Many apologies for not getting these birthday photos online earlier. It has taken a while to unearth all our computer accessories after the recent refurbishment work at home!

There have been a number of incidents of vandalism near the church building over recent weeks, including the theft of the new cigarette bins, damage to a cigarette bin, damage to the notice board and incidents involving cars. We are investigating the installation of CCTV cameras to help protect the area, but would ask all parking in the vicinity to take care at the present time and to report all incidents to us and to the police (by calling 101). We may need to organise a rota for supervision of the car park during Sunday evening meetings and it would be helpful to know if any men would be willing to do this. Please also pray about this situation, for God’s protection on the building and on our property and for His intervention in the lives of those set to disrupt and cause criminal damage to property.

On a more positive note, we are organsing a church outing to Scarborough on Saturday 9th June. A £5 deposit is needed to secure your place on the trip, which will be refunded on the day to help buy your lunch! We will be organising a coach to take us there, so please sign the list at church if you would like to come along with us for this day out. We will be leaving about 9 a.m. and departing from Scarborough about 5 p.m.

We are very sorry to announce the cancellation of meetings planned for Friday 2 March because of the weather. There will be no Parent & Toddler group this morning and the Women’s World Day of Prayer, scheduled for 2 p.m. this afternoon, will be cancelled also.

It has been a strange week in the UK because of the weather, and although our area has not suffered as much as some regions, we are very aware that roads are still very icy and a lot of the people who would have attended today are either very young or quite elderly, increasing the risk of slipping and falling.

We hope to be open as usual tomorrow for the coffee morning and that Sunday services will be unaffected.

The children’s event being held at Houghton Road Centre in Thurnscoe on Saturday 3rd March with former CBBC presenter Gemma Hunt is currently still due to be held as scheduled, but please keep an eye on social media for updates about this event. This is a ticketed event starting at 2 p.m. aimed at young children.

Please continue to pray for services and for people’s safety during these adverse weather conditions.

Life, Stephen commented tonight, is rather like a pack of cards. When you play a card game such as poker, certain phrases from the game have become so widespread as to have a significance outside the game itself: having a ‘poker face‘ means to have an impassive expression on one’s face, not revealing one’s true feelings (useful since poker is as much about bluff as the value of the cards you hold); ‘keeping your cards close to your chest’ means to keep your intended actions private (whereas literally in a card game, it’s a tactic to avoid letting others see what cards you hold!) So often in life we may complain about the cards we have been dealt, feeling life is treating us unfairly or we keep our cards close to our chest, refusing to let others or God into our lives.

Gen 3:8 reminds us that Adam and Eve hid from God after they had disobeyed Him. We often try to hide from God what we have done, pretending that everything in life is going well or hiding our shame and guilt from God. Luke 22:56-57 reminds us that it is easy to deny God, even if we have previously been so passionate about Him: Peter, when challenged about being one of Jesus’s followers, denied even knowing Him.

A better way than holding our cards close to our chest and hiding from God or than trying to tackle life on our own is to spread out all the cards of our lives before God, rather like Hezekiah did with the threatening letter he received from his enemies (2 Kings 19:14). We can lay all our cards before God, allowing Him access into every area of our lives. Heb 4:13 reminds us, after all, that ‘nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight; everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.’ There is no point hiding anything from God or pretending we can cope with all life deals us on our own. Instead, we should bring our whole lives before God and invite Him to make something of every hand we hold. After all, He can bring good from every situation, turning the most useless of ‘hands’ into something useful and winning. He can make us more than conquerors if we will only let Him in.

Garry spoke this morning on the subject of confrontation. Some people relish confrontation, but the majority of us probably shy away from confrontantion, feeling intimidated and threatened by it. Business gurus tell us many strategies for dealing with confrontation (such as being prepared in advance, choosing carefully the time and the place, not reacting in the heat of the moment, not procrastinating, being prepared to listen to the other person’s needs and allowing them time to respond), but the Bible teaches us much more about this subjuect.

In Is 6:1-7, we see a confrontation between Isaiah and God. God announces things in advance, revealing to mankind the problem sin causes and talking of His solution to sin. He zeroes in to the problem, but always gives people time to respond to His words. Another example of confrontation is between Saul and God in Acts 9:1-9, when God confronts Saul over his murderous persecution of the church and transforms him into the apostle Paul.

God confronts people, but always gives them the choice on how to respond. In Matt 4:18-19, we see Jesus calling his first disciples, who heeded the call, but in Matt 19:21-22, we see an example of someone (the rich young ruler) who decides not to follow Jesus. God wants all people to repent (Acts 17:30-31) and uses us to be His messengers. He confronts us in order to bring us to conversion, but continues to confront us to change us and develop us, challenging us with a calling to service (Isaiah 6:8). We can choose to comply with God’s calling or we can say no.

In sports, the number of players involved is far smaller than the number of spectators; in the UK last year, the average size of a football crowd was 35,822, with only 22 players influencing any game at a particular time, for example. But church is not a spectator sport. We are all called to be involved and to serve God.

God’s general calling is to worship, witness, pray and have fellowship with other believers. But He also calls specific people to different kinds of service (this may change over the years, but what matters is that we do His will in His way and in His timing.)

God has created good works for us to do in advance (Eph 2:10); there is a ‘you-shaped’ job for each one of us to do in God’s service. Michael Card’s song ‘The Poem Of Your Life’ reminds us that God can craft amazing things from our lives. All He requires is our ‘yes’!

Dot-to-dot puzzles are a great way to teach children hand-eye coordination and numbering sequences. By joining the dots, a child draws the outline to a picture which can then be coloured in. It’s a great learning tool that provides hours of fun.

These pictures initially look very confusing, but gradually the picture becomes more defined as more dots are joined together. Life is rather like a dot-to-dot puzzle, I feel. So often, we feel confused about our lives, where we’re heading, what’s happening to us, and we often need the benefit of hindsight (that perfect 20/20 vision!) to see what God has been doing in those periods when it didn’t look like He was doing anything.

One of the purposes of studying the Bible is to try to ‘connect the dots’. We don’t understand Scripture in isolation; Scripture interprets Scripture (particularly true in the case of Ps 110, where the New Testament writers refer to it so frequently to give us further clarity and understanding on the role of Messiah and His willing troops.) In that psalm, we see a variety of dots which the New Testament expound at length, namely that Jesus is:

• Lord (see Phil 2:6-11)
• King (see Rev 19:11)
• the Great High Priest (see Heb 4:14-10:18)
• the Judge (see Acts 17:31)

We also see from the psalm something of our role as God’s servants (‘willing troops’, called to carry on the Father’s mission (see Matt 28:18-20), holding out the message of reconciliation as God’s ambassadors). It’s good to have the dots connected for us!