TOGETHER AGAIN ON SUNDAYS

As you can see, from the sign on our noticeboard, Glenorie Community Church is open again for Sunday worship, from 26th July! We are excited and very grateful to our God! We have missed seeing each other in the usual way, supporting one another as we love and serve Jesus Christ.

In our country and in the world, it’s certainly been a very different season for all of us - a long 4 months that isn’t over just yet. So many conversations have taken place everywhere during this time; emotions have been running high and low; confusion has caused anxieties - and each one of us is certainly “out of our comfort zone.”!!

A word that has been resonating with me during this unusual season of the COVID 19 pandemic is the word ‘stretched’we have been and are being stretched, like an elastic band being pulled over a parcel!

For people who regularly engage in sport, physical stretching is a necessary and natural part of their daily workout, usually at the beginning of every practice session and/ or every game. In the same way, our Christian faith and spiritual life needs stretching too.

I like the way it is explained in the bible:

“For bodily exercise profits a little, but Godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.” (1 Timothy 4:8) Stretching tests our faith in God and helps us grow closer to Him. We become more God - conscious in our daily lives, through all the circumstances that life throws at us - learning to “trust in Him with all our heart, lean not on our own understanding; in all our ways to acknowledge Him” then wait for His promise, that “He will lead us and make our path straight.” ( Proverbs 3:5-6.)

In our church community we have certainly experienced unchartered waters! We have never put together an online recorded service before. Closer relationships between our ministry team were built through this new learning experience, complete with frustrations and setbacks as well as success when another service was up and running. We’d say “that’s a wrap” and sigh with relief, thanking the Holy Spirit for His very evident inspiration and leading.

God will never allow us to be stretched beyond what we are capable of in HIS strength, not ours. When we recognise His love and faithfulness towards us in the midst of the stretching season, our relationship with Him will grow and we will walk in deeper peace.

God bless,

Pr. Alex and Dee Valich