Getting started

[This reflection was published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, 11/Apr/2021]

It might not be something you’ve ever done……and if so you might struggle to understand such behaviour, but I have to confess that I can be a dreadful procrastinator…..there, I’ve told you now.

Procrastination can be defined as “intentionally putting off doing something until tomorrow that should be done today”. It is nothing to do with laziness, lack of self-control or even poor time management but it is more about the delay in starting or finishing a task, and is often against our better judgement. Our intentions are good and we know that we really should start that essay/report (or YOURS article!), pay that bill, answer that tricky email, go to the doctor or clear out our wardrobe. But instead we delay and distract ourselves with other, arguably more pleasant tasks. The problem then being that we put ourselves under unnecessary pressure, causing stress, which can leave us feeling anxious, inadequate or overwhelmed.

Psychologists suggest people (unconsciously) procrastinate because they are afraid of failing at the tasks they need to complete, or cannot see the immediate benefit of starting something (exercise for example). Yep, that’s me. I am comforted by the realisation that procrastination is a pretty common behaviour and thankfully for most of us it is only transitory so we need to be quick to forgive ourselves & not get too hung up about it. (Romans 8:1) Amen.

So why share this ‘confession’ with you? And what has it got to do with our walk with Jesus and our faith?
Well, if we think about our relationships rather than tasks, putting off something for another day might be an easier choice for us but detrimental to both parties in the long run. Is there someone we’ve put off making contact with, someone we need to forgive or say sorry to? Have we actually said “I love you” to the person we assume knows it? Have we allowed work or hobbies to get in the way of quality time together?

Or is there a decision you are putting off? Like taking necessary time out to relax & switch off? Or joining a new group, or volunteering to help with something? However big or small, you see, these decisions they do matter. It might even be recognising your need for Jesus today and committing to follow Him … or deciding to be baptised? Is this the gentle nudge you needed?

My prayer for us all is that we are quickly able to identify when we are putting off things that need our attention today. Thank God that He is patient and loves us unconditionally, despite ourselves. We will not fail with Jesus. He is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8).

He has made us good enough by dying & rising again. We have new life & new hope because of Him. May we be wise to that truth every day of our lives. Amen

Bible quotations: Unless otherwise specified, quotations are taken from the resources of Bible Gateway or Bible Hub, in accordance with the licencing conditions outlined on our Site Policies page.

Bible dates: Where appropriate, the dates given for Biblical events are based on the Bible Timeline resource
and are subject to the constraints defined on the corresponding webpage.

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Contributor: Sarah Bell
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Sit Well with Emotion

[Transcript of “A 5 minute cuppa” published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube[1], April 2021]
Sandy

Hi everyone, welcome to ‘a five minute cuppa’. This is the place that you can come any time of day, just for five minutes, to relax, put your feet up, have a cuppa and listen to a few words to help you grow in your relationship with God.

Today we’re going to have a think about our emotions and the importance of these in helping us in our relationship with God and in our two-way communication with him. We are made in God’s image, naturally built with the capacity to feel a whole range of emotions yet so often we do not allow ourselves to feel these or, if we do, we don’t allow ourselves to show these to others.

If we give ourselves time to think about this, it’s pretty easy to see where this comes from. Particularly in the UK, it is very much part of our culture to refrain from showing emotion; the stiff upper lip is seen as a strength and to show emotion a sign of weakness.

We can bring this into our church culture too where we are especially resistant to showing negative emotions. We can think that we should always be joyful because of what Jesus has done for us and that somehow showing we are down or miserable shows a lack of faith. We worry that people may think that having Christ in us doesn’t really make a difference to the way we manage life. The result of this is that we hide our feelings from ourselves and from others and from God.

This can lead to a lack of real honesty in our relationships and also disrupts our prayer life as often our motivation to bring people and situations before God comes from a deep-seated emotional place.

It’s always good to look at the life of Jesus when we’re trying to get to grips with something the Holy Spirit may be talking to us about. We don’t have to look far to see some amazing examples of Jesus showing deep, strong and heartfelt emotion. In the garden of Gethsemane just before Jesus was arrested and crucified he was plunged into agonizing sorrow, so much so that his sweat became as great drops of blood falling down to the ground. A few weeks earlier, just before he raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, he wept openly at the situation before him.

One thing we can be sure about is that Jesus fully understands deep anguish and sadness. That’s good to know because it’s part of our human condition that we will face deep sorrow at some time in our lives. The loss of a loved one, a parent, maybe even a child or there might be a breakdown of an important relationship, the effect on a person or family of a devastating illness, a disability or a mental health problem. We can’t escape at least some of these things. We can however prepare for them.

I found a way to do this is to be aware of how much God sees and knows and cares for us in our saddest times. In the Psalms it tells us that God keeps track of our sorrows, that he collects our tears in a bottle and records each one in a book. What an amazing picture to bring to mind whenever we find ourselves in an overwhelming situation. Even when those around us are unaware or do not understand the situation we are in, we can be sure that our heavenly Father knows the complete picture and is right with us in it.

You may be listening to this and find yourself facing such a situation. I would encourage you to open up your heart to the Holy Spirit. You may find that you have no words and you can’t even open your mouth to talk to the Father. That’s okay. In these times our feelings and the tears we shed act as our prayers; no explanation is needed, He knows. When I’ve been in this place I’ve found an amazing thing happens. In that place of openness the Father holds me and somehow I find I’m aware of his presence and I’m given a strength beyond my own resources.

I’m convinced that this is available for all of us and over and over again whenever we need it. Please don’t harden yourself as a survival mechanism, throw that stiff upper lip out of the window where it belongs and allow God to show you his Father heart.

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[1] YouTube link: Sit Well with Emotion
Bible references: ~
 

Bible quotations: Unless otherwise specified, quotations are taken from the resources of Bible Gateway or Bible Hub, in accordance with the licencing conditions outlined on our Site Policies page.

Bible dates: Where appropriate, the dates given for Biblical events are based on the Bible Timeline resource
and are subject to the constraints defined on the corresponding webpage.

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Contributor: Sandy Turner
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Should we Celebrate or Mourn?

[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube[1], April 2021]

Should Good Friday be a time of celebration or mourning? Should our return to ‘normality’ be celebrated or mourned? Do we need time to lament the past year?

It’s Good Friday tomorrow and whilst planning our service myself and Daz had a bit of a conversation about you know ‘what’s the feel of the service? do we go for a kind of a lively celebratory kind of mood or do we go for a sombre reflective mood because the reality is, we are Easter Sunday Christians and therefore we view our faith and review Good Friday through that particular lens. We read the Good Friday story and we know that there is hope, we know that everything’s all right in the end, We know that Jesus is resurrected and we know that Jesus’s death on the cross means life for us. We know what the cross means but does the hope and joy of the Easter Sunday take away the pain and anguish of the Good Friday?

You see, I don’t think it does. I think it’s a really sad and horrific story where Jesus is broken physically completely and that when we hear that story we should recoil in disgust, we should shout out in despair, we should shout at the injustice of it all and perhaps we should be asking ourselves ‘you know, if I was there what would I do? If I was a friend of Jesus would I run away and desert him, even deny him?’ and if I was the crowd would I switch from shouting his praises to instead shouting for his execution.

Perhaps this is why despite the fact that we are Easter Sunday Christians, despite the fact that we know that everything works out in the end, for the last 2,000 years we have spent more time remembering Good Friday than we have remembering Easter Sunday. Through the acts of Communion we remember the death of Jesus Christ, we partake in his blood and his body, and we ask ourselves the question around our own culpability in Jesus’s death, the ways that we have deserted him, the way that we have denied him, the ways in which we have not acted as a true follower of Jesus Christ.

That leads me onto the question: when we finally return to some sense of normality with regard to our church services – potentially this summer, you know – what will the moods be? Would it be lively, would it be a celebration knowing that things are okay again, that we can once again meet together and I’m so looking forward to that time but is there a danger that in having that celebratory mood we can forget the pain and despair of the last year. Perhaps that should be the lens through which we view our return to physical church services, that actually we need to spend time in lament recognizing the distress the pain, the death, the destruction that Covid has caused in the last year.

We ought to recognize that, yes, we’re now returning to some semblance of normality but actually we will never be the same again, and we could perhaps spend time considering the lessons that we have learnt and the ways in which we have changed and the ways in which we must change because this past year has been pretty terrible

Hey thank you so much for tuning in to this midweek message. Do remember to subscribe to our channel and remember that at 10 o’clock tomorrow morning we have our Good Friday service telling the story where we look at the first Good Friday two thousand years ago, and on Easter Sunday it’s really exciting – we have a live service from the church, Neil and Angie will be leading the first bit and then myself and Daz will be doing three baptisms. We’re really excited about that so do join us at half past 10 on Sunday for that.
Thanks for tuning in … ’bye

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[1] YouTube link: Should we Celebrate or Mourn?
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Bible quotations: Unless otherwise specified, quotations are taken from the resources of Bible Gateway or Bible Hub, in accordance with the licencing conditions outlined on our Site Policies page.

Bible dates: Where appropriate, the dates given for Biblical events are based on the Bible Timeline resource
and are subject to the constraints defined on the corresponding webpage.

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Contributor: Martin Shorey
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The Greatest Love

[This reflection was published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, 04/Apr/2021]

Have you ever experienced a time when something happened that was so extraordinary, you will never forget it, or where you were and what you were doing when you heard about it or experienced it?

Outside of the births of my three children, when the miracle of those new little lives brought with it a sense of awe and wonder, I can recall three other events that stand out vividly in my memory so clearly, it is like they have forever more been etched in my head, this time not for joyful reasons. They are the death of Princess Diana, the Twin Towers attacks and the Tsunami. They made such an impact on me, and so many, they will never be forgotten.

Years ago, on the first Good Friday, that sense of disbelief, shock, horror and sorrow must have been immense, unimaginable, to those who had walked with Jesus on the earth, seen him performing miracles and believed his claims that he was the Son of God. Their Saviour had come….. but now was nailed to a cross, the life-blood flowed out of him.

But on the third day – Sunday – what had devastated and saddened so many two days earlier, now turned to relief, joy and happiness as the most miraculous event, that would change the course of history and millions of lives for evermore, had happened – Christ had risen from the dead! Hallelujah!!

From that pivotal moment onwards, and very much today, Jesus lives on in the hearts of those who love and follow him, those who now know that his death on that cross wasn’t the heart-breaking thing that it first appeared, but was in fact a miracle. Jesus had been resurrected from death to life, and his sacrificial act would reconcile people to God through the forgiveness of sins.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. [John 3:16]

On Easter Sunday we remember Christ’s sacrifice of love, and celebrate that he is alive today!!

CHRIST IS RISEN – HALLELUJAH!!

Bible quotations: Unless otherwise specified, quotations are taken from the resources of Bible Gateway or Bible Hub, in accordance with the licencing conditions outlined on our Site Policies page.

Bible dates: Where appropriate, the dates given for Biblical events are based on the Bible Timeline resource
and are subject to the constraints defined on the corresponding webpage.

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Contributor: Lesley Edwards
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Refresh Your Soul

[Transcript of “A 5 minute cuppa” published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube[1], March 2021]
Sandy

Hi everyone, welcome to ‘a five minute cuppa’. This is the place that you can come any time of day, just for five minutes, to relax, put your feet up, have a cuppa and listen to a few words to help you grow in your relationship with God.

There have been a lot of difficult things for us to contend with over the last year and time for us to ask God questions about what and why this has all been happening. For many of us it feels like our former lives have been put on pause with time to reflect on what’s gone before and what is to come in a way that we have never had the opportunity to do so before. As I’ve been thinking about this recently my mind has been drawn to discerning why we need regular pauses in our lives.

We know that God has made us to have a weekly sabbath where we take a break from what constitutes the main bulk of our usual activity. Certainly, as a child Sunday was the day that was the different day from the others in the week. I must admit I felt the negatives of this day rather than the positives; it always seemed too quiet and there seemed to be an unwritten rule that you couldn’t do anything that was too much fun. Even when I came to know Jesus I fell in line with the church culture of attending services coupled with catch-up activities in the home with that slight sense of dread on a Sunday evening of not being quite ready for the week ahead.

Sometimes we can bring our past experiences from our family, church or society influence to play in our lives without thinking and totally miss the point of having a regular time in the week to refresh our souls. I know in the past I’ve been notoriously bad at this, fearing my long and never-ending to-do list and just feeling that there wasn’t time to take any kind of break.

As usual Jesus has had a way of changing my former thinking and helping me to see things in a completely different way. God certainly isn’t a killjoy, out to make one of our days as boring as possible, as I thought as a child. I’ve come to realize that God’s suggestions are full of wisdom, there to help us in a way that makes the deepest difference in our lives. Taking a sabbath rest is much more about refreshing our soul and celebrating the life and relationship we have with our creator and friend than it is about following a rule to keep God happy.

I find that when the Holy Spirit speaks to me about something important that He goes on to help me find a way to work out that thinking in a practical way. Asking questions and waiting for answers is becoming a pattern and a key to hearing His voice. I realized that for my situation my sabbath didn’t have to be on a Sunday and it didn’t have to be a whole day at a time; it didn’t have to be all about spending time quietly resting or about feeling guilty for all the busy things that I spent my time catching up with. I was delighted to discover that actually it was more about doing things that did me good; things that really did restore me, prepare me and give me strength for the full-on life that God has given me.

My sabbath now tends to take place over the weekend, some hours on a Saturday and some on a Sunday. I plan for it and make it purposeful. I like to have a time with God just to be quiet and still, to be aware of His presence, to think about His character and what I love about Him. Then I’ll build in time to speak to people I like to be with; listening, talking, chewing over a topic or dilemma and trying to find a solution, or not. I just love it. I make sure I do an activity I love too; reading and thinking about ideas in a book, writing in my prayer journal, putting my feet up with a cup of tea or going for a drive or walk somewhere with a great view.

The things that do you good will probably be different from mine. I would encourage you to discover the things that refresh your soul and give you strength. Plan for them and make them regular within your week. The Father is so wise and knows us to the core of our being. Regular restoration prepares us and helps us live our lives well, whether that’s in our work, our relationships or negotiating something that’s tough and unknown to us like a global pandemic. I for one am glad that in all of this I am constantly reminded through my regular sabbath times that we are never in this alone

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[1] YouTube link: Refresh Your Soul
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Bible quotations: Unless otherwise specified, quotations are taken from the resources of Bible Gateway or Bible Hub, in accordance with the licencing conditions outlined on our Site Policies page.

Bible dates: Where appropriate, the dates given for Biblical events are based on the Bible Timeline resource
and are subject to the constraints defined on the corresponding webpage.

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Contributor: Sandy Turner
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Just Another Giant

[This is one in a series of mid-week devotional reflections prepared for Horley Baptist Church during March 2021]

No foes shall stay his might, though he with giants fight;
he will make good his right to be a pilgrim.
Attributed to John Bunyan, 1628-1688

One of the disadvantages of being a giant is that you tend to become rather cumbersome in confined spaces. So if you are the pilot of a giant container ship aground in a narrow channel then ‘big’ is too small a word to describe your problem. This event – again, too small a word – is having a global impact on activities as diverse as tractor manufacturing in America and fish processing in Scotland.

My own experiences of traversing the Suez canal were less dramatic but they gave me the opportunity to see the pyramids along the Nile. These gigantic structures stand up from the surrounding desert and remind us of the significance that Egypt has had throughout history. In the Biblical record we see Egypt as being at various times a place of refuge and sustenance but at others as an oppressor. For Moses, the Egyptians represented a daunting challenge and he asked God to send someone else, but God knew how to show him, and them, who was in charge.

Of shorter duration but no less impressive was the giant statue that Nebuchadnezzar had erected on a plain outside Babylon. Daniel chapter 3 tells us that it was 90 feet high (five times the height of the statue on top of Nelson’s Column) and it was made of gold. Nebuchadnezzar commanded that whenever the court musicians sounded the call, all his subjects were to fall down and worship his statue. Three worshippers of the One True God would not comply; several court officials got badly burned when they tried to betray them.

In due course, Nebuchadnezzar faced a challenge of his own. After seven years of humbling experiences he eventually got the message; this is his testimony:

It is my pleasure to tell you about the miraculous signs and wonders that the Most High God has performed for me. How great are his signs, how mighty his wonders! His kingdom is an eternal kingdom; his dominion endures from generation to generation. [Daniel 4 v2-3 NIVUK]

How do we react to the giants that we encounter? Saul was head and shoulders taller than the other Israelites but Goliath filled him with fear; not the fear of God but fear of man. By contrast, David saw the giant as a big opportunity to bring glory to God. Goliath lost his head and Saul lost his reputation, but the people of God were the victors that day.

Our ‘giants’ might not be huge physical entities. Our challenges may be closer to home but they threaten to overwhelm us none the less: health, finances, relationships, spiritual well-being; the list is not exhaustive.

Will you be like Moses who tried to avoid the problem; like Nebuchadnezzar who had to learn the hard way, or like Saul who was frozen into doing nothing? Or will you emulate David who, recalling God’s past deliverances, tackled the problem with confidence?

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. [Isaiah 41 v10 NIVUK]

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Bible quotations: Unless otherwise specified, quotations are taken from the resources of Bible Gateway or Bible Hub, in accordance with the licencing conditions outlined on our Site Policies page.

Bible dates: Where appropriate, the dates given for Biblical events are based on the Bible Timeline resource
and are subject to the constraints defined on the corresponding webpage.

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Contributor: Steve Humphreys
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