1st February 2025

1st February 2025


Pray (ACts)


Read (Job 9v2-3)


Message (Scott Woodburn)


I wouldn’t say that I am a man who reads poetry every day but when a poem resonates with me it tends to stick. I know most of Yeats’ “Lake Isle of Innisfree” and I adore Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”. Poems hang around our minds and speak truth to our souls at various moments of life. Even so, there are times that poems lead us down a false path. What do I mean? Take the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley for example.


Henley’s poem is well known and oft quoted but in several areas it teaches falsehood. In the first stanza, Henley gives thanks to “whatever gods may be” and speaks of his own “unconquerable soul”. Orthodox Christianity states that there is only one true God who is one yet three. Equally, although our souls are indeed immortal, it is the Lord who is sovereign over them. Human beings aren’t all conquering beings who tell God how it is going to be - quite the reverse in fact.


However, Henley’s most famous line comes at the end of “Invictus” where we read “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”. What a statement! It sounds good and some have tattooed it on their body but it is entirely untrue. The sobering reality of being human is that even when we scale the highest of heights, we still fall short of the duties which God requires. Indeed, we cannot by our own efforts achieve forgiveness of sin nor can we march into Heaven because we are captains of our souls.


Job once asked “how can a man be in the right before God?” (Job 9v2). If we decided to contend with God we couldn’t answer Him once in a thousand times. Consider your own life. You are a wonderful mother but don’t have a great relationship with your dad. You are hard worker but can’t be bothered with your children when you get home. You exercise four days a week but see an hour with God on Sunday as a waste of time.


All of us are in the same boat - we are unprofitable servants who even when we are at our best still fall far, far short of what God requires. What is to be done? I remind you of Christ’s personal and perfect obedience. Christ is the profitable servant who never once fell short. How can a man be in the right before God? By trusting Christ and resting in His finished work. I am no poet and no one will tattoo my words on their arm, but let me take Henley’s poem and offer a few changes - “I commit my immortal soul to the one true God. I am not the master of my fate but I trust the Lord’s gracious providence. Even at my best I fall far short and so by faith I trust in the obedient Christ the true captain of my soul.”   


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC


Q103 What do we pray for in the third petition? In the third petition, which is, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven,” we pray, that God, by his grace, would make us able and willing to know, obey, and submit to his will in all things, as the angels do in heaven.
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