Selah2020: Pause and Reflect

[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube^[1], November 2020]

Although most people have rejoiced in the development of a COVID vaccine, not everyone has been as happy about it.
God has also provided a vaccine that prevents death! But the response to it has been mixed.

Last week I was celebrating along with the rest of the world, the discovery of a vaccine that can prevent us from catching COVID and also means that we can get back to some sense of normality, I guess, in our world. And this week the news has got even better, really, the vaccine is even more effective than they first thought, particularly in the more vulnerable people.

^[00:47] So how have you responded to this great news? The response has been mixed. The vast majority of people are full of hope over the potential of these vaccines but other people are not quite so hopeful. I mean, there’s those people that distrust any form of vaccine, they see it as potentially harmful to our health and therefore they won’t be taking it if they can help it. You’ve got other people that are just going to be stubborn – if they are told that they’ve got to do it then they are not going to do it. You’ve got other people – those conspiracy theorists who, in their most extreme form, see it as Bill Gates injecting a micro-chip into our bodies but in its mildest form it is seen as a way of control.

^[01:44] And then there’s those people that just don’t believe that COVID exists. This is a particular problem in Germany where their number of COVID deaths are a quarter of ours and some people just don’t believe it’s a problem or that it exists at all. In the States there are patients dying of COVID who still don’t believe it exists. We’ve been offered, we’ve been thrown a lifeline, we’ve been given a chance to halt this terrible disease, this terrible virus, and yet something within us, as human beings, seems to distrust any offer of help.

^[02:41] In a previous midweek message – quite a while ago now – I talked about a prevailing virus which has 100% fatality. It’s a virus which has infected the entire human race, in fact it’s infected the entire entirety of creation. The Bible labels this virus, it gives it the name ‘sin’. It’s a virus that separates us from our spiritual Father and it separates from our spiritual home. The consequences of that is death.

^[03:22] Sin affects every aspect of our lives. It affects our spirit, it affects our soul and, as I have said before, the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart. It is part of us, we can’t separate ourselves from it we cannot cure this disease. Paul wrote to the church, the Christians, the followers of Jesus in Rome; these words are found in Romans chapter 6 and verse 23:

“Sin pays off with death but God’s gift is eternal life given by Jesus Christ our Lord”

^[04:10] See, there is a vaccine, 100% effective and, if you take it, if you accept Jesus into your heart then you will be cured of this terrible disease of sin because what happens is when you say ‘Yes’ to Jesus, God enters into you by His Holy Spirit, He fixes the problem, He separates sin from our DNA and He cleanses us from the inside out. But more than that, Jesus’s death on the cross has removed that death sentence that is hanging over us. It has removed that separation that’s between our heavenly Father and between our spiritual home, heaven the kingdom of God, and therefore made it possible that, instead of dying, we can live for ever.

^[05:10] So, how has the world responded to this cure, this fix for the problem that pollutes the entirety of creation? Well, we should be responding with joy and thankfulness but instead humanity has responded with suspicion or even with disbelief.

How do you respond to this amazing gift from God?

[1] YouTube link: The Vaccine – How do you respond?
Bible references: Romans 6 verse 23

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[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube^[1], November 2020]

Now that a possible end is in sight for COVID, are we looking forward to returning to how things once were, or have things changed forever? How has the church changed? Should it change?

With the announcement this week of a vaccine for covid there’s been talk of when things will all go back to normal and we can’t wait, can we, until we are able to do various bits and pieces – you know, socializing, go to the cinema, stuff like that. But are we truly going to be going back to normal in terms of how things were before, or in reality are things going to be very different? When it comes to church, well surely we can just go back to how things were, can’t we?

^[00:56] There’s this passage in Isaiah 55 verse 11 that says these words “My words that proceed from my mouth will not return to me empty but it will accomplish what I please and it will prosper where I send it”. This is God talking about the power of his spoken word. Creation happened, the universe was created when God spoke. When God speaks things change; when God speaks new things are created, and I think that God has spoken in an amazing way in these past nine or ten months that during this time of covid God has been creating something new. I don’t just mean a new season because seasons come and go, they’re on rotation. I mean a new way of being, a new way of doing things, a break from the past.

^[02:10] Some of you may recall in my first midweek message, my first little talk on a dog walk, I talked about God doing a new thing. Do we perceive it? I don’t think that we can go back to how things were, particularly as a church, and I think to do so would be to ignore the new things that God has been doing in this time, the new era that God is ushering in for his people, for the body of Jesus Christ. So does that mean that some churches won’t ever go back to how things were? No, I don’t think that; I think there are some churches that will act as if nothing had happened, nothing had changed but I think that will be a massive failure on the church’s part if they have learned nothing from this and if they insist on going back to how things were. I think we need to have a recognition that this time has helped us to realize that our mission should not be building-focused. We have a sense of pride in our buildings – not saying that buildings are wrong but if we make that the focus and the centre point of our mission, of God’s mission, then we’ve got something seriously wrong.

^[03:40] We need to realize that our gifts should not be Sunday-focused. Too many people have felt beret, felt unemployed, during this time because they’ve been removed from their normal Sunday rotas or rotas that are building-centric. We need to realize that our gifts, our spiritual gifts from God, are meant for mission. It’s meant for the world out there, it’s meant to empower the church to do the task that God has for it. Also, I think we need to recognize that our aim should not be to get people into a service and if the only thing that changes about the way we do church is the way we do our Sunday morning service then I think we are focusing too heavily on such a minor part of what it means to be church.

^[04:48] One of the things that I have loved about this time has been the fact that the church has been on display, that we have had an opportunity to show our local community, and beyond, the things that we are doing. We’ve been able to show them our worship, we’ve been able to tell them our sermons, but also we’ve been able to show the ways in which we have been showing love and care and support to those who are most vulnerable in our society. We’ve been able to feed the poor through food bank or make lunch but actually people have started to see that God loves them and that we as churches are agents of God in this world, involved intimately in his mission.

^[05:43] I think that’s the thing that needs to be significantly different in this new era. They say that technology has jumped ahead five years within a couple of weeks in this time. I think as a church we’ve been talking about mission and justice and all that sort of stuff for years. I think this has been the time when we’ve had the opportunity to have that fast forwarded; that this will be an era of justice, this will be an era of helping the poor, feeding the hungry, speaking out in truth and love, sharing Jesus with the world rather than just expecting them to come into our buildings where they can hear about Jesus. We’ve been able to show them Jesus, not only through the things we do corporately as a church, but also through those acts of love and kindness that many people have shown to their neighbours and those in need.

^[06:49] This is what God has been doing, I think, in 2020 and we mustn’t let that go to waste. The question is – are you going to get on board, are you going to get on the surf board and ride the wave that God has created? It’s God’s doing, this isn’t us, this is God making the best possible outcome from a bad situation. It’s a wake-up call, not just for our nation, not just for the world, but for us as a church as well. Now really the question comes, are you just looking forward to getting back to how things were, or are you waking up to the fact that God has fundamentally changed the way that we should be functioning as the body of Christ?

[1] YouTube link: Is the church going back to normal?
Bible references: Isaiah 55 verse 11

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[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube^[1], November 2020]

France and the USA – 2 republics who view religion very differently. Should the church be involved in politics or should faith be kept separate from positions of power and influence? What is the role of the church in the broader life of our nation?

In the news this past week two republics have dominated the news. One was France where they’ve unfortunately had some religious and Islamic terrorist attacks and Macron the secularist has condemned those attacks and reiterated the fact that France is a secular not a religious country. On the other hand, you have the United States of America, also a republic, and yet in their elections we’ve seen time and time again the prevalence the importance placed on the church, on faith, on Christianity when deciding who to vote for. So which one’s right – the secularist or the religious republic?

^[01:00] One of the things that came out of the Christian reformation in the 16th century in Europe was a separation between church and state, where no longer was the church the authoritative figure within a country so it’s not surprising you have countries like France where religion and state, church and state, are very much kept separate. President Macron said that spirituality is a matter for the individual, not for the state, and in some ways there’s real positives in that. Out of that separation there became freedom of religion and the United States for example was a place where many of those new Christian groups had to end up moving to because it was illegal, for example Baptists, to be a church within England because only the Church of England, the state registered church, could actually function. We also found that all sorts of other faiths, be Jewish or whatever, went to the States because of that religious freedom that they experienced so there are real positives in separating church from state.

^[02:23] Now England didn’t do that; the church is still very much integrated into the country. The Queen is the head of our country, the head of the state but she’s also the head of the Church of England and yet we have to realize – in fact you probably do – that England is a secular country, it’s not a Christian country. The Christianity that we do kind of adhere to is a mixture between history and folklore. Really, it’s not a real Biblical Christianity at all and the church, well it just gets wheeled out at special occasions, you know state weddings or funerals. It’s more akin to a historical re-enactment at Warwick Castle than it is to a powerful authority. It’s a bit of a toothless lion really; it can growl a lot but it’s not really any threat to anyone.

^[03:24] So what should the church be? Should it be dominating politics? Should it be an authority within a country or should spirituality – Christianity – be only within the realm of the individual where people have a freedom to worship as they wish as long as they keep themselves to themselves? People could do whatever they want as long as they’re not harming anyone.

^[04:12] In Peter’s – one of the disciples of Jesus – in Peter’s letter to the early church he told those early Christians who were struggling to find their place within a state run by the Roman emperor, he told them to live good and peaceable lives, to obey the authorities, to not cause any problems, not give any reason to people to look down on them or find a problem with them, and probably for many Christians that seems like a great idea. Let’s just keep ourselves to ourselves, let’s just do our thing, let’s just worship in our churches, let’s close our doors, let’s close our homes to the horrible world out there and let’s just worship God. Let’s just try and be the best person that we can be.

^[04:54] If you read the gospels, if you look at the likes of Jesus which is who we we as Christians are supposed to be like you see a very very different kind of life. In fact, Jesus had less issue with the authorities in terms of the Romans than he did with the religious authorities – those people, God’s people, who were supposed to be setting an example, who were supposed to be a light.

^[05:26] Jesus told his followers to be salt and light. They’re supposed to bring healing, they’re supposed to stand out, supposed to stand up, supposed to make a difference because God’s people, the nation of Israel, were called to be a blessing to all people: a shining example of what it means to be a human, what it means to live under God’s rule. They were supposed to stand up for justice, supposed to bring freedom to the prisoners, to protect the rights of the vulnerable and, as followers of Jesus Christ, that’s what we should be. As the church of the body of Christ that’s what we should be doing.

^[06:10] It’s not about our rights, it’s not about what we can and can’t do. A lot of issues being raised at the moment, that churches have been shut during lockdown and we get quite uppity about our right to worship, our right to practice our religion, but actually Jesus was not about our rights, he was about the rights of others, those people who quite easily be pushed aside by stronger people by the authorities.

^[06:44] See the UK organization ‘Christians in Politics’ their vision is to seek positive relational political engagements. They want to engage with the political sphere in order to see justice at the top of the agenda, to raise issues of fairness. It’s not so much about morality which unfortunately the church has been consumed with for many years; it’s about people being treated as images of our heavenly Father, of people getting what is right and just and fair, being treated in the right way. It’s about elimination of poverty, it’s about freedom for those that are held captive by abusive relationships or substance abuse or addictions of any kind.

^[07:55] The church is there, not for its members, but for the people in our community, the people that need a voice and need help and maybe we need to have a position of authority and power in order to bring about that change, I don’t know. I don’t know what the answer is; perhaps as a church we need to find out who Jesus is calling us to be rather than being overly concerned about influence and power and our rights to do religion in whatever way we choose.

[1] YouTube link: Do Church and Politics Mix?
Bible references: 1 Peter ch 2 v13-14

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[Modified transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube^[1], May 2020]

If our prayers aren’t answered does that mean we haven’t got enough faith, or we’re not praying hard enough? Perhaps we need a dose of realism! Life will not always be rosy, and our difficulties may actually have a positive effect on us!

Well, welcome to the third part in our series “Does Prayer Work?”.
In the first part we looked at how Jesus prayed and the fact that he told those listening that the reason that he had such a power-filled ministry with so many miracles was because he spent time getting to know his heavenly Father, taking time to build that relationship so that he knew what God was doing and he just joined in was what was going on.

In part 2 we looked at the fact that God doesn’t get necessarily what He wants and the reality of the world we live in is that it is pretty rubbish sometimes and that miracles are by very nature a rare event. Yet if we pray for God’s kingdom to come, if we pray enough, if we have faith, we can actually start to see the miracles in lives. But, if you start to think about that for a little bit more, then you realise that we’re heading into some dangerous territory. We can get to the stage where we can say ‘well, if I have enough faith’ or ‘if you have enough faith’ then you will get what you pray for. Then you can say to someone who isn’t getting what they want or maybe their life isn’t as good as it should be that “you just need to pray more, you’d have more faith”. If your faith was strong enough you could move a mountain because Jesus said that, didn’t He?

Don’t get me wrong, there is a place for faith. Numerous times when Jesus performed a miracle he said “it’s your faith that has healed you” so faith has an impact but is it really that simple? I mean, there are plenty of people who have had great faith and yet they still suffered from cancer. And actually you could look at the majority of our world who are in poverty at the moment and can you really say that they’re in poverty because they haven’t got enough faith? You really need to have a bit of a dose of realism. In the last session we mentioned the fact that the world that we are in is a mess because God let us have our way. He put our freewill before his own will and therefore we are suffering from the consequences of our choices and people, other people, are suffering for the consequences of our choices too. That is a reality.

If you think if you become a follower of Jesus Christ your life will be sorted, everything will be rosy, then you are seriously mistaken because time and time again in the New Testament we find out that is not the case. I mean, when Jesus said to his followers “pick up your cross daily and follow me” (a cross was a way of executing people and Jesus carried his cross to the place of his execution) it’s not an easy task. Paul writes in Romans about the Christian faith saying when troubles happen, when troubles occur, when things go wrong. James says pretty much exactly the same thing – when troubles come your way – when, not if. If you have become a follower of Jesus Christ then that by its very nature means that your life is going to be difficult and that’s a really key thing to get your head around. If you think that being a follower of Jesus Christ is like being on a cruise ship where you get drinks brought to you and you just have a nice relaxing journey until you get to heaven, well that’s not what it is. Christianity – being a follower of Jesus Christ – is not like being on a cruise ship, it’s like being on a battle ship because there is a war going on between the forces of darkness and God.

Now God has already defeated them through Jesus’s death and resurrection but the reality is that we are in those final throes during the those final battles, the final times when things are difficult and hard, and the enemy is fighting tooth and nail to gain ground. If you are on a cruise ship you’re a bit shocked if a hand-grenade lands near your sun lounger. If you’re on a battleship you are expecting it and you’re trained for it.

Now I’ve never been to a military boot camp but I have been to teacher-training and teacher-training was really hard; it was such a shock to the system to go into schools and to start teaching a bunch of kids that didn’t really want to be taught and didn’t really respect you because you’re only a student. If you are thinking they can’t be that bad, well, you’re obviously not a teacher! From day one you are on the battlefield, from day one you are learning your craft, you are getting better so that when you’re actually employed as a teacher you know what you are doing and you are hopefully able to do it well.

It’s the same when we go through trials and difficulties and even suffering in life. Actually Paul and James both say that your sufferings and your trials will lead to perseverance and that perseverance will lead to a strength of character and strength of character will lead to hope. The troubles of this world are honing you and shaping you into a better person, into a better follower of Jesus Christ, into someone who is more effective as a warrior for the kingdom of God. So from the moment you become a follower of Jesus Christ, from day one, you are on a battlefield, you are coming under attack and prayer is the most powerful weapon you have. Some of that suffering will be caused by the enemy and you can use prayer to defend yourself, to rebuke the enemy in the name of Jesus Christ but some of that suffering is actually there to shape you and to refine you and to hone your skills and to make you more effective.

Of course, knowing which is which is the difficult bit and perhaps that’s where you need to build, just as Jesus did, that relationship through prayer with your heavenly Father so you are better able to discern what is the will of God and what is an attack of the enemy, and therefore respond appropriately.

[1] YouTube link: Does Prayer Work? – part 3
Bible references: Matt 16 v4, Romans 5 v3-4, James 1 v2

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[Modified transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube^[1], May 2020]

In the 2nd part of our ‘Does Prayer Work’ midweek message we delve a bit deeper into the topic of miracles and ask the question, does God only answer our prayers when they suit His purposes?

Last week we were looking at the question of “Does prayer work?” and really we came to the conclusion that prayer does work when it aligns with God’s will, when we pray for something to happen that God wants to happen. Jesus’s prayer life was a lot about building his relationship with God to the extent that his heart broke for the same things that God’s heart broke for and he saw what God was doing and joined in with that. That raises the question “Do our prayers only get answered when we pray for the things that God wants? Do our prayers only work if we pray for the things that God wants to happen, that fit in with his plan and his bigger picture?”

^01:08 Well, let’s put things into context a bit. Let’s first answer the question “What is God’s will; what does God want?” Well if you look through scripture, if you look in the Bible, it tells us that God’s will is that no one should perish, that everyone should have a relationship with Him, that we should have a hope, that we should have a future (2 Peter 3 v9). God’s will is that we should have good gifts and that we should be blessed. It’s God’s will that no one should suffer or die and yet if we look at the world around us we realise that that’s just not what’s happening.

^01:46 The reality is that God does not get what he wants, and a lot of that is down to the fact that for whatever reason God put our will – our free will – above His own. Because of our free will, because of the decisions and the choices that we made (as laid out at the beginning of the Bible in Genesis) we have allowed into our world death and suffering and pain and greed. The heart of the human problem is a problem of a human heart but there is a bigger picture.

^02:23 God is fixing those things that have gone wrong through our bad choices, our bad decisions and through our own free will. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, sin and death have been defeated and there will come a time when there will be no more death and no more suffering, no more pain and no more sorrow. I believe sincerely that we can have a hope for tomorrow but we also have a hope for the here and now.

^03:05 You see, when Jesus’s disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray like he prayed, this is what he told them. He said “Pray like this: Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” In other words, Heavenly Father, break into our realm, may your kingdom break into our kingdom, may your will be done in this place, in our town and in our lives. Lord God we pray that you will fix restore and redeem all those things that are broken, all those things that are not as they should be. We pray that you will heal our bodies, that you will change people’s minds, that you will fix broken relationships. We pray that you will bless us. In other words, we pray that miracles will happen.

^04:08 Now, by their very nature, by the definition, miracles are rare events but just as one golfer said “The more I practice the luckier I get” so too the more we pray the more we see the miraculous happen in our lives, the more we start to see God breaking through, his kingdom coming, his will being done in our lives and in our communities. If we humble ourselves, if we really cry out to our heavenly Father, his will will be done. What we see in the Bible is the fact that for whatever reason God partners with us, that God chooses us as his instruments. He’s given us prayer as a powerful weapon so that through us and through our prayer and through our actions God’s will is done and the miraculous happens.
So keep praying because prayer does make a difference.

[1] YouTube link: Does Prayer Work? – part 2
Bible reference: 2 Peter 3 v9.

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[Modified transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube^[1], May 2020]

In a time when so many of our prayers go unanswered, is it even worth praying? Does pray even work? Maybe the first thing we need to do is rethink our approach.

I think that one of the things that this situation with COVID has highlighted is my lack of faith when it comes to prayer. I mean, it’s something that’s possibly, probably, always been there but it has highlighted the fact that I struggle with whether or not prayer truly makes a difference, whether there really is power in prayer. And probably most of us, if we are honest, we all struggled a bit with prayer. The evidence for that is the fact that our prayer meetings are fairly badly attended. I mean it’s not just because prayer meetings can be a little bit boring but actually maybe down to the fact that we don’t really think that prayer is that effective. I mean is there any difference in outcome between someone who prays and someone who doesn’t? And even if God does hear our prayers, does he really answer them?

^01:11 Maybe prayer is more to do with psychologically feeling better about a situation than actually having any real effect on the outcome. See, Paul in the latter part of his letter to the church in Thessalonica, he tells them to keep praying. “It’s God’s will that you keep praying” and perhaps they needed that reminder because our natural inclination when we look at the reality that we see around us is to stop praying.

^01:40 Yet when we look at Jesus’s ministry, it was punctuated with times of prayer; time and time again the Gospels tell us that Jesus took himself off and prayed to his heavenly Father. That prayer life sustained his relationship, it empowered his ministry and it directed his paths. He spent time cultivating the relationship he had with his heavenly Father. And when Jesus was explaining to the people who had seen the power of his ministry, why it was so powerful, he told them it was because he only did what he saw his Father doing, that God was always working and God revealed to him His will and His ways. The only reason Jesus was able to do what he did was because God was already doing it.

^02:40 You see, without prayer, Jesus’s ministry would be completely fruitless, completely powerless. I wonder how much time do you, do we, do I spend in prayer just because I want to get to know my God better, I want to know my heavenly Father better. Perhaps our prayer life and our prayer meetings are seemingly ineffectual because we have got the foundations of our prayer life wrong. Our prayer life is driven more by our needs, our wants at any given time rather than our desire to know our heavenly Father better.

^03:24 I mean, what would it look like if our prayers were all about building a relationship with our heavenly Father to such an extent that we start to see the world as God sees it? Would our hearts break for what God’s heart breaks for? Could we start to know God’s will in any given situation because we know God that much and that He has revealed to us what He is doing and why He is doing it? Can our prayers be guided not by what we wanted but by what God is already doing? Maybe then our lives would be full of miracles and power rather than disappointment and heartbreak.

^04:12 See, Jesus and his disciples proved that prayer does work because they spent time building their relationship with their heavenly Father. They prayed “Father in heaven, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven“.

[1] YouTube link: Does Prayer Work? – part 1
Bible references: 1 Thessalonians 5 v17, John ch 5.

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