I was brought up with a sports-mad father, and therefore as a child, I went along to watch Barnsley F. C. play football and Yorkshire C.C.C. play cricket. I learned to enjoy both sports, mainly because I enjoyed being with my Dad, and I remember the years 1979-1984 with great fondness: watching Ian Botham’s match-winning performance in the Headingley Test against Australia in 1981, savouring the midfield magic of Ronnie Glavin and enjoying seeing Mick McCarthy, a Barnsley lad, make it to the big time. One of my abiding memories of this era is the passion with which fans approach every match or game. Sport is not, for many of them, simply a game…

In 1983, I discovered a new passion, for it was then that I found Jesus Christ as my own Saviour. And it struck me then, and still strikes me now, as odd that the passion seen every week in football grounds and cricket grounds and every other sporting venue is not often seen in churches. I have stood on some football terraces in freezing weather cheering on a team that was never in the top 6 in the country; I have frozen in April at cricket grounds with hardly anyone there, and still there was more passion there than is seen when people come together to worship Almighty God.

As we approach Easter and consider the mind-blowing love God has for us, love which caused Jesus to suffer on the cross for our sins and to embrace suffering for the joy set before Him, let’s put away our British reserve and worship Him unashamedly, with passion and fervour and fire and zeal. Let’s ponder how much He loves us and raise a shout, a cheer, a paean of praise.

Tonight I had the privilege of seeing the Watoto Children’s Choir on their ‘Signs and Wonders’ tour, performing at Grimethorpe Pentecostal Church. The choir is part of Watoto Church in Uganda which seeks to help the vulnerable and orphaned and is a shining testimony of the transforming power of the Gospel. The children are sponsored in a similar fashion to Bedline with Compassion, with sponsorship providing education, health care and Bible teaching, and the children sang with gusto of their hope and love found in Jesus Christ.

In addition, they gave testimonies of the work God has done in their lives and videos were shown of the work being done in Uganda through this church. The Watoto Model is designed to provide vulnerable women and children in Africa with holistic care and to impact communities in the process. The model involves physical care, medical intervention including HIV/AIDS treatment, education – formal and vocational, counselling and emotional well being as well as moral and spiritual discipleship. Currently Watoto has projects in Kampala and Gulu, Uganda; and Juba, South Sudan.

It’s great to get a glimpse of the ‘bigger picture’ of what God is doing in the wider world and it’s also good to acknowledge the profound difference a little help can give children.

Today in England, it’s April Fools’ Day. It’s a day for practical jokes and foolish pranks. Some newspapers, magazines, and other published media report fake stories, which are usually explained the next day or below the news section in small letters. Other countries still celebrate the day in other ways: in France, for example, the day is known as the ‘fish day’, with paper fish attached to the victim’s back without being noticed. Such fish feature prominently on many late 19th- to early 20th-century French April Fools’ Day postcards.

Such antics are usually harmless, if a little bewildering to the serious amongst us, but there’s nothing wrong with having fun and a sense of humour is an indispensable aid to sanity, in my opinion!

Paul reminds us that the world will never understand people of faith fully and tells us that ‘the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.’ (1 Cor 1:18) We have to be prepared to be called fools for Christ and to be ridiculed and misunderstood as we seek to follow God. We are people who are now operating on God’s principles and seeking to live according to His ways. Take time to read 1 Cor 1:18-31 today and let the foolishness of God shape your thinking and actions.

Whilst we must often consciously and deliberately choose to forget the wrongs done to us, we must also consciously and deliberately choose to remember all God has done for us. Eugene Peterson says, ‘forgetfulness atrophies the muscles of faith and leaves them flabby and passive. Remembrance internalises a history of grace and strengthens praise into blessing, so that we act in a renewing way in our environment.’

Remembering means bringing to mind, choosing to dwell on those memories of God’s actions and character, focussing our attention on God. God’s people are consistently urged to remember what God has done (see Deut 8:2,18; Deut 15:15, Job 36:24, Ps 22:27, Ps 42:4,6). This is easy to do at certain times of celebration, but needs to be done on a daily basis if we are to avoid falling into the trap of forgetfulness and therefore indifference to God which easily leads to a complaining attitude.

Today’s challenge is to focus on something positive that God has done for you! He loves you. He provides for you. He guides you. He gives you breath to breathe. He surrounds you with mercy and grace. We need to be as concerned for our spiritual muscles as we are for our physical bodies. We all need remembrance workouts!

Some of us have little choice but to embrace forgetfulness as we get older and our memory brain cells just don’t seem to function the way they used to! This isn’t the kind of forgetfulness I mean, however… By embracing forgetfulness, what I mean is a willingness to emulate God who says ‘Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.’ (Heb 10:17, quoting Jer. 31:34).

God, being God, cannot actually forget anything (in the sense of ‘losing’ the memory the way we may do as we get older.) He does, however, choose not to remember our sins. This is enormously liberating for us, as Jeremy Camp’s song ‘We Must Remember’ makes plain, for we often have a tendency to wallow in our sins, finding it hard to accept God’s forgiveness. Easter makes it plain that ‘You are the God that bore our shame./ You are the taker of our pain.’

The concomitant of this, however, is that we are urged to forgive as God has forgiven us. (Eph 4:32, Matt 6:12, 14-15). The antidote to bitterness, broken relationships and high stress levels is to live each day with forgiveness in your heart. This is not always easy, because we are easily hurt and often hurt others. Nonetheless, as we choose not to remember wrongs done to us and freely offer forgiveness to others, we are set free from so many things which would trip us up.

To those who say they cannot forgive, I would urge a re-reading of the gospels, savouring the Passion story slowly. Forgiveness is at the heart of the good news of Jesus Christ. As we ponder His forgiveness, He is able to put within us a heart that forgives, as part of the transformative process His life in us brings.

I’ve recently had to take medication to avoid cholera when I go to India, and it struck me as I struggled to drink the sweet-tasting liquid that we tend to add flavours to drinks to make them more palatable. Those flavours are inevitably sweet, because we don’t like bitter tastes that much. ‘It’s a bitter pill to swallow’, we say of something unpleasant that must be endured.

Heb 12:14-15 says ‘Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.  See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.’ Bitterness inevitably will cause us problems. When we are bitter, holding on to grudges, refusing to forgive, we will find God’s grace to be insufficient for us. Only as we let go of these things can we have open hands to receive, and dispense, grace.

Bitterness within us takes time to grow. We have to be quick to root it out and then it’s easy to deal with. Left to put down tentacles, it will take over our life and sap spiritual vitality from us. How do we avoid it? We choose to fix our eyes on Jesus and refuse to let self-pity eat away at our peace of mind.