Steve and Katuska have sent the following update from Mozambique:

‘We’re getting ready for the school Christmas talent show: the boys are practising In the Bleak Midwinter, singing in time to the rhythmical creaking of our ceiling fan, on a regular sunny afternoon, in temperatures of 36 Centigrade. They’ve just collapsed into fits of laughter and decided to try Good King Wenceslas instead.
Our patch of suburban Maputo is a sandy rectangle with the school on one half and the housing on the other. A dry wind blows across it most days, and thunderstorms sometimes batter it at night. There are coconut palms, lemon and mango trees and hopeful attempts to grow grass. We live some way from the city centre, but the alternative would be impossibly high rents, traffic pollution and noise; OMS and the school moved out here two years ago, and overall it was a good decision.

We’re pleased to detect that we’re all making some progress in Portuguese, including the boys, who have it in their school timetable. Mozambicans are very forgiving, and we can get the subjunctive tenses all tangled up and still be understood, but we do have a very hard time making phone calls. We’ve had some opportunities to preach already; and we can be called on at a moment’s notice to take some part in a service, so we have to be wide awake for the whole two hours or more.

In our prayers we give thanks for you and for your partnership in the gospel. We do look out eagerly for news from home, so any updates are always gratefully received. When you remember us in prayer, please pray for:
* safety on the roads, which can be very dangerous;
* for security generally in Mozambique, as the political situation feels very tense;
* for our work as we both prepare to teach at the seminary in the New Year.’

Tonight’s sermon was from Hebrews 3:7-19 TNIV and offer us four key reminders to making spiritual progress.

Listen to God
The first step in making spiritual progress is to hear God’s voice. Every work that has a lasting impact has its origins in God. We will only achieve lasting, eternal significance if we first of all listen to God. So often, we are full of good ideas and want to be doing things – often good things – but for us to do works that will have eternal significance, those works must have their origins in God rather than in our own good ideas. ‘You reveal and we respond.’ (‘King of Wonders’, Matt Redman et al). The only principle that works in the kingdom of God is this one of God initiating and us hearing His voice and responding to it. That’s why prayer and worship have to be fundamental to everything a church does; social action flows from this listening to God’s heart and responding to Him. Acts 13:1-3 TNIV shows us what can happen when people hear God: the missionary work of Paul and Barnabas flowed from the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to the church. God can speak in a loud voice or in a gentle whisper (1 Kings 19:11-12 TNIV), but the key thing about hearing the Shepherd’s voice (John 10:4 TNIV) is listening! Listening to God is not always easy; discerning His voice from the many which clamour for our attention is not easy. But hearing God speak to us will always revolutionise who we are and what we do.

Believe
Hearing God’s voice is only the first step to spiritual progress. The next step is to believe what He says and then to act on it: ‘When you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness.’ (Heb 3:7-8 TNIV) When God speaks, we have a choice. We can believe what He says or we can look at things with our natural eyes and doubt His motives and His ability. This recurring phrase about not hardening our hearts refers back to the wilderness wanderings of Israel, when, despite God’s miraculous deliverance from Egypt and miraculous provision of manna, water and resources in the desert, reacted predominantly with doubt and unbelief. Hardening your heart does not happen ‘accidentally.’ We always have a choice set before us: to believe (and act on) what God has said or to listen to our own doubts, the doubts of other people, or the voice of the enemy. The question is not so much ‘to be, or not to be’ (in the words of William Shakespeare), but ‘to believe or not to believe’! It is our response to that question which will determine our spiritual progress. James reminds us, ‘Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.’ (James 1:22 TNIV).

Encourage
The next step for us to take if we are to avoid a hardening of our hearts is to learn the daily value of encouragement. ‘But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today’, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.’ (Heb 3:13 TNIV) Encouragement is the method we can use to ensure we keep on believing God, rather than falling into the trap of hard hearts. On our own, we are likely to falter. We are likely to shrink back and give up. Charlie Cleverly says ‘encouragement is the oxygen that keeps us running through the challenges life presents.’

Numbers 13 and 14 show us the two reactions we can have to the same situation. Most of the spies did not believe God could deliver the land to His people and their discouragement was pervasive. Only Joshua and Caleb believed God was mighty enough to do what He had promised. Discouragement is contagious, but faith and encouragement can also spread like wildfire! When we believe, we can encourage others to believe. The writer to the Hebrews says, ‘we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.’ (Heb 10:39 TNIV) We are told to ‘encourage one another’ (Heb 10:25 TNIV) and to ‘consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.’ (Heb 10:24 TNIV) Encouragement literally means ‘to give courage to‘. There will be many times on the journey of life when we need encouragement. That is why God has put us in a body, in a family; why we are not meant to go it alone all the time.

Hold Firm
The final step to making progress is to hold firm to the end. We hear God, believe Him, holding on to His promises even if we cannot see how they can actually be worked out. We encourage others to hold on. But the last step that is required is often the hardest for us to do. We have to hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. We have to persevere. We have to keep on believing. We have to keep on praying. We have to keep on working. We must not give up. Hebrews 10:36 TNIV says ‘You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.’ (see also James 1:12 TNIV). Don’t allow the difficulties and trials we are currently experiencing to overshadow the hope we have of what God can and will achieve if we do persevere. Paul urges us to keep our eyes on the end goal (see 2 Corinthians 4:8-18 TNIV and Gal 6:9 TNIV.)

Kevin spoke from Luke 18:35-43 TNIV this morning. The last time he spoke was on the healing of the ten lepers in Luke 17:11-19, but this time we looked at the healing of the blind beggar. There are common themes of mercy and praise in both stories.

We are not told if the blind man required assistance to arrive at his regular place of begging or not, but this was clearly his ordinary way of living. An encounter with Jesus was about to change all that. Any encounter we have with Jesus will change us and we are hungry for more, no matter what we have already experienced.

Clearly, the blind man, when hearing all the commotion and being told that it was because of Jesus of Nazareth, had heard something of this man already, for he addressed Him as ‘Jesus, Son of David’. One commentary reminds us that he was blind and could do nothing to improve his situation. He recognised, however, that the Messiah could do something about him and therefore begged Him for mercy – a change to his normal begging for money and food! He was desperate to catch the ear of Jesus, but was rebuked by people for making such a noise. We need to be people who point others in the right direction and who are not stumbling-blocks. In effect, these people were telling the blind man to ‘sit down and shut up’, but his persistence paid off.

In ice hockey, a play who fouls another is sent to the ‘sin bin’ (a penalty box where a player sits to serve the time of a given penalty, for an offence not severe enough to merit outright expulsion from the contest.) Quite often he will deny any knowledge of the offence and will complain about the punishment until he is told to ‘sit down and shut up!’ If we want something from God, however, we need to overcome opposition that tells us to sit down and shut up and we need to persist in approaching God.

Jesus asked the man ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ (Luke 18:40 TNIV) This profound question cuts through our materialistic longings and reminds us that God is eager to pour out His blessings on us. He is so generous that He frequently asks us this question. The man’s response (‘Lord, I want to see’) shows us that we can be honest with Jesus and articulate to Him all the deepest longings of our hearts. Years of begging were brought to an end by the healing Jesus brought to the man. He received his sight instantly and praised God for this healing, causing others to praise God too. He was no longer a beggar, but was now a follower who opened his heart to the One who had opened his eyes.

When God works in our lives personally, it evokes praise in us. We need to be a thankful people whose response to God’s working in our lives is to stand up and praise!

As you know, Garry and I were in London last weekend at the Worship Central Conference. Podcasts of the talks and workshops are available to watch and listen to here. So, if you would like to hear some of the teaching or want to know more about the kind of things that happened, you can listen and learn from these free podcasts.

Tonight’s Bible study looked at just 2 verses: 1 John 1:5-6 TNIV. Here, we looked at the fact that the message John passed on was one he had heard directly from Jesus and therefore the message he declared was truth and needs to be heeded. That message declares the basic truth that God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all.

John makes other ‘God is…’ statements (John 4:24 TNIV declares that God is Spirit and 1 John 4:8 TNIV declares that God is love.) These are all statements of the absolute nature of God. In the Old Testament, light is seen in creation (Gen 1:3 TNIV); it is seen in the burning lamp which passed between the piece of the parted victim in God’s covenant with Abraham (Gen 15:17 TNIV) and God went before Israel in a pillar of fire in the wilderness wanderings (Ex 13:21 TNIV). Another instance is when God descended in fire upon Sinai (Exodus 19). John often uses both positive and negative statements to make a point: in this instance, contrasting light with darkness (which is, after all, the absence of light) – see John 1:7–8 TNIV, John 3:18 TNIV, John 10:28 TNIV , 1 John 2:24 TNIV, 1 John 5:12 TNIV for other examples of this. Clearly, if God is light, there can be no darkness in Him.

Jesus referred to Himself as the Light of the world (see John 1:1-5 TNIV, John 8:12 TNIV, John 9:5 TNIV, John 12:35-36 TNIV). In doing so, He is implying deity with God. However, He also referred to His disciples as the light of the world (Matt 5:14 TNIV). Here, the ‘you’ is plural, but the ‘light’ is singular, indicating that it is the church in a collective sense which is the light of Christ now that Christ is no longer on the earth. We are Christ’s ambassadors or representatives on earth and must reflect His nature in all that we are and do. Since He is light, we must also be light!

This has definite repercussions for how we live! Our walk must match our talk. If we are claiming that fellowship with God which we discussed last time – an intimate communion, a close association – then we must reflect God. For us to walk in darkness is to be living a lie (as the Message version puts it, ‘we’re obviously lying through our teeth–we’re not living what we claim.’) That does not mean we must live hermits’ lives in isolation, eschewing all contact with non-Christians (or how can they hear the message of salvation?), but it does mean that we have to be careful about how we live (see 2 Cor 6:14-16 TNIV). Quite how we manage to live dual lives – claiming fellowship with God but still sinning – is often a mystery to us, but it’s clearly possible! David’s affair with Bathsheba is one example of how easily we can be led astray from God and not even realise it. We need to ask God to search us and shine His light into every area of our lives so that we can reflect His light to a world in darkness.

To my immense joy, two of my former pupils bought me a book by Eugene Peterson entitled ‘The Pastor’ as a leaving present. (In fairness, I was inundated with presents which was truly very touching, with pupils, staff and parents being incredibly generous and very thoughtful in the things they bought. I’m awkward to buy for since I don’t eat chocolates and don’t much like wine, either, the staple diet for teachers’ presents!) In the book, which describes his life as a pastor, Peterson describes his childhood and how each of life’s experiences became a training ground for his adult calling. He talks about his mother’s influence on him as she taught him Bible stories and songs and how that taught him ‘the way we learn something is more influential than the something that we learn. No content comes into our lives free-floating: it is always embedded in a form of some kind. For the basic and integrative realities of God and faith, the forms must also be basic and integrative. If they are not, the truths themselves will be peripheral and unassimilated.” (Eugene Peterson, ‘The Pastor’, P 33)

Story and song… the staple ‘forms’ in which Bible truths are assimilated. I am a huge fan of the power of story. I have always loved reading and am an avid fiction fan. Stories were one of the primary methods that Jesus used to teach Biblical truth. The parables were not deep theological studies; they were stories which used everyday happenings to illustrate a deeper truth. Stories engage our imaginations and help us to enter into both familiar and unfamiliar worlds. We immerse ourselves in emotions, events and experiences when we read fiction which opens up the world and allows us to participate in something far bigger than anything we could experience on our own. “A good novelist enables us to feel someone else’s life and care about it,” Neil Hudson said.

As one of my other leaving presents, I received some vouchers to spend at W.H. Smith’s and I eagerly bought a number of books there. One of these books was ‘Just One Evil Act’ by Elizabeth George, an author I really admire because she writes detective fiction which is actually far more about life choices and character than it is simply about crime. Her novels are elegantly written, delving into a number of worlds (the lead detective is from the English aristocracy, his detective sergeant is from a much lower social class and is hopelessly inept when it comes to fashion or love, her neighbour draws us into the world of Islam and microbiology and key friends draw us into the world of forensic science, photography and the agonies of childlessness), with intricately plotted storylines and a whole host of believable characters. The real reason I love this series, however, is because the novels are about much more than the crimes. They dig deep into the human heart, looking at questions of motivation, what drives us to act as we do, and they explore both the duplicity of the heart and the way justice and mercy live side by side in the real world.

In this latest novel, the key theme is how ‘just one evil act’ leads to many others; how action always begins with a simple choice, but how that choice rarely seems simple to us. Sir Walter Scott wrote ‘oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive’ and this theme of mixed motivation – often good motivation – leading to wrong choices and therefore to evil actions is superbly explored through the storyline. The book begins with a quotation from ‘The Merchant of Venice’:

“The world is still deceived with ornament.
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt
But, season’d with a gracious voice,
Obscures the show of evil?”

I was reminded very much of the story of David and Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:1-27 TNIV) as I read the novel. Here, one moment of lustful thought led David to one sinful act, but that act then led to many other sinful acts: first of all, the actual adultery, but then the manipulation of both Bathsheba and Uriah (and Joab, to some extent) and the conniving to murder. Perhaps we should not be surprised that it took a simple story from Nathan to pierce David’s heart, for he apparently had no trouble living with himself despite his sinful choices. It was only when an innocent, innocuous story pierced through his complacency that he came to see his actions as God saw them and could therefore be led to repentance.

The novel shows us that every choice matters. There is no such thing as a choice made in a moral vacuum, for we do not live in a moral vacuum. Once more, the plot is not the whole story and it is this potential to keep digging into character, motivation and language which keeps me fascinated by story.

(Now just don’t get me started on song…!)