Brown's Daily Word 5-1-09

Good Morning.
Praise the Lord for this First day of May. Today is our daughter Sunita's birthday. She turns 30 today. The Lord has raised her up to be a beautiful woman. She is a woman after the heart of Jesus her Lord and a sweet servant of the Lord. We praise the Lord for her faith and for her witness. The Lord recently blessed Sunita and Andy with a new house in our Nation's capitol within the city precincts. They moved to their new house last weekend and now Sunita is just one mile from work. Sunita and Andy love Washington. They are part of a Mission Church, ( Anglican) that is committed to minister to the last, the least, and the lost.
In the midst of fear of the swine flu, we need to continue to worship Jesus, the winsome Physician, and keep on offering His grace and mercy to a world that is seized with fear and panic. One of my friends wrote me saying that the Lord of Righteousness is angry at the sin of the world. Indeed, the world is busy glamorizing sin and legislating unrighteousness. As He sent the Flood in the past He could allow a pandemic to pervade the earth if He so chooses, so that we can repent and turn to Him for healing and salvation, and so be saved. Jesus came to seek and to save the Lost.
Our Lord was a wonderful story teller. He related a story about two brothers. The younger brother asked for his share of the inheritance even before his father had died—and after he got, he squandered it all. He came back home as a last resort, certain that his father would reject him and turn him away in shame. Yet, his father ran to him, threw his arms around him, and wept with relief and joy at his return.
The older brother, on the other hand, was a model of rectitude. He did all the right things at just the right time—but, we discover, he did so for a hidden, sad, purpose. The older brother believed the lie that his father’s acceptance and approval of him was at best conditional. Therefore everything he did was done in order to earn his father’s approval and acceptance. When his father threw a welcome-home party for his immoral brother, who deserved none of that, years of doubt erupted. Jesus said, “Then he became angry and refused to go in” (Luke 15:25-28). Many people, like the older brother, mistakenly build their worth on a false scale, and often pay the price of ANGER. They try so hard to do all the right things so that people will include them and love them, invite them, accept them, seek them out, and respect them that when they see someone else receiving acceptance they react with confusion and anger. They cannot rejoice with the one who is rejoicing but, in their jealous state, they become deeply angry with the people whose very acceptance they tried so hard to earn. Building your worth on someone else’s acceptance and respect will only lead to an escalating anger. The father realized that his older son was outside, refusing to come in. “His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you and I have never disobeyed your command….”” (Luke 15:28-29). Notice what the "good" son really feels - a slave... He had sunken into self-absorbed BITTERNESS. “For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.” —Luke 15:29 Anger, bitterness, and finally RESENTMENT were the unhappy result - resentment toward the very one whose love and respect the older son was trying to earn. When people are addicted to approval, then every imagined slight they experience is magnified and remembered, any time they feel neglected, go unrecognized, are insufficiently thanked, or feel under-appreciated more fuel is added to the fire of their brooding resentment. “But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!” (Luke 15:30). The welcomed return of the younger brother was more than this one could bear. You get the feeling the older brother never wanted to see his brother again, mostly because there would never be any competition for his father’s attention, love and respect. Jesus invites us to discover God’s plan for us to find the self-worth He intends for us. When the older son has dumped years of anger, resentment, and bitterness on his father, “The father said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.'" (Luke 15:31-32). Listen again to the father, our Heavenly Father, say to the older brother and to you, “Son, daughter, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” Hear the love and respect, acceptance and approval that is within this father’s heart. Despite the son’s anger and accusations, the father continued to love the son.
God’s love isn’t based on what we have accomplished or failed to do. God’s love is always with us. God's love reveals His prevenient grace. In fact it is grace upon grace. The father (in the story) did what God does, revealing God's way with us. God seeks to heal the broken and welcome home the alienated. God seeks to unite those who have suffered severed friendships and to end enmity between us and Him. God is so committed to bringing about reconciliation between us and Himself. He mysteriously makes that possible through his son Jesus.
The Apostle Paul said, “And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him….” (Colossians 1:21-22). Christ took all our hostility and estrangement onto himself and in doing so wonderfully and incomprehensibly made a way for us to renew our friendship with God. The Good News of all this is that the moment I accept Jesus by faith, I enter into a personal friendship with God that not even death itself can break! Paul said, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor 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.” See, WHEN WE BUILD OUR SELF-WORTH ON GOD’S SACRIFICIAL LOVE FOR US, WE NEVER HAVE TO FEAR REJECTION—WE ARE ALWAYS AND FOREVER GOD’S CHILDREN! “The father said to him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” When we accept Jesus as our friend and Savior, opening our hearts to God’s love, acceptance, mercy and grace, we are at that very moment adopted into God’s family. Paul said, “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ…..” (Romans 8.38-39).
When we are in Christ we never have to fear rejection when we fail or try to win the approval that Christ died to give us. Through Jesus we are accepted, we are approved, and we are loved. We don’t have to earn it, win it, deserve it, seek it, worry over it, or ever fear losing it. This is God’s way. We can build our very life upon it. Because of Jesus we can quit trying to weigh our actions and everyone else's on some artificial scale. No one person can fulfill our need for acceptance and approval. That is God's job. Let us remember that like the father told his son, God is telling us that “you are always with me and everything I have is yours.” When we are in Christ the riches of heaven are ours! The greatest treasure of all is the blessed assurance that we are always and forever His beloved sons and daughters.

In Christ,
Brown


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFaIGSyENsY
A THIRD GRADERS EXPLANATION OF GOD
Written by Danny Dutton, age 8, from Chula Vista, California, for his third grade homework assignment to "Explain God."
One of God's main jobs is making people. He makes them to replace the ones that die so there will be enough people to take care of things on earth. He doesn't make grown-ups, just babies. I think because they are smaller and easier to make. That way, He doesn't have to take up His valuable time teaching them to talk and walk. He can just leave that to mothers and fathers.
God's second most important job is listening to prayers. An awful lot of this goes on, since some people, like preachers and things, pray at times besides bedtime. God doesn't have time to listen to the radio or TV because of this. Because He hears everything there must be a terrible lot of noise in His ears, unless He has thought of a way to turn it off. God sees everything and hears everything and is everywhere which keeps Him pretty busy. So you shouldn't go wasting His time by going over your mom and dad's head asking for something they said you couldn't have.
Atheists are people who don't believe in God. I don't think there are any in Chula Vista. At least there aren't any who come to our church. Jesus is God's Son. He used to do all the hard work like walking on water and performing miracles and trying to teach the people who didn't want to learn about God. They finally got tired of Him preaching to them and they crucified Him. But He was good and kind like His Father and He told His Father that they didn't know what they were doing and to forgive them and God said OK.
His Dad (God) appreciated everything that He had done and all His hard work on earth so He told Him He didn't have to go out on the road anymore, He could stay in heaven. So He did. And now He helps His Dad out by listening to prayers and seeing things which are important for God to take care of and which ones He can take care of Himself without having to bother God. Like a secretary only more important. You can pray anytime you want and they are sure to hear you because they got it worked out so one of them is on duty all the times.
You should always go to Church on Sunday because it makes God happy, and if there's anybody you want to make happy, it's God. Don't skip church to do something you think will be more fun like going to the beach. This is wrong! And, besides, the sun doesn't come out at the beach until noon anyway.
If you don't believe in God, besides being an atheist, you will be very lonely, because your parents can't go everywhere with you, like to camp, but God can. It is good to know He's around you when you're scared in the dark or when you can't swim very good and you get thrown into real deep water by big kids. But you shouldn't just always think of what God can do for you. I figure God put me here and He can take me back anytime He pleases.
And that's why I believe in God."