I preached a sermon recently on how the Israelites had an 11 day journey to get through in the wilderness, to start claiming their promised land. But they lost faith, and through their complaints and mistrust in God their 11 days of difficulty turned into 40 years of waiting.
So when things at church seem slow or difficult, I keep saying to myself “11 days, just 11 days”. I know it won't (in all likelihood) be literally 11 days until big changes occur, I don't even know if it is big, sudden change God has planned, but He is planning the growth of His kingdom. And God's plan is not slow, it is timely.
Someone said to me, it is like Noah waiting to come out of the ark. If it took 40 days for the rain to stop, why was Noah in there all year? He was getting on with the job in hand (taking care of the animals and his family), while elsewhere, God moved. Outside, drying the land, growing the trees in readiness, God was working in the background.
Let's review God's faithfulness recently at Bures: we have four youth outreaches and a coffee morning, which all continue to be well attended, we have a new ceiling and lights in the hall, we have a lovely band of faithful workers who tend the garden, work the admin, manage the sound equipment, clean and maintain the building, play the music week in week out, we regularly have folks turn out to worship God on a Sunday and God has faith in us to do more. Let's have faith in Him to do the same.
After all, it may turn out that we're at the afternoon of day 11, just about to start claiming some serious promised land. Or it might be that we're just be coming up to coffee break on day 1. We don't know. But we can survive, if we just remember to trust. Because real faith develops when it's most difficult to trust and you do it anyway.
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You can check out past sermons on our website. The one mentioned above should be added soon.
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