Praise the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation. It snowed a little last night. The snow was fresh and friendly, falling from starry skies. Praise the Lord for His faithfulness in all seasons.
Those who live in the area , plan to join us for our weekly Television outreach this evening at 7 PM on Time Warner Cable channel 4. We are praying that it will be a blessing to many. We are praying and planning to post these messages on youtube. This way we can share these messages around the corner and around the globe. Thanks be to Jesus our Lord.
Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life. He made an audacious promise and extravagant invitation, "Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on." He continued by asking the question, "Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?" (Matthew 6:25)
David's Psalm 23 causes us to see God provides more than just physical needs, "He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake." One author wrote, "We are truly indefatigable in providing for the needs of the body, but we starve the soul." The Twenty-Third Psalm calls us to see that our very souls have deep needs that must be met and can only be met by God. Our souls need what David needed and what ever person needs: a satisfied soul. David wrote in Psalm 107:5, "Hungry and thirsty, Their soul fainted in them." He continued in verse 9, "For He satisfies the longing soul, And fills the hungry soul with goodness."
Before his death, Abraham Joshua Heshel, an old Jewish theologian, reflected on his life and told the person with him, "I only asked for wonder and He gave it..." The soul longs for wonder. Much of the religious searching that is going on in our world today is simply the human soul in search of wonder. People have come to understand that life must be more than McDonalds, 401ks, and expensive vacations. They seek for wonder, going to extraordinary lengths to fill their hungry hearts and their thirsty souls with what they call "spirituality." Going to any bookstore you will find an entire section devoted to "spirituality." Much of it has nothing to do with the God of David. The spirituality of this world is predictable. It is known. It is tame. It is all of these things because it is a pseudo-spirituality made by man, sometimes quite ingenious, and quite creative, but still man-made. The problem is that it lacks "wonder." The problem is that it lacks the wideness, the unfathomable riches of God in Christ, which is the wonder we are all looking for. At the end of the Psalm 23 David exalts in the life of a believer, who has all of his or her needs met in God, and who has a new heart and an eternal home.
In Christ,
Brown
Saturday , November19.2011 Praise and worship service:
First United Methodist Church , Endicott
Sponsored by Union Center UMC
6 PM Gathering- Coffee- Fellowship
6.30PM Worship
Music: Jane Hettinger Speaker: Dave Hettinger
"My cup runs over." Psalm 23:5 "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." Psalm 23:6
God meets our every need, and in meeting our needs, He changes our lives. We are given joy for sadness. We are given a shelter for our lives in the place of a wandering nomadic existence apart from God. Thus, by the end of the Psalm, we see that the need actually leads us to the Lord. Our desires, when dealt with according to God's Word, lead us to Christ. Our hopes and our dreams, our longings and our human aspirations for meaning, happiness, hope, and comfort lead us to the God of all comfort.
John Donne, the great seventeenth century Preacher-Poet of St. Paul's in London, prayed: "O God, never suffer us to think that we can stand by ourselves, and not need Thee." Our needs are known to God. They are important to God. They are given to us by God to lead us to Him. Then, in coming to Him, we may say with David, "I shall not want."
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