As I eagerly await the arrival of Jeremy Camp’s new album ‘Reckless’ (released today, with a preview of the title song available here and with the title on its own bringing a smile to my face as I realise more and more how God wants to shake me out of my comfort zone to live utterly and totally for Him, which to the world so often looks like recklessness!), I am working from home and listening to previous albums.

“Staring at this empty canvas
Waiting for the next stroke of my life
It seems to go by so fast
Another day I’ve wasted wondering
How it all ends up instead of resting
That it’s all in Your hands” (‘Slow Down Time’, Jeremy Camp)
‘Slow Down Time’, Jeremy Camp

I spend so much time wondering how it all ends up instead of trusting and ‘resting in Your words that never fail’.

Styles vary from the rocky ‘Giving You All Control‘:
“Take hold of these impurities
Giving You this wretched soul
I’m giving You these insecurities
Giving You all control” (‘Giving You All Control’, Jeremy Camp)
‘Giving You All Control’, Jeremy Camp

…to the more lyrical ‘There Will Be A Day’, with its promise of hope and peace:
I know the journey seems so long
You feel you’re walking on your own
But there has never been a step
Where you’ve walked out all alone

Troubled soul, don’t lose your heart
Cause joy and peace he brings
And the beauty that’s in store
Outweighs the hurt of life’s sting (‘There Will Be A Day’, Jeremy Camp)
‘There Will Be A Day’, Jeremy Camp

… and ‘Surrender’, which captures my heart’s desire to surrender to God’s authority:
‘I surrender to Your throne
I surrender to Your throne
And I will make my heart Your home
I surrender to Your throne.’ (‘Surrender’, Jeremy Camp)
‘Surrender’, Jeremy Camp

I suspect you’ll be hearing the new ones as they too speak into my life! Incidentally, whilst on this random musical theme, Matt Redman and Jonas Myrin won Grammy awards this week for ‘10,000 Reasons’ (best contemporary Christian song and joint award for best contemporary Christian music performance.) I am pleased that such a fantastic song received recognition, but was also touched by Matt Redman’s response: “We wrote this song for the glory of God, so He gets all the glory today too.” That’s humility.
Grammy award photo

How do you know, as a parent, if your local school is good or not? Do you go by what the OFSTED report (issued approximately every three years) says? Do you judge by league tables? How do you know if your child is doing well at school? Do you know what National Curriculum level they should be at? Can you help your child with homework? Do you know who your school governors are? What do you do if you want to find out more? What do you do if you have a complaint?

Schools, like every workplace, have their own jargon and their own ways of doing things. These always look intimidating to outsiders – and parents can feel like outsiders at times! The plethora of educationally-related phrases – awarding bodies, controlled assessments, SATs, Allen tests, diplomas, GCSEs, EBCs (no longer to be introduced after all), peer assessment, NC levels – can all seem daunting and unfriendly. It’s tempting to just send our children to the nearest school and hope for the best.

But our children are given to us by God and we have a responsibility for their care and education which ought not to be fobbed off onto outsiders. So it is important as parents to find out what we can about schools and to be actively involved in our children’s education if at all possible. ‘Leaving it to the experts’ is not always the best option. We, as parents, are the experts on our own children! Don’t let any teaching professional tell you otherwise!

At primary school, most children have a class teacher who provides a point of contact with a parent. Some are easier to talk with than others, but all should be the first point of contact if a parent has questions, concerns or worries. As children go to secondary school, there is usually a Head of Year or member of staff with pastoral responsibilities who can be a point of contact for everyday concerns and queries. Most of all, though, a parent needs persistence in approaching schools and should not feel belittled or demeaned if there are concerns to raise.

There are two extremes that parents can have. One is a naive belief that schools get everything right and that this absolves the parent from any further responsibility as a parent. The other is to demonise the school and blame it for every difficulty or problem the child may face. The truth usually lies in the middle, with parents and schools needing to work together for the child’s ultimate good. Sometimes that will mean upholding discipline. Sometimes it will mean drawing the school’s attention to problems they might not otherwise be aware of. Always it involves trying to keep the channels of communication open and listening more than we speak.

There are lots of ways that parents can be involved in school life (including becoming a parent governor of the school.) Most of all, though, a parent needs to take time to listen to their child and to work with them. As the teenage years hit, sometimes it feels like the child views both parents and school as enemies, to be battled at every opportunity! The truth is the opposite. Parents and schools generally want each child to fufil their potential and to grow into rounded adults. We need to pray for our children, but in the wider church context, we need to be prepared to ‘parent the parents’, offering support, time, love and a listening ear to both parents and children alike. Children often benefit from the adult role models in church: it’s easier to pour out woes to another adult at times than to tell Mum or Dad. Young parents often benefit from older adults in church who have been through the same struggles and have lived to tell the tale! A listening ear and a timely word of advice often work wonders and can be a tangible way of helping others.

So far in our musings on prayer for our local schools we have looked at praying for teachers (including head teachers and governors) and for Christian organisations working in schools. I thought it important also to look at praying for the children and young people in schools and at how things look from their perspective.

School takes up a large proportion of time and can be a ‘make or break’ experience for many children. Some love the challenge, community life and whole learning experience of school. Others hate it, feeling isolated, lonely, academically challenged or bored, and end up wanting to leave. Many are in between, enjoying some aspects of school life but finding others stressful. School-age children may feel stressed about academic and extracurricular demands, peer pressure, parental expectations and a growing anxiety about what the future holds for them, even if they do achieve well at school. They may face bullying, which can take all kinds of different forms (including cyber-bullying where the increasing importance of social media can mean there is no escape from backbiting and malicious gossip, even away from school.) The relentless toll of assessment and testing can be very difficult for some pupils to adjust to, whilst others thrive on the competition and challenge of exams.

‘Fitting in’ is a big thing for even young children and certainly as the teenage years hit, the pressure to conform to all that is around them increases on young people. Obviously, how young people cope with this tends to be influenced by a variety of factors, including the security of their home life and the personality of the individual. Sometimes, the gap between the values taught at home and the values of school seem to clash enormously and it can be frightening for young people and parents alike to work through these issues. The influence of friends can be good or bad, but certainly has to be worked through.

I asked some of the children at church how they find school. Most said they enjoyed it, but found some of the subjects hard. Some wanted to talk about the things they enoyed (primary maths featured highly!) Playing with friends ranked high among the ‘advantages’ of school, but the opposite of that is the difficulties some have had with bullying. This can range from cruel words or ‘funny looks’ to actual physical violence. All schools must have an anti-bullying policy, but it is not always easy for adults to get to the bottom of bullying and as Christians, we must pray for the safety of the children in our schools and for staff to be vigilant in dealing with incidents. Ultimately, also, we must pray for the children to find godly ways of dealing with these issues.

The family that are moving away will obviously face the challenge of new schools. All the children are nervous about going to a new school, meeting new people and making new friends and the difference that change inevitably brings. Let’s pray for them to settle in well and to make good academic progress, but let’s also remember as we pray for our schools that God is interested not only in what we achieve but in who we are. Let’s pray for godly characters to be formed in our children and for schools to be a place where Christian values are upheld.

Yan Hadley spoke last night on how to guarantee that God is glorified in our lives, basing his sermon on John 15:8. Often, we forget that God is able to bring good things out of little; we can be like Nathanael who asked ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ (John 1:46) Outward impressions, first impressions and preconceptions can colour our view of ourselves and other people. Jesus is able to do a lot with very little!

God can bring great things out of very little. A Saviour, Healer, Deliverer and King came from a tiny seed in a virgin’s womb, born into a dirty, dusty stable. God’s timing is always right. He is never in a hurry, but is never late. Even when it seems that God delays, there is always purpose and perfection in His actions (think about the greater miracle of the raising of Lazarus in John 11.) In that situation, Jesus reminded the sisters ‘If you believe, you will see the glory of God’ (John 11:40). For us to see God glorified in our lives, we must have faith. The Bible is full of stories where something positive is brought from very little: Adam brought forth from the dust of the earth; Abraham becoming the father of many nations when he could not even have a child; Moses becoming a great leader when he had committed murder; Gideon the inadequate becoming a mighty warrior; David, the youngest of many and ‘only’ a shepherd boy becoming a giant slayer; the valley of dry bones becoming a mighty army; the Samaritan woman, cast out in society because of her sin becoming a powerful witness to the Lord.

Before we can see this transformation in our lives, we have to confess our wrong atittudes:
1) towards other people (it’s so easy to judge others by how they look and speak, but as James has reminded us, such judging by outward appearances is wrong and God often chooses the weak and lowly to demonstrate it’s all of Him! 2 Cor 5:16-17 reminds us that we should view no one from a human point of view, for in Christ, we become a new creation.)
2) towards our circumstances (not living in despair and depression, but confident that God is working all things together for good and secure in the fact that goodness and mercy are our lifelong companions and that we will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living)
3) towards ourselves (not living with low self-esteem and inferiority but sure that God can bring something beautiful out of our lives.)

We also need to understand the need for:
1) conversion (and ongoing transformation from glory to glory, see 2 Cor 3:18)
2) commitment (abiding in God and leaning not on our own understanding)
3) counsel (seeking the advice and help of other Christians, Prov 15:22)
4) consecration (setting ourselves apart daily for God, as indicated by Rom 12:1 and Josh 3:5, knowing that when we do this, God has promised to do amazing things!)
5) courage (having the courage of our convictions and not giving up or compromising our beliefs or allowing fears to determine our future. Like Joshua, we need to be ‘strong and very courageous’.)

As we do these things, we trust God to bring much fruitfulness from our lives and rest secure in the fact that His plans will prevail.

A church is a family and therefore there are all kinds of family occasions in its life to celebrate.

Last night we had two contrasting occasions. One of our families is moving to another place this coming week. That is both a sad occasion (they will no longer be with us) and a cause for rejoicing (God is leading them somewhere else, and His plans for us are always positive – Jeremiah 29:11). We prayed with this family and sent them forth with our blessing.

As with all families, ‘out of sight’ is not ‘out of mind’. We will continue to pray and keep in touch with these people, praying they will find a good local church to become a part of, that the children will settle into new schools, that they will find friends and continue to discover God’s will for their lives.

We also had a birthday to celebrate. All birthdays are wonderful, but this one will be full of special rejoicing as we celebrate God’s healing work in our brother’s life and continue to pray that he will be strengthened and know renewed vigour and blessing.

Partly inspired by Isaiah 58:12 (which is rapidly becoming a ‘theme verse’ for the church in 2013!), Dave spoke about Nehemiah this morning and his commitment to rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. Nehemiah definitely could have been called a ‘Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.’ Born during the Israelites’ exile, Nehemiah had never even seen Jerusalem and yet when he heard that the walls of Jerusalem were broken down and the gates burned with fire (Neh 1:3), he was moved to fast and pray.

Nehemiah was a man of prayer. The work for which he is most famous began with prayer, continued with prayer, and the last words recorded in the book are words of prayer! He learnt to persevere in prayer: from getting the initial message to speaking to the king took about four months, during which time he was constantly in prayer. His prayer began with a confession of Israel’s apostasy and an identification with sin. Prayer always starts with a confession of sin, with an acknowledgment of our sinfulness in relation to God. When he started praying, Nehemiah probably didn’t expect to be the means through which God would answer his prayer. But as we align ourselves with God’s will in prayer, often we see things that we can actually do. Nehemiah came to the place where he realised that the rebuilding of Jerusalem mattered more than the luxury, influence and power he enjoyed with the king. He reached the point where, when the king asked him what was troubling him, he could send up an arrow prayer and ask the king for permission to go to Jerusalem himself (Neh 2).

When he arrived in Jerusalem – doubtless to the curiosity and excitement of the people there, for any royal official must have been newsworthy! – Nehemiah spent three days in prayer and reconnaissance before he spoke to the people about his plans. The God who had already worked on the king’s heart to grant safe passage and leave of absence had worked in their hearts too, so that they were eager to join with Nehemiah. Opposition came (Neh 2:19-20) in the form of ridicule and scorn. Opposition will always come to those who seek to put God first, for the offence of the cross makes no sense to those outside God’s plans.

Nehemiah dealt with the opposition by praying (Neh 4:4-6). When the enemy changed tactics and brought in actual fighting, Nehemiah showed wisdom in splitting his forces, putting half the men to work and half to guarding the work. When the enemy wanted to distract Nehemiah into ‘friendly conversation’, Nehemiah refused to be distracted (Neh 6:2-3). He was not deceived by false prophets (Neh 6:8-13). Instead, he kept his gaze on the work and thus, in 52 days, the work was completed (Neh 6:18). After that, he gave time for the reading of the law and reminded the people that this was now a time for rejoicing (Neh 8:10).

Nehemiah models for us whole-hearted surrender to God. Like Moses before him, he gave up the fame and comfort of his life to ally himself to God’s people, who were downtrodden and in need. The kind of fasting God requires from us is to loose the chains of injustice, untie the cords of the yoke, share our food with the needy and to clothe the naked (Is 58:6-10, see also Matthew 25). One person really can make a difference. One church really can make a difference. We need to stand up for the things we believe in and understand that we work for eternal rewards. Like the quizmaster in ‘Mastermind’, we need to finish that which we have started and continue to do the things God has called us to do.