It is going to be a very bright and
brilliant day. Those of you live in the area join us for our weekly television
outreach this evening at 7 PM on Time Warner Cable Channel 4. We are getting
ready for our fabulous February banquet that will be held tomorrow at 5 PM at
our Fellowship Hall of the Union Center UMC. The Fellowshp Hall is being
transformed in to a banquet Hall. Our young chef Danny is preparing a very
special banquet. There will be an amazing concert led by our Aric Phinney, an
accomplished musician, and other Christian artists. We are excited and
blessed. Thank you Jesus. We will meet for Sunday worship and celebration at
8:30 and 11:00 AM at the Union Center UMC and at 9:30 AM at the Wesley UMC.
Plan to attend the worship of the Lord with His people wherever you might be
this weekend. The Lord will be praised, you will be blessed, and Satan will be
tormented. Praise the Lord!
I have a book in my library given
to me by our daughter Sunita. It is entitled, "The Hole in the Gospel",
written by.Richard Stearns, the president of World Vision. In this book he
tells a remarkable story about a woman named Margaret Achero. Margaret was
caught in the incredible fighting in northern Uganda, fighting that was
propagated by the "Lord's Resistance Army". One day, Margaret, who was six months pregnant, was out in her garden
working with several women from her village, when out of the bush appeared a
small battalion that had entered their village. The group of soldiers was
really a group of children led by an adult commander. It's common in some parts
of Africa for children to be snatched away from their families to be brainwashed
to commit unbelievable atrocities against other people.
So Margaret and her friends found
themselves face to face with this band of soldiers. The soldiers had come to
the village to look for food and supplies, and as they weren't satisfied with
what they received, they began to unleash a massacre on Margaret's friends. The
child soldiers were killing these women with their machetes. When they turned
toward Margaret, the commander told them to stop. He felt it would be bad luck
on the troops to kill a pregnant woman. So instead, he gave a command for the
children to cut off Margaret's nose, ears, and lips. They did, and then they
left her in the field to die, so the blood wouldn't be on their
hands.
But Margaret was rescued. She was
taken to a hospital where she went through multiple operations and was then
taken to a rehab center headed up by World Vision. The World Vision counselors
began to deal with not just the physical trauma but the emotional, spiritual,
and relational trauma that Margaret had undergone that day in the field. Her
heart began to heal. She spent the next several months at the clinic and gave
birth to a little boy whom she named James.
Imagine Margaret's horror when one
day at the rehab center—this place of safety—a group of counselors walked into
the center courtyard with the commander of the group that had committed the
atrocities against Margaret and her friends. This commander had been captured
and brought to the same place. The counselors didn't realize the connection
between him and Margaret; they were only hoping to offer him spiritual
counseling to turn his life around. Imagine the extreme emotions that Margaret
must have felt when she saw this man! The anxiety, the anger, the fear, the
horror, and the revenge. There must have been a desire in her to run away as
far as she could, and at the same time, a desire to take him out.
Stearns says that what happened
next can only be understood through the miracle of God's love, as a
demonstration of the incredible power of the gospel to redeem even the darkest
kinds of people. Counselors began to work with the commander. At first he
denied any atrocities that he had committed during the war, but eventually his
heart began to soften. The counselors also worked with Margaret, reminding her
of the spiritual foundations she had from early childhood. Then, several months
into all of this, a meeting was planned between Margaret and this commander from
the LRA.
Through tears and humility, the
commander bowed his head and begged for Margaret to forgive him for what he had
done. Margaret supernaturally found the means and will to do it. There is a
picture that hangs in the rehab center now of the LRA commander sitting in the
compound holding baby James. Standing right behind him is Margaret Achero,
smiling without lips. What a story. What a demonstration of the incredible
power of the gospel to redeem even the darkest evil."
"But God commendeth his
love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us". Romans
5:8 KJV
Brown
http://youtu.be/ldu-SenKDks
" Christ arrives right on time to make
this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented
himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to
do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we
wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a
person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could
inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by
offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to
him." Romans 5:6-8 The
Message
In Christ,Brown
http://youtu.be/ldu-SenKDks
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