Brown's Daily Word 6-4-08

Good Morning,
Praise the Lord for this new day. Sunita called from Kampala, Uganda, yesterday. The Lord gave her an amazing and incredible time in Uganda. He gave her His favor with government officials and with some international Christian leaders. She said she was blessed to attend concerts by Kirk Franklin, Matt Redman and Chris Tomlin. She saw many miracles of Jesus in the lives of His servants in Uganda. She is flying back to Washington tomorrow and flying with Andy to Toronto Friday to attend the wedding of one of their friends. Praise the Lord for His wonderful working power. He said what is impossible with man is possible with the Lord.
Emily Dickinson said, “I dwell in possibility.” Every follower of Christ ought to dwell in possibility. It is our birthright as believers. I love the way Soren Kierkegaard said, “If I were to wish for anything I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of what can be, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating as possibility?” The Lord asks a question in Jeremiah 32:27: “Is anything too hard for me?” II Kings 6 records one of the most improbable miracles in Scripture: One day a group of prophets came to Elisha and told him, “As you can see, this place where we meet with you is too small. Let’s go down to the Jordan river, where there are plenty of logs. There we can build a new place for us to meet.” When the prophets arrived at the Jordan, they began cutting down trees, but as one of them was chopping, his ax head fell into the river. He said, “Alas, master! For it was borrowed.” Notice the verb tense. He uses the past-tense because, as far as he is concerned, this ax head is gone for good. This young man regarded his loss as final. He had no expectation whatsoever that it would retrieved. I think he wanted a little mercy or a little sympathy, but he was not expecting a miracle. “Where did it fall?” the man of God asked. When he showed him the place, Elisha cut a stick and threw it into the water. Then the ax head rose to the surface and floated. “Grab it” Elisha said to him. And the man reached out and grabbed it. I think his student was so surprised to see what he was seeing that he just stood there. He was in shock. Finally, Elisha had to say something like, “Don’t just stand there. I’ve prayed this thing to the surface. You might want to GRAB IT.” I love the King James Version of this verse: “And the iron did swim.” Miracles can’t be taught. They can only be believed. Miracles can’t be planned. They can only be experienced. Here is the irony of this story. These apprentice prophets were building a bigger school so that more prophets could take classes from Elisha, and while they are building a place to learn, God gave them a course in miracles. It’s almost as if God was saying, “While you’re busy building your school, why don’t I teach you something that can’t be learned in a classroom!” So the greatest class taken and greatest lesson learned happened while they were building a school for prophets. The greatest lessons are rarely learned in a classroom because they can’t even be taught. They can only be experienced. Great lessons usually start with an impossible situation like a borrowed axhead falling into a river! Though this was not a life-and-death situation, doesn’t it seem like maybe God ought to save such an amazing miracle like this for a little bigger tragedy? But I would put this in the category of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding party. Why “waste” your first miracle on helping a bride and groom save face because they didn’t stock enough wine for the reception? I think it says something about our God who is revealed in the Person of Jesus Christ. It tells me that our Lord God cares about the little things—the wedding parties and borrowed ax heads! Nothing is too small - or too large - for our God. The slave-trader turned pastor and song-writer, John Newton, once penned these words: Not one concern of ours is small If we belong to Him To teach us this, the Lord of all Once made iron to swim Most of us have never seen an iron ax head float because we have never prayed for it. Most of us live way below the level of our God-given potential because we are thinking small, living small, and dreaming small. God is too big to fit in our tiny little boxes! God is not looking for people who tell Him what He cannot do! He is looking for people who believe there is nothing that He cannot do!

All Hail the power of Jesus Name,
Brown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYeNfXpZ0pU
Diet Club
A woman in our diet club was lamenting that she had gained weight. She'd made her family's favorite cake over the weekend, she reported, and they'd eaten half of it at dinner.
The next day, she said, she kept staring at the other half, until finally she cut a thin slice for herself. One slice led to another, and soon the whole cake was gone.
The woman went on to tell us how upset she was with her lack of willpower, and how she knew her husband would be disappointed. Everyone commiserated, until someone asked what her husband said when he found out.
She smiled. "He never found out. I made another cake and ate half!"