As we enter 2017, let’s pray God will do new things throughout this year. Do join us at our prayer meetings on Thursday 5th and 19th January at 7.30 p.m. and take the opportunity to pray in all our meetings as well as on your own and with others in small groups.

Pray for:

• new birth, for people to become Christians and find new life in Jesus
• new vision, for us to see the opportunities and paths God has for us this year and to embrace all He leads us to do
• new hope, for our churches and villages to find the living hope that Jesus brings and for despair, depression and doubt to be banished by the power of the gospel
• new opportunities to witness and serve our God both locally and further afield (pray for the mission trip to India in April and for new gifts and ministries to arise in our church.)

God hears and answers prayer, so let’s be a praying people who come before God earnestly, fervently and with faith in our hearts that we will see Him moving and doing new things this year!

Many of us go into the New Year with new things: presents bought for us at Christmas, new clothes, new ideas, new resolutions. We like the idea of newness and begin a new year with a fresh sense of anticipation and excitement, believing we can shed the obsolescence of the old and move on pastures new.

Such anticipation and enthusiasm do not generally last long, for January in England is often a long, cold, bleak month and we are people who easily slip back into old habits, old patterns of thinking and old ways of doing things. Nonetheless, we serve a God who is seated on His throne and who makes all things new. (Rev 21:5) This gives us encouragement to hope afresh and to persevere through the storms, difficulties and trials which 2017 will inevitably bring.

This new year is a time for renewed hope and commitment. Each Sunday, as we gather together to worship God and serve Him, we see the opportunity for a new week of worship and service. Each day is a new opportunity for worship and service. We serve a God of second chances, of fresh opportunities, a God who makes everything new and who gives us new birth, new life, a new song to sing, and new hope (see 1 Pet 1:3). As we celebrate a new year, let’s celebrate all the new things God will do this year and rejoice in the new life He brings.

The birth of my granddaughter on Christmas Eve has made me ponder new birth in new ways. Having given birth to my own son by Caesarean section because he was in a breech position, I have no personal experience of labour whatsoever, but am assured by all other mothers who have that experience that labour is just that – hard work! The rewards of a baby are worth the pain (see Jn 16:21), but there is no doubting the pain, effort and sheer hard work that go into delivering a child. My daughter-in-law had a long labour and I was privileged to be able to glimpse something of her struggles and work in the agonisingly long wait through that labour until the excited news arrived of a safe delivery.

As we are praying for spiritual new birth, it strikes me that perhaps we need to be much more aware of the need for hard work in prayer. People need to be born again; we long to see people coming to faith in Christ and being born again of the Spirit. That does not happen overnight, however, any more than a baby arrives in the world instantaneously. There is often a journeying towards faith: questioning, doubting, wondering, aching, longing, arguing, fighting, yielding, surrendering. Many people may be involved in that journey (‘links in the chain’, we often say, or, to use Paul’s analogy, those who plant, water or harvest the seed. (1 Cor 3:6-9)) We need to understand that prayer is work, and it may often need to be as determined, effort-filled and arduous as the labour of a woman before giving birth in the natural realm. Paul said, ‘Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured.’ (Col 4:12) Wrestling in prayer conveys the fact that to pray for people to be born again is not something for the fainthearted. We have to be persistent and not give up.

There are times during labour when the woman feels she will fail, that she cannot continue, that there will never be an end to the pain she is experiencing. She needs the encouragement of others (usually a birthing partner and a midwife, who combine both love and experience) to persevere and press on. The moment of delivery may well involve excruciating pain, the tearing of her very flesh perhaps, but the moment the baby is in her arms, there is a sense of achievement and victory beyond words.

We need to pray with the same kind of commitment and determination of a woman in labour. This is a spiritual battle, and the devil does not want to yield control over people. We need to pray with fervour and perseverance for God to shine the light of His love into people’s hearts, that blinded eyes may finally see (2 Cor 4:3-6). We need to pray for God to give us words to speak to those we love: family, friends, colleagues, neighbours, passers-by. We need to pray for the conviction of the Holy Spirit to come upon people. We cannot do this casually or even occasionally; we need to pray without ceasing (1 Thess 5:17), wrestling in prayer even as Jacob wrestled with God (Gen 32), determined not to give in or give up, but to press through until we see, figuratively speaking, the head engaged!

My son told me that his daughter’s head literally battered against her mother before finally she emerged into the world. Natural birth is not easy for the mother or for the baby. Spiritual birth is not easy. Those whom God is calling may be resistant and reluctant, but we are called to pray them into the kingdom, ‘battering’ in prayer, so to speak, like a battering ram.

This is not an easy subject, for we much prefer a life of leisure and contentment to one of sacrifice and prayer. If we want to see people born in Zion (see Ps 87:4-6), we have to be willing to wrestle in prayer, however. We cannot do without the hard work (labour) of prayer.

It has been a very exciting Christmas period in our church, with the birth of a baby on Christmas Eve and the announcement of an engagement on Christmas Day! I love hearing about proposals of marriage, though it was nerve-wracking to be ‘in’ on my son’s proposal, planned during a summer holiday to Ireland. I was entrusted with transporting the ring to Ireland so that his bride-to-be did not discover it en route and Garry was given the job of photographing the moment to capture her immediate, spontaneous reaction (something she herself wanted – she just didn’t know when it was coming!) I was never so relieved as when she said yes, having imagined a disastrous holiday if things did not work out the way we all wanted!

God is not only a God of prepositions: with us, for us, above us, in us and working through us. He is a God of propositions too, giving us suggestions and commands as to the best way to live and offering us His proposal to be His bride. He is a God of immense generosity who does not force His way into our lives, but woos and courts us more patiently than any human lover.

As we celebrate with those who are starting out on the journey towards marriage, let’s accept God’s proposal to us and receive His gift of salvation, wrapped in the form of Jesus whom we have been celebrating this Christmas and let’s obey Him, secure in the knowledge that His commands and suggestions are for our good, designed to lead us into fulness of life.

When learning a language, it’s often the little words that cause problems: prepositions, words that goes with a noun or pronoun and express a relationship to another word of element in the clause. They’re not difficult to learn in themselves, but the fact is that it’s often not possible to make a literal translation of one preposition in one language to another preposition in another. In French, for example, on se marie avec (gets married with, rather than to as in English). These little words can be hugely important, though! This morning, we looked at 5 key prepositions.

With

When the angel appeared to Joseph to assure him that Mary’s fantastic story of conception through the Holy Spirit was true, he was told to give the baby the name Jesus, which means ‘Yahweh is salvation’ and we read ‘All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).’ (Matt 1:22-23) One of the most amazing truths about the Incarnation is that God came to earth, in the form of a helpless baby, to be with us.

This truth was prophesied hundreds of years before the birth of Christ by Isaiah and becomes the theme of the whole Bible. Right at the end of the story, we read ‘God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.’ (Rev 21:3) There’s a huge difference between being on your own and being with someone, and God has promised never to leave us or forsake us, to be with us every single day of our lives.

For

One of the amazing truths about the birth of Jesus is that it demonstrates to us that God is for us. He is not against us. He’s on our side. (Rom 8:30-31) Even though our sins separated us from God, even though all the wrong things we’ve ever thought or done created a barrier between us and God, He did not leave it like that, but took the initiative and sent His Son to save the world, not to condemn it. (Jn 3:16-17)

Above

God with us emphasises the humility of Christ, that He left His throne and entered our world, but we need also to remember that Jesus is fully God as well as fully human. God is high above all other gods. He is above all, over all, higher than anything or anyone else. The psalmists often sing, ‘Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; let your glory be over all the earth.’ (Ps 57: 5, 11) and declare ‘the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods.’ (Ps 95:3) We need not only a friend and comforter, but a rescuer, a deliverer, a Saviour – and Jesus can be all those things to us.

In

Christmas makes possible one of the greatest mysteries of all: ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory.’ (Col 1:27) Amazingly, God, who was pleased to have all His fulness dwell in Christ (Col 1:19), is now pleased to dwell in us. We are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit. (Eph 2:22) Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians was that God, out of His glorious riches, may strengthen us with power through His Spirit in our inner being ‘so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.’ (Eph 3:16) We might not be able to see Him; we might not even be able to feel Him, but the truth is that every believer is God’s temple and God dwells in our midst. (1 Cor 3:16) Paul probably talks about being ‘in Christ’ and Christ being in us more than any other prepositional phrase. He reminds us that ‘if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!’ (2 Cor 5:17) He tells us that God has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. (Eph 1:3) He says that ‘there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’ (Rom 8:1) This little word has a big meaning!

Through

God said to Abraham at the start of his great journey by faith, ‘I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’ (Gen 12:3) This was God’s original plan for the world, fulfilled through His chosen people and continued through the church today. Jesus came to be our Saviour and Deliverer, and He entrusted to us the task of telling everyone else about this good news. He wants to work through us! Paul says, ‘Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.’ (Col 3:17) Our whole lives now are given over to God, so that He can take our lives and work through them.

The snapshot of photos from this past years hopefully triggers memories of some of the things we have shared together as a church. Family services have explored a variety of themes, from the present swapshop in January (where we considered the royal exchange God offers us, giving us beauty for ashes and eternal life in place of our sinfulness) to the shepherds and sheep in the Christmas story in December. In between, we learnt new songs (‘A Fair Exchange Is No Robbery’, ‘Are You A Wall or a Windmill?’, ‘A Place In The Son’) and learnt a variety of crafts (making shepherd’s staffs, windmills and doves) as well as learning about different landmarks and other interesting facts and figures!

Sermons throughout the year have focussed on the songs of ascent (Ps 120-135), the story of Joseph, revival, prayer, the ‘Bigger Picture’ and ‘The A-Z of Christian Faith’, with Bible studies looking at (and finally finishing!) 1 Corinthians. God’s Word remains absolutely instrumental to our spiritual growth and we are grateful to all who have brought God’s word to us, including guest speakers Yan Hadley, John Brackenbury (whose sermon on ‘light-emitting disciples‘ will certainly stay with me for a long time!) and Fredrick. Garry’s ‘Talking Point’ series has looked at topical issues (such as pornography, immigration and gay marriage), seeking to find out how the Bible can help us to think through such matters from a godly point of view.

Fredrick and Reeba’s visit in November was a highlight of 2016 and we are very much looking forward to the planned mission trip to India in April 2017, the first time we as a church has sent a team abroad.

Other highlights of the year have been the ‘Churches Together’ meetings in February, May and September, with the joint community outreaches on Palm Sunday and Easter Saturday and the Christmas Market a great testimony to the power and fun of working together with other churches and community groups. We were so privileged to be invited to be part of the Palm Sunday Procession at Phoenix Park (complete with donkeys!):

Just as the Palm Sunday and Easter Saturday march of witness were great events, the Christmas Market was a fantastic afternoon and evening, with about 500 people joining us at some point for refreshments, crafts, activities and carol singing. We are so thankful to all that God enables us to do in serving the community, giving out goody bags with God’s word and other treats and being able to witness freely to His grace and love. The anniversary community open day in July, although hampered by poor weather, was also an opportunity to reflect on God’s faithfulness over the past 6 years in this building and to think about what the church really is:

In addition to the ‘special events’, though, church life continues in many ways that cannot really be measured or evaluated easily. People serve faithfully every week at coffee mornings, the Monday night youth club and at the Parent & Toddler group and in teaching children on Sundays. People join together in prayer and fellowship throughout the week, playing badminton on Friday nights as well. In countless ways, people serve others through their faithful witness, kindness, love and support. We are so grateful to be able to support the Salvation Army food bank throughout the year and it was a privilege to raise £730.56 for the Christmas appeal at the Christmas market and be able to wrap presents bought with this money this past week as well as supporting the Macmillan Coffee morning earlier in the year. We are also especially grateful for our links with the community, especially in holding monthly services at Cherry Tree Court and in working with groups such as Coalfields Regeneration Trust and Dearne hOurbank. We are thankful too for the many groups which use our building (Slimming World, Dearne StayFit, an autism group and a badminton group being the regulars); as Dave is fond of saying, ‘the building is used every day of the week for something or other!’

This year has seen new people join our family, with Joan’s word that God will bring people from the north, east, south and west being partially fulfilled as a couple has recently moved from Selby and another lady is joining us from Croydon! We love seeing the family grow as babies are born and were thrilled to hold a dedication service for Tatijana in March. This photo of four generations at the Parent & Toddler group in May is also poignant and a reminder of God’s faithfulness to families.

Two things have perhaps been very different this year. Firstly, the plans to send eight people on a mission trip to India are shaping up nicely, and this represents a real step of faith for all involved, including all of us who are praying for God to bless and stretch our faith. Secondly, we are praying for the land next to the church to become available to extend our car park and add an outdoor area for use by the church and community groups using the building. Whilst this may seem an impossible dream (the land has apparently been sold for flats, but Stuart, the shopkeeper currently there, assures us he is working behind the scenes to get the land for us!), we are confident that God is able to work all things together for good and are looking forward to seeing how this works out in 2017!

Looking back reminds us always of God’s faithfulness and presence. There have been tough times for many people this year – illness, bereavement, decisions to move, changes in jobs and so on – but God remains worthy of praise.

‘Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;
    his greatness no one can fathom.
⁴ One generation commends your works to another;
    they tell of your mighty acts.
⁵ They speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty—
    and I will meditate on your wonderful works.
⁶ They tell of the power of your awesome works—
    and I will proclaim your great deeds.
⁷ They celebrate your abundant goodness
    and joyfully sing of your righteousness.’ (Ps 145:3-7)