February is the month of love, with Valentine’s Day being an annual reminder that undying love must be declared! The origins of this day are unclear. One legend has it that the emperor only allowed men of a certain age to marry (since single men could be sent to war and married men were more reluctant to go!) and Valentine was a monk who felt this was wrong and so allowed younger men to marry, thereby incurring the emperor’s wrath and being martyred for this. Another legend has Valentine as a monk who helped Christians who were being persecuted by the Romans and who again was killed for his help. Other legends believe that Valentine’s Day originates from a fertility festival to honour the god of agriculture. Whatever the origins, by the 17th century it was commonplace to send handwritten notes declaring love to a beloved, but without signing a name to these declarations; by the 20th century, the advent of printed cards revolutionised the day (and made big business for card companies!)

Our willingness to go along with the commercialisation of love indicates a deep-seated need to be loved that is felt by every human. We all want to be loved as we are, to be fully known and fully accepted. This was how it was meant to be in the beginning, with God creating man for relationship with Him, but as sin entered the world, mankind pushed God away, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts which we often seek to fill through other things.

Garry spoke about a 2-storey building in Sheffield that was demolished to build 5-storey flats on the same location. The foundations needed strengthening, but it was only when concrete was brought in to fill the gap that it was realised the original building was built on an old Victorian aqueduct. The actual amount of concrete needed to fill this hole far exceeded expectations. In the same way, no human being – however loving and kind – can fill the hole in our hearts that can only be filled by God.

Jeremiah 2:13 tells us that Israel’s sin was to forsake God, the spring of living water, and to dig their own cisterns. God is the source of pure, life-giving water. Water from our own broken cisterns will not satisfy.

However unloved we may feel, the fact remains that we have never been unloved. God has loved us with an everlasting love (Jer 3:31). His love is ‘no emotional reaction, but rather a unilateral love shaped by His character.’ (Henry Morriss III) God’s love for us is unconditional and continuous.

Even Christians can hold God at a distance, building walls to defend ourselves from hurt. But God sees through all our defences and wants to meet our deepest needs. There is ‘so much more to be revealed’, but we need to be willing to receive His love and accept that His love can meet our deepest needs.

As Michael W. Smith has sung, no matter how unworthy, unwise, unwilling and unteachable we have been, the one thing we know is that we have never been unloved. ‘It’s because of You, and all that You went through, I know that I have never been unloved.’
‘Never Been Unloved’, Michael W. Smith

Tonight’s family service looked at the theme of ‘Unloved’. Mark organised a quiz for us to identify unwanted or unloved or obsolete objects:

I hope you’re better at guessing what these are than I was!
1) Vinyl LP
2) Old steam iron
3) Broken heart
4) Holey socks
5) CD player & cassette player

As usual, there were prizes to be won:

There were even prizes for the teams with the lowest scores!

Throughout the month of January, God has been impressing on me that He is the God of hope (Rom 15:13) who can turn even the most desperate situations around. During the prayer walks, ‘discovering’ Hope Avenue (despite walking past it for six years and never recognising its name!) became a kind of parable for me that there is hope for our village and area just because God is here with us, on our side.

Psalm 124 recognises that if God had not been on Israel’s side, they would have gone under.
“If the LORD had not been on our side –
let Israel say –
if the LORD had not been on our side
when people attacked us,
when their anger flared against us;
the flood would have engulfed us,
the torrent would have swept over us,
the raging waters
would have swept us away.” (Ps 124:1-5)

The psalm resounds with the fact that God helps us. It starts with the thought that if God had not been on our side, we would have been completely lost – swallowed alive by enemies, engulfed by floods, trapped like a bird in a fowler’s snare – and ends with the declaration ‘our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.’ (Ps 124:8) God is the one who has made the difference.

Throughout the Bible, we read of desperate situations that are turned around by God. Things were bleak, with no way out… but God stepped in and made a way of escape! From the first sin (when God promised a Redeemer) through to Noah (Gen 8:1), Abraham (Gen 21:1, Gen 22:8) and Joseph (Gen 45:7-8, Gen 50:20), we see how God is the One who turns situations around. When the Israelites were trapped in Egypt, He provided a way out through the ten plagues and then through the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea. Trapped with the sea before them and the Egyptians behind them, the Israelites were told “The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.” (Ex 15:14)

The deliverance of Daniel in the lions’ den or of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace give us further examples of God’s ability to bring hope into hopeless situations. But by far the greatest evidence of God’s deliverance comes in the New Testament, where we see how God stepped into the world in the form of Christ and rescued us from the dominion of darkness. Throughout Acts, we read how “You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.” (Acts 3:15) and “Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.” (Acts 2: 22-24)

There is no situation more hopeless than ours before Christ (see Ephesians 2). We were dead in transgressions and sins. (Eph 2:1) We were cut off from God, without hope and without God in the world (Eph 2:12). We were by nature deserving of wrath (Eph 2:3). “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.” (Eph 2:4-5)

The fact that God has intervened in our lives to bring us back to life and has raised us to eternal life with Him as joint heirs with Christ gives us great hope. Even if we don’t see any reason to hope, there is reason, because God is the God of hope. As we seek God for what He wants to do in Goldthorpe and the surrounding villages in 2013, we do so with hope in our hearts and the good news that ‘Hope is here; shout the news to everyone!’ (Tim Hughes, ‘Jesus Saves’).

Igor went on another adventure this week, sadly without me! He was taken out to Las Iguanas, a restaurant in Meadowhall which obviously needs to cater for iguanas!

Apparently the waitress was impressed to meet Igor and the food there (for humans) was very enjoyable, but I’m not sure Igor enjoyed being stuffed in a rucksack in order to get from A to B…

One of the benefits of the Internet is that there is a lot of information readily available to us to help inform our prayers. Local authorities produce a lot of statistics and information about our areas which can help us to have a factual understanding of issues affecting our area.

Goldthorpe is situated in the Dearne North Ward of Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council. In Barnsley as a whole, currently 18% of the population is under 16 and 23.8% of Barnsley’s children aged under 16 years are currently living in poverty. Statistics are often meaningless to me as I’m not that good at maths! But apparently that equates to approximately 8,700 children in Barnsley living in the 20% worst areas in England for low wellbeing. I find numbers easier to deal with than percentages, and that is an awful lot of children who are in difficult circumstances. All children need our prayers, but there is no doubt that it is doubly difficult for those living in poverty.

In 2009, 39.3% of young people in Barnsley schools achieved five A*-C passes (including GCSE English and Mathematics) and at the end of March 2010, the percentage of young people defined as Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) was 8.1%. These figures are all higher than the national average and reflect the difficulties many young people face. Because of their lack of qualifications, they struggle to find jobs and there is a sense in which other problems (lifestyle factors, the risk of involvement in drugs and other criminal activities) become exacerbated by their educational failures. In our area, the picture is even worse, with only 29.8% achieving five A*-C passes (including GCSE English and Mathematics.) As we are praying for schools throughout February, we need to pray that pupils will be able to do well in their learning and that they will leave school with some form of qualifications and life skills that can help them to find work and purpose in their adult lives.

Statistics can obviously be interpreted in a number of different ways, however. If we look at the above statistics, they mean that 60.1% of young people in Barnsley schools did achieve five A*-C passes (including GCSE English and Mathematics) and that a huge number of young people are in education, employment or training. That is a far more positive way to look at things! We need to be careful to look at the whole picture. It is easy to be gloomy and despondent about the situation in our local area, but there is indeed much to be positive about. Nonetheless, we need to pray for our schools and for the children and teachers working there.

Education is not the answer to life’s ills in itself. As C.S. Lewis wryly pointed out, “Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.” The secular world view which is so prevalent in our Western society is nowhere more evident than in schools, especially secondary schools where evolution is taught as fact and humanism is the prevailing philosophy. There is also far more to life than paper qualifications. As we are praying for schools, let’s pray that children will learn well in all areas of the curriculum, but that they will also learn moral values and spiritual truths that are consistent with Christianity and that they will be encouraged to seek a personal relationship with God through Christ. Many schools work hard to give pupils some moral framework that is consistent with Christianity and there are many youth organisations and church organisations which seek to have a positive input into schools. Pray that headteachers and governors will understand the need to look at the spiritual values and ethos of their schools as much as the need to do well in ‘league tables’ and achieve good academic results.

(Statistics used here are available from LASOS (Local Area Statistics Online Service))

Thursday (31st January) will see the last prayer meeting of the month, with the whole church encouraged to pray and fast on this day to conclude the first month of prayer and fasting of 2013.

Prayer is not a New Year’s resolution which lasts for only one month, however. Prayer is ongoing in our life with God. We will continue to pray for what Mark jokingly calls the ‘Ten Commandments’ (the list of things we have been focussing our prayers on during January), but we will also focus on other aspects throughout each month of the year.

In February, we will be praying particularly for the local schools in our area, praying that:
• God will bless and encourage Christian teachers
• Through these teachers, the school will have some Christian input
• Christian organisations and churches will be allowed to work in schools
• That children and teachers will come under the influence of the Holy Spirit
• That seeds will be planted in children’s and young people’s lives that will
result in them coming to know Jesus as their Saviour.
• That God will bless and protect the children.

There are 4 main schools in the area:
* Goldthorpe Primary School
* Sacred Heart Roman Catholic School
* Highgate Primary School
* Dearne ALC (Advanced Learning Centre)

Some further information about Dearne ALC from their website is given below:

The Dearne ALC opened its doors to 1100 students in January 2011, replacing the Dearne High as part of the Building Schools for the Future programme. The new secondary school is part of the regeneration project in the village that we have been praying for.

The school motto ‘Aspiration, Ambition and Achievement’ embodies everything the school stands for as a learning community. “Our aim is to continually develop new ways of learning and teaching that respond to the varying needs of our students.”

The school is situated on the fringe of Goldthorpe. The number of students eligible for free school meals is well above average as are the number of students with a statement of special educational needs. The building has been designed to meet the full needs of our community. Service provision for students and their families and additional learning support is located onsite alongside a broad range of community and extracurricular resources. Adult learning and high quality community use facilities are a key element of the school and the community we serve is positively engaged to make use of these every day.

The school achieved the National Challenge floor target of 30% 5+ A*-C including English and maths for the first time in 2009, an increase of 8% on the previous year. Results in 5+ A*-C English and maths have increased by 2.4% from 2009 to 2011. In 2011, 32% of students achieved 5+ A*-C including English and maths.