We all need holidays.\u00a0 I’ve been on holiday for a week, and I’ve largely stayed away from the computer, and instead I have just enjoyed the weather, neither too hot nor too cold.<\/p>\n
On Friday\u00a0I decided to do a trip out, and I went up\u00a0to the Peak District.\u00a0 This is quite a run, a round-trip of some 400 miles; but in fact I never saw what I went to see, which was the Peaks.\u00a0 Instead I saw something much more important.<\/p>\n
I was nearly there when, while driving along\u00a0a dual-carriageway, I saw a sign that\u00a0indicated that I was very near to the location of a church that I follow on Facebook, but had never seen.\u00a0 This, I thought, it might be nice to look at.<\/p>\n
Not quite sure where I was going, I indicated and came off the dual carriageway, and sought out the\u00a0area where it meets.\u00a0 I thought perhaps that there might be a church office open, and maybe some literature about the history of the church.\u00a0 I was in for a surprise.<\/p>\n
I’d never attended the church.\u00a0 It’s far too far from home, and in addition is attended by a family of good people whom, for personal reasons,\u00a0it would be embarassing for me to meet.\u00a0 In fact I’d never even been to that town before.<\/p>\n
But I knew that the church must have been very alive when it was founded.\u00a0\u00a0Someone from my younger days, a very enthusiastic Christian,\u00a0had attended it, almost from its foundation in the early 80s right through to recent times, so it could hardly be a dead loss.\u00a0 It came out of the restoration\/charismatic movement of that period.\u00a0 After I became aware of it,\u00a0\u00a0I made it\u00a0one of the churches that I follow on Facebook, for encouragment and a source of topics for prayer.\u00a0 But it is very hard to get any impression of what God is doing from internet pages.\u00a0 And I thought that it might be interesting to see the location itself with my own eyes.<\/p>\n
A few wrong turns later, I found myself there, in an industrial unit, wondering where on earth the church was.\u00a0 I got out of my car, and was accosted by a man who asked if I was looking for the building.\u00a0 It was, in fact, right in front of me, but unsigned because of renovation work in progress.\u00a0\u00a0The building is\u00a0a small converted warehouse.<\/p>\n
The man who spoke to me\u00a0was working there.\u00a0 During the week the building (and an adjoining one, also owned by the church) hosts conferences and meetings, so apparently there are always staff there during the week.\u00a0 Unfortunately the church office was closed.<\/p>\n
But\u00a0this\u00a0worker belonged to the church, and told me about it, showed me the auditorium, and indeed prayed with me.\u00a0 In short he did a fine job of welcoming a casual visitor, and had I not been a believer, I am quite sure that he would have shared the gospel with me too, in a wholly\u00a0unembarassed fashion.\u00a0 In short I felt that I came into contact, not just with the building, nor even with church officials; but with the church itself, and God within it.[ref]Mind you, he also managed to introduce me, before I could prevent him, to precisely one of the people that I was eager to avoid!\u00a0 Ouch.\u00a0 Luckily I was able to keep a straight face and escape without being detected.\u00a0 I’d expected to be safe during the week!\u00a0 Oh well.[\/ref]<\/p>\n
I drove away, rather impressed, and profoundly encouraged.\u00a0 Clearly the church is busy, and doing what God wants it to do.\u00a0 Hundreds of people belong to it, and it is, as the name implies, a thriving community of people dedicated to God and his work.<\/p>\n
Very little of this could be known to anybody who didn’t go there.\u00a0 I didn’t know it, despite taking\u00a0an interest in the church for the last three years.\u00a0 You could only learn any of this by meeting those involved.<\/p>\n
In fact it became clear from\u00a0what I learned\u00a0that the work of God\u00a0is very much alive and making progress in these northern towns, in a way that does not seem to be the case in my own town.\u00a0 Praise God for this!<\/p>\n
God is at work among us now.\u00a0 We won’t hear this unless we are actually in touch with it.\u00a0 But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening.\u00a0 God is not interested in making a media splash, but in converting ordinary people like ourselves from our pointless lives, and leading us to accept Jesus as Lord.<\/p>\n
This is important for believers to remember.\u00a0 Many of us on the web live rather isolated lives.\u00a0 That means that, in truth, we don’t really know what is going on.\u00a0 Never rely on what the media or the web say.\u00a0 God’s work has always taken place, sub rosa<\/em>, away from the publicity.\u00a0 It is still the case now.<\/p>\n So if you were in the middle of God’s work when you were younger, when everything seemed to be happening; and then found yourself in a desert, do not be discouraged.\u00a0 Jesus also went into the desert.\u00a0 It is a normal thing, in a Christian’s life.\u00a0 Just remember that the absence of life in the desert does not mean that there is no life anywhere.\u00a0 The silence and absence forces you to work out what you really rely on.\u00a0 We have all known people, apparently believers, who turned out only to be going along with the crowd.\u00a0 God takes us into the desert, I believe, that we may grow reliant on Him directly.\u00a0 Some of us will live our lives in the desert.\u00a0 But we must never forget that He is alive!<\/p>\n In countless lives, in ordinary people, in ordinary places, the kingdom of God is at hand, and people work out their salvation, trusting in God and blessing as many as come within the circle of their lives.\u00a0 It was rather humbling to see this.<\/p>\n Praise God for that church.\u00a0 I pray for its leaders and its people, that they may be blessed, and bless others; and that many may come to know Christ through its ministries.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n UPDATED: I’ve removed details of which church this was: it’s not important to the article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We all need holidays.\u00a0 I’ve been on holiday for a week, and I’ve largely stayed away from the computer, and instead I have just enjoyed the weather, neither too hot nor too cold. On Friday\u00a0I decided to do a trip out, and I went up\u00a0to the Peak District.\u00a0 This is quite a run, a round-trip […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[407],"class_list":["post-15050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-my-diary-announcements","tag-christianityunderthreat"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15050\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}