Brown's Daily Word

Praise the Lord for the last day of August. I trust that you had a blessed and beautiful weekend with a wonderful day in the house of the Lord yesterday. We proclaim and claim that "Better is one day in your house, O Lord, than a thousand elsewhere".
One of the readings for yesterday was taken from James 1. In James 1:19 we read “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry” Here the writer is talking about our willingness to speak and not listen to God. We can’t miss it from the context. (read vv. 19-21) The only “Word planted in you, which can save you” is the Word of God. We need to be more interested in hearing what God has to say to us than telling Him what we think! We need to hear the Word of God.
According to George Barna, a Christian pollster, in a given week about 37% of Americans will read their Bible, but 85% will pray. (source: barna.org) This sounds as if we are quick to speak, but slow to listen to what God has to say.
As we drive in our area we see billboards along the roadways of various ordinary men and women who have accomplished extraordinary things. I have noticed the picture of Erik Weihenmayer. At the age of 33, Erik Weihenmayer is a phenomenal athlete who loves to skydive, snow ski and climb mountains. Mountain climbing is, in fact, his specialty. As a matter of fact, he is on track to be one of the youngest to climb all of the Seven Summits, the highest peaks on each of the continents. In 1995 he scaled Mount McKinley, in 1996 El Capitan, in 1998 Mount Kilamanjaro. In 1999 he climbed Argentina’s Aconcauga. On May 25, 2001 he reached the summit of Mount Everest, a peak that 90% of those who begin to climb never finish. Since 1953, 165 people have died trying to climb Everest, but Erik made it. Now that is an extremely significant feat, but you don’t know the half of it. Weihenmayer suffers from a degenerative eye disease, and when he was 13 he became totally blind. All of his climbs have been without the benefit of his eyesight. Weihenmayer is a blind mountain-climber!
If you were to ask him, “How is that possible? How can a guy who can’t see climb the highest peaks in the world?”, he would tell you that He has learned to listen well. He listens as a bell tied to the back of the climber in front of him shows him which way to go. He listens to his climbing partners who shout back to him, "Death fall two feet to your right!" so he knows what direction not to go. He listens to the sound of his pick jabbing the ice, so he knows whether his footing will be secure or not. For Erik Weihenmayer, being a good listener is a matter of life and death. (source: www.touchthetop.com)
According to James the same is true for every one of us too. Active listening is the only way any of us is able to follow the pathway that God has opened up for us. He challenges us to take faith in Christ seriously enough to allow it to change our behavior. James addresses Christian people here, and he says that we have to be willing to listen to what God says to us and then modify our behavior to conform our will to God’s perfect will. In order to do that, we have to do 3 things: Hear God’s Word, Accept God’s Word, and then Do God’s Word. An amazing thing happens when we hear the Word, accept the Word, and then choose to do the word. A transformation occurs.
In the book of Exodus there is an account of when Moses entered into the presence of God. It says that his countenance was changed; you might say he glowed from experiencing the presence of God. When he came back among the people he wore a veil to hide the fact that the glow was growing dimmer. In 2 Corinthians Paul reminds us of that occurrence in Moses' life, and then He tells us that if we hear, accept, and do the will of God, a supernatural transformation occurs in our lives. In 2 Corinthians 3:18, Paul wrote, “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
In Christ,
Brown

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