News & Announcements

Rev. Ronald E. Braxton, Senior Pastor, Metropolitan AME Church, Washington, DC
Sunday, January 31, 2010
www.metropolitanamec.org

Scripture:  Psalm 71:1-6: 71:1 In you, O LORD, I have taken shelter! Never let me be humiliated!71:2 Vindicate me by rescuing me!Listen to me!  Deliver me! 71:3 Be my protector and refuge, a stronghold where I can be safe! For you are my high ridge  and my stronghold.71:4 My God, rescue me from the power of the wicked, from the hand of the cruel oppressor!71:5 For you give me confidence, O Lord; O LORD, I have trusted in you since I was young. 71:6  I have leaned on you since birth; you pulled me from my mother’s womb. I praise you continually.

Life has a way of testing our relationships – with each other, and with God – and it spares no one.  It sometimes leaves us in troublesome, unsettling, difficult places where everything we depend on is turned inside out. We become distressed, and stressed.  But in the scripture, despite all the pain and devastation he is experiencing, there is no doubt in the Psalmist’s mind about his relationship with God.  Five times, the Psalmist refers to God as “my God.”  He knows that his relationship with God is the only REAL thing that he can lean on. 

Regardless of the type of storm you are going through, be clear about your walk, your relationship with God.  No matter what you are going through, be clear in your mind that God is undergirding you.  Jesus was very clear in the end about his relationship with God.  At the end, he said:  “You wait here.  I need personal time with my God.  I need to work this out with God.”  There comes a time in your life when only God and you can work it out. There comes a time when you need somewhere you can go and cry out: “My God! My God….”

God brought you through the last time; and He will bring you through again.  In his book, the Norwegian biblical scholar Sigmund Mowinckel takes a different take on Psalm 71; he suggests that the Psalmist is not necessarily in a crisis at the time of his writing.  Rather, Mowinckel’s take is that the Psalmist is seeking protection FOR THE FUTURE.  He is asking God to “be there for me the NEXT time, just like you have been my rock in the past”.  The Psalmist has CONFIDENCE IN GOD; he knows that God is the God of the next time; that God is the God of tomorrow.  Because of your relationship with God, there ought to be confidence that your God of yesterday will be your God of tomorrow. When you look back over your life at the last time the Lord saved you, you can be secure about the future. I put my confidence in the same God who brought me through the last time.

Be confident; praise God, and CELEBRATE.  Finally, Psalm 71 is not a lament, but a CELEBRATION of the God of the next time.  The Psalmist says: “My praise is continually of you…because you are God; you have known me from my birth; you have been there in my hard times”. He is saying, Lord, you have been my rock in a weary land. You woke me up yesterday.  You did for me what I couldn’t do for myself. I am praising you, not because of what you’ve done but because of what you are doing.  I am praising you for the next time.  The next time I can’t see my way, I want you to be my rock in a weary land.  And when that next time comes, you ought to be able to cry out:

Father, I stretch my hands to Thee,
No other help I know;
If Thou withdraw Thyself from me,
Ah! whither shall I go?

What did Thine only Son endure,
Before I drew my breath!
What pain, what labor, to secure
My soul from endless death!

The God who blessed you, who brought you through the last time will bring you through the next time.  When you look back over your life, didn’t He bring you through?  Didn’t He make a way for you? The same God who delivered you the last time will bring you through the next time. Be confident…praise God…and CELEBRATE.

Rev. Lewis M. Anthony, Senior Pastor, Metropolitan Wesley AME Zion Church
Guest Speaker, Metropolitan AME Church, Washington, DC
Sunday, January 24, 2010
www.metropolitanamec.org

Scripture: Psalm 84:5-7 5 – Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage. 6As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of spring; the autumn rains also cover it with pools. 7They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion.

Psalm 84 is a testimony of a man who is excited about his pilgrimage to the sanctuary of God. He is so excited about his journey, about being in the space where God resides. Some people come to the house of God to be seen, but I am glad just to get my foot in the door. Verse 10: “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness”.

The Psalmist goes on to explain that: “A walk with God is not a walk without difficulty, anxiety, or pain. But blessed is he whose strength is in the Lord while he is passing through the valley of Baca.” Every one of us will be in the valley of Baca if we live long enough. Can you imagine being in a place where you have tears…but no Kleenex; pain…but no medicine; frustration…but no relief. But if your strength is in God, you will walk through the valley of Baca and turn that valley experience into a thing of praise!

We talk of worship, but then we don’t do it. Worship is both a noun and a verb: it is what I am; and it is what I do. There are two times when you must worship: 1. When you feel like it; and 2. When you don’t. In Haiti, after the earthquake those who could get up and go to church did.

Even when they are in the valley of Baca, some folks don’t worship; they look at worship as something to do on the 1st and 3rd Sunday. You are either in a storm, coming out of one, or on your way into one. Who is in the storm with you? God has not promised that the skies will always be blue; that there will be sunshine without rain; joy without sorrow; peace without pain. Surely, there will be toil and temptation. He has promised strength, rest, life, grace, help, and undying love. When you go through the dry place, there is hope for weeping eyes: there is a well in Baca. God will make a way in a dry place. Moses can tell you about a well in Baca. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego can tell you that God made a well in Baca. Esther was a little girl who rose from poverty to the palace because God made a well in Baca. A preacher grew up impoverished; people nailed him to some wood; but God made a way in Baca. In Baca, there is hope for weeping eyes. Hope is when you trust that God will meet you in your dry place; when you know that He will turn your dry place into a place of spring.

William Cowper’s dry place was the inspiration for the famous hymn: “God Moves in a Mysterious Way”. Cowper grew up in church, but he struggled with depression and doubt. During a time when he experienced a dry place in his life, he became so desperate that he decided he did not want to live any longer. He was in London and he grabbed a taxi (actually it was a buggy cab back in those times) and told the driver to take him to the Thames River so he could drown himself. A thick fog came down and, after driving around lost for a while, the cabbie gave up and told Cowper to get out and find it himself. Cowper got out and wandered through the fog, finding himself at a familiar doorway: he realized it was the doorway to his own house. Believing that God had sent the fog to keep him from killing himself, he was inspired to write: “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.”

Confused Christians need to know that there is a well in Baca that gives refreshment in dry places. The well is not filled with fame, not with title or position, nor with money. Rather, it’s a “fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins; and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.” (William Cowper)

There is no need to go to the analyst when you are in a dry place. Instead, do what your ancestors did: they built this church on sweet potato pies, and washing white folks’ laundry while singing: “Father, I stretch my hands out to thee, whence cometh my help.”

Will you experience a dry place? Yes. Will you experience distress? Yes. But if the world cuts your budget, God will budget the cuts. He promised: “Come what may, I’ve got a well in a dry place for you.”

There is hope for weeping eyes, the kind of hope that is not found in the pharmacy. You won’t find this hope in the comforts of money, title or position, but in that place our ancestors sang about near the cross.

This is the word of God for someone in this room who is in a dry place. No matter what you have done, nothing has worked. He put you in a dry place so you could find out that He can make a way out of no way. This is God’s word for his people in a dry place.