West View Baptist Church, Hartlepool

A family friendly church in the town of Hartlepool

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Reflections from a sugar bowl

Hopefully the title grabbed your attention and you’re now looking at the image and trying to puzzle out and interpret what you are seeing. The easy answer is that you are seeing a reflection in the sugar bowl on the table of our men’s bible study group. But is that the whole picture, do you see the spoon, the coasters? What about two open Bibles? Still looking? What about the reflections of Terry taking the photo, the coasters and the coffee cup. So you’ve got the full picture now? Shame you missed the reflections of Dennis and John.

Making you think and interpret what you think you see and understand is a good illustration of exactly what our Men’s Bible group is all about. We were blessed last night in that so many men turned up we had to get the folding chairs out.
Eight of us around the table continued our journey through Isaiah. We’ve left the history part of Isaiah and we’re now journeying from verse 40 onwards. It’s a time of new beginnings again as the rough places are made smooth,  the rugged plain and the valleys raised. God’s highway is being created here.

The news is good here for anyone who’s feeling up against it. Young or old, tired, weak and weary, faint of strength or resolve, God’s promise is a renewal of strength. The image of the eagle soaring is one of my favourite biblical pictures. We’re also instructed to support each other and the imagery from some of our bible translations talks about nails being used to make something immovable and fixed forever. It was certainly an image of the crucifixion that was coming to mind here. Remaking us into tools to be used, providing water for the thirsty and those in drought. Turning the deserts into fertile forests shows the Lord remaking and remodelling all who follow him.
The promises go on, promises to bring light into darkness, freedom to prisoners, sight to the blind and triumph over enemies. These promises become all the more relevant as our brother in Christ, Paul, prepares for his baptism on Sunday. “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters I will be with you.”

What is also quite surprising is how three short chapters in Isaiah have prompted so many well know worship songs and choral pieces. Just under 300 years ago George Frideric Handel provided the music and Charles Jennens words from Isaiah for the part of the Messiah entitled “Every Valley shall be exalted”. Fast forward to 1967 and Sebastian Temple’s “Make me a channel of your piece” contains elements of the verses from these chapters.  Martin J Smith in 1995 wrote his “Shout to the north” lyrics about being tested and coming through with the Lord’s help. Darlene Zschech in 1996 penned her lyrics to “Power of His Love” singing of  how to “rise up like the eagle and soar”. I’m sure there are probably many more.
So whether you get your Scripture through the Bible study, through the music you listen to,  or the songs you sing, pause for a minute and reflect. What do the words mean? What are they telling you? What are you called to do?” Only you can supply that answer. Only you get to see the picture given to you. Share it and talk about it. You may be surprised at what happens when you do.

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Fishers of Men, Songs at Sheraton and a thought provoking conference.

It’s been a busy weekend for various members of the West View Baptist Church team. We finished the week with our usual hectic Filling Station event on Friday. A later finish than planned as one of the families we help turned up late and stayed late. Our clock and God’s don’t match up all the time.

Saturday saw Terry, Amanda, Lynn and Penny attend the Northern Baptist Association event discussing issues relating to same sex marriage. Excellent event that helped really clarify biblical teaching and interpretation from the traditionalist to the revisionist points of view. Good job done by the team leading the event, with a host of study references and our group certainly came away much better informed.

Sunday saw Ian, Jonny and Amanda leading worship. Yvette led us in examining God’s word. We also welcomed back Peter, one of our congregation who has been poorly for a long time.

Yvette started with a video clip of a rap duel between Loso and th3 Saga. Find it on the internet. Stick with and the message becomes crystal clear and the link with a week about Christian unity is also apparent.

Yvette explored Mark Chapter 1 to start with. She described Mark as a bit of an action man, in a rush to get into the Jesus story. Mark misses out Jesus birth, and packs in a lot of action before we even get to the end of chapter 1.  Yvettte, in her bible translation, counts 27 mentions of the word immediately. Chapter 1 14 has Jesus starting with the end of the John the Baptist’s mission. Sometimes before something can start something has to end. God’s dominion is here and is to be good. Follow me and I will make you fishers of men is what Jesus says in calling the first of his disciples . In the society of that day the 4 fishermen he chose would have raised eyebrows. They would be seen as country cousins, Galileans,common working men with strong regional accents who dropped their aitches (ring any bells ‘artlepool!),  living with gentiles. Jesus met them at their level , using an analogy they understood. He showed there were lots of people drowning in sin. He showed them to use the nets to rescue, to fish for these men and women in need. Today many people think they are too far gone. Beyond help. God can use us to rescue them all

Back in the time of the 4 fishermen they used different types of nets to catch different things. These nets were made of linen and other materials that wore out or broke.  Nets need to be maintained. We need to look after our nets, there are Christians who’ve lost the way, who are hurt, who are lost. We need nets that work to rescue people.

He showed them who’ve lost the way , who are hurt, who are in debt. Yvette asked if we’d ever followed someone in a car. Only way it works is if you stick close. They know where they are going, you don’t. If someone gets in between, you can lose sight of the target and then get lost.  If God tells us to go one way and we go another it’s not just daft, it is disobedience. Love the sinner, the difficult to love. Show them God’s grace. Jesus preached the gospel and prayed. He got close to his father. Yvette offered her own experience of being diverted off on to an unfamiliar road. We can become so comfortable when we think we know the way, we stop paying attention to Jesus. We don’t see God had changed the route, closed the route. Nothing is familiar. We can find ourselves lost in the middle of nowhere , but the good news is he comes back for us he will leaves the 99 sheep to look for the lost one. We can’t become fishers of men without him. God enjoys watching us use our gifts, it’s ok to make a mistake. Hates us giving up. Following him requires a personal commitment.

In Jonah 3 we see that Jonah has obeyed God this time. Obeying God straight away is the best option. Interesting things happen if we listen and obey. He takes us to interesting places. We may not see the results or the answer to prayer. Things are going on in the background. The cost of following Jesus is high. Think about the fact that all but 1 of apostles was martyred. But look what they did they changed the world. So follow him . cast your net, you don’t know who you are going to catch. There is a real chance you might not like some of them but  the good news is God does, and indeed God loves you all.

Finally on Sunday Esther, Terry, Matty, Brenda and Stella went to Sheraton Court to hold our monthly service for the residents. We received our usual warm welcome from our friends there. Terry provided the music via laptop as our regular musician, Tim was unable to attend. We coped with most of the songs being at a different pace or slightly differing words. We had to sing Abide with Me without music though as the pace and words were totally different on the laptop. Always an adventure and pleasure to visit Sheraton. We pray they get as much fun out of our visit as we do and that the age old words and prayers of the traditional hymns provides some comfort and reassurance.

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New Beginnings

Today’s service continued on in the theme set by Tim last week.

Jonny led our worship, assisted by Amanda, Roy and Tim.

Judith brought the word today using the message from John 1 43-51. she used this to bring forward a message of new beginnings. She opened with a prayer for the Holy Spirit to point us to Jesus and let us have a new walk with him. Verses 50 and 51 in New Living Translation offer us a vision of a stairway to heaven. Tim last week explained God was the author of creation. He made everything for us his children. God’s plan was for a new beginning. Unlike the other gospels, John doesn’t start with a helpless babe. Jesus is the Word of God. Jesus is that word the light in the darkness. Verse 14 sets the scene clearly. A new beginning with God connecting with man, full of love and faithfulness. Jesus came offer a way for everyone, Jesus identified himself and begins to call his disciples. He is identified as the Lord and the Son of God. Nathanael uses these messianic titles. Joseph in Genesis had the dream of angels ascending and descending . Jesus builds on this, he says he is the way, a new covenant for everyone. Jesus says he is going to be the sacrifice. The people he calls are just like us, regular people. We’re happy to have a saviour but not necessarily happy to have a leader. Do we change our ways, what’s our heart condition like?

This new beginning is Jesus saying come and see! This is the Word of God not our own thinking. These disciples were getting excited. The first disciples were from Bethsaida. Despite Jesus saying it was unbelieving and unrepentant he chose his first from there. Jesus finds his people in the most unexpected places, he uses people who are not likely material as well. We mustn’t be afraid , we may not be skilled theologians , yet we believe. The woman at the well ran back and asked people to come and see. Nathanael jumped to a judgement, he was religious and initially he was stereotyping. This Jesus was a builder, and he therefore was working with,  mixing and meeting a lot of unbelievers rubbing shoulders with him in the workplace. Jesus was a working man and had a regional accent from a place like Nazareth that did not have a good reputation. Nazarenes were unclean. God looks at the heart condition. It doesn’t matter where you come from. He offers a new beginning. Thankfully Nathanael was curious and he went to see. Jesus, when he saw him, knew his heart condition . He admired his honesty and integrity. Jesus welcomes the questioner. Jesus knew Nathanael wanted to know more. Jesus tells Nathanael he saw him under the fig tree. What does this mean? As soon as Jesus said it, Nathanael was captured. Under the fig tree was a common phrase to illustrate that you took yourself away to pray. When Jesus said this he was really saying “ I saw you in your time of prayer”. Nathanial knew only god knew this. Immediately Nathanial recognised Jesus. What’s our fig tree? We need to come to that place recognising Jesus as our leader.

Lamentations 3:23 shows every morning we have a fresh start . If we blew it today, we still get a fresh start. It is never too late. When we reflect on  Jacobs ladder, we know that despite everything, God promised he would not leave him in the wildness, Jacob awoke and realised God was in the hard place. Jesus identified himself to Nathanael as the gate and stairway to heaven. Jesus was inviting people with strange backgrounds and complex histories to follow him and to serve to carry his message. We can demonstrate Jesus we can invite people. If we’re in hard places, dry places, He’s promised to be living water, a light in the dark. Jesus says come and offers the new beginning for everyone. Jesus offers the new beginning, regardless of our mistakes. Come and see, is what he offers. Nathanael could have stuck to what he knew. But he didn’t. The glory cloud might be moving on for us offering us a new change, a new beginning. The challenge is not to limit God and to see the new beginning.

 

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Communion, Creation and Covenant

Happy New Year. We hope you have all had a restful break and had chance to ponder on “the reason for the season”.  Keeping Christ firmly in view at Christmas can be a real challenge at times,

Our first service of 2018 saw us taking communion, renewing our covenant or promise to God, to ourselves, to each other, the church and the wider world that is our community. The service was led by Ian assisted by Roy and Jonny. Our pastor, Tim Hyde, brought us the Word today.

Tim posed for us all the question “Where do we begin in this new year?”. His message was that we should start start at the beginning. He told that we’re going to explore the highlights of the Old Testament starting with Genesis chapter 1. Even though this might be familiar to us,  re-reading brings out new things for us all. Tim read the whole of chapter 1. He then reflected that it is estimated that  500,000 to 5 million sea life species are yet to be discovered.

If that is not amazing enough consider 6 million atoms on a full stop. How many other particles are there? If you don’t like spiders the next fact Tim shared might not amaze, there are 5.5 million spiders in every hectare and the web they produce is stronger than the equivalent width of steel. (5 million spiders on your football pitch!) The Bible starts and ends with new creation. It is not a science book. Over last 250 years there has been a constant battle with people questing the Bible and using science to defend or overthrow. Some questions may appeal more than others. Did Adam have a belly button is an interesting question. Tim reflected that he met so many people trying to argue Genesis is a scientific account. We struggle if we try to do this with literature that is thousands of years old. We end up with groups of people, evolutionists, creationists, people who interpret the bible literally. Problem of all of these is that it forgets the first principle when studying the Bible which is that it is made up of lots of different types of literature. The bible contains truth.Scientific truth has changed through the years. If we treated the Bible in the same way we’d constantly need to issue updates. The person who wrote the first words of Genesis didn’t even know atoms and molecules existed. It is not a science book. It looks at the why rather than the how. Creationists and evolutionists alike need to let God speak. Tim illustrated this by talking about the physical symptoms of how he felt when thinking about his wife rather the simple, more poetic but probably better understood statement that the message “I love you” would achieve.

We end up asking the wrong question. Creation is fundamental to understanding who we are and what we do. Only God has the power to create something new. Genesis 1 confirms God is the exclusive creator. God is all powerful. Reflect on the statement “Let there be..”. And the world is formed. However it happened it is all from God. God wills it and it happens . God goes on to sustain it. The balance is incredible. One tiny difference and nothing exists. God is creator and the source of everything. Hope for the future is only possible if you believe in a God who created from nothing and who can sustain the change. You don’t have to go far to see it. God’s creation of incredible beauty. Every part of God’s handiwork is there to remind us of his power. How leaves on trees work is just fascinating and something to marvel at. It is how God intended and the best is that he took pleasure in it. We see who we are. We can be creative in a different way. We are created in gods image in a relationship with every person still being unique. Even twins are different with differing personalities. He made us responsible for our own actions and choices. Genesis 1 shows how things were meant to be. There were no barriers between God and between people. Free open creation between humans and their God .

God hasn’t stopped he can still bring light to the darkest of places and order to chaos. God hasn’t changed. All human beings are still in God’s image.

Something to think about in this new year of 2018. Think about the simple fact that if God created everything out of nothing what could he do in your life this year.

In your life what could he do if he brought:
Light out of dark
Order out of chaos
Time and then the effect on your diary
Love from loneliness
Control  from powerlessness.

What could God do in your life this year? Remind yourself of these thought and questions the next time you see something beautiful.

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Last service of 2017

Our last service of 2017 was a café style service led by Ian and assisted by Amanda and Roy. Judith provided some words to guide us and Esther offered a reflection on some of the work done by Young Church through 2017.

Judith led a less formal, more casual period of reflecting and sharing. We looked not only backwards with thanks for the events of 2017 in the church and in individual lives and families, but also forward to what the new year may have in store for us. Judith posed the question, “Did we have good or bad times?”  1 John 9-10 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us. We need to remember that we do not do things in our own strength. Ian had already made that point as part of his own personal testimony and Judith reinforced this. God gives us grace and the original Greek word Charis is a dynamic, proactive verb. It is power, it is strength. God’s promise is that His grace is enough, his presence gets you through. Cath offered the thought that Grace can be remembered as God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.

God opposes the proud but rewards the humble.  We were asked to consider who we are in Christ. We carry his name, his purpose and his Spirit. So what season are we in and what are we facing?  Is it difficult? What challenges do we face? We need to consider where our faith is in relation to his Grace. We need to ensure that our confession actually reflects that we can do this in God’s power.

Esther shared the work that the children had done through the year on the giants of the Bible. Between her and Ben and Amy they told us of the work they had done around Joshua. Jonah, Abraham and Noah, all people of amazing faith but all had faced their own doubts and challenges. 

Esther also offered her thoughts on the giants of West View Baptist Church who had gone before us. She reflected on the choice of the final hymn for her mother’s funeral, “Turn your Eyes on Jesus” which was also the hymn that closed meetings of the Sisterhood that served across the town for so many years in the different churches that make up  our wider family. We closed this reflective part of the service on the thought “What does God want us to do?”

Matty shared some thoughts on the meaning of  Christmas and Amanda reflected on the work she had been called to in helping a new friend in her battles with addiction and starting a new life in Christ. She shared a recent example of being behind a well known (sometimes) homeless person in the town and how she’d been prompted to pay for the small amount of groceries he was buying. She made the point that it can be easy to be judgemental about such people but when you hear their life story it can be a real challenge to attitudes. She asked us all to pray for him and his partner in their daily struggles.

Our final worship song was Cornerstone and this  was particularly apt for Terry as this was played at his colleague Geoff’s funeral. Yet the contrast from that sad occasion to  watching one of our young church members dancing to the same tune, full of joy seemed so right.