Brown's Daily Word 7-20-07

Praise the Lord that we can trust Him and walk by faith. We can wait on Him with confidence, knowing that He works for good in all things with those love Him and are called according to His purposes.
Not long before his death, Henri Nouwen wrote a book called "Sabbatical Journeys", in which he wrote about some friends of his, the Flying Roudellas, who were trapeze artists. They told Nouwen that there is a special relationship between the flyer and the catcher on the trapeze. This relationship is governed by important rules, such as, “The flyer is the one who lets go, and the catcher is the one who catches.” As the flyer swings on the trapeze high above the crowd, the moment comes when he must let go. He flings his body out in mid-air. His job is to keep flying and wait for the strong hands of the catcher to take hold of him at just the right moment. One of the Flying Roudellas told Nouwen, “The flyer must never try to catch the catcher.” The flyer’s job is to wait in absolute trust. The catcher will catch him, but he must wait.
Nouwen said, “Waiting is a period of learning. The longer we wait, the more we hear about him for whom we are waiting.” Waiting is not a static state, it is a time when God is working behind the scenes, and the primary focus of his work is on us. I love Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of Romans 8:24: “Waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting” (The Message). God is creating his life within us, and we must wait for it to come to full term.
It is possible to fail in our waiting and get ahead of God. We wait and nothing seems to happen, so we panic and start to work things out on our own. Waiting is an art, and timing is everything. We wait expectantly. God is busy bringing about his full plan for the world and for us. In his perfect timing he will birth that plan. I suppose that an expectant mother sometimes thinks, “Is this baby ever going to come?”, especially if she is past her due date. But all you have to do is look at her and you know that it is impossible for the baby not to come.
When Jesus was delivered into the world, the world was enlarged with its waiting. The Bible says, “But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman” (Galatians 4:4). Before it was time, the birth of Christ would have been premature, but when the time came, nothing could hold him back. When it is time for Christ to return, nothing will be able to hold him back.
Gary Preston tells a story in his book, "Character Forged from Conflict", that illustrates how we are to wait. He writes: “Back when the telegraph was the fastest means of long-distance communication, there was a story, perhaps apocryphal, about a young man who applied for a job as a Morse code operator. Answering an ad in the newspaper, he went to the address that was listed. When he arrived, he entered a large, noisy office. In the background a telegraph clacked away. A sign on the receptionist’s counter instructed job applicants to fill out a form and wait until they were summoned to enter the inner office. The young man completed his form and sat down with seven other waiting applicants. After a few minutes, the young man stood up, crossed the room to the door of the inner office, and walked right in. Naturally the other applicants perked up, wondering what was going on. Why had this man been so bold? They muttered among themselves that they hadn’t heard any summons yet. They took more than a little satisfaction in assuming the young man who went into the office would be reprimanded for his presumption and summarily disqualified for the job. Within a few minutes the young man emerged from the inner office escorted by the interviewer, who announced to the other applicants, ‘Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming, but the job has been filled by this young man.’ The other applicants began grumbling to each other, and then one spoke up, ‘Wait a minute! I don’t understand. He was the last one to come in, and we never even got a chance to be interviewed. Yet he got the job. That’s not fair.’ The employer responded, ‘All the time you’ve been sitting here, the telegraph has been ticking out the following message in Morse code: “If you understand this message, then come right in. The job is yours.” None of you heard it or understood it. This young man did. So the job is his.’”
The young man got the job because he was not just waiting — all of the other men were waiting — but he was waiting expectantly. We are all sitting in the waiting room. But it is how we wait, and what we do with the waiting, that is important. The young man in that office was listening, and because he was, he was rewarded. Waiting does not mean just sitting down and doing nothing. You have to be watching and looking for God to fulfill his promise. We have to believe he is going to do it. It is possible to get ahead of God when we try to work things out ourselves, but it is also possible that we could miss what he is doing because we are just waiting without expecting God to really come through.
We wait faithfully. To be faithful means to be full of faith — faith full — faith that completely trusts and depends on God. It is active faith, not passive. It is a faith that delights in doing the Master’s will. It is love that results in action. It is a faith that keeps doing the right thing even when the waiting becomes long. In His parable Jesus says, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the menservants and maidservants and to eat and drink and get drunk. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers” (Luke 12:42-46). Waiting in faithful obedience is essential in our walk with God.
Gordon McDonald writes about an experience in high school. He says, “Running track in my prep school days taught me a valuable lesson. I was at the Pennsylvania Relays, a famous Eastern track meet, and our relay team was going to run in the championship race. I was the lead-off man and in the second lane. The man in the first lane held the 100-meter dash record for prep school runners. He also held a record for arrogance. . . . When I got to the line and we were putting our starting blocks down, he said, ‘May the best man win. I’ll be waiting for you at the finish line.’ We went into the blocks. The gun sounded. He took off, and the other seven of us settled in behind him. We went around the first turn and down the back stretch. About 180 meters into the race, I suddenly saw the record holder in front of me, holding his side, bent over, and groaning as he jogged along. We all passed him like he was standing still. Because I’m such a gentleman, I waited for him at the finish line. At the end of the race my coach took me aside. ‘I hope you’ve learned a lesson today. It makes little difference whether you hold the record for the 100-meter dash if the race is 400-meters long.’”
The race we are in is a long one, and it calls for endurance, not speed. It’s not how you begin the race, but how you finish that counts. As the Bible says, “This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of the saints” (Revelation 13:10). When McDonald was running that race, he could have given up. He could have said, “This is useless, I’m not going to win the race anyway.” He could have let what others said discourage him, but he ran the race with his whole heart. He did not give up. He did not quit. He did not run half-heartedly. He gave it all he had. His coach commended him for it, and reminded him at the end that it was because he was a long distance runner that he finished the race well. The Bible says, “The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong” (Ecclesiastes 9:11). The race is to those who have learned to endure. They wait with patience. They wait expectantly. They live in faithfulness to God whether their faithfulness seems to be noticed and rewarded or not. As we read, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31, KJV).
In Christ,
Brown

I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise and very beautiful; but I never read in either of them, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden."
- Saint Aurelius Augustine (Augustine of Hippo)

"And whatsover ye do in word or deed--all in the name of the Lord Jesus." "Do" does not belong there. There is more than doing in life. Thinking, speaking, hoping, planning, dreaming--all are to be in the name of the Lord Jesus. His love and life are to color and shape our ambitions and accomplishments. In Him, as a plant in soil, in rain and sunshine, we are to live, growing up by Him and into Him. In His name we are to work, to pray, to suffer, to rejoice, and at last to go home. It is only another way of saying, "For me to live is Christ."
- Maltbie Davenport Babcock

God be thanked for that good and perfect gift, the gift unspeakable: His life, His love, His very self in Jesus Christ.
- Maltbie Davenport Babcock

A note :

Hi Pastor Brown,
I just have to take a minute to tell you how meaningful your email was today. Earlier today, I absent-mindedly left my purse in the cart at the Giant. I returned my cart to those holding areas for carts outside and took my groceries but forgot to grab my purse. Well, upon returning home, I realized I must have left my purse at the Giant and headed back. I kept praying that someone would turn it in and not keep it. I was afraid if someone looked inside,they would be too tempted.You see, I had hundreds of dollars from my just cashed paycheck, all my credit cards, my prescription, an uncashed money order and other items. Thank God, someone turned it in and everything was intact. It made me cry.
Then I got home and checked my emails. There was your email about the Samaritan and the kindness of strangers and I just started crying again. It is amazing to me how in sync with my life your emails can be! It makes me know God hears us and is involved in our everyday lives. Thanks for your emails, Pastor Brown..they encourage me and give me much to think about.
Congrats on the new baby,too!!! Have a wonderful day, Beth

In 1923, Who Was . . .
1. President of the largest steel company?

2. President of the largest gas company?

3. President of the New York Stock Exchange?

4. Greatest wheat speculator?

5. President of the Bank of International Settlement?

6. Great Bear of Wall Street?

These men were considered some of the worlds most successful of their days.

Now, 82 years later, the history books tell us what ultimately became of them.

The Answers:

1. The president of the largest steel company. Charles Schwab, died a pauper.

2. The president of the largest gas company, Edward Hopson, went insane.

3. The president of the NYSE, Richard Whitney, was released from prison to die at home

4. The greatest wheat speculator, Arthur Cooger, died abroad, penniless.

5. The president of the Bank of International Settlement, shot himself.

6 The Great Bear of Wall Street, Cosabee Livermore, also committed suicide.

However, in that same year, 1923, the PGA Champion and the winner of the most important golf tournament, the US Open, was Gene Sarazen.

So, what became of him?

He played golf until he was 92, and died in 1999 at the ripe old age of 95! He was very financially secure at the time of his death.

The moral here: Forget work. Play golf!