Praise the Lord for this new day. He
blessed us with a bountiful weekend. Sunita and her family spent the weekend in
the gorgeous Shenandoah Mountains at a retreat center with friends. Laureen
had one of her Grove City College friends for the weekend in Washington. On
Friday she had the opportunity to worship on the mall (near the Smithsonian and
the Washington Monument) with Kari Jobe, Mercy Me, and others. Janice and her
family spent the whole weekend in beautiful Boston. She texted that Ada Asked
her mommy,"I am sad. Why? Birds can fly, I cant." Janice said also that the
children were tired out spending the weekend in the favorite places in Boston.
Jessy called and shared that she and Tom were busy, making the house ready for
arrival of the little baby. The Lord blessed us with a wonderful and a very
blessed day in His house yesterday. Alice preached at Wesley and I preached at
Union Center. The Lord visited us. We sensed His very presence. It rained
torrentially in the evening and almost all night. They posted flash flood
warnings for the area. Alice said that as a child she had heard about monsoon
rains of India. She had never seen in her life until she went there. She said,
"After you moved the States the monsoons followed you here." I said thank you
Jesus, I love monsoons. They remind us of the showers of blessings of
Jesus.
I am pausing and pondering on our Lord's majesty and might as I look back in my life serving the Lord and walking with Him. You are all part of that blessing and grace of the Lord.
Our Loving Lord often puts us in situations where we are doomed to failure in order to force us to depend totally on him so that when the miracle comes, he alone gets the credit. This is a divine strategy repeated many times in the Bible and in our own experience. We often find ourselves in desperate straits with no way out, no good options, and no human way of remedying our situation. God allows this to happen so that we will cry out to him. When the deliverance comes, we are obliged to give the Lord the total credit.
All too often we conclude that some thing can’t be done, and so we don’t bother trying to do it. If Moses had taken that attitude, the Jews would still be in Egypt. If Joshua had felt that way, he would have merely marched around Jericho. If David had adopted that opinion, Goliath would still be terrorizing the Israelites. You never know in advance what God may do so don’t rule out the possibility of a mighty miracle coming your way.
God asks us to do the impossible and then he gives whatever we need to obey his command. Erwin Lutzer, of the Moody Church in Chicago, points that Jesus often told people to do impossible things. To a lame man he said, “Rise, pick up your bed, and walk.” To a dead man, he cried out, “Lazarus, come forth.” There is a true sense in which every command of God is totally impossible for us to obey. We always lack what we need to obey God’s commands, but God is faithful to give us whatever we need when we ask him. What God demands, He supplies. He “bids us fly and gives us wings.”
When we offer our meager resources to God, we discover that the impossible really is not impossible. Years ago I ran across a quote from J. Hudson Taylor, a great man of faith whose missionary efforts helped open China to the gospel. Time and again he saw God do amazing things in the face of hopeless circumstances and murderous hostility against him. Reflecting on his experiences, he remarked that “there are three stages in any work attempted for God: Impossible, Difficult, Done.” I am very encouraged by that because there are many moments when we all seem to be stuck in the “impossible” stage of life. Cheer up, we never know but our impossibility may simply be “Stage 1” of a mighty miracle Jesus will perform on our behalf.
What a Christ we serve!
In Him,
Pastor Brown
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