It never fails to irritate me that so many Christmas songs have banal lyrics and very little to do with the real meaning of Christmas. (I know, I know, bah humbug and all that, but actually, it’s because I love Christmas so much that I get so irritated by the secularisation of the season.) As we prepare for Christmas, here’s a new version of an old favourite, ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ for you to enjoy:
Paul Baloche, ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing/ King of Heaven’

We have been given many reasons to give thanks, but the update on the fundraising for the food bank project provided us all with additional reasons for thankfulness. The church has been able to give a donation of £1000 to the Salvation Army foodbank in Goldthorpe and Mark McKeown’s sponsored half-beard-growing raised £783.10, including a very generous donation of £200 from the Great Houghton Methodist Church. We are sure this money will be immensely helpful to provide practical assistance to all those in need at this time of year.

Many, many thanks to all who have supported the food bank programme and who give regularly to this. It’s a good idea to keep buying items like scarves, gloves, fleece blankets and hot water bottles, particularly if these are discounted in the January sales.

Last week, Chris and Adrian from the Salvation Army were interviewed for the BBC programme ‘The One Show’ about the food bank and about the new community shop due to open today in Goldthorpe. Goldthorpe will feature on ‘The One Show’ tonight, so you may well see the interview if you watch the programme at 7 p.m. tonight! It is worth noting that Goldthorpe is the UK pilot for this scheme which aims not only to offer a range of products at significantly reduced prices, but also to provide an interactive programme of wider support available free of charge in the Community Hub from budgeting and debt advice to cookery classes. Further information can be read in the ‘Guardian’ article on the Goldthorpe community shop.

As a church, we have been praying for economic regeneration in the area and have also been doing what we can to offer practical help to those in need. Let’s give thanks to God for the generosity of so many people and continue to pray not only for economic regeneration but for spiritual regeneration in our area.

Ephesians 5:4 in the Message version says, ‘Thanksgiving is our dialect.’ A dialect is ‘a particular form of a language which is peculiar to a specific region or social group’ and involves both specific words (eg a ‘bread roll’ may be called a cob, batch, bread cake, barm cake or scuffler, depending where you live in the UK) and accents (how these words are pronounced.) For Christians, we have a new language, Paul says: one which involves thankfulness.

There are times when it is extremely easy to be thankful: when you are healthy, when you feel loved, when life is going well for you and you are happy and successful, giving thanks is relatively easy. But the Bible encourages us to give thanks in all circumstances (1 Thess 5:17 TNIV), learning contentment whether we are in need or in plenty (Phil 4:12 TNIV) and also commands us to give thanks for everything. (Eph 5:19-20 TNIV)

As we grow in God, this command seems less baffling than at first, for we realise that nothing comes into our lives unless it has been filtered through God’s love. ‘God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’ (Rom 8:28 TNIV) What the enemy means for evil, God is able to turn to good: as Joseph said to his brothers, ‘You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.’ (Gen 50:20 TNIV) God is never the author of evil, nor is He a sadist who enjoys our discomfort so much He gives us impossible commands and then laughs at us when we fail to achieve them. He is able, however, to turn every tragedy, every heartache, every trial and every suffering into something which will strengthen us and help us to become more like Christ, and therefore it is possible to give thanks for everything, however difficult that may be for us to do.

The autobiography ‘Joni’, written by a young girl who became quadraplegic after a diving accident at the age of seventeen, is one example of how God can work good from tragic circumstances. Understandably she struggled with doubt and depression and feelings of utter bewilderment as she realised that her life was not going to be as she had imagined it would be. At times she said “I wished God were like He used to be, a few notches lower. I wanted Him to be lofty enough to help me but not so uncontrollable. I longed for His warm presence, times when He seemed more… safe.” (‘The God I Love’) But she said she learned ‘Suffering provides the gym equipment on which my faith can be exercised.” (‘Suffering’) She has shown through a lifetime of rich and diverse ministry and endless help to the disabled that tragedy does not have to have the final word in our lives. Thankfulness can open the door to blessings that are poured out from heaven.

Love has many different guises. It’s not all about the romantic view of love which is portrayed in the media. In Greek, there are many different words to describe different kinds of love. C.S. Lewis has written a book called ‘The Four Loves’ which looks at the different Greek words for love: Storge is fondness or affection through familiarity (a brotherly love), especially between family members or people who have otherwise found themselves together by chance. Eros is romantic or sexual love (the words erotic and eroticism have their roots in this word). Philia is the love between friends, the strong bond existing between people who share a common interest or activity. Agape is unconditional love and is the word used in 1 John 4:8 and 16 when we read ‘God is love’. Other people have tried to define the different levels of love that we can have. Bernard of Clairvaux, for example, a twelfth-century monk, said there were four ‘degrees of love’: the first degree being to love one’s self for one’s own sake; the second ‘loving God for one’s own sake’ – in other words, for what we can get out of Him! This is perhaps the stage that many of us feel we are at: we love God for what He can do for us and what He can give us more than for who He actually is in Himself. But as we mature, we move to the third stage, ‘the love of God for God’s sake’ when we actually begin to value God for who He is more than for what He does. The fourth stage is ‘loving one’s self for God’s sake’, whereby there is a mutuality in love. God’s love for us actually permeates our love for God. Our own human wholeness is somehow affirmed in the love of God and all these other three stages are somehow completed.

Other books recognise that love is manifested in different ways: Gary Chapman’s ‘The Five Love Languages’ looks at how love can be expressed through physical touch, through time spent with loved ones, through gifts, through words of affirmation and through acts of service. It is often helpful to married couples to recognise that there are different ways of expressing love, for we often feel unloved if love is expressed in a ‘language’ with which we are not familiar.

We cannot be prescriptive about how we love God, but the fact remains that love has to be visible and demonstrable. Some ways that other Christians have found to do this through the ages include food banks, helping the unemployed with job applications, founding pregnancy crisis centres, housing the homeless, working against poverty, working with the addicted, campaigning against slavery and human trafficking, prison visiting. But love is also shown in faithfully helping with church outreaches: youth groups, coffee mornings, parent and toddler groups, schools’ ministries and so on.

The Radio 4 iPM news programme features a ‘New Year’s Honours awards’ where listeners nominate local people who are involved in outstanding community work. The winner this year was a youth worker in South London, Stu Thomson. When the interviewer asked him at the end of the interview why he had done this work so faithfully for so many years when so many of the people he had tried to help had been so violent and abusive towards him, he said that he did it because of his faith in God: ‘I know this is where God wants me to be at this moment.’ That kind of commitment to loving people because of God’s love for us and for them is played out over and over again in church communities the whole world over and we must never underestimate the power of our ‘ordinary’ love in the lives of ordinary people.
Interview with Stu Thomson, 5th January 2013

We also had two birthdays to celebrate:

Tonight we started a series looking at Christian maturity, or how to ‘grow up’ so that we can all attain ‘to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ’ (Eph 4:13 TNIV), growing to ‘become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.’ (Eph 4:14 TNIV) Maturity requires taking a long view, for growth is both complex and endless, but we need to be constantly growing and maturing if we are to be conformed into the image of Christ, which is God’s will and purpose for us all. (Rom 8:29 TNIV)

Ephesians 5:1-20 TNIV offers us some practical advice on what spiritual growth and maturity look like.

1. Walk in the way of love
Paul urges us to follow God’s examples or be imitators of God and this means walking in love as Christ did. The first step to maturity is knowing God as He reveals Himself to us – not as we imagine Him to be, not as we want Him to be, but as He is. We have to have ‘eyes wide open to the differences, the God we want and the God who is.’ (Casting Crowns, ‘Somewhere In the Middle’) Love is at the very heart of who God is and is therefore absolutely fundamental to our growing up. We can’t be mature if we don’t love. 1 Cor 13:1-8 TNIV shows us what love is like: not the mushy, sentimentalised, erotic version of love which is often presented to us from the world, but love in action, and love which is a response to the love we ourselves receive from God (see 1 John 4:19 TNIV). As we observe the sacrificial way Jesus lived on earth and see how He came not to be served but to serve, as we consider how He was not self-seeking but only lived to do the Father’s will, as we reflect on His willingness to lay aside majesty in order to embrace human likeness, we begin to see how to love and as we spend time with Him, coming alongside Him, taking on His yoke and learning from Him (Matt 11:29 TNIV), we find our lives are shaped into a life of love. We ‘walk’ in the way of love, just as we looked at ‘walking in the light’ when we were studying 1 John 1, meaning that this becomes our everyday standard of living.

2. As we grow, our behaviour changes
Eph 5:3-7 TNIV outlines some of the behaviour which needs to go if we are to grow in maturity. The work God does by His Spirit in our lives is internal or spiritual, but this is manifested in visible, practical ways: mainly in what we say and what we do. Our thoughts, speech and actions have to reflect God’s work in our lives. Often, this is not a comfortable process, for God disciplines those He loves (Heb 12:5-11 TNIV) and probes us to highlight areas that need to change. If we feel like we’re in the furnace of discipline right now, remember that God does this because He cares about our maturity and we need to change!

3. Find out what pleases the Lord
As we grow and mature, we want to find out what pleases God (Eph 5:10 TNIV) and this shapes how we live. There are many things we are clearly told please God. Four things we looked at were:
a) love
b) obedience
c) faith
d) thanksgiving

As we develop these characteristics and seek to develop our relationship with God (for this is all about relationship more than rules!), we will grow. Maturity will always predominantly feature love, for God is love and therefore if we are His children, we will be growing in love and walking in love. Our speech and actions will be changed to reflect His speech and actions. We become imitators of God, reflecting a family likeness. Love, servanthood, obedience, faith and thankfulness will be the signs that point us to how well we are growing, for these are the things we see in our great example, Jesus. (see Phil 2:1-11 TNIV)