When I first became a Christian, one of the key verses that seemed to be everywhere (song, sermon etc.) was Isaiah 60:1 TNIV: “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.” Another popular verse was Isaiah 52:1 TNIV: “Awake, awake, Zion, clothe yourself with strength!” The idea of rising up, waking up and proclaiming God’s kingdom was very dominant in the late 1980s.

Such truths are timeless, of course, so it is interesting to hear new songs being written on these same themes. Chris Tomlin’s ‘Awake, my Soul’ owes more to Ezekiel 37 than to Isaiah, but still has the chorus ‘Awake, awake, awake, my soul’. His ‘Awakening’ also uses this theme of our souls awakening to all God is doing. More recently, I learnt Luke Hellebronth’s song ‘Stand Up’, which again alludes to 2 Chronicles 20:12, 17 TNIV, Psalm 31 and Romans 8:31 TNIV in addition to urging us to stand up and see the king.

“With history behind us
And destiny before us
Every heart is bowed down.

Stand up, everybody, stand up!
Come on, lift your eyes up.
See the king!
Our God, such a mighty fortress,
You are with us, for us,
Jesus our King.” (‘Stand Up’, Luke Hellebronth)

Back in the days long ago when I studied chemistry, I can remember learning about saturated solutions. A saturated solution has reached the point at which a solution of the substance can dissolve no more of that substance and additional amounts of it will appear as a separate phase (as a precipitate). Saturation – from the Latin saturare, to fill – means that no more water can be absorbed. It’s completely soggy, wet through, dripping with liquid.

Somehow, that image reminds me of Jesus’s words in Luke 6:38 TNIV: “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” God is capable of saturating us so that there is an overflow. And as we learn to receive from Him, so we must learn to give to others, so that this ‘good measure’ can be passed on, and then, in ways that we don’t fully understand, God gives back to us. Far from being a dry, wrung-out cloth that is stiff and inflexible, we are like a moist sponge. When squeezed by life, what comes out is the living water God has poured in to us! We give to others from the overflow of our hearts, which will always reflect what is in our hearts.

As we have recently experienced lots of rain again and probably face months of unsettled weather, let’s remember that when God rains on us, it helps us to be fruitful and let’s pour out all that He gives us into lives of generous service.

Al Gordon led an interesting seminar at Worship Central entitled ‘Do the maths!’ Despite not wanting to do any maths at all (!), it was a useful way of looking at the busyness of our lives and allowing God to speak into our schedules.

He started with the number 1, reminding us that we only have one life to live and need God’s help if we are to live well.

Then he looked at the addition sign:

What do we need to add in to our lives to improve them? We might need to make more time for prayer, but it could also be that we need to spend more time with our families and friends or need to add in something just for ourselves that will help us to relax or grow fitter.

Next was the subtraction sign:

Sometimes we need to remove things from our lives. This doesn’t just apply to bad habits or sinful practices (though obviously these need our attention!) Sometimes we have allowed ourselves to say ‘yes’ to too many things and are overloaded in a way that God never intended. It is difficult to be ruthless with our time, but since we cannot change the number of hours in a day, what we need to look at is how we actually occupy our time. Sometimes we fritter time away (watching TV, on the Internet, on mobile phones etc.) and we may need to have more discipline in our lives to focus on God more.

Next came multiplication:

What is God already blessing in our lives? Where are the highlights? Perhaps we need more of these things! In gold mining, once the seam of gold had been discovered, this needed to be mined in order to gain the maximum yield of gold.

The next step was the percentage symbol:

Often, what distinguishes one person from another is how they manage their time. Those involved in leadership often give time for themselves, but Christians often feel guilty if they do this. We need to look at how we spend our time and what percentage of time we give to each activity.

Then we looked at division:

Jesus wants us to ‘give away’ things – not just belongings, but often we can ‘give away’ some of the jobs we do so that other people can grow into ministries. That means relinquishing control at times. Delegation is an important principle to learn; we must never be possessive of the ministries God has given us or think that we are the only people who can do these things. God often blesses what we share with others.

Finally, we looked at a less familiar symbol:

This is the symbol for infinity, which was related to eternity in this workshop. How are we going to bring the infinite into our lives? Worship involves every part of our lives and we need to seek God in every aspect of our lives so that the eternal perspective is visible in our everyday living.

Diane and Karen were busy during the half-term holidays, painting the newly refurbished kitchen. It looks lovely!

Mark spoke from Romans 8:28 TNIV tonight, using the idea of a Scrabble game to look at how God is working all things together for good to those who love God.

Paul wrote this verse originally to the church in Rome, but we are included in this promise. ‘All things’ includes absolutely everything that happens in our lives, even those things that seem to us to be anything but good!

Our lives are not a series of random accidents, thrown together carelessly, but God is carefully working all things together.

God works things together for good (notice the word ‘God’ is on a triple word score to remind us of the Trinity!). This promise is for those who love God.

We are individually called and chosen by God (see Eph 1:3-4 TNIV) and His purposes for our lives and for the world will prevail. God’s plan is for people to come back to Him and we can be involved in that plan! It may well require faith to believe this verse, for life often looks more confused than clear to us, but by faith we realise that God is working all things together for good to those who are called according to His purpose.

Tonight’s family service was on the theme of ‘All things work together for good’, so we had a game and a quiz about things that work well together.

In the game, we had to answer questions to find out a relevant Bible verse:

The verse was 1 Corinthians 12:18 ESV: ‘But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.’ Things go well when church members work together!

The next activity involved word association, again requiring people to work in groups to think of as many related words connected to the topic of ‘fish’ and ‘church’.

As usual, there were prizes:

Our thanks to Stacey and Stephen for organising these activities!