Mark reminded us on Sunday morning, that God not only gives us salvation; He restores us (see Ps 23:3, Ps 41:3, Ps 53:6). I have been musing on the art of restoration this week, learning vital lessons from this summer’s decorating spree…

1. Things often look worse before they look better

Restoration has an end goal in sight, a goal of something beautiful and whole, restored and in better shape than when we started, but in order to reach that goal, there is often a tearing down that has to be done which looks far from beautiful. I am about to have a leaking radiator fixed, but the problem (the leaking pipe) is hidden from sight, so in order to solve the problem, a wall has to be knocked into and a huge amount of mess created. I’m not looking forward to the mess, but if I want the problem to be solved, I have to put up with a temporary mess in order to have a restored radiator. Sometimes, we feel like our lives are getting worse, not better, but God, in the business of making ‘all things bright and beautiful, wild and colourful’ (Rend Collective, ‘The Artist’), sometimes has to allow this process before we can be fully restored. It’s a mistake to look at a project before it’s completed and judge the final picture from the mid-term mess. Phil 1:6 reminds us that we’re all works in progress which God will bring to completion.

2. You can’t cut corners if you want true restoration

I was amazed at the amount of preparation work and unseen work that are necessary in decorating a room properly. No one ultimately can see the rubbing down, sanding, priming, undercoating and first coats of paint which go into decorating, but they see the finished sheen and even walls. So often, we want the ‘finished sheen’, but we want it now, without any effort or preparation! I would look at the community room and think it was finished; Ray would then point out all the flaws still present and insist on further work. The end product was worth all the effort. Just as you can’t cut corners if you want the final product to look good, the end result simply cannot look that good without the unseen work before it. It’s worth keeping the ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures of any job to remind us of this!

3. Patience is an absolute essential of restoration

Most of our problems with restoration arise from our impatience. We want to cut corners because we are impatient. We are in a hurry to reach our final destination. Patience is a fruit of the Spirit, however; Eccl 7:8 reminds us ‘the end of a matter is better than its beginning’, but to reach that end, we need perseverance, endurance and patience. God is patient (see Rom 2:4) and is prepared to spend inordinate amounts of time (in our eyes!) working on His projects. He’s in nowhere near as great a hurry as we are…

4. The end view determines the process

God’s goal is to make us like Him, working to make us conformed to the image of His Son (Rom 8:29). The end view of decorating the community room was a beautiful room; in order to achieve that end, a great deal of painstaking, back-breaking effort was put in by a large number of people who were motivated by the end view (at that point, unseen.) Sometimes, we go through painful trials and bewildering circumstances in life, but this kind of testing produces perseverance which is needed for us to reach the end goal of maturity (see James 1:1-3). We may not always enjoy the process of sanctification, but the end view (restoration and salvation) is well worth the process!

5. We need vision and strategy to get to the goal

Someone has to see where we’re headed and have a plan how to get there. One without the other leads to frustration. I had a vision of a beautiful room, but no skill or strategy to get there; on the other hand, all the skill in the world achieves nothing if it’s not harnessed to an end goal. Vision and strategy need to work hand in hand, not competing against each other.

6. We need a ‘project manager’

A project manager is needed to ensure that a project is completed to schedule and to budget; in a work context, this is a skilled role, requiring vision, strategy, the ability to communicate well with people and to bring the best out of people and an understanding of what cannot be changed and when compromise is possible. A project manager keeps the end goal in sight and is not distracted by problems or setbacks. All projects, however small, need leaders who will see beyond the mess to the final restoration, who will persevere when it’s easier to give up and who will not be satisfied with anything less than the vision being fulfilled. Sometimes, it’s easier to feel these leaders are slave-drivers, for they ask from us more than we feel able to give, refusing to be content with mediocrity or imperfection. Yet the best leaders lead by example, giving wholeheartedly to their work even as they ask for wholehearted commitment from others. God is our ultimate leader, never losing His focus, never being distracted from this work of restoration, leading always be example (Phil 2:1-11, Heb 12:1-3, Phil 3:12-14), urging us forward and cheering us on.

The baby shower will now be on Saturday 17th October from 12 noon until 3 p.m. – please note the revised date.

Sunday 25th October is ‘Bible Sunday‘ (see the Bible Society Bible Sunday 2015 video for further details.)

As part of our ‘Bigger Picture’ series, we will be looking at the importance of the Bible to our Christian walk on that date and will be running a Christian bookstall in church, giving people the opportunity to buy books and other Christmas gifts without having to travel!

Before then, people were asked to fill in their favourite Bible verses and reasons why those verses mean so much to them, so that we can use these in the services on 25th October. It can be hard to pick a favourite verse, but hopefully these will give us insight into the diversity and richness of the Bible. I liked the one completed tonight, which chose John 1:5 as a favourite verse ‘because it shows that good always prevails over evil.’ Amen!

We are also looking forward to holding a baptismal service soon; anyone interested in getting baptised should contact Garry or Julie for further details.

Angry Birds is a video game franchise created by Finnish computer game developer Rovio Entertainment which involves shooting birds into pigs’ fortresses because the pigs have stolen the birds’ eggs. Tonight at the family service, we played a game that was similar: each team had to build towers from dominoes which an angry bird then had to destroy…

After this, people had to ‘rant’ about a pet subject for 30 seconds, on topics as diverse as ‘superstition’ and ‘the youth of today’!

Others were quite good at pulling very angry faces!

Fortunately, we had excellent prizes to soothe our anger: stress balls and chocolate (supposedly good for relieving stress because it contains valeric acid!)

Tonight’s family service looked at anger management. Anger is an emotion which can cause us a lot of problems, usually because when we are angry, our tongues work faster than our brains! – we say things we easily regret, lashing out in temper and hurting others. It’s not simply the fact that we get angry which causes problems for us (after all, God gets angry too!), however; it’s how we handle the anger that makes the difference.

Jesus demonstrates for us how we can be angry without sinning (see John 2:13-16, Eph 4:26-27). Even when He cleansed the temple (having taken the time to make the whip of cords), He was in control; His anger was righteous and He did not simply react out of selfish pique or fury. There are indeed issues which should make us angry (injustice, corruption, cruelty and so on), but anger must be balanced by love (see 1 Cor 13:4-8). Love conquers anger; a kiss conquers a slap.

1 Tim 2:8 shows us that prayer is one way we can manage anger, bringing our anger before God and allow Him to control that through His Spirit. We need to avoid holding on to grudges and letting our anger fester; as Eph 4:26-27 reminds us, we need to sort out things that make us angry as soon as possible to avoid giving the devil any foothold in our lives.

We often define work in terms of its usefulness and also in terms of its worth (how much we earn etc.) It’s worth bearing in mind, however, the Parable of the Vineyard Workers (Matt 20:1-16), a parable that underlines God’s grace. Grace is outrageous, lavish and totally undeserved, and the only means by which we can become God’s children (see Eph 2:8-9). We can’t earn God’s favour by hard work; we simply receive from Him with open and empty hands. If we want to rely on wages for how we live life, we have to face the uncomfortable truth: ‘the wages of sin is death.’ (Rom 6:23) The only way we can receive eternal life is by accepting this as a gift from God: ‘the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Rom 6:23) Everything good that we receive from God comes as a gift (James 1:17); it is undeserved and not given to us because of our own righteousness.

Our work must be defined in terms of our relationship to God and to others, for these are the greatest commandments (see Matt 22:37-39). The basic work that Jesus did was invest His time and energy into learning from God and living with people. He cultivated His relationship with His Father and He cultivated relationships with people. In our society, we don’t often see this as work; we define work in terms of activities, in terms of measurable outcomes. Yet so often it is the relationship with our colleagues or customers which makes a real difference to whether we enjoy the activities we do at work and which gives meaning to the activities we do. A nurse cannot simply defined by the medical tasks performed; the care, attention and devotion to patients matter as much as the practical skills employed. How we work is as vital as what we do.

God at the centre of everything is the only way our work can be truly fruitful. Let’s not put our work at the centre, with God on the outskirts. Let’s put God at the centre instead and realise that what He does is so much more bountiful and fruitful than anything we can do on our own! As we remain in the vine, fruit will come; apart from Jesus, we can do nothing. (John 15:5-6)

This morning’s sermon looked at Ps 127, a psalm right in the middle of the Psalms of Ascent, which deals with the subject of fruitful work. Work takes up a huge part of our lives, but it’s easy to fall into one of two extremes, characterised by Eugene Peterson as ‘Babel or Buddhist.’ (‘The Journey’, P 91)

The Tower of Babel (Gen 11:1-9) was a monumental work effort (literally), but of course, it was fuelled by the people’s desire to make a name for themselves (Gen 11:4); it was essentially a selfish project which had man as their own god. For many of us, work is our god; it’s the means by which we feel secure and look after ourselves. The psalmist says this kind of energetic work without God gets us nowhere fast: ‘Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labour in vain. ‘Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain. In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat – for He grants sleep to those He loves.’ (Ps 127:1-2) In other words, work without God is in vain: it gets us nowhere in the long run.The ‘Buddhist’ extreme is at the opposite end of the spectrum, typified by Eastern religions with their teachings on withdrawal from the world so that sin can be avoided, with the Buddha as their symbol: an enormous, fat person sitting cross-legged, inert, doing nothing. If all our hard work and effort end up in sinful confusion (as it did in Babel) or in hypocrisy and self-righteousness (as it did with the Pharisees), the only safe bet is to do nothing. Paul warned the Thessalonians against this extreme (see 2 Thess 3:6-12) and as always, the truth about work lies somewhere in the middle!

Work itself is not sinful; God is a God who works (see Gen 1) and we are made in His image. Work must be redefined, however, so that God is central. Ps 127 reminds us of the value of children, showing again the importance of relationships and the fact that so much of what is truly important in life is a gift from God. When God is at the centre, we are free to relax and let Him be in control (see Matt 6:25-34). When grace is reigning in our lives and in our relationships and in our work, then we’re living life God’s way and we can be fruitful in Him (see John 15.)