Praise the Lord for this Wednesday. Our daughter Sunita is flying back to Washington, DC today from Uganda. She was in Kampala for several days for work.
We will gather for our mid-week fellowship and Bible study tonight. We will first meet for a meal at 6 PM and will gather for a video presentation and discussion on "Becoming a Contagious Christian" at 6:30. The Choir will meet for practice at 7:30PM.
Today is the Republic Day celebration in India. I was watching some of the celebrations in Delhi, India. The Government of India displayed its military hardware and weapons mass destruction. India is rising to become one of the super powers. Russia, China, and North Korea parade their weapons of mass destruction during times national celebration. We in the States never display our military hardware during their July Fourth celebrations.
Our President gave his State of the Union speech yesterday. We praise the Lord for America the beautiful, the best place on earth to live. May Jesus bless our nation.
We all need encouragement from time to time. All of us at some time or other face a crisis when everything seems to fall apart. There are times of discouragement when things go wrong even when we are trying to do right. At such times, people may even say, “That’s what you get for trying to do right.” There are times of uncertainty, when don’t know how things are going to turn out. There are times of stress, when our load seems heavier than we can bear or the task is more than we can handle. There can also be times of fear when our very sense of security is threatened. In all of those kinds of situations we need to be encouraged in the Lord.
In the midst of a time of great distress it says of David in 1 Samuel 30:6, “…But David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.” “Now David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and his daughters….” Some went so far as to suggest that they stone David. It is always easy in a crisis to blame somebody else or to look for a scapegoat.
What does this have to do with encouraging ourselves in God? Frequently, when our life gets hairy, we are tempted to do what David’s troops did. We want to take it out on someone else. We all know the old addage, "misery loves company". When we are in the "pit of despair", instead of spending time with God and asking Him what to do, we become stupid and insensitive. We are hurting so we hurt someone else. People who are hurting often hurt other people.
Think of what must have been going through David’s mind as he stood over the ruins of his home not knowing whether his family was dead or alive. He must have asked himself some serious questions, such as, “Why, if God is with me, is Saul trying to kill me? Why is Saul so insanely jealous of me? Why, if I am anointed, do I have hide myself in the wilderness? Is this the reward I get for being a man after God’s own heart?”
Is it not possible that God intended that a crisis be allowed in David’s life that would force him to seek some answers from deep within? David had a choice. He could either, as a great many of us do, just stand there and continue to look, and see nothing but the disaster, or he could look beyond his circumstances and see God. David looked deep within himself and there he met God. When he did that he found the strength and direction to carry one.
Verse six continues “…But David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.”
It is in the book of 1 Samuel 30:6 we find perhaps the most eloquent “but” in the Bible. David had lost just as much as any of the rest of the men. David’s only worldly possession at that moment was the clothing he wore. Everything else was gone; his property was carried off by raiders, his home was a mass of smoldering embers. Yet one thing that the Amalekites had not taken and could not take from him was his relationship with God. Although he could no longer say, “My house, my city, my possessions,” he could say, “My God.” David was able to strengthen himself in the Lord because he had a personal relationship with God.
Alexander MacClaren stated it this way, “Whatever else we lose, as long as we have Him we are rich; and whatever else we possess, we are poor as long as we have Him. God is enough; whatever else may go.”
In Christ,
Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO_bKR2Wzhk
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