Conduits of Blessing

Oct 30, 2023

God’s purpose for His people is that they are conduits of blessing to others. A conduit is a channel (of water or electricity, for example.) The noun comes from words meaning ‘pipe’, and in the natural world, a conduit is a pipe made of metal or plastic which allows electricity or water to flow from one place to another. Metaphorically, to be a conduit is to convey something to someone else.
God works in and through people. He blessed Abraham so that Abraham could be a blessing to others – indeed, to the whole world. (Gen 12:3) His Holy Spirit living in us wants to bless others and to show them the reality of God in our world. We can be the channel through which God works, as the book of Acts demonstrates. Ordinary people turned the world upside down as the power of God moved through their faith and obedience. This is God’s chosen method of working – He involves us in His work and we become channels of blessing, conduits of His power.
What a purpose we have!

Understanding The Times & Seasons

Oct 29, 2023

Joy Gascoigne from Grimethorpe Pentecostal Church spoke tonight on understanding the times and seasons. Just as seasons change in the natural world, so too in the spiritual world, when what worked previously may not be fitting for the present time. God can help us through every change of season and meets us where we are.
Hebrews 12:1-2 reminds us that we must throw of all that restrains us and run the race marked out for us. We need focus, preparation and perseverance in the race of life. We can celebrate the faithfulness of God in it all. The testimony of what God has done in the past helps us to face the future which is unknown because even though there may be uncertainty in that season, we know God holds the future.
We are called to look to Jesus in every season and forget not all His benefits. We don’t forget the past, but we can’t live in it. The One who blessed us in different ways in the past is with us to bless in the days ahead. The faithful One remains faithful through every season, and therefore we have hope always.

Listening to the Word

Oct 29, 2023

Dave spoke this morning from John 1:1-14, where Jesus is described as ‘the Word.’ Speaking is our natural means of communication, and God speaks through His Word (Jesus) and through His word (the Bible.) All throughout the Bible, we see God speaking – He spoke into darkness and created all we see; He speaks truth and continues to speak truth to us.
At the baptism of Jesus, God spoke words of love and urged people to listen to His Son, but some only heard thunder. Today, people continue to ignore God’s words, but God continues to speak to people’s hearts. If we believe what God says, then light is shed into our hearts. God’s word is powerful, life-changing and world-changing. Nothing turned into something when God spoke.
God does not just speak; He also listens to us. (Ps 34:6) The magnificent Alpha and Omega takes time to listen to our cries for help; He is interested in us and listens to every individual. Just as He listens to us, so we too must listen to Him, for His words are worth listening to.

Poo Arrows

Oct 29, 2023

My 6-year-old granddaughter wrote a story in the summer holidays which won a competition at Wigfield Farm (proud Grandma moment!) “The Smelly Adventures of Splat” tells the story of a rather malicious guinea pig named Splat who seeks to gain popularity by taking out the rabbits (whom he perceives as being more popular) with poo arrows.

It’s a typical children’s sotry full of toilet humour and graphic details (the poo arrows are orange, yellow and green because the guinea pig eats carrots, hay and lettuce…) which children find hugely amusing and which cause me to roll my eyes in despair. Splat gets his comeuppance when the meerkats tackle him and he ends up frozen as a statue, an ending which reminds us that kindness is better than notoriety or fame…
When Esther wrote this story, I felt a little despairing, since the constant ‘poo poo poo poo’ conversation of small children doesn’t really do much for me anymore. But I am reminded that Eugene Peterson speaks of God’s word being like a javelin, piercing our hearts with truth (see http://www.gpcchurch.co.uk/the-javelin-of-truth), and it struck me that ‘poo arrows’ are a pretty good description of the devil’s tactics.
The enemy of our souls targets us daily with arrows (‘flaming arrows’, Paul calls them in Ephesians 6:16), hoping to deflect us, distract us and deter us from wholehearted discipleship. Often, these feel like they are tipped with poo. Troubles and difficulties leave us feeling soiled, besmirched, defiled. Shame, guilt, fear and anxiety hem us in, leaving us helpless and discouraged.
God’s word is not like that. His word (described in Hebrews 4:12 as a double-edged sword), may well leave us wounded, but there is nothing dirty or defiling about it. It’s like a surgeon’s scalpel; it ‘hurts good.‘ It puts us back together; it restores our souls. There is healing and restoration, forgiveness and strengthening found in God’s word.

So don’t settle for the poo arrows of the devil! Instead, let God’s javelin word touch and transform you,

Excellence & Detail

Oct 25, 2023

I’m always challenged and inspired by the work of Michelangelo, the great Renaissance painter and sculptor. He spent years painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel while working on a hanging scaffold. The work was difficult (ceilings are harder to paint than walls because of the difficulties of working at heights and essentially painting upside down), but he continued to paint more than 400 figures which feature in the work. When asked why he was working so hard on a dark corner of the chapel that no one would ever be able to see, his reply was, ‘God will see.’
Paul tells us ‘whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God through him.’ (Col 3:17) Most of what we do in life is ephemeral: few of us will create lasting works of art like Michelangelo that will stand the test of time! Instead, we cook meals that are eaten and then gone; we clean and tidy houses that our children and grandchildren dirty and untidy seconds after we finish; we work on things that soon disappear. Our words rarely last in the way that famous writers’ do. It can feel very dispiriting to do your best in the mundane, knowing our hard work will soon disappear.
But the Christian way of excellence in all things looks at life as Michelangelo did: ‘God will see.‘ Our labour for God is not in vain. He sees what we do, including the things that no one else sees, and He is pleased by faithfulness and excellence, by attention to detail. He Himself works that way!
At the moment I’m involved in preparations for events at church, and the amount of work that goes on in those preparations far exceeds the amount of attention anyone can give to what I do. It’s easy to wonder, ‘What’s the point?’ It’s easy to feel frustrated or that what we are doing is a waste of time that could be spent more profitably elsewhere. It’s just another event, after all. It will soon be forgotten.
But God’s way is one where attention to detail matters and our labour for Him is never in vain. Like Michelangelo, we seek to serve God in the dark places where no one will see. We serve in our homes (where we may feel unappreciated, taken for granted); we serve in our communities (where we may feel unknown and unwanted); we serve in the world where we are just one of X billion. We can be tempted to slack off, to cut corners, to ‘make do.’ No one will see. No one will know.
But God sees and God knows. He wants us to do all things well. As we serve Him faithfully, the little things really do matter, as anyone who has ever visited the Sistine Chapel can testify.

The Miracle of Conversion

Oct 22, 2023

Tonight in our series ‘The Miraculous & The Mundane’, we looked at the miracle of the conversion of Saul (Acts 9:1-19). Saul was the least likely person to become a Christian; he was a Pharisee, a religious Jew who believed that Christians were totally wrong and worthy of persecution and who had approved of the stoning of Stephen as the first Christian martyr. (Phil 3:5-6, Acts 8:1-3) Yet God stepped into his life miraculously as he was travelling to Damascus to find yet more believers he could persecute, arresting him en route with a bright light and a voice from heaven and leaving him temporarily blinded by this experience.

God is able to step into the lives of ordinary people and completely turn them around; to be born again or converted means a radical U-turn on the way we used to live. Yet at the same time, he graciously involves us, ordinary believers, in this process of salvation which is all of Him (there is nothing we can do to save ourselves as Romans 3:23, Eph 2:8-9, Rev 7:10 testify.) Ananias was the one chosen by God to go and welcome Saul into the family of God and send him forth with a mission to testify to the Gentiles. Not surprisingly, he was not initially keen to follow these instructions, since Paul’s reputation had preceded him! But in humble obedience, he went and prayed for Saul, and from this moment, the scales fell from Saul’s eyes and he could see again. God used his faith and obedience to do something miraculous for Saul, to restore his sight and to confirm him in his faith. Again, God could have just restored his sight without any human intervention, but he chose to work with and through another person. He has good works for us to do to bring about the miraculous in the lives of those who need God! (Eph 2:10)

God’s purposes cannot be thwarted. (Job 42:2) When facing the threat of persecution and extinction, the church did not reckon with God’s plan to turn around the worst persecutor to become a follower of Jesus! We can say confidently that God pursues people, longing for them to know the truth. He does not want anyone to perish but wants everyone to come to repentance. (2 Pet 3:9) His heart is for us; He wants people everywhere to come to a knowledge of the truth. (1 Tim 2:4) We can be sure that every time someone accepts Christ as their Saviour, it is as a result of the miraculous intervention of God and we can also ask God to involve us in the wonderful work of evangelism which results in conversions as we accept our role as co-workers with Him.