Dear Hope family,

Thought for the Week

Growing Maturity

Hebrews 6v1 “Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity …”

We are familiar with the process and benefits of maturing – whether it is a bottle of fine wine or a person. To quote Wikipedia “As a wine starts to mature, its bouquet will become more developed and multi-layered.” The good news for us Christians is that we mature like that wine.

So I must ask myself as a follower of Christ, “Am I staying where I started, or am I developing?” It takes no special situation to grow older, but it takes the right environment to mature well: wine is best matured in a dark, cool environment. In contrast, a Christian is best matured in a light, warm environment – the light of the truth of Christ and the warmth of the love of Christ.

So I ask myself, “Am I placing myself in the right environment?” Of course, you and I face difficult natural environments, but that is not the point. It is our spiritual environment that brings maturity. How does this work? As we marinade in the truth and love of Christ, our hearts and minds are transformed. We marinade in His truth and love as we meditate on His Word, dwell in prayer, soak in worship.

But there is more, because real maturity is achieved as we then exercise that new spiritual life in the challenging situations we naturally face. This lesson is clear with respect to Jesus: “he learned obedience from what he suffered.” (Hebrews 5v8). It is not that Jesus was previously disobedient (see Luke 2v51), but that the real depth of obedience is learned when you submit to do something you really do not want to do.

May the Lord, in his grace, enable you and I to move on to spiritual maturity.

With love and blessing,

Roland

Dear Hope family,

Thought for the Week

Growing Obedience

Hebrews 5v8 “Though he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered.”

Obedience is not doing what someone says when you want to do it anyway.

Obedience is doing what someone says when you want to do something different. It is allowing the will of someone in authority to override our own.

Obedience to God grows as we become used to doing things God’s way not our way.

In this verse, we read that Jesus “learned obedience”. When he was in heaven with the Father, I imagine that they never thought differently from each other. When Jesus was on earth and faced with the suffering he was about to go through, he pleaded with God to take it from him, but then prayed “not my will, but your will.” It was not that Jesus ever disobeyed God the Father previously, but that the real clincher of obedience was whether he was going to do what His Father wanted despite the cost to him personally.

So it is for us. What are the tests of obedience in your life today? Are you learning obedience even in the midst of difficulty? Are you more likely to obey God now than you were back in 2020?

May the Lord grow our obedience so that we may be like Christ.

With love and blessing,

Roland

Dear Hope family,

Thought for the Week

Growing Faith

2 Thessalonians 1v3 “Your faith is growing more and more.’”

As my 80 year old father sat in his harness at the top of a Zip wire in Snowdonia yesterday, he could have backed out. He could have looked down at the huge drop below and think, “that is dangerous, I stand no chance, what if ….” . Or, he could look up at the thick wire, the careful assembly of his harness and carabiners, the testimony of those who have gone before, and decide to entrust himself to these things. When the gate opened, he could either lift his feet and go, or stay where he was.

Faith is not something static, but something that grows like a muscle. A successful journey down one zip wire, builds faith to do it again.

Paul commends the Thessalonians for their growing faith. If you are walking with God, it is natural that your faith must also be growing. Why? Because the more you experience of Him, the more you trust Him and find Him trustworthy, then, the more your faith in Him grows.

How can we tell whether our faith has grown? We can tell by the way we react to what goes on in the world around us and our willingness to do what God tells us in His Word. When someone hurts me, am I more likely to forgive them than I used to be? When things go wrong, am I more likely to persevere than I used to be? As we saw on Sunday, Joseph’s ability to persevere against the equally persevering difficulties and to forgive his malicious brothers, rested on his knowledge and experience of God: God who is both the ultimate judge and the One who brings about what is good, even in evil. This is spiritual maturity.

When the disciples were challenged about forgiveness, they asked, “Lord increase our faith.” (Luke 17v5) Jesus replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the see,’ and it will obey you.” You only need just enough faith to speak or act. May God give you that faith today.

With love and blessing,

Roland

Dear Hope family,

Thought for the Week

Passing on the Baton

Genesis 35v2-3 “So Jacob said to his household … come let us go up to the ‘House of God’.’” (NIV)

In our survey of the main characters of Genesis, we find that Abraham leads Isaac into a relationship with God based on God’s promises, then Isaac leads Jacob, and Jacob in this verse leads his family.

Each of us carries a responsibility to lead, as best we can, the next generation into the presence of God. For Jacob, he takes them to “Bethel” which means “House of God”: it is where he had met God previously. In the context of the above verse (35v1-12), you will notice the following:

1. Jacob obeys God’s call to Bethel.
2. Jacob exercises his authority and tells his household to get rid of idolatry and be pure.
3. Jacob builds an altar to worship God (and presumably offers sacrifices in the presence of his family).
4. God appears to Jacob (and presumably the others in his household saw this).
5. Jacob sets up a reminder for the family going forward of this encounter.

Joseph, who we will be looking at this Sunday, was probably aged about 7 or 8 at this point. I wonder to what degree this encounter influenced his attitudes in later life.

There is a limit to what each of us can do, depending on our circumstances, and we are each answerable to God. But let us endeavor to embrace the next generation in the things of God.

With love and blessing,

Roland

Dear Hope family,

Thought for the Week

Let us go right into the Presence of God

Hebrews 10v19-22  “And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus … Let us go right into the presence of God.’” (NLT)

Last Sunday we looked at Jesus’s call for us, the church, to return to our “first love,” and for us not to be tepid and lukewarm, but to be full of passion for God. This coming Sunday, we return to our mini-series looking at the key characters in Genesis. The lives of these characters are summarized in Hebrews 11 in terms of their faith in God. The writer lists these people as “witnesses” to the faithfulness of God. He is saying in effect “Look at Noah, Abraham etc. See how they lived by faith in God and God ultimately proved faithful. On the basis of their testimony, enter right into God’s presence. Now.”

While the NIV translation has “Let us draw near to God”, the more paraphrased NLT has, “Let us go right into the presence of God”, which brings out the force of the overall text. Don’t just pussyfoot around on the edges, don’t be shy, don’t think you are unworthy, don’t think it is too risky. Get right in, yes right inside, boldly, holding nothing back, with total confidence.

When Charles Wesley was converted from Christian religion to Christ relationship on 27 May 1738, he wrote these words as his first hymn,

“No condemnation now I dread,

Jesus and all in Him is mine!

Alive in Him, my living Head,

And clothed in righteousness divine,

Bold I approach the eternal throne,

And claim the crown through Christ my own.”

He had earnestly pursued after religious practice for years, but now he had met Jesus and was able to enjoy the very presence of God. Where are you today?

Enter into the presence of God each day this week whether in prayer, Bible reading, worship, meditation …. Let’s get right in!

With love and blessing,

Roland

Dear Hope family,

Thought for the Week

You are the God who sees me

Genesis 16v13  “She [Hagar] gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her, ‘You are the God who sees me.’”

In this day and age, we may be concerned about the degree to which we are seen and recorded: CCTV’s abound and our phones can be portals for organisations to know about us.

When Hagar had been ill-treated by Sarah, she ran away (16v1-8). It is by a spring in the desert that the “angel of the LORD” finds her and speaks to her. The Lord is fully aware of her situation: He sees the wrong that Sarah has done, the situation Hagar is in, and what Hagar should do going forward. The LORD’s instruction is a correction:  Hagar should return to Sarah, which is not going to be easy.

The correction is blended with words of comfort and encouragement as well as uncomfortable prophecy. What is Hagar’s response to all this? For her, this was an encounter with God – the God who sees her – and she is encouraged and is obedient to God’s instruction.

God sees your situation perfectly. He comes alongside you and wants you to share with him what is going on. He wants to encourage, but he will also correct so that you may journey on His road.

What is the LORD seeing in your situation today? What words of encouragement is he giving you? What words of correction?

With love and blessing,

Roland

Dear Hope family,

Thought for the Week

God opened her eyes

Genesis 21v19  “Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water.”

It is strange how we do not see what is in front of our noses!

Hagar had been the maid for Sarah, Abraham’s wife. Hagar and her son Ishmael were turfed out because of friction between her and Sarah. She thought she and her son were going to die in the desert. They desperately needed water. Interestingly, the appearance of a well for her was not about God making a well, but simply him opening her eyes to it.

In 2 Corinthians 4v4, Paul writes, “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” It is not that Christ has not come, it is not that Christ has not died for our sins, it is not that Christ has not been raised from the dead or sent the Holy Spirit. It is simply that minds are blinded to it.

God has chosen a two-pronged approach to this – there is us announcing the truth, and there is the Holy Spirit illuminating hearts and minds. As Paul writes in the same passage “[We] set forth the truth plainly,” and, “God… made his light shine in our hearts.”

Next week is the Admaston Fun Week – a week when we put on different events for people in our community for them to enjoy. But in it too we will be sharing elements of the truth of the gospel with people.

Let’s pray together that during next week God would “make his light shine in people’s hearts.”

With love and blessing,

Roland

Dear Hope family,

Thought for the Week

Noah Walking with God

Genesis 6v9  “Noah … walked with God.”

This week I want to follow on and expand one of the things we noticed last Sunday in the life of Noah. In the Genesis accounts so far, there are two particular terms used to describe the “righteous” as differentiated from the “wicked”: the righteous “call on the name of the LORD” and they “walk with God”.

God walked in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve (3v8).  Enoch walked with God and as a result avoided death (5v22-24). And here in 6v9, Noah walks with God.

To walk with someone implies two elements. The first is an intimacy. As you walk with one other person, there can be a personal sharing of time and thought, concerns and hopes. It is one-on-one. But the second element is that the walk is not behind walls, but out in the open where others can see and indeed others may be met. It is public.

Our relationship with God is to be both intimate and public. We need those times of personal one-on-one with God where we share time, thoughts, concerns and hopes together. What does that look like for you? Maybe it is to sit quietly, to read and to listen, to hear God’s Word in the Bible, to pray and to worship, to pray in tongues or to sing out loud.

It also means that in the public square, we do not wander away from God, but very much stick with him. We are not ashamed to be seen with him. We are recognizing that he is seeing and hearing everything we do. We know that he is with us and supporting us as we live for Him. What does “walking with God” look like in your daily context?

May you and I truly “walk with God” 24-7.

With love and blessing,

Roland