Brown's Daily Word & India update 2-24-09

Good Morning,
Praise the Lord that we serve a God who is a very great and generous giver. "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and for righteousness". Praise the Lord that He gives us Joy in giving. Praise the Lord that we can use the God-given time, talents, and treasures to bless Him and to bless His people.
I heard a story the other day about a couple that went to the county fair and they wanted to take a plane ride and the pilot was taking people up for rides, charging them $5 a person. They did not want to pay that much so they tried talking him into $5 for two. He said, “No, it’s going to be $5 for each of you." They tried negotiating, and finally the pilot said, “I’ll tell you what. Since you really don’t want to go for $10, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you go up in this plane with me and never say one word, when I come back down, I will return your $10." The husband agreed and gave him $10.
The pilot had an open cockpit airplane, and there was mischief afoot. He did loops, barrel rolls, and turn-arounds for about 15 minutes. Much to his surprise, there was not a word from behind. He even became a little sick himself and had to go land the plane. After he landed, he reached in his wallet to give the $10 back to the man, and said, “Man, I can’t believe it. You get your $10 back; you never said a single word.” The husband replied, “I’ll tell you what. I almost said something when my wife fell out.” That’s financial enslavement.
One of the great verses on stewardship in the Bible is found in I Timothy 16:17-19. “Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited.” In other words, if you have wealth, don’t brag about it. Do not be conceited about it “or fix (your) hope in uncertainty of riches, but fix (your) hope on God who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy.” In other words, if you have it, it is because God has given it to you. This gives you nothing in which to boast or to fix your hopes upon. Verse 18 then gives instructions in how to use wealth as a blessing. “Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good work, to be generous.” If you have been blessed then you are required to be generous and ready to share the blessing.
Each time we give, every time we share with others it helps to break down our materialism. One reason that God wants us to be givers is to break the cycle of materialism. Every time we give it loosens the grip on those things which God does not want us to hold tightly in the first place. Giving also strengthens our faith. In Malachi 3:10, God says that we are to bring the whole tithe to the storehouse. He also issues a challenge with this command. “I want you to test me in this, if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out to you a blessing that there is no more need”. In other words we are to put God first financially, begin to tithe, and God will take care of us. It is interesting that God has to nudge us to trust and test Him, who alone has given us everything. It is the only place in the Bible that God tells us to test Him. Every other time that we test God, it indicates a lack of faith.
In 1 Chronicles, chapter 29, when David and the people brought their money to the temple, they rejoiced because they had so willingly made their offering to the Lord. Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive”. In other words, giving makes us happier than receiving.
The root word of miserable is “miser.” The least happy of all the people in the world are people who are misers, who are stingy, who have never let go, who are constantly looking out for themselves, and who have a mind-set of greed. Carl Meninger, a famous psychiatrist once said, “Giving is a good criteria for mental health.” He also said, “Generous people are seldom mentally ill.” Martin Luther said, “I have had many things in my hands and I have lost them all, but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, I still possess.” If you want to increase your assets, give. If you want to decrease your assets, keep on hoarding. It’s a biblical principle. Jesus said, “What you keep you lose and what you lose you keep.” This is such a paradox. Humanly speaking this cannot happen, but God's way is not the way of mankind. God teaches us to let go, to hold lightly, every thing we have. There is really nothing wrong with having things as long as things do not have us or possess us. The moment that you and I begin to hoard "our assets", believing them to belong to us, that’s when we get in trouble.
There is a true story about a man in the early 1920’s who gave $100,000 to a Methodist college. He later lost all of his money in the 1929 stock market crash. In the 60's the administration of the college wanted to find the man who had given them money to begin this college, so they did a search for him. They found him in the south side of Chicago. When they asked him if he would like to see the school, he twice said no and, finally, on the third time he agreed. They flew him to see this school that he had helped establish in the early 1920’s. When he stood in front of the hundreds of Christian students at this Christian college he wept, and then he turned to the president and said, “The only thing I have left is what I gave.”
How true it is. Every one of us will soon understand that everything we keep for ourselves, we are gong to eventually lose. But everything that we give now for the kingdom, we will always keep. Paul told the Church at Corinth that they had proven their earnestness and the sincerity of their love by their giving.
I learned a long time ago that we can give without loving but we cannot love without giving. When we begin to become givers, we focus on things which are eternal, instead of the temporal.
Alexander the Great, who possessed enormous wealth, insisted that when he died and lay in state, that they put his arms up and his hands open. It was because, according to Alexander the Great, “I want everybody that marches by me when I die to understand, although I conquered everything, when I left this world I took nothing.”
How true it is. None of us are going to take anything and all of that biblical stewardship does is it teaches us to focus on the eternal instead of the temporal.



Dear friends,
Praise the Lord for this new day. Praise the Lord for His faithfulness and everlasting love. Praise the Lord for David Godoy who is back home from Iraq.
We praise the Lord for the life and witness of Barbara Allen, a wonderful servant of Jesus. She went to be with Jesus yesterday. Continue to pray for her family, especially Chris Allen.
Praise the Lord for many, whom the Lord has raised up to minister to Chris in these days while Barbara had been hospitalized. May the Lord bless all of you richly.

Continue to pray for the following:
John Conlin (Kathy Tewksbury's father, who is going in for surgery today)
Millie Rood (who is hospitalized with bruised ribs, she is at Lourdes hospital)
Michelle Head (hospitalized for two weeks with migraine headaches, she is at Lourdes hospital)
Tricia O' Neal (40 yrs. old, received a lung transplant yesterday in a NYC hospital)
Dave Hettinger (colon cancer, surgery March 4, 2009)
Marc Leniek (at home recovering from an infection)
Sandy Wingard (Mike Wingards' mom, having surgery in Pittsburgh on March 4, 2009)
Carol Hower (having surgery on Friday, February 27, 2009)
Patel Naik (he is in jail in India, please pray for strength)
Pray for our Nation, for the Lord to pour upon our leaders wisdom and anointing.

God's Blessings
Mercy.
Favor.
Grace.
Peace.
Protection.
May these overflow in your life as you cling to your Savior and Friend!
The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. Numbers 6:24
In His Love For You,


Good morning,
I would like to thank each of you for keeping my niece Jennifer in your prayers. Below is last night's update.
God is AWESOME!! Just two days ago they were comptemplating keeping her in the hospital another 5-7 days, and then in rehab 1-2weeks. The Lord works incredibly beyond anything we could think or imagine!! He is Huge!
Please continue praying for Jennifer and her family...looks like something is going around, and it needs to stop!
Thankyou again....The Lord continues to amaze and humble me, and having you all to pray...just blesses me so much!
Julie
Hi,

We brought Jennifer home from the hospital this afternoon and she is doing quite well. She is able to move her arm and leg now but the movement is somewhat restricted. She uses a walker and is able to get up and down to use the restroom. She hasn't had a fever all day but is still having trouble with the hearing in her left ear. Jenn and Dennis have an appointment tomorrow with the neurologist and with the ENT. The rehabilitation center in Dallas was completely booked up so she will start physical therapy on Tuesday here in Rockwall. Praise the Lord she is doing so well.

Please pray for Andrew, he began to cough yesterday and was up coughing most of last night. Late this afternoon he had a temperature of 101. We'll do our best to keep Jennifer and Andrew on separate floors tomorrow. Please keep them in your prayers.

With love,
MaryBeth

Mon, 23/02/2009 - 9:30pm Suprme court to hear petition to prevent communal violence
New Delhi, Feb 23 : The Supreme Court today decided to hear a petition seeking laying down of guidelines for preventing communal violence like the Kandhamal riots in Orissa in which the Christian community was targeted after the assassination of a Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader.A Bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justice P Sathasivam issued a notice to the Centre and tagged the PIL on the issue with another pending petitions relating to communal clash in Orissa.
The petition filed by Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) said that parameters should be clearly laid down for holding the responsibility of the authorities, be it under the Centre or the state governments in case a clash takes place, leading to loss of life and property.
Senior advocate Soli J Sorabjee and Romy Chacko, appearing for the CBCI, said Kandhamal incident should be probed by the CBI and it should be made mandatory that in events of any communal clash irrespective of the community, a judicial authority should be set up to decided the issue of compensation among the victims.
The Bench said it was already seized with a petition relating to the year's communal clash in Orissa in which all these concerns were raised, the PIL by CBCI will also be heard with it.
posted in: Current Issue, Persecution, East India
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Mon, 23/02/2009 - 8:24pm Oscar awards to Slumdog Millionaire to focus on violence against Mionorities
Oscar night belongs to Slumdog Millionaire, a look into a violent Indiaby Nirmala CarvalhoThe documentary Smile Pinki gets best award telling the story of a child who is ostracised for a cleft lip. Indian minorities hope that these successes will put the spotlight on the violence endured by Muslims, Christians and the marginalised.
Mumbai (AsiaNews) – India is celebrating Slumdog Millionaire's sweeping success at the Academy Award ceremony last night. In addition to the movie by director Danny Boyle, which took home eight Oscars, Smile Pinki won for Best Documentary Short Subject, telling the story of a six-year-old girl from the village of Dabai in Uttar Pradesh who becomes a social outcast because of a cleft lip.Despite this achievement few Indians received any award from the victories of British director Boyle and US documentary maker Megan Mylan; they were composer A.R. Rahman, singer Sampooran Singh Gulzar and sound designer Resul Pookutty.Slumdog Millionaire producers have also been dogged by controversy. They have been accused of underpaying the two child actors who worked in the film, Rubina Ali and Mohammed Azharuddin Ismail, who after the completion of the movie went back to live in their slums.Still for ordinary people success in Los Angeles has been cause for celebration in the streets. Even schools stayed close.What the movie celebrates is not India's cinema which produces hundreds of movies each year, drawing an average 23 million spectators per day, but the country and its stories, placed under the limelight of Hollywood for once.The stories of Mumbai's slum kids, that of Muslim boy Jamal and Pinki from Dabai, are but two of the many faces of today's India, faces almost always ignored until Slumdog Millionaire's triumph put the spotlight on them.As a celebratory mood grabs the country many people are hoping that the movie's success will bring greater attention to the problems and events it describes. For Boyle's film especially highlights Hindu anti-Muslim violence, rekindling the memory of the 1993 anti-Muslim attacks in Mumbai by Hindu nationalists.Ram Puniyani, a member of the Committee for Communal Amity (EKTA), told AsiaNews that the "film captures that reality very well. The popular notion that riots are caused by Hindu-Muslim or Hind-Christian differences is misplaced. In the last two decades incidents of violence have been triggered by some offshoot of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (a Hindu nationalist organisation), looking for a pretext to begin the carnage. In Gujarat it was the event of Godhra train catching fire (in February 2002) and in Kandhamal it was the murder of Swami Laxamanand by Maoists (on 23 August 2008)."Puniyan, who wrote 'Fascism of Sangh Parivar', hopes that Slumdog Millionaire's success will "encourage international agencies to pay more attention to this problem and shed light on the violence" as well as "put pressure on India to protect its minorities."