Stephen asked the question tonight ‘what proportion of God is in your life?’ God desires our total surrender to Him, but many things can interfere with that. Our earthly desires, work, family, hobbies and other things can interfere with our devotion to God, but He desires to be at the centre of our very being.

Isaiah 1:27 talks of penitent ones being delivered with righteousness. When we realise God does not have our whole heart, we need to come to Him in repentance, allowing Him to fill our hearts with His presence. Num 24:4 speaks of total surrender (we need to hear and see God in all His glory and then will fall prostrate before Him.) As we come before God in repentance and allow Him to remove the problems, we can then have a greater proportion of God in our lives. He wants more than just a ‘slice’ of our lives; He wants all the cake!

We are urged to give ourselves fully to the work of the Lord. (1 Cor 15:58) Submission involves surrendering our whole lives to God, so that we can stand firm and let nothing move us. It’s an ongoing challenge for us, but as we decrease and allow God a greater proportion of our lives, we find satisfaction in service.

Troubles without number may surround us; our sins may overtake us so that we are left facing all kinds of peril, but we can still be confident that as we wait patiently for the Lord and call to him out of the depths of our distress, He will hear our cry for help and rescue us. Whatever the pit is and however dark and lonely you feel, God is there with us. The psalmist said, ‘In my alarm I said, “I am cut off from your sight!”’ (Ps 31:22) and when we’re in a dark place, we often feel cut off. Yet that verse goes on, ‘Yet You heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help.’ (Ps 31:22) God hears us and is our rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save us (Ps 31:2). The God who saved Joseph, Jonah and Jeremiah can also save us from our pits and give us a firm place to stand and a new song to sing. We can testify that God is able to deliver us from evil and rescue us from danger. We ask God for help, as the psalmists did: ‘Turn your ear to me, come quickly to my rescue; be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me.’ (Ps 31:2)

When we face opposition and persecution from people, we pray, ‘Rescue me from their ravages, my precious life from these lions’ (Ps 35:17) and learn to say ‘He rescues me unharmed from the battle waged against me, even though many oppose me.’ (Ps 55:18)

When we sin and mess up, we come before God in repentance and ask for His cleansing and forgiveness: ‘Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.’ (Ps 51:1)

When we face opposition and persecution, even though we are not aware of having done anything wrong, we take heart from Jesus’ words to His disciples: ‘In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.’ (Jn 16:33)

Most of all, we are blessed because we know God’s deliverance and rescue are not dependent on our righteousness and our goodness, but on His unfailing love, mercy, compassion and kindness. Ps 44:26 says, ‘rescue us because of your unfailing love.’ Whatever our pit of peril today, we can have hope that blessings will run alongside the troubles and that rescue will come in God’s time because of His unfailing love. Our response to trials is to cry out to God from the depths and to wait patiently for His rescue.

Joseph, Jonah and Jeremiah are all examples of people who found themselves in literal pits at one time or other, but who also experienced God’s rescue, help and blessing.

Joseph ended up being thrown into a cistern by his own brothers, who later sold him into slavery (Gen 37:19-20). He experienced relationship problems and ended up estranged from his family and living in a foreign country for years. Whether his brothers’ reaction was partly caused by his own boasting about dreams, it must have been difficult for him to come to terms with the animosity he faced – and animosity from those nearest and dearest to us can be very hard to take.

Jonah‘s ‘pit’ was caused by his own rebellion and disobedience. Running away from God, he ended up on a ship to Tarshish and was thrown overboard in the middle of a storm. Instead of drowning, he found himself in the belly of a large fish (Jonah 1:17), describing this experience in Jonah 2:3, 5-6. When we end up in trouble through our own foolishness and sin, we often think there is no way back to God, but Jonah is a reminder of God’s grace to us in rescuing us even from our own sin and giving us a second chance.

Jeremiah, on the other hand, ended up in a pit through no fault of his own. A faithful prophet, he was condemned by those in authority who did not like his messages of judgment and calls to repentance. They plotted with the king to have him thrown into a cistern (Jer 38:8) – scant reward for one who had served God faithfully all his life.

We see, however, how God provided help and deliverance for all of these people.

1. God used Reuben and the Midianites to save Joseph’s life and to lead him to Egypt, where ultimately, one day, he would save the whole world during a great famine. The pit and prison, which were definitely unpleasant experiences for Joseph, ultimately turned out to be God’s great plan of salvation, so that when he was reunited with his brothers years later, he could say, ‘You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.’ (Gen 50:20) Joseph’s dreams were fulfilled in ways he could never have predicted as a seventeen-year-old! God can use unexpected people to help in our deliverance; as Proverbs 16:7 says, ‘When the Lord takes pleasure in anyone’s way, he causes their enemies to make peace with them.’ God will constantly surprise us in how He rescues us using unexpected people! – He even got a foreign king, Cyrus, to issue a decree to allow His people to return to Israel after the exile, for example. We should never underestimate God’s ability to rescue us, even when there seems to be no way out at all.
2. In the case of Jonah, we see how God used a large fish not to harm Jonah, but to rescue him and give him the opportunity to serve Him again, even when he had messed up. What would have been a disastrous time of drowning and death was actually turned into another opportunity for praise: ‘In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry.’ (Jonah 2:2) God is able to use all circumstances to work things together for good for us (Rom 8:28).  Jonah reminds us that God is able to save and rescue in the most unlikely ways and is prepared to give us second chances.
3. In the case of Jeremiah, God had people in high places who were prepared to risk their lives to save Jeremiah’s (Jer 38:8-12). God is never taken by surprise, never left floundering around to sort out things as we are. He is always in control and He can use all kinds of people and all kinds of ‘coincidences’ to rescue His people from pits of peril.

When my son was little, we used to watch the ‘Thunderbirds’ programme, where International Rescue used their amazing spacecraft to save the world. One of his favourite episodes was called the ‘Pit of Peril’, when the Thunderbirds team was called on to rescue a U.S. army vehicle known as the ‘Sidewinder’ which had fallen into a burning landfill before the army crew died of heat exposure. This pit of peril was so deep that only the specialised equipment carried by the Thunderbirds could rescue the army crew.

Life often seems to have ‘pits of peril’ for us (financial problems, health problems, relationship problems, loneliness, bereavement, persecution), but the common feeling during those times is that of being out of our depth. As we cry to God out of the depths (Ps 130:1), we can experience rescue from God, however: David said that God ‘lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.  He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him.’ (Ps 40:2-3)

This morning, we looked at 3 pits of peril and saw that we can have hope that blessings will run alongside the troubles we face and that rescue will come in God’s time because of His unfailing love. It’s not down to us. It’s not up to us. Ps 121:2 says ‘My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.’ Ps 124:8 says ‘Our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.’ Whether we need individual rescue or collective help, we can be confident in God that He will rescue us and set our feet on a rock, giving us a firm place to stand and putting a new song of praise into our mouths.

Are you creative?

That’s a very loaded question, because we all have different ideas of what it means to be creative. I firmly believe all people are creative, but often we don’t recognise creativity because we have a limited definition of what that word means.

Creativity, in the widest sense of the word, encompasses all kinds of activities and arts. We can be creative in drawing and painting (often known as the ‘fine arts’). We can be creative in crafts (sticking, collages, mosaics, knitting, crocheting, sewing and so on). We might love papercrafts (origami, card-making, making bags and boxes). We might be good with our hands at making models (woodwork, metalwork and other crafts come into this category.) We might be creative through performance (music, drama and dance, for example) or through writing (poems, stories, articles.) Creativity through photography, technology, flower-arranging and cooking are all different ways we can express our ideas and thoughts, emotions and feelings.

This year, I hope to organise a community arts’ festival in Goldthorpe which champions creativity and celebrates community. There are so many talented people in our communities, people whose creativity has led to some beautiful paintings, objects and works of art. They often take their talent for granted, so they do not see the beauty in what they have created, but it is there, bursting forth!

Organising an arts’ festival is a first for me, and will only work if people from our community are willing to show others what they have created. This is an opportunity to exhibit your work for free, to share your talents, to showcase your group’s work. If you want to know more, please email me on contact@gpcchurch.co.uk or come along to one of the church’s coffee mornings and have a chat. I’ll be working with as many local people as possible – art classes, sewing classes, local schools, local groups, local councillors, funders and so on – to find work which can be exhibited. We hope to run workshops in the school holidays to learn new talents and to have slots for the performing arts at the festival as well. The aim is to hold the festival over a couple of days in September, so there is plenty of time for people to create new work or to dig out old favourites to exhibit.

Spread the word! – let’s celebrate our community, show the world that creativity is alive and well, and give our villages something positive to talk about!

I have only once had the privilege of having clothing made-to-measure just for me: a friend from church made my wedding dress and, armed with material and pattern, I arrived at her house to watch in amazement as she transformed those things into a dress that made me feel truly special. Bespoke clothing that is tailored to fit your exact shape (with all its lumps, bumps and oddities!) is exceedingly comfortable and feels truly snug and cosy.

More often than not, however, I have to buy clothing that is mass-produced, and, being small, that usually means clothing needs shortening to be of the same length that women of ‘average height’ would wear (my son laughs if I buy trousers, saying that crop trousers are just the right length for me!) This kind of clothing is cheaper and generally works, but it is not the same as the luxury of having something made-to-measure.

2 Cor 1:3-4 says ‘Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.’ The comfort God gives us is tailor-made to our situations and personalities; it is ‘just right’ for us. The situations we go through give us insight into God’s comfort, which we can then pass on to other people. This comfort is not stinting or meagre; it is a comfort which ‘abounds’ – a ‘full measure of healing comfort’, as the Message version puts it.

I’m grateful that God’s comfort isn’t ‘off the peg’. In the film ‘Bruce Almighty‘, Bruce, delegated with the task of running the universe, gets bored with answering prayers, overwhelmed by all the requests (represented by post-it notes!)

In desperation, he decides to ‘solve’ the problem by saying ‘yes’ to all the prayers (which leads to more chaos, as it turns out.)

God is not like that. He does not offer us impersonal answers and comfort which might be tweaked to all situations and all people; instead, He knows us individually, hears our prayers, bears our sorrows and comforts us with bespoke comfort. He is the Father of compassion and God of all comfort, who loves us, hears us and helps us. We can relax into His personalised care today and know it will fit us perfectly.