In our morning service today we looked at Eph 6:10-17, at the ‘Blessing of the Armour of God.’ In these verses, Paul reminds us that we are all involved in a spiritual battle, contending not against flesh and blood (i.e. people) but against the rulers, authorities and powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Eph 6:12) No matter how much the devil may use people against us and against God’s church, the real enemy is not people. We may feel frightened and intimidated by this talk of a spiritual battle, feeling inadequate and helpless, but God has given us the blessing of spiritual armour to help us. He does not leave us to fight on our own!

The armour of God is God’s provision for us, enabling us to stand against all the devil’s schemes. If we want to be strong in God’s mighty power and keep standing, even in the heat of the battle, we have to put on the armour of God. We have to fight with God’s armour and God’s weapons and not with our own. (2 Cor 10:1-5) God’s armour is the blessing we need to overcome the enemy. He doesn’t send us into warfare defenceless (like the soldiers in the First World War who were effectively ‘cannon fodder’ in the trenches), but gives us His Holy Spirit to be with us and spiritual armour to defend and protect us as well as giving us the all-important sword of the Spirit to use to cut down the lies of the enemy.

The Bible is full of stories of people who were confronted by God, of people whose lives were radically changed by their encounters with the Holy One. One thing we learn from each of these stories is that God is who He is (see Ex 3) and that His holiness had a profound impact on people (see Is 6:1-5, Rev 1:12-17).

So often, however, we crave the wrong thing, like pregnant women who want to suck coal! We want a cosy God who makes us feel comfortable and warm. Instead, we find ourselves confronted by a God who is a consuming fire (Heb 12:24). We want a God who will ignore our sin and wrongdoing (and punish everyone else’s) and pat us on the back when we do something good. Instead we have a God with no blind spots, a God who is not deceived by appearances and who demands truth in the inward parts, a God who is wholly fair and with whom there is no favouritism. We want a God who makes no demands on us but who yields to our every demand. Instead, we are confronted by a God who demands from us total allegiance, unswerving obedience, blind trust, and often gives us no explanation and little consolation.

We want a God shaped in our image. But we are instead made in the image of God and His goal is that we are transformed into His likeness, not the other way around.

Encounters with God are uncomfortable for us, for God will not change who He is for our pleasure. We have to choose between the God we want and the God who is. So many of us opt to worship the God we want, because that is easier. This God has no mystery. This God has no inexplicable actions or bewildering commands. Yet this God is actually an idol. He is not real.

We need instead to encounter and be confronted by the real God. The God who left Daniel, Ezekiel and John face down in awe and wonder. The God who loves us unconditionally, unceasingly and unfailingly. The God of perfect justice and mercy. The God of amazing grace and unlimited power. The God who is so much greater than the God we think we want. Only that God, the ‘I AM’, can meet the deepest needs of our hearts and transform us. Only that God will be enough for us.

One of the questions asked this afternoon was ‘Do I have to become a different person to speak someone else’s language?’ Since we will all naturally speak one love language better than another (some of us need affirmation to feel loved; others need physical contact with people; others need gifts or time or love shown through action), it can feel hypocritical at times to try to demonstrate love to someone in another language that feels alien to us. How do we do this without actually losing our own sense of identity?

As someone who loved learning languages, I found this question effectively cropped up time and time again in the classroom. Since we’re English, how can we learn to speak French in such a way that won’t mark us out as Mr Bean or someone from a stereotypical comedy? How can we ever learn to speak another language properly?

We are told that if we learn a language from a young age, we can actually speak it without any foreign accent; we can sound like a native! Others who learn languages later in life might not achieve this native fluency, but can still speak well enough to be understood and to communicate well. In all cases, however, I found that in some ways you do have to become a different person to speak another language well. You have to listen and mimic something which initially sounds very odd. Teenagers often find this difficult to do because they are self-conscious and don’t like feeling (or looking) stupid. Yet to learn another language will to some extent always involve putting aside those feelings in order to make new sounds. Garry told me this afternoon that when I read out Bible verses in French, my posture and voice changed markedly. I wasn’t aware of that, but if I’m speaking French, I have to ‘become’ someone else: a French speaker, not an English speaker.

Now obviously that doesn’t make me French. And in the same way, if I learn to speak in someone else’s love language, that doesn’t make me fluent in that language; it doesn’t change who I am. But my willingness to do that – to give a gift to someone because I know it means something to them, to give someone a hug because that’s their native language – has to be the starting point of love, for love considers others and wants to do what makes them feel loved. Love has to go the extra mile, has to recognise that people’s differences are not really barriers that are insurmountable. They are hurdles that can be overcome.

This post has been written in a larger font because someone I know was struggling to read the pre-formatted font which comes with the blog. It doesn’t take much time to adapt the font, and it might help someone to read more easily. Learning to love others starts when we’re willing to honour each other and help each other. Let’s learn other love languages and fulfil Jesus’s command to love one another.

One of the ideas of the Team Building Day is to encourage us to work as a team! Sarah gave us a task to do in two groups: to build a bridge out of newspapers strong enough to bear the weight of a toy car.

In these tasks, it’s always interesting to see who takes the initiative, who is eager to get on with the building, who would rather plan carefully before starting, who is able to modify and adapt and so on. In every situation, we will need leaders and followers; we need people to communicate vision; we need people to take ideas and make them happen. Part of the church’s role is to use the gifts and talents of each of its members. God has given us all gifts, talents and skills which we can use for His glory. Let’s work together to see His kingdom come, realising that we do indeed achieve more when we work as a team.

This afternoon’s Team Building Day was a time to get to know each other better, initially over lunch:

… and then through ‘Human Bingo‘, where we discovered some interesting facts about each other!

1. Roger, Julie & Gemma get stressed easily
2. Most of us like dogs but few have owned cats
3. Stephen & Roger’s favourite colour is red
4. Julie, Sue, Roger, Stephen & Garry like reading
5. Some of us have formal academic qualifications & some don’t
6. Herlen, Garry & Stacey are good with money

We also discovered that most of us didn’t understand the Bible when read in Afrikaans or French, reminding us that for us to communicate effectively, we have to speak and understand the same language. In the same way, though we are called to love each other (John 13:34-35), we need to understand we all use different ‘love languages’. Perhaps one reason we find it hard to love some people is that we’re not speaking their language! The ‘five love languages‘ (written about in detail by Gary Chapman) are defined as:

1. affirmation (using words to encourage and communicate love)
2. gifts (expressing and receiving love through gifts)
3. acts of service (the old adage ‘actions speak louder than words’ applies to these people who get on with showing love in countless practical ways)
4. quality time (needing time to be with people and expressing love through time spent with them)
5. physical touch (expressing love and affection through hugs and needing physical contact with people)

While we considered the implications of this for understanding and loving each other, the children got on with making crafts to express their love in tangible ways (combining gifts, words and acts of service!)

Our thanks to Sarah Davey for giving up her time to help us explore these themes together. It was a great time!

Jesus spoke much about our hearts. He said that actions stem from the overflow of our hearts. (Matt 15:18-19) and reminded us that the greatet commandment involves loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. (Matt 22:37) We are told in Scripture to guard our hearts for life springs from that source (Prov 4:23). What we ponder and desire in our hearts and minds has tremendous influence on us.

So often we are led by our dreads and our desires. What we dread will vary from one person to another, but is usually something negative, something destructive. Dread can be a cold, paralysing force within which ties us up in knots, robbing us of peace and hope. Interestingly enough, all the calamaties which happened to Job – bereavement, loss of finances and goods, personal illness and so on – were summed up in the phrase ‘what I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me.” (Job 3:25) Looking from the outside, we wonder at the dread and fears Job must have experienced even before tragedy hit; dread is not confined to the poor and needy.

The other fuel for our lives is our desires. What we imagine, long for and earnestly desire has the power to motivate and move us. It’s desire that keeps us saving for a coveted item or keeps us pursuing a particular goal. We can’t persevere in something that is of not interest to us.

Prov 10:24 tells us ‘what the wicked dread will overtake them; what the righteous desire will be granted.’ This may seem to us an over-simplified generalisation (we know plenty of wicked people who currently seem to be prospering and plenty of righteous people whose desires seem yet to be fulfilled), but the principle reminds us there are two ways of thinking. We can either fix our minds and hearts on right desires or we can live in numbing dread, pondering disaster after disaster until we are paranoid. There is no grace to be found in hypothetical dreads! As people, also, we realise we fall into one of two categories: ‘the wicked’ or ‘the righteous‘. Our thoughts and actions reflect who we are. Let’s be led by God and fix our hearts, minds and thoughts on Christ. (Col 3:1-2)