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Chartridge Mission Church
  • 29/04/2025
#SASRA #psalm91 #salvation #Miracle #Jesus #bibleteaching #history #christianity #christian #DavidMalam #God #doctrine #Military #Charity #Soldier #protection #divine #ChartridgeMissionChurch #chesham #thefriendliestfellowship

SASRA Regional Manager David Malam brings the latest news on the Soldiers & Aviators Scripture Readers Association. David mixes SASRA updates with unmissable real-life stories. In this video, David tells the emotional story of a mother's mysterious conviction to teach her sons to memorise Psalm 91. Years later, with her sons facing mortal danger, they remember their mother's instruction.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeLtfVhcCUFsS9v92WagSFvsvBV-IsyUU

Chartridge Mission Church was founded in 1844 and remains in the village of Chartridge, just outside Chesham, in the picturesque Chiltern Hills of Buckinghamshire, England, UK.

We are a friendly fellowship and would love you to visit us in person. Join us for our Sunday service at 6pm, followed by refreshments.

Our Church is wheelchair friendly, with an accessible toilet.

Chartridge Mission Church, Chapel Lane, Chartridge, Chesham, Buckinghamshire, HP5 2TH

Support our work at Chartridge Mission Church:

Donations via Stewardship.org.uk:

https://www.stewardship.org.uk/partners/20005300

Cheques can be made payable to Chartridge Mission Church and sent to the above address for the attention of Pastor Barry Kempson.

Filmed on Sunday, 27th April 2025.

Join us for our Sunday service at 6pm.

www.Chartridge.UK

The Friendliest Fellowship.
Transcript
00:00Be our strength in hours of weakness, in our wanderings be our guide.
00:12Through endeavours, failure, danger, father be thou at our side.
00:26Thank you so much for the very kind welcome.
00:30The psalmist says, make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands.
00:37Serve the Lord with gladness, come before his presence with singing.
00:42Know that the Lord, he is God.
00:45It is he who has made us and not we ourselves.
00:49We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.
00:53Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise.
00:59Be thankful to him and bless his name for the Lord is good.
01:07His mercy is everlasting and his truth endures to all generations.
01:14Well, thank you again so much for the kind invitation.
01:21I'm conscious some of you know Sandra so well.
01:24You could be up here.
01:25I could be sitting down, enjoying listening to you.
01:28There was a lady in America, a mum.
01:33She had two boys.
01:35And I tell you this story because it's a great encouragement.
01:39It's a true story.
01:40And it's an encouragement to us, I think, not to forget to memorise scripture and particularly
01:50to encourage where we can the younger generation to memorise God's words.
01:59She felt, she was a Christian lady.
02:02She had two young boys.
02:04I think they were about eight or ten at the time.
02:06Maybe a touch older.
02:08And she felt compelled to teach them to memorise Psalm 91.
02:17She felt, she couldn't really explain it.
02:21She just felt compelled by the Lord to memorise, to get them to memorise that psalm.
02:30And it's not the shortest psalm in the Bible.
02:36You'll recognise the start of it.
02:38He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
02:44And these boys, well, they had many tactics to avoid the memorising of this psalm.
02:52So mum tried to make it a daily routine for 15, 20 minutes.
02:57And there was all number of things that they could try to do.
03:01Even a desperate and really unusual urge to do homework and so on.
03:07But she persevered and it took a while.
03:11And in the end, her boys memorised Psalm 91.
03:18I'm going to come back to that later.
03:20So I just thought I'd give you a little bit of an update on the work of Sazra.
03:26As you know, we're the soldiers and aviators.
03:29That's what the RAF call airmen and airwomen now.
03:33Scripture Readers Association.
03:35We've been going for a long time.
03:37And here's one of those great dates in British history that you won't read about in history books.
03:44In 1825, King's Regulations were written, which stated every new soldier joining the British army must be offered a Bible.
03:57Must be offered a Bible.
03:58That was wonderful.
03:59And you'll know the Sazra story, some of you very well.
04:02And you'll know that that was amazing.
04:07But a group of Christian officers met to discuss this.
04:10And they realised there was a significant problem, which, of course, was that many of the soldiers simply couldn't read.
04:18They couldn't read.
04:19So Sazra begins.
04:22And the way it begins is with these Christian officers paying for Christians to go on the bases, to sit down with the soldiers and read their own Bibles to them.
04:33And they called them Scripture Readers.
04:35Now, if you ever read Florence Nightingale's Diaries, I'm not recommending it.
04:40It's not a spiritual classic, but she references Scripture Readers when she was doing her work in the Crimea.
04:52There's references to Scripture Readers in General Gordon and Khartoum.
04:59There's references to Scripture Readers in the Boer War.
05:02There were many who went to World War I, World War II.
05:05The amazing thing, I think, despite how secular our society has become, is we still have Scripture Readers today.
05:13They have permission to go on the bases, to wear uniform, and to give out Bibles, and to share their faith with the men and women of our armed forces.
05:25The mission hasn't changed since all that time ago, which I think is a great encouragement.
05:31It's simply this, that all serving personnel will hear the Gospel whilst they are in uniform.
05:40Now, our Scripture Readers are on bases, and they will be as helpful as they can be on that base.
05:46They'll help out in any way they can, but they're there to be salt and light, and to share their faith with the men and women of our British Armed Forces.
05:56And if they can, what they love to do is to have one-to-one Bible studies with men and women who are seeking.
06:06That's what they love to do, and often that will take up quite a bit of their time during the week.
06:14I was with Tian, who's at M.O.D. Lynam, earlier today, and he was explaining about some of the Bible studies he has.
06:23He, sometimes he may only have five or seven or eight people coming, but sometimes he has over 30 soldiers coming to his midweek Bible studies, which is hugely encouraging.
06:36Why do we exist?
06:38We exist.
06:39There's Paul.
06:40He's trying to get in.
06:40He does get in.
06:43He's in Edinburgh.
06:45We exist simply because the church can't go on the bases.
06:49I can't wander onto the base, neither can you.
06:52Sazra goes where the local church can't go.
06:55And what our desire is, is to be able to point men and women on those bases to local Bible-believing churches, either in the area where they're serving or when they go home, so that they can be established in a local church of their own.
07:13So how can you remember us?
07:15Just a few updates.
07:16There are a number of things I've mentioned since I've been here.
07:19So this is Steve.
07:21Steve is at RAF Northolt, which isn't a million miles away, and he's going to be moving to RAF Wittering.
07:30The main reason for that, really, is that he's got four children and about two bedrooms, where he is at the minute, and he needs, there's no accommodation on offer at RAF Northolt.
07:41RAF Wittering is a little bit north.
07:45It's towards Peterborough.
07:46It's a much bigger base, and he's been offered military accommodation, which is an amazing provision.
07:54Also, there are quite a number of opportunities at RAF Wittering that there may not be at RAF Northolt.
08:00It will be sad to leave, and the hope is that maybe it's possible we might be able to get another scripture reader into RAF Northolt, because Steve was having weekly Bible studies, and so quite a lot of encouragements.
08:14He had about seven or eight people, did a Christianity Explored course there, and he had five or six coming along to that quite regularly.
08:21So, he has some challenges on the base.
08:29I won't go into details at RAF Northolt, but he really wants to finish well.
08:34He's been well appreciated by the leadership on the base, senior officers, and so on, and so he wants to finish well.
08:42And in the next few weeks, it's a big thing for his family.
08:45So, do pray for him, because imagine, you know, all different stages, schooling, and so on, and then also just the kind of sense of when you start on the base.
08:54A lot is about building up relationships, so that's quite a challenge, isn't it?
08:58Day one, you don't know anybody going on to the base.
09:01So, just to pray that God will be with him and give him those lovely opportunities to meet with people and to be able to share about his faith when he moves to RAF Wittering.
09:15So, remember, Steve, I thought also just share with you just some general things.
09:21I may have told you this before, I can't remember, but Her Late Majesty was our patron, as was her father, as was her grandfather.
09:32And so, we weren't quite sure what would happen when Her Majesty died.
09:37I don't know if you're aware, but a lot of the royal patronages were basically reconsidered.
09:44Some groups lost their royal patronage.
09:48Some were distributed to other royals and so on.
09:51But the king wrote to us, and I'm not quite sure whether this had happened when I was last here,
09:56but the king wrote to us, and not to me, but to Sazra generally, and said that he would be delighted to continue this royal tradition of being our patron.
10:08He also asked us to pray for him and for his family.
10:14This is a great thing, I think, for Sazra, because there are folk who aren't happy with Christians being on bases, giving out Bibles and so on.
10:22And they're fairly, sometimes they can be quite quick to point that out.
10:27It's a lovely thing to be able to say, well, did you know the commander-in-chief of the British Armed Forces is our patron?
10:36That's a great thing for Sazra.
10:39That's a big help for Sazra.
10:41We have a number of new scripture readers starting up.
10:43I suppose that the really encouraging thing is that we're hoping to get to 25 scripture readers by 2030.
10:52We currently have, we've just appointed a couple more, and I think we're about at 20 now,
10:58which is bigger than we've been for several decades, which is hugely encouraging.
11:07Now, some of those are part-time, but most are full-time.
11:11And you imagine that they all require, obviously, things like accommodation and so on,
11:18and then the wisdom about placing them.
11:21Where do you place them?
11:22There are ideas.
11:24I mean, unfortunately, it's not in our power to just say, oh, we'd like to put a scripture reader on this base,
11:29because we need to go through the military authorities and so on.
11:34And they may have, obviously, a view on that.
11:37Generally speaking, they're very supported.
11:39So it needs a lot of wisdom about where scripture readers will be and when they start and so on.
11:48We've had just literally last week, we had some scripture reader interviews.
11:51I'm not involved in that side of things, but encouraging that we've had Christians who've left the military who want to go back in and minister to their fellow soldiers.
12:02That's been really encouraging.
12:03VE Day is coming up.
12:06It's not far away at all now.
12:09And so we're seeking to recognise that in different ways.
12:12One of the small ways we're doing that is that we're offering a free book, Sazer in World War II.
12:18There's copies on the table.
12:19You're very welcome to it.
12:21Just to encourage Christians just to think about VE Day.
12:28Last, going off script a little bit here, but last week I was at the Uxbridge Bunker.
12:34Has anyone been to the Uxbridge Bunker?
12:36That is where the Battle of Britain was kind of mastermind.
12:41You know, you see in the films, the great table and they're moving, the ladies moving all the, yeah, that's it.
12:47And it's based in Uxbridge.
12:49It's underground and Andrew Hill was doing the tour and Andrew was previously the CEO of Sazer.
12:59It was ever so interesting anyway, but he mentioned the providences of God during World War II.
13:07Remarkable providences at different times.
13:09And so we have Victory in Europe Day and it'll be really great if Christians as a country can just reflect on God's goodness in times past to our nation.
13:24So please do pray for us.
13:28Psalm 91, we're back to that.
13:31So the mum persevered.
13:35The boys learnt the, learnt Psalm 91 off by heart.
13:40And about 10 years later, one of them was in the Gulf, in one of the Gulf conflicts.
13:45He was with a group of about 10 or 12 other soldiers, American soldiers.
13:51They got separated from their groups somehow.
13:54They found themselves in a bit of a wilderness and that was pretty bad.
13:58But they also stumbled across the enemy and they had nowhere to go.
14:05There was very little cover.
14:06And they were sighted and mortars started to rain down upon them.
14:12They managed to find shelter in a very small bunker.
14:17And there they were, 12, 10 or 12 young men, terrified, quiet.
14:25As the shells landed, they could feel the reverberations on the ground.
14:29So they had a sense of the shells coming closer and they recognised that a direct hit.
14:36There was nothing that they would be able to do.
14:40And in the silence, with these young men fearful for their lives, a voice sounded out.
14:49He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
14:59I will say of the Lord, he is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in him I will trust.
15:09Surely he shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the perilous pestilence.
15:17He shall cover you with his feathers and under his wings you shall take refuge.
15:24You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day, and so on.
15:32What impact that must have had on those young soldiers.
15:38The barrage stopped, the mortifier stopped, after a safe period, they were able to extricate themselves, return.
15:49All safe, all well.
15:51But none of them, none of them would ever forget that day when in their terror, God's word was read to them.
16:04And who knows what impact that must have had upon them.
16:09And so the mum, after all those struggles, she finally discovered why, why the Lord had prompted her.
16:18Because there were 12 young soldiers who were going to be in trouble, who needed to hear God's word that day.
16:25So thank you for your support for Sazra, really appreciate it.
16:29There are a number of things on the table.
16:32You'll be very welcome to, most of it is free, you're very welcome to take copies of it afterwards.
16:37Or just come and chat and just come and ask.
16:40May our souls in hope unwary make thy work a sleepless breath.