Sarkozy in the Holy Land

This news article is from today's Jerusalem Post. I thought it interesting how Nicolas Sarkozy seems to be interjecting himself into the peace process in the Holy Land when France has basically had nothing to do with it for decades. Last week, it was Sarkozy that convinced President Bush that it would be right and fitting to pressure Israel into negotiating away the Shebaa Farms sector of the Golan Heights to Syria. Bush immediately dispatched Condaleeza Rice to Israel and Prime Minister Ehud Ohmert bit on the idea.

Take special note of Sarkozy's stance that Jerusalem should be shared....another word for divided....since it is a treasure to three faiths. Jerusalem has been under Jewish control since 1967 and that fact continues to drive the Arab world crazy, even though Israel has voluntarily ceded the Temple Mount to Islam.
Read away!
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas signed an agreement on Tuesday to establish an industrial zone in the Bethlehem area to boost the Palestinian economy.

Abbas thanked Sarkozy for agreeing to fund the $21 million project, which is expected to provide thousands of jobs. Abbas also called on the European Union to play a more active role in solving the Israeli-Arab conflict.

The industrial zone will be built on a 530-dunam plot, PA officials said, expressing hope that the work would begin in the next few weeks. After the meeting with Abbas, Sarkozy and his entourage visited the Church of the Nativity.

Abbas, speaking at a press conference in the city, hailed the French president as a "true and brave" friend. He added that the Palestinians were relying on the EU for financial aid. Abbas said peace in the region depended on "removing the 60-year-old oppression" against the Palestinians. He called for dismantling Israel's security barrier in the West Bank and ending settlement there.

"Every Palestinian, be he or she a Muslim or Christian, should have the right to move around freely and to have free access to holy sites," Abbas said. "We hope to see the principles of the French Revolution, namely justice and friendship, implemented in Palestine."

Sarkozy described Abbas as a man of peace "whom we trust and support." He said his country's policy was to talk to men and women of peace and not terrorists. He added that during his talks with Israeli leaders, he had urged them to halt the policy of settlement construction.

Sarkozy also called on Israelis and Palestinians to "share" Jerusalem.

"It's a holy city for three faiths - Jews, Christians and Muslims," he said. "Can Jerusalem be for one party and not the other? I don't think so."

Earlier, Sarkozy dispatched his interior minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, to Ramallah to lay a wreath of flowers at the tomb of former PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

Refined, Not Defined

My daily reading of the Word took me into Romans chapter eight....I've read it trillions of times, cherish it deeply, but I love the way the 'same ole' 'same ole' can reach out and emphasize a valuable newness.

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?----No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

FACT...trouble, trial, hardship, and difficulty will follow us all the days or our walk in Christ. (Sorry to borrow from the flow of Psalm 23... goodness and mercy will follows all the days of our life too!) But the walk of the believer is not defined by the outward difficulties and tribulations, even suffering. We fail one another when we attach labels of faith and perseverance on one another simply because a severe test has been completed with a passing grade....say an "A-" or "B." Paul tells the Romans that none of those outward sufferings have any separative affect upon the love of Christ we hold to.

Now, don't get me wrong: I am not saying trials and tribs don't have a purpose, because they do. However, their purpose is not to DEFINE, but to REFINE. The relationship we have with our trials, persecutions, sufferings, or times of nakedness (lack), according to James, strengthen our faith. Why? Because they teach us to rely even more on our relationship with Jesus. The trials, when approached and dealt with by faith, tend to separate us from the love of stuff, the love of comfort, the love of culture, the love of things that are really not worthy of afterthought. Thus, we are refined into a deeper walk by our struggles, if we let it happen that way.

No, we are not defined by troubles and trials. We are defined by the love of Christ that we are attached to by faith! Something extraordinary happens to the person who holds desperately to the love of Christ when the odds seem to stack up against him. Paul calls it being "more than conquerors!" In other words, you don't have to win the trial....the trial simply cannot detach you from the love you are holding to. It is almost an ambivalent brush-off of the difficulty, as if it were a bug that is irritatingly buzzing around your ear.

I wish I was to that place, but I confess I am not. Sometimes, the hardship seems huge and difficult, and it is! That is why the refining continues...so that I will know thoroughly what defines me and how big HE really is. How about YOU?
Pastor Jim

When You're Stuck

Have you ever felt stuck? I'm sure you have, me too. But I'm referring to those times in your spiritual walk of faith when it just feels like your'e bogged down and can't get moving. It's a frustrating, if not frightening feeling.

A few years ago, I was working along the newly poured footings of our facility, sucking an exorbitant amount of rainwater out of the outer excavation, when I slipped down into the Missouri mud. Yes, Missouri mud is different. It has a not-so-subtle way of pulling you in and holding you. I felt myself being slowly sucked downward. It started at knee level and quickly advanced to envelop my hips. I was alone with no help available. Down...down....down.......down I went. In a burst of panic and a vocal prayer for help I was able to finally pull myself out and walk away, muddy but unscathed. Forget the water!

From time to time, our walk of faith can get sucked into a muddy halt. I don't like it at all, but it happens. Jacob, in the Book of Genesis, was stuck like that. He had relied on his own wit and deceptive brinkmanship for so long that he let God's covenant promise slip behind the horizon of his character. His life was formed around attempting to out-deceive his slave-master father-in-law and it wasn't working. But then, his barren wife, Rachel, miraculously conceived and bore Jacob a son. She was so overjoyed that she immediately claimed the conception of a second child by saying, in faith, "The Lord will add another!" Those declarative words formed the name JOSEPH. (Jehovah Yowcef)

Jacob was jarred by the miraclaculous. In Genesis 30 we read that he took the birth as a sign that it was time to move out of the mud and get on with his life, a new life of trust in the Lord, and God responded. Jacob began to prophet honestly. He left his self-produced slavery. He launched out on his own and encountered the Lord in a wrestling match. In the process, God transformed his inner-man and changed his name to Israel (God's Prince) The change was wholesale, to the point where he was able to reconcile with his wronged-brother Esau. He left the mudhole.

In times of muddy stuckness....I believe, if we really and truly call out to the Lord for help, he will send us a Joseph...not just a helper, but a multiplier of God's blessing and presence. In fact, he already has. His name is Jesus.. "The Salvation of the Lord." Through him, mud-rescues occur, characters are transformed, and blessings abound. "Now to him who is able to do far abundantly more than we can ask or think, through the power that is at work within us..." Wow! Let him do that and see how quickly you can be pulled from your mud-pit, your mirey clay, your place of deadness.
Pastor Jim