In our series looking at questions God asks us, we looked at Mark 8:34-38 where Jesus asked His disciples two challenging questions:

• What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? 

• What can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

In these verses, Jesus addressed those who wanted to be His disciple and spelled out for them the challenges of discipleship, which involved self-denial and living life on God’s terms, with God in the driving seat. We cannot expect following Jesus to be all miracles and ‘wow’ moments; we must be prepared for the suffering, opposition and persecution. The gospel way is one of paradox where to find life, we must be prepared to lose it; we have to understand that God’s foolishness is wiser than our wisdom and His weakness stronger than our strength. (1 Cor 1:18-25) Jesus forced His disciples to consider the soul, to understand that there is so much more to life than the physical, material world which dominates our thinking.

We may have everything the world offers – money, houses, cars, possessions, fame, celebrity and so on – but if we have not attended to our souls, to the part of us that money can’t buy, then we have failed to understand the meaning of life. If we forfeit something, we lose it. We can’t live in the here and now as if the here and now is all there is, without subsequently suffering loss. Moreover, His second question (‘what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?’ Mark 8:37) underlines this point. You can’t buy salvation. You can’t pay for the gift of eternal life. You can’t barter for the gift of the Holy Spirit. You can’t earn spiritual gifts with physical goods. No amount of financial giving to God’s work or hard work for God can ‘buy’ God’s favour.

To be a disciple of Jesus means that we put God first in everything. We don’t compartmentalise our lives; we don’t relegate God to the times we attend church services, but let Him into every area of our lives. When we understand the radical nature of discipleship, the consequences are amazing – those timid disciples who struggled to understand the teaching of Jesus before His death and resurrection became fearless witnesses to Him afterwards through the power of the Holy Spirit. We are called to be the same: radical, fervent, full of zeal, full of the Holy Spirit, full of faith and putting God’s will above our own. Nothing less will do in our discipleship.

Thank you to all who came to church this morning to help with cleaning and tidying. Your help is much appreciated. Garry’s fierce attire, incidentally, was because he was going to tackle the very large weeds at the side and rear of the church building!

We have finally heard from Compassion in Haiti about the devastating earthquake there. Whilst we are thankful that Bedline was not injured in this earthquake, our hearts go out to all who have suffered loss at this time. Please continue to pray for these families and for the ongoing work of Compassion in this area. Below is the text of the email we received today.

As the Vice President of the Latin America and Caribbean Region for Compassion, I have seen how the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti on 14 August has come and gone from the news cycle — faster than most people had time to register it had even taken place. That is why I am thankful I can give you a personal update on the developing situation.

Stories of loss

The earthquake took more than 2,200 precious lives – each one a beloved child, grandchild, sibling, parent, grandparent or friend. Among them were 16 children supported by Compassion — their young lives, full of potential, cut devastatingly short; as well as another 78 lives of caregivers and siblings of children and families we work with through our local Haitian church partners. Those whose sponsored children have been affected have been contacted directly.

The impact of such trauma and is ongoing. People are afraid to go home; afraid to cook in their kitchens; afraid to sleep in their beds – that trauma can have a real impact on both the children and their caregivers.

Stories of hope

However, amid the tragedy, there are so many positive stories to share – stories of the Haitian people’s resilience in the face of a crisis, and how the church is growing stronger and more responsive. We choose to keep moving, to fight, to find hope and help our fellow neighbours.

After the earthquake of 2010 and Hurricane Matthew in 2016, one of the most important things Compassion has done for the community is work with our local church partners to re-build, using para-seismic standards to stand up to future storms and earthquakes.

When visiting a church in Torbeck, after Hurricane Matthew, we saw that a school had collapsed. We went in and rebuilt the classrooms where the children gather for their Compassion activities.

In 2010, we relied on foreign engineers and technicians to build the schools that had been destroyed, because we had a hard time finding that competency in the country; but in 2016, we used the Haitian engineers who had learned from the expatriate engineers.

Fast forward five years; after this most recent earthquake, that same school building still stands when those around it have crumbled. We praise God for the work that we were able to do.

We can make a difference

Together we can make a difference and together we are indeed making a difference. We have the foundations for change, but we need support.

I strongly believe that the church worldwide has an opportunity to come alongside fellow believers to bring about effective change. Supporting the immediate needs of children and families but also building on the foundations that have already been laid to protect families for the future.

Amid the despair around us, as Christians, we can be the arms and the feet of Jesus, we can make a difference in the lives of many. This, for me, is what gives me hope in the midst of tragedy.

Please pray with us

We would love for you to join us in prayer at this time. We’ve collected some suggested points, but please pray as you feel led.

• Pray for comfort for children and families, and that Compassion’s response will bring much-needed help to the communities we serve. Pray for those who are grieving in the wake of this disaster.
• Pray for all the local church staff members and the four Partnership Facilitators living in the area who are accounting for families and providing support while also dealing with how the earthquake impacted their own families.
• Pray that the fuel shortage that has affected the country over the last year will not impact getting needed supplies into the area.
• Pray for those who need medical attention that they will be able to get the care they need and that the medical teams will have the supplies they need.
• Pray for the safety of the region. It has been unsafe to travel in the region for the past months because of gang violence and political instability.
• Pray for protection for the national office staff members who are travelling to the area to provide support.
• Pray for the Compassion Haiti staff as this earthquake brings back memories of the traumatic 2010 earthquake in the Port-au-Prince area. Ask God to bring comfort and peace to their hearts and minds.
• Pray for all those involved in the rebuilding process. Pray that the expertise to build structures that can withstand any future earthquakes or hurricanes would come to the fore, which can help protect buildings and ultimately children and families.

Bondye beni w [God bless you],

Edouard Lassegue
Vice President of Latin America and the Caribbean

I spent most of my life either gaining qualifications or teaching others to gain qualifications. Examinations were a large part of my life as the approved way of recognising a person had reached a certain standard of knowledge or ability. A qualification is, in effect, a shortcut for someone to assess your competence; it’s supposedly shorthand to inform others what you are capable of doing in a particular area.

Yet examinations are notoriously difficult to formulate in such a way as to be entirely reliable: some people may not be good at writing answers but be perfectly knowledgeable and competent in other areas; others may be so nervous during an examination that their true skills are not reflected properly in that time-limited pressure-cooker situation. Examinations are a ‘snapshot’ measure of competence which can fail to take into account a whole raft of things which are important to know. I became very disillusioned with the format of some public examinations which did not, in my opinion, give people the skills they actually needed to survive in the real world, even if their paper results were glowing.

Being qualified to do something means to be competent in a particular area, and this is often acquired only through ongoing diligence and practice, honed over years.

In the Christian life, however, competence or sufficiency does not merely come from our own skills, knowledge or effort, important though these are. There is a saying that ‘God does not not call the qualified; He qualifies the called.’ This is not to say we should not strive for competence and excellence in all we do, but it does reflect what Paul says to the Corinthians that ‘we are not competent in ourselve to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.’ (2 Cor 3:5) We must never become reliant on our own skills or qualifications but must understand that it is God who makes us competent. (2 Cor 5:6)

There are two extremes we can hold when it comes to this matter. We can feel proud of our achievements, of our competence and come to believe that success is all down to our excellence – but then we are likely to end up flat on our faces: ‘if you think you’re standing firm, be careful you don’t fall!’ (1 Cor 10;12) Or we can feel utterly useless and inadequate, daunted by the tasks God gives us and haunted by a feeling that we are not qualified to do these. The good news is that Christian service is not defined by qualifications. God is the One who ‘qualifies’ us (see Col 1:12). He is the One who makes us fit for purpose and He is able to take everything we offer to Him (however ‘inadequate’ we may feel it to be) and turn it into something greater than the sum of its parts. Are you qualified to serve God? Not by your own righteousness or skills, but by God’s grace, most definitely!

Garry spoke tonight from 1 Sam 13:11-14 about a heart aligned with God. Saul’s heart may have been aligned with God’s initially, but by this time, he did what he should not have done. He was facing a difficult situation with the Philistines coming against him and Samuel, the prophet, had not arrived. Something needed to be done as far as he was concerned; he wanted to offer a sacrifice to God to encourage the men and was not prepared to wait to do things in the prescribed way. He was, in effect, not prepared to trust God or do things His way.

Saul’s reasoning was perfectly natural and rational; he had a completely justifiable answer to give… but this does not mean he was right to do what he did. He was, in fact, completely wrong. What was actually required was a trusting heart which would acknowledge and work with God. This is what was seen in David, who was prepared to put his life on the line in the situation with Goliath, showing a disregard for the odds stacked against him because he was completely dependent on God. (1 Sam 17)

David learned to trust God way before his battle with Goliath, when he fought the lion and bear as a shepherd boy (1 Sam 17:37) There is no ‘quick fix’ to hearing God and obeying Him. Saul may have thought his solutions were perfectly rational, but he was paying lip service to God, for without faith, it is impossible to please God. (Heb 11:6) Faith factors God into our equation – and to walk with God, we need working faith and a heart that is aligned with God’s.

Not only do we need an aligned heart, we need also an undivided heart. Ezek 11:14-21 reminds us that we need an undivided heart; without this, we have split loyalties and split devotion. We may well understand that we have little personal control over life; there is also little organisational control (despite what governments may want us to believe!) God reminds us that we cannot serve two masters (Matt 6:24); we need to be whole-hearted in our devotion to God.To walk with Him, we need a heart aligned to His and a heart that is totally devoted to Him; anything else will bring failure. With a heart set apart for God alone, success is guaranteed and amazing things are possible – things that are far greater than we could ever expect without Him.

This morning, in continuing our series on ‘Questions’ (looking now at questions God asks us), we looked at the story of Jonah (Jonah 3:6-4:11). The story of the rebellious prophet Jonah is well known (especially when he ended up in the belly of a fish after going to Tarshish instead of Nineveh!), but we sometimes fail to see that even when he finally obeyed God, he was still not happy. Instead of being thrilled that the Ninevites listened to his message and repented and thus the Lord relented from sending calamity, to Jonah, this seemed wrong and he was angry (the Message version speaks of him being furious and yelling at God!) We might find such a response unusual (Luke 15:7,10 gives us the spiritual response to any one sinner who repents and speaks of celebration and rejoicing), but this highlights how our responses are often not what they should be. The Bible is nothing if not honest about God’s people!

Anger is not in itself wrong. God is described as being ‘slow to anger’ (Nahum 1:3, Ex 34:6, Numbers 14:18, Neh 9:17, Ps 103:8), but His anger is aroused by persistent sin and stubborn unbelief (see Ex 4:14, Ezek 7:3, Judges 2:12, Ps 78:21-22); His anger is righteous, caring for justice and fairness. Our anger so often is selfish, fuelled by personal prejudice, fear or unbelief, which is why Paul tells us not to sin in our anger (Eph 4:26) and why James comments, ‘human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.’ (James 1:20)

Jonah’s anger here is against God. Despite knowing God’s nature (‘I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.’ (Jonah 4:2)), this does not translate into his own actions. Grace and mercy may have rescued him from the fish, but he secretly longed for Nineveh to perish. He is so angry with God for who He is and how He acts that he wishes he were dead. (Jonah 4:3)

God’s question probes the morality of Jonah’s response, but at first Jonah is unwilling to face the deeper motivations of his heart. Anger clouds our objectivity and leaves us unable to see beyond the anger itself. Jonah goes to hide, welcoming the shade of a plant, secretly hoping Nineveh will still perish. When the plant is eaten by a worm and his shade removed, God repeats the question about anger and Jonah is forced into understanding that his anger is entirely fuelled by personal pique and selfishness.

God’s final question (Jonah 4:10-11) exposes Jonah’s selfishness, giving him the opportunity to move from selfish anger and a theologically correct but barren understanding of God to a real passion for the lost. God is not only interested in us. We are not the be-all and end-all of everything in life. It’s crucial we know we are important, loved, valued and cared for by God, but that is the launchpad to life, not the final destination. For Jonah’s understanding of God as ‘a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity’ (Jonah 4:2) to be effective, he has to reflect God’s nature. He has to be gracious and compassionate. He has to be slow to anger and abounding in love. He has to be glad that God has relented from sending calamity, because he has to be glad that the 120,000 people in Nineveh now have the same access as he does to God. We need a passion that others have the same access to God’s love that we now enjoy; we need to have God’s heart for the lost.

We don’t know what Jonah’s response to these questions was, just as we don’t know if the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son ever accepted his father’s generosity and joined in the celebrations. I think the reason these stories end like this is because the ending is still being written by our responses as well as by the responses of the protagonists. We are drawn into these stories and invited to look at them through different eyes as we hear God’s questions. ‘Is it right for you to be angry?’ (Jonah 4:4) This is a question not only to Jonah, and not only about anger. God is constantly questioning our responses, not because He doesn’t know the answers, but because so often we don’t. Emotions will always affect our actions, whereas in this question, God is bringing us back to basics, back to His right and wrong. Identifying how we feel is one thing; it’s the start of the path to emotional intelligence. But there will always be a moral foundation to our actions and feelings. Is it right for us to react to this situation, whatever ‘this’ is, in the light of who God is and who we are as children of God? Society tells us we can feel whatever we want to feel and act however we want to act, but this is not what we are called to as Christians. We are called to be conformed to the image of Christ (Rom 8:29), to actually be God-reflectors. Is it right for us to doubt God’s goodness and justice? Is it right for us to appropriate grace and mercy for ourselves and deny it to everyone else? Is it right to hoard the treasures of God, or should we be seeking to share these with others? Is it right to do God’s will grudgingly and to blame God when things don’t go our way? Only we can answer the piercing questions God asks us. What will our response be?