Brown's Daily Word 11-05-09

Good morning,
Praise the Lord for the gift of this new day. It is written, “For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations” (Psalm 100:5).
Douglas Coupland wrote a book titled, "Girlfriend in a Coma". In the story a young woman comes out of a coma that she has been in since ‘79. After she has been out of the coma for quite awhile, someone asks about her impressions of people who live in the ‘90s. She says, “A lack. A lack of convictions, of beliefs, of wisdom, or even of good old badness. No sorrow, no nothing. The people I knew when I came back, they only, well, existed. It was so sad.” But what would you expect from people who have crammed their lives with everything but God.
“Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name” (Psalm 100:4).
We love to go to Washington, DC. One of the blessings of our Nation's capitol is the presence of so many museums. At the Holocaust Museum there is a large wooden altar that came from a Jewish synagogue. The synagogue was vandalized by Nazi soldiers who had come to remove all Jews from that city. The soldiers had tried to destroy the altar. You can still see the hack marks of their axes, but still decipherable across the altar is a single phrase of Hebrew carved deeply into the wood. Though the axes of man attempted to delete the words, the phrase still reads, “Know before Whom you stand.” The problem with our pagan culture is that we do not know before whom we stand, therefore we do not understand the value and purpose of life. “Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture” (Psalm 100:1-3).
Too often we are afraid of life. Jesus said, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Erwin McManus told about an experience with his son who had become afraid. “One summer Aaron went to a youth camp. He was just a little guy, and I was kind of glad because it was a church camp. I figured he wasn’t going to hear all those ghost stories, because ghost stories can really cause a kid to have nightmares. But unfortunately, since it was a Christian camp and they didn’t tell ghost stories, because we don’t believe in ghosts; they told demon and Satan stories instead. And so when Aaron got home, he was terrified. ‘Dad, don’t turn off the light!’ he said before going to bed. ‘No, Daddy, could you stay here with me? Daddy, I’m afraid. They told all these stories about demons.’ And I wanted to say, ‘They’re not real.’ He goes, ‘Daddy, Daddy, would you pray for me that I would be safe?’ I could feel it. I could feel warm-blanket Christianity beginning to wrap around him, a life of safety, safety, safety. I said, ‘Aaron, I will not pray for you to be safe. I will pray that God will make you dangerous, so dangerous that demons will flee when you enter the room.’ And he goes, ‘All right. But pray I would be really, really dangerous, Daddy.’”
We can be afraid of life and retreat from it, or we can become dangerous and face life with boldness. May the Lord make us bold and vigorous. May He make us strong and dangerous in and through the power of the Holy Spirit so that we can walk in triumph.
Psalm 91:1-2 tells us to let the Lord God be our shelter, our refuge and our fortress. A fortress is a stronghold of a permanent nature. Placing our trust in God is placing our trust in something that is permanent.
Psalm 91:3-8, "Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, [and] from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth [shall be thy] shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; [nor] for the arrow [that] flieth by day; [Nor] for the pestilence [that] walketh in darkness; [nor] for the destruction [that] wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; [but] it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.”
These verses tell us that God will deliver us from anything that tries to come against us. God has already made an escape route for anything that Satan tries to throw against us. God has already covered it; He has already given us protection, security, safety, healing, and strength. God has covered it all, and we need only to place our trust in Him and He will deliver it to us for He is our God and in Him we can trust. If we have truly placed our trust in the comfort of God then we should be able to rest at all times in all dangers, and in all circumstances knowing that we are resting in the shadow, the shelter, of the Almighty God. God will send ministering spirits, angels to keep a watch over us and to keep us fully in His protection. He says that no evil shall befall us, nor shall any plague come near our dwelling, because we have made the Lord our refuge our habitation. We have decided to dwell in Him.
Psalm 91:9-11: "Because thou hast made the LORD, [which is] my refuge, [even] the most High, thy habitation; There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.”
“For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations” (Psalm 100:5).
In Jesus,
Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtfkyyPQLAE