Tonight we reached the end of the alphabet in our ‘A-Z of Christian Faith’… Z is for Zeal. Zeal is defined as ‘great energy or enthusiasm in pursuit of a cause or an objective’.

Synonyms include:

Zeal is fuel for the journey. It’s the thing which will keep us going when the going gets tough. Without zeal, we can easily either burn out from exhaustion or become discouraged and disheartened and give up. Paul told the Romans, ‘Never be lacking in zeal, but always keep your spiritual fervour, serving the Lord.’ (Rom 12:11) Life is like a marathon,and if we are to run the race with perseverance (Heb 12:1-3) and finish well (see 2 Tim 4:7), we need to have the fuel of God’s Holy Spirit in our lives, helping us to reflect God’s image (for God is a zealous God – see Is 9:7, 2 Kings 19:21, Is 37:32).

We can, alas, be fuelled by the wrong kind of zeal (‘ignorant zeal is worthless’. Prov 19:12 tells us). Paul is a prime example of this, for before his conversion, he was the most zealous of Pharisees, persecuting the church (Phil 3:20). It was only as he encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus that his zeal was redirected in the right direction. Zeal has to be married to truth; it has to be aligned with the whole counsel of God. The wrong kind of zeal can be extremely harmful; ignorant zeal, zeal that is not based on the solid foundation of Christ and His teachings, will not lead us into fruitful service. Jesus urged us to look at the fruit to determine the state of the tree: ‘every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.  A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognise them.’ (Matt 7:17-20)The Galatian church were almost led astray by false teachings that were being given to them by very zealous people. (Gal 4:17) We need to be careful to pursue God’s zeal, not the world’s.

This morning at Cherry Tree Court Pat reminded us that despite the challenges and difficulties life brings us, God’s love remains constant and unchanging. In Job 42:1-6, we see how Job moves from head knowledge to a personal relationship with God as he finally encounters God through all the trials he has faced. At the beginning of Job, we see a picture of piety and prosperity, how Job’s faith pleased God, but God nonetheless allowed trials and loss to come to him. Job lost his family, his wife and his possessions and his friends were little help to him, but ultimately God revealed Himself to Job and gave him a new start. Life often brings trauma to us and there are many blockages which can make us feel as though God is far away, but ultimately He works by His Spirit to clear the blockages and allow us to hear Him afresh.

In the New Testament (Mark 10:46-52) Bartimaeus receives healing and restoration from Jesus. He was determined to speak to the healer, determined to meet with Jesus and that determination led to his transformation. We need determination and persistence in our pursuit of God, a focus on Him and an obedience to all He says. The outcome of those things is a renewed relationship with God.

Ultimately, God’s message to us is one of unfailing love, as Joe King’s song ‘I Will Always Love You’ indicates.

The school holidays are approaching and for families with children, it can be hard sometimes to know what to do that is both fun and inexpensive. There are a range of community events happening over the six weeks’ holiday, including a Beach Party organised by Big Local Thurnscoe at Thurnscoe Flower Park on Saturday 4th August and a ‘Bounce Into Summer’ event organised by the Goldthorpe Development Group at the Welfare fields in Goldthorpe on Wednesday 22nd August.

Dearne Churches Together is working with the Dearne Area Team, FareShare, Berneslai Homes and other community groups to host family fun days throughout the school holidays. These will run from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. on each Wednesday (except on 21st August when the event is on Tuesday to avoid clashing with the ‘Bounce Into Summer’ event; please note the last event ends at 2 p.m.) at different local churches and will provide free activities and lunch for families in our area. See below for dates and venues. These fun days will have a wide range of craft activities, games (including table tennis at most venues and other sports/ games at different venues) and will be a great day out for all the family.

Wednesday 25th July @ Salvation Army with an international flavour to the day!

Wednesday 1st August @ Houghton Road Centre, Thurnscoe, with a sports theme:

Wednesday 8th August @ Furlong Road Methodist Church, Bolton-on-Dearne, with a board games theme:

Wednesday 15th August at Goldthorpe Pentecostal Community Church, on all things Yorkshire! Please bring in buttons and glass jars for use in the activities here (Map making and glass painting).

Tuesday 21st August at St Helen’s Church Hall, Thurnscoe, with a Superheroes theme! (Dressing up highly recommended!)

Wednesday 29th August at Goldthorpe Parish Church, with a Teddy Bears’ Picnic theme! (Bring your own teddy bear…)

And last but not least, right at the end of the summer holidays we have the Dearne Community Arts’ Festival which is on Friday 31st August and Saturday 1st September from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m. at Dearne ALC. This free event brings together exhibitions, perforamnces, demonstrations and workshops under one roof and will provide fun and entertainment for all the family. Come and browse the wide range of arts and crafts on show, watch a 3D printer or virtual reality cinema, take part in learning how to play the ukelele or walk on stilts, dig for fossils outside, learn how to made a model aircraft or how to sew, get involved in paper crafts or sand art, hone your writing skills with Jeannette Ayton (children) or Ian McMillan (adults) and much more…! Face painting and body art available; refreshments on sale. Don’t miss it!

We had two birthdays to celebrate tonight, one a belated birthday and one in anticipation.

Gill concluded the family service by looking at how we use the phrase that someone is a rock to mean someone who is dependable and can be relied on. There were many aspects of Peter’s life which indicated his reliability and dependability. His confession of Jesus as the Messiah (Matt 16:18) shows someone whose life was being shaped by the knowledge of who Jesus is – a vital principle for us to emulate. When he walked on water (Matt 14:22-31), there was a sense that he had grasped the truly revolutionary principle that he could do what Jesus could do (see also John 14:12), again something we need to learn (all things are possible with God!) When Jesus washed His disciples’ feet, Peter’s rejection of this initially showed that he had a deep sense of the holiness of God and wanted to honour Jesus in everything. All of these things indicate a man who had a real hunger for God and a faith that was large and expansive.

At the same time, Peter shows us that he is human and all too prone to make mistakes. When he walked on water, he soon took his eyes off Jesus and began to doubt (and thus sink.) We too can be like this: full of faith one minute, besieged by doubts and fears the next. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he must have felt deflated by his inability to pray for even one hour in Jesus’s time of need, and in his denial three times, he let Jesus down and felt so useless and helpless from this denial that he returned to his old life of fishing, probably feeling too disheartened to believe God could continue to use him.

Jesus knew Peter through and through. He knew his volatility and failures, but he also saw his potential. He knew what Peter could become: the man who would oversee the appointment of another disciple to take the place of Judas (Acts 1:15-26), the man who, on the Day of Pentecost, could stand up and preach to thousands (Acts 2:14-41), the man who could speak out boldly to see a man healed at the temple gates (Acts 3:4-26), the man who could face the authorities and say, ‘We must obey God rather than men!’ (Acts 5:29) Jesus knows us through and through too and sees not only our failures and mistakes but our potential. We too are needed and have purpose and mission in His church.

Tonight’s family service had the theme ‘Peter the Rock’, referring to Matt 16:18. There, Jesus tells Simon that he will henceforth be known as Peter and on his confession of Jesus as the Christ, He will build His church. There is a play on words here as ‘Peter’ and ‘rock’ in Greek are from the same root word. We see that Peter is fundamentally changed by his relationship with Jesus. He was originally a fisherman: a hardy, robust, energetic, capable man who had to work hard for a living, but who ultimately learned to obey Jesus – even when Jesus, a carpenter, gave him clear instructions about fishing! (Luke 5:1-11) In learning to obey Jesus even when it made no apparent sense, Peter teaches us all how to respond to Jesus, and for this Jesus gave him a new role (not a fishermen, but a ‘fisher of men.’)

Peter was ultimately changed from a small stone, capable of being tossed around easily, into something more durable. He was changed because he learned to build his life on a solid foundation (Luke 6:48) and we too can become stable and rock-solid if we build our lives on Jesus Himself. Peter clearly took Jesus’s words to heart, for in 1 Pet 2:4-6, he talks about building on the living Stone and said ‘you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.‘ (1 Pet 2:5)

We are called to be those living stones and to build strong and stable lives on God.

A visual aid for the sermon!