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.

This morning’s sermon continued to look at the life of Abraham, looking at Genesis 22 where Abraham’s faith is tested. Like it or not, trials and testings are an inevitable part of our walk with God. They are not necessarily a sign of God’s displeasure or His anger against us; they are part of His refining process. James 1:2-4 TNIV reminds us to look at trials as gifts from God which refine our characters and refine our faith (see also 1 Peter 1:7 TNIV.)

We might wish life was a bed of roses (to quote Christopher Marlowe’s romantic poem ‘The Passionate Shepherd to his love’), but it rarely is! We live in a fallen world of sin and temptation, but we also need to remember that nothing happens to us without God’s knowledge and permission.

Genesis 22:1-19 TNIV has much to teach us about how to respond to trials and testings. We see here that:

1. God was the initiator of the trial. That is sometimes hard to understand and it’s necessary to understand that testing is not the same as temptation (see James 1:14-15 TNIV). It’s also necessary to dwell on God’s benevolent kindness and loving nature so that we do not view Him with wrong eyes as the source of all trouble. Nonetheless, we see that Jesus was led into the wilderness by the Spirit of God to be tested (Matt 4:1-11 TNIV), so we should also expect to face trials and testings. At those times, we need to remember that whatever comes our way has been filtered through God’s loving purposes. Even when we have to undergo discipline and rebuking, God does this out of love and for our good: “God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness” (Hebrews 12:10 TNIV) Testing is not a sign of God’s displeasure or anger, but a sign that He is at work in our lives. We must also remember and lean on God’s promise: “God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted [or tested] beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted [or tested], he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” (1 Cor 10:13-14 TNIV)

2. What God does and says doesn’t always make sense to us! Killing the son of promise for whom he’d waited such a long time can’t have made sense to Abraham! Hebrews 11:17-19 TNIV offers us some insights into Abraham’s thought process at this time. He was confident God could even raise Isaac from the dead if necessary! God’s ways and thoughts are beyond our understanding (see Rom 11:33 TNIV), but we can trust Him even when we don’t understand.

3. Abraham’s response was obedience to God; that needs to be our response too. Even when we can’t see how God can work good from the circumstances, even when we can’t understand what God is doing in our lives, we can obey.

‘Trust and obey
For there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus
But to trust and obey.’ (Traditional hymn)

4. Abraham received new revelation of God through his obedience. He discovered in that place that God is Jehovah-Jireh – the Lord our Provider. That God, the God who provides, is our God too. For we must always remember:

God has provided a lamb
He was offered up in your place
What Abraham was asked to do, he’s done
He’s offered his only son.’ (‘God Will Provide A Lamb’, Michael Card)
‘God Will Provide A Lamb’, Michael Card

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor 12:9 TNIV)

Quite often we face situations which we feel are beyond us: beyond our strength, beyond our understanding and beyond our capacity to continue. One of the greatest things about knowing God is coming to understand that actually, there is no situation beyond His strength, His understanding and perseverance and therefore, because we dwell in Him and His Spirit lives in us, there is no situation beyond us, for His grace is sufficient for us. Knowing God is ‘more than enough’ for us is liberating and strengthening. Our vision of God always needs to be expanded, because He is more than able to carry us, keep us, guide us and leave us.

“Our Father, Creator, You hold our hearts together.
There’s no one higher than You.
Redeemer, Defender, our great and mighty Saviour
There’s no one higher than You.

There’s no one like You, Lord.
No one like You.
There is no one higher, no one greater, no one like our God
There is none more able, Christ our Saviour, great and glorious.
There is no one higher than You.” (‘No One Higher’, Aaron Shust)
‘No One Higher’, Aaron Shust