Endless Reserves
We are constantly being told that we have a finite amount of fossil fuels to feed our energy needs and that we must look to renewable energy sources for the future.
All of us can identify with the idea of reaching the end of our natural resources. We understand that we have a limited amount of patience, kindness, compassion and love, and often feel that we have simply run dry of the milk of human kindness. We are worn out by the constant demands on our time and regularly feel that we have no reserves left to see us through another day of lockdown.
What do we do when we feel burned out, washed out and completely depleted of energy and love? Matthew 11:28-30 offers us the very simple answer.
We must come to Jesus.
In Jesus, all the fulness of the Godhead dwells (Col 1:19). In Him, there is an endless reserve of love, patience, kindness, compassion, mercy, forgiveness and strength. When we are weary and burned out, when our battery charge is at 0%, if we come to Him, we can, once again, be filled.
We are finite. God is infinite. We are weary. God is never weary and never slumbers or sleeps. (Is 40:28, Ps 121:4) We are selfish. God is selfless. All that we lack can be found in God.
Plug yourself into God today. He’s willing to pour into us everything we need. His reserves are limitless and will never run out.
The Unfolding of Your Words
In the film ‘A Cure For Wellness’, one of the characters makes the observation, ‘a man cannot unsee the truth. He cannot willingly return to darkness, or go blind once he has the gift of sight, any more than he can be unborn.’
It is true that truth is itself revelational, opening our eyes, giving us understanding and insight. Once we know the truth, we can be set free. (John 8:32) Truth acts as a doorway to light. Once we enter that doorway, ignorance is banished. We cannot ‘unsee the truth‘, even if we then choose to ignore it. We can’t pretend we are not changed by this knowledge. Truth becomes a solid foundation on which to build.
Ps 119:130 says ‘the unfolding of Your words gives light.’ When we understand what God is saying, when His word is broken open to us, when we suddenly ‘see’ what it means, we are led to a place of revelation, where truth is unveiled for us. After that, we can never be the same. The truth doesn’t change, but it changes us.
Jesus said that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). As we follow Jesus, the truth that He embodied is opened to us. Each day we have the privilege of HIs words being opened to us so that as this is unfolded, light comes. More light. More revelation. This is how we are transformed through the renewing of our minds. (Rom 12:1-2)
Truth is a cure for blindness, for ignorance, for all the ills of the world. It is not a painless cure (thought it is definitely preferable to the cure in the bizarre gothic film I referenced earlier!) But it is the way to the wide-open spacious places of God’s kingdom if we will walk its narrow paths.
Your Purpose
Stephen spoke tonight on the vision and challenge of God. The Bible is divided into two testaments, but it speaks really of three times: the beginning (before Christ), the times of Jesus and the end times after His death and resurrection. We are living in those end times, when the Holy Spirit has been poured out on us as Joel 2:28-32 predicts and Acts 2:1-41 describes. We don’t know when Jesus will return, but we know that He will return and that we are all part of God’s plan.
Eph 1:11 says ‘in him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.’
This verse reminds us that we are not bystanders or spectators; we have been chosen and have a purpose and destiny in God. Each one of us matters and is of importance; we all have a task to do, a vision to fulfil. We may well feel inadequate, insignificant and confused, but God is in the communication business. He is the most interactive communicator of all, way better than social media or the Internet could ever be! He is able to pour out His Spirit on us, speaking to us through prophecy, visions and dreams.
The challenge for us is to listen and obey when God speaks. It’s easy to misinterpret what He says or to simply forget it or not even understand it. Hab 2:2-3 reminds us that the revelation or vision awaited an appointed time and Habakkuk was commanded to write this revelation down on a tablet (the writing form used then.) We too need to write down what God says to us; keeping a journal is a good idea so that we do not forget what God has said and can refer back to it as we mull over it and ponder its meaning. We may not use tablets to write on anymore, but the idea of taking tablets as medication reminds us that they work because we ingest them, digest them and our bodies work with their active ingredients. In the same way, we must ingest, digest and absorb God’s words to us so that they become real to us.
Samuel, Job, Isaiah and Daniel all had purpose which came from God. We too have purpose, and the boy who gave his packed lunch to Jesus saw that Jesus fed multitudes with just a few items. Jesus had a plan; He had the answer to the crowd’s needs. He is able to use whatever we give Him for His purpose and for His glory.
Why, God? (2)
God created a good and perfect world. (Gen 1-2). God’s original purpose, as we see in the Garden of Eden, was for humanity to live in peace and harmony with the world and with God. Amy Orr-Ewing, in her book ‘Where Is God In All The Suffering?’, writes, ‘God, who is love, made a world in which love is possible… and this entails there being a world in which there is the possibility of choice.’ (P 25) The choice made by Adam and Eve to want to be God rather than to love and serve God (Gen 3) has had consequences throughout history which still reverberate today.
Sin is the source of suffering and we live in a world that is broken, a world where ‘the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.’ (Rom 8:22) All the natural disasters, all the illnesses, diseases and death, which plague us and cause us to ask God ‘Why?’ so many times, all the suffering that comes because of human behaviour, have come as a result of sin, and this is why only God’s solution to sin can give us any hope of an answer that will see our heartache, pain, suffering and sorrow resolved one day.
We may feel dissatisfied with God’s answers to this age-old question, but ultimately we see that God has chosen to work redemptively rather than removing all evil and suffering right now. He has chosen to bring good out of evil, to give us hope that is eternal and not limited to the world we can currently see and experience. God’s answers will never eliminate the need for personal trust and personal choice, because that is how God has made us. Any answer also will invariably involve waiting and understanding that perfection will not happen now, but that God will make all things right in eternity. Paul tells the Romans, ‘I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.’ (Rom 8:18) He tells the Corinthians, ‘our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.’ (2 Cor 4:17) God tells us that He is preparing us for wholeness, completeness and perfection in Him, for a time when every tear will be wiped away, a time when there is no more death or mourning or suffering or sorrow or pain. (Rev 21:4) That is the hope we have to sustain us now and to help us gain strength to live with faith in a broken, suffering world.
Why, God?
In our series exploring the big questions of life using question words (‘Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?), we reached probably one of the biggest questions of all today: ‘Why, God?!’ So often, we don’t understand what happens in life and ask questions such as ‘Why does God allow suffering? Why doesn’t He step in to sort out injustice? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do the wicked seem to flourish?’ We often conclude that either God is loving but impotent (He can’t do anything about evil) or that He is powerful but indifferent (He could do something, but doesn’t care enough to do anything.) Either conclusion is wrong and will lead to resentment, anger and bitterness and will erode our faith.
The question as to why God works the way He does may never be fully answered in this life, but in Psalm 73 and the book of Habakkuk, we see these questions asked honestly and openly before God and learn something of His ways through His answers. The psalmist questions if there’s any point to living a righteous life when the wicked seem to flourish and get away with ignoring God (Ps 73:2-12); Habakkuk asks why God tolerates wrongdoing and how long this must go on for. (Hab 1:1-4)
God’s ways cannot be understood from the perspective of time; we must look further into eternity to understand fully. Only when Asaph entered God’s sanctuary did he begin to see that the wicked will indeed get their just ‘reward’ (Ps 73:17-27); Habakkuk, far from reassured by God’s answer that He could use even the evil Babylonians to achieve His purposes, sees that he must wait for God’s revelation to come. (Hab 2:1-4) Waiting for God’s justice to prevail and for righteousness to dawn like the noonday sun (Ps 37:6) is not easy for us to accept as the answer to our ‘Why?’ questions. We want answers now and we want justice and righteousness to be seen in our dilemmas right now, but the truth is that in a fallen world, where sin has tainted everything, we have to learn to live by faith and not by sight. (2 Cor 5:7) Only God can satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts, and both Asaph and Habakkuk ultimately found satisfaction in God Himself, even when they wrestled with doubt and uncertainty. (Ps 73:25-26, Hab 3:16-19)
Heart Creativity
Most of you will know that I believe strongly that creativity comes in different guises and that we are all creative in some form or another because we are made in God’s image… and God is a creative God! Dearne Churches Together, building on the ‘Advent Angels’ project at Christmas when we gave out 45 knitted or crocheted angels in our community as a symbol of hope in difficult times, is working on an Easter project involving hearts called ‘Whispers of Love.’ The world needs to know just how much God loves each one of us, and this is a way of reaching out to people by giving them a symbol of His love in the shape of a heart. These hearts will be distributed in Thurnscoe, Goldthorpe and Bolton-on-Dearne (and anywhere else where people choose to rise to this challenge!) on Easter Saturday (3rd April) so that people can have a visible reminder of God’s love through a free gift of a heart.
Some people love knitting, crocheting and cross stitch and are offering hearts made in that way:
Some have painted hearts onto pebbles:
Others have taken the wooden hearts we bought and are decorating them in different ways. Some have painted:
Some, especially the children, had fun with glitter and stickers:
Some have even braved the stickiness of decoupage!
Marie Nichols showed us her fantastic art skills in a series of painted hearts:
However people are choosing to create their hearts, we are immensely grateful for all the donations (we are up to about 200 hearts so far and want lots more – there are a lot of people in our villages!) and even more grateful to God for His gifts of creativity and especially for His unfailing love towards us all.