In my last sermon, I mentioned Christopher Marlowe’s poem ‘The Passionate Shepherd to his love’:
“Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.

The shepherds’ swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.”

This poem is credited with creating the phrase ‘a bed of roses’, a phrase which is now used figuratively to mean any easy or pleasant situation. Life is not usually that simple; we live in a fallen world, tainted by sin.

However, on recent travels we visited the Botanic Gardens in Oxford where we saw lots of flowers and other interesting plants, as well as some beautiful roses in Keble:

View from the Botanic Gardens:

We also saw some amazing flowers in the gardens at Nostell Priory recently:

… and some amazing views:

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice[b] goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” (Ps 19:1-4 TNIV)

Not content with visiting Oxford, Igor decided to venture further afield to the capital (timing his arrival to coincide with the celebration of the birth of the royal baby! – note the elegant bow tie he is wearing in his effort to be suave and respectful!)

Igor near the London Eye:

He also saw Trafalgar Square and Chinatown, but usually was perched in a rucksack for safety reasons when travelling!

Garry was not the only one with a birthday this week. Many of you may remember that Igor was his birthday present from Mark last year, so technically, yesterday was also Igor’s birthday! (see Joy? if you want the back history as to why the pastor of our church bought one of his leadership team a plastic iguana as a birthday present!)

Igor was taken to Oxford with us this week to celebrate his birthday in style! Our friend, clearly reciprocating our kindness in singing to her on her birthday at church, arranged for a birthday pain au chocolat with candle to be brought to Garry’s breakfast table so that we could sing, and Igor was also present (possibly the first time in the history of Keble College that an iguana has been on High Table!)

Igor is clearly used to Keble and enjoyed various views of the college:
on a bench in Pusey Quad:

view from Pusey Quad, including the clock:

on a bench in Liddon Quad (clearly the rose between all the thorns…!)

view of Liddon Quad from the opposite side:

Igor in our room with all Garry’s other birthday presents (including a guitar hero from Mark this year!):

Igor enjoying lunch in the ‘Rose and Crown’:

Punting is a typical Oxford pursuit and Igor enjoyed that too:

As we pray for healing and wholeness this month, last night’s sermon looked at the question of healthy minds. Following on from recent Bible studies, Garry looked at the way we think – using the analogy of paths we follow – and encouraged us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Rom 12:1-2 TNIV).

Rom 1:28 in the Message version tells us that since people did not acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them loose. Effectively, before we come to know Christ, we have a ‘depraved mind’ and do whatever is right in our own eyes (as in the Judges’ cycle.) Rom 2:14-15 TNIV reminds us that certain laws are built into people (hard-wired, so to speak) by God, but if we allow our consciences to become hardened or seared, this is like God’s pathways becoming overgrown through disuse and neglect. The mind which is governed by the flesh is actually hostile to God (Rom 8:7-8 TNIV) and our thinking without Christ is futile (ses Eph 4:17-19 TNIV.) Our consciences and minds have effectively been corrupted (Titus 1:15 TNIV), just like a spot of coloured dye affects a beaker of clean water. This is what is meant by ‘total depravity’: not that we are all necessarily evil murderers but that every part of our thinking has been affected by sin; our minds are not hooked up to reality, becasue we need God to find truth and reality.

The Christian’s mind is to be renewed by the Holy Spirit so that we become mature, thinking as Christ thought. We do this by focussing our attention consciously on everything that is true, lovely and praiseworthy (see Phil 4:8 TNIV.) As we think in our hearts, so we are (footnote to Proverbs 23:7 TNIV). The word used here focuses on ‘style’ – whatever we think about constantly, the style or manner in which we think, influences our paths. Research has suggested that if we do not think a particular thought for between 2-6 months, that neural pathway breaks down, like the well-trodden pathway becoming overgrown with weeds. Similarly, in a computer, dynamic memory needs to be continually refreshed or we lose what is stored there. We have to work consciously at letting wrong thoughts go.

One way to do this is through the washing of the Word of God (Eph 5:25-26). Permit a personal illustration here. I have been struggling with waiting for an answer from God to a specific prayer request recently and in the waiting, I have been tempted to think that the answer is slow in coming because God is toying with me, as a cat does with a mouse. This is clearly not a Biblical thought, since we know that God is a kind and loving Father (see Matt 7:9-11 TNIV.) How I was thinking was colouring my view of God and making me feel both disillusioned with Him and angry with Him (I felt that He was being unfair.) I had to be washed by the Word in order to be cleansed from this wrong thought. The actual means was initially through a Scripture-soaked song quoted on the blog a few days ago, which says:

“He won’t abandon
He won’t deceive
He won’t desert us
He won’t ever leave
He’ll never forsake us
He won’t ever run
He’ll never reject us
The faithful One.” (‘Mighty Fortress’, Aaron Shust)
‘Mighty Fortress’, Aaron Shust

The lyrics here took me back to the Biblical definition of God’s character and washed the wrong thoughts away.

God wants to heal our minds and correct our thinking. He wants us to have a ‘sound mind’ (2 Tim 1:7 KJV). His goal is that we become mature like Christ (see Gal 4:19 TNIV, Eph 4:14-16 TNIV), thinking God’s thoughts. He wants us to take every thought captive to Christ (2 Cor 10:5 TNIV) and wants us to be, like the healed man, ‘seated and in our right minds.’ (see Luke 8:34-35 TNIV). In thinking, as in living, we reap what we sow. We need to be careful to sow to God in how we think and to allow Him to wash us and cleanse us and heal us.

We had a number of birthdays to celebrate today:

We also had a visitor whose birthday was actually today! (There really is no escape…!)

‘We know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.’ (Rom 5:3-5 TNIV) James tells us ‘you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.’ (James 1:3-4 TNIV)

What are the blessings produced through our patient endurance of trials and testings?

1. We learn to persevere in our faith. There are some things we just can’t learn in a hurry or in the good times when the sun’s shining and all’s as it should be. Some lessons we can only learn in the dark, but we learn perseverance and doggedness in these trials.

2. Our characters are developed. We are refined. Peter’s comments on the reasons for the trials we go through also mention the benefits we receive from them: ‘These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.’ (1 Peter 1:7 TNIV) We learn to trust God more through the trials and our faith is strengthened and refined. The result is that there is praise, glory and honour given to God.

3. Hope flourishes in our hearts as a result of the deepening revelation we have of God as all-wise, all-knowing, all-trustworthy and all-loving. We discover something new about God, just as Abraham did, when we go through a particular situation and come out at the other side finding that He is more than enough to meet all our needs. Finding God’s sufficiency for every aspect of our lives is a great blessing indeed.

4. We inherit the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 5:10-12 TNIV) Sometimes we feel we can’t see any reward or benefit or blessing in this life, but when that’s the case, we need to remember the timescales that God is involved in. He is not bound by time in the way that we are.

“For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Cor 4:17-18 TNIV) The Message version translates these ‘light and momentary troubles’ as ‘small potatoes compared to the coming good times.’ Let’s remember that God is with us at all times (see Isaiah 43:1-3 TNIV) and will not let us go.