Never Leave Home Without Him

Never Leave Home Without Him

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

By Pastor Jim May

Have you ever met worry wart? I’ve seen a lot of people who worried about everything under the sun. No matter what you do, what you eat or what you drink, somebody is always trying to share their fears of what might happen. If you go around listening to every warning that everybody gives you, you’ll never do anything. Fear will invade your spirit and fill your heart and you’ll feel paranoid about everything. Fear destroys faith, because we start to focus on what every negative thing that could happen, instead of focusing on God and letting Him worry about what lies ahead.

Some people say that cancer is caused by potato chips. Of course the lab rats that developed cancer were fed nothing but potato chips and they were fed chips until they would nearly burst. It would probably be the equivalent of eating 50 bags a day to you and I, and yes, I guess if you ate that many chips and nothing else that the chances are you’d probably develop some kind of disease, especially the one that makes you overly weight challenged.

Some people say that sunshine, cell phones, and electric shavers can cause cancer. Some people say that if we keep saving all of the junk that we save, sooner or later we are going to cause the continent to sink and we will all drown. People are so consumed by the fear that some unseen danger is about to destroy them that they can’t enjoy life while they have it.

The headlines of the Medical Section of the newspaper read something like this: Pickles; a Grave Danger”! The article went on to say that, in the opinion of those who had completed a study on the danger of pickles in American society, there was an absolute link proving that pickles are a terrible danger because they can cause cancer, indirectly cause airline crashes and that they are a major contributor the rise in crime across America. How did they figure that one out? Well, they tell us that about 99.9% of cancer victims had eaten pickles sometime in their lives. So have 99.7% of those who are involved in car wrecks and airplane crashes. Not only that but, in people who were born prior to 1889 who ate pickles, there is a 100% mortality rate. Pickles are terrible things. You can’t eat one and live past 130 years of age so stay away from them. This is according a report by Mr. Barry Siegel of the Los Angeles Times. (Another prime example of America’s wonderful world of journalism and news reporting.)

Now there are some things that could be legitimate reasons to worry.

When you’ve been given a medical diagnosis that is life threatening – you have good reason to worry. When the pilot opens the door of the plane and jumps with the only parachute – you have a legitimate reason for worry. When you’re on a downhill run on the side of Pike’s Peak and your brakes go out – you have a legitimate reason for rry. When you look out of your bedroom window and you see a shark swimming above eye level – you have a legitimate reason for worry.

There are times when it seems that there is a very legitimate reason to worry. In the passage of scripture that we will read tonight, we can see that King David had a true concern.

1 Chronicles 14:8 And when the Philistines heard that David was anointed king over all Israel, all the Philistines went up to seek David. And David heard of it, and went out against them.

If you remember, it was David who had killed Goliath when the giant was the champion of the Philistine Army many years before. David had humiliated the Philistines and they weren’t going to forget it. They had come with blood in their eye and they were out for revenge.

They had managed to defeat Saul, but now that David was king, they were worried. Would David build a kingdom that was much stronger than Saul’s? Would David invade the Philistines homeland to conquer them? They decided to do a preemptive strike to take down David’s kingdom before he had a chance to settle in and create a powerful army.

1 Chronicles 14:9 And the Philistines came and spread themselves in the valley of Rephaim. The Philistine Army, many thousands strong, covered the valley. The sight of such a large army struck fear into the heart of Israel and the cry went forth for King David to do something about it.

The Valley of Rephaim meant, “the valley of the giants”. Even in those days the people around Israel desired the land that God had promised the Children of Israel as an inheritance. In the beginning, before Joshua had led Israel across the Jordan and began to conquer the land under God’s direction, the Philistines had inhabited the Valley of Rephaim and now they wanted it back. That’s one reason that Goliath and the “giants” had been with the Philistines.