Despite the abundance of evidence that God is good and has good plans for His children, many of us still feel uncertain about God’s nature and doubt His goodness to us. The brokenness of life causes us to question God’s goodness; we have ‘ruined foundations’ that tend to lead us down paths of negative reactions such as shame, fear and wrongful control and must, therefore, daily make the choice to accept that ‘God is for us.’ To do this, we have to follow 3 principles:

1. Accept that God has the final word.
2. Accept that blessing is God’s natural inclination
3. Taste & see that the Lord is good

1. God has the final word.

It is mutually exclusive to believe that God is good and that He acts in a way that is maliciously harmful to us, so we must learn (as Mary did, when faced with the stupendous news that she would be the mother of Jesus) to agree with God: ‘Let it be to me as you have said.’ (Luke 1:38) God cannot lie, we are told, and so if we accept that He has the final word and is good and true in all His ways, we have to believe that that is the case even when we cannot see how that can be. This is not the same as casuistry (being deceptive in our reasoning) or sophistry (a superficially plausible but generally fallacious method of reasoning). It’s simply saying that we lack the perspective, wisdom or knowledge to reconcile the appearance of events with God’s nature and therefore we will believe what God says about His nature above what we see or feel. Just as Job and Joseph had to trust God through severe trials even though their perspective was limited, we have to hold on to what we know is true of God’s nature. In any battle between feelings and faith, faith has to win!

2. Blessing is God’s natural inclination

Psalm 1 shows us a world where God is in total control and His natural inclination is to bless. Blessing doesn’t have to be tied to material prosperity (as the Sermon on the Mount makes clear), but Ps 67 makes it evident that God blesses us in order to be a blessing (see also Gen 12:3) and Romans 8 reminds us of all God’s blessings which will not be thwarted.

3. Taste & see that the Lord is good

Eugene Peterson says that ‘the anticipation of being blessed works changes in us that make us capable of being blessed.’ (‘Answering God’, P 25) As we read God’s Word, a true picture of who God is is revealed to us and our ideas about Him have to come into line with this revelation of Himself as we begin to see that He is a God who wants to bless us and is able to bless us. Our hearts are therefore stirred and encouraged to believe that God is good and we start to put our weight on that truth. We do as Peter has suggested and we taste and see that the Lord is good. We read that ‘God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work’ (2 Cor 9:8) and instead of being filled with fear and foreboding, faith and hope arise in our hearts and we are able to trust in the trials of life.

Numbers 6:22-27 gives us the priestly blessing, which forms the basis of the song ‘Benediction’ (Matt Redman). God is more eager to bless than we are to receive!

Tonight’s sermon continued the series on ‘Everyday Church’ by looking at the topic of God’s benevolence: God is good all the time! Taking Ps 67 as the text, we looked at how the topic of God’s goodness can be hard for us to accept, depending on our temperaments. For the ‘Tiggers’ amongst us, optimists who always see the glass as half-full, this doctrine is perhaps easy to grasp.

But for those of us who are more like Eeyore in temperament, pessimists who struggle to hold onto positive truths about God’s nature, it can be difficult to believe that God is always good and always wanting to do good to His people.

Charlie Cleverly asserts that ‘we have an unassailable future in the benevolent plans of God’ (‘Epiphanies of the Ordinary’ P 130), reflecting Jeremiah’s promise that God’s plan for us are good, giving us hope and a future. (Jer 29:11) God’s goodness is part of who He is (see Ps 119:68, Ps 86:5, Ps 100:5, Ps 106:1, Ps 107:1, Ps 118:29, repeated throughout Ps 136 & Ps 135:3)and results in Him doing good to us (see Ps 84:11, Ps 85:12, Ps 103:5, Ps 104:28, Ps 107:9, Ps 116:7, Ps 145:9, James 1:17, 1 Pet 2:3).

One word in Hebrew which reflects God’s goodness is chesed. It appears over 250 times in the Old Testament and is translated by many different English words (loving-kindness or unfailing love or mercy, for example – see Is 54:10). The prevalence of these references in the Old Testament reflect the fact that God does not change (Mal 3:6) and His loving-kindness and goodness towards mankind are as evident in the Old Testament as they are in the New. God is good and we can build our lives on this fact, even when we face difficult circumstances and trials.

Mark continued his series on Joseph this morning, looking at Gen 41:55-57 and then also looking at Gen 42:1-6. We left Joseph with a new name (Zaphenath-Paneah), a wife and two sons whose names (Manasseh & Ephraim) reflected the fact that he had not forgotten God, despite spending so many years as a slave or in prison. Now he is elevated to the position of second-in-command to Pharaoh and is in charge of food distribution during the seven years of famine. All who came to Pharaoh for help were directed to Joseph, showing the importance he held in the country. (Gen 41:55)

Joseph was in this position of responsibility because Pharaoh had seen the faithfulness of God in bringing about the fulfilment of the interpretation of his dream through Joseph. At times of crisis, people need to be able to turn to God’s people because they recognise God’s power and faithfulness through our lives. Our lives are fashioned in the furnace of adversity and testing. Joseph was by now at least forty years old. He had been waiting for the fulfilment of his dream for well over twenty years. We do not know if he was still hoping and praying for the dream to be fulfilled, but we know he was working faithfully in the place in which God had placed him and was still loyal to his God. It was a time of great famine, not only in Egypt but all over the world, but Joseph was able to help those in need because of his close walk with God.

At the beginning of Gen 42, the story shifts back to Joseph’s family. They too were affected by the famine, and so came to Egypt to look for grain. God was moving all the pieces of His plan into place. In Gen 42:6 we read one of the most poignant verses in this narrative: ‘So when Joseph’s brothers arrived, they bowed down to him with their faces to the ground.’ How Joseph must have remembered the dream (Gen 37:6-11) at this point. Truly nothing had been able to stop God’s plan or separate him from God’s love. (see Rom 8:35-39) We need to hold on to the dreams God has placed in our hearts, for when the time is right, God is able to bring all things to pass. He is Sovereign over all.

Last night we had a ‘Churches Together’ meeting at the Salvation Army. The theme looked at ‘Getting out of the Boat’, with Alison, Amy-Joy & Shaun being involved in a sketch illustrating Matt 14:27-32.

Peter as a fisherman was used to rough seas and bad weather, but it took courage and faith to step out of the boat to walk to Jesus. When he lost focus on Jesus and focussed on the waves, he was afraid and started to sink, but no matter how fierce the storms are, Jesus is with us. He challenges us to leave the comfort of our boats and get out onto the water, secure that He is with us and able to help us to do so much more in Goldthorpe than if we remain in our own safety zone.

The boat/ holiday theme was continued with activities: writing postcards to people offering messages of hope:

… and making boats to sail in our own mini-lake!

We also had testimonies of what God is doing in different churches, including updates about the food bank at the Salvation Army, where two food banks are run on Mondays, one for referrals (with food provided centrally) and one by the church itself (supported by other local churches.) It was exciting to hear that Bibles are being distributed along with food, spiritual hunger being met as well as physical hunger.

The next ‘Churches Together’ meeting will be held later this year, hopefully at the parish church. Watch this space for further details!

During our visit to Ireland, we visited the House of Waterford Crystal and enjoyed a factory tour learning about how crystal is made. The process is fascinating, time-consuming and involves furnaces functioning at 1300 degrees celsius! Moulds are carved by hand from beech and pear wood:

The moulds are used to shape crystal and the master blowers (who train for five years and have to go on to study even further if they are to be allowed to do all the other jobs in the factory) transform glowing balls of molten crystal into elegant shapes:

Blowing the glass:

There are six stages of production, which include taking the edges off the glass:

Then lines are drawn on the glass to show the engravers where to cut:

Engravers then cut along these marks:

Some of the finished pieces were stunning:

The whole process of making the crystal glasses, vases and other objects is time-consuming and done by hand. The use of furnaces is mentioned many times in the Bible: Proverbs 17:3 says ‘The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests the heart.’  God says His refining is done through the ‘furnace of affliction’ (Is 48:10); the furnace is sometimes used as a metaphor for hell (see Matt 13:42-50, for example). At Waterford, there are no ‘seconds’, for if a piece is failed at any of the six stages of inspection, the glass is simply broken and thrown back into the furnace to start again. Similarly, God is able to take all our ‘broken, shattered pieces’ and make of them something more beautiful than we could ever imagine. (‘Long Live the King’, Aaron Shust) The time and painstaking care which goes into every piece of Waterford crystal is nothing compared to the work God is doing in each one of us, creating unique testimonies to His grace and power which cannot be valued in earthly currencies at all. Let’s be grateful for the work of the Almighty in each one of us!

The next ‘Churches Together’ meeting will be held tonight (Saturday 19th July) at 7 p.m. at the Salvation Army church on Straight Lane. Come along for joint worship, prayer, fellowship and fun! It’s always good to realise that God is bigger than our individual church and that there can be many expressions of worship and different ways to learn. Meetings this year have been really interesting and useful and there is a real sense of God working through all of us who belong to His family in Goldthorpe and nearby villages. Come along if you can!