Westbury Churches Together

Do you have anything you can be thankful for today?

We recently celebrated Harvest at church: a time indeed of thankfulness and gratitude. Did you know that being thankful actually offers healthy benefits for our bodies?

Research has shown that gratitude can improve heart function, lower stress hormones, and help us bounce back from life’s setbacks.

The Bible has a lot to say about being thankful. Philippians 4:6 encourages us: ‘Do not be anxious about anything (okay, I admit it’s not an easy start!), but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God.’ For so many of us, stress and anxiety are a daily occurrence. But we’re not simply told ‘don’t be anxious’, rather we’re given a way of achieving this… through thanksgiving.

Did you know that anxiety and gratitude activate different parts of the brain? Could it be that God has given us an off switch to our anxiety if we choose to use it?

So, if you’re feeling stressed right now, try finding something – however small – to be grateful for. Developing rhythms of gratitude may be something that requires work, but being intentional about gratitude might help. Try writing down three things you’re thankful for and repeat this daily. Try saying thank you to someone or perhaps writing a note of gratitude. I believe that even the smallest prayer of thanks can open the door to God’s peace – why not try it today?

Esther McManus, Minister at Bratton Baptist Church

On revivals, quiet and loud

In his poem Dover Beach, published in 1867, Matthew Arnold pictured the tide going out of the sea of faith with a “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar”.

In some ways, Arnold’s poem was quite prophetic. Church attendance figures have plummeted since the 1860s. For the first time on record, the 2011 UK Census revealed that people who identify as Christian are now a minority in our country. Perhaps you may think that it’s all downhill from now on.

Not so fast. Newspapers are reporting an uptick in churchgoing among young adults. They are calling it “the quiet revival”. Writing in The Times, James Marriott reports that young people are looking for a “full fat faith”, with a focus on encountering God in worship and clear Bible teaching.  While all this is welcome, at least to Christian observers, to date, a renewed interest in God has not yet had a deep effect on the masses.

For that to happen we need a considerably louder revival. The last large scale Christian awakening in Britain was the 1904/05 Revival, which was especially evident in Wales, although other parts of the UK were also affected. In that short period, it is said that over 100,000 new converts were added to the membership of churches in Wales alone.

Revival means bringing back to life something that was either dead or dying. As the writer G. K. Chesterton explained, “Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.” What Arnold failed to note was that while the tide of faith may go out, it can always come back in again.   

Guy Davies, Providence Baptist Church