Brown's Daily Word 3-30-09

Good Morning,
Praise the Lord for this new day. I trust you all had a blessed weekend of rest, renewal, worship, and fellowship. The Lord blessed us during worship yesterday. The readings were taken from Psalm 51 and John 12: 20 ff. Praise the Lord for His Word which is always relevant and contextual. Praise the Lord for the times and days of our lives on earth. He has called us for such time as this. It is exciting to be alive. It is a great thrill to know the Lord and to serve Him.
I praise the Lord for the internet. It is the new and emerging mission field. The social networks on the Internet are exploding. People all over the world now are writing blogs, which are online journals, or web-logs. Some are blaming blogs for ruining the newspaper and classic journalism. The role they serve is to give everyone a voice. People think their thoughts are worthy of being shared with the world. There is also the internet genre which includes Facebook and My Space. People use these formats to keep their friends up-to-date with what is happening in their lives; people really do want to know about friends and relations, both past and current.
The words of Christ as found in John 12 sting us when he says, “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. He who loves his life will lose it…” Jesus tells us we need to focus on something else besides ourselves. Actually, if we are to follow him we need to be like a kernel of wheat and die to our selves. We have to die to self in order to bear much fruit. King David, the one who penned Psalm 51, pleads, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.” There is something inside of us, when we look really deeply, that desires something more. Sometimes we think we want to be famous, admired, revered, or at least seen as important. We want to be something to someone.
Nadya Suleman is a standard in our daily news these days. If you have not heard of her she is the woman who had six children, two with autism, and then just gave birth to eight more. She has been on a roller coaster ride with the media and not painting a good picture of herself. In an interview with the Today Show’s Ann Curry she said, “That was always a dream of mine, to have a large family, a huge family, and I just longed for certain connections and attachments with another person that I really lacked, I believe, growing up.” She went on in the interview to confess the connection she longed for was being filled by children and now she has 14 to help fill that void. But will it? That void inside of us, that desire for something meaningful in our lives, may be filled with many things. It can be full of sports, hobbies, relationships, children, material things, or whatever. Yet, these things cannot satisfy. Pascal, a 17th century philosopher, once said, “There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every[one] which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.” The void within each of us that we are looking to fill can only be satisfied by God. When we are selfish and self-centered, we lose our lives. To gain life, we need to be focused on the one calling us. It is our narcissistic nature to think that we are seeking God. Many people think that God is on a mountaintop somewhere, and we have to climb to get to him. Only after making that journey can we be worthy to be in His presence. The truth is, we do not seek God; The Lord God, In Jesus Christ, seeks us. One of the reasons the poem "Footprints" is so popular is because the traveler realizes that God was there all along. The same is true with us. God is with us - we just have to be willing to see. During Lent, as we confess and as we go through our spiritual disciplines of self-denial, prayer, reading, and reflecting, the Lord of the Heaven and Earth, continues to call us closer. As we live through hard times, as we struggle with questions about faith, and as we love people we don’t like, God continues to call us closer. To see God we need to get out of the way. We need to die to self, leave ourselves behind for the sake of glorifying God. Just as a kernel of wheat falls to the earth and dies before it bears fruit, we need to die to ourselves and be open to God in our lives. When we do this, we realize the work God does for us, and the opportunities that surround us in which we can glorify God.
May Jesus be praised and glorified,
Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGbuz8QuhmE