The new Matt Redman album ‘Your Grace Finds Me’ duly arrived in our household this week (still waiting for the Phil Wickham album, alas…!) As always, I love the songs. But as always, I love also the heart behind the songs – the fact that Matt Redman pays such generous tribute to all who have been involved in the making of the album (from the songwriters to the musicians to the artist who designed the album cover to the myriad backstage people who normally never see the limelight), the fact that he is involved in a creativity that spans the arts as a whole (if you watch the video below, notice the artist drawing the lyrics out behind the musicians), the fact that he is so aware of God’s grace and mercy in the everyday and the mundane as well as those special moments of life. We all need daily reminders of grace. It’s the very thing that makes life worth living.

“It’s there in the newborn cry.
There in the light of every sunrise.
There in the shadows of this light:
Your great grace.

So I’m breathing in Your grace
And I’m breathing out Your praise.
I’m breathing in Your grace:
Forever I’ll be
Breathing in Your grace
And I’m breathing out Your praise.
I’m breathing in Your grace:
Forever I’ll be
Breathing in Your grace
And I’m breathing out Your praise
Breathing in Your grace
Forever, God, forever, God.” (‘Your Grace Finds Me’, Matt Redman)
‘Your Grace Finds Me’, Matt Redman (recorded live version)

Sooner or later in our church, most conversations end up with food! Tonight’s Bible study was no exception. We were discussing Ps 65:5 TNIV: ‘You answer us with awesome and righteous deeds’ and Mark asked us what examples we could give of ‘awesome and righteous deeds’ God has done for us.

Works of healing, provision, leading and guidance were mentioned, but to me, the way God communicates His awesome, lavish, generous nature is best summed up by thinking about cupcakes.

Just getting a cupcake (a ‘bun’ in Yorkshire parlance) is itself a luxury, not really a necessity. But a plain sponge cupcake is not seen as particularly exciting:

The mere fact that God answers our prayers at all is pretty amazing, I think! But I have recently seen, very vividly in my own life, just how much more generous God is. He doesn’t just give us a plain cupcake. He gives us answers that have ‘all the bells and whistles on’, rather like these lavishly decorated cupcakes:

The variety of toppings we can have – butter-cream, whipped cream, iced buns, sprinkles, additional sweets like Smarties or sugared jellies, nuts, chocolate and so on – is mouth-watering. God is that kind of God. His ‘awesome deeds of righteousness’ go beyond sufficiency into abundance, just as Jesus promised a ‘good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap.’ (Luke 6:38 TNIV)

That kind of abundance and awesome attention to detail shows us the kindness and generosity of God.

The Bible study today looked at the question of ‘how can we have confidence in God?’ We started by reading Psalm 65:4-7 TNIV, looking at the many things in those verses which encourage our confidence in God.

First of all, God has chosen us and therefore we are blessed (Ps 65:4 TNIV, John 15:16 TNIV, Eph 1:4 TNIV). In a way, He chooses us because He has confidence in us; He knows what He can make of us and what we can become in Him. This gives us a sense of purpose and hope, because we are not living random, pointless lives, but lives that have meaning in God’s plans and purposes.

God brings us into relationship with Him: He draws us to live in His courts (Ps 65:4 TNIV). We have a long-term relationship with Him, one that will last all eternity! We are brought into His wonderful family and are drawn into holy places. We are filled with good things; fully satisfied by all that God has for us. There is an abundance in God which overflows and meets our every need.

The mere fact that God answers us is amazing, but His answers are awesome deeds of righteousness (Ps 65:5 TNIV). There is such provision and plentitude in God! He is our Saviour, the source of our salvation – our rescuer, our deliverer, the One who saves us from trouble. Not only that, but He is our confidence and hope. We have confidence because of His faithfulness in all creation – not only in creating all we see but in sustaining it (see Ps 65:8-13 TNIV, Heb 1:3 TNIV). We see His faithfulness in maintaining the seasons, in sending rain and helping the crops to produce a harvest, just as He promised Noah (see Gen 8:22 TNIV). ‘You crown the year with your bounty, and your carts overflow with abundance.’ (Ps 65:11 TNIV) Again, we see more than enough in God.

Next, we looked at the confidence found in Psalm 27:1-6 TNIV. God brings light into our lives and is our fortress and protector against enemies; because of Him, we have nothing to fear. We can have confidence in His protection and deliverance; not only is He our hiding-place and refuge, but He lifts us up to high places (Ps 27:5-6 TNIV). As we seek His face, we find beauty in His ways and are blessed with songs of praise (Ps 27:6 TNIV).

Prov 14:16 shows us the follies of feeling secure in our own strengths and having self-confidence that has no regard for God. If we rush in without due consideration of the Lord, we are hotheaded and reckless. We can have confidence in God’s vision and plans because He sees the end from the beginning. He is the One who is able to bring His plans to completion (see Phil 1:3-6 TNIV) and we can also have confidence because of His assurance that nothing will be able to separate us from His love (Rom 8:37-39 TNIV).

One of the things that we find so hard to grasp about God is the fact of His unconditional love. As we were challenged on Sunday to add love to our faith and to understand that that love is not just brotherly affection but is actually the same kind of love that God has, I have been meditating on His unconditional love.

Most of our lives as humans is spent understanding the relationship between cause and effect. We very soon learn the principle of ‘quid pro quo‘ (even if the Latin term comes later in our understanding!) This is all about one favour in return for another. If we do something for someone else, they will do something for us. “You scratch my back; I’ll scratch yours” is the popular saying reflecting the same principle!

God’s love is not like that, however. He loves us no matter what. He doesn’t just love us if we obey Him or if we respond or if we pray or if we accept that He loves us. He just loves us. And that same kind of love is totally liberating to us and is the measure of all true love. No conditions. No strings attached.

Wow! Such a simple thought, and yet one we find so hard to grasp and so difficult to reflect back to a world which really needs to see unconditional love in us in order to see it in God.

Dave had a number of announcements to give tonight.

Firstly, he reminded us of the Macmillan Coffee Morning on 28th September. The Methodist church on Furlong Road will be holding an Autumn fête on the same day, from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. There will be a bouncy castle and barbecue at this event, to which we were all invited.

Then he read out a letter on behalf of the leadership of the church, following the announcement made last week regarding the pastorate of the church.

“Last week Pastor Mark made a very important announcements which he gave in the form of a letter to each one of us. He announced that he was resigning as Pastor at the end of this year.

Dave Wood.”

One of the things Stephen touched on tonight was that we sometimes find it difficult to accept the gospel because we are unused to such good news being completely free, no strings attached. We are so used to having to pay for things that we view special offers suspiciously. We don’t expect to find monies deposited in our bank accounts unless we’ve earned them!

‘Eagle Eye’ was a 2008 film starring Shia LaBoeuf and Michelle Monaghan. Their characters were coerced into carrying out a plan by a possible terrorist organisation. Jerry Shaw is a Stanford University dropout who learns that his identical twin brother Ethan, a US Air Force first lieutenant, has been killed. Following the funeral, Jerry is surprised to find $750,000 in his bank account. He later finds his apartment filled with weapons, ammonium nitrate, classified DOD documents, and forged passports. He receives a phone call from a woman who says the FBI is about to arrest him and that he needs to run.

The film captures the total sense of bewilderment the character feels on checking his bank balance and finding it much healthier than he expected (he’s used to avoiding his landlady because he can’t afford to pay rent, for example!) That’s a little bit like we feel when we accept the good news that God loves us so much that He sent His only Son to die for us so that we should not perish but have eternal life. We are stunned to discover that not only have we been given the ‘credit’ to live for ever, but we have also received multiple additional blessings – ‘Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.’ (Eph 1:3 TNIV) We discover we were chosen in Him before the creation of the world (Eph 1:4 TNIV). We discover that we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ (Rom 8:17 TNIV). We discover that we have been given gifts from the Holy Spirit.

If we can truly grasp all that God has deposited into our lives, we will live life with a new identity and purpose that are independent of our financial wealth or social status.