John Lancaster
God’s repair shop...
In a lovely setting on the South Downs in West Sussex stands a very old but beautifully preserved barn.
It has become the workshop for a highly talented and wonderfully devoted team of men and women who work miracles of restoration on a wide range of much treasured but badly damaged family heirlooms brought in by hopeful people from many parts of the country.
Called ‘The Repair Shop’, it is featured in a fascinating TV programme which echoes the sounds of happy astonishment and tearful thankfulness for the skills of transformation that take place in the ancient barn.
Whenever I watch it, I am reminded of a passage in Jeremiah 18:1-6, where God takes the prophet on a visit to a potter’s workshop, shows him the master craftsman dealing with a misshapen piece of clay on his wheel and remaking it into something new.
Then in effect he says, “That’s what I want to do with the ‘broken earthenware’ amongst the people I have called to myself, but they don’t respond to my call.”
Then I’m reminded of Stuart McCall to whom as a church we recently gave a sad but affectionate farewell.
According to his own testimony, Stuart was a piece of very damaged humankind.
Surly, unreliable, aggressive, he came into the old Bridge Street Church in Leeds following an unexpected encounter with God.
In a wonderful way Stuart became a new man in Christ: kind, absolutely trustworthy, a lovable brother who worked as a painter/decorator in our homes and our church and shared our fellowship in a quiet but lovely way.
After a painful journey through ‘the valley of the shadow’ Stuart, 48, went home to be with the Lord he loved, but he remains a wonderful example of the creative genius of God’s repair shop.
And that reminds me of Paul’s words in Ephesians 2:10: “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works.”
John Stott points out that the Greek word for ‘workmanship’ is ‘poiema’ – ‘his work of art,’ ‘his master-piece’.
In other words, naturally we are damaged human beings in desperate need of repair. We are not ‘self-made’ saints but sinners saved by grace, products of the patient skill employed in God’s repair shop.
So Paul cries, “By the grace of God I am what I am!”
As Stott says, “We shall not be able to strut round heaven like peacocks.” We will only be there because God had mercy on us.
In Philippians 2:12-15 Paul describes what we might call the ‘dynamics of restoration’.
It only happens when we ‘work out’ in a personal response to what God is seeking to ‘work in us’ – ‘both to will and to do what pleases him’ in our choices and personal actions.
We may not always enjoy the pressure of the divine fingers on sensitive areas of our lives.
We may be tempted to question his reasons for exerting that discipline on us, but it is only as we yield to his superior wisdom and creative power that our lives will display his glory.
That is why Paul says we must respond to God ‘in fear and trembling’ – being ‘reverent and sensitive before God’ (The Message).
Just as the delicately balanced branches of the beautiful Aspen tree tremble in response to the slightest breath of the wind and its leaves break out into happy applause, so we are called to respond to the slightest moving of the Holy Spirit through his Word and his voice within our hearts.
It is wonderful to realise that the fingers seeking to shape our personal lives are the ones which shaped the glittering constellations that span the heavens (Psalm 8:3).
And, according to Philippians 2:12-15, he has ‘stellar’ ambitions for us, too – if we humbly respond to his touch.
And finally, see Philippians 1:6: God hasn’t finished with us yet.
First published in the February 2022 issue of Direction, Elim’s monthly magazine. Subscribe now to get Direction delivered to your home.
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