Garry spoke this morning from 2 Peter 1:3-8, looking at how God’s plan is for us to be productive. Gal 5:22-24 lists the fruit of the Spirit which God wants to develop in our characters. For this fruit to grow, however, we have to crucify the old nature, which is never a pleasant process! Jesus is the Gardener (John 15:1-8) and leaves have to be lifted out of the shadows into the light for us to be able to grow more. We have to work in partnership with God. All things can be used, but we need to learn the lessons or we keep coming back to the same things! God even uses suffering to help us to grow (and if Jesus learned obedience through what he suffered, as we read in Heb 5:7-8, we will certainly have to learn this way too!)

There is often pain involved with our growth, for the scalpel hurts just as much as the dagger, but we have to remember that there is a different intent behind the hand which wields these implements. God’s intention, even when He cuts us, is to heal us. ‘Sometimes all we have to hold onto is what we know is true of who You are,’ Kutless sing (‘Even If’) and we have to learn to trust God even when everything around us feels like no good can come from it! (Job 13:15, Matt 27:46) We always have to remember ‘there’s an aim behind the pain.’

The church is God’s idea and needs to be involved in worship, in encouraging itself and in reaching out to the world. We need church to be:

1) A safe place, where we care for each other and look out for each other. (1 Cor 12:21-26). God wants us to encourage and build each other up (1 Thess 5:11), giving support and comfort to each other so that we can encourage the disheartened and help the weak. (1 Thess 5:13-18). This means, however, that we need to really know each other and let down our guards enough to allow others to see our weaknesses. Then we can come alongside each other to strengthen and support, rather like the trellis put up to help runner beans grow:

2) A place of demonstration, where we set examples to each other (1 Cor 11:1) so that we demonstrate how to handle life’s difficulties and messiness. Bill Lane, who was a mentor to Michael Card, told him when he was diagnosed with cancer ‘I have shown you how a Christian lives; now I will show you how a Christian dies.’ We need people to be an example to us of how the Christian life works in the everyday, and we need to set that example to others too.

3) A place to learn and grow, where we can be involved in activities together. Jesus modelled how to disciple others, by urging His disciples to come and watch Him, then allowing them to work alongside Him and finally sending them out to do it themselves. We need to have the freedom to fail, for no one gets it right all the time, and we need the ongoing challenge to grow. Church is where we practise what God wants and the world is where we produce. No one is excluded, for we all have a role to play. To be productive, we need to be part of a church, engaged with the family of God.

Unity is a great thing and we are thankful to be able to work with different churches in our local area. Tonight, we all met at the Salvation Army church in Goldthorpe for the first ‘Churches Together’ meeting of 2014. It was great to worship and pray together and to engage in activities which demonstrated unity, such as making bookmarks out of different threads and linking chains to show how the local churches are committed to one another.

After the meeting, we enjoyed cakes and buns and fellowship as we chatted together.

The next ‘Churches Together’ will be on Saturday 29th March at 6 p.m. at Goldthorpe Pentecostal Community Church, so we hope this will be another opportunity to pray and praise together!

Talking to yourself outloud has often been interpreted as the first sign of madness and we may feel uncomfortable about the whole topic of talking to ourselves. It’s far more likely there is an internal conversation going on within us; sometimes we’re not really even aware of this, since it functions on a subconscious level. But whether we realise it or not, quite often we are talking to ourselves regularly, reminding ourselves to do things, chiding ourselves when we forget something, rebuking, encouraging and chivvying ourselves into action.

Perhaps it is good, however, to move these conversations from the subconscious level to the conscious level, for Lam 3:24 says ‘I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.”’ There are times when it is good and helpful to talk to ourselves, to remind ourselves of God’s promises, even to speak these words outloud. As we saw in the previous post, there is power in God’s Word to banish darkness, allowing truth to take a hold in our lives. Today, if we’re talking to ourselves, let’s make sure we’re talking truth!

There are times when life seems serene and calm and everything is going smoothly; there are also times when life seems like battling in a raging storm when you can barely stand up, let alone move forward. Winds and floods have battered the UK over recent months and in the winds just before Christmas, my husband said he had actually struggled to keep standing as he walked from one building at work to another because he was effectively caught in a ‘wind tunnel’ at that point.

When we are in those times of battle – which can be invisible to other people and almost inexplicable even to our own hearts – it is very difficult to hold on, let alone find weapons of victory. But God has promised that no weapon forged against us will prevail (Is 54:17) and has actually given us spiritual weapons with which to fight back (Eph 6:11-17). One of those weapons is called ‘the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.’ The power contained in God’s word, when released into our lives, not only sets us free but enables us to stand, even in the fiercest storms. Recently, I read this in a friend’s blog (reproduced with her permission):

‘His Gr…‘ You clear your throat. These words are important, but as you speak, the darkness grows heavier and the silence grows louder, overwhelming your thoughts and intercepting your words. You are fighting back the darkness, and you have only these few short words.

‘His Grace is sufficient.‘ A break in the silence. ‘And His power…‘ It is too much, the darkness is getting heavier, overwhelming and overtaking you.  But you have to speak. The only way to get rid of the darkness is to bring in the light. You try again.

‘His Grace is sufficient. And His power is made perfect in weakness.’ As the words are released into the silence, something breaks through the darkness. A light. Dim, at first, but growing brighter with every word. You look around you, but the light is not there. And yet the darkness is retreating. You glance down. The light, it is coming from inside of you. It is radiating its bright yellow-white rays from your heart. And as you speak words of truth, it glows brighter still.

‘There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’ The light burns brighter.
‘In all things, God works for the good of those who love Him.’ The darkness is retreating.
‘He who began a good work in me will carry it on to completion.‘ The heaviness is dissipating.
‘I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.‘ The air clears.
‘He who is in me is greater than He who is in the world.‘ The light bursts forth from within you, and suddenly, there is no longer any darkness. You are bathed in glorious light. Radiating from within, it is shining its truth over you, eclipsing the darkness which had threatened to overwhelm. You are free from the heaviness, the oppression, the battles, the lies, the hurts. The light has overcome that which you could not.

‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it’ – John 1:5

Since I worked for many years as a French teacher, the subject of languages is one very dear to my heart and I have always been interested in Bible translation. As Stephen highlighted last night, it is not always easy to understand how or why certain phrases are translated as they are in our Bibles. Literal, word-for-word translations often don’t help us much in understanding what God is actually saying to us, because languages are constructed in different ways. Word order, verb endings, pronouns and all the other grammatical functions which help us to analyse and understand languages tend to vary from one language to the next and so it is important to be clear about these things when we are reading the different versions of the Bible available to us. There are a number of key things translators have to look for when translating: as the preface to the widely used New International Version of the Bible says, ‘The first concern of the translators has continued to be the accuracy of the translation and its faithfulness to the intended meaning of the biblical writers. This has moved the translators to go beyond a formal word-for-word rendering of the original texts. Because thought patterns and syntax differ from language to language, accurate communication of the meaning of the biblical authors demands constant regard for varied contextual uses of words and idioms and for frequent modifications in sentence structures.’

Organisations such as Bible Society and Wycliffe Bible Translators work tirelessly to translate the Bible into languages for people who have never had the privilege of reading God’s Word in their mother tongue. Wycliffe calculate that there are approximately 7 billion people alive today, speaking almost 7,000 languages. Almost 2,000 of these languages do not have the Bible yet, with only 513 language groups having access to the entire Bible in the language they understand best. Those of us who own many different versions of the Bible in English are privileged people who can study and learn from God’s Word in the privacy of our own homes as well as when we attend church. Those of us who have the honour of teaching God’s Word need to remember Paul’s injunction to Timothy: ‘ Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.’ (2 Tim 2:15) All of us need to be aware of how easily misunderstandings can occur as we seek to dig deep into a book whose context, history and culture have to be taken into account as we read. Nonetheless, this remains a living word (Heb 4:12) through which God speaks to us each day if we have ears to hear..

Stephen spoke on the subject of knowing God’s will last night. This can be difficult for us to discern at times; understanding the language of the Bible (since the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek) makes this even harder to understand, since translation can cause issues of misunderstanding at times. There are two main Greek words translated  by the noun ‘will’ in the New Testament: boulema & thelema. The former (used in Rom 9:19, for example) speaks of God’s plan or intention which cannot be thwarted. In Gen 1:3, God speaks His will into being and nothing can stop this! The perceptive will of God (thelema) can be resisted by people, however, for we have free will. It is God’s will that we do not sin, for example, but there are times when we do sin and are clearly not following God’s will on those occasions.

Sometimes we speak also of God’s general will and His specific will. His general will encompasses all that we know God wants: for  us to do good (1 Pet 2:15), for us to give thanks (1 Thess 5:18), for example. Jesus is our perfect example of doing the Father’s will (John 4:34, John 6:38), demonstrating in the Garden of Gethsemane His complete humility and surrender to God’s will (Matt 26:39). Knowing God’s will for our own everyday lives is critical also, however. Col 1:9-14 records Paul’s prayer that the Colossians might be filled with the knowledge of God’s will so that they can live lives worthy of the Lord. Understanding God’s will (see Eph 5:10) is paramount for our lives; we need to be open and receptive to God’s will and ready to receive from him. As we make Ps 143:10 our prayer, we can be encouraged that God’s Spirit (who will lead us in all matters) dwells in us and will enable us to grow in patience, endurance and thanksgiving. Then we will be able to stand firm in the will of God, being mature and fully assured. (Col 4:12)