Praise the Lord for this Wednesday.
We will gather for our Mid-week study and fellowship at 6:00 PM. We will have a
special meal. Best of all there will be a great fellowship. We are excited.
Praise the Lord, for the He lavishes us with stainless and sweet seasons. We
are the objects of His matchless love and unreachable riches. The sweet summer
days are gently making room for some cooler days. It is all refreshing and
reinvigorating.
I drove to one of the largest farm
stands that is in one of our neighboring counties. It was a very pleasant drive
in the countryside. The autumn colors are still holding on to the trees and
bushes . "A thing of beauty is a joy forever". The farm stand is always full
of local produce including potatoes, New York Apples, pumpkins, and winter
squash. There is an overwhelming supply of all kinds of produce. Praise the
Lord for His abundance from the earth. While I was one of young woman working
said, "I know you. You are Laureen's dad". She shared with me that she is part
of the same prayer and praise group that Laureen attended, which met in
Binghamton. In few moments a couple drive to the stand, dear friends of ours
going home after closing their summer cottage for the off-season. We shared
about the Lords faithfulness and His grace in our lives over these many years.
Praise the Lord for the amazing
harvest season. Our children Janice and Jeremy, living in the city of Boston,
buy much of their food directly from the farmers in Vermont and Massachusetts,
along with many of their friends who are city dwellers.
In the evening I called a friend of
our ours. He had gone big game hunting to Canada along with nine others. Each
one got a moose. Our friend got a big bull moose. He was excited and feeling
like a young boy. I was reminded of my dad, who was a brave and smart hunter
back in the village where I was born and raised. He hunted both small and big
games.
While in Boston this past
weekend I spent some time reading from Psalm 119 with my grand daughter Micah.
“Let my cry come before you, O LORD; give me understanding according to your
word. Let my plea come before you; deliver me according to your word. My lips
will pour forth praise, for you teach me your statutes. My tongue will sing of
your word, for all your commandments are right. Let your hand be ready to help
me, for I have chosen your precepts. I long for your salvation, O LORD, and
your law is my delight. Let my soul live and praise you, and let your rules
help me. I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek your servant, for I do not
forget your commandments.”
Don Carson
and company in the New Bible
Dictionary say that you could
really divide this section of the psalm into two parts. They say you could say
verses 169 to 172 are saying, “Lord, hear me,” and then verses 173 to 176 say,
“Lord, act for me.” One of the
things that the Word teaches us is about prayer.
William
Plumber says, “good men are often so situated that the only resource left to
them is prayer.” We all have been put into situations like that repeatedly
in our lives where the only thing we could do about our circumstance was
pray. There was literally nothing left that we could do so we had to
completely leave our situation in the Lord’s hand. God often designs for us to
be precisely in that circumstance so that we will lean on Him and the resource
of prayer. Plumber goes on to say that prayer is never produced in our hearts
because of the difficulty of our circumstances, but the Holy Spirit working in
the difficulty of our circumstances sanctifies those circumstances to our
spiritual resort to prayer. Plumber says, “Prayer is never performed aright as
to be answered until we are taught by the Holy Spirit” and he points us to
Romans 8:26. Then he continued, “Distress is a natural means of stirring us up
to prayer only when sanctified to us by the Holy
Spirit.”
One of the
great hymns of the church we sing is “How Firm A Foundation.” There is one
stanza that intrigues me, as it says, “Sanctify to us our deepest distress”.
Distress, in and
of itself, does not create in us a spirit of prayer, but the Holy Spirit will
sanctify our distress to us so that we resort to dependence upon God in
prayer. When we sing, “Sanctify to us our deepest distress,” we are saying,
“Lord, by Your Spirit, make even our deepest distress and our darkest dangers,
by the work of the Holy Spirit, grow us in grace and prayer.” Even so the
psalmist is once again reminding us that living by faith is living by prayer.
“Let my cry come before you, O LORD; let my plea come before
you.”
In Christ,
Brown
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