Hi, this is Chris Benjamin, the director for the Salvation Army Soundcast. We wanted to take this opportunity to share some additional messages of encouragement with you from some of our hosts from shows like 1-4s of Life and Heartbeat. We just pray that these are an extra blessing to you. If they are, please share them with a friend. God bless. Hello, my name is Mike Harris. I'm the financial secretary for the Texas Division, and I want to just take a few moments to give you some words of encouragement. After all, we need encouragement, don't we, in these strange days. In Dallas County, where I live, we're in our fourth week now of a stay-at-home order, and we have three children who are school age, and they're trying to figure out how they're going to do school.
Our son, Michael, is trying to figure out how graduation will work. Through all of this. And then, of course, if you do venture out of your house, which many have chosen not to do now, but if you do go out and go to the grocery store, you'll see where people are fearful of being close.
We stand at a distance. If we walk down an aisle where somebody else is, we make sure we go as far to one side of that aisle as we can for fear of getting close to folk. And then, of course, you've got the economic impact of all of this. You've got people who have lost hours at work. Others have been furloughed.
Many still have been laid off as really it's starting to hit the economy of this and every other nation, it seems, around the world. And then worst of all, you've got the loss of lives. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands.
Only the Lord knows how many people eventually will succumb to this awful disease. And yet, in the midst of all that, I want to come and offer you some encouragement. And for me, when I look for encouragement, I look first of all at God's word. And if you go to the book of Isaiah in chapter 40, you start to see this words of comfort that Isaiah gives to the people of the southern kingdom. He's prophesied about the Babylonians exiling them, but they will return.
They will return. And so if you get to Isaiah chapter 43, you see the prophet speaking. Again, it's God's words through the prophet's writings, where he starts to talk about the story of the exodus and the miracle that God performed, just reminding the people of God's faithfulness. But then he says, however, forget those things. You see, God is doing a new thing. God is doing a new thing. And then he says, do you not perceive it? And what he's asking the people to do in the midst of the world that they're living in that doesn't seem anything close to good, he's saying, but God's doing something new. Can't you see it? And so I say to you, God is doing something new. Can you see it? I see it in the mornings.
I turn on my television now, and I've often enjoyed watching breakfast television, so I'll watch some of that. Gosh, I've watched as suddenly there's a freedom on there as people are putting aside prejudices that we talked about just a few weeks ago. And now people are searching for something of meaning and Christ and God is talked about on television. Like I've not seen it for a very, very long time. I heard one morning where a preacher was able to sing two verses of Amazing Grace while expressing his faith. Kristen Chenoweth, the actress, was able to sing Lord Make Me an Instrument as she also expressed her faith.
And so I continue to see on television where people are having this level of freedom. Because friends, I believe God is doing a new thing. Earlier this week, I had the privilege and the opportunity to call up really for what was me was a stranger. I've been asked by a friend to call her son.
Her son was searching. He had been away from the church for a good while, but now in the midst of all of this, and he's kind of on the front lines of these things. In the midst of all this, he was starting to wonder, how does this make sense? And the only way it made sense to him was to bring God back into the equation. And so she asked me to call him and to talk to him about this.
Of course, I happily did that. And we had this conversation. And I realized in the middle of this conversation that this young man represented so many people. Those who used to know Christ are coming back. Those who didn't are now bringing him into the equation.
Why? Because God is doing a new thing. We are focused very naturally on the awfulness of this. Yet in the midst of it, there is a light. Something's going on. When Isaiah talked to the people of Judah, the southern kingdom, and said, when you return, he talked also about what we know as the suffering servant, the reed that would not be bruised, the wick that could not be put out. And basically, he was prophesying about the coming of Jesus Christ, that God is doing a new thing. This Messiah is coming to save us all. And friends, so it is when we get out of our exile, when one day we are able to see people again, when we're able to go back to our places of business, when we're able to go to church to worship God freely, we will see that he is doing a new thing. Friends, in the midst of this craziness, be encouraged because God is still in control. God bless you.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-02-03 11:37:58 / 2024-02-03 11:40:36 / 3
