Stephen continued looking at how we can become more like Christ tonight, focussing on dealing with anxiety. Anxiety – that nagging feeling of uncertainty which is not the same as a specific fear – is like a crippling burden on many people, robbing them of peace and rest. Phil 4:4-7 offers us a pathway away from anxiety, reminding us that we need to rejoice in God and bring our requests to Him. Matt 11:28-30 also shows us how to deal with anxiety, telling us that God offers us rest if we lay down our burdens and accept Christ’s yoke.

The command God gives us is not to be anxious about anything, which may seem a tall order to most of us. We may feel that anxiety is simply part of our personalities or that it is an inevitable part of life. However, though Jesus clearly experienced great sorrow in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matt 26:38-39), He showed us how to deal with anxiety by talking to God about His feelings and praying ‘yet not my will, but Yours be done.’

Prayer and rejoicing are the best ways we deal with anxiety. Jesus gave examples from the world of farming, telling us that His yoke is light and easy. A normal yoke weighed about 70 pounds and was placed on the shoulders of oxen to help them with ploughing. Many of us carry that kind of anxiety around on a daily basis. Imagine having 35 bags of sugar weighing on your shoulders and you can picture the pressure that anxiety brings into people’s lives. We are asked to sow seeds and reap harvests, which we can do only in Christ’s power. As we rejoice, take our troubles to God in prayer and exchange our burdens for Christ’s yoke, He promises us peace which transcends all understanding and rest for our weary souls.

We also had a birthday to celebrate:

As well as looking to develop the actual building in which we meet (an ongoing work which will include roof insulation of the worship room, scheduled to take place at the end of May), we are also well aware that the work the church does is spiritual and involves prayer, worship and witness. At the service tonight, Garry outlined his vision for ongoing prayer for the ministries run by the church: the coffee morning on Saturdays, the Parent ‘n’ Toddler group, the youth work, Sunday School,  the food distribution work,  the badminton outreach, worship and the ministry of the Word.

Prayer coordinators for each of these outreaches and ministries will liaise with those working in these areas and feed back to the church on a regular basis to help inform our prayer for each ministry. These prayer coordinators are:

• Dave Wood – Coffee Morning
• Diane Burgin – Parent ‘n’ Toddler Group
• Mark Burgin – Youth work
• Stacey Chapman – Sunday School
• Mark & Debbie McKeown – Food Distribution work
• Tony & Gillian Burgin – Badminton outreach
• Garry Turner – worship
• Julie Turner  – ministry of the Word

It is easy for activities to continue in isolation, but each of these ministries is part of an integrated whole; every ministry in which church members are involved is vital and important to the overall health of the church. Jesus reminded His disciples ‘remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.’ (John 15:4-5) Not only do we need to remain in Christ in order to be fruitful, we need to know what is happening in these ministries if we are to pray intelligently and with understanding. Every activity and ministry needs to be fuelled by prayer; human effort is not enough to guarantee spiritual fruit. Let’s get behind each one of the ministries of the church through prayer and pray that God will inspire, lead, direct and bring fruit from everything that is done!

Plans to refurbish the community rooms at GPCC were discussed tonight. The leadership is considering a funding application for refurbishing the community room, stage area and children’s room, and ideas and suggestions from all church members and all users of the building are welcomed. The last funding applications (to Coalfields Regeneration Trust) in 2009 saw us receive money for youth equipment and, of course, a substantial grant towards our current building. This time, we are looking to apply to a funding organisation called WREN and perhaps also to CRT again to help us with future developments of the building which will fulfil our aim to provide excellent community facilities available to all.

Ideas suggested so far include:

• new radiators and pipework and decoration in the community room (following our continuing upgrade of the heating system in the building, we need more efficient, touch sensitive radiators to replace the ones which are well over 20 years old in that room)
• waterproof flooring, redecoration and the installation of a sink in the children’s room to allow for ‘messy play’ in that area (which could also be hired out as a smaller meeting room during the week)
• new equipment for the youth group & Parent ‘n’ Toddler group
• development of the stage area, including new lighting and sound system and projector for this area, and the development of the storage area under the stage. This would enable the stage to be used for amateur productions and would also allow this room to be hired out for business meetings and conferences.
• an awning outside the main community room to protect people waiting outside in inclement weather and to give us an outdoor area for community outreach events (for face painting etc.)
• cavity wall insulation to help make the building more energy efficient and to reduce running costs

At this stage, however, the sky’s the limit! We need to dream big in God and listen to His ideas and glimpse His vision for now. Over the next few weeks, everybody using the building will be asked to fill in a consultation form (available in church or by email from julie@gpcchurch.co.uk) to give us their feedback and suggestions.

The Big Birthday Bash community events on 21st and 22nd June will also provide opportunities for the wider public to have their say as to how we can best serve our local community. After all, we believe we are working with God in the local community and with God for the local community and we are keen for everyone to be a part of what God is doing in Goldthorpe.

Mark continued his series on Joseph and his dreams today, looking at Genesis 41. The phrase ‘Who’s the daddy now?’ reminds us of someone’s superiority over us and in this chapter, we finally see Joseph’s fortunes turning as God continues to work His will out in his life.

Joseph at the start of this chapter is still in prison, a full two years after he correctly interpreted the dreams of Pharaoh’s baker and cup-bearer. Now, God has given Pharaoh a dream and he is not happy; he does not understand the dream and is troubled by it. His magicians and wise men cannot help him to understand the dream and it is only at this point that the cup-bearer remembers Joseph. Sometimes it is as if God turns on a light bulb in our heads, causing us to remember things we had previously not considered.

Eccl 3:1 reminds us that there is a time for everything. Now the time was right, in God’s strategy and planning, for Joseph to be released from prison and brought before Pharaoh. When God moves, He often does so with stunning speed. Joseph may well have spent thirteen years wondering when the fulfilment of his dream would ever bring him anything but trouble and strife, but now this was his ‘PPI‘ – his ‘pivotal point incident.’  (See Mark’s sermon from August 2013.) God moved on the people involved in this story so that two completely separate worlds – the world of the richest, most powerful man in Egypt and the world of a forgotten Hebrew slave – were interwoven together.

Joseph’s response to Pharaoh’s demand for clarification is telling: he says that he cannot interpret dreams but God will give Pharaoh an answer. This acknowledgment of the true God (refuting any claim Pharaoh may have made to a divine status) was a dangerous stance to take, but Gen 41:25 shows us that Joseph is confident of God’s sovereignty: ‘God has revealed to Pharaoh what He is about to do.’  This matter has been ‘firmly decided by God’ (Gen 41:32) and there is no escape from what God firmly decides! No power or person can thwart God’s plans, for He is working all things together for good for those who are called according to His purpose. (Rom 8:28)

Pharaoh can clearly see God at work in and through Joseph, calling him ‘a man in whom is the spirit of God.’ (Gen 41:38) God gave him such a revelation that he was able to recognise God in Joseph and thus he was given the chance to obey God himself. We need to understand that God is sovereign over all, in control of every incident in our lives and can move to fulfil His plans with alacrity when the time is right. We need to pray that people will recognise God’s Spirit in us and will acknowledge God as Lord (the true ‘Daddy’ of the universe!), even as we seek to honour God in all we do and say, as Joseph did.

At the end of Romans 8, one of the most confident and reassuring passages in Scripture, Paul says ‘For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Rom 8:38-39)

The new Passion album ‘Take It All’ has a song by Kristian Stanfill called ‘Never Gonna Let Me Go’ which continues this theme:

‘His love breaking through
My heart of stone
Love breathing
To awake my bones
Love reaching out
To save my soul
Love never gonna let me go

Love calling me
As I am
Love making me
New again
Love lifting me
When I can’t
Love never gonna
Let me go

Wherever you’ve been
Whatever you’ve done
Come as you are
Come into His open arms.’

Such truths bring security to our lives.

Tonight’s sermon looked at being rooted and built up in Christ, with reference to Col 2:6-15.

God wants us to start well by faith and to continue by faith. In that sense, growing up spiritually is not the same as growing up naturally, for as parents we teach our children to be independent as a necessary part of the maturing process, but we can never become independent of God. Continuing in Christ means we walk by faith continually and accept His Lordship. We are to be rooted and built up in Him. Jer 17:7-8 and Ps 1:3 remind us of a tree with good roots and the Casting Crowns’ album ‘Thrive’ has a good picture of a tree which digs deep in order to grow tall:

We have to have roots that are firmly established in who Christ is and what He has done for us; we have to be grounded and rooted in His love. Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians was ‘I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.’ (Eph 3:17-19) If we are to be able to withstand the storms and the droughts, we have to be able to rest secure and unshaken on the love of Christ. We need to have a firm foundation with deep roots – the word ‘rooted’ has connections with the idea of stability – but we need also to be growing upwards towards the light.

Being strengthened in faith means to have our faith muscles constantly developed. The amazing thing about muscles is that they have memory and as we apply the things we are taught to our everyday lives, as we take God’s Word and believe it not only for other people, or for the saints in the Bible, or the missionaries of the past, but for ourselves, for now, for our situations, we can move on to bigger things. The more we see God stretch our faith, the more thankful we become when He answers our prayers and demonstrates His reality in our lives. Overflowing with thankfulness is a key sign of maturity (see Eph 5:20, 1 Thess 5:18).

For us to grow up, we have to be aware of the pitfalls which abound. Hollow and deceptive philosophies often sound attractive and plausible, but do not provide lasting satisfaction and fulfilment. Paul reminds us that we have an enemy who wants to seduce us (2 Cor 11:3) and we can only defeat his schemes if we are secure in who Christ is and in what He has done. Col 2:9-15 vividly demonstrate Christ’s deity and the power and efficacy of all He has done on the Cross. Far from being an ignominious defeat, the Cross showed that Satan no longer has any hold on us.

When we realise that we have been given fullness in Christ – in whom all the fulness of the Deity lives in bodily form – our lives can be revolutionised. Our part, then, is to enter into everything that Christ has done for us so that His life in us becomes the growth medium. In Galatians 2:20, Paul says ‘I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’ This is the secret to real growth in God: it’s not our life, but Christ’s life living in us, a life lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave Himself for us, a complete identification with Him brought about by the fact that ‘Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it.’ (Gal 2:20, The Message)