Here are some notices for the month of May:

On Friday 3rd May at 6.30 p.m. at the Salvation Army church, there will be a concert in aid of HopeHIV, a charity which works with children affected by HIV. There will be an opportunity to hear about the charity’s work as well as singing contributions from the Goldthorpe Gospel Community Choir and the Sacred Heart School Choir. Tickets cost £2.50 or £5.00 for a family ticket. For further details, contact Adrian Lee on 01709 895018.

Throughout May, the prayer topic for our church will be the outreaches the church is involved in. These are:
• Monday night youth club
• Friday Mums & Toddlers Group
• Friday Badminton
• Saturday Coffee Morning
• Sunday night Sunday school
• All our church meetings

In addition, the building is hired by a number of other community groups.

Pray that God will:
• bless all our outreaches
• send His Holy Spirit into each outreach to keep the peace
• give wisdom and understanding to those who run these outreaches and help at them
• put His protection on all the people who run and attend these groups
• give us opportunities to plant seeds in people’s live and show God’s love to them
• let us see people from these outreaches into the church
• let us see people being saved
• lead us in ways that will improve our relationships with the people in the community
• help us to be good ambassadors for God in all that we do

If you would like to know more about any of these outreaches or be involved with helping with them, speak to any of the church leaders for more details. Paul told the Corinthians: “Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.” (1 Cor 9:19-23)

Mark spoke this morning from Jeremiah 6:16 on the ‘Dream Cross Code.’ Most of us remember the ‘Green Cross Code’ from our childhoods:

This taught us basic road safety:
1) Find a safe place to cross the road.
2) Stop just before you get to the kerb.
3) Look all around for traffic and listen. Look right, look left, look right again.
4) If traffic is coming, let it pass.
5) When it is safe, go straight across the road – looking and listening all the time.

Jeremiah 6:16 tells us, “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.” This is the ‘Dream Cross Code’ we are to follow to find God’s plan for our lives when we are at a crossroads:

When we are at a crossroads, there are a number of options facing us. We can carry on regardless, choosing the obvious option first. Or we can take a wild guess and go in whatever direction seems best! We can listen to the Sat-Nav (or Sat-Nag, as Mark termed it!), which does not always result in success.

In life, we can carry on with our lives, or we can try the ‘pot luck’ method of spiritual direction, deciding what to do on whims or fancies. Sometimes we ask for directions from everyone but God. Sometimes we panic when faced with new directions and want to go back the way we have come, because that represents safety to us. What we should do when we are faced with crossroads is:

1) Stop
2) Look
3) Listen
4) Go

2 Chron 20:12-18 shows us what Israel did when facing a great enemy. They did not know what to do, but were told to ‘stand before the Lord’. Then God spoke to them through a prophet, telling them “the battle is not yours but God’s. You will not have to fight this battle. Take up your positions, stand firm and see the deliverance the Lord will give you, O Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Go out to face them tomorrow and the Lord will be with you.”

In the same way, when facing the Red Sea in front of them and the Egyptians behind them, Moses was commanded to ‘stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you.’ (see Ex 14:13-14) God is the one who is able to save and deliver us. Sometimes we have to let God do the saving and be aware that He fights for us.

God is able to make a way for us where there is no way. 1 Cor 16:9 says that Paul discovered ‘a great door for effective work has opened to me.’ 2 Cor 2:12 tell us that he found ‘that the Lord had opened a door for me.’ When we are at a crossroads and we actually take the time to stop, look and listen, God speaks and we are then left with the choice to go or to refuse. In Jeremiah, the people did not heed God’s word, but in 2 Chron 20, the people’s obedience resulted in a great victory. When we actually follow the ‘Dream Cross Code’, we will find rest for our souls.

Tonight’s Bible study looked at James 5:14-18, controversial verses in some circles about prayer, faith and healing. James is continuing his teaching on prayer, this time looking at the question ‘Is anyone among you sick?’ (James 5:14) The nature of the sickness is not specified (the word astheneō means weakness, being feeble, being diseased or sick), so there was discussion about whether this refers to physical sickness only or spiritual ‘sickness’ as well. Whatever the nature of the sickness, there is both a responsibility on the sick person to request prayer from the elders of the church and a corresponding responsibility on the part of those church leaders (by whatever title they are known!) to pray for the person and to anoint with oil.

Why can’t we just pray for ourselves, as James tells us to do in James 5:13 when we are in trouble? Why do we need to call on others to pray? Why do we have to call on church leaders? Are they just ‘super-spiritual’, closer to God than the average church member? Church leaders are appointed by God and with that calling comes a responsibility to them to pray, but that is not to say that it is the virtue of the person praying which makes all the difference of itself! In all of this, James is keen for us to recognise that it is the Lord who raises people up. Faith – that trust in God to make a difference to our lives and our situations – is vital, but it is God who heals. Perhaps this is one reason James emphasises the local church in all its diversity and plurality, rather than focussing on a particular person with gifts of healing (as outlined in 1 Corinthians 12).

The prayer of faith is offered by the church elders, accompanied by anointing with oil (symbolic of the Holy Spirit, another reminder that it is God who heals, and also a symbol of healing – see Luke 10:34, Isaiah 1:6). Prayer for healing was common in the New Testament (see Mark 6:13, Acts 3:6), but it is all done in the name of the Lord (see also Luke 10:17). Prayer is offered in the name of Jesus, iis commanded and commissioned by Jesus and is carried out in the context of the local church community.

It is not always easy to know why some people seem to receive healing instantaneously and others do not. The connection between sin and sickness has long been debated, but Jesus effectively taught us that sickness is not necessarily the result of sin (see John 9:1-3). In all these ponderings, we have to accept that God’s ways are not always our ways: Paul’s ‘thorn in the flesh’ was not removed by God because he needed to learn the valuable lesson of weakness being the vehicle for God’s strength (2 Cor 12:7-10). Nonetheless, James tells us that the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well (James 5:15).

Prayer is clearly a powerful and effective spiritual weapon. James uses Elijah as an illustration of the effectiveness of prayer (James 5:17-18). Elijah was an ordinary person like us, we are told; in other words, we can all be effective in our prayer lives. Moreover, the community nature of our walk with God is stressed in verse 16 where we are urged to confess our sins and pray for each other.

It takes courage to ask for prayer, because it means admitting weakness; it takes courage to confess our sins, because we do not like to admit to them! But as we realise the need to develop our prayer life, we see that there is no shame in weakness. Rather, there is strength in community and power in prayer because we are linked through it to the God who is all-powerful and all-loving.

One of my favourite Christian authors, Brennan Manning, died on 12th April at the age of 78. I was surprised at how much I felt a sense of loss at that news. The sense of loss is not for him: as his family said, there is much comfort “in the fact that he is resting in the loving arms of his Abba.” No, the sense of loss is entirely selfish! I can no longer expect new books, new spiritual insights, further revelations of the Father-heart of God from his pen and that saddened me enormously.

Starting in 1970 with the publication of Gentle Revolutionaries, Manning wrote and published more than 20 books, the most famous of which was The Ragamuffin Gospel. His alcoholism in the context of being a Franciscan priest was the backdrop for much of his spiritual reflection. As we spend this month praying for those who battle addictions, I find it encouraging that God uses us even with our weaknesses and addictions. In fact, Hebrews reminds us “we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” (Heb 4:15) Sometimes we need to be reminded that God uses the weak things of the world to shame the strong (see 1 Cor 1:26-29).

Brennan Manning once described his ministry in this way: to ‘help sinners journey from self-hatred to self-acceptance.’ (quoted in a Christianity Today article published in 2004). He said that we are all on a journey in life: travelling this road daily, never too far from a character he calls the Imposter. Everyone’s got one. It’s “the slick, sick, and subtle impersonator of my true self.” The persona craves to be liked, loved, approved, accepted, to fit in. “It’s the self that refuses to accept that my true self, centered in Christ, is really more likeable, more attractive, and more real than the fallen self.”

One of the things that most challenged me as I read obituaries was this quote from the same article: ‘Beneath Manning’s struggle with alcoholism is his struggle with a fiercer foe: self-hatred. One of the greatest regrets of his life is “all the time I’ve wasted in shame, guilt, remorse, and self-condemnation.” He’s not speaking about the appropriate guilt one ought to feel after committing a sin. He’s talking about wallowing in guilt, almost indulging in it, which is “basically a kind of idolatry where I’m the center of my focus and concern.” ‘

Many of us might think there can be no greater struggle than trying to break an addiction like alcoholism or drugs. But I identified very strongly with this ‘fiercer foe’. My debt to Brennan Manning, as to all authors whose words have illuminated my life, is great. We are all pilgrims on a journey, learning to accept ourselves as God accepts us and to love ourselves and others as He does. As Michael Card said of Brennan Manning, “He has freed me up to be able to show that I have weaknesses, too, and that God still uses me in spite of them and sometimes perhaps because of them.”

We would doubtless prefer God to make us infallibly strong and never to sin; we much prefer heroes to be flawless and without fears. But we need to accept that we are flawed and recognise, nonetheless, that God’s love is greater than any of our weaknesses and sins. It’s not a case of our grip on God being strong enough to keep us safe, but His grip on us being stronger than the strongest glue!

Garry continued his series on the Beatitudes (‘Looking For Heroes’) last night, looking at Matthew 5:7: ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.’

Often, if we are wronged, we long for justice, but so often, when we are in the wrong, we realise we need mercy. Mercy is not the same as justice. Mercy is often doing what is not deserved; it is the unexpected act of generosity. Our sense of justice and righteousness is often offended by mercy (see the Parable of the Workers, Matthew 20:1-16, when the all-day workers are outraged that the owner pays those who have only worked an hour the same rate as they have received for a full day’s work!)

Mercy Defined
Mercy (‘hesed’) is not an emotional sense of pity for someone, but a determined effort to feel what someone else is feeling and to do something about it; it carries with it the idea of getting in someone else’s shoes and feeling what they are feeling. It is allied to compassion (‘suffering with’) and allows us to forgive freely, for we understand and love. Grace is a loving response when love is undeserved; mercy is prompted by the misery and helplessness of another and is a characteristic of God.

Mercy Declined
We can decline to accept mercy for ourselves and we can also decline to show mercy to others. Mercy is often perceived as weakness, which is one reason we struggle to receive and to give it. In the Roman culture of Jesus’s time, the four cardinal virtues were wisdom, justice, temperance and courage; mercy was perceived as weakness because it undermined justice. Aristotle said that ‘pity is a troublesome emotion.’ Jesus accused the Pharisees of not showing mercy (Matt 23:23) even as they declared themselves champions of justice.

Often, mercy is declined because it is not perceived to be a masculine attribute. In the Western world, it is felt that to be manly, you must shun all that is feminine, must be successful, aggressive and self-reliant. This mindset can be in God’s people too, but is not consistent with Biblical truth, for the fact remains that we cannot save ourselves and need God’s mercy. God is merciful (see Romans 9:14-15, Nehemiah 9:31) and we need to accept this mercy and reflect it back to others.

Mercy Declared
God, because He is merciful, wants us to be merciful too; He wants us to reflect His character in every way. Hos 6:6 reminds us that God desires mercy, not sacrifice. The parable of the unforgiving servant (Matt 18:21-25) shows us that as we receive mercy, we have to reflect that to others. The unforgiving servant is chastised because he did not show mercy to his fellow-servant, even though he himself had experienced great mercy. Mercy is costly (the master cancelled the servant’s great debt), but it grows as a result of our experience of a merciful God. We then become imitators of God (see Matt 5:41-48 & 1 Thess 1:6) and have pity (or mercy) on those in need (see 1 John 3:17-18).

The promise we receive in the Beatitudes is that those who are merciful will be shown mercy. Mercy is like a cycle: we receive mercy, we show mercy, we receive more mercy. We need to be a stream of mercy to others, not a dam. Just as being forgiven places on us a responsibility to forgive, so we have a duty to be merciful. We may not receive mercy from other people, but we will definitely receive mercy from God!

Stephen spoke this morning from Matt 23:8-12 about the words that we use. Often, we view ourselves from an earthly viewoint, regarding status and standing as being of utmost importance. When we think about ‘teachers’ and ‘fathers’, we tend to view these things with our own understanding of the importance of names and like to invest in these roles the authority and status we perceive these words to have. We have to be careful not to be limited in our understanding of the meanings of words, however, and need to recognise that there is power in the names of God which cannot be attributed in the same way to those bearing those names in earthly terms. God is so much more than any earthly role!

Sometimes we put people on a pedestal simply because of the job title they have. We need to understand that God has far more authority than any earthly figure and that there is a vast difference between earthly position and power and God’s position and power. Eph 4:6 reminds us that there is one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. Jesus reminded His disciples that the greatest among us must learn to serve and that humility comes before exaltation, which is completely the opposite way round to how the world works. We need to recognise God’s authority and power in our lives and in the world and to place Him above everything else in our lives.