On a lovely sunny day in April, what could be more pleasant than being outdoors? Well, I’m sure these people can think of a whole host of other things they would have preferred to be doing this Saturday, but they generously gave of their time and effort to try and solve a problem we’ve had with the drains. There are a lot of practical jobs associated with church buildings and many of them are not at all glamorous!





Some enjoying food while others keep working!

When we first started meeting in the new building, I preached on the dangers of anticlimax, for there is usually a ‘low’ that follows any ‘high’ and we can be in danger of thinking that there is something wrong if we aren’t always feeling on top form.

Many of you know that I have been in training for the Swimathon event, a sponsored swim to raise money for Marie Curie Cancer Care (and many thanks to all of you who have sponsored me for this!) Today was the actual sponsored swim and I managed the 5 km swim I had set out to achieve. I even have the medal to prove it! But funnily enough, rather than feeling any great sense of achievement, I felt a strange sense of anticlimax at the end of it. “Is that it?” perhaps best sums up my feelings. All those weeks of training, all that extra mental toughness in true Thomas the Tank Engine style (‘I think I can, I think I can’), all that imagining and hoping and wondering… all gone. I’ve done it. And instead of feeling elated or any great sense of achievement, I just think ‘Now what?’

Life can be like that more often than we like to admit. Garry has just bought a new motorbike. He’s been dreaming of this moment for months and months and has talked of little else for the past few weeks. This week he’s been like a child waiting for Christmas! But at times maybe the anticipation and the saving up and the waiting and hoping are more exciting than the reality. When we’ve got what we want, sometimes we don’t want it any more…! (Not true of Garry, I hasten to add!)

The human heart is restless, always wanting more. If we think things will satisfy us, there’s always something bigger, better, shinier out there to tempt our hearts and lead us astray. We need to learn patience and contentment and the joy, perhaps, of perseverance.

Hebrews 12 tells us to run with perseverance, “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Heb 12:2) We need to have that long-term vision and the stickability that will not depend on the highs and lows of feeling or mood or circumstances but on the reality of God’s word. Paul tells us in Romans 8 “But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” May we learn to wait patiently for what we do not yet have and may we be thankful for all we do have, not moving on restlessly to the next quest for something new, but learning contentment in God.

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.!