The second half of the quiz was to guess the name of the female animals listed below:





How successful were you with these? I was hoping for more obvious pictures, like ‘lioness’!

The answers:
1) Doe (a deer, a female deer, as the song goes)
2) Hen
3) Doe (also a female rabbit, apparently)
4) Fish (yes, that obvious!)
5) Sow (though I preferred the suggestion of ‘coonette’ for this one!)

Some of the successful mothers with their Mother’s Day prizes:

It was entirely fitting that on Mother’s Day we celebrated the dedication of a baby at our church. Grace, born in October last year, was brought by her parents to the church for prayer and blessing, dedicating her to the Lord and asking God’s help in bringing her up ‘in the discipline and instruction of the Lord’. May God bless this family as they experience the joys (and pains) of parenting and bless Grace, who is a delight and blessing already to us as a church as well as to her immediate family.

Mark looked at various mothers in the Bible, focussing on Eve (‘the mother of all living’), Hannah (who knew what it was to be blessed by God, receiving the gift of children after many years of barrenness and heartache), and Mary, favoured by God to be the earthly mother of Jesus. May we too learn to seek God and to fulfil our vows to God and to be wholly yielded to Him, willing to do whatever He asks of us.

Continuing on the theme of the spiritual disciplines needed if we are to walk the ‘narrow way’, this morning’s sermon focussed on prayer, festing, meditation and study. All these disciplines are things that have to be practised in private; motives are key; and they are a means to an end – not the end in themselves.

Prayer has to be private before it can be public; it is personal (Jesus taught that we pray to ‘Our Father in heaven’) and arises from our relationship with God, since we are His children (1 John 3:1). It also has to be persistent (see Luke 18 & the parable of the persistent widow, a parable given to show we “should always pray and not give up” (Luke 18:1)) and penitent (as Luke 18:9-14 shows). Prayer is also, as James reminds us in James 5, powerful. We engage in spiritual battle when we pray – one reason the devil tries to keep us from prayer!

Fasting also needs to be done privately and for the right reasons (see Matthew 6:16-18). Chiefly we fast and pray to seek God and to learn the discipline of self-denial, because our appetite for food is strong! As we fast, we prove the truth of Jesus’s words that “man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matt 4:4) Fasting can never be divorced from our daily living, though, as Isaiah 58 proves. God is not pleased with fasting that is just an arm-twisting exercise with no thought for others; the kind of fasting He has chosen is “to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?” (Is 58:6-7)

Meditation means to ‘gnaw’ on God’s word, like a dog ‘worrying’ a bone, desperate to get every last bit of nutrition and enjoyment from it. Psalm 1:1-2 talks about the blessing that comes from meditating on God’s Word day and night, and there we have part of the problem: meditation requires time and so often that’s the thing we feel we lack. We wish we could ‘slow down time’ (as Jeremy Camp puts it), but we need to make the time to chew on God’s Word, understanding that we need the Holy Spirit’s enlightenment as we read; we need to read and understand so that the words become as sweet as honey to us (Rev 10:9-10).

Study involves both ‘a detailed critical inspection’ (such as is commanded by Paul before we take Communion in 1 Corinthians 11:28 and in 2 Corinthinas 13:5, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves.”) It also involves using every resource available to learn more about God and about His Word – and the resources available are immense! Nonetheless, we must be careful, for knowledge is not the end goal. Paul reminds us that, “We know that “We all possess knowledge.” But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know.” (1 Cor 8:3) Ultimately, the aim of all these disciplines is not so that we can know everything or feel self-important; they are necessary so that we may “grow in grace and in a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Pet 3:18) in order that we may fulfil the greatest commandments, to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and love our neighbours as ourselves. We pray, we fast, we meditate and we study so that we may know God better and so that we may love Him and our neighbours, reflecting His image and spreading His fragrance wherever we go.

This Sunday we’ll have an extra-special service in the evening. First of all, it’s the first Sunday in the month, so it’s the Family Service…always a great time of fun, games, quizzes, songs and an important theme.

This Sunday, however, it’s also Mother’s Day, so it will be a special service because of that. And finally, it’s also the dedication of baby Grace, so that will be a really special part of the service.

Three special reasons to be there, but most of all, it will be special because God will be there, faithful to meet with His people as they gather in His name. Be there for 6 p.m.!

God is in the business of transforming people. No, He’s not a character from the film ‘Transformers.’ Based on the hugely popular cartoon and toy range from the 1980s, ‘Transformers’ revolves around a war between two sets of robots for supremacy on earth. Optimus Prime is the leader of the Autobots, who have travelled to earth to protect mankind from Megatron and his evil army of Decepticons. Meanwhile, young human Sam Witwicky buys his first car, which just happens to be Autobot Bumblebee, and soon finds himself embroiled in the battle to save the planet. These two tribes of ancient alien robots can shape-shift into items of our technology (thus spawning a whole range of toys to captivate children’s imaginations!) We all like the idea of transformation, but don’t always understand what spiritual transformation looks like.

Romans 6 shows us the shift in allegiance that Christ brings to our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin, but have a new master, a new allegiance. We died with Christ so that we may live with Him and for Him. We have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God.

God’s purpose is not that we might be happy, that we might live successful lives in the way that we often define success (money, marriage, children, good jobs, good reputation etc.) It’s not that these things are wrong or that we shouldn’t aspire to them. It’s more that they are limited ambitions and aspirations. God’s purpose is outlined in Romans 8:29: “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.”

God is transforming us so that the sin-stained image inherited as a consequence of Adam’s sin is replaced by the image of Christ, who lived a life of total obedience to God and therefore regained the true purpose for humanity. “We all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Cor 3:18)

It’s a bit like a Rolf Harris picture, though. The artist used to entrance me on Saturday evenings, daubing paint on a canvas and asking us “Can you tell what it is yet?” His artwork appeared totally random, until suddenly the picture was revealed… looking effortlessly like the cartoon creature it was supposed to be representing.

God’s work in our lives can seem like ‘daubs of paint’, splashed randomly on. Tragedy comes and we don’t understand how that can fit in with His revelation that all things work together for the good of those who love God (Rom 8:28). The mundane continues, day by day, and we fail to see how this ‘great plan’ we have read about is being written in our lives. But even though we may not see the picture yet, the Great Artist is actually at work, painting the image of His Son, shaping our lives so that we become like Jesus. John says, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2)

We may not see His image clearly in our lives yet, but God is at work transforming us into that image. Man, made in the image of God, will again look like that. How amazing is that?!

Freedom is very much a popular topic of conversation, but Romans 6:15-23 has some interesting things to say about liberty. Paul talks here about if we are under grace, we are not under law: in other words, we can do what we want! Is the gospel adovcating anarchy?!

The freedom Paul talks about in this chapter of Romans is the freedom to choose. God has made us with free will, but there is no such things as rights without responsibilities. “Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?” (Rom 6:16) As Jesus so controversially taught, “everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” (John 8:34)

The freedom Jesus offers us is freedom to choose His way, rather than the way of sin. “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.” (Rom 6:22) We have the choice now of living as a slave for God, loving Him and serving Him as a willing servant (rather like the Old Testament slave whose ear was pierced as a sign that he wanted to remain with his master even when he could have left him).

Augustine famously once said, “Love God and do what you want!” Although this might seem like licence to some and a recipe for disaster to others, if we truly love God, we will want to keep His commands and please Him. (John 15:10, 14, 17) We have a new allegiance, a new master, for there is no such thing as simply pleasing ourselves. We either serve God or we serve His enemy; there is no middle ground. We are either slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness (Romans 6:16)

God is in the business of transforming people into the image of Christ (Rom 8:29). Look at Jacob – ‘the deceiver’ (Gen 25:23-26), transformed into Israel – ‘he struggles with God’ (Gen 32:22-28), later referred to as ‘the upright one’, ‘Jeshurun’, in Is 44:1-2. This kind of inner transformation is brought about by God as we consistently choose the paths of righteousness over the ways of the world, as we follow Him daily, learning to offer ourselves to God (Rom 6:13). There is so much more to our lives than the mere collection of information; we are in the process of being transformed into the image of Christ, regaining that lost image of God which Adam first knew.