Good morning,
Praise the Lord, for it is Friday and Sunday is coming. May we all be blessed with a full weekend of rest, renewal, worship, and witness. May the Holy Spirit provoke us to share the Good News of Jesus our Lord in word and deed with others that they might be drawn to Jesus, the author of life. Let us make room and time to worship the Living Lord with great Joy and great zeal.
In his book, “Loving God,” Charles Colson tells about a Russian Jewish doctor by the name of Boris Nicholayevich Kornfeld, a Russian Jewish doctor who was sentenced to a most inhuman Russian prison for a minor political crime in the 1950's. Because he was a physician he did receive some privileges in the prison in return for treating other prisoners. Still he suffered much abuse. His treatment would have in fact been unbearable except that he developed a friendship with another prisoner who, through the quality of his witness, brought Kornfeld to a commitment to Christ.
After he committed his life to Christ, Kornfeld felt a great inner freedom. He had a patient, a cancer patient, who was awaiting surgery. Kornfeld shared with him what Christ had done in his own life. Kornfeld was so enthusiastic about this change in his own life, that he caught the patient’s attention in spite of brief lapses brought on by the medicine. Late into the night, the doctor stayed with his patient, sharing with him the unsearchable riches of Christ. Later that night someone slipped into the doctor’s quarters and brutally beat him to death. From a human standpoint that should be the end of the story, but, it is not.
The patient recovered from his surgery, but he was a changed man. Because of Kornfeld’s testimony, he became a Christian--and what a Christian he became! His name was Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who not only won the Nobel prize for Literature in 1970 but, even more importantly, became one of the world’s most influential voices for Christ. Kornfeld and Solzhenitsyn both learned that the claims of Christ were always meant to make radical changes in the lives of those around us; changes as radical as the claims themselves found in John chapter five.
In John chapter 5 Jesus has healed the lame man on the Sabbath (5:8-9) and the religious leaders are incensed, declaring that the Sabbath has been violated. In His bold action Jesus was essentially stating that He is equal with God.
After he committed his life to Christ, Kornfeld felt a great inner freedom. He had a patient, a cancer patient, who was awaiting surgery. Kornfeld shared with him what Christ had done in his own life. Kornfeld was so enthusiastic about this change in his own life, that he caught the patient’s attention in spite of brief lapses brought on by the medicine. Late into the night, the doctor stayed with his patient, sharing with him the unsearchable riches of Christ. Later that night someone slipped into the doctor’s quarters and brutally beat him to death. From a human standpoint that should be the end of the story, but, it is not.
The patient recovered from his surgery, but he was a changed man. Because of Kornfeld’s testimony, he became a Christian--and what a Christian he became! His name was Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who not only won the Nobel prize for Literature in 1970 but, even more importantly, became one of the world’s most influential voices for Christ. Kornfeld and Solzhenitsyn both learned that the claims of Christ were always meant to make radical changes in the lives of those around us; changes as radical as the claims themselves found in John chapter five.
In John chapter 5 Jesus has healed the lame man on the Sabbath (5:8-9) and the religious leaders are incensed, declaring that the Sabbath has been violated. In His bold action Jesus was essentially stating that He is equal with God.
Jesus claims power to give life. (John 5:21, 24-26) In verse twenty-four of our text, Jesus said that the person who believes “has eternal life.” 1 John 5:13, “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life…”
Praise the Lord, for He is the Author of Life Eternal. He is the giver of Life Eternal and Everlasting. Praise the Lord for the way He has promised the Eternal City for those who love Him and have put their trust in Him in this life on earth now.
C. S. Lewis wrote the great series of books entitled “The Chronicles of Narnia,” and in the last book in the series, “The Last Battle”, he creatively describes to us what our hope is and what eternity will be like. At the end of Lewis’ book “The Last Battle”, Aslan, the Lion (who is the character of Jesus) tells Peter, Edmund, and Lucy there has been a railroad accident and they are dead. “And as he [Aslan] spoke he no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.” [C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle]
By the authority of his voice of Jesus will call believers forth into a new life; a life of which our existence on earth was merely the first chapter.
In Christ,
By the authority of his voice of Jesus will call believers forth into a new life; a life of which our existence on earth was merely the first chapter.
In Christ,
Brown
Friday March 23, 2012
Television Outreach
Time Warner Cable Channel 4
Time 7:00 PM
Saturday Evening Worship Service:
Location: First United Methodist Church
53 McKinley Avenue
Endicott, NY
Sponsored by: Union Center United Methodist Church
Time: 6:00 PM gathering for Coffee Fellowship
6:30 PM Worship Service
Date: Saturday, March 24, 2012
Speaker: Rev. Brown Naik,
Special Music by Laureen Naik
Friday March 23, 2012
Television Outreach
Time Warner Cable Channel 4
Time 7:00 PM
Saturday Evening Worship Service:
Location: First United Methodist Church
53 McKinley Avenue
Endicott, NY
Sponsored by: Union Center United Methodist Church
Time: 6:00 PM gathering for Coffee Fellowship
6:30 PM Worship Service
Date: Saturday, March 24, 2012
Speaker: Rev. Brown Naik,
Special Music by Laureen Naik
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