Gilcomston Church

Monthly Letter – August 2024

Dear Friends,

Guidance is always the Lord’s responsibility, not ours.

He’s the Shepherd: we’re the sheep. He knows the way; we know Him. He leads; we follow. It’s not, in the end of the day, a complicated thing. We look to Him to show us the way and we leave it to Him to guide us.

The Scriptures are replete with reminders of just this grace of the gospel: the commitment God has to direct our paths and bring us where He’s purposed we should be.

The whole great lengthy saga of the exodus from Egypt and the journey to the promised land provides a full-blown, graphic object lesson in the guidance of Almighty God. He delivers them from slavery. He directs their path – across the barren wilderness, and down through many decades. He leads them to the Jordan and then lands them safe on Canaan’s side. Guidance. He knows the way and He gets them where He’s purposed they should be. He provides; He protects. He instructs; He directs. He tells them when to get up and go, and He shows them the way they should take.

“By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night” (Ex.13.21).

His sovereign, shepherd-like guidance is an integral part of His gospel grace. Paul’s words, as he rounds off his ‘swansong’ letter, provide a simple summary of what God does for us in the gospel – “The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom” (2 Tim.4.18). He delivers, yes. But He also directs. Out of the slavery of sin, into the freedom of grace. Out of the dominion of darkness and into the kingdom of Christ.

Such a ‘big picture’ statement of the gospel is all fine and good, of course. But how does it work out in practice? How does the ‘macro’ truth of the Shepherd’s sovereign guiding of His sheep translate into the ‘micro’ world of the daily decisions we’re all of us having to take – some of which have far-reaching implications? How do we know where to go, when to move, what to do, when we don’t have a pillar of cloud through the day nor a pillar of fire at night? How can guidance be God’s responsibility when we have the decisions to make? How does God direct our paths?

The Scriptures are nothing but down-to-earth and practical. They address these issues carefully, both by stating spiritual principles and by showing actual examples.

Here, for instance, is a classic – and basic – principle. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will direct your paths” (Prov.3.5-6). Three simple lines for the sheep to remember: and the promise of the Shepherd’s direction. A confidence in the Lord: a reliance on the Lord: and a submission to the Lord. It’s not complicated! Challenging perhaps. Humbling perhaps. But certainly not complicated.

The Scriptures, though, do more than just articulate the principle: they illustrate the principle and show us how it all works out in practice.

Genesis 24 is a case in point. Abraham’s getting on in years (to put it mildly) and is looking to the future (as we’re always meant to do – and as we’ve been seeking ourselves to do). If the line God has promised this elderly man is now to be continued through his miracle son, then Isaac needs a wife. It’s a big next step! An important decision which he’ll want to be sure he gets right! Where is he going to find a wife? What should he be looking for? Whom is he going to choose?

Guidance. God’s responsibility, not ours. The promise – He will direct your paths. The principle – confidence, in Him, reliance on Him, submission to Him. And then see how it works out in practice.

The servant is given very clear instructions by Abraham: instructions that are essentially informed by the word God has spoken to Abraham. Submission, straight off.

Along with that submission, there’s a real confidence: he’s given the assurance that God “will send His angel before you so that you can get a wife from there”. And once the man gets where he’s been told to go, first thing he does is he prays. Reliance on the Lord. The servant knows what he’s looking for – a woman who’ll not only give him some water to drink but will water his camels too: a woman, that is, who’ll immediately show both a Christ-like grace and a servant heart – so he looks to the Lord for direction.

The Lord is already on the case, of course! “Before he had finished praying ..” we’re told, out comes this lady Rebekah. She looks the part. Ticks the boxes. And when the servant learns all her credentials, he knows that his prayers have indeed been wonderfully answered. He’s back on his knees before the Lord in gratitude and praise, testifying gladly to the marvelous way in which “the Lord has led me on the journey..”

The Search Team have been on just such a journey, the servants of God’s people here over these past many months since October last year. And just as Abraham was doubtless very thankful to have had such a servant as this man, so I myself (and I don’t doubt it’s all of us as a fellowship) am profoundly grateful to the members of the Search Team for the onerous task they assumed and for the manner in which they went about their work – and grateful, with them, to the Lord, for the way in which they too have been so very conscious of His leading them on the journey.

Confidence in the Lord. Reliance on the Lord. Submission to the Lord. They, too, were given clear instructions, with both a ‘Role Profile’ and a ‘Church Profile’ carefully informed by the Word of God. They, too, were afforded a real confidence, not least through the continuing presence and constant encouragement of Phil Hair. They, too, knew just what it was they were looking for, and they prayerfully looked to the Lord for His sovereign direction and leading. And they, too, found a man in Nathan Owens who looks the part, who ticks every box, and whose ‘credentials’ simply served to underscore the sovereign goodness of our Shepherd God in the provisions that He makes for His people. And the fact that this group of thirteen very different individuals came back with total clarity and complete unanimity is itself a powerful, gracious testament to the Lord’s good hand upon their labours and His seal upon their work.

The Lord is our Shepherd. And He does direct our paths. It’s a thrill always to find in our own experience how altogether sovereign He is, and how altogether bountiful in all His dealings with us. “He is the Rock,” as Moses sang in making his musical curtain-call, “His works are perfect, and all His ways are just” (Deut.32.4). Or as Newman put it in the opening verse of his hymn – ‘in all His words most wonderful, most sure in all His ways.’

He will direct your paths. The promise is clear. Guidance is His responsibility. We follow where He leads. The lingering question in the minds, I guess, of many, though, is – How does He lead? In the likely absence of a pillar (of cloud or of fire, depending on the time of day or night), what are we to look for?

We look, or (more accurately) listen, for a voice. That’s how Jesus put it. “The sheep listen to His voice .. His sheep follow Him because they know His voice ..” (Jn.10.3-4). We listen to what He is saying. And that listening is a ‘quadraphonic’ thing, as I’ll try and explain.

There’s a large river estuary – I think in northern Italy – navigating which is such a potentially hazardous matter that to do so safely, without either running aground on unseen sandbanks or holing the hull on rocks near the river’s surface, four significant marker posts have been placed up the course of the channel: the pilot simply gets them all in line and takes his route from there. Navigating all the big decisions of life is a bit like that for ourselves as we line up four main ‘marker posts’, the four main ways in which the Lord will be speaking to His people, and the means by which we learn to hear the distinctive tones and direction of our Shepherd’s voice.

He speaks through His Word, of course. That’s the first and most obvious way in which He speaks. We learn to ask what He’s saying to us through His Word. As we read it ourselves in private on (ideally) a day-by-day basis: and as we join with others in the worship of God and have His Word preached to us. Sometimes it’s just the gentle, cumulative impact of a truth being rehearsed repeatedly. Sometimes it’s more like a bolt from the blue, a word or a phrase, a one-liner perhaps, which hits you without any warning right between the eyes. Sometimes it’s in the careful, prayerful reflecting on the Scripture that you’ve read or heard. But He’s the God who speaks, and He speaks through His Word, and we’re careful therefore to listen. ‘Speak, Lord, Your servant is listening.’

He speaks through His people as well. People who know us and love us and desire for us the best: and people who know and love the Lord Himself and seek the best interests of His Kingdom. What is the Lord saying through them? Sometimes that sort of ‘word from the Lord’ comes through an individual unprompted by any discussion: sometimes it comes from considered reflection where we’ve sought their advice and asked for their take on the matter. That’s why the course that we followed in seeking the man of God’s choosing as minister here has seen other Didasko church leaders meeting and speaking with Nathan: the fact that thereafter they ‘warmly and wholeheartedly’ endorsed the prospective appointment is again itself a further indicator of the call of God.

A third major way in which the Lord speaks is through His sovereign providences. Jesus is Lord – and as such He orders all our circumstances well and overrules in all the smallest details of our lives. What things happen. When they happen. How they happen. He opens doors; and closes doors. His wise and sovereign providence requires to be interpreted, for sure: weighed carefully, pondered prayerfully – as Mary, for instance, ‘treasured up’ the strange and varied circumstances of her Baby’s birth and ‘pondered them in her heart’. What’s the Lord saying through the way things turn out? His providential dealings with His people can sometimes be quite in-your-face and dramatic: but more often they’re like the bits of a jigsaw puzzle, where bit-by-bit a picture begins to emerge – we watch and wait and ponder and pray; and we’re able thereby to discern the whispered leading of the Lord.

The Lord speaks through His Spirit, too, of course. Sometimes we find our hearts ‘strangely warmed’, as if the Spirit of God were lighting a fire in our hearts as we contemplate a particular course of action – as if He were in that way giving us every encouragement to go ahead; sometimes we’re aware of some ‘niggles’, as if the Spirit were pulling up some warning lights on the dashboard of our lives. Sometimes it’s through some quiet inner prompting. Sometimes it’s through a startling conviction which wakes us from our sleep. Sometimes it’s through a slowly-growing burden on our hearts, pointing us in a particular direction. As infants grow to discern the voice of their parents, and as sheep learn to recognize their shepherd’s familiar voice, so we as believers learn to discern the promptings of the Spirit, and to let the ‘peace’ of Christ act as umpire in our hearts.

When all of these four big ‘marker posts’ line up, and the ‘word’ that you’re hearing’s the same through each, then, like the pilot in that dangerous river estuary, you know that you’re hearing the voice of the Lord saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it.’

As sheep we then follow the Shepherd, glad in the knowledge that He knows the way, and will sovereignly bring us where He’s purposed we should be. As we look ahead to the coming months, we surely do so all the more persuaded of His good and guiding hand upon our life here as His church.

We’ve made the whole matter of the appointment of a new minister a matter of earnest prayer: we’ve rejoiced in His sovereign grace, we’ve looked to the Lord for direction, and we’ve submitted ourselves to His will and His Word. Confidence. Reliance. Submission. And He has directed our paths. We’re glad to say that ‘the Lord has led us on the journey’. We press on, therefore, into the future that the Lord has for us all, confident always that ‘the path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.’

Yours in the glad service of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Jeremy Middleton

Dear Friends,

Guidance is always the Lord’s responsibility, not ours.

He’s the Shepherd: we’re the sheep. He knows the way; we know Him. He leads; we follow. It’s not, in the end of the day, a complicated thing. We look to Him to show us the way and we leave it to Him to guide us.

The Scriptures are replete with reminders of just this grace of the gospel: the commitment God has to direct our paths and bring us where He’s purposed we should be.

The whole great lengthy saga of the exodus from Egypt and the journey to the promised land provides a full-blown, graphic object lesson in the guidance of Almighty God. He delivers them from slavery. He directs their path – across the barren wilderness, and down through many decades. He leads them to the Jordan and then lands them safe on Canaan’s side. Guidance. He knows the way and He gets them where He’s purposed they should be. He provides; He protects. He instructs; He directs. He tells them when to get up and go, and He shows them the way they should take.

“By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night” (Ex.13.21).

His sovereign, shepherd-like guidance is an integral part of His gospel grace. Paul’s words, as he rounds off his ‘swansong’ letter, provide a simple summary of what God does for us in the gospel – “The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom” (2 Tim.4.18). He delivers, yes. But He also directs. Out of the slavery of sin, into the freedom of grace. Out of the dominion of darkness and into the kingdom of Christ.

Such a ‘big picture’ statement of the gospel is all fine and good, of course. But how does it work out in practice? How does the ‘macro’ truth of the Shepherd’s sovereign guiding of His sheep translate into the ‘micro’ world of the daily decisions we’re all of us having to take – some of which have far-reaching implications? How do we know where to go, when to move, what to do, when we don’t have a pillar of cloud through the day nor a pillar of fire at night? How can guidance be God’s responsibility when we have the decisions to make? How does God direct our paths?

The Scriptures are nothing but down-to-earth and practical. They address these issues carefully, both by stating spiritual principles and by showing actual examples.

Here, for instance, is a classic – and basic – principle. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will direct your paths” (Prov.3.5-6). Three simple lines for the sheep to remember: and the promise of the Shepherd’s direction. A confidence in the Lord: a reliance on the Lord: and a submission to the Lord. It’s not complicated! Challenging perhaps. Humbling perhaps. But certainly not complicated.

The Scriptures, though, do more than just articulate the principle: they illustrate the principle and show us how it all works out in practice.

Genesis 24 is a case in point. Abraham’s getting on in years (to put it mildly) and is looking to the future (as we’re always meant to do – and as we’ve been seeking ourselves to do). If the line God has promised this elderly man is now to be continued through his miracle son, then Isaac needs a wife. It’s a big next step! An important decision which he’ll want to be sure he gets right! Where is he going to find a wife? What should he be looking for? Whom is he going to choose?

Guidance. God’s responsibility, not ours. The promise – He will direct your paths. The principle – confidence, in Him, reliance on Him, submission to Him. And then see how it works out in practice.

The servant is given very clear instructions by Abraham: instructions that are essentially informed by the word God has spoken to Abraham. Submission, straight off.

Along with that submission, there’s a real confidence: he’s given the assurance that God “will send His angel before you so that you can get a wife from there”. And once the man gets where he’s been told to go, first thing he does is he prays. Reliance on the Lord. The servant knows what he’s looking for – a woman who’ll not only give him some water to drink but will water his camels too: a woman, that is, who’ll immediately show both a Christ-like grace and a servant heart – so he looks to the Lord for direction.

The Lord is already on the case, of course! “Before he had finished praying ..” we’re told, out comes this lady Rebekah. She looks the part. Ticks the boxes. And when the servant learns all her credentials, he knows that his prayers have indeed been wonderfully answered. He’s back on his knees before the Lord in gratitude and praise, testifying gladly to the marvelous way in which “the Lord has led me on the journey..”

The Search Team have been on just such a journey, the servants of God’s people here over these past many months since October last year. And just as Abraham was doubtless very thankful to have had such a servant as this man, so I myself (and I don’t doubt it’s all of us as a fellowship) am profoundly grateful to the members of the Search Team for the onerous task they assumed and for the manner in which they went about their work – and grateful, with them, to the Lord, for the way in which they too have been so very conscious of His leading them on the journey.

Confidence in the Lord. Reliance on the Lord. Submission to the Lord. They, too, were given clear instructions, with both a ‘Role Profile’ and a ‘Church Profile’ carefully informed by the Word of God. They, too, were afforded a real confidence, not least through the continuing presence and constant encouragement of Phil Hair. They, too, knew just what it was they were looking for, and they prayerfully looked to the Lord for His sovereign direction and leading. And they, too, found a man in Nathan Owens who looks the part, who ticks every box, and whose ‘credentials’ simply served to underscore the sovereign goodness of our Shepherd God in the provisions that He makes for His people. And the fact that this group of thirteen very different individuals came back with total clarity and complete unanimity is itself a powerful, gracious testament to the Lord’s good hand upon their labours and His seal upon their work.

The Lord is our Shepherd. And He does direct our paths. It’s a thrill always to find in our own experience how altogether sovereign He is, and how altogether bountiful in all His dealings with us. “He is the Rock,” as Moses sang in making his musical curtain-call, “His works are perfect, and all His ways are just” (Deut.32.4). Or as Newman put it in the opening verse of his hymn – ‘in all His words most wonderful, most sure in all His ways.’

He will direct your paths. The promise is clear. Guidance is His responsibility. We follow where He leads. The lingering question in the minds, I guess, of many, though, is – How does He lead? In the likely absence of a pillar (of cloud or of fire, depending on the time of day or night), what are we to look for?

We look, or (more accurately) listen, for a voice. That’s how Jesus put it. “The sheep listen to His voice .. His sheep follow Him because they know His voice ..” (Jn.10.3-4). We listen to what He is saying. And that listening is a ‘quadraphonic’ thing, as I’ll try and explain.

There’s a large river estuary – I think in northern Italy – navigating which is such a potentially hazardous matter that to do so safely, without either running aground on unseen sandbanks or holing the hull on rocks near the river’s surface, four significant marker posts have been placed up the course of the channel: the pilot simply gets them all in line and takes his route from there. Navigating all the big decisions of life is a bit like that for ourselves as we line up four main ‘marker posts’, the four main ways in which the Lord will be speaking to His people, and the means by which we learn to hear the distinctive tones and direction of our Shepherd’s voice.

He speaks through His Word, of course. That’s the first and most obvious way in which He speaks. We learn to ask what He’s saying to us through His Word. As we read it ourselves in private on (ideally) a day-by-day basis: and as we join with others in the worship of God and have His Word preached to us. Sometimes it’s just the gentle, cumulative impact of a truth being rehearsed repeatedly. Sometimes it’s more like a bolt from the blue, a word or a phrase, a one-liner perhaps, which hits you without any warning right between the eyes. Sometimes it’s in the careful, prayerful reflecting on the Scripture that you’ve read or heard. But He’s the God who speaks, and He speaks through His Word, and we’re careful therefore to listen. ‘Speak, Lord, Your servant is listening.’

He speaks through His people as well. People who know us and love us and desire for us the best: and people who know and love the Lord Himself and seek the best interests of His Kingdom. What is the Lord saying through them? Sometimes that sort of ‘word from the Lord’ comes through an individual unprompted by any discussion: sometimes it comes from considered reflection where we’ve sought their advice and asked for their take on the matter. That’s why the course that we followed in seeking the man of God’s choosing as minister here has seen other Didasko church leaders meeting and speaking with Nathan: the fact that thereafter they ‘warmly and wholeheartedly’ endorsed the prospective appointment is again itself a further indicator of the call of God.

A third major way in which the Lord speaks is through His sovereign providences. Jesus is Lord – and as such He orders all our circumstances well and overrules in all the smallest details of our lives. What things happen. When they happen. How they happen. He opens doors; and closes doors. His wise and sovereign providence requires to be interpreted, for sure: weighed carefully, pondered prayerfully – as Mary, for instance, ‘treasured up’ the strange and varied circumstances of her Baby’s birth and ‘pondered them in her heart’. What’s the Lord saying through the way things turn out? His providential dealings with His people can sometimes be quite in-your-face and dramatic: but more often they’re like the bits of a jigsaw puzzle, where bit-by-bit a picture begins to emerge – we watch and wait and ponder and pray; and we’re able thereby to discern the whispered leading of the Lord.

The Lord speaks through His Spirit, too, of course. Sometimes we find our hearts ‘strangely warmed’, as if the Spirit of God were lighting a fire in our hearts as we contemplate a particular course of action – as if He were in that way giving us every encouragement to go ahead; sometimes we’re aware of some ‘niggles’, as if the Spirit were pulling up some warning lights on the dashboard of our lives. Sometimes it’s through some quiet inner prompting. Sometimes it’s through a startling conviction which wakes us from our sleep. Sometimes it’s through a slowly-growing burden on our hearts, pointing us in a particular direction. As infants grow to discern the voice of their parents, and as sheep learn to recognize their shepherd’s familiar voice, so we as believers learn to discern the promptings of the Spirit, and to let the ‘peace’ of Christ act as umpire in our hearts.

When all of these four big ‘marker posts’ line up, and the ‘word’ that you’re hearing’s the same through each, then, like the pilot in that dangerous river estuary, you know that you’re hearing the voice of the Lord saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it.’

As sheep we then follow the Shepherd, glad in the knowledge that He knows the way, and will sovereignly bring us where He’s purposed we should be. As we look ahead to the coming months, we surely do so all the more persuaded of His good and guiding hand upon our life here as His church.

We’ve made the whole matter of the appointment of a new minister a matter of earnest prayer: we’ve rejoiced in His sovereign grace, we’ve looked to the Lord for direction, and we’ve submitted ourselves to His will and His Word. Confidence. Reliance. Submission. And He has directed our paths. We’re glad to say that ‘the Lord has led us on the journey’. We press on, therefore, into the future that the Lord has for us all, confident always that ‘the path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.’

Yours in the glad service of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Jeremy Middleton