I found the last Bible study (looking at the way we need our thinking to be renewed) to be deeply challenging and the part about making new pathways for our neurons to follow became even more relevant to me during the past week as I have been on an outdoor pursuit residential trip with the Senior department at my school.

Outdoor pursuits are not my thing at all. But there were definite pluses to the trip, namely staying at the beautiful Christian Guild hotel Willersley Castle in Cromford, Derbyshire.

… with views like this to ponder each day:

… and meals in this exquisitely beautiful dining room:

(If you’re looking for a holiday hotel, I can’t recommned this one highly enough; the Christian staff are so welcoming and helpful and the accommodation and surroundings are beyond compare.)

But back on topic: the reason I was reminded of the Bible study was that on some of the hikes through the Peak District National Park, there seemed to be no paths at all to follow! We were led (thankfully!) by experienced guides who knew the way, which was just as well, because on some paths, I seriously wondered how these could have got the name ‘public highway’! I came back with scratches over my arms and legs from bushes that were definitely in the way of the path I was treading! A number of us were nettled and had to use dock leaves to soothe our irritated skin. The paths we were walking were not all wide and easy by any meaans; the terrain at times was rough. On the first night, we did a ‘night walk’ and came back down a very steep slope in the pitch black with just a few torches to give us light. We had to tread carefully to avoid stumbling and falling. I have no photos of those treks, largely because I was concentrating so hard on staying upright that there was absolutely no way I was messing around in my rucksack getting a camera out to record these experiences! I was too concerned about not falling and injuring myself when I was supposedly responsible for teenagers (most of whom were like gazelle, bounding about with a carefree abandon I found bewildering!)

Some parts of these hikes were hard work and challenging (and I was gratified to see young, fit people puffing and panting up some of the hills we climbed, reassuring me that it was the incline and not my lack of fitness which was making this hard work!) Thinking God’s thoughts is not always an easy path to tread. We have to ‘unlearn’ our old patterns of thinking and for many of us, after a lifetime of being washed in the world’s way of doing things and thinking, it is not easy to tread a new path. We have to be constantly vigilant because there are obstacles en route which would cause us to stumble. Hebrews 12:12-13 TNIV says ‘Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. “Make level paths for your feet,”so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.’ Thankfully, there is strength and healing in the Lord for those of us who need level paths for our feet!

Last March, OMS missionary Steve Davies visited our church to tell us about his family’s work in Ecuador and about their forthcoming work in the Bible college in Mozambique. (‘Being God’s Someone’, March 2012) They were hoping to fly out to Mozambique in July 2012, but a variety of issues, mainly to do with raising financial suppport, have kept them in the UK until this year. The good news is that they will be flying out on July 31st and so in preparation for that, they have been visiting family and supporters in England during this past week.

I was away in Derbyshire on a school trip when I got a text from Steve suggesting that they could drop in on their journey back to Glasgow sometime on Friday. Given that I wasn’t getting home till 5.30 p.m., this meant a little bit of re-arranging of schedules, but I’m glad we managed a brief visit to give them a journey break!

The last time Steve came to Goldthorpe, he was on his own, but here he is with his lovely wife, Katuska:

Their three boys Samuel, Benjamin and Joseph (who were all too young to remember their previous visit to our house) dived into playing games as if they’d never been away:

Please pray for the family. The boys start school in Mozambique just three days after arriving in the country and the family will have to make massive adjustments after living in Glasgow for two years and in Ecuador prior to that. Three continents in three years is quite a lot! They are aiming to teach at the Bible college for the next four years and will be separated from their extended family for this time.

Pray that:
1) all arrangements still to be made before flying out will go smoothly (visas are still required!)
2) they will all settle in quickly, adapting to the new country and culture
3) good working relationships will be established and strengthened with the other OMS missionaries in the country
4) language learning will go smoothly (Portuguese is the official language and is therefore not the native language for any of them)
5) the boys will settle into their new school (where they will be taught in English, with Portuguese studied as a foreign language) and will make new friends quickly
6) their ministry in the Bible college will know God’s blessing
7) health, strength and protection will be on the whole family

The topic for prayer for July is that of healing. Many of the sermons and services will be devoted to this theme and our prayer meetings (on 4th and 18th July) will focus on this topic.

Pray that God will bring:
• physical, mental and spiritual healing to those who come to this church
• healing to our family members who are sick
• healing to our friends who are sick
• non-Christian people in to be healed at this church by Him

Pray that God will:
• give us gifts of faith to pray for, and gifts of knowledge to know how to pray for, healing
• inspired preaching on this subject and signs and wonders to follow the preaching of His word

Pray that:
• the name of Jesus will be glorified in this church and in Goldthorpe because of the works of healing He will do!

“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”
(Isaiah 53:5 TNIV)

The last time Mark spoke was on the topic of ‘Immanuel, God with us.’ Last night he continued the topic to look at ‘God in us.’ Only one word difference, but a new sermon!

Romans 8:11 TNIV tells us that ‘if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of His Spirit who lives in you.’ The same power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in us.

Power can be defined as energy. We like powerful appliances (from the relatively mundane hair straighteners to powerful cars and motorbikes to music amplifiers!) Often, though, we like powerful gadgets because we don’t feel powerful in ourselvevs. The good news is that it is God’s power in us, not our own. 1 Chronicles 29:11-12 TNIV reminds us that ‘Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendour.’ Because of God’s nature, He is generous enough to share His power with us: ‘In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all.’ (reiterated also in Ps 68:35). God is willing to share His power and strength with us.

The purpose of this power in us is explored in Colossians 1:9-11 TNIV: ‘being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience.’ God’s power in us enables us to hold fast, to achieve, to endure, to withstand opposition. His strength enables us to be strong (see Eph 6:10 TNIV) and because His Spirit lives in us, life is given to our mortal bodies (see Rom 8:11 TNIV).

The most powerful car in the world is useless, however, if the accelerator is not pressed down! If we don’t use God’s power, it’s wasted. This power is stored in ‘jars of clay’ (2 Cor 4:7-9 TNIV). We might not look anything special on the outside, but God’s power makes us resilient people, not easily squashed or crushed. We need to ensure that our ‘jars’ are emptied so that God can fill them. We need not fear that God is incapable of doing this for He has glorious riches with which ‘He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being’ (Eph 3:16 TNIV) and is able to do ‘immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us’ (Eph 3:20 TNIV). God is working in us in unquenchable force, but we need to allow His power to work within us rather than remaining dormant and unexplored. We need to let God’s power loose!

We also had a birthday to celebrate:

Stephen spoke this morning on the battle we face, reminiscing about school assemblies from his youth when the hymn ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ made him wonder what exactly the Christian life entailed! Sometimes, even as Christians, we are very aware of the battle within, wondering which way to turn as we feel conflicted between our own desires and God’s ways.

Rom 7:14-25 TNIV shows us that Paul was aware of this conflict in his own life. We often feel that there is ‘another law at work in me’ and that we are a ‘prisoner of the law of sin.’ We desperately need rescue! Thankfully, God delivers us through Jesus (see also Rom 8:1-2 TNIV, Gal 5:16-23 TNIV).

The Christian life is not ‘a walk in the park’, a pleasant stroll that is always easy. We have to be actively engaged in the warfare and can only win as we abide in Jesus (see John 15:1-8 TNIV), for He is the Victor and any victory we win will be through Him. The battle is not necessarily won instantanously but is a growing experience, a gradual change as we learn to walk in God’s ways.

‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ (Words: Sabine Baring-Gould, 1864. Music: Arthur Sullivan, 1871.)

Radio 4 has a programme called ‘The Moral Maze’ which is (according to its website) a ‘combative, provocative and engaging live debate examining the moral issues behind one of the week’s news stories.’ I was reminded of the programme as we discussed various modern-day moral issues at the Bible study on Thursday night. Applying Biblical principles to everyday life scenarios is surely what we are called to do in our everyday lives as our thinking is renewed.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (German pastor and theologian who was killed towards the end of the Second World War) raised the first voice for church resistance to Hitler’s persecution of Jews, declaring that the church must not simply “bandage the victims under the wheel, but jam the spoke in the wheel itself.” It is not easy to stand up for truth in an age where truth is deemed to be relative and determined by one’s own personal opinions. We discussed the moral issues raised by the production of cheap technology: at the Foxconn factory in China (manufacturers of gadgets for the likes of Apple, Sony, Nintendo and HP, among many others) has a grim history of suicides amongst its workers because of their desperate working conditions. At Foxconn’s flagship plant in Longhua, five per cent of its workers (24,000 people!) quit every month, yet the company sees no need to change its policies because there are so many others to take their place. Steve Jobs (former CEO of Apple) once remarked that the suicide rate at this factor ‘was lower than the overall suicide rate of the United States’, implying that this problem was of no significance or consequence. Why do Western companies invest in such factories? Why do we as consumers with an insatiable thirst for cheap gadgets not consider the true cost in human terms of their production?

Another example of such moral dilemmas has recently been in the news with the collapse of a building in Bangladesh housing factories supplying clothes to various budget clothing brands. 194 people died and up to 1,000 people were injured in the collapse. Mostafizur Rahman, the director of the Industrial Police, blamed the Rana Plaza factory owners for ignoring the instruction to evacuate after the first faults were discovered. “We had asked them to operate the factories only after a structural inspection by Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. But the factories’ owners ignored our directives and decided to reopen their units on Wednesday,” he said. The £13 billion clothing industry in Bangladesh clearly valued profit over human safety. But we in the West are the ones who demand cheap clothing and who fail to consider how this is achieved.

It is much easier to raise the questions than to answer them! But asking the questions is the first step, perhaps, to realising that there is a problem and to asking God for ways that we can be involved in solutions rather than compounding the problems. We can feel helpless when we look at global injustice and wonder what our lone voice or lone stand can achieve. We shrug our shoulders and feel we cannot make any difference at all. But history is littered with individuals who have stood up for something, jammed that spoke in the wheel and effected great changes. Sam Childers, the author of ‘Another Man’s War: The True Story of One Man’s Battle to Save Children in the Sudan’ has said “there is nothing anyone could ever say to convince me that one person cannot change a nation. One person can do unbelievable things. All it takes is that one person who’s willing to risk everything to make it happen.” When we think of one person with God, we are reminded that we have a majority! “One of you routs a thousand, because the Lord your God fights for you, just as he promised.” (Joshua 23:10 TNIV)

Our culture is ultimately dominated by the ‘ruler of the kingdom of the air’ (Eph 2:2 TNIV). We forget this at our peril, for, as John Stonestreet has said, ‘Anyone who wants to join in the kingdom-building work of God will face satanic opposition.’ The moral maze in which we live is not mere philosophy or an hour’s debate for a Radio 4 programme. It is life-threatening and life-changing. As we allow God to renew our thinking, He will help us to find alternative ways out of the maze to see the kingdom of God established on earth.