Garry spoke tonight from Eph 4:14-16, focussing especially on verse 15 which urges us to speak the truth in love. The two aspects emphasised in this verse are truth (we need to know how to deal with truth, apply it to ourselves and live the truth in our own lives) and love (we have to understand what is and is not God’s love, experience that love, live in it and share it.) If we do this, then we will grow.

Truth

Truth is something of great value (see Prov 23:23). Ultimately, truth is brought to us by Jesus (‘grace and truth came through Jesus Christ’ John 1:17) who is full of grace and truth. (John 1:14) He himself is the truth (John 14:6) and therefore everything He says and does is true. Truth is what lines up with reality, as opposed to the lies of the enemy (see John 8:43-44). He has many ways to mislead us and lead us in wrong directions, but God wants to lead us into all truth (John 15:26).The Holy Spirit is our gude into truth. He teaches us about God and salvation (there may be many Christians denominations, but ultimately we need to be sure these are teaching truth and accept there will be differences of opinion, but this does not mean we are not following God.) Other religions may have elements of truth in them, but they lead us away from God’s truth as revealed to us in the Bible.

God also gives us truth about how to live and we should stick to this, seeking to follow Christ in all we do.

Love

Truth on its own without love can be hard and hurtful. James 5:19-20 reminds us that we need love to help those who wander from the truth. We should love people not just with words but with actions and in truth (1 John 3:18).Oor motivation needs to be to build people up, to heal and not to hurt. Then we can speak the truth in love and from that position of integrity can grow.

Dave spoke this morning from Genesis 29 about the two wives of Jacob, Leah and Rachel. Jacob never intended to marry Leah (the older sister), but her father (Laban) connived to marry her to Jacob rather than Rachel. Jacob loved Rachel, who was beautiful and strong, but did not love Leah (who had weak eyes and was presumably not as beautiful). It’s easy to understand Jacob’s frustration at being manipulated in this way, but we can also imagine Leah’s hurt. She was fundamentally not respected by her father and was unloved by Jacob; she must have been envious of her younger sister. Yet despite this, God saw her pain and therefore granted her the ability to bear children (Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah) whilst Rachel was barren.

Leah, we see, eventually came to realise that she was loved by God, and it is significant that two of these sons became extremely significant in God’s plans (it was from Levi that the priesthood came and Jesus was from the line of Judah). Judah means ‘may God be praised’; by this time, she had perhaps come to understand that envy is not a profitable emotion. Rachel, who may be said to have had everything, ultimately had the love of her husband, but she did not have children; she may have known love and good looks but Leah had life and legacy.

Ultimately, the story of Leah and Rachel minds us of the futility of envy and jealousy and shows us that God does not love us because we are valuable. We are valuable because God loves us.

Over the past eighteen months, we have looked at many questions – questions we ask God and questions He asks us – and have seen that asking questions is a normal (even healthy) part of a relationship. However, we have to also face the fact that sometimes God does not seem to answer our questions, and how we respond to the silence of God is very important.

1 Cor 13:8-12 reminds us that we currently live in a season of incompleteness, when we do not know everything. One day, we shall know fully, even as we are fully known, but until that day comes, we must accept that God is not obliged to answer our questions. It’s not that He is mean or secretive, but sometimes He does not answer our questions because He wants us to live by faith and not by sight (2 Cor 5:7) and because some answers are beyond our comprehension (see Deut 29:29).

We mature by learning to trust God even when we do not see or understand what He is doing. It can be hard to trust Him when we do not see how He is working or what He is doing, but we are called to praise Him in everything and to believe that He is working for our good in every situation, even those which are tragic and hard to bear. (Rom 8;28-29) Faith and trust, worship and praise, are our choices. They are markers of living by faith and not by sight. Rend Collective’s song ‘Weep With Me’ has the profound truth in it that ‘what’s true in the light is still true in the dark.’ Often, when darkness calls, when sorrow hits our lives, we find it hard to believe that God is good, that He loves us, that He is able to work for good in our situations, but we grow as we trust God in these situations.

Secondly, sometimes perhaps God does not answer our questions because He knows we would not be able to understand the answers! We live in the now; we live in a world we can see and touch. But the answers God brings belong to the spiritual realm and this realm can’t be seen or touched in the same way as the natural world. God often gives us examples and pictures of spiritual truths through the natural world – the transformation of a butterfly from a caterpillar, for example, pointing to the truth that our mortal and corruptible bodies will one day be transformed into immortal and incorruptible bodies. But spiritual questions have spiritual answers.(1 Cor 2:14) We need to have spiritual understanding if we are to grasp the answers to spiritual questions and must learn to accept that we can’t understand everything now.

Andrew Peterson says, ‘So when the questions dissolve into the silence of God,/The aching may remain, but the breaking does not.’ (‘The SIlence of God’, Andrew Peterson) We don’t have to be broken by unanswered questions but can learn to trust God even when He doesn’t give us all the answers we would like.

Here are some more photos from the Jubilee Fun Day, taken by volunteer Christopher Wright.

A flavour of the day…

What a wonderful afternoon we have had, with 90 people attending our Jubilee Afternoon Tea and celebration service. We had lots of food to eat, a Jubilee quz to complete, a Jubilee song to learn (especially written by Garry to mark this occasion) and crafts to do. We learnt that we can all have 2 birthdays like the Queen – but to be born again and become a follower of Jesus is far more special than having an ‘official’ birthday! We also reflected on the fact that whilst 70 years is a very long time to reign, Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and His reign will never end!