Messiah sustained God’s people throughout the ages. Gen 3:15 and Deut 18:15 both act as references, and Jacob, the great schemer, is now given the privilege of speaking of the future Messiah. He prophesied about the Messiah’s victory (see Col 2:13-15 for the fulfilment of this prophecy) and how the kingly line would come through Judah. He spoke about the Messiah as Lion (see Rev 5:5-6) and ruler (over all the earth and not just Israel, as Acts 1:7-8 makes plain.)
Even in the darkest times, even in times of apparent defeat, God can speak hope. Jacob stood at the start of God’s plan. We stand today in the middle, sharing Communion and looking back and forward. We will all stand at the end, sharing what God has planned and accomplished through His chosen One, The Messiah.

Roots

In the 1970s there was a TV series called ‘Roots’, which looked at the history of a black American family, set during and after the era of slavery in the USA. The series looks at the journey of one family and their will to survive, and as a historical drama, it does what history so often does: it homes in on the individual in order to give us a better perspective of the wider issues. We find it hard to deal in the abstract; we need a person and a family to care about in order to understand the complex issues of life and find a pathway to hope and life.

The Bible itself often takes this path, teaching us much about history as it does so, but always looking at history as His Story, God’s story, showing us His involvement in human lives. It starts with the story of God’s creation of Adam and Eve and shows us the consequences of their disobedience; the book of Genesis is lined with named individuals who mattered not only to God but to what happened on earth: Cain, Abel, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Isaac, Joseph, and so on. Some of the books of the Bible focus in very clearly on certain people (the books of Ruth and Esther, in particular), showing us how their response to God has influence way beyond their personal lives (both featuring in the lineage of the Messiah.) In other historical books, people again hold great sway: Moses in the Pentateuch and Joshua, then key prophets such as Elijah, Elisha and Isaiah, not to mention the kings of Israel who form the backdrop to 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings and 1 & 2 Chronicles. David, whose life we are now studying in our Bible studies, is probably the most illustrious and famous of those kings, but it is important to remember that he did not exist in a vacuum, any more than we do.

David was shaped by his family circumstances, by his religious heritage and by what was going on in the world around him (which we tend to term ‘culture’ these days.) There is a tendency nowadays to want to re-write history with the brush of our contemporary age, but that is to fail to take into account a key part of history: understanding what happened in the past and why. It’s not our job to re-write history, but to learn key principles from it.

David was part of the long history of people of faith, people who believed in the God of Israel. As such, he has much to teach people of faith nowadays, for people, despite different cultures and circumstances, are often at heart much the same. Fear, jealousy, covetousness, materialism, love, loyalty and forgiveness are not new to this present century. Persecution, opposition, waiting, injustice and celebration did not cease with the Old Testament, nor even with the period of American history which is the subject of ‘Roots’! The wider issues of what it means to be a human in touch with the Almighty, living in a world that is largely hostile to God, are as relevant today as they were in David’s day. Scripture, therefore, is the perfect place to find and explore our human roots and to see if we can learn important lessons on what it means to live as people after God’s own heart.

The Life of David

This week we started a new Bible study series looking at the life of David. David is one of the most beloved of Bible characters, probably remembered for two pivotal incidents, one involving a giant named Goliath, the other involving a married woman named Bathsheba, one at the beginning of his life, the other when he was a mature man and king over Israel. He features heavily in the historical books of the Old Testament (first appearing in 1 Samuel 16 and then becomes the main story throughout the rest of 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel, before dying in 1 Kings 2:10-11.) He is frequently referenced in the New Testament and, of course, was part of the human lineage of Jesus Christ (thus fulfilling God’s prophetic word that the Messiah would come from David’s line.) In so many ways, David has much to teach us and the fact he is called a ‘man after God’s own heart’ (Acts 13:22) points to the many spiritual lessons we can learn from his example and life.

It’s worth remembering, however, that David might appear to us on the scenes as a bolt out of the blue, a young shepherd boy who has six older brothers and two sisters, but he does not exist as a fully-formed human being! As we read about his life, we see how he was shaped by his family life and upbringing; we see his growth and development. This is reassuring to us, for we are all ‘works in progress’, as the saying goes. David shows us what it means to be human. We share in his sorrows and joys; we know his fears and hopes. The most characteristic thing about David is his relationship with God. It is this which ultimately defines him, and we do well to understand that it is our relationship with God which ultimately defines us. The question, as Casting Crowns point out in their song ‘Who Am I?’, is not so much ‘who am I?’ but ‘whose am I?’ (‘You told me who I am: I am Yours.’)

David is one individual in the Bible, but we see clearly that he is no island. He is born into a specific time, place and culture, as are we. He is shaped by family, friends and colleagues, as are we. He has the opportunity to respond to specific situations, as do we. Sometimes he triumphs magnificently; sometimes, he falls flat on his face. In this way, he is an archetype of humanity. Like Joseph and Joshua before him, he is a mirror to us, revealing faith, fear, despair, joy, exuberance, confidence, jealousy, generosity, duplicity, cunning, and every other human emotion possible. We do well to learn from the life of David: a real life anchored in historical reality but always reminding us of spiritual truths.

Tissue Paper Layers

I spent a couple of days away at the beginning of September. The first was spent in Barnard Castle, a beautiful place with (for me) the perfect combination of coffee shops, castle and second-hand bookshop (Book Aid, a Christian charity). After a damp morning there, we ventured further afield to Eggleston Hall Gardens, where I had the unexpected pleasure of finding an artist’s studio.
There, in this small garden nursery, I entered a world of flower art that was so delicate and intricate, I was mesmerised. Puzzled at the medium, I went further in to find the artist herself at work, making this intricate beauty from the very ordinary medium of tissue paper. In front of her sat bowls of tiny pieces of differently coloured tissue paper and I watched as she stuck the different hues onto a canvas frame to bring beautiful flowers to life. Layer upon layer was stuck and then varnished to create a canvas of floral magnificence.
Victoria Bellas Carter (https://www.victoriabellascarter.com/) works with a tissue paper collage technique, ‘tearing, cutting, layering and manipulating shapes to create vibrant and beautiful images of flowers.” I spent quite a long time simply gazing at these works in awe.
Layering was the technique that fascinated me the most, how the artist created different shades for the flowers using the different layers of tissue paper.
God uses different circumstances and seasons in our lives to create beautiful shades whcih add depth and colour to our existence. Not all of those circumstances are easy. The Bible shows us many people in the wilderness, on the run, facing opposition, grief, obstacles. Ruth and Naomi suffering the bitterness of multiple bereavement and famine. Joseph in the wilderness of prison through no fault of his own. David on the run from an insanely jealous king whose cause he had only tried to serve faithfully. Moses in the wilderness because temper got the better of him and he was forced to flee Egypt to live in Midian for forty years.
Those difficult seasons seem more than a layer of tissue paper to us. They seem to last forever. But perhaps they are simply another layer, intended to build character, to shape our flowers into what we were designed to be.
The painstaking work of the artist results in something magnificent to behold. I suspect our lives are the same if we can see beyond the individual shreds of tissue paper.