b AMBASSADOR MAGAZINE - THE PARISH OF ESTON WITH NORMANBY - CHRIST CHURCH AND ST GEORGE CONTENTS 1 FIRST & FOREMOST with Paul Wilson 2 SPIT IT OUT 4 SPIRITED WOMAN God Is With Us In The Trenches 6 BITS & BOBS How Long Was Your ‘Courtship’? Gardening Is Good For You? The Power Of Music Beware If You Use A Gym 6 MEN OF FAITH Dad’ll Fix It 8 PREMIER CHRISTIAN RADIO 12 IT’S A KIND OF MAGIC 16 LAUGHTER LINES 18 WORDSEARCH Church Office St George’s Church Spencer Road 19 CALENDAR Normanby Middlesbrough TS6 9BH 20 CONTACTS Tel: 01642 281182 Email: [email protected] Magazine designed and edited by Paul Wilson AMBASSADOR MAGAZINE - THE PARISH OF ESTON WITH NORMANBY - CHRIST CHURCH AND ST GEORGE c d AMBASSADOR MAGAZINE - THE PARISH OF ESTON WITH NORMANBY - CHRIST CHURCH AND ST GEORGE ours of immeasurable pain, difficulty Hin breathing and searing agony as His torn back moves up and down against rough timber. Then another torture begins: a deep, crushing hurt deep in the chest as His lungs slowly fill with fluid and begin to compress the heart. It is now almost over. The loss of tissue fluids has reached a critical level. The compressed heart is struggling to pump blood into the tissues. The tortured Sadly, this can still be the case today. We, lungs are making frantic efforts to gasp His privileged characters, miss God as we in small gulps of air. He can feel the chill rush through our lives. We can sometimes of death creeping through His tissues. get so busy with being the church that Finally, He allows His body to die. we forget to be children of the living God. In the gospels Mark records the He stands there in plain sight wanting to simple words, “and they crucified him.” work in us to help Him grow His Kingdom (Mark 15:24) and we ignore Him. As one of the final scenes of the What might we be missing? Look Gospel unfolds a Centurion nearby sees around. What does God want to do and the way that Jesus dies and declares, how can we be a part of it? What do we “Surely this man was the Son of God!” need to do to make our church relevant (Mark 15:39) to the people outside its walls? What If this were a play on the stage then can we do to bring back the missing the centurion should be an extra, a bit generation? player. But the soldier saw God working As we approach this Easter time I where God was most active. The sad irony implore you all, please STOP. Take some is that nobody else saw it. We read Mark time to stand still, rest and know that and we get it so why didn’t everyone else God is there. Seek Him out and, when you who was standing around that day and meet with Him, tell Him, “Here I am, send witnessing God at work? me.” (Isaiah 6:8) For His people, the ones who were supposed to see Him, there Peace was blindness. Unexpectedly it is the bit-player who sees, even while the privileged characters miss the whole point. AMBASSADOR MAGAZINE - THE PARISH OF ESTON WITH NORMANBY - CHRIST CHURCH AND ST GEORGE 1 When you read the letter maybe have made perfect sense to in Revelations to the Church at the people of Laodicea. Laodicea Jesus tells the church You see, at the time, Laodicea “I know your deeds, that you are was a centre for commerce and one of the wealthiest cities in the world. It neither cold nor hot. I wish you was also a great centre for textiles, in were either one or the other! So, particular a special black wool, and it because you are lukewarm— was a medical centre famous for eye neither hot nor cold—I am about and ear ointment which helps us to to spit you out of my mouth.” appreciate Jesus’ command to them As one commentator writes, it to put clothes on their backs and sounds as though, “Jesus is saying salve on their eyes so they can see. something that no preacher would dare to say if the Lord had not spoken it first; namely, that ice-cold atheists and pagans are preferable to him than lukewarm Christians.” This always sounded a bit harsh to me and not like the Jesus I understood who promises to love and guide us through our walk. Yet here it sounds like He is saying that He will drop you like a hot potato if you don’t cut the mustard or make The city, however, lacked a the grade. natural, local source of water and it Then, during a study in a house had to be brought in from miles away group some time ago, we came in Colossae through an aqueduct across another explanation that system of stone pipes. But by the shed some light on this puzzling time the water got to the city it had statement from Jesus that would lost its freshness and was no longer 2 AMBASSADOR MAGAZINE - THE PARISH OF ESTON WITH NORMANBY - CHRIST CHURCH AND ST GEORGE cold and refreshing. Now we can see that hot and Also, six miles away was the cold are both good and maybe Jesus city of Hierapolis which was famous is not saying they are opposites: one for its hot springs. The water from good—hot; one bad–cold. Some here flowed across the Lycus Valley, argue “hot” means aglow with the spilling over a broad cliff directly Spirit, and “cold” means hard and opposite Laodicea and covering it unresponsive to the gospel. with a white incrustation of calcium Yes, Jesus does find lukewarm carbonate. Christians nauseating. But the point of “hot or cold” is maybe that Jesus uses the geography of Laodicea to show that the church, like its water, was providing neither refreshment for the spiritually weary, nor healing for the spiritually sick. It was totally ineffective, and therefore unsavoury to the Lord. What we must remember is that this letter in Revelations, like all the others, closes with a challenge By the time this hot water to hear and listen to the voice of the had reached Laodicea it gradually Spirit. That is the challenge that must became lukewarm and putrid - still be heard by the church today. not only tasteless but positively If Jesus wrote a letter to your distasteful and nauseating. church, what would He say? What Unsuspecting tourists would drink it would He find worthy of praise? What only to spit it out upon the rocks and, would He find needing correction? in some people, the lukewarm water The Lord of the church still walks would actually induce vomiting. among us today. He knows us as So Jesus’ words “hot or cold,” we really are. He is not deceived by therefore, were most likely suggested what we look like on the outside. He by the fact that everyone in Laodicea knows when we look rich, but really knew about the hot medicinal water are poor. He knows when we look of Hierapolis and the cold refreshing strong, but really are weak. spring water of Colossae. The water Remember the echo in each of Laodicea was neither. It wasn’t hot letter, “He who has an ear, let him hear and healing, nor cold and refreshing. what the Spirit says to the churches.” AMBASSADOR MAGAZINE - THE PARISH OF ESTON WITH NORMANBY - CHRIST CHURCH AND ST GEORGE 3 God is With Us in the Trenches Why it’s important to trust and experience God’s presence in the midst of life’s trials and tribulations by Caryn Rivadeneira Copyright © 2013 by the author or Christianity Today. Used with permission from Today’s Christian Woman I still remember my First Big time in years (I was 12!)—and just let Disappointment. While I’m me cry. She probably told me it’d be sure there had been others— okay or offered some soothing words. smaller things—before this But all I remember is her holding me while I cried. disappointment, nothing stands Then, when my crying turned out quite like not making into sporadic sniffles, when I was the school play when I was in ready to talk a bit, she told me it was seventh grade. okay that it hurt right now. But maybe I suppose it was because it was someday—maybe—it’d all make the first thing I’d wanted—rather sense. But even if it didn’t, she told me badly—that I’d worked hard at, I’d have to make a decision: to either practiced for, tried out for, but been stay bitter and angry at the friends cut from. It was the first time I’d been who did make the play or to cheer told, essentially, “You are not good them on anyway—even if it hurt a bit. enough.” Then she prayed with me. Or at least that’s how I read that When my mom prayed for me typed-white sheet, with lists of names that day, she asked simply that God that were not mine—hanging there would be with me. And that I would on the bulletin board for all my junior feel His presence. She didn’t ask for high to see. I remember the moments that followed so clearly: me, faking a headache, heading to the school office, asking to call my mom. I remember getting home, telling my mom the news, climbing on to her lap and just crying.