Archive for the ‘Instruction’ Category
Stoping the Hunger period, first part by Rodney Howard Browne
Friday, December 11th, 2009
Ever witnessed the ravages of a famine? If that is the case you can always remember the scene.
The stink of death is sickening, horrifying. Each living creature suffers due to the acute insufficiency of food. It is one of the most traditional of all plagues—and famines are still with us to this day. We hear and read of them sweeping across massive territories leaving people and animals in their wakes. The hunger brings a mix of such starvation and starvation, life grinds to a virtual dead stop.
Not even the otherwise hearty and once-powerful four-footed beasts of the field can survive if the famine remains.
We who live in “the land of plenty” can only imagine such scenes. With fast-food places at nearly every corner in our busy towns, corner shop shelves stacked high with lots of food and typically a selection of different types of the same food to pick from—all of it in abundance—and, additionally, many eateries to suit our food fancy, we do not think about what life would be like where none of that is right.
The Bible speaks rather regularly of famines but nowhere more eloquently than in the scribblings of a rather obscure soothsayer named Amos. God used Amos’s pen to explain a crisis that would one day arrive, leaving humanity in the grip of a famine. However incredibly, it wouldn’t be a hunger for literal food or seared tongues hankering for clean water. It’d be a famine for hearing God’s truth announced. Here’s the way that the prophecy appears in Amos 8:11-12. “Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord GOD,. Not a famine for bread or a thirst for water,. But rather for hearing the words of the LORD.
They’ll go to and fro to find the word of the LORD,. Without meaning to be overdramatic, that prophecy has come to pass. We now live in the middle of such a famine. The sound, unswerving, balanced, consistent, and healthy teaching and evangelizing of the Word of the Lord is barely heard here in these US or, for what it’s worth, around the planet.
There are churches and chapels, churches and churchs where spiritual activities abound. And there are folks of each convincing who talk and teach, who appear in the media, who write books, who talk about God and debate subjects the Bible addresses related to our times. But the absence of solid biblical food based mostly on sound doctrine, served continually and in healthy portions, is noticeable by its absence. Let’s recommit ourselves to breaking that famine.
A Half Hour Spiritual Improvement by Rodney Howard Browne
Friday, December 4th, 2009
Go back over those 3 concerns of religious nourishment we looked at yesterday : taking in Our Lord God’s Word, chatting to Him in prayer, and spending some additional mins turning the truth over in your mind’s eye with plans to obey. One of the finest methods to put this plan into action is to put aside thirty additional mins per day—just thirty minutes—for at least this the week after next.
For the 1st ten mins, begin a book of the Bible—you may select Proverbs or maybe Philippians or perhaps the text of John. Mention those members of your folks by name.
Eventually , sit silently for the final ten mins and think. You can need to begin keeping a book, where you record in your own writing what the Lord is showing you. Do that every day for a minimum of one week and see how nutritive it becomes. And incidentally, before you suspect, “30 mins a day is way too long a time,” consider how long you spend nutritive your body on a day-to-day basis. Then remember the principle : “optimal health needs perfect nutrition.”.
The secret lies in keeping a balance, nutritive your soul as well as your body.
He’s Always Here by Rodney Howard Browne
Saturday, November 28th, 2009
The book of Job isn’t just a bystander to the grace of suffering and God’s presence in our suffering, but it is also our main biblical protest against faith which has been reduced to explanations or “answers.” plenty of the answers that Job’s supposed buddies give him are technically true. But it’s the “technical” part that ruins them. They’re answers without private relationship, intellect without intimacy.
The answers are slapped onto Job’s ravaged life like labels on a specimen bottle.
In reply, Job rages against this secularized knowledge which has lost touch with the living facts of The Lord God. The late ( and I would add great ) Joe Bayly and his other half, Mary Lou, lost 3 of their kids.
They lost one child following surgery when he was only eighteen days old. They also lost the second boy at age 5 because of leukemia. They then lost a 3rd child at eighteen years after a sledding accident, due to complications related to his hemophilia. Joe writes in a superb book, the very last thing we discuss.
Somebody came and talked to me of God’s dealings, of why it occurred, of hope outside the grave. He talked continually ; he revealed things I knew were true. I was indifferent, except I wished he’d depart.
He just sat beside me for an hour and more, listened when I announced something, answered briefly, prayed simply, left.
You have done it right when those in pain hate to see you go. Had we lived in his day, there is not any way we could say, “I know how you feel.” we do not.
A True Friend by Rodney Howard Browne
Saturday, November 21st, 2009
Mates care sufficiently to come without being asked to come.
No one sent a message announcing to Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar, “Would you please come and bring a little sympathy and comfort for Job? The person is dying in this cooking pot of suffering and pain.” That was not required, because real chums show up when anyone they like is truly injuring. Sympathy includes identifying with the sufferer.
They enter into their melting pot, for the point of feeling the misery and being personally touched by the agony. Comfort is making an attempt to reduce the pain by helping in making the sorrow lighter. Pals overtly express the depth of their feelings. They have methods of doing that, don’t they? It is not odd to see a mate standing nearby in the surgery room fighting back the tears.
It isn’t unusual for the buddy to express deep feelings. To the contrary, they come alongside and they get as near as possible. Pals aren’t offended as the room has a bad smell. Chums don’t turn away as the one they have come to be with has been reduced to the shell of his previous self, weighing half what he used to weigh. They don’t walk away as the bottom dropped out of your life and you are at wits’ end. These men literally tore their robes, spattered dust on their heads, and raised their voices and sobbed as they sat down on the ground with Job. They demonstrated the depth of their torment by staying a week and 7 nights without letting out a word. Buddies understand, so they say little.