Those who live out of the area join us for our weekly
Television ministry tonight at 7:00 PM on Time Warner Cable channel 4. On
Sunday we will gather for Sunday School
at 10:00 AM and for worship at 11:00 AM. We will be participating in a
community wide caroling this coming Sunday starting at 6:00 PM at St.
Stephen's. All the churches of our town including, Baptist, Episcopalian, Roman
Catholic, Presbyterian and United Methodist will be joining in the festive and
celebrative event. Praise the Lord we all get to sing some the most joyful,
triumphant, and powerful carols and songs of the season.
I was talking to one of my neighbors, who shared with
me that she has been dreaming of a "Green Christmas". I told her that my wife
has been dreaming of and praying for a White
Christmas.
In the book Pilgrims
Progress, Interpreter leads Christian into a place where there is a
perplexing sight. He sees a fire burning beside a wall. It continues to burn
under extraordinary circumstances. There is someone standing beside the fire
who is continually throwing water on the fire in an attempt to extinguish it,
but instead of the fire going out, it only burns brighter and hotter. Then
Interpreter takes Christian behind the wall and shows him what he could not see
before. Behind the wall is another man who is continually feeding the fire with
oil. Christian cannot understand the whole thing until Interpreter explains to
him that the man putting water on the fire represents the devil. He is always
trying to dampen and extinguish the work of God in the world. What he and the
others on that side of the wall cannot see is the man on the other side of the
wall who represents Christ. He is continually fueling the fire with the oil of
his Spirit, and forces of evil can never put it out. The meaning is clear.
Those who are on this side of "the wall" can only see the discouraging signs of
the things the evil one is doing to extinguish the work of God in the world. We
cannot see with our natural eyes that Christ is stoking the fire of God and
causing it to burn brighter and hotter in spite of all that the enemy tries to
do. God knows exactly what He is doing, and no one can put out the fire that God
has begun in the world. He operates in ways that we cannot imagine, choosing to
use things that look unimportant, things that should be easily defeated by the
devil.
The Bible says, “God chose the
foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the
world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the
despised things — and the things that are not — to nullify the things that are,
so that no one may boast before him.The more the powers of evil try to put
out the fire of God, the more Christ stokes the fire as the power of the Holy
Spirit is poured out on the world.
All of us saw the
incredible pictures of Saddam Hussein after he was taken from his
hole in the ground. We were
astounded to see this once powerful man who terrorized his own country and
people throughout the world. But there he was looking dazed and confused as he
was being deloused. He was filthy and his hair and beard were unkempt. He
looked pitiful instead of powerful. The same thing happened with Osama bin
Laden. Somehow, I think the world, when the final battle is over,
we will look at our enemy, the
devil, after he has been deposed and his power taken away and say, “That was
who we were afraid of? That is who terrorized the world? The frightening serpent
turned out to be only a worm.” And he will be thrown back into his
pit. That is going to
be the way the Lord purposed and planned for this
world.
In
Jesus
Brown
