Nineteen of us gathered last night to watch ‘The Jungle Book’ and enjoy chip butties and cake after the film!

Our thanks to Alex at Fishfella’s for supplying the chips and for those who helped throughout the day and evening.

One of the metaphors for Christians in the Bible is that we are pilgrims ‘on a journey to reach our home’ (‘Children of God’, Phil Wickham). We had pilgrim footprints leading to different places in the church building so that we could find the answers to a variety of questions about our particular church.

From this, people found out that the first meeting of our church on Market Street was on 6th June 2010, with the official opening being on 3rd July 2010. They learned that the date on the stone outside the building is 1960 and counted the number of windows in the community room and the number of crosses in the Worship Room. We also learned that the parish church is celebrating its centenary this year and that the next ‘Churches Together’ meeting will be on 17th September at our church!

Meanwhile, in the Worship Room, we had songs and photos reminding us of all that has happened over the past six years, along with visual representations of various Biblical metaphors for the church. We had a bride’s dress, soldier’s uniform and body diagram to remind us that the church is called the Bride of Christ, that we are the army of God and that we are the body of Christ.

We also had a house to play in, reminding us that we are God’s house (Hebrews 3:6):

There were photo displays of different services and events over the past six years:

Despite the poor weather, there was great enjoyment of craft activities at the Community Open Day today. There was a variety of activities on offer:

Glass-painting (the jars hold candles to remind us ‘we are the light of the world’)

Making key-rings:

Building bodies (for ‘we are the body of Christ’)

Working on family trees (reminding us that we are all part of God’s family) and building towers

There was also the opportunity to have your face painted.

Our thanks to all the volunteers whose crafty skills made this a great event!

Eugene Peterson makes the wise comment ‘all the water in the ocean cannot sink a ship unless it gets inside; and all the trouble in the world cannot harm us unless it gains entrance to our hearts.’ (‘Praying With the Psalms’)

A wooden ship had to be made waterproof through pitch and caulking, pitch being the resin or glue spread on fibres which were pushed in the wedge-shaped seams between boards to make those seams watertight. Provided there was no leak in the ship, she could sail on the mighty oceans quite safely, but a leak could easily lead to disaster and the sinking of the whole vessel.

Faith, Eugene Peterson goes on, is to the soul what pitch and caulking are to the ship. As long as there is faith in our hearts, circumstances cannot sink us. While we hold on to Jesus in faith, we have protection from every storm of life: ‘In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.’ (John 16:33, see also Ps 91:3-16).

Paul shows us what this looks like in practice: ‘we are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned, struck down, but not destroyed.’ (2 Cor 4:8-9)

Let’s ensure our lives are watertight, so that even when trials, doubts and questions come, we are not destroyed; our faith is not capsized. Paul urges us to hold on to faith and a good conscience so as to avoid suffering shipwreck with regard to faith like Hymanaeus and Alexander. (1 Tim 1:19-20). With God on our side, who can be against us?

The Bible describes a war that goes on within our hearts, a war vividly described by Paul in Romans 7:7-24 between the ‘old nature’ (dominated by sinful desires which are at odds with God’s ways) and the ‘new nature’ (which delights in God’s ways.) The only way, Paul says, to deal with the old nature is the way of crucifixion: ‘those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.’ (Gal 5:24) We can’t afford to show mercy to this old way of being, because it chokes faith and leaves us battered and bruised by those waves of doubt.

In the book of Kings, we read a sorry cycle of disobedience and half-hearted worship. 2 Kings 16:31 says ‘even while these people were worshipping the Lord, they were serving their idols.’ Such double-minded lives, as we saw yesterday, cannot lead to victory in God. We can’t afford to worship at any other altar, so we have to deal ruthlessly with any idol in our lives (the idol of prosperity or anxiety  or pride, jealousy or fear, for example.) If we don’t, we become like the animal Pushmipullyu in ‘Doctor Dolittle’, an animal with two heads facing in opposite directions.

Not only does double-mindedness succeed in destroying us, it will lead others astray (2 Kings 16:41 concludes ‘To this day their children and grandchildren continue to do as their ancestors did.‘)

For healthy living in our own lives and the lives of those to come, we must be people of integrity, wholeheartedly serving the Lord as Caleb and Joshua did. (Num 14:24)