‘Sovereign Lord, you alone know.’ Pastor's pen for 12th October 2025

Long Bay coastal walk

‘Sovereign Lord, you alone know.’ This is the response of the prophet in Ezekiel 37 to the valley of dry bones he was shown in a vision and the Lord's piercing question; ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ I referred to it lightheartedly in my sermon last Sunday, praying that God would restore the misbehaving knee cartilage I've been hammering to a pulp all these years. I've been thinking about it since then in terms of it being one of the many biblical images of resurrection or new life.

I'm away this Sunday, but I know that Lorna is preaching on a theme relating to the 'green shoots' of church revitalization. The faith community who follow Jesus are always a hopeful people, or should be. New life and hope are what we are about.

Yet we look at the world and have many uncertainties. We look at the church and see tight budgets and ministries with a lack of volunteers, or at least minimal back-up. Nonetheless, it is a source of joy when people step up to a new thing and the Lord provides the resources we need as the church exercises faith. Mark Sayers, in his book Reappearing Church writes;

“continuing the same things that are not bringing renewal is not going to bring renewal. Lack of commitment is not going to bring renewal. Business as usual will not bring renewal. Accumulating knowledge without putting it into practice will not bring renewal. We need our autopilot patterns interrupted.”

I don't necessarily believe we are on autopilot, but to have our regular patterns interrupted is perhaps inevitable. We have a thoughtful, prayerful leadership open to where God's Spirit might direct us, and believing that new life and vigorous community might just spring up in our midst. Revitalization starts with your own heart before God, and interacts with, and is encouraged by like minds in the faith community. The primary building block for renewal is always prayer, the kind of prayer that begins with repentance and reflection, then attributes the power and agency of revitalization to God; ‘Sovereign Lord, you alone know.’ Shalom