Verity Christian Fellowship

Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel

1 Chronicles 21:1

When David took a census of all the fighting men of Israel, God became very angry with him. I have never really understood this passage before. Why would God get so angry with David just because he wanted to know how many fighting men he could call upon if needed? After all Israel at this time was always having trouble with its neighbours and any good general would want to know what resources he has available wouldn’t he?

However God in his wisdom has given me a practical lesson just recently which has helped me understand this passage. Our church is a small fellowship of about 35 adults and the same number of children. Our outgoings are minimal and so we have never had any problem with money. This has been good as I don’t believe church should be a financial burden on people. In the past when we have had a need God has always prompted someone to provide and we have had some generous gifts. It has also meant that when there has been a time of trouble, such as the recent earthquake in Haiti, people have been generous and responded. I have never doubted their generosity.

However we have now outgrown the building we worship in and have been looking for new premises. We have found somewhere but this will cost considerably more than we currently spend. However I believe it within our grasp. In order to assist people to make a decision about the move, I worked out how much each person would have to pay per month. As I was doing it, I had this nagging doubt that it was not right to do so, but could not think of a rational reason not to. I thought it would be helpful for everyone to know what they would be committing to. I was surprised how little the figure worked out at.

This is where the enemy stepped in and used this information against me. For I realised that some people already give far more than this. Therefore some people give far less or even nothing. I suddenly changed from believing the fellowship to be a group of generous people to thinking of then as penny pinching.

This was not good and not true. People give out of their ability and commitment. Some don’t have much money to give (like the widow in Mark 12) but give in other ways, such as time and friendship. Others are only on the edge of the kingdom and so don’t have the commitment. Putting more burdens on them would only drive them away and not draw them in as we want to.

The truth is God had always provided when David needed it. By taking the census David was effectively saying he did not trust God to provide. I did the same thing. God has always provided for us financially as a church. By trying to analyse what we had I gave him no room to work.

It is always right that we should count our blessings. We need to do so in order that we can realise just how much God does for us and be grateful. But we should not ask how he does it or try to control them. That just takes God out of the situation.

The Lord was with Joseph and he prospered…..

Genesis 39:2

If you have ever had a problem with your computer will will know that it is possible to reset it to its default settings and that sometimes it is necessary to restart it in ’safe’ mode. These default settings are the basic settings that it was provided with at the factory. This will hopefully return the system to operate in the way it was designed to.

If only that were possible for us sometimes. Just as our computers pick up ‘bad habits’ in the form of rogue programs, trojans, viruses etc. we can pick up bad responses to things. These bad responses are learned by bad experiences which give us a negative outlooks on life. As a child if something bad happens to us we learn not to trust people or if we are not give correct guidelines we don’t learn how to behave well in a situation. We have bad lessons and so we learn bad ways. Then if someone comments over our bad attitude we say ‘its not my fault, its because of….’ and find someone or something to blame.

In reality though we are responsible for our own actions and we can decide how we should respond to any given problem. A good example of this was Joseph. He had a terrible experience. Although he was loved by his father, he was despised by his brother who made fun of him. They then beat him and sold him into slavery. If anyone had an excuse to be negative and have suppressed anger at the world around him it would be Joseph.

But Joseph displayed a positive attitude which the Bible describes as ‘The Lord was with Joseph’. We cannot say if the Lord was with Joseph because he was positive or if he was positive because the Lord was with him. These are two sides of the same coin. The point is that Joseph stayed positive and followed Gods ways which were written in his heart. This is why when he was offered the opportunity to have an affair with Potiphar’s wife he refused. He could not go against God.

Even though this landed him in prison, he still refused to be negative. So again the Lord was with him and he ended up working for the warder. Do you see the common thread? Even though things seemed black Joseph refused to be beaten and become a complainer. And because he always went at whatever he did with a positive attitude, the Lord was with him.

So perhaps if we can always go at things with a positive attitude and do our best, whatever it may be, and don’t let the circumstances get us down, the Lord will be with us. Let our default setting be a positive one.

Teacher I will follow you wherever you go

Matthew 8:18

There are always times when we are feeling full of the Holy Spirit and on fire for God. At those times we generally say ‘whatever you want God, Just let me know.’ But do we really mean it?

The truth is we are usually happy to do Gods will if we think it is in our comfort zone and will not cause us too much grief. But if it looks difficult and may cause us some discomfort either financially or in commitment of time or we think it is outside our talents we are not so sure.

But by limiting ourselves in this way we can prevent God really working in our lives. The Bible is full of stories of people who thought they were not up to the job but achieved great things when they actually stepped out of their comfort zone and tried. Moses and Gideon come immediately to mind. One thought he was not a public speaker and one thought he was not a warrior.

Jesus however does not look at the outward initial enthusiasm but at the heart. That is why in Matthew he responded in what seems a discouraging way to what was probably a genuine flush of enthusiasm by the scribe. He knew that when it came down to it the man’s head would not be able to meet the commitment his heart was jumping to.

The second man, a disciple, was perhaps being more honest and his head was telling him to get things sorted first before making the commitment. However Jesus knew he would always come up with excuses not to act but these were just that – excuses. When truly judging priorities they were not ultimately important.

The truth is we can always come up with excuses for not doing things. The second man thought of these straight away, Jesus knew the first man would think of them latter.

The point though is Jesus was there then. He would not be in the same place a week later. God gives us opportunities once. Each one is unique. He may give you other chances, but never exactly the same one twice. If there is an emergency or an opportunity we need to respond whilst the window is open. Once it is closed it is gone forever.

We need to properly asses each chance to make sure we are prepared to pay the price, but never underestimate Gods provision. We sometimes need to take a risk.

Some people never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. But don’t make excuses. Don’t be one of them.

I seek you with all my heart.
Do not let me stray from your commands

Psalm 119

Every year we make new year resolutions. And generally without fail, every year we break them. To me Psalm 119 reads like a very long new years resolution.’Lord I will get closer to you.’

Unfortunately we start out with good intentions but generally they come to nothing. But that should not put us off from even trying. It is believed Psalm 119 was used for teaching and as such it uses a form known as an Acrostic to help in this. This means that each section begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet, 22 section in all. Therefore if you knew the alphabet you could remember the Psalm and its teaching.

Perhaps we should do something like this to help us remember our resolutions for they do matter. You see if we really want to, we can make a difference in our community. We can count for something. We just have to keep trying. So this year lets make a resolution and try to keep to it.

If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat;
if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head,
and the LORD will reward you.

Proverbs 25:21-22

Last week the Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, took the decision to release from prison Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person who has been convicted of the 747 aircraft bombing over Lockerbie. The release was on compassionate grounds as al-Megrahi is dying of cancer and is expected to have only a few months to live. The result of this has been an international political storm with claims of all sorts of underhand deals being done. There are also doubts expressed about whether al-Megrahi was even guilty in the first place.

I cannot comment about whether he is guilty or not or whether anyone has taken or will take advantage of the situation to make deals. I do not know enough about the case to state categorically what went on and give an opinion, and knowing a little about human nature I expect there will always be people who officially or unofficially will try to gain an advantage in any situation.

The question that does interest me though, is ‘was the Justice Secretary right to release the prisoner on compassionate grounds?’

From reading the various comments from people on the news websites, the main argument against releasing him was ‘the Lockerbie bomber showed no compassion to his victims, so why should we show compassion to him?’ This is a very natural and understandable reaction. However is it the one that God would have us make?

The quote from Proverbs 25 above can be simplified as ‘Show compassion to your enemies and they will feel shame for what they do’. I don’t know that Libya was Scotland’s enemy or that they feel shame for what happened at Lockerbie. But from the waving of Scottish flags at al-Magrahi’s return it is obvious that they now feel more respect than they probably did.

Also it is true that terrorists show no compassion. That is the futility of what they do. It is why terrorism will never achieve anything. Indiscriminate killing just hardens people’s hearts and their resolve to get revenge and not give in. And by showing no compassion in return we are becoming just like them. We may not instigate the spilling of innocent blood but we are certainly doing nothing to prevent it. We need to prove we are better than them. That we have higher ideals, higher values.

Jesus instructed us that if an enemy strikes us, we should turn the other cheek. This is not simply doing nothing and giving in, but is showing resistance. By releasing al-Megrahi we have proved that we will not be brought down by terrorists, but that we will stand by our principles and stand proud.

Jesus showed compassion on those who crucified him when he said ‘Father forgive them, they know not what they do’. These words marked his victory.

I therefore think that Mr MacAskill’s actions were not a submission as some would say but in fact a victory. A victory cry we should all take up.

I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified

1 Corinthians 9:27

Not many people leave comments on this site, and most comments are fairly innocuous. However one came in last week that sort of caught me off guard. It was very flattering and asked if I were a journalist by profession. I am not a journalist or professional writer in any sense so having read this I could feel my head getting bigger by the second.

But that was just the problem. My pride got the better of me. For you see the programme that formats this site had identified the message as SPAM. Now I am not very technically proficient in these matters and I could see nothing wrong with the message, so I let it go. But something inside me had nagging doubts. It was too flattering.

So I investigated further and found that within the post was a link to a web site selling pharmaceuticals. I then checked back on a number of previous comments and found the same thing.

Now maybe this site has some special interest to those working in the pharmaceutical industry, but I doubt it. It may also be that those who sent the comments were totally innocent and their computers are infected, but the incidence of this was very high. Only one external comment was not so affected. I can therefore conclude that this is how some people try to get hidden advertising onto the site, and in that case I can only thank God that the links were not worse.

The point of all this is that the enemy can trick us if we are not careful. He will not trick us by obvious deceits but by very subtle ones. If we are not careful it is easy to fall into sin and before we know it we are trapped.

However, the enemy usually overplays his hand and gives the game away. In this case the flattery was too much.

The answer is to always follow the rules. Don’t try and convince yourself that you are a special exception and that God has given you special permission. He has not. If you stick to the rules you can stay on the path and ultimately you will be happier.

In my case I will take more notice of what the system tells me in future.