What Our Hands Have Handled, chapter two
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personal testimonies
“Use your abilities for Christ!” That’s a popular challenge, especially to new Christians, in our times. As I mull over it, it leaves the distinct flavor of humanism in my soul. The spirit of this age glorifies man and his abilities and the same spirit has entered the church full-force.
The New Testament truth is that God neither needs you or your abilities. In fact, God doesn’t need anything; He is totally self-sufficient, but because He is also generous, He gives us the privilege of participating in His purposes. However, in order to do this, we must receive His ability… and His “power is perfected in weakness”. That was Paul’s theology and he was willing to sacrifice his strength, “so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.” (2 Co.12:9). Brothers and sisters, could we please get back to New Testament thinking and faith? What follows is the story of a simple man, clothed with God’s strength…
CHAPTER 2
Witnessing with the Holy Ghost from Heaven
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| Alice & Erwin Brueckner |
With some people, salvation is a radical experience. Christ invades their life with such power and reality that returning to their former life is unthinkable. He banishes the darkness and thrills their souls. Erwin Brueckner had such an experience. He came into the kingdom of God with his whole heart and all the energy he possessed.
The new life was fresh and alive. He carried a running conversation with the Lord. He talked and God answered. At times, he thought he heard angels singing and would join the song. The location did not seem to matter. God was as real on the sidewalk of the downtown district of North Milwaukee, as He was in the private prayer room.
Erwin gave all that he had and wanted all that God had. Two weeks after his conversion, a visiting minister in his church, L. H. Ziemer, a Lutheran pastor from Pennsylvania, preached a stirring sermon on the necessity of being filled with the Holy Spirit. He invited the spiritually hungry and thirsty to come for prayer to a side room off the main auditorium. Erwin was holding his oldest son, Erv Jr., but that did not detain him. He set the boy on the seat next to him and told him to await his return. He was the first to his feet and, for a moment, no one else moved. Then as he walked down the aisle, he raised his arm to heaven and those who watched later declared that his hand turned in a rather peculiar manner, as if he were beckoning the congregation to come. Many then responded. Erwin took it as a sign that he had a call to invite others to experience the presence of the Lord.
September 14 - 20 Daily Meditations in the Psalms
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Daily Meditations
September 14
Psalms 90:9-17
9. For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.
10. The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
11. Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.
12. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
13. Return, O LORD, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants.
14. O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
15. Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil.
16. Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children.
17. And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.
As the Israelites, who were destined to wander forty years in the wilderness, so the tale of our life was told before the foundation of the world. In spite of that fate, Moses was satisfied to live in the presence of God. “If You go not with us, then we will not go up,” he said years before. His presence makes the wilderness to bloom and Moses and his followers could rejoice and be glad all their days. We need to apply our hearts to wisdom and spend each day in the fullness of His will. Man is foolish to rebel against his Creator. Do Your work and show Your glory, oh Lord. Though our geographical position does not improve, let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. He is all we need anywhere. May our lives count for eternity, as Moses’ did, though he died in the wilderness.
"What Our Hands Have Handled", chapter one
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personal testimonies
“The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was brooding over the surface of the waters.” God begins His mighty works with less than nothing. He takes disorder and darkness and moves in love to create that, which will bring glory to His name. So He does in individual human lives, moving sovereignly, where there seems to be no potential for anything positive, nothing moving in His direction.
Among our relatives, He started with one 30-year-old man, who worked in his father’s tavern and played his violin in his dance hall. This is the story of my father’s conversion and how He then cracked the hard heart of my grandfather. Read and marvel at the powerful invasion of God in human affairs…
CHAPTER 1
Grandpa Was a Bartender
Otto Brueckner, along with his parents, eight brothers and a sister, immigrated to America from Germany a few years before the turn of the 20th century. He was 16-years-old. It must have been shortly thereafter that he found a job at the Fuller Warren Stove Company in Milwaukee, for he was employed in the factory almost forty years. He worked his way up the ladder and became one of the foremen. Fuller Warren was hit by the depression in the early 1930’s and went out of business. Otto, along with millions of others across America, found himself unemployed. Otto Brueckner was my grandfather.
September 7 - 13 Daily Meditations in the Psalms
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Daily Meditations
September 7
Psalms 88:13-18
13. But unto thee have I cried, O LORD; and in the morning shall my prayer prevent thee.
14. LORD, why castest thou off my soul? why hidest thou thy face from me?
15. I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up: while I suffer thy terrors I am distracted.
16. Thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut me off.
17. They came round about me daily like water; they compassed me about together.
18. Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness.
More than once, we find this question in the Psalms: “Why hidest Thou Thy face from me?” Has it ever been answered? The Christian life is not a mind game or an escape from reality. We pray because we are faced with matters of life and death, eternal loss and gain and titanic strength against disheartening weakness. There is no pleasure in being an abomination to friends and to have eyes weary with mourning. However, when we are separated from all else, He becomes our only source and early “in the morning shall my prayer prevent thee” (come to meet you).
This is a song of the cross. Every child of God will sing this song at one time or another. It is a song of weakness, a song of abandonment, a song of death. Jesus Himself sang it. However, resurrection springs out of this song. We are brought low that He might arise and be exalted in us.
Are You Afraid to Judge?
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Important messages
I wrote the following article while we lived in the USA sometime between 1979 and 1986. A church published it and it was distributed in our area; afterwards it was published in ten languages in “The Herald of His Coming”, a Christian newspaper, of which you may have heard. Because my brother asked for some copies, I had to look for the article. I hadn’t seen it for quite a few years. But now, I was surprised, as I read it again and thought about things that I have observed since then, that confirm 100% what I had written. I don’t have to change a single word to apply it perfectly to the situation in 2013.
Are You Afraid to Judge?
The lesson that Jesus gave us about the log and the speck in the eye (Mt.7:3) is, for most of us, at least, almost as familiar as John 3:16 or the Golden Rule. Often it is quoted, not only in church services, but many a conversation or heated discussion is brought to a screeching halt by the reprimand… “Don’t judge!” Nevertheless, in the same way that a pleasant melody can be distorted by too much amplification, likewise over-emphasis of the most certain truth can weaken it and deafen the listener to a proper balance of biblical doctrine.
If the quantity of teaching over a theme could guarantee its effectiveness, the effort against judging should have totally eliminated its practice among God’s people. By now, believers should be living in perfect harmony. However, facts show the complete opposite is true. Controversy and division prevails, and what is more important still, we have learned to drop our defenses. We have opened a door towards tolerance to sin and a lowering of standards, to general worldliness in the church, and to a multitude of false teachers carrying explosive and seductive doctrines. Should we conclude that something is wrong? I believe that we have not taught “the whole purpose of God” (Acts 20:27) with the faithfulness that godly people did in the past. The average modern Christian is not aware of the whole truth about spiritual judgment.
You and I will have to isolate ourselves from the modes of the day and the common attitudes, and get in contact with the Author of unalterable truth, God’s Holy Spirit, in order to perceive the original intention of Scripture. With His unction and direction, the whole tenor of Bible teaching, from Genesis to Revelation, has to be explored. Each extraordinary text must be examined within its context.
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