This morning’s sermon at Cherry Tree Court looked at the subject of trusting, but used the analogy of floating in water. Most of us don’t float instinctively because we have to overcome our fear of the water before we trust it to keep us afloat! Similarly, most of us don’t find it easy to trust God, even though He is reliable and trustworthy. We prefer to be in control of our own lives and don’t like to feel we don’t know what’s happening.

Heb 11:6 tells us it’s impossible to please God without faith, and when we read that famous chapter of faith, we see that ordinary people simply did what God told them to do. What they did may well seem odd to us (Abel offering a sacrifice, Noah building a boat, Abraham going on a journey without knowing his destination), but what was important was their obedience in response to what God said. Trusting God means we don’t have to have all the answers or know everything, but that we choose to obey what He says.

Prov 3:5-6 tells us to trust in the Lord with all our heart and not lean on our own understanding. When we submit to Him in everything – effectively allowing Him to have the driving seat of our lives – we can trust Him to direct our paths and make them straight. When we learn to float, it’s surprisingly relaxing and soothing – and a life of trust can be fulfilling and relaxing too!

Reeba has sent us some photographs from the recent tailoring graduation in Bangalore. Our thanks to all who support this vital ministry to local Indian women, all of whom receive a sewing machine when they graduate to help them.

Although we don’t meet midweek in August because of holidays, we still need to be a people who pray. On Friday 16th August we will have a morning prayer meeting at 10 a.m. to which all are welcome. Come along to pray specifically for other church members and for the work of our church. Bring your prayer requests (or let us know them beforehand) as we seek God’s face for our needs and the needs of our community. If you can’t actually be in the church building to pray, please commit to pray where you are!

Let’s pray for health, strength, wisdom and spiritual gifts to be seen in our midst and for all God’s people to be filled with His Spirit.

Let’s pray for our everyday witness: for our contact with family, friends, neighbours and colleagues to be fruitful and for people to come to know the Lord as we engage with them.

Let’s pray for church ministries to flourish (especially to the Mums & Toddlers and the young people) and for new ministries to be birthed as God speaks to us and shows us how to reach out to people.

Let’s pray for ‘Churches Together’ and the work and witness of all local churches. Pray for our summer outreaches, the visit of The Message Bus on 30th October and the visit of 4FrontTheatre again on 25th December.

Let’s pray for revival.

‘When You move, hearts awaken
Broken lives will be redeemed
Here and now, as in Heaven
Let revival be released.

Hear our cry
Heal our land
Oh God, we pray for revival
What You’ve done before
You can do again
Oh God, we pray for revival.

God of grace, God of salvation
We are desperate on our knees
You can save this generation
Let revival be released.

At our Team Building Day this afternoon, we explored ‘the perfect couple’ – not a Mr & Mrs quiz (though Garry and Julie did have to answer a range of questions, with others predicting their answers!)

The perfect couple we were really interested in was how our church life builds us up to fulfil Jesus’ Great Commission to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. how our Sunday worship affects our Monday-Saturday living. We looked at how the Bible describes the church as a body (and thought about the diversity of the human body as well):

We looked at how each of us is vital to the work of the church and the diversity of ways we can serve God in the church, but we also explored our individual mission fields, looking at how we spend our time and how God wants to work in those ordinary areas of work, recreation and home to help us reach our communities.

We also prayed for people and situations in our mission fields, asking God to help us be witnesses in those areas.

Our thanks to Sarah Davey for her prayerful help in leading the session and her willingness to help us look at things in a different way and to all who came and participated so enthusiastically.

Fredrick and Reeba have today sent updated photos of Amshika, the little girl we support in Bangalore. Please continue to pray for her and her family.

Ballast forms the trackbed of a railway, used to bear the load from the railway ties to hold the track in place as the trains roll by. It is usually made of crushed stone at least 150 mm in thickness, these stones being irregularly cut so that they can properly interlock and grip the ties in order to fully secure them against movement. (Spherical stones cannot do this.)

One function of ballast (and the root of the word itself) is to provide stability. In mediaeval days, ballast was used to steady a ship to prevent it drifting; Heb 2:1 says, ‘we must pay the most careful attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.’ Ballast prevents drifting.

One of the functions of meeting together as Christians to prevent this drifting, this tendency to deviate from truth and from faith. Peter talks about us being ‘living stones’ which are being built into a spiritual house. (1 Pet 2:5) We are not meant to be loosely scattered stones; we are meant to be closely compacted together. We provide ballast for each other, a reminder that all we have heard about God is true. As we spur each other on to good deeds, as we talk about the things of God together, as we pray and study God’s word together, stability is brought into our lives.

Fellowship is a joy and a delight, but it’s also hard work. Stones of uneven edges and sizes rub against each other. We irritate each other. Our different personalities don’t always mesh well. We can be thoughtless and inconsiderate as well as caring and compassionate. But fellowship is essential if we’re going to grow spiritually, for God is building a spiritual house and these living stones have to be built together,.

There is no place for splendid isolation in the church, no place for lofty haughtiness or spiritual posturing. Our function is ballast: unglamorous, unfashionable crushed stones, knitted together to provide a highway for our King to travel on. It’s only as we live together in unity and harmony that others see God. That’s a new purpose to hold onto in the indignity of being compacted together on the track of life!