Brown's Daily Word 9/30/08

Good morning,
Praise the Lord for this new day. The world is waking up to face the turmoil and upheaval all around us. The Christians in Orissa are facing severe persecution moment by moment. The state government has failed utterly to protect its citizens. The state is in utter chaos and lawlessness. Hindu mobs, numbering in the thousands attacked the villages of Rudangia, Gresingia, And Gadaguda. I know these villages. I visited the area the last time I was in Orissa, in June of 2008. The husband my first cousin was shot by a Hindu mob yesterday. The wife of one local pastor, one of my relatives, was hacked by a machete. The houses and properties belonging to all the Christians in this area have been destroyed in a fresh flood of violence against Christians.
The European Union has condemned the violence the Christians in Orissa. The President of France has confronted the Prime Minister of Orissa during his recent visit to France regarding the barbaric atrocities committed against Christians. Hindus are building their temples in North America and in Europe, and they are set on a mission of destroying the churches in India. One of the Bishop's of the Church of England has also condemned the violence against Christians in India. Most of the Church leaders and the Bishops in the USA are silent in the face unprecedented brutalities against Christians. We are witnessing a mass religious persecution in Orissa, India. From the first hand reports that I have received from Orissa, 90% of the houses belonging to Christians have been destroyed. 100% of the homes belonging to Christians in the village where I was born have been burned down. I pulled out an old story that perhaps you have heard before. Back when Jack Kennedy was President of the US, Nikita Khrushchev was in charge in the Soviet Union, and Golda Meir was Prime Minister of Israel, the three of them got together and decided to pray about the greatest concerns on their hearts. Nikita Khrushchev asked God if there would ever be peace between Russia and the United States, and God looked at Nikita Khrushchev and said, "Not in your lifetime." Jack Kennedy said, "Well, God, will there be peace in America between the blacks and the whites?" And God, again, said, "Well, not in your lifetime." And finally, Golda Meir asked God, "Well, will there be peace between the Arabs and the Jews?" And God said, "Not in my lifetime." Many times when we think about peace, we think of the word that the Jewish people use, "Shalom," which we think means peace. But what it really means is "order and well-being." So when people say Shalom, what they are really saying is that in your life may you have order and well-being. May you have a sense of security. May you have a sense of a foundation underneath your feet. In Isaiah 48, notice these incredible words, "I am the Lord your God who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way that you should go." Notice this statement: "If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river and your righteousness like the waves of the sea." In this passage of Scripture, in verses 22, 23, he talks about the fact that there is no peace for the wicked. So the peace that we want to talk about today, the peace that Paul talks about, which is part of the fruit of the spirit in our life, is a direct result of obeying God and giving him control of our lives. It gives us a sense of well-being. In the Old Testament is the story of Gideon. Gideon was in the winepress, threshing wheat, hiding because the enemy, the Philistines, have constantly, for several years now during the harvest season, come in and plundered the land of Israel. So here’s Gideon, hoping to get enough wheat together for some flour for bread for his family without the Philistines coming and taking it away from him. Suddenly, into this story, comes God. He finds Gideon in this hiding place and says to him, "Oh, Gideon, man of valor." It’s kind of amusing. God looks at Gideon and calls him a man of valor, of courage, while he is in hiding. God looks at Gideon and says, "I would like you to be the leader of the children of Israel." He shares with him that He wants him to do battle. It is interesting that at the end of this conversation with God, Gideon builds an altar to Jehovah Shalom. In other words, he built an altar to the God of peace. Here Gideon, in fear because of a larger oppressive enemy, is about to go and do battle against that enemy, and he makes a sacrifice to the God of peace. How can Gideon make a sacrifice to the God of peace when there’s all kind of tension around him, when he is facing a very dark period in his life, going into battle, where there’s going to be all kind of hostility. How can Gideon make an altar to the God of peace in this situation? It is simply that Gideon understood Jehovah Shalom. He understood peace. He knew what it means is to have a sense of security, direction, and the presence of God in the midst of tension, turmoil, hostility, and battle.
The peace that God promises you and me is not a peace absent of trouble. What he promises is, to find us in the midst of our trouble, our difficulty, our dark days, and walk into our life and speak peace to our spirits, even while everything around us is unraveling. That’s the peace that God promises. It’s the peace that helps us understand that God is in control, and that this life is not all there is. There are some things that you and I will never understand as long as we live here on earth. Paul says we look through a glass darkly. That is, our vision is not clear. In this earthly life with earthly situations around us, there are things that are going to happen to us that cause us to say, "It’s not for my good. I don’t like it. I don’t understand it. It brings pain to me. It brings grief to me. It brings sorrow to me." However, knowing that God is sovereign and in control, Paul said, "All things work together for good, for the ultimate good." In other words, we will not understand them all here on this side of the earth. But in God’s great plan, not only for us, but for all his people, ultimately, way beyond what our eyesight can see or what our faith can grasp, this good is something that in God’s sovereignty He has planned for us and it will ultimately be for our benefit.
May Jesus Christ our Lord be praised,
Brown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ1vXATV