It was good to gather together virtually yesterday for our services, and there will be further opportunities to do that this week. On Thursday at 7 p.m. our Bible study will be online via Zoom and Facebook Live and we will be looking at Acts 12 – lots for us to ponder there! You could read the chapter beforehand and ask God to speak to you through it. Links will be posted later this week.

Friday 3rd April was scheduled to be the ‘Churches Together’ Day of Prayer and although we can’t meet together to pray at Furlong Road Methodist Church, we can still meet together to pray! We are investigating a way of doing this online with other churches, but we are calling all Christians to pray at 11 a.m. on the Friday. We will be saying 2 Chronicles 7:14 aloud and using this prayer for revival, which has featured so predominantly in sermons prior to the lockdown, as our focus. May this be a time of humble repentance and trusting God to bring healing and revival to our nation.

On Saturday 4th April we will still be holding our ‘Take Back the Streets!’ prayer campaign between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. If we’re still allowed to take our daily walk by then, we would encourage people to do that wherever they are and pray as you walk outside. Those that can’t do that are encouraged to pray at home. In particular, let’s pray for the streets of Goldthorpe (use maps online -this one or this one)

We can do a ‘virtual’ walk using maps, praying for streets by name and asking God to bring hope and peace to the people living in these streets. We can pray for our local shops at these difficult times and for protection. We can pray for the people we know and ask God to use this time to bring people to know Him. There’s so much we can pray for.

If you can, please email photos to Julie of the places you pray for as you walk (at safe distances from others, obviously!) and we will try to build up a picture of our area. If you can’t walk in Goldthorpe, pray for the streets where you live too. Prayer knows no boundaries and no barriers!

One of the things Jesus did on the cross was to bring about reconciliation between people and God: ‘God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.’ (2 Cor 5:19) Sin created a chasm between mankind and God which the cross of Christ bridges, enabling us now to come into God’s presence with confidence. (Heb 4:16) Not only that, but because of the cross, we can now have reconciliation with other people, exemplified by the reconciliation between Jews and Gentiles: ‘he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.’ (Eph 2:14)

This has profound implications for us. We still live in a world divided by race, gender, age, sexuality and a whole host of other things. Every day, we face the choice to live shunning others for a whole myriad of reasons, or to embrace others, offering them this message of reconciliation. (2 Cor 5:17-21) James urges us to embrace heavenly wisdom, one characteristic of which is to be peace-loving. (Js 3:17-18) Jesus told us that peacemakers are blessed (Matt 5:9). They will be called children of God – a God whose name is the Prince of Peace. (Is 9:6)

Pray for opportunities to be a peacemaker today – to bring together instead of to drive apart. The world desperately needs such people – even if we have to do this online for now! Praying for all you parents who may have to be peacemakers between fractious children too. It’s not easy, but it is worth doing.

We managed to livestream on Zoom and Facebook simultaneously tonight, a real step forward! Our thanks to all who gathered with us; it was lovely to see your smiling faces. Our thanks to Tim for the message below:

At these difficult times, we often feel a mixture of emotions, including anxiety and fear, and need to be honest with ourselves and God about this. We have to speak out God’s word at all times so that we are living by what He says rather than simply by how we feel. Ultimately, we know God is in control and is working for our good in all circumstances (Rom 8:28); Jesus has overcome the world (John 16:33) and is still able to give us abundant life, even in lockdown! (John 10:10)

God is in control but chooses to work through His people. Because we are created in the image of God, we need to understand that words are powerful and have creative power. Matt 21:21 reminds us we can speak to the mountain and see it move; we have authority to bind and loose (Matt 18:18) We need to learn to speak out the word of God; there is power in doing this (speak out Psalm 91, for example, personalising the pronouns in the psalm to realise that this is God speaking to us.) Adam and Eve were given dominion over the earth and although sin has caused a disruption to God’s original order, Jesus has defeated the enemy and Satan’s only power now lies in deception and lies. Col 2:15 tells us ‘having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.‘ Jesus is the One to whom all authority has been given in heaven and earth and therefore we need to focus not on chaos or trouble but on the God who has overcome the world. As we speak God’s word aloud, we find that there is a spiritual law at work which we may not understand but which has power to change situations.

This is a time when we can effectively hit the ‘re-set’ button on our lives. We can take time out to re-evaluate our priorities and see how the world’s culture has perhaps influenced us more than the word of God. We can re-commit ourselves to God and seek His renewal and revival. Many feel fearful, wondering if these are the ‘last days’, but we are in a win-win situation: ‘to live is Christ; to die is gain.’ (Phil 1:21) We can be immunised against fear as we speak the truth of God’s word into our lives and we can be sure that if it’s not good yet, it’s not the end! God has so much more for all of us and we can trust in His protection, provision and providence.

Despite various technological problems as we climb the steep curve of learning to livestream, it was good to meet together this morning and share in Communion. Stephen spoke to us from Mark 12:30, which tells us, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’

It’s very easy to stop our reading at ‘Love the Lord your God’ – which is an important message for us all, but we need to look at the ‘how’ outlined in this verse. The soul is a critical part of our lives but is often hard to define; strength can be interpreted in different ways (physical, emotional, mental strength), but today, Stephen focussed on us uniting our heart and mind in our love for God.

Many of us find we are ‘head’ people, who rely on reason and knowledge to guide us, who are sensible and think things through logically and rationally. Others are more ‘heart’ people, focussing on emotion, kindness and compassion and being caring, adaptive and sensitive. Physically our head and our heart may be only about 50 cm apart, but often the distance between our head and our heart can seem more like a vast chasm! Sometimes we feel torn, as if reason takes us one way and emotion takes us in the opposite direction. We need to integrate both our heart and our head to love God whole-heartedly.

One of the key aspects of this verse is the repetition of the word ‘all’. God wants us to love Him with all that we are. It is sobering to remind ourselves that even in these difficult times, our love for God needs to be whole-hearted, bringing together every part of our being in love and worship before anything else. Only then will we know the completeness and integrity God wants for us all.

One of my favourite passages in the Bible is found in Isaiah 43:

‘Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.’ (Is 43:18-19)

God, that ever-creative God, is always doing a new thing. He is always making a way in the wilderness and providing streams in the wasteland, as He did for the people of God for forty years before they entered the Promised Land. In other words, God is always looking for opportunities to do good things. Even when situations are far from good in themselves, He is able to do good things.

We need to be willing to embrace new things. That might mean taking up a new hobby or being willing to change the way we do something. It means being unafraid of change (not easy for most of us) and being positive about doing something different (or something differently). We’re all being forced to learn new things at the moment, often involving technology and taking us out of our comfort zones, but maybe God is pushing us towards new things. We are having to embrace new things, whether we like it or not, but this can be a challenge which leads us into deeper connections and positive change.

I spend a lot of time pondering grace and particularly love the verse “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor 12:9) At least (if I’m honest), I love the first part of the verse. I’m not quite so keen on the second part…

In our current situation, people are finding the helplessness they feel in this situation difficult to live with. We are used to being proactive and the idea that self-isolation and staying at home can actually help seems utterly counter-intuitive to us. Most of us worry if we can live like this for three weeks and then worry it might be longer than three weeks… and so the cycle of anxiety, lack of control and panic ties us up in knots.

A long time ago I remember being in a similar situation, lost in a hypothetical world of anxiety, ‘what ifs?’ and uncontrollable scenarios. This is the only time I’ve really heard God speaking to me in a way that was almost audible: He said to me, ‘there is no such thing as hypothetical grace.‘ That pulled me up short. I believed firmly in God’s all-sufficient grace, and yet I was living in tension, anxiety and gut-churning worry and wondering why the peace of God that passes all understanding was nowhere to be found. I was wanting hypothetical grace.

Shortly after this, the ‘worst-case scenario’ happened: my mother, aged only 61, was diagnosed with bowel cancer and I had to face the prospect of losing someone so very dear and precious to me. Somewhat to my naive surprise, I found not hypothetical grace, but real grace. I found I was carried by God through those months before her death – and after her death, I was carried even more. God worked in ways I can’t begin to describe. His grace is sufficient for us.

But His power is made perfect in weakness. When we feel helpless and hopeless, that’s when God’s grace and power can be seen and felt. So maybe today, if you’re feeling a bit swamped by everything, take heart. God’s all-sufficient grace is there for you. Lay aside the hypothetical stuff and get hold of the real thing.