Brown's Daily Word 5-24-11

Good morning,
Praise the Lord for this new day. It is filled with the splendor and beauty of spring. Praise the Lord. He gave us very blessed weekend that included preparing and serving meals to the needy Saturday noon at the First UMC, Endicott along with the Evening worship Service. It was a great blessing to be in the House of the Lord yesterday to worship and offer praises to Him for His mighty deeds.
The Epistle Reading for yesterday was taken from 1 Peter 2. In Peter’s inspired vision, the church is a spiritual house. This spiritual house built from living stones can be understood in two ways. First, it is a dwelling place for a household or family. With God as the Master of the house, we all belong to God’s family through His Son our Lord Jesus Christ. Second, this spiritual house can be a temple. A temple is a place of God’s presence where the people of God worship. We are that temple. We are that spiritual house. We are the living stones that God intends to build into a glorious structure that brings glory to His Son. We are also the priesthood that serves in God’s house .
A priesthood exists to serve God at the temple, offering sacrifices. In this case, the priesthood includes all Christians, and the sacrifices offered are spiritual ones. We make no offerings for sins, since that offering has been made once for all by our great high priest, Jesus Christ. The spiritual sacrifices that we offer to God are our lives. We can encapsulate what offering our lives to God as spiritual sacrifices means in one word, worship.
In "The Purpose Driven Life", Rick Warren says : "Worship is not part of your life; it is your life. Worship is not just church services…. Every activity can be transformed into an act of worship when you do it for the praise, glory
and pleasure of God." [pp. 66, 67]
God desires every part of us, not just a portion of our lives. He asks for all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. God is not interested in halfhearted commitment, partial obedience, and the leftovers of our time and money. He desires our full devotion, not little just the crumbs or the dregs.
Quoting Isaiah 28:16, the Apostle Peter spoke of a new building being fashioned by God. The first stone, the cornerstone, is our Lord Jesus Christ. We are told that this stone has been chosen by God and is precious to Him. Moreover, we are also told that "whoever believes in him,” that is, the cornerstone chosen by God, "will not be put to shame." The idea here is that when testing of the judgement of God comes, those who put their full trust in Jesus Christ will be found worthy.
Peter continues in verses 7-8, "So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and "A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense." Those who believe in Jesus Christ will share the honor that God has for His Son. For those who will not believe, they will see the crucified Christ that they rejected, who seemed to be abandoned by God and powerless on the cross has in fact been given by God the most prominent place in God’s household. The stone that the builders rejected has been accepted by the architect and used as the cornerstone for the entire edifice. In addition to this, Christ is a stone over which people stumble and He is a rock of offense.
Peter changed subjects in verse 9, shifting from speaking about Christ to speaking about Christ’s followers, saying, "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light."
To the Christians of his day, and to us, Peter said, you are a "chosen race." Just as Jesus Christ is described as the chosen cornerstone, we are described as a chosen race of people. All who belong to God by faith in Jesus Christ are a special people, chosen by God to constitute a new people. God is making a people gathered around His Son into a New Israel.
You are a royal priesthood. A priest is someone who serves God, and a royal priesthood is a group of priests who belong to a king. In the Old Testament, the priesthood was restricted to only one of the twelve tribes of Israel. In the New Israel all the members of the church are priests to God who is our king.
You are called to be a holy people. Because we belong to God we are obliged to be holy. We are holy because we have been set apart for God’s service. To be holy is to be morally blameless, and since none of us sinners can be morally blameless, we must rely on God’s mercy.
You are also a people of God’s own possession. We are God’s special property and as such we are recipients of God’s special care. It is only through God’s gift of grace given to us through Jesus Christ that we are made worthy to belong to God. We can be assured that Christ will never fail us, never mess up, never forsake us, and never give up, give in, or give out. Christ is the foundation upon which our lives are built. If we stand, we stand in Christ! If in Christ, we shall never ultimately fall. Christ is the alignment factor in our lives. We should measure anything we do and say against our Standard - Christ - not by each other. He is determinative in regard to our priorities, our values, our votes, our goals, our thoughts, our actions, and our words.
Without this cornerstone our lives are out of alignment, out of balance, and of no positive eternal value. If as Christians, we treasure other things more than Him, we are then bound for misery, depression, and a sub-par Christian existence. We will be buried with guilt from not treasuring Him. We will have a difficult time listening to or being led by the Spirit, because of the other things clouding our life. Joy and peace will be stifled as well, because we look for it in the wrong places.
In Christ,
Brown
http://youtu.be/SUf5v0VySw0


Saturday evening worship service.
Location: First United Methodist Church
53 McKinley Avenu
Endicott
Sponsored by the Union Center United Methodist Church, 128, Maple Drive, Endicott

Saturday, May 28, 2011

6 PM Coffee Fellowship( First UMC Enicott, )

6:30 PM Worship Service Worship Music: Ruth Gent and worship Team.
Speaker: Rev Earle Cowden