Brown's Daily Word 2-26-14

    Here we are on the last Wednesday of February, 2014.  We will meet for our Wednesday Evening Gathering at 6 PM with a special meal and Bible Study followed by choir practice at 6:30 PM.  We will have a special ministry with children at 6:30 PM.  

 

    I was talking to one of our friends recently who had been on a short term mission trip to a far away place in a far away county.  She was telling me that the living conditions were not inviting but the ministry was a great joy and a great blessing.  She came home blessed and challenged.  She is ready to go back again  to a far away place.  Sometimes we look at these kinds of people and we think they are crazy, but the Lord honors this kind of craziness. 

 

    I get excited and challenged every time I read the miracle story of two men who had gone crazy for Jesus.  We read about them in Acts 16.  They had been thrown into a new mission field where the living conditions were not very conducive for ministry.  They were in the jail in the city of Philippi.  Paul and Silas were jailed in Philippi, and at midnight they began praying and singing hymns of praise to God. Acts 16:25 says that the other prisoners were listening to them.  No doubt these two strangers looked a mess after being severely beaten.  The fact that they were in stocks and under close guard told the other prisoners that Paul and Silas were not ordinary criminals.  Despite the harsh conditions, Paul and Silas were singing at midnight.  They knew that God had sent them to the jail to bear witness for their faith.  As Paul and Silas sang and the prisoners listened, they had no idea of the earthquake that was about to set them free (vv. 26-28).  Nor did they know that soon they would lead the Philippian jailer and his whole family to the Lord (vv. 29-34).  That was all hidden to them at the time and, as far as they knew, they would stay in prison a few days or a few weeks or a few months, and then they would go on trial.  After that, no one could say what might happen.

    They knew that we  are where we  are because God wants us  there, and that when he wants us somewhere else, we will be  be somewhere else.  Therefore, they worshipped and ministered in that stinky jail under cramped and confining conditions.   I believe that Paul and Silas were not praying and singing in prospect of some great miracle.  They simply bore witness to the goodness of the Lord in a most difficult situation.

    Paul and Silas were not trying to be quiet in the jail.  Evidently they prayed and sang loud enough that a crowd of prisoners listened to them, amazed that two men in stocks, having been beaten and roughed up, no doubt a sight to behold, would seem so cheerful and full of faith.

    When God calls, we can always find excuses to make.  “Not me, Lord.”  “Go ask someone else.”  “I’m busy.”  “I’m happy right where I am.”  For each of us, the issue is not our personal desire but, rather, our response when the call comes.  In the truly tough circumstances of life, we rarely get a choice in advance, which is probably a good thing because, if we did, we would be sorely tempted to run in the other direction.  It is, however, in moments like this that we discover the   presence and the power of the Lord at work .

    I’m not surprised that Paul and Silas sang in prison. Some of God’s best work gets done in prisons.  John Bunyan went to prison for preaching the gospel and wrote “Pilgrim’s Progress.”  Dietrich Bonhoeffer went to prison in World War II and died testifying to God’s grace.  Chuck Colson went to prison and God gave him the vision for Prison Fellowship.

    I wonder what Paul and Silas prayed at midnight.  I wonder if it was something like what Paul wrote several years later in 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17.

"May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word."

    When Eugene Peterson gave us his version in The Message, he started back in verse 15 and came up with this:

"So, friends, take a firm stand, feet on the ground and head high.  Keep a tight grip on what you were taught, whether in personal conversation or by our letter.  May Jesus himself and God our Father, who reached out in love and surprised you with gifts of unending help and confidence, put a fresh heart in you, invigorate your work, enliven your speech."

    I like Peterson's interpretation of this passage.  “Take a firm stand, feet on the ground and head high.”  We all need that reminder, especially as we face the tough times in our lives.  At midnight we need to keep a tight grip on what we know to be true.  If it’s true in the bright sunlight of noon, it’s just as true at midnight.  ("Do not doubt in the darkness what God has shown you in the light.")  It is completely conceivable that they prayed for courage and a “fresh heart” and to be made strong so they could bear witness to the Lord.

    At midnight each one of us needs to keep a tight grip on what we know to be true. 
In Jesus our Lord,

Brown

http://youtu.be/b6ncg2pLYks