Last night instead of just holding the prayer meeting inside the church building, we went out to walk the streets of Goldthorpe. This month, we are praying particularly about regeneration in the area, including economic regeneration, so we concentrated on praying for local businesses and also prayed on the barren wastelands which have been earmarked by Barnsley M.B.C. as the site for the new primary school.

Goldthorpe has an industrial estate on Commercial Road, constructed between 1977 and 1994, made up of a detached industrial unit benefitting from its own secure yard and parking area. It houses a number of businesss, including Speed Frame, Home Choose Blinds, Sea Scooter UK Ltd, a firm dealing with hydroponics and other businesses. At the far end of the area, the supermarket Aldi is building a distribution centre. All of these businesses can help bring economic prosperity to the area and provide job opportunities for local people. Other industrial areas are found in different parts of the town and there are many local shops and businesses (lots of take-aways were open at night!) which need our prayers. We prayed for God’s blessing on these businesses and for employers and employees to work honestly and to know the presence of God in the area.

Goldthorpe Industrial Estate

Two verses have particularly come to mind whenever we pray for the area to flourish economically and spiritually. The first is Isaiah 58:12 TNIV (“Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.”) and the second Isaiah 43:18-19 TNIV (“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”) Parts of Goldthorpe still look like the wilderness or the wasteland: derelict buildings, graffiti on buildings, vandalism and overgrown areas of weeds, untended and uncared for. But as we pray, we are looking for God to move in this area and to bring forth new life, economically and spiritually. We believe that God has good plans for this place and we long to see hope manifested in every aspect of our community’s life.

An analogy is a comparison made to show a similarity. It’s a useful means of helping us to see something in a different light. It’s not the whole picture, but it can often shed light on it or help us to perceive something differently.

In my musings on God’s sovereignty as I watch Him unfold His plans in my life, I have thought of various analogies. These are limited, but in trying to fathom God’s ways, there will always be limitations!

The analogy of a tapestry has always been helpful to me.

Here, I see God weaving together His story with our lives becoming part of that picture. Often, it feels like I can only see the ‘wrong side’ of the tapestry, with all its knots and crossed threads, but on the right side, all is beautiful and picturesque.

Or I think of the analogy of a game of chess.

Here, in this game of strategy, God is moving all the pieces according to a masterplan which often seems baffling to the uninitiated. Then, several moves down the line, all becomes clear. I can’t think far enough ahead to appreciate chess properly and in the same way, I’m often locked into the ‘now’, failing to see how having to wait or how this current ‘disaster’ (whatever it may be), can actually bring good. Joseph is the story I come back to when I think of this analogy. His life shows me purpose even though this is usually only visible with hindsight.

Another analogy is that of a jigsaw puzzle.

Again, the idea of a finished picture, broken into oddly shaped fragments so that it’s not clear where the pieces fit into the overall picture, is the theme of this analogy. Life often seems to me like a jigsaw puzzle where we’ve lost the picture on the lid and don’t even know what the picture’s supposed to look like!

Then there are puzzles like Rubik’s cubes, which require mathematical skills I definitely don’t possess! My son can do these with such speed that I’m baffled, but he tells me it’s all about patterns and seeing the bigger picture.

He can see several steps ahead so that the mishmash of colours doesn’t put him off, because he knows exactly where to move these to end up with each face having its own colour.

All these analogies remind us that:
1) God knows the end from the beginning. He can see the final picture, the finished cube! Often, we can’t. It requires faith to believe that life isn’t just a pile of jigsaw pieces or a messed-up Rubik’s cube. Many today believe that life is just random chance and has no meaning. Christianity teaches that God has a plan for each one of us which belongs to His great master plan and that He is working all things together for good.

2) God is the master strategist. He can think so far ahead, it blows our mind! He loved us and chose us before the creation of the world. Salvation was no afterthought. The devil thought that the crucifixion was the end of God’s plan, but this was actually woven into the tapestry from the start! (see Acts 2:23 TNIV)

3) God’s will and plans will not be thwarted. It often looks as though things are not going the right way, in the same way that when I watch my son do a Rubik’s cube, his actions seem random and frankly meaningless. Then, with a few swift movements, the puzzle is solved and I’m in awe. I often feel that with God. “So that’s what it all meant!” Quite often with jigsaw puzzles, I try to force pieces into place, only to find they don’t. When they are in the right place, they fit. It works a bit like that with us and God. When we try to do His will for Him, the results are disastrous. When He works, everything slots into place and the end results are spectacular.

Just recently, a pupil asked me to give him some examples of French phrases which are used in everyday English, phrases that have crossed the language boundaries, so to speak, and become an accepted part of another language. English is full of these words and phrases: café, for example (the French word means coffee and by association came to mean also the place in which the beverage is drunk), not to mention words from other languages such as sombrero from Spanish, banana from African origin and my personal favourite Schadenfreude, ‘pleasure at another’s misfortune’, even if the meaning is obviously not as pleasant as the sound of the word!

I suggested to the pupil that in order to answer him, we would have to have a tête-à-tête after the lesson (literally head-to-head, this phrase has come to mean a private conversation between two people.) But the phrase which his conversation and recent events triggered in me is actually fait accompli.

Literally, this phrase means an accomplished fact. It’s defined in the English dictionary as ‘something already done and beyond alteration.’ A done deal. Fixed in stone, as it were. Something that has already happened, even if we might not always realise it.

“May it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38) reminds me vividly of this phrase. In a recent sermon Agreeing with God, I talked about how God speaks to us of His sovereign plans and we agree with Him, speaking the ‘Amen’ to His ‘Yes’ and thereby seeing the promise by faith before we can actually see it in this visible world.

Isaiah 25:1 TNIV says “O Lord, You are my God; I will exalt You and praise Your name, for in perfect faithfulness You have done marvellous things, things planned long ago.” God, who dwells outside of time, has plans to prosper us and give us hope and a future (Jer 29:11 TNIV) and works all situations together to make these plans come to pass (Rom 8:28 TNIV). As we agree with God, we come to see that, in ways that don’t negate our free will, we are actually mysteriously participating in a fait accompli – accomplished by God, realised through faith, and definitely worth praising Him for when we actually get to ‘possess by faith what we could not earn’ (Graham Kendrick).

One of the favourite hymns of our church is the old classic ‘I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene.’ Somehow the wonder it conveys never fails to capture us and we love singing this.

Today, I can’t find any other words to express how I feel. I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene. When we actually see answers to prayer, it leaves us astounded and amazed, shaking our heads in wonder. Perhaps we shouldn’t feel so surprised, but there is just something so awe-inspiring about seeing God work personally in ways that are beyond our comprehension and absolutely and definitely beyond our ability!

This has been a year of upheaval and change for many people. We started the year with a month of prayer and fasting, prayer-walking the streets of Goldthorpe. I had no idea how that month would change my life. It just seemed like a good idea at the time!

God’s word to me on 13th January (‘The Journey’) set me on a journey, just like Abraham. It was a word which caused me to re-evaluate my whole life and consider leaving the security and joy of a job I’d treasured for fourteen years, to set off, like the disciples and like Abraham before him, on a journey whose destination was pretty much unknown. That didn’t seem a very sensible or logical thing to do, but I couldn’t shake off the feeling that this was a God-idea, not one of mine. I don’t do radical or change. I’m the kind of person that has to be shaken loose from positions. I was about to discover that God is very capable of shaking!

In April, Mark preached on the ‘Dream Cross Code’ , a sermon that gave new heart to me, for after taking the radical step to resign from my job (and being vastly encouraged by a whole army of friends who didn’t seem to doubt my sanity anywhere near as much as I did!), no one had applied for my job and I was full of questions and doubt. In that sermon, apart from forcibly reminding me that God didn’t need my help to sort out the situation (which was a good thing since I didn’t know anyone else who could do the job!), Mark said that God ‘moves heaven and earth to make His plans for us come to pass.’

I sat and pondered that for a long time. It seemed an almost presumptuous statement to me. I realised that I believed in God’s sovereignty in an academic and totally theoretical way, but wasn’t at all convinced that that applied to me. Did God really care for me enough to move all the pieces of the jigsaw to allow me to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was His idea, not mine? Did I really think that God cared enough to not only provide for me but for the school as well? I always used to love balancing chemical equations at school and I desperately wanted to see God do this in this situation. I hate loose ends; I didn’t feel I could just walk away from the job unless I could rest easy knowing that someone else was doing the stuff that had always been so important to me.

The weeks went by and all other advertised posts were filled. There was no sign of even one applicant for my job. That was a time of great soul-searching and, at times, great doubt for me. I needed every scrap of encouragement from God’s word that I could find. My walls are covered with every one I found: 2 Chron 20:17 TNIV, 2 Cor 1:20 TNIV, Hab 2:3 TNIV. Quotes, song lyrics and Bible verses adorn the walls of my house as daily reminders of God’s faithfulness, but the waiting period still seemed interminable.

And then, during the sixth week of the school holidays, when I was resigned to continuing and wondering when God would ever deliver me (you can see why that song ‘Deliver Me’ became my staple diet during July and August), a lady walked into the building who today has just been appointed to do my job. And I am awed. She is a native French speaker. She is part of the leadership of a local Elim church. She is about my age. She and her husband got married on exactly the same day in the same year that I did.

That last part has just completely blown me away. When God answers prayer, He doesn’t do it by halves! He doesn’t do the kind of ‘bodge job’ I often end up having to do because something comes up that I hadn’t anticipated. He is always totally and utterly prepared, always ready, able to move people all over the world (from Congo to Belgium to Cambridge to London to Barnsley!) to make things work. The God who enabled Sarah and Abraham to have a son after years of infertility, the God who rescued Joseph from prison so that he could work to save the nations from famine, the God who worked in a heathen king, Cyrus, to allow His people back to their own land after exile… that God is working in our lives too. Mark was right. God is still moving the puzzle pieces of our lives around to make His plans come to pass. And when we catch just a glimpse of His answers, we are awed, because not only does He supply, but He puts the icing on the cake, the cherry on top of the bun, the extra bits that maybe weren’t strictly necessary, but boy! do they make it taste good!

I stand amazed. There just aren’t the words to express how I feel. But if He can do this for me, He can surely do it for you. Because, believe me, I’m no one special. But believe me, I really am special as far as God is concerned. And so are you.

‘I Stand Amazed’

Anyone interested in joining the Goldthorpe Community Gospel Choir is invited to attend an open rehearsal on Monday 16th September at 7 p.m. at the Salvation Army Church on Straight Lane.

The prayer meeting this week (Thursday 19th September) will take the form of a prayer walk. We will be praying for local businesses, continuing with the month’s prayer theme of regeneration. We will meet at the church at 7.30 p.m. Don’t forget warm clothes!

Mark had an important announcement to make, which he gave in the form of a letter:
“Hi, everyone,

Pastor Mark Burgin.”

Such decisions are never easy to make and obviously have an impact on Mark and his family and on the church family. Please pray for Mark, Diane and their family; for the church leadership as they meet to pray and discuss this matter; for the church as a whole. God has good plans for us, plans to give us hope and a future, plans that will prosper us and not harm us (Jer 29:11 TNIV). Change can be difficult to embrace, for we often feel threatened by it. This year has been a year of change for the church and God is clearly moving in many ways. Let’s hold on to Him and be confident that He is able to complete every work He has started (see Phil 1:6 TNIV).

Dave spoke tonight from John 6:1-13 TNIV. All four gospels record the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, which happened in spring, just before Passover. Prior to this, Jesus had been involved in healing a paralysed man and He took His disciples away from Jerusalem across the Sea of Galilee. There was no escape from the crowds, however! Jesus could see the crowd gathering and He resolved to feed them, reflecting His previous words that He only ever did what He saw the Father doing.

This moment became a mid-term examination for the disciples! Jesus asked Philip, ‘Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?’, and Philip could see no solution; this was a predicament which had no human solution. We are often like Philip in our responses – looking at things from a logistical point of view or only seeing the lack of money, rather than seeing God’s resources. Then Andrew appeared with a solution that did not seem to be very feasible – he’d found a boy with 5 loaves and 2 fishes, but could not imagine how that would solve the problem. Andrew brought what he found, not thinking it was enough, but actually, all Jesus wanted was what was available. We have to begin with what we do have, rather than worrying about what we don’t have.

When we considered moving to St Mark’s, it seemed an impossible dream, for we only had just over £7,000. We were challenged by God to give all we had (to the last penny) and we did… and found that His provision was sufficient not only to purchase the building but to run it! Jesus was able not only to feed the thousands present but to feed the disciples afterwards! The miracle of multiplication was such that there was a continual supply from Jesus until all were full. In all honesty, we can testify that this is still the case today. This year, we have refurbished the kitchen and toilets, had rewiring work done and have had a new boiler installed – building work totalling about £11,000. Yet as we approach the end of the financial year, we have £1,000 more than when we started the year, despite that expenditure! God is truly lavish in His provision!

Some people rationalise this miracle, arguing that the people simply all shared their food or that they were so inspired by Jesus’s teaching that they did not feel hungry. God is able to do far more than we can imagine, however. When we reach the end of ourselves, God is able to do so much more than we realise. He provides and keeps on providing. We just have to start with what we’ve got and let God do the rest.

We also had a birthday to celebrate: