We also had a birthday to celebrate!

Stephen spoke from Micah 2 tonight, looking at the question of forward planning and how we can ensure that God’s plans are foremost in our lives. When a house is built, detailed plans are needed so that the builder knows exactly what materials are needed, in what quantity and how the house is to look:

We know from Jer 29:11 that God has good plans for each one of us, but so often, self-planning takes over when we consider plans for our lives and we become more interested in how we interpret life’s plans than in discovering God’s plans for our lives. God’s ways are best, however, and for us to move forward in life, we need to understand that every aspect of our lives includes God. God wants to be in everything. We can be very focussed in making plans for our lives, having tunnel vision, but the Christian life is not meant to be lived entirely through self-motivation. Instead, our lives need to reflect God’s involvement and planning, rather like a knitted garment may have two strands of wool knitted together to make a new whole. God works in and through us and wants us to make plans with Him, instead of trying to manage on our own.

The victory over the Amalekites (Ex 17:8-16) reminds us of the importance of working together and the value of corporate prayer. There is great value in praying individually, but God clearly expects His people to come together to pray.

So often, we treat prayer as something inconsequential, something insignificant, ‘a walking stick to help us through the uneven journey of life’ (Bill Versteeg), when actually it is a powerful weapon that can smash warped philosophies and tear down barriers erected against the truth of God.

It’s time for us to change our perception of prayer from something common to something extraordinary, from a simple walking stick that helps us hobble through life, a crutch or a prop,  to something which can change cultures and lives and communities. I’m old enough to remember the threat that Communism was felt to be to the church: how believers were imprisoned and tortured because of their faith and how organisations such as Open Doors set up a seven-year prayer campaign in 1982 against the Communist bloc. How could praying lead to the downfall of political regimes? The fact remains that seven years later, in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, Glasnost became the political order of the day and Communism fell in Eastern Europe. Today, the threats may seem very different to us, but again, prayer will always be our best weapon against every philosophy, religion and culture which sets itself up against God.

We do well to understand that prayer is about much more than asking God to bless us and protect us; it is His weapon to us to defeat every enemy. Prayer is transformative, powerful and the means to victory, but it looks ordinary and is time-consuming and hard work. It has to be done in faith, because there seems to be nothing to it. How could two men holding up another man’s hands and keeping a staff in the air bring about victory? It seems an utterly ludicrous battle strategy, but we see here again the powerful results of prayer.

Moses couldn’t win the battle on his own, and neither can we. It’s crucial that we realise prayer is a powerful spiritual weapon, but it’s also crucial that we realise we need to pray together. There is power in corporate prayer. We need to come together regularly – far more regularly than we are currently doing, I have to say – and seek God’s face together. If we are to defeat the wiles of the enemy, if we are to be a blessing to our community, we have to be equipped with God’s word and we have to pray. There is no other route to blessing and to victory. We have to be prepared to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing (1 Tim 2:8), understanding that as we raise our hands in the sanctuary and praise God (Ps 134:2), we are offering ourselves wholly to God, which is the only thing God really wants from us. Lifting our hands has no magic significance in itself, any more than the staff of Moses had any power in itself, but as we do this, God sees our hearts and accepts our offering, using it – and us! –  in ways that are truly remarkable. Let’s pray in faith and let’s pray together!

Exodus 17:8-16 tells us about a battle against the Amalekites and how this battle was won through prayer and working together as God’s people. Battles tend to come at inconvenient times: the Amalekites attacked when the Israelites were weary and worn out, jaded from the journeying through the wilderness. (Deut 25:18) We have to be sober and alert, watching and praying against temptation at all times (Matt 26:41, Mark 14:38, 1 Thess 5:8), for battles often come when we are least expecting them and are not ready to fight. That’s why we are urged to put on our spiritual armour all the time!

Moses’s strategy for winning this battle was two-fold. He told Joshua, ‘Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands.’ (Ex 17:9) The first part seems full of common sense, but the idea that Moses’s role is to stand on top of a hill with God’s staff seems bizarre!

Spiritual weapons do not look impressive or powerful, but we have to understand that to win battles, we cannot rely on human strategy alone. Moses’s staff was ordinary in itself, but it had been used by God in miraculous ways (see Ex 8:5, 16; Ex 7:17, Ex 9:23, Ex 10:13, Ex 14:16, Ex 17:6). God is able to take our ordinary offerings and make something extraordinary out of them (see Jn 6:9, 1 Sam 17:40).

God’s Word and prayer are the chief spiritual weapons we have, and these are ‘powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ.’ (2 Cor 10:3-5, The Message) Jesus used the word of God to defeat the enemy (see Matt 4:4, 7, 10) and promised great results in prayer (Jn 14:14, Jn 16:24, Matt 18:19). Do we believe these are powerful weapons?

Joshua’s role is easy to understand in this battle, but the roles of Moses, Aaron and Hur show us the importance of corporate prayer. Moses needed these two men to hold up his hands and their help was directly influential in the victory that followed. From the seemingly insignificant place of prayer, victory and blessing came and Moses also received a new revelation of God:‘Jehovah Nissi’, ‘The Lord Is My Banner.’ (Ex 17:15) God is our unifying force and our rallying point. His banner over us is love and love too is a powerful weapon in our hands.

Fasting is often associated with giving up certain foods or mealtimes in order to pray, but Isaiah 58:1-14 makes it clear that fasting is more than a religious ritual. We have to fast not only from food (give up chocolate or sugar or miss a meal in order to pray, by all means), but from practices which God abhors. Thus, He tells us fasting also means ‘to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free  and break every yoke’ (Is 58:6), to ‘share your food with the hungry, to provide the wanderer with shelter, to clothe the naked and not turn away your own flesh and blood’ (Is 58:7), and to ‘do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk.’ (Is 58:9) There is a clear connection between fasting and our behaviour and treatment of other people.

Pope Francis has given useful advice for the kind of fasting God wants:

As always in the Christian life, there has to be a renunciation of the wrong and an embracing of the right. Christianity is not all about the ‘Thou shalt nots’, but there does have to be repentance and turning away from wrong things in order to walk on the narrow path of obedience which leads to life. Getting the balance is the hard part: we can either become dour, resentful, pharisaical people, or we can be over-casual, not respecting the holiness and righteousness of God. We need to fast from wrong practices but also to embrace right ones.

The film ‘Now You See Me’ looks at the world of magic and sleight of hand, and this can be a world of great entertainment. Magicians astound us with their tricks and amuse us with their dexterity. Ironically, however, Christians are often accused of living in a world of illusion and make-believe when nothing could be further from the truth. Christians live in God’s reality and must give up the illusion that with a little more effort, a better political system, a bigger budget or a more efficient administrative process, the world will soon be saved.

We must give up the illusion of self-help as our source of salvation if we are to enter into Christ’s salvation which is freely available to us. ‘We should not believe in people or in the good in people that ultimately must triumph,’ warned Dietrich Bonhoeffer, trusting instead solely in God, who creates life out of death and does impossible things. One word from Him, Chris Tomlin reminds us in the song ‘Impossible Things’ and the walls start falling, the blind will see and the sinner is forgiven. Our help is in the name of the Lord our Maker. (Ps 124:8)

Any other salvation is an illusion which quickly becomes a delusion and which inevitably leads to disillusionment (see Gal 1:6-9). Easter invites us to give up illusion and embrace the God-reality of salvation through sacrifice.