I want to suggest that the past months haven’t only seen us facing challenges and difficulties but they have also seen unexpected gains, both personally and as a church.
Those gains might have been a clearer, stronger realisation of our call by God to be a people who pray. They may include a sense of unity and togetherness we have cherished, a greater valuing of one another.
Perhaps its been a loosening of our hold on some things that, while legitimate, are passing and not worthy of the attention we were giving them - and they have been traded for a more purposeful and delightful experience of the Lord himself.
It’s maybe been a deepening trust in the Lord as we have depended upon him. Or perhaps a more extensive care and compassion for others - your over-busy heart has been allowed to still itself and God’s Spirit has moved you, sometimes profoundly and even to tears, for the needs of others.
It could well be that the tyranny of the timetable - even the church timetable - has been loosened and you’ve been more able to focus on people - free to serve them, in Jesus’ name. It could be a far deeper realisation of the urgency of the gospel in the lives of those people, coupled with more fervent praying for their conversion.
Or it could be that what has most impressed itself upon your heart over these weeks has been, along with much of what’s already been said, simply a greater and richer sense of wonder as you worship the Lord.
Whatever the precise details and without wishing to exaggerate it, it’s possible that for some the experience has been akin to Job’s - ‘once I had heard of you, now my eyes have seen you’.
We don’t want to parade them; we want to do what Mary did - cherish these things in our hearts. Some things are too precious, too holy to speak of (as Paul discovered). But we do want to retain them.
So here’s the question: how do we keep these things? How do we hold onto the gains?
I want to direct your attention to 2 prayers of Paul in his letters to the Thessalonians and to the very similar wording we see there and to encourage you to take to heart and to turn into your own prayer what Paul writes.
Here are those verses:
1 Thes. 3:13 “May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.”
2 Thes. 2:116f “May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father…encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.”
Do you see what’s common? The prayer that the Lord would strengthen the hearts of his people, strengthen them in every good word and deed. Establish, solidify, enlarge their hearts - ‘heart’ being understood as “not only the centre of personality, the seat of will and understanding, but also the place where our hidden motives are shaped.” (DA Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation)
We don’t have the wherewithal to strengthen ourselves. This is spiritual work, spiritual development, that needs the Holy Spirit to work within us. But it is something we can recognise our need of and thus ask for. He does it, in part, through times like this as we pray together (I’m sure you’ve known that to be true for yourself).
We want our life in Christ to have roots that are going deeper each year, treasuring him more, serving him with greater delight. That needs our hearts to be made strong in him.
So let’s ask him to strengthen our hearts in love for the Lord and love for our neighbours. Ask him to direct us as a church into the good deeds and words he wants for us today and tomorrow (and not those of yesterday).
Growing in him, having our hearts strengthened by him, will be for the praise of his name.
