Over the past weeks and months, great emphasis has been placed on staying physically fit and well. The importance of physical exercise even in lockdown was recognised by the government, and Joe Wickes’ fitness workouts became a useful part of families’ home-schooling efforts. People have become very alert to symptoms of Covid-19 and as the country begins to creep back to some kind of normality, things like temperature checks are being used as a way of measuring this new normality.

Physical check-ups may be useful, but so are spiritual check-ups. God’s word encourages us to come before Him and ask Him to search us and know us (see Ps 139:23-24). Paul tells believers to ‘examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves.’ (2 Cor 13:5) He knew the benefits of physical training, but also stressed the value of godliness to spiritual health. (1 Tim 4:8)

Martyn Day, in his book “Beyond Easter”, writes of the spiritual check-up Jesus gave Peter when He asked him three questions about his love for Him in John 21. He refers to three things we can be checked for in the natural realm and relates these also to spiritual health:

1. Jesus took Peter’s spiritual temperature by asking about his love for Him. Whilst a raised temperature in the physical realm causes concern, in the spiritual realm, what is dangerous is being lukewarm. (Rev 3:16) We are called to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (Matt 22:37) and anything less than this is not good.

2. Jesus checks our breathing. “It has been said that prayer is to the sould what breath is to the body – in other words, rather important.” (Martyn Day) Our prayer life reveals much about our spiritual health. How much time do we spend talking and listening to God? Are we short of breath, coughing and spluttering? Respiratory problems have been one of the major issues raised by Covid-19. Are we experiencing similar problems with our communication with God? Our prayer life, usually secret and unseen, is perhaps one of the greatest barometers of spiritual health.

3. Jesus checks our reflexes and responses. “How do we respond to God and His requirements? Does He get much reaction from us?… Are we sluggish in how we view His authority? What is the extent of our obedience?” (Martyn Day) The Bible has much to say about listening and doing. (James 1:22-25) Jesus spoke about putting His words into practice. (Matt 7:24-27, John 13:17) The challenge is always how swiftly we respond to God.

Spiritual fitness, like physical fitness, requires our commitment, discipline and effort, all of which have to be mixed with faith, hope and love. As we draw closer to Jesus, He enables us to ponder these things and gives us the power to change. Peter reminds us that failure does not have to have the last word!

Tonight’s service looked at John 10:1-18 and the fact that Jesus is the good shepherd and we are His sheep. Jesus contrasts Himself – the good shepherd – with all who might get paid for looking after sheep but don’t really care about them, a theme found also in the Old Testament (see Ezekiel 34). Jesus demonstrates His love for us, the sheep, by laying down His life for us and we can be secure in His care and protection of us, as Ps 23 also indicates.

We need God’s protection, not only because of our own sin and stupidity, but because there are enemies who would seek to separate us from God. Jesus gives us great encouragement, however, telling us no one can snatch us from the Father’s hand. (John 10:27-30) The key to succes lies in knowing and recognising the shepherd’s voice. This takes time, effort and practice, for there are many voices crying out for our attention, but as we learn to ask, seek and knock (Matt 7:7-8), we are reminded that God does want to speak to us. He is a God who is always speaking and if we seek Him, He has promised we will find Him. (Jer 29:12-13)

God speaks in many ways, sometimes (but not always by any means) in an audible voice, but also through His word, the Bible. He may well confirm or explain further through the prophetic (a word of knowledge, word of wisdom or prophecy given to someone to build us up), through the counsel and advice of others (who may not know the significance of what they are saying but who can be used by God to speak to us!) or through circumstances and timing which really can’t be explained in any other way than as coming from God.

Fundamentally, we need to understand that:

• God desires to speak to us

• God will speak to us

• God has our best interests at heart

• God leads us as a good shepherd

• our role is simply to follow Him, wherever He leads.

Dave reminded us this morning that the Lord’s Prayer offers solutions to all of life’s seven problems.

• God’s answer to my inferiority is His person — I know Him.

• God’s answer to my confusion is His plan and purpose.

• God’s answer to my worry is His provision — “Give us this day our daily bread”.

• God’s answer to my guilt is His forgiveness.

• God’s answer to my strained relationships is His peace.

• God’s answer to my temptation is His protection.

• God’s answer to my fears is His power.

The Lord’s Prayer also teaches us that we should always put God first in life as the source.It’s so easy to look to jobs, relationships, money or other things as the source of our confidence, but we need to seek God first. Secondly, we need to be specific as we pray. Many of us feel discouraged by unanswered prayer because we don’t really ask God for anything specific (perhaps afraid that He will refuse us.) We need to be specific:

• When you feel like you’re falling apart and you have low self-esteem and feel inferior, pray for His person in your life.

• When you’re confused pray for His plan in your life.

• When you’re worried, pray for His provision.

• When you’ve got guilt, pray for His pardon.

• When you have strained relationships, pray for His peace.

• When you’re tempted, pray for His protection.

• When you have fears, pray for His power.

You can’t get any more specific than that. He says, “trust Me.”

The Lord’s Prayer isn’t just a pattern for prayer, however. It’s a pattern for life. We can’t pray this prayer without being challenged and changed – and the first step for praying this prayer is to know God as our Father, to be born again into HIs family. As we learn to trust Him with our lives, our attitudes and behaviour are changed and we find His person, plan, provision, pardon, peace, protection and power.

Online services have led to a few technical problems in recent months, but communication problems aren’t limited to the Internet! Dave’s sermon this morning looked at the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:9-13), where Jesus, in response to the disciples’ question on how to pray, gave us a framework for prayer which enables effective communication between us and God.

Life has many problems, but they basically fall into seven categories (Inferiority, confusion, worry, guilt, strained relationships, temptations, and fears), and the Lord’s Prayer gives us answers to all seven of these problems.

1. Inferiority. Many of us feel insecure and inferior, not really secure in our identity. The Lord’s Prayer says that our identity is in His person, in our relationship with God as ‘our Father.’ Once we know that He is our Father, we have a security that is not dependent on achievement but on the fact that we are valued and loved by God.

2. Confusion. So often, we feel confused in life, wondering what is the meaning or purpose of life and how we fit into that purpose. The Lord’s Prayer teaches us that He is in control and has plans and purposes for our lives, where His kingdom and His will are bigger things than our own agenda or ideas. Confusion is dispelled as we align ourselves with this ‘bigger picture.’

3. Worry. God’s answer for worry is His provision. We need to pray, ‘Give us today our daily bread’, secure in the fact that God loves to provide for His children and has no lack! We worry about everything: our health, our finances, our future, and our schedule. But God says, “relax.”

4. Guilt. God’s answer to guilt is His pardon. We all make mistakes and mess up in life, and this causes regrets. Sometimes we find it impossible to lay these aside, but God offers us His forgiveness so we can live with a clean slate.

5. Strained relationships. Our biggest problems are really people problems, getting along with other people. When I do things that hurt other people, it causes guilt within me. When other people do things that hurt me, it causes resentment within me. These are the Siamese twins of misery — guilt and resentment, what I’ve done to others and what they’ve done to me. The only answer lies in forgiveness. So many people cannot let go of the past and cannot get on with the present because they’re hanging on to grudges, just like they hang on to guilt. Only God can give us the power to let go and forgive others as He works in us.

6. Temptation. The only answer to temptation is God’s protection. 1 Cor 10:13 gives us the promise that God will not let us be tempted beyond what we can bear and will provide a way out for us. We need to cry out to God for His help.

7. Fear. There’s a lot of evil in the world and we can feel overwhelmed by fear at times, but God’s answer is to deliver us from evil. He helps us because He is all-powerful and has conquered evil. Some of us need to be delivered from some hurtful memories in the past.Some of us need to be delivered from some scars that we’ve carried from childhood. Some of us need to be delivered from some present evil in our life right now that is pulling us down. The good news is God can deliver us!

Some people find it relatively easy to make decisions, to weigh up pros and cons and to come to a decision about what to do. I personally find it almost impossible to make decisions. I spend so much time considering every point of view and possible outcome that I am left in a state often referred to as ‘analysis paralysis‘. Coupled with a fear of failure and a desperate desire to please everyone with every decision I make, I find it difficult to make decisions. God tends to have to push me through open doors before I even recognise they are there!

Christians believe that God is our shepherd, leading us beside quiet waters (Ps 23:2), that He is the good shepherd who leads His sheep into fulness of life (John 10:1-10) and that ‘whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”‘ (Is 30:21) Nonetheless, this does not absolve us from making decisions, for God has given us free will, and rational thought can play an important part in making decisions.

Proverbs 16 has interesting advice for us about making decisions. It tells us to commit to the Lord whatever we do, secure in the knowledge that He will establish our plans. (Prov 16:3) It reminds us to consider motives and weigh options. (Prov 16:1-2) It urges us to give heed to instruction and to trust God in everything. (Prov 16:20) It reminds us that something can look good but lead to death. (Prov 16:25) Ultimately, it also refers to the ‘lot’, saying, ‘The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.‘ (Prov 16:33) We have to have a confidence in God’s ability to guide us and to both open and close doors. (Rev 3:7)

A fear of making mistakes can be a crippling thing. A fear of failure can inhibit us from doing anything good. We need to have confidence in God’s ability to lead and guides us, and also in His ability to redeem our mistakes and bring good from every situation. Paul and his companions faced many setbacks as they went to preach the gospel (Acts 16:6-10), but ultimately, they were led to Macedonia where several churches were established. Circumstances and supernatural messages were all ways God directed them. He leads us in many ways, and whilst we may wish for the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire to lead us as it did the Israelites in the wilderness (it’s always good to have visible signs, we feel!), we are called to live by faith and not by sight. (2 Cor 5:7) Please pray for us as we have important decisions to make about re-opening the building for services, how to keep people as safe as possible and how to lead services in these strange times when restrictions and prohibitions seem to abound.

Thanks to the wonders of Zoom, we had guest speaker Yan Hadley join with us tonight to give us a message entitled ‘The Power Of A Personal Testimony.’ 1 Pet 3:15 urges us to be prepared always to give a reason for the hope we have and we all have a story to tell and a testimony to share of who God is and what He has done for us. We are living in challenging times, but we need to embrace the challenges of life, because the purpose of God is to change us – and change often only comes through times of testing. We are changed primarily by two things: uncomfortable circumstances (which James urges us to treat as friends – see James 1:2-4) and the uncompromising word of God (which is living and active – see Heb 4:12).

As we face the challenge of a global pandemic, we have many questions and uncertainties, but need to have an unshakeable confidence that God can deliver us. In the Bible, we see three examples of this:

1. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego demonstrated confidence in God’s ability to deliver them from the fiery furnace (Dan 3:17-18). The king did not believe God could deliver them (Dan 3:15), but they were uncompromising in their refusal to bow down to him. They saw God’s miraculous deliverance from harm and as a result had a powerful testimony.

2. Daniel demonstrated a similar confidence in God when the edict went out banning prayer. He continued to pray, even though this resulted in being thrown into a den of lions, and he was able to answer the question of the king in the affirmative, for God did indeed deliver him. (Daniel 6)

3. David showed similar confidence in God when he came against Goliath (1 Sam 17). Goliath was the biggest bully around and it would have been easy for David to feel intimidated, but instead he had boldness and confidence in God’s ability. He could later speak of God’s ability to deliver from every trouble and affliction he faced. (Ps 34:19)

If we want a powerful personal testimony like these men, we need to:

• refuse to compromise what we believe, not allowing fear to lead us into compromise

• rest in the security of God’s protection, for God is on our side (Rom 8:31), our refuge and strength and help in trouble (Ps 46:1)

• respond to every challenge by speaking out boldly. The enemy seeks to silence us; it’s often easier for us to retreat into our shells, but God wants us to speak out and confess with our lips what we believe in our hearts. We need to embrace challenges with confidence in the truth ‘My God is able to deliver me.’ Circumstances, people and even the devil may be against us, but God is for us.