Last week, David talked about barriers (listen here). One of my barriers is fear and sometimes when God calls us to go, sometimes there's fear. Where are you calling us to go? What would you get us to do?

But the fear I want to talk about is something I've had for the years and years, since I was a young kid. It's a fear of having surgery, there's no way I wanted to have surgery in my lifetime. I thought, Lord, just take me home when it's that time, you know.

So just over a fortnight ago, I had a stroke and they found that this artery down this side was nearly blocked up. They said, they needed to operate on that, Martin, to clear it. I said that's fine, OK, just put me out and wake me up when it's all over. No, we can't do that. It's got to be done under a local anaesthetic. No way.

Well, I went into that operating theatre meditating on Psalm 23, on the first part, “the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want”. I changed the last word, I said “I shall not fear”. It goes on, “He makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me by still waters.”

As an ex-farmer, I have some wonderful images of green fields and as I was going down to the theatre, I was meditating on a picture of me walking through the green pastures with two dogs and Jesus.

Then the anaesthetist started talking to me and it just went out the window. Oh, wish I could stand here and say I was super-spiritual and I concentrated on that all the way through the surgery, but no. I wish I could be super-spiritual and say that I felt God's presence through the surgery, but that would be a lie.

But as I lay in recovery after the surgery, I was reminded of the next part of Psalm 23. That the shepherd goes with us, through the shadow, through the valley of the shadow of death. Then at the end of Matthew's gospel, where Jesus said to his disciples and to us, there's nowhere where you go you'd be out of my presence.

Then I was reminded of something that I've preached many times about “don't rely on your feelings, but rely on the word of God”. The word of God is the truth. As I thanked the Lord for that, I just felt the Lord say "Martin I told you that on the Sunday before you went into the operation". You see Graham preached on Psalm 139 (listen here) and he focused on about how wonderfully fearfully and wonderfully were made. I can't remember whether you read the whole of the Psalm, but I did. The first part of the Psalm basically says there's nowhere where you can go where you’d be out of my presence. So often our feelings ride over our actions. Don't listen to your feelings, stand on the word of God.

Scripture tells us the Holy Spirit will remind us of Jesus teachings, of his word. So, can I encourage you today? If you haven't, done so, is to take up a challenge of reading your Bible each day. If you haven't done that in the past then have a word with Tim, he's got me on an app for reading the Bible a passage a day. You know, how can the Holy Spirit remind you of Scripture if you don't read the Scripture? You restrict in the Holy Spirit. We shouldn't be doing that, so don't rely on your feelings, stand on the word of God, the word of God, because as Jesus said, the truth will set you free!