FBC Daily Devotional – November 24, 2020

Faith Baptist Church

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you. Looking forward to Thanksgiving praise service this evening. As I record this in advance of Tuesday, the plan is that it will be in person, but it may end up being virtual.

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You'll know by the time you see this devotional, you'll know whether we're doing it live and in person or live by live stream.

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Nevertheless, I appreciate the Thanksgiving praise service that we can have and gather together and just share testimonies of thanksgiving to the

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Lord and focus on Him. Well, a while back, we were in Florida, Chris and I, and traveling, driving along the highway, and I could see up ahead that we were going to be driving into a storm, into a downpour, and it was really interesting the way that played out.

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I mean, you could see it in the distance, and the closer you got, you could see the wall of rain, and all of a sudden, you're in the middle of it, and it is just pouring down.

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But even while you're in that rainstorm, you can look out to the west, and there's the sunshine, and you look in the rearview mirror, and there's the sunshine.

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I've been to Florida enough to know that this happens quite frequently. Where you are, you may be having a downpour, and yet through that downpour, you can see off a mile or so away, the sun is shining brightly.

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I thought of that experience when I came across a statement by Thomas Manton, and he said this.

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He said, As many times the sun shineth when the rain falleth, so there may be in the soul a mixture of spiritual rejoicing and holy mourning, a deep sense of God's love, and yet a mourning because of the of corruption.

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Spurgeon, in commenting on that quote of Manton, he said that the spiritual Christian understands this.

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He gets this. Spurgeon went on to say, he says, This is no puzzle to a Christian. Our life is a paradox.

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Never in the world elsewhere is there such sunshine of delight as we enjoy, and never such rain as that which damps our joys.

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It seems at times as if heaven and hell are met in our experience.

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Ours is a joy unspeakable, and yet an agony unutterable. We rise to the heavenlies in Christ and sink to the abyss in ourselves.

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Those who have seen fire burning on the sea, trees living and flourishing upon a rock, feathers flying against the wind, and doves vanquishing eagles have begun to see a list of marvels, all of which we experience in the

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Christian life. Have you experienced that even this week already, joys mixed with sorrows?

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So I said tonight's our Thanksgiving Praise Service. I remember Thanksgiving Praise Service we had years ago.

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I was pastoring a church in Vermont, so this has probably been 20, 23 years ago.

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On Thanksgiving, the night before Thanksgiving, we're having our praise service, and people are together.

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People gathered. There's a joy in the room. We're expressing gratitude and giving praise to God for various things, and the phone rang.

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The church phone rang, and my wife went to answer the phone, and she came back with a look of horror on her face.

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She explained to me that a little girl from our congregation, her mom had adopted her from Russia.

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This little girl, she's five years old, I believe, had fallen, injured her head, and was in ICU in the hospital.

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We ended the service very quickly, and Chris and I took off to the hospital and found the mom in the waiting room and so forth.

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The long story short is that the injury to her head was so severe, she did not survive.

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Here is this horrible juxtaposition of, within a matter of minutes, the joy expressed in thanksgiving to God for all of his wonderful things that he's done, his faithfulness and mercies and so forth, and then the sorrow of a horrible tragedy.

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Paul understood this when he was writing to the Corinthians, the second letter that we have in our

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Bibles, 2 Corinthians. He wrote in chapter 6 about his ministry.

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He says, his ministry, he's been laboring through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise, we are treated as imposters and yet are true, as unknown and yet well known, as dying and behold we live, as punished and yet not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing yet possessing everything, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing.

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The Christian who has any experience in his walk with the Lord understands that very well.

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Sorrowful yet always rejoicing. You can be sorrowful even right now because of your own true condition, the condition of your heart.

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You know you're full of corruption, you know you're far from perfect, and that causes you grief if you love

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Christ, and yet rejoicing that he remembers our frame, he knows we're dust, that the blood of Christ Jesus cleanses us from all sin, and on and on we can go with the very experiences that Paul mentions and the experiences of life, that we oftentimes are driving through a rainstorm and yet there we see the sun.

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Well I hope you'll be encouraged today by the fact that the sun is indeed shining.

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I hope you're not right this moment experiencing the rainstorm, but if you are, if you are, look around, somewhere there's a ray of sunshine.

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Maybe open your Bible, look in the Word, go to one of the Psalms, and find in God's Word that ray of light in your rainstorm.

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Well I hope you'll have a good rest of your Tuesday, and spend some time giving thanks to God today, even if your heart is sorrowful, be rejoicing.

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Our Father and our God sometimes it's a very difficult thing to do, and we have to be honest to admit that, and yet Lord there is great healing and there is great hope that is found when in our rainstorms and our sorrows we can look around and we can see rays of light that for which we can rejoice, things we can be grateful for and praise you for.

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Help us to do that we pray in Jesus name, Amen. All right, have a good rest of your day and may