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Click the pictures to enlarge.
It is a cold winter morning, yet songs of praise flow forth in rich fullness.
It is a cold winter morning, yet the Word of God is brought forth in power.
It is a cold winter morning, yet God’s people are in attendance in faithfulness.
It is Sunday morning in a high-density area of Harare Zimbabwe. Yes, it is a cold winter morning, and these people, standing in a crude howbeit legal structure are praising God because they know God is faithful. They have opportunity to prove it this day and in the days ahead. You see, the police demolition squad came through this high density area on Thursday and Friday. They call it Operation Clean up. The people equate it to the big wave of destruction that hit East Asia. They say, just as that big wave hit those countries with all the destruction and devastation, we now have our own wave of destruction, only ours is man made.
Everyone has been affected.
Some of the people sitting here today are living in legal
structures and they are opening their own small rooms or home to help those
whose homes have been destroyed. Businesses
are gone, livelihoods demolished or confiscated by police.
“We don’t understand this,” Mayi Mugabe states.
Indeed reason fails when you see the situation.
People barely able to survive on their income from selling vegetables or
maputi (traditional bagged popcorn) now find themselves without the basic
necessities of life, shelter and food and no means with which to achieve it.
The sermon this morning is dealing with the fiery furnace.
You know the story in Daniel. Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego were standing in front of the furnace that was stoked to
be 7 times hotter than normal and Nebuchadnezzar tells them they will be thrown
into the furnace to burn alive if they refuse to bow down to the golden image.
They replied to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend
ourselves before you in this matter. If
we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from
it, and He will rescue us from your hand,
O king.
But even if He does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not
serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”
(Daniel 3:16-18) You see
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego knew the truth that God is sovereign.
Yes, God is able, but even if God chooses not to work things out the way
we want, God is still sovereign. We
cannot understand God’s ways because they are not man’s ways.
This is where faith and trust become active. “Earthly things” are just
that, earthly things. We are
putting our hope in what is eternal. We may no longer have a home in this world, but we know we
will have a whole mansion, for all eternity, in heaven. To God be the glory!
This church is doing all it can to help. There is not a member who will be out in the cold tonight. But they cannot begin to alleviate the suffering of the masses in Zimbabwe. God is our only hope. He is our Jehovah Jirah