King David, the man after God's own heart, praised God saying, "Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all." (I Chronicles 29:11) Once we acknowledge the majesty and might of our Lord God, we can live in freedom under His authority. We can serve Him with abandon, worship Him with Joy, and invest in His Kingdom with great hilarity.
The Lord blessed us with an amazing, Spring-like weekend. I can but think about the touch of Spring "clothed in the blooming garb of Spring". The Lord blessed our gathering on Saturday evening with His very presence. The banquet was both bountiful and beautiful. The meal was prepared with much joy and served with much gladness. There were desserts galore. When we place our five loaves and two fish in His hand, He multiplies them every time so that there are always twelve baskets full left over. There was a full house, which was reverberating with laughter. We could sense the warmth and fellowship in Christ, which is always sweet. The music following the dinner was sweet and heart warming. People lingered there, sharing in the after-glow of the evening. The Lord blessed us in His House on Sunday, in worship, witness, and fellowship.
Alice and I have walking in the late afternoons. Each day we can go our a little later than the day before. The sun is getting stronger and daylight is lasting longer. We are grateful for the Master's touch all around.
I have been blessed by the witness and testimonies of many wonderful men and women who have abandoned themselves in the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. One of those witnesses is Chuck Colson, who was blessed with keen mind and warm heart. I had met him in person a few years ago at a conference, and was deeply blessed. Chuck Colson told story after story of men in prison who had committed crimes, but who came to Christ and were thoroughly converted. No one would have guessed that some of these men would be devout followers of Christ one day. One such story was the account of a man named Danny. Danny had been a fighter, and he was in prison for murdering a man named John Gilbert. While Danny was in prison, someone gave him a Bible, and as he read it, he found himself being attracted to the Jesus he was reading about.
Colson tells his story: “The more Danny felt drawn to Jesus, the more he saw himself in a new light. He was used to comparing himself to the guy on the next bar stool, and that way he usually didn’t look so bad. But when he compared himself to Jesus, he started to feel afraid. This man Jesus, who never raised his fists, scared him as nobody else ever had. He also read the passages about people being ‘cast into outer darkness,’ where there was ‘weeping’ and ‘gnashing of teeth.’ Danny knew something about darkness... Lying on his bunk at night, Danny began to review his whole life, horrified by the person he had become. He saw himself living for his next drink, his next coke party; he saw himself using women. His last girlfriend had been good to him, but he would have thrown her away for the next quarter ounce of coke. In fact, he probably had.
"That next Sunday, when the guard called out for people who wanted to be let out of their cells to attend chapel, Danny shouted, ‘Cell 16.’ But he sat like a stone through the service, hearing little. He was there to ask a question. Afterward, he approached Chaplain Bob Hansen and asked him if the passages he had read about outer darkness were really about hell. ‘Yes,’ said the chaplain. ‘Then I’m in big trouble,’ Danny said. ‘When you get back to your cell, get on your knees by your bunk,’ said the chaplain. ‘Confess your sins to God, and pray for Jesus Christ to come into your heart.’ Danny did just that. In his cell, he knelt, confessed that he was a sinner, and asked Christ to be his Lord. As he did, he kept remembering horrible things he had done, and the memories brought both pain and an eagerness to be forgiven. Talking to God seemed like carrying on a conversation with someone he had missed all along without knowing it. He could almost hear God replying through a silence that echoed his sorrow and embraced it. Danny not only felt heard, he also felt understood, received. He slept that night. And every night afterward.”
Eventually, Danny was released from prison, got married and had five children. He then graduated from Wheaton College and was ordained. He went on to work with troubled kids in Boston, and then was offered a job as prison chaplain. He had been very far from the Father, but turned around and began to work in the Father’s vineyard.
C.S. Lewis, in his
book "Mere Christianity" said, “Now that I am a Christian I do
have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable.” But he
understood that was the result of a naturally inquisitive mind. He then
went on to say, “...but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity
looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self
is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue:
unless you teach your moods where they get off, you can never be either a sound
Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro,
with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its
digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith.”
In Christ,
Brown
https://youtu.be/FBJJJkiRukY
