Christmas // Expectations

8And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

13Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

14“Glory to God in the highest heaven,

and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

15When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

(Luke 2: 8-15)

Pastor Jonny brought us the first message in our Christmas series all about expectation.

When we look through the first 3 chapters of Luke, we can see that the Christmas story is full of anticipation and expectation. All through the Old Testament, there are prophecies and shadows that point towards a Jewish Messiah, a Saviour, coming to redeem His people. The actual expectations were quite different to reality! The Jews were expecting a political or military saviour, someone like King David, to ride in on horseback and lead Israel to military victory. What they got was so different, but so much better.

It starts in Luke 1, where Mary and Elizabeth were both expecting babies. Once the babies were born, there was so much expectation placed on each baby: John the Baptist, and Jesus Christ, because so much had been prophesied about each one.

In chapter 2, people were expectant and excited to meet the baby Jesus. In our lives today, expectation drives excitement. We get excited for Christmas because of the expectations it holds. We get to spend time with our families and friends. As adults, we can relax from work, and as children, we get to play with lots of new toys.

In chapter 3, people’s expectations were a little misplaced. They began suspecting that John was the Messiah. John had to explain that he wasn’t, but that he was preparing the way for the ministry of the Messiah.

People’s expectations were heightened because there had been no revelation for 400 years! From the end of the writing of Malachi (the last book in the Old Testament) and the beginning of the Gospels, there had been no prophecies from God, or miracles taking place. The Jewish people were expectant that at some point in the future, the Messiah would arrive, so as soon as they heard that prophecies were being made again (to Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth and Zechariah), the excitement must have been uncontainable!

At the birth of Jesus, God revealed Himself through angels to shepherds, and a star to some Wise Men. God could have chosen to reveal the Messiah’s birth to anyone, but He chose random groups of people from the working and upper classes. God can save people from all race and class in society. Jesus is not just for the elite, neither is He for the working class alone. He is for everyone!

Because of God fulfilling His great promises in the Messiah, we can come to the Saviour with expectation. As Christians, we have an expectation for a future brighter than any of our earthly circumstances, and this can help us endure difficult time when we’re waiting for God to bring an end to such times in our lives. We can come to God today in expectation, knowing that if we repent and believe the Gospel, He will be faithful to meet us where we are at. We can read stories of God’s faithfulness as we read through the heroes of the faith in the Old Testament. Noah believed God’s warning of judgement in the form of a global flood, and was faithful to build an ark. Moses believed God’s promise to liberate the Hebrew slaves from Egypt, and was propelled to keep going in efforts to demand freedom from Pharaoh. Moses’ faith and obedience to God’s commands and expectations of God’s promises was so great that they got to the point where God parted the Red Sea for them to escape! We see Joshua, another hero, expectantly believing God’s promise and following God’s call to march around Jericho in a very specific way. He knew that God was going to be faithful. King David had a life marred by sin, yet he was always obedient to God’s promises in his life, resulting in being known as a “man after God’s own heart”.

As Christians, we should have that same expectation and obedience. When we get older, we often lose the magic of Christmas, and sadly the same can be said about our relationship with Jesus. It can become stale and we can start taking things for granted, failing to praise God for the many blessings in life that we don’t even deserve. We should seek to recapture the excitement of the Gospel when we focus our mind on how incredible God’s promises are for us as Christians, and the reality of the death of Jesus on the cross for us.

Let’s focus this week on how expectant people were to receive Jesus throughout the Gospels, and come to Him in prayer with that same level of expectation and excitement, both for the great future He has planned in eternity for us, as well as being expectant that He is going to bless us in so many ways and grow us in our faith and relationship with Him in too many ways to count!

Simple Living // Rest

This week, Pastor Jonny concluded the Simple Living series, looking at rest.

As a country and individually, we’re going through a tough season in the midst of a pandemic. The pain we’re experiencing is worse for some than for others, with the loss of businesses and investments, while others have found a newfound time for rest from the hectic pattern of pre-pandemic life.

Regardless of our current circumstances, the Government restrictions are set to be eased for a week in December, meaning we have the excitement of Christmas ahead of us where we can rest with our families.

28“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

(Matthew 11:28-30)

In this passage, Jesus speaks to His disciples who want to learn more about walking in His ways. Many of them were burnt out from trying to keep all the excessive religious rules that the Pharisees were imposing on society, adding extra laws on top of those found in the Bible.

There are 3 key reasons why we need to rest:

Rest because we are told to

We know that God designed His law in love for the benefit of people. When people follow God’s law, humans (and by extension, humanity) flourish. We know that God’s command to rest is good for us.

8“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

(Exodus 20:8-11)

Out of the Ten Commandments, eight of them are “you shall not” commandments, and two of them are “you shall remember” commandments. We should try and remember that God has created the Sabbath as a time of rest and replenishment for us, and that it’s been designed in love.

The UK in the 21st century, seems to value living life at an ultra-productive fast pace, yet we have mental health issues and relationship breakdown like never before. While God does indeed call us to be wise with our time, we need to find a healthy balance, and the concept of the sabbath gives us a day each week to shut off, relax, and be with the Lord, our families and friends, without the pressure to have to be “doing” something.

Rest because we need to

If we don’t catch up with rest, our overworking will catch up with us. We will experience burnout, mental health issues and problems in our relationships.

Trying to take a day off every few weeks or a week off every few months won’t cut it. Something needs to change day-to-day, week-to-week for us. We need regular, intentional rest in God. Even better, building in some time to “rest with God” each day, some quiet time in the Word and prayer, is the best way to set us right for the day.

Interestingly, before Thomas Eddison invented the lightbulb, people got 11 hours sleep on average as they had to live with limited light. When we hear about theological heroes like John Wesley getting up at 4am, it’s probably because he went to bed at 7pm!

Jesus said “my yoke is easy and my burden is light”. There are a couple of different ways of looking at this verse. Firstly, the yoke was a piece of wood binding oxen together, enabling them to share the load of whatever they were carrying. When we are bound to Jesus, He does the heavy lifting for us in life, by His grace.

Interestingly, a yoke was also a rabbi’s teaching from Scripture. Jesus is claiming that His interpretation of Scripture is the best; it lifts people up with grace, whereas other rabbis used Scripture to pile works-based living on people, wearing people down with heavy burdens.

As Christians, we are called to work hard and be intentional with our time, so we should also be intentional about building in time to rest.

Rest because we should want to

We should desire “the Jesus life”, the life devoted to Christ. To achieve this, we need to adopt "the Jesus lifestyle". Jesus loved God, put others first, worked hard in His calling, studied Scripture, and spent time in prayer. Then in addition to that, He rested and retreated to places of solitude, and also napped a lot too!

We cannot live well in our own strength, we can only live well in Jesus. By resting, we are handing over our ability to achieve to God. This week, we need to ask God to do what only He can do because we can’t strive anymore.

This week, let’s be intentional about God’s calling to more rest, and let’s discover the importance of resting in God, with more time with the Lord in prayer and in Scripture.

Simple Living // Offence

20Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous,

no one who does what is right and never sins.

21Do not pay attention to every word people say,

or you may hear your servant cursing you—

22for you know in your heart

that many times you yourself have cursed others.

(Ecclesiastes 7:20-22)

Ecclesiastes is an Old Testament book written by King Solomon, one of the wisest men who has ever lived! The book is full of wisdom and appears pessimistic when first read, but it’s only pessimistic when God is taken out of the picture. The book tells us that everything is meaningless, but it’s only meaningless without God.

Today’s passage shows us that everything that people say about us is meaningless. We have our identity rooted in Christ rather than what others say to us. Too often, however, we let our emotions ride up and down based upon what we hear people say about us, how many likes we get on social media posts etc.

There is a way to live a life that’s unoffended, and Pastor Jonny spoke to us this week about how.

Choose to forgive people before they hurt us

It’s fashionable to be a social justice warrior on social media these days, getting offended about the latest thing that’s fashionable to be offended about and rioting, protesting and virtue-signalling to show how offended we are. This is fake offence. It’s a little more difficult in life when people say things about us and our personality/character,.

The way to deal with this is to understand that “hurt people hurt people”, and “bitterness leaks”. The person saying offensive things to/about us likely has issues of their own and they are being offensive themselves as an outlet. We need to get into the habit of choosing to forgive people before they say anything to us, ensuring our heart is swept clean to avoid being part of a chain reaction of offence.

Jesus had a parable on a similar topic:

23“Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold h was brought to him. 25Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

26“At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

28“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. i He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

29“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’

30“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.

32“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

35“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

(Matthew 18:23-35)

As we can see from the above passage, God’s grace is freely given, therefore we must be grace-based people ourselves. Just because someone gives us offence doesn’t mean that we have to store it up in our heart as unforgiveness and possibly become offensive to the people around us.

The best time to forgive someone is before they hurt you, the second best time is now

Don’t pick the offence up

When someone gives us offence, sometimes it hurts because it holds a seed of truth.

We need to remind ourselves of our status as a child of God, and respond to the person offending us from that position of strength. If there is any truth in the person’s offensive speech, then we need to take out the emotion, analyse their point objectively, and potentially use it as a point for self-improvement.

The person who is speaking offensively might have issues of their own, and they might be lashing out in anger. Remember the Ecclesiastes passage, that we have all offended others and that none of us are sinless. Knowing that, we have the ability to ignore it and respond to the issue being discussed, rather than dwelling on the offensive part of the person’s speech.

Learn to “shake it off”

We need to learn to become people who are unoffendable, shaking off offence and becoming immune to it, letting offensive speech bounce off us like water off a duck’s back.

Jesus refers to shaking of offence when instructing His disciples to go from town to town to spread the Gospel:

14If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.

(Matthew 10:14)

We need to learn to follow the instruction of Jesus, not take things personally, and walk away from offensive people, shaking the dust off our feet.

So let’s focus this week on praying for our friends, family, neighbours, colleagues, and even enemies, and choosing to forgive them in advance for anything offensive they may say to us.

Simple Living // Relationships

We all have baggage in life, and often this is relational. Peter writes in his first epistle that we should cast our cares/anxieties upon the Lord. Often relational issues can be caused by overcomplicating everything. Pastor Jonny spoke to us this week about how we should aim to keep our relationships simple, reflecting the perfect relationship found in the Trinity between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, living in community loving one another, without any drama.

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

(1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

Relationships in our life are important. They provide us with a foundation and a support network, and the people we have relationships with (friends, family, neighbours, bosses, colleagues) are our biggest influencers.

Jonny has 3 simple steps to succeed in positive relationships in life:

Honour Your Parents

Our relationship with our parents is the very first relationship we have. Much of who we are comes from “nature”, that is, inheriting traits from our parents. The other part of who we are comes from “nurture”, how our parents raised us.

Families are God’s idea: a mother, father and children. The responsibility is with the parents to make sure that a family operates well. God’s design for families is that children grow up in community with their parents, the people who love them the most and want them to succeed the most. Parents model relationships to their children, and lead by example on how children should treat their neighbours.

God tells us in the Ten Commandments that we should honour our parents:

12“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

(Exodus 20:12)

Honouring our parents brings blessings in life, however, this comes with a caveat: it’s good to honour our parents, but only in-line with God’s commandments. If our parents are trying to encourage us in ungodliness, then it’s acceptable to push back.

If you don’t have good parents, remember that you have a Heavenly Father who loves you and you can honour Him!

Love Your Spouse

Whether married, dating or single, we should seek to honour our spouse.

When two people get married, they become one flesh. When married, loving one’s spouse is really important.

During the dating phase, we should ask ourselves whether this person is whom we want to become one flesh with, someone we want to bring new life into the world with, and someone we want to build a life with.

If we’re single, we should be thinking about the sort of person we want to be married to, keeping ourselves pure for our future spouse, ensuring a clean conscience on the wedding day, knowing we’ve loved our spouse before we even knew them.

Society tells us that marriage is just a social contract these days. It’s actually a big deal! After our relationship with the Lord, our marriage is the most important relationship in our lives, our first calling.

We should aim to not be unequally yoked, meaning we should only date and marry Christians. A common moral and spiritual compass makes the big life decisions so much easier, and means that children can be raised with a consistent worldview, shared by both parents. Also, it’s a command from God, so we should seek to obey Him.

We should also ensure that we don’t let our relationship with our spouse become an idol; if we prioritise it over God, we leave no room for the Holy Spirit to sanctify us and make us more like Jesus - we need to keep a focus on our relationship with the Lord.

Teach Your Children

The family as God designed it is a support network with a strong female and a strong male. For parents, children are the greatest gift and the greatest responsibility, the greatest source of joy and the greatest source of anxiety.

6Start children off on the way they should go,

and even when they are old they will not turn from it.

(Proverbs 22:6)

We should seek to raise our children in the faith. They need us to be their guide on how to follow Jesus. We should be praying for their future friends and spouses too.

There’s an old saying, “more is caught than taught” - we should be leading by example! Our children need to see us praying and reading our Bibles. We need to discuss the big deep topics of life and involve our children in those discussions. We need to build them up with encouragement and discipline them, building them into well-rounded adults.

In summary, the key to our relationships is time. We need to spend quality time honour our parents, loving our spouses and teaching our children.

This week, be praying for better relationships, and if you’d like any prayer or assistance with broken relationships, please get in touch.

Simple Living // Finance

As Christians, we are called to travel with as little baggage as possible. We have our new live found in Jesus, and we should aim to live simply. Pastor Jonny spoke to us this week about finances.

Day-to-day life often revolves around going to work to earn money, and then spending that money. Life can often have a focus on balancing the books in our households. We should aim for freedom in our finances, because when we reach freedom in our finances, we will find more freedom in other areas of our lives, we’ll have less mental, spiritual and emotional baggage.

Here’s a key thing to remember: wealthy people are not the people who have a lot, wealthy people are people who don’t want a lot.

In our culture today, we see marriages falling apart based upon financial issues. We have an epidemic of absent parents, constantly striving for more money and not present to spend quality time discipling their families.

We shouldn’t be afraid to talk about money, as we talk about our children, futures, hopes and dreams, but never have the often-needed difficult conversations about our finances. Freedom in finances means we can aim for our hopes and dreams without worry, and build a better future for our families with good planning.

5Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,

“Never will I leave you;

never will I forsake you.” a

(Hebrews 13:5)

Looking at this verse, we need to remember that money isn’t what sustains us, but our relationship in God sustains us.

Our financial situations are all different. Some of us are big earners and big spenders, but stats show that higher earners also have more debt! Some of us have little money and struggle to make ends meet. Some of us have very little debt. Some of us are big spenders. Some of us are good budgeters. We’re all different in our attitude to money.

This is because money in itself isn’t the problem. Money is just a tool for buying stuff, in the same way a hammer is a tool for hitting a nail into a wall. The problem with money is our attitude to it, that we can make an idol of it and sacrifice more valuable things in life to pursue more money.

Having lots of money doesn’t guarantee happiness in life. We hear about millionaires committing suicide and billionaires going through divorces. The issue is our relationship with money, our thinking and behaviour patterns. We should be on top of our finances so they aren’t on top of us.

There are 3 key Godly principles for handling money.

Put God First

Jesus is Lord of our lives in all areas, yet we hold back in letting Him be Lord of our finances. He wants 100% of who we are, including 100% of our finances. Our spending patterns should be defined by the Lordship of Christ.

21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

(Matthew 6:21)

As Jesus said, we should be willing to let our “treasure” be under the Lordship of Christ, as it demonstrates where our hearts are. The concept of the tithe is that if we give God 10% of our income to our church, then God gives us 90% back and promises that it’s enough to live on!

It’s a heart thing. All things are God’s, and we are stewards of any property that He has allowed us to possess.

10Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.

(Malachi 3:10)

Take Out The Emotions

As we discussed last week, when we’re high in emotion, we’re low in intelligence.

For example, if we want a new car, we need to know our budget and do our research before heading out to the showroom. Salesmen are trained to play to our emotions, so we need to be on guard, otherwise we may end up several months down the line making very expensive car payments with a tonne of interest that would be better off spent (or saved) elsewhere.

If a neighbour gets flashy new items, we need to be aware of covetousness and jealousy of other people’s stuff, and resist the temptation to buy new stuff ourselves to “keep up with the Joneses". Our neighbour may have received a gift, received inheritance money, or they might be funding their flashy lifestyle with debt. We should avoid trying to conform to the worldly patterns of consumerism and materialism.

Generosity

God’s economy is upside down. Man looks on the outside, but God sees the heart. We should be loving and generous in our possessions to those around us, whether that’s giving things away, blessing people who are struggling with money, donating to charities etc. Eternally, being generous at heart and letting that love of Jesus flow out of us in generosity is much better than trying to show off our material possessions to the world.

When we give even just a little, God can make it go a long way. We see this in the Gospels with the feeding of the 5,000. That’s a picture to us that God can use any gift we give, more efficiently and more effectively than we might think.

If you’re struggling with finances, the church should be your first port of call. Get in touch with us if you’re struggling with financial issues like debt, or if money is causing problems in your relationships. We’d love to help you spiritually and practically.

Remember that your life is too significant, your time is too precious, your calling too great and God too good for you to not be living with financial peace and contentment. Let’s be a people who are known for our generosity, gratitude and sensible handling of our finances.

Simple Living // Emotions

Have you ever said something you regret in the heat of the moment? Have you ever done something without thinking it through, causing unintended consequences? We all have done so in one way or another. This is because we often say and do things we regret when we’re reacting from emotion rather than thought. When we are high in emotion, we are low in intelligence.

Pastor Jonny continued his Less Is More sermon series this week, looking at emotions, from James 1:19-27.

19My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, 20because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. 21Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

22Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror 24and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

26Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. 27Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

(James 1:19-27)

People often say and do things in haste, such as responding to work emails in a bad mood and regretting it, or saying destructive things to friends and family and causing hurt.

Emotions are powerful, they can be the best thing and the worst thing. God gave us emotions, but they’re fallen, just like everything in the fallen, sinful world in which we live.

Emotions don’t just affect us today, they affected people who lived in Biblical times too.

King David was walking on his palace roof one day and noticed a beautiful woman. While high in emotion, he sent out his servants to get the lady, Bathsheba, and bring her to him. She was married to one of David’s soldiers, but David disregarded this, slept with her, and she became pregnant. David felt guilt and shame, but caught up in emotion, he had Bathsheba’s husband killed to cover up his actions.

Another example of emotions ruling over rational thought is in the New Testament, when Jesus was arrested. Peter had seen Jesus demonstrate His power, and yet he didn’t think Jesus could handle being arrested, so he pulled out his sword and chopped an ear off one of the soldiers.

We often think of people as either “head” or “heart” people, or “thinkers” and “feelers” as some personality tests like to categorise them. Thinkers tend to make decisions, whereas feelers make reactions. To walk Christ-like, we need to understand that not everything that feels right is right, and that our emotions shouldn’t rule us, but instead, we should rule our emotions.

In fact, the best thing we can do is combine them, letting our emotions advise us in making rational decisions, such as letting empathy for other people’s feelings help us make difficult decisions.

A Biblical example of someone who combined thinking and feeling is King Solomon, son of David and Bathsheba (they eventually married). Solomon built a temple to God, and used the emotion of gratefulness to God to fuel his decision to build a temple to represent God’s glory and importance in our lives.

Another example of emotions prompting rational decisions is when Jesus cleared the temple of market stalls. He made a whip and drove the people out, prompted by his righteous anger. This wasn’t just an emotional reaction to anger, but the anger of seeing the temple misused in such a way prompted him to empty the temple for the sake of God’s glory.

We should be conscious of our emotions so that they don’t own us. We can experience feelings of rage, lust, gluttony, pride, jealousy, fear, etc, and the Bible has something to say on all of these. Let’s spend this week searching His Word to see where we can live simply, love God and obey His commandments.

Just like last week’s message about “stuff”, the same applies to emotions: less is more.

Simple Living // Less Is More

Have you ever tried moving around with a lot of baggage, especially at an airport or train station? It’s quite cumbersome! Have you ever noticed how spacious show homes always feel? It’s because they’re very minimalist. In reality, once a family moves into a house with all their stuff, the house appears to be a lot smaller with a lot less space. The life lesson there is that we should perhaps try to minimise the “stuff” we have, so that we can be grateful for what we do have, rather than always yearning for more.

Pastor Jonny spoke to us this week about this, looking at Ecclesiastes 4:

4And I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

5Fools fold their hands

and ruin themselves.

6Better one handful with tranquillity

than two handfuls with toil

and chasing after the wind.

7Again I saw something meaningless under the sun:

8There was a man all alone;

he had neither son nor brother.

There was no end to his toil,

yet his eyes were not content with his wealth.

“For whom am I toiling,” he asked,

“and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?”

This too is meaningless—

a miserable business!

(Ecclesiastes 4:4-8)

We cannot know for certain who the author of Ecclesiastes was, but all the evidence points towards it being King Solomon, a man who had more “stuff” than anyone else at that time, and would still be considered extremely prosperous by today’s standards too! Yet at the same time, Solomon was also considered the wisest man to have ever lived, with the book of Proverbs also being attributed to him as the author. We can therefore assume that Solomon had the track record of being able to balance having lots of “stuff” with great wisdom, so we should listen to what he had to say.

Less really is more

Each item in our possession costs more than we actually paid for it. As Christians, we are called to be good stewards of our possessions, and the art of stewarding costs time, effort, and sometime more money. We should be mindful that time is far more valuable than money, as we cannot get it back, so we should consider minimising our possessions in order to exchange that time for the things that really matter, such as our relationships with God, friends and family.

When is enough really enough?

As humans, we are naturally discontent with our circumstances, always striving for more, assuming we will be fully content once we achieve “more”. As adults, we strive continually for pay rises and promotions (forgetting the additional stress that comes with them), yet as teenagers, we thought that merely having a job would make us content. We should ask ourselves “when is enough really enough?”. Can we be totally content in our current circumstances? Is our striving for more actually going to cost us time spent with God, friends and family?

Better one handful with tranquillity than two handfuls with toil

Verse 6 says that it’s better to have just one hand full and have peace and tranquility rather than have both hands full and be overloaded with work. Jesus said in Matthew16:26, “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?”. If you overload yourself with stuff, or striving for more stuff, then you won’t have time to follow the most basic commandment: Love God and Love Neighbour.

We live in a world where people say that “one is good but two is better”, that we should never be content, and always strive for more. Is there anything you need to let go of? Do you understand when “enough is enough” in your life? This week, be praying to God to get clarity in our lives about what is truly essential.

Call To Me

This week at Light & Life, Doug Burke came and spoke to us about a particular verse from the Bible and how it can apply to us today:

‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know’
(Jeremiah 33:3)

Jeremiah, one of the major prophets in the Bible, was passionate about communicating God’s message at the time to the people around him, a message for Israel to repent and turn back to God, or suffer judgement at the hands of enemy nations. He was so passionate to communicate the message, that when people thew him down a well to try and stop him from prophesying, he carried on! His goal was to have a living, breathing relationship with God and follow Him in obedience. History proves that he was right to do so, as his prophetic warnings came to pass soon afterwards, and Jerusalem was besieged and captured by Babylon.

What are your current life goals? Perhaps to make money, improve/retain your health, or be popular and have lots of friends? Our main goal in life should be to delve deeper in our relationship with God, calling to Him and listening to what He has to say to us.

In Jeremiah’s time, the revelation of the person and work of Jesus Christ hadn’t come to pass yet, so Jeremiah’s revelation of God as the Trinity was less developed than ours today, but that didn’t stop him from listening, trusting and obeying what God said to Him. We should be just as eager to listen to God today.

God speaks firstly through His Word. If we ignore the Bible, we’ll struggle to get in line with God’s thoughts and ways. Billy Graham used to begin his day with a Bible study and asking God how He was. God never replied “I’m fine, thanks for asking”. The truth is that God doesn’t deal with small-talk and chit-chat. Instead, He speaks boldly with instructions and directions and promptings through the Holy Spirit.

This week, let’s commit to spending more time calling out to God in prayer, spending time in His Word and learning those great and unsearchable things that we did not know.