Brown's Daily Word 5-12-10

Praise the Lord that we serve a God who is living, loving, and awesome in every way. He restores, He renews, and He refreshes. He makes all things new. He makes all things beautiful. Though Satan comes to steal and to destroy, our Lord comes give life and He gives it abundantly.
At times someone will call the church and leaves a desperate message on voice mail – will your church pray for us; we are having severe marital problems? Or, you may be in line at the bank and the teller asks you to pray for her because her mother is dying. Did you ever wonder why people ask you to pray for them? Can you remember the last time someone asked you to pray for them and you had every intention in the world of praying for them? Then your schedule got busy and eventually you realized that you forgot to pray for them.
When you think of the great people of prayer in Scripture whom do you think of?
Abraham? Moses? David? Elijah? Daniel? The Apostle Paul? Or what great people of prayer in Christian history (since Bible Times) would we think of? Would it be George Mueller or Hudson Taylor?
When we consider people of prayer from Bible times we probably don’t include Job, but God did. The life of Job as portrayed in the Book of Job begins with beauty and ends with beauty. God recognized Job to be a great man of prayer. The Book of Job begins with him interceding for his children, and it ends with him interceding for his 3 friends. Between the two incidents, Job endured intense suffering at the hands of Satan and unjust accusations from his 3 friends. Job was a godly man who served God and feared God. In spite of this he was not exempt from suffering. Knowing God, Serving God, and Loving God do not automatically grant an exemption from Suffering. Job demonstrated that in the OT. However, suffering in this world need not alter our status before God. He was “MY servant Job" before his suffering, and he is still “My servant Job.” In spite of Job's intense suffering and in spite of his questions, God still recognized him as “My servant Job.” God said, “My servant Job will pray for you and I will accept his prayer.” This was Job’s standing and status before God. Our status before God and our standing in Christ allows us the privilege to approach the throne of Grace in prayer.
E. M. Bounds wrote, "Almighty God knew his servant Job as a man of prayer, and he could afford to send these friends of Job to him to pray in order to carry out and fulfill his plans sand purposes.”
Here’s the Good News –“the Lord accepted Job’s prayer.” Job 42:9 So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite did what the LORD told them; and the LORD accepted Job’s prayer. Isn’t it great to know that God accepts our prayers.
The Lord blesses us when we intercede for others. (Job 42:10" The LORD restored Job’s losses when he prayed for his friends. Indeed, the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before. When we intercede God not only blesses those for whom we pray, he blesses us as well. Note that it was after Job prayed for his friends that God restored his fortunes. God saw that Job’s sufferings had not caused him to become so self-absorbed that he could not pray for others. He prayed for others even while he was still grieving and suffering. He prayed for others before God changed his own situation. His difficulties and unanswered questions had not caused him to give up on God or prayer. Note also that he did not try to strike a bargain with God. Neither did Job look at the men that God was asking him to pray for and say, “Nothing doing, these are the guys that have been falsely accusing me and heaping guilt upon me.” Apparently, it was out of a forgiving heart that Job was able to pray for his 3 friends. Job simply prayed for them and God heard, accepted, and answered Job’s prayer.
The apostle Paul modeled the same attitude, even while He was in prison in Rome. His prison letters are filled with prayers for other believers. Phil.1:9-11, "And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ--to the glory and praise of God."
While Paul was in prison and He never ceased to pray for others. The reason he could do this is because His life was Christ –centered and others oriented in spite of his personal situation. May Jesus draw us close to Him always that we might live Christ-centered and other oriented lives.
In Jesus our Lord,
Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAbaqzk66Vc

Some of you have asked about the wedding pictures of daughter Jessica. Here is the link from Amber for our online galleries:
www.amberbeckham.com

Click on the web site
Then "clients"
Then there are three galleries with the following passwords:
ross1
ross2
ross3
(all lowercased)

My daily devotionals are posted in my webpage by our dear friend Julie in Oklahoma.
"Your web page is now www.brownnaik.blogspot.com

So, you’ll need to tell everyone we had to add blogspot into your address.

If you copy and paste the address into an email, tell them this is where you are now located and to save as a favorite, or when they open the link they can click on the orange blogger icon and drag it to their desktops"