Good Morning ,
It is going to be hot and humid here in New York today. It is like sweet summer, though the calendar still declares that it is spring. In Barrow, Alaska they have 24 hours of daylight at this time of the year. Jessica and I, along with our friend Frank Decker from Atlanta, were in India on a short mission trip last year at this time. We spent our time preaching, training pastors, and equipping the saints for ministry. Jessica and I spent 10 days in Bangalore preaching and visiting some of my friends who I had not seen since 1974. We also spent some time visiting three of the bishops of the Church of North India. It is a great blessing to share the Word of the Lord around the corner and around the Globe.
We are planning to host a Christian tour to the historic Passion Play 2010, which will be held in Germany. This spectacular and brilliant performance and presentation is held once in every ten years. It is held in Oberammergau in the Black Forest region of Germany. We are planning to host the trip in July of 2010. The duration of the trip will be two weeks. So mark your calendars. There will be optional tours planned to the Reformation sites in Germany, to the Holy Land, and to Rome. We will be visiting various parts of magnificent Austria.
Christian singer and songwriter Michael Card wrote a song entitled, "Joy in the Journey," which contains some valuable insight. The first stanza of this song says, "There is a joy in the journey, there’s a light we can love on the way. There is a wonder and wildness to life, and freedom for those who obey." All too often we look for the joy of the Lord in the destination when that joy is really found in the journey, and then we miss out on many blessings that God wants to give us. Instead of experiencing the freedom God has granted us through Christ, we become chained to something or some dream that’s only in our imagination and we cannot think of anything else except that dream.
Let us look at Acts 8:26-29 and see that God is found in the journey and not the destination. In Scripture Jesus says that he has come to give us life and give it more abundantly, but we can only experience that abundant life if we claim it today. Abundant life is not found somewhere in the distance; it is here for us to have right now. God’s will is not out there somewhere waiting to be found, but God’s will is that we worship him here and now.
We see in Acts 8:26-29 that God spoke to Philip through an angel of the Lord, who told him to leave Jerusalem and go to the desert city of Gaza. When the Lord spoke to Philip he asked him to do something that just didn’t seem to make much sense. He was asked to leave a very fruitful ministry in Jerusalem to go to Gaza, a city that lay about fifty miles southwest of Jerusalem at the very end of the Palestinian world at that time. Gaza was right at the edge of the Sinai desert, which trailed off into Egypt, and was very sparsely populated. The modern city of Gaza is the one of the violent hotspots of the world , and also the most densely populated spot on earth. Gaza probably would have seemed like such a fruitless area for ministry, and any other person than Philip likely would have questioned God about going to such a place.
Sometimes God asks us to do something that doesn’t make much sense but, like Philip, we need to be obedient and go. Philip didn’t question the Lord or say to him, “Well Lord, I really need some time to pray about this.” If God has spoken a word to us and then we say to him that we’ll pray about it, what that sometimes means is that we want to debate the matter within our own minds for a while, or question God and struggle with him. If God tells us to go, he means it, and we should do just as he says or we will miss a great blessing that he has in store for us.
We need to always be open to God’s leading. If he speaks to us then we need to be sensitive to hear his voice. Remember that one of the ways the Lord speaks to us is through circumstances. An Ethiopian Eunuch coming down the road, dressed very nicely and driving an expensive looking chariot, was definitely a circumstance that couldn’t have been ignored by Philip. He had to take notice. What Philip saw would have been similar to us seeing some dude in a suit with lots of chains around his neck driving a Cadillac. We need to view every encounter with individuals throughout our life as circumstances that God has arranged and opportunities to either share with people about Jesus Christ or to learn a lesson. Let’s try not to focus so hard on the destination that our peripheral vision is skewed. Let’s live our lives day by day and one step at a time, being sensitive to what is going on around us at every moment.
Remember that there is joy in the journey. We read in Hebrews chapter twelve that we are on a journey through life, and that this life is not our final destination or homeland. Let’s not allow our worldly goals to distract us from seeing the beauty and joy that lie all around us. Singer Toby Mac tells us we are riding the "J-Train" or Jesus train. We are not driving a car to heaven, having to work to stay on the road and work to take the correct turn. We are trusting our lives to Jesus to take us to our destination wherever that might be, and to give us opportunities to serve him along the way. Let’s try to keep our eyes open to people whom we need to meet - either to witness to them or learn a lesson from them. Our joy in Jesus Christ is not found in the destination but in the journey.
After my surgery, as I have seen the Lord perform a wonderful miracle in my body and in my life, , the Lord has been teaching me to enjoy my journey, day by day. He has graciously given me a miraculous healing. I am learning to seize the moments of joy, gaze upon things of beauty, and hold lightly to the things of the world. The joy of the Lord is my strength.
In His Joy,
Brown
Prayer is the movement of trust, of gratitude, of adoration, or of sorrow, that places us before God, seeing both Him and ourselves in the light of His infinite truth, and moves us to ask Him for the mercy, the spiritual strength, the material help, that we all need. The man whose prayer is so pure that he never asks God for anything does not know who God is, and does not know who he is himself: for he does not know his own need of God. All true prayer somehow confesses our absolute dependence on the Lord of life and death. It is, therefore, a deep and vital contact with Him whom we know not only as Lord but as Father. It is when we pray truly that we really are. Our being is brought to a high perfection by this.
... Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
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