Prayer is a recurring topic for our church currently. Dave spoke from Acts 12:1-17 last night about what happens when a church prays. Here, the church was praying for Peter who was imprisoned by Herod. To their surprise, God worked in the supernatural to release Peter from imprisonment! Prayer not only changes situations, but changes us!

Do we really believe great things can happen when we pray? 2 Chronicles 7:14 reminds us of the part we have to play (to humble ourselves and pray and seek God’s face) and the part God plays (pouring out blessing and healing). God hears us when He prays; He actively listens to us (Ps 116:1-2).

When we pray,
1) the supernatural happens. Peter was guarded by 16 soldiers and was shackled in chains, but he walked free from the prison!
2) the surprising happens. The church, despite their prayers, were surprised when Peter arrived back at the house of prayer. So often, we pray in half-faith, not really expecting God to do what we are asking!
3) the saving happens. Deliverance happened to Peter and as we pray, deliverance and salvation will be seen. In past revivals, there have always been those praying faithfully for the preaching of the Word as people are being saved. Do we pray for this too? Do we take the responsibility to pray for our meetings, for those bringing the Word to us, for those listening to have open hearts and listening ears?

Acts 12:5 tells us the church was earnestly praying for Peter. They were fervently praying and persevering in prayer. We need to seek God with all our hearts (Jer 29:13) and pray without ceasing. There needs to be personal prayer and corporate prayer (see Matthew 18). Let’s rededicate our prayers lives to the Lord and really pray.

Remember the prayer map I was telling you about here? I left the story with the frame completed and the board waiting to be filled with photos and the map. Once that was done, this is what it looked like:

However, given the amount of time taken to make the board and frame, it should perhaps come as no surprise to discover that actually getting the map to church proved quite a headache! Basically, the map was too big to fit in our car… and, as it later turned out, in anyone else’s! Undaunted, Garry set about making a frame for the frame so that it could be transported on our roof-rack:

The map duly arrived at church:

It features photographs with the street names of some of the streets:

It also has coloured stickers that are co-ordinated to our prayer topic for the month (in February, this has been local schools)as well as the prayer requests for that topic:

The prayer map is now in place in the foyer and this evening, we will be writing prayers to stick on the board to complete it. Each month, we will add new stickers as we pray for new areas of Goldthorpe and we will change the prayer requests and the prayers to keep the map up-to-date.

The Women’s World Day of Prayer meeting will be held on Friday 1st March. This year, we will be praying for France and the theme of the service is ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’

The local service will be held at the Salvation Army church on Straight Lane in Goldthorpe and will start at 6 p.m. Representatives from all the local churches will be sharing the readings and there will be refreshments served after the service. All are welcome to attend – including men and children!

Further information on WWDP can be found here and further information about France can be found on the France Mission website here. As always, it’s good to have real people to pray for; France Mission supports a number of missionaries working in evangelical churches in France, so if you want to personalise your prayers, this is a good place to start!

France Mission was founded in 1957 and now has over 60 churches in nine regions of France. France Mission’s churches tend to be small (under 100 people), democratic in structure, informal in style, and distinctly non-ecclesiastical in their premises, with converted shops, banks, garages and factories pressed into service. Of France Mission’s 125 missionaries, 14 come from the UK. Since 1970, when there were around 900 evangelical congregations, church growth in France has been spectacular, with over 1,400 new churches being added in the last 40 years. A new evangelical church is now planted somewhere in France every ten days!

As with many European countries, immigration is high on the political agenda. Because of its links with North Africa, there are many North Africans living in France and the Muslim population is growing there, often resulting in tensions and unrest. This year’s WWDP service looks at the diversity of the church and at Christ’s command to love all people, no matter what the nationality, so is very relevant to the women living in that country.

Stephen spoke from 1 John 1:4-10 this morning about the light of God. Light can be dazzling and dominating, but it can also be subdued (think of candlelight and how this ‘sets the tone’ for romantic meals!) Sometimes dimmed lighting is necessary (eg to protect the tapestries in the stately home Stephen visited this week), but that makes it difficult to see the splendour and grandeur of the works on display.

In God, there is no darkness at all; He is light. Are we walking in the benefit of God’s light or do we have a dim vision, in shadow, of glory concealed? In a light box, different shades of colours are revealed more clearly and we see colour and light in all their fulness. How much of God’s light are we in? How many shades can we see?

God’s light illuminates the path we take (Ps 119:105) and enables us to walk through darkness (“when His lamp shone on my head…by His light I walked through darkness”, Job 29:3). We need to know God personally so that we can walk in the light, as He is in the light, and so that our fellowship with Him and others is untainted.

A few weeks ago, Dave was preaching on Nehemiah and he talked about how Nehemiah prayed for God to work in Jerusalem… and how eventually he became the answer, so to speak, to his own prayers. He warned us that prayer can be a risky activity, because we may well find God stirring us to do the very things we are praying about.

Eugene Peterson has written a book on ‘the psalms as tools for prayer’ entitled ‘Answering God’. I like the ambiguity of that title: the idea that God is an answering God (how often have we heard that phrase that ‘God is a prayer-answering God‘?) and that in prayer, we also answer God. The psalms are eseentially a collection of prayers, many of which were set to music, and therefore were sung prayers. Eugene Peterson says that the psalms are tools, but ‘not tools for doing or getting, but for being or becoming’ (‘Answering God’ P 2). Prayer is not simply about ‘getting answers’ from God, but perhaps also involves becoming His answers.

As I wrestle with these thoughts and listen to songs, I realise that these songs, too, are prayers. I believe that what we sing is crucially important, because the words get inside us and become part of our lives. When we sing lyrics that are prayers, then, they effectively become our prayers. As I was listening to this song today, I reached the conclusion that this is a dangerous prayer to sing, but one which captures my heart perfectly. ‘Move me, Lord. Use me, Lord. Give me a fire that’s always burning. Show me Your glory. Open my eyes to the world I don’t see.’ It’s a prayer I don’t really know how God will answer, but I long for Him to use me and move me.

“Into the heart of the darkest places
Into the lost and the lonely spaces
Bringing the hope and the life You’ve given
I’ll move cause You move me.

We need to wake up
We need to raise up
Cause I will never stand still; Lord. keep me moving, moving.” (‘We Need’, Jeremy Camp)
‘We Need’, Jeremy Camp

The Bible study focussed on James 5:7-8 tonight: “Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.”

Whilst the only word I see in those verses is patient (it seems there is no escape for me from that word!), Mark looked at other aspects of these verses, namely the Lord’s coming (His parousia) and the rains mentioned (given as ‘former and latter rains’ in some older versions).

In particular, we looked at Joel 2:21-29, seeing how there were different kinds of rains: the former rains starting in October and bringing deluges to break up the soil; the latter rains in spring feeding the crops and ripening them prior to harvest. In these verses, we see the abundance and favour of God and how He is able to restore all that is barren and broken; we also see the abundance and favour of God in verses 28-29 as Joel talks about the outpouring of the Spirit. Jesus likened the Spirit to ‘streams of living water’ in John’s gospel, and we considered how God pours out blessing in abundance at the right time. Just as the former rains prepare the soil for the seed to be able to grow, so the Spirit works on our hearts to bring us to faith in Christ; the latter rains may be likened to the outpouring (or baptism) of the Spirit (see also Acts 2).

The patience required from the farmer, and from us, is not simply passivity. Paul had to remind the Thessalonians that whilst the coming of the Lord was imminent, this did not excuse them from the need to work! Similarly, our job is to sow the seed and to reap the harvest at the right times. We are entirely dependent on God to make the seed grow (and without the sunshine and rain, the farmer is powerless to harvest a good crop), but there is plenty of work to be done in His kingdom as we wait for His coming. Patience is associated with standing firm (vs 8), or as the NKJV puts it, ‘establish your hearts’. We need to be entirely surrendered to God and sure that He will do all He has promised. Joel is full of promises of what the Lord would do; some of these promises have not yet been fulfilled, but we can be sure that God is faithful to all He has promised.