Praise the Lord for this new month of August.
The Summer season is still sizzling and simmering. People are
on vacation, traveling, going to family reunions and class reunions, and
engaging in all the social transactions of Summer. We are excited that we
will get to spend some time with all our grand children at different times and
in different settings. We spent some time picking blueberries yesterday
and we also labored with much love in our garden in the
evening. Praise the Lord for the cool breeze that wafts over the
fields and the hills. It is refreshing and exhilarating. The sunset
was brilliant in the western sky, looking as picturesque as if the Master
Artist has just put His finishing touch on celestial canvas. One of
the local honey growers who has over a thousand hives has placed several hives
near our garden plot. He has started harvesting honey for the season.
We could smell the fresh honey as we drove past the hives.
I have been talking to some of the
colleagues and fellow servants about organizing a Living Nativity in
mid-December. We are planning to hold it in the Town Square.
We are excited at the prospect. The Lord has given countless reasons to
celebrate and rejoice.
I hear from so many of you
through social media and in so many other forms. Praise the Lord for
your affirmation and warm fuzzies. I am encouraged and blessed beyond and
above. I hear from one of my former colleagues on a very regular
basis. From 1975 to 1977 we were part of a ministry team serving together
in a large teaching hospital in Corpus Christi, TX. We last saw each
other in May of 1975. Nevertheless we are connected and linked through
Jesus our Lord. He corresponds with me on a regular basis, provoking
me to run the race well. He and his wife served the Lord with obedience
and much joy. The Lord blessed them with a multifaceted ministry.
His dear wife is suffering with Alzheimers over the last many
years. Her dear husband has been her caregiver. He is been so
faithful, so dedicated, and so much in love. Both are in their
80's. They are the salt of the earth in our Lord's kingdom.
During my active years in ministry I was
privileged to serve in the Board of Directors of the Mission Society based in
Atlanta, GA. I was blessed to have met some wonderful, gifted, and
special leaders, movers, and shakers from around the world. Some came from the
Southern States of Kentucky, Alabama, and Georgia. They were all a breed
apart.
I was watching a program yesterday, in
which they were interviewing some of the people in Kentucky who still live in
the spirit of the pioneers. One couple they interviewed was a
very special couple who couple still live on the their family farm with
their extended family. They love the farm, they love the family, they
love the land, and they love the Lord. The couple shared that they have
been married for 74 years. They looked vigorous, vital, and vibrant.
I read this morning about a man who
worked as a janitor, living a quiet and simple life. He was good and wise
steward, and at his death he left 8 million dollars as a bequest to a
local hospital in Vermont. Praise the Lord that in Christ we can
live a very rich life of receiving and giving, inhaling and exhaling.
Jesus, the giver of all good and perfect gifts, makes it all
possible.
Praise the Lord for the gift of
memory. The Lord God realizes that we often forget what he has done for
us. In Deuteronomy. 6:12 Moses issued a final warning to Israel just
before they entered the promise land, “beware, lest you forget the LORD who
brought you out of the land of Egypt…” There are memories of places, and
there are places that trigger memories.
There are some significant places in
your life that elicit certain memories of people God has used in your
life. I love the story of W. A Criswell, whose
biography I have in my study. Dr. Criswell was a pioneer
in ministry and legendary pastor of the First Baptist Church of
Dallas. He recorded an event in his life that I think speaks the way one
person can impact the life another, even though it may, at the time, seem very
mundane and ordinary. “When Criswell was 10 years old, the Texline church
his family attended held a revival meeting with Dallhart pastor, Johnny
Hicks. Hicks stayed in the Criswell home where he came to know the young
preacher-to-be. During the morning service that week (they had services
both day and night) …..he walked to the front of the church auditorium where
Pastor/Evangelist Hicks met him and led him to Christ…. Years later Criswell
was conversing with a friend, a fellow pastor in Dallas. He told of his
childhood conversion during the Johnny Hicks revival meeting. Criswell
went on to tell the story of how Hicks stayed in his home and enjoyed his
mother’s cooking, and his interest in the lad, and how Criswell went forward
and was met by the evangelist at the altar. Criswell’s friend shook his
head sadly, “Johnny Hicks. Just a few years ago I visited my friend Johnny
Hicks at Baylor Hospital here in Dallas. He was dying. And on his
deathbed he said, ‘ I haven’t done anything for Jesus’ Isn’t that something?
That dear old man thinking that he had failed.” There are times we feel that
our labour is in vain.. But the Lord compensates. He fills our void.. He
makes our cups overflow.
There are memories of experiences, of
God answering prayer and of God’s marvelous hand of provision. I remember
in college and grad School how God always provided for my needs. We
learned some invaluable lessons on faith. These lessons on faith are not
something you can be taught; they are something that you must experience to
truly understand. God knows how we think and that is the reason that he
instructed Joshua to build a memorial, so that each time the Israelites saw it
they would be reminded that they had not crossed the Jordan on their own
ability, but because of God. They were now a people with a
powerful new sense of purpose, determined to take new territory with God.
Likewise, for the believer today, we should be able to look back and see those
monumental occasions which standout as times in which God has changed our directions
and give us new hope and a new sense of purpose, when we act in bold faith and
decide to abandon ourselves to God and step out into the unknown to take new
territory for Him.
In Christ,
Brown
