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Friday, August 13, 2010

Brown's Daily Word 8-13-10

Praise the Lord for this Friday the 13th. Those who live in the area, please join us for our Television ministry this evening at 7 PM on Time Warner Cable 4. I am sharing from the life of Moses, how the Lord used Moses for His divine plans and purposes. The Lord redeemed the failures and the defeats of Moses for His glory. Moses born, who was born a pauper became a mighty prince of Egypt. He then took things into his own hands, only to become a fugitive and a pauper once again. The first 40 years of Moses' life were lived out in Egypt, and the next 40 years he dwelt in the land of Midian as a shepherd. The Lord came to him in Midian when he was 80 years old. The Lord commissioned him for great drama and action. Moses came out of his retirement in order to be deployed for KINGDOM PURPOSES.
We are blessed to have with us this weekend Meredith Watson, from Washington, DC. Meredith is a dear friend of Sunita and Laureen. We call her our fifth daughter. Praise the Lord for the joy of living and for the joy of life and, best of all, for the joy of knowing Jesus and serving Him as our King and Lord.
We had word from Orissa, India yesterday that my brother Potel was involved in a hit and run accident, in which he suffered a broken arm. He is going in for surgery today. Please keep him in prayer. Only a couple of weeks ago my mom was bitten by a dog, but she is doing much better now.
August 15 is India's Independence Day. India was ruled by the British Empire for two hundred years. One of the great blessings of British Rule was the coming of the missionaries to India with the Good News of Jesus Christ. My grandparents and my parents were born during the British Rule. All of my siblings and I were born in Independent India. One of my friends was born on August 15, the day India became independent.
T. M. Moore in "Encounter with God" wrote, "When I was a kid, a favorite pastime was to take in the Saturday matinee. It didn’t matter much what was on. I’d head to the snack bar and plunk down my nickel for a Holloway’s All-Day Sucker. Now I was set. This caramel delight would last me through the entire movie, all the way home, into the evening, and I’d still have some left for the next day."
Psalm 16 is a Psalm of delight. David used the words "delight", "pleasant", "glad", and "joy" in this Psalm. David found his delight in the Lord and it gave him an all day delight. He delighted in the Lord’s person. He delighted in the Lord’s people. He delighted in the Lord’s portion. He delighted in the Lord’s principles. He delighted in the Lord’s protection.
Dr. S. D. Gordon told of an older Christian woman whose age began to tell on her memory. She had once known much of the Bible by heart. Eventually only one precious bit stayed with her, "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I committed unto him against that day." II Tim. 1:12.
As time went on, she lost more of that verse too. She would quietly repeat, "That which I have committed unto him." At last, as she hovered on the borderline between this and the spirit world, her loved ones noticed her lips moving. They bent down to see if she needed anything. She was repeating over and over again to herself the one word of the text, "Him, Him, Him." She had lost the whole Bible, but one word, but she had the whole Bible in that one word.
When Lloyd Douglas, author of "THE ROBE", attended college, he lived in a boardinghouse. A retired, wheelchair-bound music professor lived on the first floor. Each morning Douglas would stick his head in the door of the teacher’s apartment and ask the same question, "Well, what’s the good news?" The old man would pick up his tuning fork, tap it on the side of his wheelchair and say, "That’s middle C! It was middle C yesterday; it will be middle C tomorrow; it will be middle C a thousand years from now. The piano across the hall is out of tune. The tenor upstairs sings flat. But, my friend, that is middle C."
We all need a middle C. Life changes. Health changes. Relationships change. However, amid all the changes in our lives, Christ never changes. Jesus is still the Christ, the Son of the living God, and He is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.
In Christ,
Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPeVIuRjUi4

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Brown's Daily Word 8-11-10

Good morning,
Praise the Lord for the summer season; I love summer. Praise the Lord for all the seasons. Our Lord is the Lord in every season and indeed He is the Lord of all seasons. This week our church is involved in our annual Vacation Bible School. We are blessed to have children come for whole week to learn about Jesus and His love. I praise the Lord for our faithful and very dedicated workers who labor with much love to make a difference in the lives of the precious children.
Sunday, September 12, is designated "Back to Church Sunday". This will be held on the day after 9/11. We are inviting our neighbors and friends to join us for special worship service ( 8:30 and 11:00 at Union Center and at 9:30 at Wesley).
We are praying and planning to launching a Saturday evening worship service in September. We will have our first Saturday Evening worship Service on Saturday, September 18, at 6:30 PM. Our Saturday evening services will be held at the First United Meodist Church , Endicott. The historic Church is centrally located in Broome County. The Worship and Praise Band from Davis College will minister in music. Rev Earle Cowden will be preaching. There will be ministry for the children and the youth provided. Those who live in the area please join us for an evening of wonderful worship and praise and celebration. We are praying and targeting our unchurched neighbors and friends. Please pray for these worship services.
We love stories about answered prayer. We get a thrill hearing accounts of God’s miraculous interventions in people’s lives. It motivates us to be more diligent about prayer, becoming specific, confident, and bold. We become absolutely convinced God will answer in the way that we seek. We feel a level of faith and enthusiasm that we have never before experienced. There are times , when we ask, seek, and we knock…but God is silent. The thing that we want does not materialize. When this is the result, our zeal is crushed and we wonder what happened. We ask ourselves and God, “Is it worth it?” “Did I do something wrong?” “Does God even hear me?” “Does He care?” In 2 Corinthians 12 we read about Paul's self- disclosure, and how the Lord said no to him.
No one knows for certain about the nature of Paul’s "thorn in the flesh", though there has been extensive speculation about the nature of his affliction. Paul prayed 3 times for God to relieve him of his affliction. Yet, when trouble comes, it comes with a purpose; God doesn’t waste suffering (McBirney). Despair is suffering without meaning or hope ( Viktor Frankel). We need to realize that for our own good, God’s answer is sometimes “no”.
Perhaps it is better for us if we not know the exact nature of Paul’s difficulty. Then we can fill in the blank with whatever hardship we are personally encountering and begin to see God’s purpose in our pain. We can take our burden to the Lord and leave it there. Paul was not advising us to stop praying after asking 3 times, but simply to accept God’s response, realizing there’s a bigger plan that what we can perceive.
The Lord kept Paul in touch with his limitations. Paul had been given extraordinary revelations. It would not have been surprising if Paul started thinking a bit too highly of himself, taking credit for his own success, so he was given the blessing of a handicap. Paul’s affliction kept him from relying on himself, and kept him trusting the Lord's power. God’s answer to Paul is the same answer that He gives to us today. That is, His grace is sufficient for any human weakness. How is “grace” the remedy for pain? Perhaps grace leads us to learn from our limitations. Phil Yancy wrote, “Grace is for the desperate, the needy, the broken, those who cannot make it on their own. Grace is for all of us.” We can’t “fix” our pain; only God can do that. However, we can grow from our experience.
The Apostle Paul said that the messenger of Satan was “buffeting” him. In other words, he was pounding or beating him. Earlier Paul uses this same word buffet to describe how he had to deal with himself. In I Corinthians 9 Paul said he had to buffet himself, to keep his desires under control. Sometimes, in order to say “yes” to God, we have to say “no” to ourselves. Paul explained back in chapter 1, “We comfort others with the same comfort we have received from the Father of compassion.”
Our hardships make us better qualified to offer comfort. Before we can dry another’s tears, we must learn to weep. How could we ever experience the comforting power of God without first being uncomfortable? We don’t respond to human pain with detachment; we respond out of our own wounded-ness. Henri Nouwen called those who comfort out of their own pain the "Wounded Healers". Oswald Chambers advised, “When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message for someone else when you get into the light.” God’s love is never measured by our physical comfort. In studying of the lives of famous Christians, we discover that many led troubled lives, filled with conflicts, persecution, and disabilities. Yet they rose above their circumstances and remained faithful. They could have easily been bitter, broken and resentful, but they remained close to God through it all. We may suffer broken relationships, broken promises, and broken expectations, but we don’t have to become broken people. Pain is inevitable, but misery is optional.
When God doesn’t seem to be saying anything, rest your confidence on what God has already said. - “When darkness seems to hide His face, I rest on His unchanging grace. In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil. His oath, his covenant, his blood support me in the whelming flood. When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay. On Christ the Solid Rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.” “The Solid Rock”
In Christ the Solid Rock,
Brown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol8JOH1rAxk

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Brown's Daily Word 8-10-10

Good morning,
Praise the Lord. We spent the weekend with Sunita and Andy in Washington, DC. We took our 6 nieces and nephews to their annual summer pilgrimage to Washington, DC. Sunita and Andy have a little garden behind their house. They were blessed with lots of tomatoes and other vegetables. In particular, they have planted one vine of butternut squash, which appears to have close to 40 squash on it. Sunita, her mommy, and I took a walk on Friday evening, from their house to Roman Catholic Cathedral, near Catholic University and the center that is home to the Council of Catholic Bishops. It was an easy evening walk, a little over one mile one way. Sunita said they walk that route often, meeting the people on the streets and praying for them. She said she often takes prayer walks and feels the presence of Jesus, feeling very safe.
We took our nieces and nephews to spend some time at Smithsonian Museum of American History and Heritage. It was a very beautiful experience. On Sunday we worshipped with Sunita and Andy at their church, St Brendan's in the City, a small Anglican congregation that seeks to reach out to the City. The church meets at a Rescue Mission downtown, where the poorest of the poor live. The church meets at 4:30 PM on Sunday. It was a great blessing to be there worshipping the Risen Lord. Most of the congregation was much younger than us. Alice and I were the oldest persons there. Many of the people are of Andy and Sunita's age. Several work for various Government branches such as FEMA, USAID, USDA, World Bank, etc, but all love the Lord Jesus and attempt to live their lives to make a difference in the world they live. Their priest, Father Bill Haley, had just returned from attending a conference on Healing that was held in Jacksonville, FL. He preached on Moses, who had many questions as he walked withe Lord.
When we read the Bible, we find a lot of people asking big questions. Moses, who was born a pauper, was raised as a Prince of Egypt. He took things into his hands, did things his own way, and ended up in a big mess. The Prince of Egypt then became a fugitive and a pauper in the faraway land of Midian. He married, had a family and worked for his father-in-lay. He remained there from the time he was forty until he was eighty, living with many questions. While out tending the sheep one day, the Lord appeared to him in burning bush, in a desolate desert.
If you look closely you will notice something about the questions that Moses asked. They were asked in the face of unfulfilled promises or personal tragedy. They were similar to the questions that are on our lips when difficult people try to steal our joy, when we are facing immanent danger, or even when we face undeserved punishment. When times get tough, wise people start directing their questions to God.
The prophet Habakkuk also stood in the middle of that tradition of questioning God. His work differed from every other writing by every other prophet in the history of Israel. What makes it different is that he never said a word to another person. Habakkuk was somebody with questions for God, and he was not shy about asking them.
The book opens with a question of frustration. “How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you ‘Violence,’ but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong?” The situation during Habakkuk’s life was difficult. As he looked around at the world, at the injustice and pain that are a natural part of life, he asked God why He did not do something about it.
We all feel that way sometimes. In the wake of a personal tragedy, or when we were waiting for some good thing to happen instead of the bad, we have moments when we just want to try to get God's attention.
Tim Hansel was about as active a person as anyone could be. He lived in central California and his passion was mountain climbing. He loved it so much that he made his work leading mountain climbing expeditions. One day in 1973 around dusk, when the snow-covered mountain turned to ice, Tim fell and suffered an injury that would cripple him for the rest of his life. The injury was not of the nature that he would be bound by a wheel chair; he wasn’t. He could move around fine, but his spine was unalterably damaged so that every movement gave him excruciating pain. It was pain so intense that it shook him to the core of his being.
Tim spent several years questioning God. “Why did this have to happen to me? Why don’t you take away the pain?” As you can imagine, the longer Tim lived with the pain the more intense the questions became, but after a couple of years, Tim’s questions began to be answered. If you read through his journal, you can get glimpses into the answers that God was giving him.
Winter 75. “Perhaps this is the ultimate realization--when we recognize that all questions have the same answer that comes from you, O Lord, from you.”
Spring 76. “At times I whisper in the night: “God I’ve learned enough now! I’m ready for the next test.”
Summer 76. “Learning patience. . . takes a lot of patience.”
“What a test of character adversity is. It can either destroy or build up, depending on our chosen response. Pain can either make us better or bitter.”
Spring 78. “If your security is based on something that can be taken away from you--you will constantly be on a false edge of security.”
Reading through Hansel’s struggles, we find that his words are parallel to those of Habakkuk. Habakkuk questioned about why God let pain and evil continue on earth. When God answered and explained that he was going to punish the wickedness of Israel by allowing the Babylonians to destroy the southern Kingdom, Habakkuk was not any more satisfied. He than struggled with why God could use the most ruthless and terrible people, the infamous Babylonians, to judge the Jewish nation who were at least more godly than the Babylonians. As we read through the text, we cannot help but realize that Habakkuk didn’t receive all of the answers he was searching for. Yet, through the process of his questions, he did come to a conclusion that empowered him to move on. In 3:19 he wrote, “The Sovreign Lord is my strength! He will make me as surefooted as a deer and bring me safely over the mountains.” What changed between the questions and the affirmation of confidence in God was a realization that he came to in chapter 2. 2:4, "The Righteous will live by his faith."
These are words that Paul latched onto as he explained how to live as a Christian. Paul quoted the passage in Romans 1:17, and the Hebrew author quotes it again in Hebrews 10:38, but this New Testament idea is rooted all the way back in Habakkuk. Righteous people live by faith. It means that people who truly follow God trust Him enough to be obedient, even when life doesn’t make sense.
Habakkuk 3:17-19, "Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights.
In Christ,
Brown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qp11X6LKYY