This past week we visited Woburn Safari Park where there is a play area for children. Our older granddaughter loved the park and she demonstrated to us quite clearly how her gymnastics lessons have helped to develop her sense of balance. With arms outstretched to help her keep her balance, she navigated the twists and turns of the wooden beams quite confidently.

Maintaining balance is largely a matter of practice. We understand this when it comes to children learning to walk and ride a bicycle – or navigating the different challenges of a play area – but we don’t always appreciate that as adults, we too have to keep practising if we want to maintain balance. Moreover, we accept that falling and failing will be inevitable when it comes to children, but often a fear of falling and failing paralyses us as adults, and we prefer not to even try because we are afraid if we step out in faith, it will end in crashing failure.

Moving in spiritual realms is risky. We won’t always get it right, but just as the child falls and is picked up by loving parents and encouraged to try again, so too we have a heavenly Father who is longing to pour out His Spirit in our lives. Let’s not be afraid to ask God to use us in the spiritual realm, to give us access to heavenly wisdom, knowledge and power, and let’s step out in boldness. Little children have much to teach us.

God wants us to have access to the supernatural, spiritual realm; in fact, since we are now alive in Him because of His love and mercy, this is now our ‘new normal.’ The question remains, however: ‘how do we learn to balance the spiritual with the physical?’ How do we ‘grow into’ the spiritual?

There is a simple test for how far you have come into the spiritual realm, and this is ‘what does it take for you to pray?’ If prayer is a last resort, something to be done only in times of real emergency when we have exhausted every other option, we will not make much progress spiritually. We need to pray in order to become more spiritually sensitive, and as we become more spiritually sensitive, we will want to pray more!

One of the hardest things for us is learning to recognise when God is speaking to us. He may speak to us in an audible voice, but quite often, our connection to the spiritual realm comes through thoughts or feelings and it can be hard to discern if this is our own ideas or God’s. What matters is that we are tuned in to God’s word so that we know the kinds of things He says and we  then need to take baby steps in responding to God’s voice. That often leaves us feeling uncomfortable; after all, sometimes the ideas we have are odd, to say the least! But as we respond to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, we realise we have an open invitation to live in balance with the physical and the spiritual, to live in this augmented reality. All God really requires is our willingness to hear and obey. If we pray, ‘God, use me’, be prepared to hear God’s voice and obey it!

Vertigo is a sensation of whirling and loss of balance, associated particularly with looking down from a great height, or caused by disease affecting the inner ear or the vestibular nerve. Balance is especially important to us and can be improved with practice, so vertigo leaves us feeling out of sorts and can be very disorientating.

All of us have to learn to balance (think of the child learning to walk and ride a bicycle) and some people, like Travis Horn (see here), become very, very good at balancing. We talk about ‘balancing’ different aspects of life, but perhaps the most important balancing we have to do is between the physical and spiritual realms.

Humans were created physical and spiritual beings and initially these two aspects of being human were in perfect balance. However, when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, a kind of spiritual vertigo set in and now we all have lost touch with our spiritual side (see Eph 2:1, Col 2:13). We are living off-balance since we are living mainly in the physical realm. It’s a bit like losing a dimension (like the difference between a 2D picture and 3D reality.)

God the life-giver has given us spiritual resurrection through Jesus, however (Eph 2:4-5, Col 2:13, Eph 5:14) and as a result, we now have access to ‘augmented reality.’ In military terms, this term refers to a technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world, thus providing a composite view. In spiritual terms, this means we now have access to God’s spiritual realm as well as our physical realm.

Jesus demonstrated this augmented reality throughout His life, ‘knowing’ things about people (e.g. the woman at the well and Nathanael) which could only have been known by God. We have access not only to knowledge and information, however (often described as a ‘word of knowledge’), but also have access to God’s power. Jesus was involved in healing the sick, raising the dead and controlling nature, but He also told us that we would do greater things than He had been doing (John 14:12).

As we pray, read God’s word and meditate on it and are washed by God’s truth, we have access to the spiritual side of life and need to grow in sensitivity to this side of life. Just as Travis Horn learned to balance by practising, we need to take those baby steps towards God’s knowledge and power; we need to learn to respond to God. Life is about far more than the material and the physical only; we need the augmented reality of the spiritual world which is now available to all who believe.

Last week we had three birthdays to celebrate! (and a new tiara to go with the birthday hat…)

Stress and anxiety are often part of our lives nowadays; we worry about so many different things, including our jobs (or lack of them), finances, relationships, politics and so on. Even when we don’t have any specific reason to worry, anxiety can gnaw away at us; Charlie Brown once said, ‘I worry about my worries!’ The problem with stress, worry and anxiety is that these are futile; as Charlie Brown also comments, ‘worrying just stops you from enjoying the good.’

In Matt 6:25-34, Jesus addressed these problems and gave us the antidote to anxiety. He told His disciples – who faced much the same worries we do, even if they may be dressed in different clothes! – not to worry, showing them it was pointless (it can’t add an hour to our lives or an inch to our height) and that life is about much more than the material world. The reason we don’t have to worry is not because bad things don’t happen, but because we have a God who loves us and provides for us.

Many people struggle to believe that God is in charge and that He loves us and therefore feel that they must be able to solve all of life’s problems by themselves, which is clearly impossible. So often, our worries are about tomorrow, but as Jesus reminded us, if God cares for the flowers in the fields and the birds of the air, He will surely look after us, since we are even more valuable to HIm. The only way we can successfully live without worrying is by seeking God’s kingdom and His righteousness above our own desires and needs. If we focus on ourselves, worry is inevitable, but in the divine paradox of life, if we turn our attention away from our needs, our needs will actually be met by God. When we learn to rely on God’s righteousness rather than our own and put God first, we find that trusting God is the cure for anxiety (see Prov 3:5-6). Habbakuk reminds us that we can rejoice even when circumstances don’t appear to be favourable (Hab 3:17-18). It’s all a question of trust; trust is the antidote to worry. When we put God first and trust Him, we can relax into His loving care. ‘Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions‘, as the Message version puts it!

We have a couple of special meetings left in September. On Tuesday 17th September at 10.30 a.m. we resume our ‘Churches Together’ prayer meetings, joining with Christians from other churches to pray for our churches and community, this time at the Salvation Army on Straight Lane in Goldthorpe. All welcome; please feel free to let us know your prayer requests. John tells us, ‘This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.‘ (1 John 5:14-15) What an encouragement to pray!

We are hosting a coffee morning in order to raise funds for the cancer charity Macmillan on Saturday 28th September between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. Come along for home made cakes and buns and hot and cold drinks and support Macmillan at the same time!

On Saturday 28th September between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. there will be the Dearne Community Arts’ Festival at Astrea Academy Dearne (secondary school on Goldthorpe Road, S63 9EW). This local event seeks to champion creativity and celebrate community and is a wonderful opportunity to see what local residents get up to all year round! There will be exhibitions, performances, workshops and demonstrations with all kinds of arts on offer – painting, photography, crafts, woodwork, jewellery, knitting, sewing, crocheting, circus skills, music, dance, pyrography, 3D printing, virtual reality cinema, paper crafts, needle felting, hot wax painting, sand art, making bead badges, creative writing, poetry and much more!

The festival is free and suitable for all ages. It’s a great opportunity to buy Christmas presents (we have local people selling home decor, children’s clothing, blankets, baby cardigans, jewellery, hair accessories, Scrabble tile gifts, wooden vases and bowls, for example) and to look at some lovely art work (including projects done by local organisations such as Station House, the local history group and Dearne Churches Together), but there is also the opportunity to have a go at something creative yourself and to learn about different kinds of crafts. With face painting and body art by Julia Arts and light refreshments sold, we really hope you’ll come along to see for yourself and to support this local arts’ festival!