A community that speaks

A community that speaks:
A talk by Helen Thorne-Allenson at the BCUK Growing a Culture of Care event in Bournemouth, November 2025.

Chapters

00:00
The Importance of Community and Love

09:12
Understanding and Supporting Struggles

17:57
Practical Ways to Help

25:48
The Role of Scripture in Healing

36:04
Building a Supportive Church Community

Creators and Guests

Host

Helen Thorne-Allenson

Director of Training and Resources at BCUK

What is The BCUK Podcast?

Equipping churches for conversation and counsel

Helen (00:00)

As we ⁓ come together again for our second session, let me begin in prayer. Father, thank you so much for what we've been hearing so far this morning. Thank you that you are a God who is love. And thank you that you have called us to be a community of that love, where we speak the truth in love to one another, where we are equipped for works of service in that attitude of love.

Father, it is no small thing to be invited to be part of a community like this. We pray, Lord, that you will help us now to think practically about how to love our brothers and sisters well. We ask all of this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Well, it is indeed a privilege to be part of the community of the church. We don't deserve it. We have been called and chosen and saved to be part of this community. But part of this community we are. And it is a community where we are loved, where we are safe, where we are forgiven, where we are equipped, and where we are called to love one another well. But what does that actually look like?

On a Sunday by Sunday basis, on a Wednesday by Wednesday basis, when we are speaking with each other, when we are meeting together for Bible study, when we are bumping into each other in Sainsbury's, what does it mean to be a community that loves, a community that has Jesus very much at the centre of our conversations?

Well, I'd like us to imagine that we have a friend called Sam in our church. I'm gonna make Sam ⁓ female, but you can imagine a different kind of character if you would like. Sam is a young woman. She's single and she is struggling at work. She has got a boss who just cannot be pleased. Time and time again, he is making demands of her that she cannot fulfill.

And he is so critical of her time and time again. She's now waking up feeling anxious each day. She's waking up feeling anxious at night as well. Her sleep is diminishing. Her blood pressure is rising and she is struggling to pray about it. It all feels so overwhelming that she can't even find the words to talk to the Lord about what is going on. And she comes to you.

to ask for help.

What's your first reaction if a conversation like that had on Sunday morning? What would you be feeling? How might you pray? What, if anything, would you share from God's word?

Well, if you are a fairly normal group of Christians, and I'm going to work on the assumption that you are, there will be a range of responses going on in our hearts. One is, get me out of here. I don't want to have this conversation. It might be because we're busy. It might be because we don't feel gifted, but we just want to run. I'm guessing there's not a lot of people in that category here. We kind of self-select on a Saturday morning like this, that we actually want to be doing some pastoral care.

But in our churches there will be people that just want to run away. There was a lovely, lovely, godly man in one of the churches I've been at over my 35 years following Jesus and he said to me, Helen, I will do anything you ask other than one thing. Do not make me sit next to someone who is crying. I will not do it. Very excitingly, about 10 years later,

and I was in tears over something. He said, Helen, come and sit near me. Isn't it amazing how the Lord works? But for some in our congregations, we will want to run away from conversations like this. For others of us, it's not so much we want to run, it's more that we want to refer. This is the moment where we hear this conversation, we hear these words, and we just start scanning the church for somebody else. Maybe it's the pastor.

Maybe it's a woman who is known to be compassionate and wise. We just look around and go, let me refer this on so I don't have to deal with that.

Maybe there are a few of us that want to fix. Yes. Now, here are the four things you need to do. This is how you talk to your boss. This is how you deal with your anxiety. This is how you deal with your prayerlessness. And this is how you deal with your sleeplessness. And if you follow my advice in these four ways to the letter, you will be sanctified. Don't worry about Jesus at all. I've got the answer. Well, we wouldn't be quite that bold, maybe.

But sometimes we can lean in that direction. There's something in us that we want to make it better for the people around us. And there is good in that instinct, but we are finite. We are limited. We can't make it better. Of the three, that's the one that I tend towards the most. I am so grateful for a pastor a couple of churches ago who got alongside me.

and with a big smile on his face, he was a man I trusted very well, said to me, Helen, you do great work. Can you just do me a favor? Take the superwoman cape off. Nobody needs super Helen. We've already got a savior. Concentrate on pointing to him. He did it gently with a smile. I was humbled.

He was right. We can't fix people. Our call is to walk alongside Sam in whatever our gifts might be and that will look different for different people in the room in the church. But our call is to walk alongside Sam in her struggles, helping her to refix her eyes on Jesus and to do that gently and humbly.

What might we pray? Well, maybe we'll go for the good old takeaway prayers. Lord, take away the anxiety. Lord, take away the sleeplessness. Lord, take away the struggle. Maybe we might even venture into Lord, take away this boss. There might be a whole list of takeaway prayers. We're really good at defaulting to those. But how about richer prayers? Prayers that look at how she can grow in the middle of this. How she can grow in her trust, how she can grow in her love.

how she can grow in her patients, how she can turn to the Lord differently, how she can grow in her community with those around her in ways that will help her to persevere.

We have choices about what to say to Sam after the Sunday service. It might be, can I bring round a meal? I mean, that is a lovely thing to offer. And I do have a sneaking suspicion that lasagna is a love language of the evangelical church. I mean, any problem and we'll take one round. And that's not a wrong thing to do. But are we going to stop there? Or are we actually going to say something that encourages her heart as well?

They're choices that we need to make. How about the Bible? Are we gonna say anything about that at all? Are we gonna run from God's word? This doesn't feel like a moment to open God's word. This feels like a moment where we just want to say something vaguely encouraging. Or maybe at the other extreme, are we just going to hear a key word in her sentence and try and find a verse that matches that? And just, it ends up being a bit simplistic. Or are we going to try and spend a bit

longer speaking with Sam, going a little bit deeper, helping her connect scripture to her heart. These are all choices for us to make. And the choices we make will have a big impact on Sam, they'll actually have a big impact on us, and they'll have a big impact on the wider church as well. And what we're going to look at in this session

is some principles, looking at who God is, and then some resultant practicalities of how we can respond. And we'll ground that in how we might love Sam well in the middle of her struggles. We're not aiming to be doctors. We're not aiming to be therapists. We are aiming to be brothers and sisters in Christ who are loving, as Steve was encouraging us to love in that first session.

So just to recap very briefly on what Steve was saying, God is love and God loves. That is who he is as well as being what he does. 1 John 3 and verse 1 says, see what great love the Father has lavished on us. That is who we are. God is a loving God. And that love means that he does not turn away from us in our mess. I don't know about you, but.

When my life is going astray, either through suffering or through sin, or maybe more commonly through both, I tend to imagine God turns his back on me at that point. Surely God would want to turn his back on a messy human being. And yet scripture is so full of examples of God turning towards the messy. God coming for those who need a doctor.

in Jesus when he was walking the earth, moving towards the tax collectors, moving towards the prostitutes, milving towards the sinners, moving towards the broken. The story of the prodigal son, the father watching out for his son's return and not wagging an irritated finger but hitching up his dress, running towards his son. The arms are outstretched, welcome my son.

God has a posture of love towards the broken, a movement towards the broken. And what we want Sam to know is that God is moving towards her. God loves her. God is not taking a posture of irritation towards her. It is not a case of will you please stop being angry and pull yourself together, but an invitation to come to the Father who loves her so very much.

How might we reassure Sam that God is helping her, not hiding from her? Well, maybe we start our response simply by thanking her for being willing to share. It will not have been easy for her to utter those words that she is struggling.

We can thank her. We can reassure her that the very fact that she is speaking means that the spirit is at work. And that brings hope. We can reassure her that God is looking compassionately upon her. We can reassure her that the church is looking compassionately upon her. And that can help the conversation to flow.

But let's dig a little deeper. It's not just God loves it, as if that was just one very simple category. Part of God loving is God knowing. As Psalm 139 reminds us, we cannot go from the heights or the depths or the east or the west to get away from the Lord. And that is not a sort of a malevolent surveillance kind of thing. It's not God is looking at you in a George Orwell sense.

It is a God knows because he is the father who cares. He is the shepherd that is looking after his flock. And he doesn't fall asleep. He takes an interest in his children. And he calls us therefore to take us an interest, for us to take an interest in the people around us as well. We have a God who knows, but we cannot know fully like God. If we are to...

have any hope of pointing Sam to God, we need to get to know her as well as we can. We want to emulate God in that knowledge, although being very humble in the fact that we can never know as well as he does. And that is going to mean listening. That is going to mean accepting that we don't know what she's going through. As the old saying goes, when you've met one person with anxiety,

You have met one person with anxiety. There is no such thing as this is anxiety and everybody experiences it the same way. Therefore I know what I need to say next.

What way might we ask Sam to get to know her better? I'd love to understand what you're going through more.

Can you tell me a little bit more about what it's like at work? Can you tell me a little bit more of what it's like at night? We want to make sure that conversation is happening in a ⁓ safe place. If we're in coffee after church, we might just want to move a few feet away from other people so we're not overheard.

But we can go a little bit deeper. And maybe we can arrange to meet up with Sam later in the week. Tell me more, how do you experience your anxiety? I know what anxiety feels like for me, but what does anxiety feel like for you?

What's happening day by day? When your boss says that to you, what's going on in your head? What's going on in your heart? Where is God in all of this?

Now, Sam might want to share a lot with us. She might want to share a little, that's okay. There's no forced sharing in the Church of God. But we take what she wants to share with us and we respond to it gently.

We ask, we allow her to share her life so that when we come to speak, we can speak wisely into a real situation.

we may want to reflect on the fact that we have a God who sustains us. I love that God made us to be embodied souls and I love that he takes seriously the part that our bodies play in our experiences. We see that in Elijah's life, in 1 Kings 19 maybe. Elijah had just done this.

extraordinary ⁓ thing of standing up for the living God and he had seen incredible acts of power from the Lord. But then the threat started coming. Then he needed to run in order to save his own life. And he gets exhausted. He gets burnt out. He gets terrified. He gets to the point that he doesn't want to carry on anymore.

I suspect there would be some conversations with Elijah that might go a little bit like this. Now Elijah, how is your trust of the Lord going at the moment? Can we just look to see if maybe you're thinking about the Lord a little wrongly? Can I suggest that we just read a passage of scripture together and remember exactly what your call is as a man of God?

I'm so glad God didn't treat Elijah like that.

Things that were said may have been true, but that is not what Elijah needed to hear. And that's not always the first thing that people in our churches need to hear either.

Elijah got a nap and then he got a meal.

and he was allowed to rest. And then the calls to be thinking and persevering came.

As churches, we want to be passionate about helping one another look after our bodies. Now, there will be limited ways we can do that in the church. Church is not a place of medication. We go and see the GP for that. Church is not a place of specialized medical care. Church is not even a gym, though I do know of a few churches that actually do have gyms in the church building. It's a wonderful sense of outreach, nourishing for the body and soul. But that's not ever going to be mainstream. But as a community,

We can go for a walk together. We can have meals together. We can invite each other round for nutritious food. We can take someone to Sainsbury's or your supermarket of choice to do the shop. We can give them a lift to the GP. There are the practical things we can do to help each other. With Sam, maybe we will want to take her a meal.

Maybe we will want to help her get some exercise because anxiety is really helped by regular exercise. Maybe we will want to give her a lift to the GP. Maybe we'll go practically a bit beyond that. Maybe we will want to think about HR strategies. Maybe we will want to help her get in touch with her HR advisor or something like that and think about how best to respond to this boss.

who is saying things that are so unkind.

But there will be a point where we want to move beyond that practical and start to talk about God because we have a God who speaks. We have a God who speaks through his word and in Psalm 119 we are reminded that his word is authoritative, it is sufficient, it is good, it is beautiful. And we see that when God speaks, we see this in Psalm 1, that we are invited to respond to his speech.

It's not a case of God speaking to us in his word and us noting it down and thinking, gosh, that's rather interesting, isn't it? The Bible is different to the complete works of Shakespeare. We are supposed to read it in a very different way. There is an intimacy there, a response that is called for, a relationship that is being fueled.

and the Bible changes us. As we engage with God's word, well, it is sharper than a two-edged sword. We become more like Christ as we read his word that has been inspired by the Spirit and we respond to his word in ways that are enabled by the Spirit. That is one of the big ways, or one of the big components of the ways in which we change.

As we speak God's word out, not just in preaching, not just in teaching, but in conversations as well, that is how we help each other mature. That is how we help each other grow.

For Sam, we might need to remind ourselves that God is speaking to her in the middle of this struggle. It's very easy to have a gospel gap. What do I mean by a gospel gap? Some of you may have heard that term before. It is the gap between our functional theology, our taught theology. They're two different things. What we're taught on a Sunday is this, that God is sovereign, that God is good, that God is loving. And most of us will nod along with that.

We will listen to the sermon wonderfully preached on the sovereignty of God and we will go, yes, the Lord is my King. We will sing the hymn about God being our King and we will praise the Lord because his rule is so precious. It may be someone that leads services in your church and you might even pray that people will know that as a church we will know his loving Lordship. You might even turn to someone.

and speak about the sovereignty of God. And yet when I get home, even 30 minutes after a service like that, when that text message comes telling me of the latest disaster, I do a complete headless chicken routine because in my head everything is out of control. My taught theology is that God is sovereign. My functional theology is that I'm a headless chicken and the world is spiral.

And it is as we speak with one another, as we take what we hear preached and taught, and we turn that into conversation that is rooted in people's experience, that that gap shrinks. And even when that text message comes telling me the latest disaster in my family or in the world or whatever it might be, I still believe in that moment that God is sovereign and good.

We have a God who speaks.

yet we do struggle to speak. In that quiet coffee after church, in that midweek chat, sometimes we pull back from wanting to open God's Word. Sometimes we are people who sit there and go, ⁓ I'm not sure people really want me to talk about Jesus right now. I'm not sure this feels like a Jesus moment. Maybe we just, our mind goes blank.

You know, maybe we have read the Bible every day for the last 50 years, but when it comes to that conversation, there is not a single verse of scripture in our head. We feel like the entire Bible has fallen out of the bottom of our brain. Maybe we just worry that people are going to disagree and we can't find the words to defend.

Well, we do want to be sensitive. If someone is absolutely adamant that they do not want to talk about God, then we do not impose that upon them. within the church, often people do want to talk about God, especially if they've just been there on a Sunday morning. We don't impose, but we can invite. And often people will say yes. And if we truly care, we will at least want to point them to Jesus.

We will at least want them to know that God cares because in Him, that's the best knowledge, that's the best love, that's the best help, that's the best hope.

And whilst we might respect their desire not to chat, well we will respect their desire not to chat. Within our hearts we will want that for them. Because where better is there to go for that strength?

We will need to do that with gentleness. We will need to do that with wisdom. We might want to be praying for ourselves that we will indeed speak words about God that are humble, that are wise, that are able to show real love, that we will go slowly, not expecting Sam to be ready for that clincher verse that's gonna show her how not to be anxious today, but maybe start with just a tiny little bit of lament.

or a tiny reminder of God's presence.

We might want to pray for ourselves that what comes out of our mouths will be honouring to Christ and helpful. We might also want to spend a little bit of time preparing our hearts and our voice to speak. We want to avoid platitudes. It'll be fine, Sam, don't worry. I have no knowledge that it's going to be fine. It might be fine. It might not be fine.

We don't want the platitudes to come out. We want to be faithful. We don't want to come out with words that are irresponsible. My favorite irresponsible phrase is, call me anytime. It is not wise. Boundaries are good, not to keep people away, but to remind ourselves that we are all finite. I am pastorally useless at three o'clock in the morning.

We can all be clear that we want to talk, we want to hear from one another, happy to get a WhatsApp message from you anytime, but please be aware that my phone is off overnight and actually sometimes it can take me a couple of days to get back. Let's be honest about the support that we can offer. But we do want to share God's word with expectancy, not out of a sense of duty.

I went to a conference and Helen said I should open my Bible so I probably should. My pastor thinks it's a good idea too. But no, because there are words of life here, there are words of beauty here, there are words which bring hope and help to the most downcast of hearts and we want that for people. We share God's word expecting him to act and to do so well.

But we do also want to prepare our hearts to share with humility because whilst God's Word is perfect, our use of it is not. I cannot just randomly pick a verse out of the Bible and slap it onto a person's life and expect it to suddenly make everything right. We need such care.

I call that playing spiritual snap when we're trying to be over simple. I've played it many times in my life. I've had it played on me as well and it doesn't work. It's you're having a conversation with somebody and you hear the word anxiety and so that's it. Snap, do not be anxious about anything. Or we hear someone talking about their struggles with purity. Snap.

Do not let there be any hint of sexual impurity.

Those verses aren't wrong. They are beautiful words from scripture given to us by the God who loves us. But there is a thing about timing. There is a thing about nuance and pace and positioning.

We don't want to play spiritual snap. We want to know someone and to meet them where they're at. Because the trouble is those snap verses, be holy, don't let there be a hint of sexual impurity, do not be anxious about anything. If we just slap them down, they sound like a very spiritualized version of, well, just stop it.

You're anxious? Well, don't be. You're being ungodly? Well, maybe consider being godly instead. And when you hear it said that boldly, we know it sounds slightly ridiculous. If someone could stop being anxious, they would stop being anxious. If they could just be bold, they would be bold. It's not that simple. I sometimes like to think of those kinds of verses, destination verses. If we phrase it like,

I'm so sorry life is so hard at the moment. I'm wondering, can I walk with you? Can I walk with you through this season and together let's seek a life where we can pursue more purity or where we can pursue more trust. It becomes a sense of direction at that point rather than a sticking plaster. There is a little bit more hope in that.

But bottom line, when we're a conversation, when we get to the point, having listened and listened and listened, having loved, where we want to start sharing a little bit more of God's word, we start with where they're at. Is there a verse that's encouraging you at the moment? Why would we start with what's encouraging us rather than what's encouraging them? Let's ask them what God is already doing. Meet them where they are at.

Or if our minds are going blank or if they are not able to come up with something as many people who are struggling can't. If it's Sunday morning, shall we think together? Is there anything in the sermon that we've just heard that can encourage us both today? I think pastors up and down the land would be dancing if they thought that actually in the pews, in the chairs, midweek over coffee, people were saying, how did last week's sermon

How does that speak into our situation today? Can we be doing that? It's a simple question to ask, to tease out together. We don't have to find the right answer. We explore together. Or maybe this, if it's a, if I haven't been to church that week and you've bumped into them, are there any Bible pictures that describe how you're feeling right now? Pit, desert, enslaved.

darkness. What are the Bible pictures that encapsulate the experience tossed around by the storm? The Bible has given us so many pictures to describe pain and sometimes pictures are easier to grab hold of than words in times of struggle. What's describing your experience right now? Or how about this one? Are there any characters in the Bible whose experiences resonating with you?

Are you feeling like a Job or a Joseph languishing in prison or a Ruth having to move from one country to another not knowing anybody and carrying great burdens of grief?

Which character resonates with you?

Maybe you might want to ask the question, what do you think the Lord is saying to you in this? Now, that's probably a question for a little further down the conversation. But with someone like Sam, maybe we can be reflecting on how the Lord is present with her, even at work, even in those conversations with the boss, the Lord is there. What difference could that make to Sam to know that when she is having that conversation with her boss, that she is not having that conversation alone?

but God by his spirit is with her. It doesn't make everything better, but it takes her from isolation to community. What would it make difference to Sam to know that she is loved? Even on those days when it feels like she can't sleep, she can't concentrate, she's not getting anything right at work, it's all spiraling out of control. She can't even formulate the words to pray and yet God still loves her.

Is that small thing that any of us can say? Well, it's a big thing, but small words that any of us can say. Will that make a difference to Sam? I think it will. But there are other places we could go. Not all in the same conversation, I hasten to add. We don't want to squish every Bible verse that we can think of into one conversation. This is about a long-term walking alongside the Sams of our churches in their struggles.

But we might also want to be thinking about, who is God in the middle of this? Has Sam or whoever else we're talking to, have they started thinking that God is the taskmaster or God is the headmaster or God is the disapproving father or God is the absent landlord? Are they starting to think of God like that?

We don't rebuke them, but can we start talking about the metaphors that are in the Bible? What it means to have God as a rock, where we can hide and be protected, a refuge where we are safe. What it means for God to be our shepherd, the one who leads and guides, the one who protects and provides, the one who knows when to press on, the one who knows when to rest.

the one who has a plan that will ultimately lead us to the victory feast where there will be no more tensions at work or any other suffering for that matter.

Can we drip feed those in?

It doesn't need to be a sermon. In fact, it probably shouldn't be a sermon. Just a few words. How about rooting the Psalms of this world in who God has made them to be? See, Sam is probably thinking of herself as the messy one, the failed one, the one that can't get it right at work one, the anxious one. She may well be defining herself by all the things that are going astray. And yet in Ephesians 1, we see something far more beautiful.

We see that Sam is the chosen precious child of the living God, who is lavished with grace, who is forgiven, bought back at a price, who is adored, who is equipped, who is indwelt, who is safe and being kept safe for heaven. That is who she is. Can we help Sam know that?

Can we help her to start to pray again, baby steps? She's probably not gonna do a long prayer in the next few days, but can we help her to know that prayer is a privilege, that prayer is an act of dependency, that we don't have to be all shiny before we come to the Lord, that actually we can mumble and bumble our prayers and that's okay, that we can shout at the Lord, I don't understand this injustice.

Can we help her see that prayer is personal and powerful? Can we help her work out what is getting in the way? Can we take her to wonderful verses in the Song of Songs, where there are beautiful reminders that the beloved and the lover who represent God and the church, the man says to the woman, I love to hear your voice. A little picture of what God says to us. I love to hear your voice.

Can we help her pray through lament? She doesn't have to start with prayers of triumphant I will persevere. She can start with Lord, I hate this, I am struggling. I don't know why it's all going so wrong. Please help me. An outpouring, but an outpouring to the Lord, not to the pillow. Hosea reminds us there are two ways to pray. We pray to the Lord, or we pray to our beds. We cry to the Lord, or we cry into our pillows.

Helping her to cry to the Lord is such better place for her to be. Can we help her to ask her questions? Habakkuk is full of questions. Why Lord? How long Lord? I'm paraphrasing here, but you cannot be serious Lord. All of these words come out in Habakkuk and the other minor prophets. Can we help Sam pray like that? Can we help her ask God for what she needs?

Maybe to say sorry for where she has doubted him. Not saying sorry for being anxious. Not say sorry for being hurt. But maybe turning around from when she has been believing that God doesn't love her and coming back to a place where he does.

Can we encourage Sam to be talking more and more about her circumstances with the people around her? She's not designed to be an island. It's wonderful that she's spoken to us, but can we help her to relate, to know that the whole community of the church is invested in her as we weep with her, as we mourn with her in the things that are hard, and as we look forward to rejoicing with her when things get better? Now that doesn't mean everyone in the church needs to know everything.

That would be hideous. But can there be a small group of people in the church, all committed to loving the Psalms of our churches, all committed to speaking?

And maybe we can help her tease out that maybe there are some things that she can't change like her boss right now. Maybe eventually she can get a new job or her boss might change. But for now, this cannot be changed. But maybe she can grow in her trust. Maybe she can grow in her perseverance. Maybe she can grow in her hope. Can the community of the church help her with that?

And can we talk her through what it would be like to change in some of those areas, to take off her old self, to have her mind renewed, and to put on her new self as it says in Ephesians 4. That is the simple model of change that the Bible puts out. Now here too, we need to be nuanced. This is not take off anxiety, read the Bible a bit more, and then go forward bouncing through life like a bunny in clover as if there are no more problems. That would be trite and horrible.

But what we can do is help her just find one thing, maybe one thought that keeps cropping into her mind, I'm so useless. And just for weeks, just walk with her as she catches that I'm useless thought and notes it as an old self thought, something that is not in accord with what God would say of her. And as she catches that, I'm useless thought and notes it as an old self thought.

Maybe we can encourage her to think about the place that she has in God's church, the gifts that she's got, the pivotal role that every Christian has in the mission of the church, the difference that she is making as the Spirit then enables her to in her workplace. And little by little begin to understand that she is loved, that she is gifted, she is equipped.

and so little by little that I am so useless thought morphs into I'm struggling but equipped and I know I have purpose.

Is that gonna change everything? No. But is it gonna start to change her experience? Just a little bit. Yes, it will.

And along the way, just very briefly as we come to a close, we can be sharing little snippets of testimony of our own life. We don't want to over talk about ourselves when people are struggling, but actually it does help if people know they're not the only one who's struggling. It does help if people know that struggling with a boss...

I'm sorry, I'm just looking at my boss now as I have that. This is not autobiographical here. Having bosses that are tricky is quite common. It can be useful to know that anxiety is common for Christians. It can be useful to know that sleeplessness can be common for Christians. Sharing those snippets and how we have been able to turn to the Lord in those hard times can be so useful. I was helped when...

This is what I remembered when my own personal favourite is the end of Habakkuk 3. Though the fig trees may not blossom, there's not going to be grapes, there's no sheep in the field, it's a picture of desolation yet. I will praise the Lord. He will enable me to go on the heights.

It is not when the world is perfect that I praise, but when it's empty, I can still praise because I know that God is good. And as the weeks and months go on, we can be people who are hunting for grace. We can be people who are able to say, Sam, I've just seen, I just heard you were praying in the small group and your prayers were so beautiful. What a wonderful work the Lord is doing in you.

Sam, I just noticed that your prayer requests for work have changed. That is such a sign of the Lord maturing you. Sam, it is so lovely to hear you praying for your boss rather than grumbling about your boss. Now, we don't want to say those in patronising ways, but grace hunting for how someone is growing is a wonderful thing. And as we do those things, over time, slowly, gently,

humbly, then things change. Things will change for Sam. It may still be that she needs to see a GP. It may be that she needs HR employment advice. It may be that she needs to see a more specialist counsellor. Those things are not off the table. But for our part in the local church, as we love, as we listen, as we pray, as we provide,

as we help her pray differently, as we explore scripture with her, as we reflect back to her how she is changing, how she is growing, then Sam begins to do life differently. Sam begins to relate to God differently. Sam begins to relate to the people around her differently. And as she does that, the whole church begins to change.

As people see how Sam has been nurtured, people become more open about their struggles. As people see how their words have brought encouragement, they get more courageous and more willing to share God's hope with others who are struggling.

And as everyone gets involved in that, it doesn't become a, are the messy people of the church over here, and here are the sorted people of the church over here, and the sorted people will help the messy people, although the problem with that is the sorted people will get very tired. What we end up with is a church where everyone knows they are messy and in need of help.

And the church where everyone knows that they have words of encouragement and compassion and comfort and hope that they can share. And everyone loves and speaks into everyone else's life, probably in smaller groups, unless you're in a very tiny church. But as that happens, that Ephesians four piece of speaking the truth in love of one anothering happens, and we all grow in maturity. Which is a little aside,

is also really good for our witness too. This day is not about evangelism, but I don't know if you've ever read the early church, the early accounts of the early church in Acts. It is as they meet around God's word and as they provide for each other's need that the church grows.

I don't think it's any surprise that in the early church the phrase, see how these Christians love one another, was something that was touted and seen as a spur to discipleship and reaching out at the same time.