Brown's Daily Word 3-24-10

Good morning,
Praise the Lord for this Wednesday before Palm Sunday. We will gather for our mid-week gathering this evening at 6 PM for a wonderful meal prepared with much love. Then we will gather for Bible study and prayer at 6.30 PM. We will be looking at Mathew 6 in our Bible study this evening. The Choir will gather at 7.30 PM for Easter Cantata Practice; the cantata will be presented on Palm Sunday at both morning services. We will gather for our annual Easter Banquet this Saturday at 5.30 PM followed by the Presentation of Simon Peter by Dr. James Geer, PhD, at 7 PM. We will gather for Palm Sunday Celebration at 8.30 and 11.00 AM and at 9.30 AM at Wesley.
Praise the Lord for the Joy which Jesus, our Savior, brings to us. He is the Joy of man's desiring. There is a great Joy in knowing Christ as our Lord. There is a greater joy in serving Him as our King. There is an extravagant joy in worshipping Him as the Risen Lord and King.
I read a story some time ago about a man working in New York City at a very stressful marketing job. He was asked to take 3 days off and spend time among the people of the city probing them with questions about some of the products that they were marketing. It had been cold and wet in the city for the past week as a cold winter storm had been blowing through. Then, one morning, the man woke up on the first of his three days off, to bright and sunny skies. As he got ready for the excursion out amongst the people he reached into his pants pocket and found a $100 dollar bill. As he walked out, enjoying the sunshine in Central Park, he stopped at a hot dog stand for lunch. The hot dog vendor had run out of change so he gave the man his lottery ticket and told him that if they won he would split ½ of it with him. Later that day as he was talking with people, when he met a beautiful woman who asked him to escort her to dinner; he said sure! When the woman arrived to pick him up she was in a stretch limousine and it turned out that she was the queen of some small European city-state, heading to a United Nations dinner with the President of the United States. As they are driving to dinner he flipped on the TV in the car as the numbers are being given for that night's lottery, with an estimated grand prize of 35 million dollars. There he was, on his first day off, arriving at the nicest hotel in New York, with a beautiful queen on his arm, realizing that he just won the lottery, thinking that it just does not get any better than this.
Sometimes we feel as if we are walking on cloud 9, and our emotions could be classified as nothing short of pure joy! Life is not always a negative experience.
All of us have experienced days when everything actually goes right, and we are in a good mood, full of happiness and life. We have all experienced times when we think, “Wow! I am just glad to be alive to enjoy this moment!” Life can be joyous and we should not feel bad when we do get to celebrate and shout for joy, but we also need to remember that joy is a gift. “Every good gift and every perfect present comes from heaven; it comes down from God” James 1:17 Joy is a gift from God! God wants us to have a jouful time here on earth! When we have joy, when we are given a good and perfect gift from above, our first response should be to give credit where credit is due. Give the Lord the credit he deserves for sending some joyful experience your way. Psalm 92:4 “You thrill me, LORD, with all you have done for me! I sing for joy because of what you have done.”
As a third-century man was anticipating his pending death, he penned these last words to a friend, "It’s a bad world, an incredibly bad world. But I have discovered in the midst of it a quiet and holy people who have learned a great secret. They have found a joy which is a thousand times better than any pleasure of our sinful life. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They are masters of their souls. They have overcome the world. These people are the Christians--and I am one of them."
When the Lord gives us the gift of a joyful time in life, let us enjoy it whole- heartedly. Deuteronomy 27:7 “Rejoice before the LORD your God.”
Karl Barth once said, “It must be said that we can have joy, and therefore will have it, only as we give it to others… there may be cases where a man can be really merry in isolation. But these are exceptional and dangerous.” When we have joy, when we are in the middle of God’s gift of joy, we need to also pass that on to others. Proverbs 15:30 “Smiling faces make you happy, and good news makes you feel better.” Our world is full of hurting people, sad people, and people who need to experience some joy in their lives. When the Lord blesses you with joy let that experience spill over into your friend’s lives.
John 15:10 – 11 “When you obey me, you remain in my love… I have told you this so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow!”
In His Joy,
Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kx9Yi9eaTAs