Mark spoke from Ps 46 on Sunday morning, looking especially at verse 10: ‘Be still and know that I am God.’

We are often so busy running around seeking blessing that we fail to be still before God and, ironically, miss the blessings He has for us. We can flit from church to church or run after big name speakers,looking for spiritual thrills all the time. Psalm 46 looks at how great and awesome God is. We need to do the same.

God’s power is such that He can do amazing things with just a word, even bringing wars to an end (Ps 46:6, 9). His admonition to be still is not simply addressed to His people, but to the world, for even His enemies can do nothing when He acts. Enemies are removed; they need to stop fighting God, for He will always be the winner!

God is with us (Ps 46:7, 11). He is our refuge, our strength, our help – not only in times of ease, but in times of trouble. His command is for us to be still, just as it was to Moses before the parting of the Red Sea (‘Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.’ (Ex 14:1-15))

God brought victory to the Israelites and made a way for them where there was no way. When we are in turmoil, God has a plan He is working out. We need to be still to recognise His authority in our lives. We can take refuge in God and understand that however bad things are for us, He will fight for us and even evil forces will submit to Him.

God stops the warring. He brings us peace. He, then, gets the glory.

Last night was the family service on the theme of Samson and strength.

We had a quiz about Samson. Some questions were fairly easy:

Some were not!

By the end of the quiz, we all knew a lot more about Samson!

Then Stephen preached on his life, talking about the miraculous foretelling of his birth and how the Lord blessed him with great strength. The source of Samson’s great strength was the Spirit of the Lord working in him (Judges 14:19), but as with most gifts, there were potential problems as well. Samson was strong in body and physical strength, but he was weak in judgment and spiritual wisdom. God seems to give gifts not just to bless us but to test us, for He wants to know how we will use those gifts and if we will surrender them to Him. If we are given the gift of creativity or beauty or knowledge, will we acknowledge God in all we do and are or will we become proud and boastful? Each gift carries blessings, but also responsibilities. Samson had the gift of physical strength, but didn’t really learn how to master it. He grew up with indulgent parents and made unwise choices when it came to women. As a result his focus was more on his own comfort and needs than on serving God. He misused his gift because he lived a self-indulgent life and did not have the discipline to seek God throughout. He made life choices based on his own wants, and there were eternal consequences from these choices.

What we need and what we want are usually two different things and Satan wants us to depend on our wants. He tries to convince us that our wants are really our needs. Samson finally learned to rely on God, after he had suffered greatly (having his eyes gouged out by the Philistines and losing his great strength through the cutting of his hair.) God’s strength was channelled through him in his final act of bringing down the pillars and killing the Philistines in his own sacrifice.

Each of us has great potential, but the question remains ‘What are we going to do with our gifts?’ We need to surrender all our gifts and talents to God and involve Him in every aspect of our lives, so that we live disciplined, dedicated lives, not self-indulgent, unchannelled ones.

This morning we looked at the characters of Joab and Abner, ‘helping’ David to become king (see 2 Samuel 2 & 3). This story shows us much about how NOT to do things, since neither man was prepared to seek God and wait for His timing, learning to do things His way, and motivation counts for a lot in God’s eyes.

David is at this point in the story king of Judah. He has come a long way since being anointed king by Samuel in 1 Samuel 16 and has experienced the highs of victory (defeating the Philistine giant Goliath in 1 Samuel 17) and the lows of persecution (forced to flee from Saul’s jealousy and violence and live in the caves of En-Gedi and Adullam, even seeking refuge with the Philistines to save his life at one point.) Now he faces the challenge of putting into practice all he has learned in the wilderness. Will he continue to rely on God and do things God’s way or will he succumb to the temptations and pressures of living the world’s way?

Joab, his nephew, was, apparently, loyal to David and was a leader in the southern part of the kingdom, in Judah. Abner was the son of Ner and was the commander of Saul’s army (2 Sam 2:9), based in the northern part of the kingdom. Abner, loyal to Saul, had taken his son Ish-Bosheth and set him up as king of the northern tribes (2 Sam 2:8). There were thus two kings and two kingdoms and, predictably, as a result, there were divided loyalties. Not for nothing will Jesus later teach His disciples that “Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall.” (Luke 11:17)

The two clash in 2 Samuel 2:12-17, resulting in a battle where men are senselessly killed, including the death of Joab’s brother, Asahel, killed by Abner (2 Sam 3:23). Violence begets more violence and the seeds of future problems between Joab and Abner are sown here. In the next chapter (2 Sam 3), we see how Abner is offended by Ish-Bosheth, who questions him as to why he has slept with Saul’s concubine, and how he decides that David is the better bet to back. Effectively, he defects to David’s side. In terms of gaining a fierce strategist and an opportunistic schemer, David has definitely won. But if we analyse the characters of Joab and Abner a little more closely, we can see that there is little to rejoice over from God’s point of view.

Abner may use pious language to defend his decision to Ish-Bosheth and other leaders, invoking God as he does, but the clue to what motivates him is in the phrase “if I do not do for David what the Lord promised him on oath.” (2 Sam 3:9) Similarly, Joab’s fury at David’s forgiveness towards Abner, resulting in his murder of Abner, may be defended by him on strategic grounds, but the real motivation is given in 2 Samuel 3:27: “And there, to avenge the blood of his brother Asahel, Joab stabbed him in the stomach, and he died.” Selfish motives, personal pride, unforgiveness and resentment are often the real reasons behind our actions. As T.S. Eliot acknowledged in his play ‘Murder in the Cathedral’: ‘The last temptation is the greatest treason/ To do the right deed for the wrong reason.’

Both Joab and Abner believed that they were doing God’s will; they believed they were helping David to fulfil his kingly destiny. But we have to be aware that motivation counts for as much in God’s kingdom as action: the ends never justify the means. The means these two men employed were not God’s means, for God acts always out of love. The difference between Joab and Abner and David was not that David never sinned: we know assuredly that he did, for the Bible is nothing if not brutally honest! But David learned to wait on God; he had a spirit of forgiveness and knew how to cry to God for mercy. The psalms reveal David’s heart to us (Ps 27:14; Ps 37:1-6) and show us he has learned to trust God, the faithful one, to give him the desires of his heart.

The ways God wants us to learn include laying down our lives and our weapons in order to find victory. We cannot understand this with reason but need the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit to learn more about how death ultimately is the way to life (John 12:24-25, 1 Cor 2:14). Then we will have the courage to believe that waiting and trusting are not irrelevant lessons in our modern society and to learn daily to trust and wait on God.

At the rate we’re going through the book of James, we might take nearly as long as we did to study Romans! Tonight we looked at just one verse: “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” (James 1:5)

All of us lack wisdom to some extent; certainly, none of us can claim to be as wise as God (see Romans 11:33). We are encouraged to ask God for wisdom (just as Solomon did). Wisdom can be defined as ‘practical application of knowledge’, ‘spiritual insight as to what to do in any given situation’ or, in Garry’s words, ‘wisdom is the product of survivable mistakes’! Wisdom in the natural sense is acquired through knowledge, reading, learning and applying what we learn to real-life situations. In some ways, spiritual wisdom is similar, in that our main source of wisdom is going to be the Bible (see Col 3:16), teaching us more of the character, nature and ways of God. There is, however, a wisdom that comes directly from the Holy Spirit (see 1 Cor 12:7-8, 1 Cor 2:6), given to us when we need it, perhaps on special occasions, often for the benefit of others. God’s wisdom may at times be hidden (meaning we have to dig to find it, as with hidden treasure), and certainly it is vastly different to our normal ways of thinking (see 1 Cor 1:18-25).

Wisdom does not necessarily look glamorous or fill us with confidence: Paul talked about preaching in ‘weakness with great fear and trembling’ (1 Cor 2:3), but ultimately that helps us to rely not on our own strength, but on God’s power (1 Cor 2:4-5). This verse in James reassures us that if we ask God for wisdom, He will undoubtedly give it to us. He is generous, liberal, a gracious Father who loves to give good gifts to His children. He gives to us ‘without finding fault’, not reproaching us for any lack we may have, but being willing to supply what is required to meet all our needs. He does not patronise us or act in a condescending way to us, looking down on us for our lack of wisdom. Instead He is generous, able to give us the ‘Spirit of wisdom and revelation’ (Eph 1:18) so that we may know Him better. That knowledge shapes our lives, aligning us with His truth and allowing us to shine forth, reaching out to call others to know Him too. We grow in love, in compassion and in kindness as His wisdom gives us insight and practical experience.

Our response is to receive in faith and to obey those gentle whispers from the Spirit, which may well not make any sense to us, which may well leave us in fear and trembling, but which can unlock situations and allow God to move in situations. He is the One who receives all the glory!

Tony Brown preached from Isaiah 29:13-14 last night, talking about how to honour God with our lives as well as with our lips. He talked about the wrong attitudes we can have towards God and in particular looked at how living in a routine can encourage complacency in us and how focussing on traditions and rituals can lead us into pride and self-righteousness.

Routines are a necessary part of everyday life, bringing structure and organisation into our lives. But the danger of a routine is that it leads us to live life on ‘autopilot’. The Israelites, with their regular, twice-daily habit of offering sacrifices for sin, could easily forget why they were doing what they were doing. Religion can easily become routine. We can be doing all the right outward things, such as Bible study, prayer, attending church meetings and so on, but can still be neglectful of that intimate, personal relationship with God which we all need.

God has given His only Son for us. He has given the ultimate sacrifice. How, then, can we be satisfied with half-hearted service? Revelation 3:15-16 warns of the dangers of being lukewarm. We need God to breathe life into all we do and we need to be prepared to vary our routines so that we do not become complacent in our worship.

One other danger is traditionalism, where we pay more attention to traditions (even those originally designed to honour God) than we do to God Himself. If we focus more on the tradition than on the God the tradition is aimed to serve, we are in trouble. The Pharisees were like this, inventing more and more rules for people to follow, but failing to honour God in their hearts. They rebuked Jesus because of hand-washing issues, but His reply was that their traditions had led to self-righteousness and pride (see Mark 7:1-15, where Jesus quotes from Is 29:13).

When we rely on traditions for our self-righteousness, rather than trusting in Christ’s perfect sacrifice and understanding that our only boasting should be in the Lord, we can end up with a prideful heart or a judgmental heart. The prideful heart stops us depending on God and makes us believe that it’s our own achievements and accomplishments which satisfy God. We lose any sense of reverence, gratitude and awe and start thinking it’s all down to us.

When we allow ourselves to feel superior to others, we quickly fall into the sin of judging others. Instead of showing compassion and love to those who do not believe, we condemn them. Again, the Pharisees showed this attitude towards Jesus becasue He ate with sinners (see Matt 9:9-13). We need to love sinners as Jesus did, learning what He meant by ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’ (Matt 9:13, quoting Hosea 6:6), rather than believing ourselves superior to them. We are all in need of God’s grace. When we realise this, there is no room for pride or judgmental attitudes and we will learn to honour God through every part of our living.

Stephen continued his series through Genesis this morning, looking at Genesis 13. Here, we meet Abram and Lot as they leave Egypt, in a position of wealth, owning many possessions. They retrace their steps, going back to where they started from before they went to Egypt. If we leave our walk with God, we have to go back to where we were with God before. Abram had tried to go it alone, sorting out his own solutions, and now he had to go back to where he had previously built an altar.

Here, Abram ‘called on the name of the Lord.’ (Gen 13:4). He returned to that place of humble penitence and dependence on God. Can we be humble enough to realise when we have strayed and left God’s side? Can we once again leave our lives in God’s hand, waiting for His guidance?

In Genesis 13:5-13, we see problems developing between Abram’s and Lot’s herdsmen. Quarrels and disputes arise. Abram has learnt enough to let Lot choose which way he would prefer to go, looking to his relative’s needs before his own. Lot chooses according to what he can see with his earthly eyes. He decides to go for the ‘green plain’, the land that looks good. Abram is left with apparently the poorer choice, but he is now back in the place of surrender to God and here, he once more hears God’s promises to him (Gen 13:14-17).

It’s only when we are in that place of promise that we can receive God’s word. Abram is promised a good land, full of abundance and joy. He is promised descendants who can’t be counted. We need to see life with spiritual eyes, not looking at things from an earthly perspective as Lot did.

Things might not look so rosy for us. We may be facing difficult situations and circumstances and it might look as if nothing is happening, or God is not working. Are we looking with earthly eyes or spiritual eyes? God can lead us to a place of abundance and joy. Abram’s response is once again to build an altar to God. (Gen 13:18). Is God fully involved in leading and guiding us? Are we willing to surrender our whole lives to Him and wait for His leading?