Brown's Daily Word 4-1-08

Good Morning,
Happy First day of April. Jesus is Lord. He is alive. He is the Lion of Judah, who breaks every chain. As I write this morning's devotion, I am praying for one of our friends who is going through radiation treatment, and another strong believer who has gone through chemo and radiation treatments and is still having some severe complications. A pastor friend whom I knew in the late seventies died this week after a prolonged illness. A young man of beautiful faith in Jesus, from my village in Orissa died from kidney disease. He was 49 years old, leaving behind a wife and young children. Another young Christian, from G. Udayagiri, Orissa, who had received a kidney transplant from his mother, died a few months ago, leaving behind a young widow with very young children.
Our Lord has some very encouraging words for people who are finding life hard, who are ’up against it’. "For we know that all things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to His purpose"(Romans 8:28). The apostle Paul was writing to the church at Rome an exposition of the Christian message. He wanted to convey to the believers at Rome that the redemption God has provided is complete, that no aspect has been neglected. The J. B. Phillips’ translation uses these words, "We know that to those who love God, who are called according to His Plan, everything that happens fits into a pattern for good.’
It’s easy to accept the truth of these words when circumstances are favorable, when life takes on the appearance of being ’heaven upon earth’. When that’s so it costs nothing to say glibly ’everything that happens fits into a pattern for good." Despite these words of comfort and assurance, anyone with even a little experience of life knows that it is not always plain sailing. Life’s voyage has its stretches of troubled waters from which there is no escape and there are no short cuts. But the apostle insists that "everything that happens fits into a pattern for good." Yes, even those things, which at the time are so distressing, perplexing, and hard to bear.
When Paul wrote in these terms he did not do so lightly. We are quite entitled to ask what evidence can be brought to substantiate his words. Here’s the great value of the Bible stories, recorded for our instruction. The characters in them have made their brief appearance on the stage of time, but the lessons they can teach their successors are abiding and it’s for us to reap the fruits of their experience. Then let’s take a page from God’s casebook and see what principles apply in considering Paul’s emphatic words "we know that to those who love God, who are called according to His Plan, everything that happens fits into a pattern for good."
The principal witness we shall call upon to give evidence as to the way God over-ruled in his life is Joseph. In addressing his brothers, frightened of what might happen to them now that their father, Jacob has died, he said, "you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good" (Genesis 50:20). Joseph’s story is so well known that there’s no need to go over the events of his life in any detail except to draw out lessons illustrating the way that God deals with a Christian in his or her personal life. "You meant evil against me," testified Joseph, "but God meant it for good." This is something hard to accept, as it often appears that God has forgotten the victim even though he or she is a person of faith. Joseph had the bitter experience of this. Remember how, as a result of his brothers’ hatred, he found himself up for sale in Egypt and was bought as a slave by Captain Potiphar. The writer records that "the Lord was with Joseph" (39:2), so obviously he was a man of faith, and yet God allowed him to be thrown into prison as a result of the lies which Potiphar’s wife told about him. What a reward for his faithfulness to his master and his personal determination not to sin!
Joseph had worked so hard, and it seemed to come to nothing. He held on to his integrity, and where did it get him? Is there no justice? What hope remained of God using his young life? This must have been terribly hard for Joseph to accept at that point of time but from God’s perspective it was quite different. Joseph would have been astonished had he known that the historian would note following this incident "the Lord was with Joseph and showed him stead-fast love" (39:21). And yet by the time that Joseph was telling his brothers, "God meant it for good", he knew that God had been with him. He would certainly confirm what the hymn-writer affirms: "Ill that He blesses is our good: And unblest good is ill: And all is right that seems most wrong, If it be His sweet Will."
That’s how the Christian is called on to accept the apparent victory of the forces of evil. We are to believe that we are surrounded by the steadfast love of God despite every indication to the contrary. Joseph was in prison. It was unfortunate for him, for he was just at the age when he should have been thinking about setting himself up for the future. Still, the historian records that "the Lord was with him; whatever he did the Lord made it prosper", though year after year rolled by, and all the early promise seemed to have been wasted away forever. Then we come to the episode of the butler and baker’s dreams. With the butler’s restoration to favor Joseph’s hopes were high - surely his break must be here at last? But the butler forgot! Could not God have made the butler remember Joseph? Of course, he could. Then did God intend deliberately that Joseph be left there day after day, month after month, two long tragic years before He would make another move? Yes, that’s the way God does it. That’s His plan in love.
This is as hard to understand as all who have prayed to God with complete confidence and faith and yet have had, in God’s inscrutable wisdom, to wait for the answer. But to wait for God’s perfect time is so worth while. When that moment arrives it’s wonderful to see the way He accomplishes His designs to the benefit of His people, "His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour; the bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower." Many years afterwards Joseph could look back with gratitude to God and say, "God meant it for good." A message from a Wayside Pulpit poster declares, "Life is only understood backwards, but must be lived forwards." Joseph’s experience encourages us to trust in God because He sees the end from the beginning. From the first glimpse that the Bible gives us of Joseph it doesn’t seem that he was very promising material for the statesman he became in later life.
Some difficulties and even sorrows stem from our own waywardness and disobedience to God’s laws. The fact that we are Christians does not exempt us from reaping in this life what we have sown. Although it may seem bitter at the time it’s to our ultimate benefit if this grief, as St. Paul said it should, produces a repentance which leads us back to God. So often we see trouble, suffering and disappointments as purely negative, obstacles, hindrances and setbacks. But the Bible casts a different light on them. God’s aim through the suffering of Christians is to give us a desire for, and to make us fit for heaven. If Christ is to present us faultless "without blemish before the presence of his glory" (Jude 24) then He must separate us from the sin which so easily besets us. We must be purged of the ugly aspects of our lives which are not to go with us to heaven.
Because God is love He willed His best for Joseph. He was at work in him, uprooting the things that were unworthy, and creating instead the qualities that were good. It was a long hard process with Joseph, involving the adversity of losing his family, his home, his wealth, and his freedom - drastic action, but all done by a loving God.
What a blessing God’s dealings with Joseph proved to be. Once his faith and character had been proven in the school of life’s experiences God entrusted him with saving a nation from disaster and at the same time preserving his own family. Our vocation as Christians is even higher. God’s aim is that we should bear the family likeness of His Son. When that has been accomplished by the grace of God I am confident we shall look back over some of life’s tiresome, even hard, experiences, and be able to say in the words of Joseph, "you meant evil against me but God meant it for good."
Whatever God allows has a loving purpose behind it. The apostle Paul dearly loved God and served Him to the utmost of his capacity, and yet we read of him being humiliated by "a thorn in the flesh". It isn't clear to us what permanently irritated him. What is clear is that God used it to keep him a humble servant of His and to give him the opportunity to prove that God’s grace is all sufficient. We may be assured that everything that affects the Christian comes under the compass of his permissive will. Paul’s experience and the history of the Church teach us that the devil often oversteps himself.
In reading the biography of D. L. Moody, the famous American evangelist of the late 19th century, I found an example of this. When he and Ira Sankey were holding a campaign in Dublin, some comedians made jokes about their names in the Music Hall, hoping for a big laugh. But instead it must have offended their audience. Someone started singing a hymn and all joined in until the comedians fled from the stage. Happenings that promise overwhelming disaster often turn out in God’s good time to be of great benefit. Obstacles set up by Satan to hinder and stop the progress of the Gospel become stepping-stones. That’s the quality of the loving support God gives to His people. He is touched by feeling of our adversity. Our God is not one who is detached and indifferent. He’s ’Emmanuel, God with us.’ Christianity is not easy escapism from life’s tribulations, from problems that won’t go away. The Lord promises to be with us in them and He will be with us if we are willing to acknowledge Him, to trust Him, and to give Him the glory. "We know that to those who love God, who are called according to his Plan, everything that happens fits into a pattern for good." The experiences of Joseph and Paul confirm this in the life of a Christian. The pattern for 'good’ is anything but ease and comfort, but the God who fully met the need of those in ages past is unchanging in His faithfulness. Paul clinches his argument with these words, "For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, not things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (8:38,39). He challenges us to prove him true.
In His Victory,
Brown