This is a busy week for birthdays in our church:

We also had a special birthday cake to consume!

Hebrews 4:12 in the Message version says ‘His powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defence, laying us open to listen and obey. Nothing and no one is impervious to God’s Word. We can’t get away from it—no matter what.’

I’ve only ever undergone surgery once: my son was born by Caesarean section because he was breech. With the arrival of anaesthetics, it is easy to regard surgery as relatively minor these days, but in actual fact, any breach of the layers of the skin is painful and a surgeon’s scalpel is razor sharp in order to cut through those layers. When the anaesthetic wears off, the pain is very evident! Any sword wound, any surgery, is painful. Sometimes the pain is excruciating, leaving us gasping, unable to think of anything else. For the first couple of days after surgery, I virtually counted the hours to the next dose of painkillers and found it all too easy to understand how war veterans had become addicted to morphine after the horrors of losing limbs.

God loves us too much to leave us in our sin and hard-heartedness, however. He speaks to us gently and tenderly, pricking our consciences and wooing us (Is 40:2), urging us not to harden our hearts (see Heb 3:7-9). If we do not respond to those pinpricks, however, He has to use more drastic measures. Let’s remember, though, that a surgeon uses the scalpel not to wound – though that is what happens in the short-term – but to heal. Surgery is necessary to cure something which if left would cause us even more problems. God knows that hard heartedness leads to sin and rebellion and ultimately to a rupturing of our relationship with Him, just as an inflamed appendix, if left untended, will rupture and poison our whole system, or a cancerous tumour, if left untended, will continue to grow and shut down vital organs necessary for life. God’s Word may cut us, piercing our doubt and defences, highlighting our sinful attitudes and our lack of trust, but it is also the means by which we are healed. Job 5:18 says ‘For he wounds, but he also binds up; he injures, but his hands also heal.’ We may fear surgery, but it is better than the alternative!

David’s prayer of repentance in Ps 51 shows us the importance of keeping our hearts right. All our speech and actions are the overflow of our heart attitudes and Jesus reminded us in the Sermon on the Mount that actions can be more complex than they appear. If we are ever to understand our own actions or the things other people do, we will have to dig deeper than the action itself into the motivation and the belief system which have prompted the action.

The state of the unregenerate heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. (Jer 17:9) From early times ‘every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time’ (Gen 6:5) and those who are without Christ are ‘darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.’ (Eph 4:18) Pharaoh gives us an example of someone who repeatedly hardened his heart when confronted by God’s might and majesty (Ex 7:14, 8:15), and sadly this tendency to hard hearts is not reserved to non-believers. The wilderness wanderings show us the Israelites repeatedly grumbling against God and hardening their hearts even when they had witnessed His miraculous provision. (Ex 17, Num 20:1-13) Moses’s advice ‘Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer’ (Deut 10:16) needs to be applied to all of us.

God’s aim is to transform our unregenerate hearts of stone into renewed hearts of flesh (see Jer 31:33, Ezek 11:19).  He is in the process of sanctifying and transforming each one of us and our role is to guard our hearts, since this is the wellspring of life. (Prov 4:23) Like David, we have to be sensitive to God’s Word and repent when we have gone wrong, asking God to ‘Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.’ (Ps 51:10) Our prayer needs continually to be ‘Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.’ (Ps 139:23-24)

When we pray David’s prayers in Psalm 51 and Psalm 139, what we are doing is not only giving God permission to enter our lives and cleanse us; we are allowing Him to sensitise our hearts. When our hearts are hardened, when we have hearts of stone, it takes a lot to penetrate our hearts. Every time God speaks to us, we have a choice. We can hear His voice and respond to it. Or we can harden our hearts and ignore Him. God’s voice, if we are sensitive to Him, is like a pinprick. If your skin is soft, you can feel a pinprick. A pin can draw blood. So often, that is how God is with us. He pricks our consciences. He whispers words of exhortation to us. He nudges us to the right choice. He reminds us gently of the way we should go.

If our skin is not soft and sensitive, however, we can jam a pin into it and not even feel it. Our skin can become calloused. A callus (or callosity) is a toughened area of skin which has become relatively thick and hard in response to repeated friction, pressure, or other irritation. Calloused skin is one thing – an annoyance rather than a major problem. But calloused hearts are a much bigger problem. Jesus said that most people who listened to Him did not respond in faith because of their calloused hearts. (Matt 13:15)

If we do not respond to the pinpricks of God’s Spirit, His Word will come as a sword or scalpel to us, cutting through our layers of defence and doubt (Heb 4:12), which is inevitably more painful! Let’s allow God to search and know our hearts and to create in us pure hearts, as David teaches us, we will be able to recognise His voice more clearly and can then choose to obey Him; we are laid open to ‘listen and obey’, which is the response God is longing for.

‘Soften my heart, Lord.’ (Graham Kendrick)

John spoke this morning at Cherry Tree Court from Psalm 23, telling a story about 3 shepherds and a minister.

A minister from Scotland moved to England, but returned to his home church once a year to speak at their anniversary celebrations. Each trip back to Scotland proved quite eventful! The first year, he ran out of petrol on the journey, so the following year, he remembered to take petrol in cans for the journey. Unfortunately, that year, his radiator over-heated and it turned out he had forgotten to take any water with him, so he could not cool the engine!

He prayed for help, and in the distance heard bells ringing. A shepherd called Peter approached with his flock of sheep and pointed the minister to a nearby brook. While they waited for the engine to cool, the minister talked to Peter about a shepherd in the Bible called David and read Psalm 23 to him, telling him that the fourth word was the most important in the psalm. He told him that it was important he knew God personally if he was to experience the guidance and help promised in the psalm, and that Jesus is the Good Shepherd.

The next year, the minister thought he had made the journey safely when the sunny day suddenly turned misty and it was difficult to see where he was going. He came across a house and asked for help; when he was invited in, he was surprised to see a picture of Peter on the walls. The lady told him that Peter was her son and the minister explained how he had met him the previous year. Unfortunately, he had died that winter in a severe blizzard, but the mother told how when his body had been found, his fourth finger was gripped by his right hand, reminding them that the Lord was his shepherd.

We tend to wear wedding rings on the fourth finger of our left hand in this country to indicate that we belong to someone and they belong to us. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, belongs to us and we belong to Him. We need to be sure He is our shepherd.

Last night’s Bible study looked at 1 John 3:1-3, a passage where John is overwhelmed with the knowledge of our identity as children of God. He talks about how great is the love the Father has lavished on us, or, in the KJV, ‘what manner of love’.  The word ‘manner’ or ‘type’ is used infrequently in the New Testament, but indicates coming from another country or race, being a different type altogether. Sometimes, other country’s customs are strange to us (the French habit of dunking croissants – or Weetabix! – in coffee or drinking coffee from a bowl at breakfast, for example, or the Malaysian tea ceremony which is part of the wedding rituals) and in many ways, the depth and range of God’s love seems totally alien to us. We find it hard even to love our friends at times, but God’s love is demonstrated in that whilst we were His enemies, Christ died for us. (Rom 5:8-10) God never asks us to do that which He has not done Himself. (see Matt 5:44)

Not only is God’s love so much stronger and deeper than anything we have ever known, He has lavished it upon us – extravagantly, overflowing, oozing, not lacking anything. His love is like an endowment which makes us rich. (Rom 9:22-24, 2 Cor 6:10, 2 Cor 8:9, Eph 2:7, Col 1:27) In addition in this passage, we read that our spiritual riches – which are greater than anything the world can offer us – are tied to our spiritual identity as children of God.

What God calls us supersedes what we  may call ourselves or what others may call us. He who spoke creation into being (Genesis 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 24, 26, 29) is able to speak into being things that are not. (Rom 4:17) He has called ‘my people’ those who were not His people (see Rom 9:25-26) and we need to understand what God calls us and agree with His assessment of our identity if we are to flourish spiritually. Other people may well not recognise that identity (as they did not recognise Jesus as God’s Son), but our lives are now defined by our relationship to God and that governs how we live.

One of the unusual features of our church is the birthday box and the birthday hat, our means of celebrating people’s  birthdays each Sunday. Sometimes, however, circumstances prevent members from actually being able to come into our building and thus stand on the birthday box. That is no guarantee of escape, though! Here is another birthday photo from this week: