The Bible has much to say about hearing. A repeated phrase in Revelation is ‘whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’ (Rev 2:7, 11, 17, 29; Rev 3:6, 13,22). That may seem an odd phrase to us, for there are very few people without ears. What it’s really talking about is not the physical anatomy of ears, but if we are actually listening and hearing what God is saying. The Message version talks about our ears being awake.

At the moment, Garry is having trouble hearing in his left ear because of a build-up of wax. He’s deaf in that ear. This morning, I was downstairs when his alarm clock went off and instead of him turning it off, the noise of the alarm continued, getting louder and louder and more insistent. I had to go upstairs to wake him, astonished that he wasn’t disturbed by the noise. He was lying next to it, oblivious, while I was disturbed by it a relatively long way away! He couldn’t hear it because of the wax blockage in his ear.

We can be like that when God speaks to us. We simply don’t hear Him. Our ears are clogged up with the noise from the world, deafened by our own sin and by the culture all around us.

We need God to open our ears so we can listen. (Ps 40:6) The Hebrew word here is ‘dug out’. We need God to unclog our ears, to dig out the wax, to open the channels again so we can hear Him speak.

How does this happen? The chief way, it seems to me, is actually stopping to listen. We are adept at multi-tasking, but this creates half-hearted listening. To truly listen to God, we have to slow down and give Him our undivided attention. Jeremy Camp sings, ‘I need to stop so I can hear You speak’ (‘Slow Down Time’, Jeremy Camp) and this seems to me to be the first step. Instead of being proud of our ability to multi-task, we need to understand that we need to stop and spend time with God, with no other item on our agenda, that we need to listen in this time and not just talk.

Secondly, for us to hear God, we have to soften our hearts. Just as Garry needs ear drops to soften the wax which is the blockage preventing his hearing, hard hearts don’t hear God well. We have to allow God in if we’re going to hear Him. Every time we hear His voice and ignore Him (‘it wasn’t really God; it’s not convenient to do that; I don’t want to forgive X or give to Y’), we are actually making it harder to hear Him again.

Thirdly, hearing (listening) is allied to doing. (James 1:22-23) If we hear God and don’t do what He says, we’ll find it harder to hear Him next time. When God speaks, it’s not usually “information only.” He speaks to us to shape us, mould us and transform us. He speaks to us so we can be involved in His transformation of society. We need to get used to hearing and obeying.

It’s hard to believe May is already here! This year seems to be flying by… Here are a few things that are happening locally this month for your diaries.

The Age of Creativity Festival is a national festival celebrating creativity. We are hosting 4 workshops at Goldthorpe Pentecostal Community Church, encouraging people to have a go at something creative they may not have tried before. All sessions are free and there’s no need to book – just turn up! All sessions are run by Christians from local churches who are very talented in these area.

• Tuesday 7th May, 7.30-8.30 p.m. Needlefelting with Angie Wapples
• Wednesday 8th May 1.00-2.00 p.m. Learn to draw with Ali Thomas
• Friday 10th May 3.00 -4.00 p.m. Poetry & Singing workshop with Pat Moore
• Saturday 11th May 7.30-8.30 p.m. You Can Sing! workshop with Plami & Andrew Thomas

On Wednesday 22nd May we have our monthly ‘Churches Together’ prayer meeting, which this month will be at St Helen’s Church Hall (High Street) in Thurnscoe at 10.30 a.m. Join us to pray for our churches and communities as we prepare for the Family Fun Day celebrating Pentecost on Wednesday 29th May (at Houghton Road Centre in Thurnscoe. 10 a.m. – 1 p.m.) and the 4FrontTheatre production of Fisherman’s Tail at St Helen’s Church Hall on Tuesday 25th June at 6.30 p.m. Both of these events are great outreaches so please do invite your friends, neighbours and family to come along!

Please pray also for the 4 schools we will be visiting with Fisherman’s Tail in June (The Hill & Gooseacre Primary in Thurnscoe and Lacewood and Carrfield schools in Bolton-on-Dearne).

The early church as described in Acts 2:42-47 was a learning, loving, caring, sharing, worshipping, witnessing church. We may feel we don’t measure up very well and it’s always good to ponder carefully our shortcomings and look at how we can change and improve (the purpose of our ‘Building Blocks’ meetings and team building days.) All such things have to be done in an attitude of expectation and humility: expectation that God hears and answers prayer and an awareness that He is the one that adds to the church those who are being saved, not us. Salvation is His work and He is the head of the church. Nonetheless, it’s good to ask ourselves hard questions about the state of the church as we meditate on these verses in Acts, for these adjectives are useful in considering our church life and our commitment (‘devotion’) to that life.

A learning church

Are we keen to learn? Do we devote ourselves to studying God’s word, both privately and in our corporate gatherings? We live in a society where concentration spans are being eroded; I’ve heard numerous people tell me sermons above ten minutes are ‘too much’ for people to bear. In India, people gather for hours to listen to God’s word because of the value they place on this. We need to be people who are hungry to learn. As Heb 5:11-14 reminds us, we need to grow in our faith, moving from the milk of the word to solid food! How can we demonstrate devotion to the apostles’ teaching and grow through our delight in God’s word?

A loving, caring, sharing church

Jesus firmly placed the emphasis on loving God and loving each other and told us this is a valuable witness to a world desperate for love. ‘As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’ (John 13:34-35) These verses in Acts 2:42-47 challenge us to move beyond being ‘churchgoers who pass each other by on a Sunday’ to believers who share everything together. Community living is messy, heart-breaking, discouraging and frustrating… but it’s also invigorating, reassuring, exuberant and worth it! We need to learn to care for each other the way those early disciples did. Perhaps that starts with a phone call or visit to someone this week, just reminding them that they are loved and appreciated? At our recent Team Building day we discussed the different ‘love languages’ needed for different personalities. Perhaps someone needs to hear that they are appreciated and valued. Another person may need you to spend time with them to signify they’re important. Someone else may need a hug, that physical touch that connects them to another person or perhaps a bunch of flowers or small gift may be the way to their heart. Someone else may need to see love in action – mowing a lawn or making a drink, perhaps. Whatever the means, as we focus on the needs of others, we can serve Jesus and show His love to others.

A worshipping church

When we worship, we take our eyes off ourselves and fix them on God. When we join together in prayer, singing, reading the Word and sharing Holy Communion, we acknowledge the centrality of God to our lives and we acknowledge that we are not in the driving seat. Only as our eyes are firmly fixed on Jesus can we hope to see the signs and wonders that the early church experienced. (Col 3:1-3) As a church, we need to be firmly rooted and established in God:  ^‘So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, ⁷ rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.’ (Col 2:6-7)

A witnessing church

We need to be committed to witnessing, to outreach, to telling others the good news of Jesus Christ. God is the only one who can save people and add them to the church (Acts 2:47), but we have to be willing to be His witnesses (Ps 107:2, Acts 1:8). Corporate outreach is crucial (helping at the youth club, the Parent & Toddler group, teaching children on Sundays, serving at the coffee morning, talking to the folk at Cherry Tree Court), but there is always more we can be doing. Let’s ask God to show us how we can best fulfil the ‘Great Commission’, as individuals and as a church, and let’s be praying for opportunities to speak to those around us – neighbours, acquaintances, colleagues, friends and family – about the wonderful works of God.

Generosity and sharing go hand in hand. There is much debate about private ownership and communal living in the early church, with Acts 2:42-47 and Acts 4:32-37 being cited as the ‘model’ for the New Testament church. Certainly, many people sold property and possessions and shared and gave this to the apostles, but this was always done on a voluntary basis, and since people broke bread in each other’s homes (Acts 2:46), clearly some people retained their own homes. The sin that caused such judgment on Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11) was not so much that they kept money from the sale of their property but that they lied to the apostles about this; deceit and lying were the problem here, it seems.

Nonetheless, it’s clear that we should be generous people (see 2 Cor 8:5-17, 2 Cor 9: 6-11). God is a generous God and longs for us to reflect His nature in every aspect of our lives. The early church was characterised by generosity and giving, and we need to understand that there should be an overflow from our lives as we reflect on all we have received from God. (Luke 6:38) There is no place in the church for stinginess and meanness; so often, our carefulness and prudence are masks behind which our selfishness runs rampant.

Matt Skinner says, ‘the reign of the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ creates the potential for mutual service that embodies God’s justice. The life and work of a Christian community can reflect–even if only dimly–the reign of God that Jesus proclaimed while on earth and secured through his death, resurrection, and exaltation.’ Some people believe that the book of Acts shows us the ‘perfect’ church in its initial purity, but in reality, the church on earth will never be perfect, for it is made up of imperfect, flawed, sinful people. Nonetheless, one way in which we can reflect the reign of God is through our generosity to each other (and this goes beyond financial generosity to the sharing of our lives in many smaller, practical ways – a phone call to someone, a visit to someone, practical help as outlined in 1 John 3:16-18, Matt 5:39-41). This kind of living is counter-cultural and certainly goes against the grain of selfish humanity, but this passage ‘anchors humanity’s deepest hopes for community, justice, generosity and meaning specifically as a result of people coming to embrace the crucified, risen, and glorified Christ as God’s designated agent, as the particular means by which God institutes and exercises God’s reign within creation.’ (Matt Skinner) This is the church’s role as we fulfil Jesus’ commandment to love one another as our greatest tool in evangelism. (John 13:34-35)

Sharing is not a natural concept. Anyone who has brought up children knows this for a fact! The toddler does not like to share; they have to be taught to do this. Their natural tendency is to want to keep all the toys for themselves. They don’t like sharing; they don’t like taking turns; they don’t like waiting. In their world, everything revolves around them.

This is a picture of people in general: it’s just seen in the pure, unadulterated form in a toddler (whose tantrums when encouraged to share can be truly impressive.) We are all selfish creatures who believe we’re the centre of the universe.

As we encourage the toddler to share, it’s interesting to note that they understand this concept easily; they just don’t like doing it. So my granddaughter is more than happy to come to any member of the family who is eating something interesting and say, ‘Share!’ But she is not happy if we ask her to share her food!

In the New Testament, we are introduced into a new kind of sharing, known as ‘koinonia’ or fellowship. This sharing marked out the church as something different. Acts 2:42 tells us the believers devoted themselves to fellowship and goes on to give us challenging and practical examples of what this looked like. (‘All the believers were together and had everything in common. ⁴⁵ They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.’ Acts 2:44-45) Over the years, believers have struggled to work out what this looks like in their present times. The concept of monks who took vows of poverty was one example of this (everything they owned before becoming a monk was given to the monastery; there was a ‘pooling’ of resources), as were some hippie communes in the 1960s. Even communism, in some ways, was an attempt to look at communal resourcing and to eliminate the divide between the rich and the poor.

However we interpret these verses, the call to share our lives with others is one which the selfish self will rebel against. We don’t really like sharing. We don’t really like honouring others and putting their interests before our own. But Paul tells us that if we have any fellowship or common sharing in the Spirit, this is what we must do. (Phil 2:1-4) The fellowship which God gives us with Himself (see 1 Cor 1:9, 2 Cor 13:4, 1 John 1:3) has to be worked out practically in every other relationship we have. (1 John 3:14-18)

I don’t know about you, but I’m as challenged as any toddler by this one word, ‘koinonia’. Sharing is the grass roots of our faith. We’ve been given so much, Paul says, that our new natural response must be to share. That will only happen as the old sinful nature is put to death and the new spiritual nature allowed to flourish.

In Acts 2:42-47 we are told what the early church devoted themselves to. Devotion is a strong word, meaning love, loyalty and enthusiasm, and points to constancy, purpose, or resolve. When we are devoted to something, we give our time and allegiance gladly to that thing, and the church devoted itself to 4 main things:

1. the apostles’ teaching
2. fellowship
3. the breaking of bread
4. prayer

The apostles’ teaching

Having 3000 new converts to teach may be every church’s dream, but it’s not an easy task! The apostles had to ground these disciples in the truths of God, just as Jesus did to those two on the road to Emmaus (‘beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.’ Luke 24:27) We need to be people who honour God’s word, giving it due time and attention (see 1 Tim 4:13, 2 Tim 4:1-2). Steven J. Cole says, ‘a healthy church must be devoted to sound doctrine, because God has chosen to reveal Himself in the written Word.’ There is no room for us to neglect God’s word, either privately or publicly, if we want to grow spiritually. We need to prepare people to be able to defend their faith and to understand that faith, for we live in a world hostile to God, faith and the Bible.

Fellowship

Fellowship (‘koinonia’) is something we are now able to share with God because of the reconciling work of Jesus Christ (see 1 Cor 1:9, 2 Cor 13:4, 1 John 1:3) and therefore is something we can also now share with each other. Fellowship means sharing: our time, our talents, our homes, our lifestyles, our possessions. These verses in Acts 2:42-47 challenge us to look beyond our Western individualistic culture to a community which cares. The early church shared meals, shared possessions and shared property. They understood something of the fact that in Christ we belong not only to God but to each other.

The breaking of bread

On the one hand, fellowship is achieved whenever we ‘break bread’ (i.e. eat) together. Meals together are a great way of getting to know people; over the table, all manner of things can be discussed and shared. Jesus ate many meals together with His disciples (to the extent that the Pharisees called Him a glutton! – Luke 7:34). At the same time, the use of the definite article (literally, ‘the breaking of the bread’) probably refers to the Lord’s Supper, inaugurated by Jesus just prior to His death (Luke 22:14-19). Every time we take the emblems of bread and wine in Holy Communion, we remember the death and resurrection of our Lord, and this central act keeps us focussed on the essentials of our faith.

Prayer

Again, the use of the definite article here indicates not private prayer, but corporate prayer. The early believers joined together to pray, understanding the value of meeting together in a way that can easily be forgotten in our individualistic society (see Heb 10:25). Whenever and wherever the church meets, whether in a large meeting (“in the temple”) or from house to house, prayer needs to be woven into the fabric of church life, for it is as we pray that we show our dependence on God.

We need to consider our church life and look at each of these four aspects and our devotion to them, for these are the ‘building blocks’ of the church, the ‘interior life’ from which all our outreach overflows.