I was sharing with a few people out there before we prayed about how I have a struggle with Psalms, not in a, you know, I don’t think it should be there in the book or I disagree with what it is, but in regards to doing a preaching series from Psalms.  I’m not going to tell you what’s in these Psalms, but what do you do with the end passages of Psalm 21 and what do you do with the end passages of Psalm 137?  And how do you preach Psalm 119? 176 verses, man, what do you do with all that? Psalm 137 is that one that says by the rivers of Babylon where I sat down, but the last couple of verses are not very appealing.

So when I was here last time and I preached, I was talking to Ross and Ross said, well, I need you to preach in a month’s time. And you said you’d do a Psalm, so he gave me a Psalm.

So at least he gave me a Psalm which was quite easy to preach from. Trusting God in difficult times. He even sent me the PowerPoint.

But I want to kick it off by saying, don’t you think it’s way easier to say things than to actually do things. Like, you know, you hear the news of someone being sick, for example, let’s say it’s easy in words to show sympathy.

But it’s another thing to be able to do something about it. You know, so someone gets a bad prognosis and you feel awkward because you think to yourself, well, what am I going to do about that? Other than say, well, I know God will be with you. We know God’s going to be with them, but yeah.

And you can feel a little bit kind of hopeless, perhaps when tough things happen.  It’s much easier to give words than actions. God will look after you. When we hear about building a church in Tonga, it’s way easier to say, I’m happy to pray for you.  A little bit different to give you tax rebate, isn’t it? You know, how do you see the words in the Psalms and how do you walk them? When you hear that God is our refuge and strength, how do you actually walk that? What are the practical things that we do? So that’s what I want to hopefully unpack. I’m going to share a very personal story in how I’ve handled this today. I trust your integrity with that.

I know this will probably go online and people can hear, and I don’t mind that, but I also trust your integrity with my personal story. So, but let’s read Psalm 46.

The God of Jacob is our refuge. What a wonderful psalm. But I can’t talk to you today in a political way about this psalm.

I’m not going to talk to you about why are there wars, and why does God not stop wars, and why are nations politically in turmoil, why do countries elect different presidents, and all this sort of stuff. Because it’s just above my pay grade. I just don’t know.

I just don’t understand. And also the reason I’m not going to go there with you this morning is because I’m not sure how to relate it to how you walk on Monday, and how you address your own thing. But what I can do with you today is share how I have found personally God’s refuge and strength.

Our refuge and our strength.

And maybe get to the point of saying instead of us just being able to say something, that we are able to offer something practical for people, so that Psalm 48, God is our refuge and strength, becomes real, becomes true.

These mountains that you see here are in the Marlborough region, in the South Island.

They’re just across from the Kaikoura Ranges, in the centre, upper south of New Zealand. And I was there sitting basically, in March this year. And when I was there, I felt what the Psalmist talked about.

I felt the mountains shake. It’s the first time I’ve been on top of a mountain when the mountains have shook.  And I felt very responsible for the mountains shaking, because it happened at a very sensitive moment for me.

The Psalm is about finding God’s trust and refuge and strength in extremely difficult times. And I went to this area in March at a very sensitive moment for me. Perhaps one of the most difficult things that I’ve faced personally in my life.  Since July last year, Joss, my wonderful wife of 40 years, have had to face a family issue. And I’m not going to share with you what that family issue is. But it has been extremely tough for us.  Joss and I love each other immensely. And we will survive to 41 years or 42 years. We’ll probably survive to 50 years while I’m still walking.

But on January this year, this particular issue ramped up. And I started to feel it physically to such a degree that when I came and preached here a month ago, my heart had been in atrial fibrillation since January. And three weeks ago, I had what I call my death and resurrection experience where I went to hospital and they knocked me out and re-paddled my heart and got the rhythm back going together.

So it ramped up to a point where I was physically feeling the hurt. So it wasn’t just a mind thing. It wasn’t just an anger or upset thing.  It became this physical thing. The worry, the hurt travelled from my mind and into my physical being. A little bit like as you listen to the Psalm 46.  Because of what I know now, I can feel that sense coming through, that sense of hopelessness that the psalmist had, that the mountains are shaking, the nation’s in an uproar.

What on earth can I do about it? And we think about these sorts of things in our nation today politically. What on earth can I do about the Ukraine war? What on earth can I do about the Gaza-Israel situation? What on earth can I do with elections of presidents that we may not like? What on earth can I do? And our answer is always, we can pray, which is a pretty good thing to do. But also there’s another sense of saying, what on earth can I do? Perhaps nothing practically.

So why am I worried about it as well? Which is what the psalmist is coming to a point of saying. But I was getting to this situation. I was in a time of trouble and I needed His help.

And I spoke about this before I went away, because it was two days before going up into the hills that I had a cardiology appointment where they found out about my atrial fibrillation. And then I said, well, should I be going hunting for a week in the bush? And he said, oh, you should be all right. I said, okay.

So I spoke about this with my supervisor, my mentor, a guy I meet with once a month. And he said, Peter, you’re angry, aren’t you? And I went, yep. I realized I’ve been carrying this anger for a significant amount of time.

And he said, well, why you are away, I want you to deal with your anger.  I’m not one to be reflective. I’m one that just says, come on, let’s get on with life here. You know, sort it out, get over it, get going.  And so he said to me, while you’re away in your mountain place, I want you to find a couple of places in the mountain where you can talk to Jesus about your anger. And I went, oh yeah, okay. I’m actually there, Mike, just to remind you, that I’m there to hunt deer, not to reflect on my anger.  He said, no, no, I want you to do this. And I want you to talk directly to the people who you are angry with, even though they’re not there. And I want you to get all your anger out.  And I went.  And he suggested I write letters to the people that I’m angry about and get very practical and to start to write letters. Now this is all getting a bit too Jesuit monkish for my likings.  You know, I’m kind of not this sort of guy, but I thought, well, I’m angry.  My ticker is not going very well.  I’m not going to be running up and down mountains as much.  I’m going to have to do something when I’m sitting on the mountains doing nothing.

So I went and brought myself an exercise book and I started to write letters. But then he said, as you write the letter, you are to invite Jesus to sit beside you.  And then as you write the letter every now and then, I want you to do something extreme physical. I want you to pick up rocks and smash them.  Now this is getting now into weird territory. But I said, okay, I’ll do it. I’ll do it.  So on the second day, I sit on this place. I got my binoculars out. I’m looking for deer around the place.  I hadn’t walked very far. I wasn’t very active in my hunting trip this year because of my AF. I was a bit cautious.  I didn’t want to have a heart attack out there,  probably isn’t particularly helpful.  So I was pretty cautious and I was looking out with binoculars and every now and then I’d stop and I’d write a letter to one of the people I was angry about. And I blamed everything on this person, everything, even things that had nothing to do with me.  I blamed it on this person. I just got the anger out, picked up some rocks, threw them down. And this one particular morning, I picked up some rocks and started throwing them down a cliff and watching them shatter and got quite a bit of pleasure out of it.  So his whole theory was that we often train our mind when we’re hurt, but we don’t realize that our hurt affects our nervous system.  And we, particularly a bloke, needs to get that nervous system kind of reignited.  And so I started throwing these rocks down, a little deer jumps out and runs away. That’s real helpful.  After 10 minutes of throwing the rocks down, the mountain moves, the whole mountain moves. And I’m thinking, you are going absolutely nuts. You’re going crazy.

So that night we met back at camp and I was talking to the mate that I was with. We were split up for the whole day. And I was just sitting down having dinner.  And I thought, how am I going to broach the subject? And I said to him, Hey, his name’s Pete as well. I said, Pete, just wondering when you were up there around mid morning , did you feel an earthquake? And he went, what? I said, well, I was sitting on the hill and the whole mountains moved.

He said, nah Foz, you’re nuts. There was no earthquake. And I said, yeah, I figured it.  There was no earthquake. And he said, well, what’s going on? And I just talked to him a bit about it.  And I said, I think it’s probably just, I’ve got low blood pressure or something.

We stayed for about three more days. I went through the process of doing what I was doing.

I did a little hunting, but I did lots of therapy, writing, praying and thinking and throwing rocks. And I started in this process, sensing that God was doing something within me. The last day or the second to last day I had been writing letters.  I’d done a letter that was nine pages of an A4 exercise book.  And he told me when you finish writing to reread the letter, rip it up into little bits of paper and then let it go. And I said, but the Greens won’t like me doing that.  He said, look, it’s paper. It’ll dissolve. Don’t worry about it.

I said, okay. So I found a hole and I put it in a hole and I finished my time, prayed a prayer and then walked from this. And I said this all my way there, I’m walking away from anger with Jesus by my side.  And I can honestly say, it didn’t fix my heart. I still had to have my death and resurrection experience, but I can honestly say that I’m no longer angry. I don’t know whether I can come to a point yet of facing a couple of people and forgiving them, but I know at the moment I’m not angry.  And the rhythm of my heart is really good at the moment. It’s going really good. But I chose to walk away from anger with Jesus beside me.

And in this isolated part of New Zealand, I found Jesus with me. When we got out, I Googled earthquakes and this is what I found. Magnitude 4.8 earthquake, Shakespeare’s Marlborough, 9.52 AM on the 21st of March, 2025.  I wasn’t nuts. My blood pressure wasn’t low and I felt it. And I thought, you know what? I don’t know whether God did that just for me.  I’m sure that earthquake would have happened whether I was doing that process or not. But for me at that time, there was a sense of, after the event the first time I just thought I was nuts and I was just going crazy. I was going to ask for a refund from my therapist.  I felt the mountain shake.

You know, I’ve seen the waters roar in foam as I’ve walked down Ohope Beach. I’ve seen a river.  We’ve camped beside a river that has been a dry river bed. This is many years ago.  It was a dry river bed close to 50 or 60 metres wide from where we camped to the other side and a trickle has gone down. I’ve seen within four hours that river being completely filled up and a flooded to such a degree that we were thinking we better get a helicopter to come and take us out.

I’ve seen these sorts of things. I’ve seen the images of what the Psalmist is saying. There is a river whose streams make glad the city.  I’ve seen those streams. I’ve sat after I did my little exercise and walked away. I sat beside a stream and had a cool glass of water.

As soon as I had done my little exercise and ripped up the letter, I knew what the Psalmist meant when he said there’s a stream of living water. As I walked away from that event with Jesus by my side, choosing not to be angry again, I felt a burden shared. Not necessarily taken from me at that point, but I felt renewed and because I had done something physical, something more practical than just saying, Lord help me, Lord help me.

My life has changed. The burden is still there and I can read this. “Come behold the works of the Lord.  See what desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear.  He burns the shields with fire, but be still and know that I am God. I’m exalted among the nations. I’m exalted in the earth.

The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge.”  God is with us when we invite him in whatever way you do it, but sometimes our invitations have to be far more than just spending 30 minutes reading scripture and trying to talk yourself into it.  Sometimes our invitations has to be something physical. I know that there will come a time when I will have to face the people who have deeply hurt me, where the Lord will invite me to stand before them and offer forgiveness. And it’s no use me thinking, oh, I’ll forgive one time.  I’ll be willing to forgive when they do this, when they do that, when they do this. But right at that moment, I wasn’t concerned about what was going on in the Middle East. I wasn’t concerned about what was going on in the Ukraine.  I wasn’t concerned about what was going on because what mattered to me was in my own personal life.  Do I know the refuge of God? And I did at that moment.

Psalm 46 in its simplistic form is a song.  It’s no different to the songs that we’ve sung this morning. It’s a letter. It’s a letter where the writer writes out in verse what they’re going through and what they’re seeing happening.  Struggling to see hope around him or her for whatever reason. And they see the world politically and is in despair.  Sees the earth changing and he is in despair. Sees his own trouble and wonders and he writes about it and he invites us on his journey. But he also invites us to see our journey in his journey.

God’s journey of redemption and belonging. So just by making it a song and inviting people to sing that song is an invitation to be part of his journey and to see your situation in that journey. And the answer is always, God will see us through.

And it becomes a worship song. A worship song of hope and purpose and celebration. Compare that with our earthly songs.  Compare that to how the world sees brokenness. There is a hit song in 1969 by Credence Clearwater Revival. The song was called Bad Moon Arising. The lyrics are sad.  There are absolutely no hope in it at all. It talks about weather disaster happening.   “I see the bad moon rising. I see trouble on the way. I see earthquakes and lightning.  I see bad times today.”

This is like the psalmist.

“Don’t go around tonight.  Well, it’s bound to take your life. There’s a bad moon on the rise. Hope you got your things together.  Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we’re in for nasty weather. One eye is taken for an eye.”

It’s a psalm. It’s a secular reflection of what’s going on in the world.  And what’s their answer? Shut the door. Hide. Because there is absolutely no hope.  It became a hit song. No hope.  No purpose. No way ahead.

But what the psalmist does in Psalm 46 is exactly the same thing.  He gives us the reality that the nations are in disarray. Your life is in disarray. The stuff in your heart is in disarray.  Everything around you is in disarray. And the psalmist reminds us of that. But then what does the psalmist do? Gives us the answer.  And the answer is God and Jesus does the same thing. Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heaving burdens.

Write a letter.  Say a prayer. Throw rocks (not at people)!  God says “Whatever it takes to give it to me. And I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.  For I am gentle and humble in heart. And you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

You know one of the things I realized when I was up on those high mountains. One of the things I realized is how I started this message right from the beginning. I’m not going to give you a political talk because I don’t know how to stop wars.  I don’t know how to tell a country to appoint another president. I don’t know about the Israel and the Gaza situation. I don’t know about all that.  But I reckon I do know how to change the people in my life that hurt me. I reckon I did know how to do that.

And you know what God told me on that mountain? He said, you don’t know Peter. All you know is how you can give your burden to me. Let me work with those people that have hurt you.  Let me do that. And I realized that I’m in control of very little, but I also realized I’m in control of the most important, and that is my own mind, my own heart, and my own physical being. And that’s all I can do.

So, in the Psalms it says this, all we can do is long for God, thirst for God, remember God, hope in God, sing God’s word, praise God, and look to God. And in just about every Psalm, from Psalm 1 to Psalm 100, what is it? 55, 48, whatever it is. Every Psalm ends with more or less, the Lord of hosts is with us.

The God of Jacob is our refuge. And it’s true and it works.