January 2015 - Meeting with God

Our church community’s vision statement is “Seeking faithfully to love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind and to love our neighbours as ourselves”. This presents us with two challenges at the start of the year. The first challenge is with regard to loving God and the second is with regard to loving people. To help us with the first challenge of loving God, our theme for Sundays in January is meeting God. The reason I have chosen this theme is because my problem with loving God is not that, having met with God, I am not drawn to love him. Rather, for me, it is that I don’t give the time to meeting with God.

In order to choose the readings for this theme I asked a number of people which passages in the bible best described the way in which they met with God. One church member told me that she encounters God when she follows Paul’s advice to rejoice in the Lord always (Philippians 4: 4-8 on January 4th) Another church membertold me that he most identifies with Elijah who heard the voice of God in a gentle whisper (1 Kings 19: 1-18 on January 11th) A friend told me that he finds the writing of John helpful in understanding what it is to know God (1 John 2:1-6 on January 18th). Our regional minister told me that meeting with God causes him to change the way in which he thinks about himself, and suggested we read Judges 6:11-24 on January 25th. Two deacons pointed me in the direction of David’s Psalms which we shall use each Sunday. In terms of giving time to meeting with God I commend to you the practice of starting and ending each day with prayer (e.g. based around the Lord’s prayer), a passage of scripture (e.g. a Psalm – there are booklets on the information table at the back of the church building) and listening to God, particularly on the subject of loving people. I hope and pray it will be more true of us in 2015 than it was in 2014 that we are people who are seeking faithfully to love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind and to love our neighbours as ourselves.