Daily Topic for June 18, 2013
Daniel’s fourth chapter is a kind of celebrity tract in which the most powerful king of his day tells how God broke his pride and stubbornness, and how in simple childlike surrender, he came to acknowledge the most High God as his Sovereign. Nebuchadnezzar said, “I raised my eyes toward heaven, and my reason returned to me and I blessed the Most High.” When we are tempted to believe that any individual or any nation is beyond the saving power of God, we should be reminded that the king’s heart is in the hands of the Lord; He directs it like a watercourse wherever He pleases.
Pray that God will give us the faith to trust Him for miracles in the hearts of men and nations.
The Buol people’s former sultans were quite effective implementing a class system of the have’s and the have nots. Zul, a simple rice farmer, definitely inherited the takdir (fate given by Allah) of the have not’s.
Zul’s neighbors, Burhan and his wife, had recently begun to talk with him about the prophet Isa (Jesus). They invited Zul and his family to a discussion of the prophets as studied from the books of Moses, Psalms, and the gospels. During his last crop failure, Zul had observed Burhan and his wife standing in the middle of their rice field as they cried out to Allah in the name of Isa Al Masih (Jesus the Messiah). They asked Allah to bring rain for the parched land so that Allah would be glorified. A beautiful rain did descend at that moment! Mysteriously though, rain fell only upon Burhan and his family’s farm. That prayer and apparent intimacy with Allah had mystified Zul. Why did Allah answer Burhan’s prayer in the name of Isa Al Masih and not his?
Pray for the Holy Spirit to draw the Buol people to Jesus. Pray for the Holy Spirit to thrust out a national team that will implement a church planting movement among this unreached people group for God’s glory.-RA
96,000 Muslims, five believers
Status: Engaged in a church planting movement (CPM) effort
Learn more at joshuaproject.netLocation: Northern Sulawesi