On Friday 16th March, we are involved in the Dearne Churches Together Day of Prayer at Furlong Road Methodist Church. The building will be open from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m., with ‘prayer spaces’ created to encourage us to pray and focus our attention on different aspects of prayer. Prayer can be creative: we can pray as we make craft things or share in communion, meditating on all God has done for us and asking Him to work in life’s difficult situations and bless our churches and communities. Please feel free to drop in during this time and stay as long (or as short) as you can. It’s so good to set time aside to pray and we believe that our lives need to be rooted in the rhythm of prayer.

Not everyone is able to gather in a church building, but that doesn’t stop us praying! We can pray at any time and in any place! So even if you can’t make it to Furlong Road, we would encourage you to sign up for a 30-minute slot betweeen 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. on that date when you commit to pray. A sheet with a ‘prayer wall’ will be at our church this weekend and you can sign a ‘brick’ to commit to pray at that time. Let’s make a prayer chain on that day so that we cover our area with prayer.

Paul urged the Thessalonians to pray continually. (1 Thess 5:17) It’s a privilege to be able to call on the name of the Lord wherever we are. May each one of us learn the joy of setting aside time to seek God’s face, listen for His voice and intercede for our families, friends and communities. The news is often full of woe, but we have a God who cares and is eager to listen to our prayers. Let’s make the most of that opportunity! Even if circumstances won’t let you get to Furlong Road, don’t let circumstances stop you from praying!

In reading through the book of Leviticus in my daily readings, I was struck by the range and physicality of much of the priestly work: killing animals for the offerings (more suited to being a butcher, I would have thought!), reviewing skin diseases (a doctor’s role) and inspecting houses for mould and mildew (building contractors?!) Part of me wondered when the priests ever got any time to spend in the temple with God, but this reminds me forcibly that there is actually no division between ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’, that God is interested in every aspect of our lives, not just the ones we can visibly see as being connected to worship.

We find it difficult to see life in this way, and therefore constantly need our thinking renewed and transformed. Rom 12:1-2 in the Message version says, ‘So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognise what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.‘

The Bible teaches that worship involves all we are and everything we do; it is not limited to the hour or so we spend in God’s house on a Sunday. God is in everything we do, and therefore our ordinary, everday lives – involving accountancy, washing-up, fixing cars, cleaning schools, engineering, teaching, looking after children and so on – can be part of our acts of worship as we seek to allow God into every area of our lives. I can imagine if I’d been a Levitical priest grumbling about checking out infectious skin diseases (‘it’s not my job!‘), only to be forcibly reminded that we don’t get to pick and choose the ‘bits’ of jobs we like and have to take the whole package. God does not want us to live divided, disconnected lives, but to acknowledge all of life is a gift from God and He is interested in every aspect. If your day involves boring, repetitve jobs that don’t seem to ever amount to much, take heart! God is still there in the mundane and monotonous and is working in all. Our attitude is laid out in Col 3:17: ‘Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.‘

We had two birthdays to celebrate tonight:

There’s no escape, even for visitors!

Our activity tonight involved questions about the heart. For the adults, we had to label a diagram of the heart, which revealed our woeful lack of knowledge of basic human anatomy… (The answers are below… I have to say this activity reminded me of Mitch Benn’s clever song on love entitled ‘The Chambers of the Heart’, with its memorable lines:

‘You can tussle with corpuscles

When the tricuspid valve’s dilated

And I don’t think I’ve ever felt so high

As when I’m fully oxygenated…’)

Simple Human Heart Diagram Labeled Labelled Heart Diagram Picture Of The Human Heart Labeled – Human – Anatomy Body Library

The children, while blindfolded, had to stick a heart onto Stephen (a new version of ‘Pin the Tail on the Donkey’, perhaps!)

Jeanette spoke at the end of the meeting about how faith is rather like the heart, a muscle that needs to be exercised. David faced many frightening situations in life (Saul’s persecution of him, the Philistines as enemies and so on), but he learned to trust God when afraid (Ps 56:2-3), to hide in the shadow of God’s wings (Ps 57:1) and to depend on God’s deliverance at all times (see Ps 18). He had to take refuge in caves at times and faced many troubles in life, but his faith did not falter. We too can be like David, allowing every situation to draw us into a greater dependence on God, learning that His grace is sufficient for us at all times, for His power is made perfect in our weakness. (2 Cor 12:9)

Dave spoke on King David, described by God in Acts 13:22 as ‘a man after my own heart.’ David is one of the best known and best loved of all Bible characters, with his victory against the giant Goliath known even by non-Christians. As a psalmist and king, David’s influence on Israel was great, but the Bible is clear in showing us his faults, sins and shortcomings as well as his victories. David can teach us much about faith, obedience, repentance, worship and trust, and it is significant that God’s own testimony about David is so positive.

Saul, Israel’s first king, was chosen because the people wanted to be like the other nations. Samuel warned against a king, and Saul, although outwardly fitting the part of a handsome, strong king, soon showed himself to be jealous, someone who overstepped his boundaries and whose disobedience was significant to a nation for whom God was the primary ruler. David was chosen as Saul’s successor: an unlikely candidate, the youngest son of Jesse, but it is significant that even at this stage, God comments on the fact He is not swayed by outward appearances but looks at the heart. (1 Sam 17:7) Whilst we do not always understand God’s reasons for doing things, we can see in the choice of David as king:

1. God’s sovereign providence (He works behind the scenes to see His plans fulfilled)
2. God’s sovereign planning (clearly directing the prophet Samuel to choose David, and His hand in David’s lineage, with both Rahab and Ruth, pagan women drawn into God’s story as his ancestors)
3. God’s sovereign power (He not only has plans and dreams, but has the power to fulfil these!)

In David, we see a man who:

1. had a true and genuine faith (see, for example, his words in 1 Sam 17:34-37, when he speaks of all God has taught him, even as a young man)
2. knew how to be truly grateful to God for His many blessings (his psalms are often evidence of this gratitude.)
3. knew how to repent (he failed in many aspects of life, committing adultery, murder and lying, but when confronted, he confessed and repented, Psalm 51 showing us the depth of his sorrow.)
4. sought to live an authentic, transparent life before God, often asking God to test him and examine his heart and mind (see Ps 26:2, for example).

David is portrayed as one who was faithful, thankful, truthful, trusting and transparent. He was a man who learned to live in dependence on God, being fully aware that he was chosen by God and loved by God. We do well to pray as he did, asking God to create in us a pure heart and renew a steadfast spirit within us.

Stephen spoke this morning from 2 Samuel 12:7-9, when the prophet Nathan confronts King David about his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah the Hittite. When we are separated from God due to sin, we are not in a good place. Sin acts as an obstruction between us and God, but unfortunately, we are all too adept at hiding our sin. David thought no one knew about his sins, but just as in a game of football, when the referee blows the whistle and the game has to stop, so Nathan acted as God’s referee in this situation, confronting David and leading him to repentance.

We often need God to blow the whistle in our lives, to stop our hiding and prevaricating and to face the sin which causes separation and distress. So often, we carry on with our lives, going about our daily business as if nothing has happened, but sin and our indifference to sin mean our relationship with God is tainted. When the whistle is blown, we are brought face to face with the God who knows all we do and from whom we can keep no secrets. We need to stop living divided lives and to face up to our sin.

David confessed his sin, repented and as a result experienced God’s forgiveness. There were consequences for his sin (the death of the child conceived in adultery and subsequent difficulties in family relationships), but the relationship between David and God was restored.

God does not want any wedge, any sin, any problem to disrupt our relationship with Him. He blows the whistle on sin so that we can confess, repent and rebuild, regaining the joy of unbroken relationship with Him. It can be very hard and painful to be confronted, for confrontation is painful, and we often run from the truth. Nonetheless, if we heed the word of the Lord to us, we can rededicate our lives to  God. God is waiting for that prayer of repentance (see Ps 51); He is waiting for us to come home to Him. He is the Father waiting for the prodigal son to return. We may well feel guilty and ashamed of our sin, as if our hands are dirty and we are unworthy to be forgiven (‘How Can It Be?’ by Lauren Daigle perfectly captures this feeling); we may feel we don’t know how to put things right, but God is our hope, the only solution to our sin. All He requires is our confession and repentance for restoration to come.