Kevin preached from 2 Chronicles 5:13-6:12, concluding his series on the building of the temple. This reading looks at the dedication of the temple, dreamt of by David but built by his son, Solomon, as prophesied by Nathan.

Get Back Up Again
It was David’s desire to build a temple for the ark of the covenant, but although Nathan originally endorsed this plan, God spoke clearly saying that David, although a great king and warrior, was not the man to do this job (2 Samuel 7). When God says ‘No’, it can be difficult for us to come to terms with, but we need to be like the figure skaters who fall when practising but who get up again and practise repeatedly in order to perfect their skills. As Toby Mac sings:

“We lose our way,
We get back up again,
It’s never too late
To get back up again
One day you’re gonna shine again.”(‘Get Back Up’, Toby Mac)
‘Get Back Up’, Toby Mac

God keeps His promises
God is faithful to do what He has promised. David gave Solomon the charge to build the temple, as God had told him. He urged Solomon to know God, serve Him and seek Him, reminding him that there was always more. He knew the truth of the fact that God does not fail or forsake us (see 1 Chron 28:20).

Lord, do it again
We long to see God move again. We need to see Him move afresh in our lives. Each time we come into His presence, we need to meet with Him and be changed. We shouldn’t go out unchanged from His presence. The woman who touched the hem of the cloak of Jesus was changed and healed by that touch. We need to be prepared to reach out and touch the God who does not change (see Hebrews 13:8, Luke 24:22-23).

At the dedication of the temple, God’s glory fell. We pray ‘fill this place with Your holy presence so that we are overwhelmed and changed’. Despair is turned to hope as we are in God’s presence. Matt 20:29-34 recounts the healing of two blind beggars. Jesus asked them, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ We need to be unafraid to ask God and to let Him know the longings and yearnings of our hearts.

Twice a year I grit my teeth when shopping and steadfastly ignore the cards for ‘Mother’s Day’ and ‘Father’s Day’ because of the positioning of the apostrophe. Since, I reason, these celebrations are for all mothers and all fathers, I dislike the fact that the apostrophe indicates the singular ‘mother’ and ‘father’.

Apostrophes are fantastic punctuation marks and I despair over their misuse. They indicate the omission of letters (in examples such as ‘they’re’, the apostrophe indicates the omission of the letter a) or show possession (the boy’s sister = the sister of the boy.) If the noun is plural and ends in s, the apostrophe goes after the s, thus the boys’ sister = the sister of the boys. One punctuation mark changing the whole meaning of the sentence. How hard can that be to understand?

Today is Fathers’ Day, and I salute the many fathers in the world who do a fantastic job of bringing up their children. I’m grateful for my father and for my hushand’s fathering skills. But today, according to the cards, is Father’s Day and actually, I can live with that too. For God is our Father and Sunday is definitely His day, so yes, it’s Father’s Day too! He is our Father in heaven, as the Lord’s prayer teaches, and a father to the fatherless (Ps 68). He is the best father we could have and we need to honour and serve Him every day, not just once a year.

When my son was very small, he had a fascination with clocks. In fact, his first word was ‘clo’ (though it was actually addressed to a barometer, we were so excited to hear this recognisable word that that discrepancy never bothered us, nor the fact that he was more interested in pointing out inanimate objects rather than addressing his parents, as is usually the case with toddlers…)

When he was small, any outing usually ended up looking at clocks. Shopping trips in Goldthorpe ended at ‘Daddy Clock’ (aka the parish church, so named by him because it was big, like daddies are!):

Trips to Barnsley ended up in the Co-op department store (long since gone), gazing adoringly at grandfather clocks (for years, he vowed to buy his own once he was working and could afford it!)

I can also remember a Christmas trip to Sheffield where Garry went to the shops in Orchard Square and I stayed with Stephen gazing at the German clock there:

Years later, we enjoyed a visit to Wells Cathedral enormously, partly because of the astronomical clock there, where the dial represents the geocentric view of the universe, with sun and moon revolving round a central fixed earth. It may be unique in showing a philosophical model of the pre-Copernican universe.

This fascination with clocks was also connected to a story we used to read about a ‘clock man’ whose mantra was “It’s always the right time to do God’s will.” I don’t remember the details of that story anymore, but that saying became part of our family phrases. Whenever we struggled with doing something or tended to procrastinate, we would remind ourselves “it’s always the right time to do God’s will.” Good children’s stories speak as powerfully to the adults reading them as to the children, I’ve found! Truth is truth, after all.

At the moment, I am waiting – at times hopefully, at times expectantly, at times desperately, at times dejectedly – for God’s answer to something very specific which has (in my eyes, at least) a definite time limit on it. I am waiting for God’s time and discovering more and more that His time and my time are not always aligned. Just as a clock can be slow or fast and on those occasions is inaccurate in telling the time, my timing is generally not always in sync with God’s! It’s always the right time to do God’s will, yes, but there are times when we are waiting for God to move, waiting for Him to slot the next piece into the jigsaw of our lives and the waiting-for-the-right-time is difficult. Ecclesiastes 3 talks about there being a time for everything, but recognising the right time for things and waiting for the right time can be frustrating and (if I’m honest) burdensome. Sometimes God’s promises come with timings (eg Gen 21:2, Ex 9:18), but often we are left with the instruction to ‘trust and obey’ even as we wait for God’s time. Our natural impatience can lead us to take things into our own hands (often with disastrous results – look at Abraham’s decision to sleep with Hagar or God’s rejection of Saul because of his impatience and disobedience in 1 Samuel 15, for example.) In the end, we are wise if we hold off and allow God to work things out in His time, which (as we are reminded in Galatians 4) is a set time, fully ripened and ready. At just the right time, Paul says, Christ died for the ungodly (Rom 5:6). Let’s attempt to adjust our clocks to God’s time and be content because our times are in His hands (Ps 31:5).

In the meantime, we are ‘waiting here for You’. It’s all we can do. We can’t make the impossible happen. Only God can do that.
‘Waiting Here For You’, Christy Nockels

Garry continued the Bible study on culture wars which initially started with looking at Paul’s revolutionary request to Philemon that he should welcome former slave Onesimus back into his household as a fellow brother in Christ rather than as a slave treated as a possession or commodity. We live in our cultures for so long that we often do not perceive what is unbiblical in our everyday surroundings. We need to spend time seeking God so that we can see Him afresh, slowing down and having a ‘rooted attentiveness’ to Him so that we can be effective in our culture. Daniel, a prophet in exile living in a culture that clashed violently with his religious origins, “prepared himself for inner revelation through a lifestyle that was courageous and counter-cultural.” (Charlie Cleverly, ‘Epiphanies of the Ordinary’) We need spiritual disciplines (including prayer and fasting) if we are to find out what God wants and what is wrong with our cultures.

All around us, we see the consequences of wrong teaching and wrong thinking (often made visible in extreme violence, such as the Columbine High School massacre, which was the ‘logical’ consequence of the nihilistic teachings embraced by the killer.) We need Biblical revelation to show us the truths of God’s kingdom. John Stonestreet has said “Too often… we treat our faith as just one more item on our to-do list. But if Christianity is true, it’s the central framework for everything, the grid that overlays all of life… Christianity gives us a map to reality, an outline of the world the way it really is: God’s moral and physical order.”

Christians have exchanged citizenship of earth for citizenship of heaven and as such we live in an awareness of the clash between these two cultures or kingdoms every day. We have been ‘saved from death to live presently in a new society under the rule and reign of Jesus’ (Michael Craven). We now live following the way of the Cross, living according to the principles of a kingdom where the first shall be last and the way to life is through sacrifice and death.

Micah 6:8 offers us insight into how God wants His people to live: ‘He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly (prudently) with your God.”

God loves justice and urges us to follow this, even if it means being at odds with our culture (Ex 23:2). Justice should not be affected either by showing partiality to the poor or favouritism to the great (Lev 19:15). We need to show justice even to the foreigner or fatherless (Deut 24:17). Combining justice (doing the right thing) with showing mercy (a combination Jesus reflected in His everyday interaction with people, but which we often find difficult to balance!) is our goal. We need to know the truth (which sets us free) and act accordingly, doing what is right because that is the way God works, even if that means personal loss or persecution.

Brenda’s family organised a barbecue to celebrate her special birthday and, with characteristic selflessness, she turned that into a fund-raising event for Marie Curie Cancer Care. Here is the church contingency enjoying the food!

‘Morning Rises’ is the name of the new Aaron Shust album, due out on 16th July and eagerly anticipated in our household! Today, I read an interview in ‘CCM Magazine’ about the album, in which Aaron Shust said, ‘My primary litmus test for choosing a song is theological accuracy accompanied by the power to mature the listener or singer. The songs need to elevate our view of God.’

You can read the interview here.

No wonder I’m looking forward to the new album!