Tonight at our prayer meeting, we were praying for spiritual breakthrough in our communities. Recently, a church member felt that the Lord reminded her of the ‘dambusters’ in the Second World War. The Dambusters (made famous in the 1955 film of the same name, whose theme tune is very famous) was the nickname of the RAF’s 617 Squadron which led ‘Operation Chastise’ in 1943, an attack on the Möhne, Eder, and Sorpe dams in the Ruhr Valley industrial area of Germany. The idea was to destroy the dams so that the source of power for generating electricity was destroyed and massive disruption to German war production would be the result. The raid happened only when Barnes-Wallis created, in effect, a ‘bouncing bomb’, which was capable of destroying the dams at the bottom.

Prayer is a little like those bouncing bombs which destroyed the dams. Prayer is a spiritual weapon. Paul says, ‘For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.’ (2 Cor 10:3-4) Just as those bouncing bombs destroyed the seemingly impregnable dams, so I believe our prayers have the power to destroy the enemy’s strongholds in our area.

We need an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on our churches and on the whole area. One way we think about this is the idea of flooding, water pouring forth, gushing forth, an unstoppable stream of God. Is 59:19 says, ‘From the west, people will fear the name of the Lord,and from the rising of the sun, they will revere his glory. For he will come like a pent-up flood that the breath of the Lord drives along.’ We need an outpouring of God’s Spirit so that we see the strongholds breached and the flood of God’s life bringing regeneration, new birth, new life to our own lives, to our churches, to our area.

In addition to our usual Thursday evening meetings (at 7.30 p.m.) and Sunday meetings (at 10.30 a.m. and 6.00 p.m.), we have a couple of additional prayer meetings in May and will also be joining with other churches in distributing Pentecost doves in our local communities.

This Saturday (1st May) at 10 a.m. we will be holding our ‘Take Back the Streets’ prayer meeting. Join us to pray in the building or to walk the streets in Goldthorpe, praying for the revelation of God and the outpouring of His Holy Spirit on our community.

On Wednesday 19th May we will be hosting the ‘Churches Together’ prayer meeting at 10.45 a.m. in our building. This will also be on Facebook live/ Zoom.

On Saturday 22nd May at 10 a.m. we will be joining other churches to give out Pentecost doves in our local communities. We will be meeting in our building before going out into Goldthorpe, Thurnscoe and Bolton-on-Dearne to give out the doves/ toiletries.

Dave told a story on Sunday night which illustrated for us the truths of 1 Peter 2:9-10. It’s the story of how Doug Nichols, the International Director of Action International Ministries, made the excellencies of God known in a tuberculosis sanatorium in India in 1967.

Doug was a missionary with Operation Mobilization and he got TB. He was in the sanatorium for several months. He tried to give tracts and copies of the Gospel of John away, but no one would take them. They didn’t like him and assumed he was a rich American. At one point for several nights he would wake up coughing at 2 a.m. He noticed a little old emaciated man trying to get out of bed. The man couldn’t stand up, and began to whimper. He lay back into bed. In the morning the stench in the ward was terrible and everyone was angry at the old man for not containing himself.The nurse who cleaned up even smacked the old man for making such a mess.

The next night the very same thing happened. Doug woke up coughing with his own terrible sickness and weakness. He saw the old man try again to get out of bed. Again he couldn’t stand, and began to cry softly. Doug got out of bed went over to the old man. The man cowered with fear. But Doug picked him up with both arms and carried him to the bathroom which was just a hole in the floor, and then brought him back.The man kissed him on the cheek as he put him down in bed.

At 4 a.m. another patient woke Doug with a steaming cup of tea and made motions that said he wanted a copy of the booklet — the Gospel of John. Through that whole day people kept coming to him and asking for his booklets even though he could not speak their language.

In other words one way to declare the excellencies of God is to act them out. When we act out the excellencies of God, people will hear them with even greater eagerness. God made us who we are to show the world who He is. That’s our great and meaningful purpose in life.

Dave spoke on Sunday evening on the subject ‘Who Am I?’ This is a question only humans ask; no cat or dog or turtle or fish or squirrel or bird or dolphin or chimpanzee ever lost one night’s sleep pondering this question! 1 Peter 2:9-10 gives us insight into the question of identity and purpose, questions which are so crucial to human life.

Peter, writing to Christians, says that we are a chosen people. Our identity is not based on our ethnicity or beliefs as such; it is based on the fact that God has chosen us. We are a people who have received mercy. We can’t really use ‘mercy‘ as a verb, so some translations say we are ‘pitied.’ This implies that God saw our sin and need and had compassion and mercy on us. His love and grace reached out to us when we had nothing going for us, so to speak. Our identity fundamentally comes not from what we do, but from what God has done.

We are God’s possession, His very own people. He has chosen us to belong to Him, to spend eternity with Him. This gives us purpose in life. We are set apart for God, called to be a ‘holy nation.’ We exist for God, and since He is holy, He is able to make us holy too. Moreover, our purpose is to be a ‘royal priesthood.’ That means we have direct access to God and are called to serve Him all the time. Our identity and purpose are given to us by God. They are not human inventions, but are the direct gift of God.

This leads us to ponder on the question ‘What am I here for?’ Peter defines that purpose as “that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.” We cannot ever really understand ourselves and our identity and purpose apart from God: Christian selfhood is not defined in terms of who we are in and of ourselves, but only in terms of who are in God. God has made us who we are so that we can make Him known to others. The meaning of our identity is that the excellency of God be seen in us.

How do we do this? We can do this in so many ways:

• We can do it in church services with preaching and singing and praying and reading.

• We can do it in our small groups as we tell each other what God has been for us, or what we need Him to be for us.

• We can do it at work as we tell people what we love about God and why we think He is great.

• And we can do it in a thousand different ways of love that suit our situation and personality.

Paul, facing a storm which threatened the lives of all on the ship on which he was travelling to Rome, was able to pass on encouragement and hope to the others because he received a personal word from an angel from ‘the God to whom I belong and whom I serve.’ (Acts 27:23) Even in what must have been truly scary circumstances (things had got to the point where all their preventative measures had failed and even the cargo and equipment were being thrown overboard), he was able to pass on hope and to remain confident because of God’s help and specific word to him.

It is interesting to see that he defines God in a way that would have made sense to people whose ideas of gods were very different to his own. The first thing he mentions is belonging to God. Belonging is one of the essential needs of every human; we all need to know that we belong somewhere, to find ‘our place in this world.’ (‘Place In This World’, Michael W. Smith) Most of us find a sense of belonging initially in our blood family, but God offers us the chance to become His children and belong to His family (John 1:12). This gives us great security, even in difficult times. Paul also links service to God. Once we are secure in belonging, we are not afraid to serve. Jesus, secure in His identity (‘Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God’ John 13:3), washed the disciples’ feet. The two things – belonging and service – may seem contradictory, but it is actually only out of a sense of belonging that true service emanates. Where there is fear or anxiety, our service arises from a desire to avoid punishment or a need to please. Only as we are sure whose we are can we serve with gladness.

All of us would like life to be all about ‘plain sailing’, a metaphor describing smooth and easy progress in a process or activity. As Christians, we sometimes believe that this is what a life of faith means: the constant intervention of a benevolent God who, if He only wants the best for us, surely owes us deliverance from evil and access to a life of continuous ease.

Acts 27 bursts this idealistic bubble, however, as it describes a fierce storm and shipwreck which certainly threatened the life of the apostle Paul, finally on his way to Rome after over two years’ imprisonment on false charges. This chapter resonates with detail and vividly describes the desperation felt by even experienced sailors when facing the merciless sea during a storm. Nonetheless, God’s presence with Paul sustains him (and encourages others) and is a vivid reminder to us that troubles and difficulties do not automatically mean God’s displeasure.

Jonah faced a similar storm that was indeed the result of his disobedience, but we would be wrong to assume that all trouble is linked to sin. Jesus made this plain when he spoke to people about a blind man (John 9:1-3) or when he spoke about different disasters. (Luke 13:1-5) Difficult though it may be for us to grasp, life in a sin-stained world is never going to be all ‘plain sailing.’ There will be testing, trials and troubles, but these do not invalidate or negate God’s goodness, mercy, kindness, love and grace. Paul was able to testify to God even in these extremely hazardous circumstances; he was also able to reassure all 276 on board that they would survive this ordeal. (‘Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand trial before Caesar; and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you.’ Acts 27:24) The one thing we can rely on, even in the fiercest drought or storm, is that God will never leave us or forsake us. (Heb 13:5)