Brown's Daily Word 9-16-11

Good morning,
Praise the Lord for this Friday. Yesterday afternoon I drove around Tioga County, including parts of Nichols, Tioga Center, and Owego. The destruction and the disaster caused by the flood in these area is beyond belief. ( Please watch the video of the flood scenes enclosed herewith) At this time most of the residents finally have their power back. Praise the Lord for every one who is involved in ministering to these people. It is a blessing to see the work of the Kingdom by His people. May Jesus provoke us to love and care, and to come alongside those who are in need. Our Lord came not to be served but to serve.
Pray for our weekly TV outreach this evening on Time Warner Cable Channel 4 at 7 PM. I will be speaking from Psalm 46. "God is our Refuge and strength, a very present help in the time of trouble".
Letters are interesting and amazing things. They have been the main form of communication between two people or groups of people who are some distance apart, longer than any other form of communication. With the invention of the telephone, there was some threat that written correspondence might pass by the wayside, but it didn’t. Ironically, with the invention of the computer - which has made it possible to do away with so many other outdated things - letter writing has returned in a new way and with its own language and format, that of email.
Letters have a great deal of power, though sometimes, we are unaware of their power. The power within them is controlled only by the depth of their content, and the courage of the writer to record his or her true thoughts and feelings. Often
letters are channels for expression of a person’s true nature that cannot be shared or expressed in any other way or to the same extent.
Letters are also great storytellers, or great catalysts for stories. Paul, one of the great apostles of Jesus, wrote letters, including those he wrote to his young friend and protege, Timothy. The content of these letters was to teach Timothy and other church leaders and pastors how to be faithful disciples and to lead others to faithful discipleship. Paul wrote this letter to Timothy to make sure Timothy and the Christians under his care and supervision pursued a spiritual journey, seeking a closer relationship with God. Paul included direction as to how people should live out their lives and conduct themselves as faithful followers of God. There is instruction provided concerning the habits of Christian households and how people should behave.
In this letter Paul wrote and talked about family, particularly home life and what life within the Christian family home should be like. Then it projected those family images onto the church. Paul referred to Christians as being the members in the “family of God.” In Hebrew culture, which was very much a part of the life of those early Christians, home was where faith began. Everything related to home life had a ritualistic, liturgical, worshipful experience about it. They literally lived out the relationship to God in mundane daily activities. They took that very experience with them when they went to worship at the temple.
Early Christianity was a home based faith. Paul instructed Timothy that the people Timothy serves should come together as a larger family, as brothers and sisters in Christ, in the same way they should be conducting themselves in their smaller family units. The letters written to Timothy were penned to provide loving guidance and instruction in the absence of the teacher to help people understand how to behave, how to be, as the family of God, and to provide guidance as to how to live out their witness as revealed to us in the event, of Jesus, his death and Resurrection, his teaching and ministry, and the mystery and wonder that surround him.
Our Lord is faithful and steadfast. For one thing, throughout these letters we find the consistent, unyielding, unchanging presence of Jesus. He is the theme in every scenario, the main character of every part. He is the reason for living and serving. He is the one who has made it possible for to have the life abundant and life Eternal. He is the one who has made it possible us to to enter the Eternal City. Blessed be His Name.
In Christ,
Brown


Binghamton Flood 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s0VYzmh96s




Please pray for our upcoming ministry events:


We will be back to our Wednesday schedule, including Bible study, fellowship, and prayer, starting September 14.2011.. We will meet with a meal at 6 PM, with the Bible study beginning at 6:30 PM. We will begin a 4 week study on the theme, "Why? Making Sense of God's Will", by Adam Hamilton. Topics include, "Why Do the Innocent Suffer?", Why Do My Prayers Go Unanswered?", "Why Can't I See God's Will for My Life?", and "Why God's Love Prevails". Following the completion of this study we will be using Rick Warren's study, "Forty Days of Love". This will lead us to the beginning of the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons. More information will follow in the church newsletter.

Please mark your calendar for our prayer conference, which will begin on Friday, October 14 and continue through Sunday morning, October 16.
The Key Note Speaker: Kelly Johnson from Memphis TN.
Prayer Team will include: Sunita and Andy, Rob and Jenn and Meredith from Washington DC.

The tentative schedule follows:
Friday, October 14 at 6 PM - opening session at Union Center UMC
Saturday, October 15, 9 AM - noon - concert of prayer at UCUMC
Prayer teams will be available to pray for people for salvation, restoration, healing, deliverance...
Saturday, 5:30 PM - banquet at First UMC, 53 McKinley Ave., Endicott
6:30 PM worship service, including an open invitation to pray at the altar following the worship service. I invite you to be a part of the prayer team during that time.
Sunday morning worship at 8:30 and 11 AM. at UCUMC Kelly Johnson will be preaching. There will be a time for prayer / a concert of prayer

Our first Saturday evening service will be held on Saturday, September 17 at 6:30 PM (Coffee Fellowship at 6 PM) at First United Methodist Church, 53 McKinley Avenue in Endicott. Rev. Earle Cowden will be preaching, and Laureen Naik will be leading the worship. One of our ministry teams, led by Lynn Rosenbarker, will be preparing and serving a meal at noon on 9/17, as part of our outreach ministry.
Our youth will be attending the Word of Life Superbowl at the arena and other sites on November 4 & 5.
Our annual Thanksgiving Banquet will be held on Saturday, November 19.
The Russian Men's Ensemble will be in concert on December 3.
We are planning for a trip to the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Extravaganza on December 6, leaving here at 6 AM, spending the day in NYC, and attending the show at 5 PM. There are optional sites to visit, including the Ground Zero 9/11 Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. The trip costs $90 per person, including the bus ticket and a ticket to the show. Anyone who wants to reserve a spot on the bus should make their check payable to Union Center United Methodist Church, memo "Radio City Christmas Extravaganza".
September 18, we will go back onto the regular schedule with services at both 8:30 and 11 AM and Sunday School at 9:50 AM. Wesley will resume meeting at 9:30 AM.
Here at Union Center- Wesley- Endicott, we focus on " World as our Parish"., We remind ourselves that we serve under a captain who has never lost a battle. Jesus Christ the Head of the Church is Faithful . We are invited to embrace 7 holy habits of Christian faithfulness. We are called to FOCUS on our prayer life, our relationship with Christ, reading the Bible, faithful worship attendance, financial gifts to Christ and His Church,, serving Jesus with our hands, and sharing the good news of His Great Redemption,with others. May Christ be praised.