The first Valley Worship of the New Year was held at St Swithun’s in Martyr Worthy yesterday, gathering a good congregation on a chilly morning.   All of Fiona Coulter, Simon Ffennell and Nick Owen contributed to the service, in doing the reading, being interviewed as part of the ‘Every Day Lives’ series and in leading the prayers, respectively.  Tim Clapp led the worship and Nicky Barber – continuing Valley Worship’s focus on the book of 1 Peter – spoke on verses 8-15 of its first chapter.    John Barber led the service in the church while Verity Greig led a very well-attended session of the Ark in the Village Hall, where the focus was on the Holy Spirit and where the children were able to choose Bible verses printed on cards to take home (an example is pictured below).   These were read out to the congregation, to very good effect, at the end of the service by the children.

The text of the reading was as follows:

Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

 Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.

 Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do.

Here is a link to the recording of Nicky’s talk and its text can be found below or on the Sermons Page of our website.

1 Peter 1:8-15: “Prepare your minds for action!”

Can you remember a time when something you had hoped for didn’t materialise? Perhaps a longed-for baby, a desperately needed healing, the perfect house sale that fell through or the job promotion which went to someone else.

What did it feel like?  We may remember the initial shock, the stab of pain, that feeling of “Oh no, not this”. Disappointment can feel crushing, it saps our energy and robs us of our joy.

When Peter wrote this letter, he had tasted real disappointment. He had watched Jesus, his friend, teacher, mentor, go through the agony of crucifixion and die. Now 30 years later, he is writing to people who were being persecuted for their faith – not just being laughed at, as might happen in this country, but we read in the Bible of Peter, Stephen, Paul and others being whipped, imprisoned, stoned to death, flogged, lashed, beaten, shipwrecked and we know that Peter himself was martyred for his faith a few years later.

What might they be thinking? “Has God forgotten us? Did something go horribly wrong with his plan for this world? Is he still in control?”

Do we sometimes feel the same? “Where is God? Is he powerless to help me or to solve some of the disasters I see going on around me and in the wider world? Does he even care?” I wonder what questions Christians living in Sudan, in the Middle East or Ukraine are asking at the moment?

How does Peter respond to these tough times? In this passage, v.13 seems to be the key.

v.13 “Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming”.

Notice that word “Therefore” at the beginning of the verse. When we read that word in the Bible, we have to look back to see what has gone before.

During the last two VW services we have looked at what the first 12 verses say about the incredible gift of grace that God has given us.

v.1-12 have told us what God has already done for us, now in v. 13 Peter tells us what we need to do in response and the rest of the letter will fill in more detail about that response. It’s as if the whole letter turns around this one key verse, so let’s look at it more closely.

He starts by saying “with minds that are alert and fully sober” or as the RSV version translates it “prepare your minds for action”.

He uses these words, or words almost the same, three times in this letter. He obviously thinks it is really important for us to grasp so we must press into the meaning of it and not just rush on.

I checked with our daughter, who speaks Greek, and the literal translation of this is “Gird up the loins of your mind” referring to the ancient oriental custom of gathering up your long robes by pulling them between your legs and hitching them around your waist so you could either walk fast or run.

What preparations do we make when we are planning a journey?

Packing, checking we have enough petrol or the right tickets, recently we might have turned on the car engine to start clearing the ice off the windows before we start driving.

But there is no point in making all these preparations if we then just stay where we are and don’t actually start moving and set off. Is there anything that might hinder our departure?

But Peter is saying here “prepare your minds for action”! Right action starts with right beliefs and a right mindset.

Peter says here that our minds need to be “fully sober”. Not intoxicated with, or addicted to, anything else which might distract us from reaching our destination. Not in the mind equivalent of a drunken stupor. Just as drunkenness distorts and numbs us to reality, worldly distractions can easily numb our hearts to God.

Looking round this church at 10.00 on a Sunday morning, I don’t think many of us are likely to be inebriated but there may be things which are clutching at our attention, which dull our minds or bring confusion into them, which lure us with empty promises which they cannot fulfil.

I don’t know what that might be for each of you. Perhaps a head full of fear, worry or stress, or the endless striving for “more”, more things, more stuff. For some it may be the hold that technology has on us, those incessant pings from our mobile phones intruding on whatever else we are doing.

I rarely use social media BUT recently, just at the moment when I have decided to pray or read my bible, even while trying to write this talk, I have noticed that alluring little symbol on the Instagram app, cajoling me to have a look and before I know it I have wasted half an hour on mindless scrolling through reels of videos which have no real value whatsoever. That is definitely not being “sober minded”.

What about you – what is most likely to distract you from having a right mindset and how can you say no to it? How do we make wise choices about whether to spend some time reading the newspaper or delving deeper into the Bible, whether to phone a friend or to pray, to spend some time worshipping God, or to catch up with something on Netflix?

It may help to focus on what is the good thing that Peter wants our minds to be focussed on.

He finishes this verse by telling us that we must each “set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming”.

Other translations say it more strongly – set your hope fully, set all your hope on this grace and on this second coming of Jesus.

We are used to hearing about the gospel Peter spoke of in v. 12 – the amazingly good news that when Jesus died on the cross, he paid the penalty for all our sins, yours and mine and that when he rose from the dead, he brought life to each of us too, real life now and for eternity as God’s children. But what about his second coming when he returns to fully redeem our lives and to redeem this earth too?

We don’t have time to look into that properly now, but the Old and New Testaments are full of references to it if you want to look into it more later. For now, these verses from Hebrews 9 are very helpful:

(Hebrews 9:27-28): “Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him”.

In other words, there is a day coming when he will complete what he has started regarding the salvation of those who are waiting for him.

Peter is not painting a picture of some wishy washy, vague, wistful thinking. This hope is a secure, confident, whole hearted expectation that something is going to happen. In other words, set all your hope, build your life on the fact that all that God has promised will actually happen, and that it will be worth waiting for. Peter is certain of it, certain enough to build his life on it, despite the suffering that is and may bring.

The danger here may be that we might know in our heads what God has done but fail to follow through, to respond. To try but then give up when the going gets tough.

We are all able to amass so much knowledge now. It flows out of the little phone in our hand, it is presented to us by the news, by social media and chat gpt, by the television and books.

Knowledge is good, but knowledge about God isn’t enough, we have to believe it and act as if it is true, to press into our new relationship with him as his dearly beloved children, to keep moving forward with him.

What invitation is God giving to you and to me in this verse? Might it be something like this?

“Will you too gird up your loins and prepare for action? Will you fix your eyes on what I have prepared for you when Jesus comes again and push all of those other tempting distractions out of the way”?

This could feel quite daunting, a bit of an uphill struggle but earlier in this letter, several times Peter has mentioned the 3^rd member of the trinity – the Holy Spirit. Jesus told his disciples that once he was no longer physically with them, or with us, he would send his spirit to live in our hearts.

One of the things the bible says the spirit will bring is joy. Earlier in v. 8 Peter talked about believers “being filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy”. I wonder how many of us have felt that joy? Perhaps when we first realised what he has done for us or at moments since then when he has moved in our lives in a powerful way?

Peter’s hope is not just about the future. He has experienced the joy which comes from knowing God in the present too. Living in a right relationship to God transforms life now in both good times and bad times. We are going on holiday in 2 weeks. I can’t wait to feel the sun on my face again after this season of grey, dismal, wet, cold weather. But yesterday the sun broke through the clouds and for a time it was beautiful outside and it really lifted my spirits. We do need to trust God for the future but each day there are also opportunities for some of what he has promised to break through into this fallen world, into our lives.

I have had some special moments when joy has bubbled up inside me as it has dawned on me what God has done for me or when he has made his presence known in some way. But I have also had many times of anguish before God. When trying to understand why he allowed me to miscarry three of my babies, or why didn’t he heal my sister Emma when cancer took her life too young? Or, at the moment, watching so many of my friends going through nightmarish times of suffering? Why isn’t God doing something about it if he has the power to change it?

Strangely, one of the times I was most aware of the joy of the holy spirit was in the middle of intense pain at my sister’s funeral. Even though I could see my young niece and nephew standing in front of their mother’s coffin, the presence of the spirit seemed to rise up inside me giving me an extraordinary joyful assurance that Emma was safe with him and that he would care for her family too.

But today, I wonder if instead of joy, some of us are being touched by the January Blues? Feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of some of the things we are having to face this year?

Others might be thinking “Taking action sounds time consuming. I just don’t have time to squeeze anything else into my busy diary, I am juggling too much already”. Maybe we are still exhausted from the holidays and distracted by those things that are competing for our attention, trying to intoxicate us and take our attention off the goal.

Or perhaps we feel it is too hard to keep going with God because we feel we have failed him, we have tried to follow him but haven’t lived up to what he has called us to be? Will that place us outside the reach of his grace?

Peter has the best answer for that. “Never!” He would say. He made a total mess of following Jesus and even denied knowing him the night before his crucifixion. Then, after his resurrection, Jesus lovingly restored him and showed him that he still loved him and had good plans for him.

Whether we are wrestling with sadness, with general overload, or with guilt, the thing that may lead us back to joy is the awareness that God sees the deepest secrets in our hearts and yet forgives us, that he loves us and will himself lead us forward.

In our garden we have a tyre swing attached to a rope hanging from the branch of a tree. If someone gives you a big push on it you can land up swinging wildly unable to get back to the centre and calm it down. You have to give in to the rhythm of it and let it finish its swinging and slow down until you find your balance at the centre again then with another push you can start moving in a more controlled way again.

When it feels as if our circumstances are dragging us further and further away from the centre, we need to be honest with God, cry out to him for help, ask his Holy Spirit to help re-orientate our minds again and to help us to find our balance again on that one goal, the “living hope” that Peter has been describing here and earlier in v.3. The hope that means we can know God’s presence during the painful and dark valleys but also on the mountain tops when all is good.

Let’s be quiet for a few moments and think about where we are on the spiritual equivalent of that tyre swing today and ask the Holy Spirit to take hold of us and gently bring us back to the centre again and then to give us his strength and power to keep going forward.

Have you ever trained for a big sports event. I haven’t but our son Ben ran the London Marathon last year and we went to watch him – there were people cheering the runners at each stage but especially at about the 24^th mile when strength would be flagging, muscles would be burning and it is so tempting to give up. Some are still sprinting at that stage, others are hobbling, some are helping others to keep going despite slowing themselves down. Some are determined to run fast enough to break a record, others just want to finish, to get over the line.

Jesus is calling each of us to run in a race with him where we have him cheering us on, holding out his arms to us, his spirit helping us to run well and to reach the finishing line.

I don’t think Jesus will chide us for not running fast enough, but today will he see each of us gathering up our robes (preparing our minds for action) and pushing forwards resolutely towards the time when he will return bringing our salvation with him?

As we finish let me read you some words about what brings pleasure to God from Psalm 147 v.11:

“The Lord delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love”.

As we choose today to set our hope fully on the grace to be brought to us when Jesus Christ returns, may we know that the Lord delights in us as we do so.