Brown's Daily Word 1-10-14

   Praise the Lord, for it is Friday.  A "heat wave" is blanketing the region.  Thank you Jesus.  Those of you live in the area join us this evening on Time Warner Cable TV channel 4 at 7 PM.  I am speaking on, "The Wisemen Still Seek Jesus".

    As many of you know, I was born in a tiny village in Orissa sorrounded by majestic mountains.  I had a dream as a boy to travel and go places.  The Lord has been gracious to me.  He has granted me His favor.  He has blessed beyond belief and has made it possible for me to travel and see the world.  I have been so blessed and privileged to go places around the world and share the Gospel of Christ.  My daughter Sunita has my DNA.  She loves to travel and the Lord has been so gracious to her that she travels the world for the sake of the kingdom of God.

    In his wonderful book, "The Island of Lost Maps", author Miles Harvey shares a sentiment with which I think many of us can probably resonate.

In my 30's I spent a great deal of time at the Kopi [a travelers' café in Chicago] whose walls were adorned with masks from Bali and shelves filled with guides to far-flung destinations.  I was then the literary critic for Outside Magazine, a great job but one that was beginning to wear on my patience.  You see, the books I read were about people who climbed Himalayan peaks, rode a bicycle all the way across Africa, sailed wooden boats across the Atlantic, or tracked into restricted areas of China.  These tales of adventure filled my days and my imagination, and yet my own life was anything but adventurous.  The interior of the Kopi coffee shop was ringed by clocks, each one showing the time in some distant locale, and as I watched the weeks ticking away in places like Timbuctu and Juno and Goa and Denpasar, I began to long for an adventure of my own.

    Harvey said that he loved looking at maps.  He said he was acting like a character in a Joseph Conrad novel who said, "When I grow up I will go there." So Harvey would look for hours at exciting places in South America, Africa, or Australia and lose himself in the glories of possible adventures around the world. 

    Many of us can likely identify with those sentiments.  There are times we  grow weary of the routine, of the way things are.  There have been those who have said, "Yes, yes, I want to go there."

    "As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew.  They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen."  That was their life, their box, their world.  "'Come, follow me,' Jesus said, 'and I will make you fishers of men.'"  Jesus was opening a whole new way of life to them - something beyond their wildest imaginings.  He would take  them just as they were, teach them how to live in a new and better way, with more impact and more influence. He would literally make them fishers of men.  "At once they left their nets and followed him.  Going on from there, Jesus saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and his brother John.  They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets.  Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him."  

    In recent modern conversations we  examine the difference between being a tourist and being a traveler / pilgrim.  Many spend their lives as tourists.  The Lord, however, calls to take the journey with Him.  It is full of adventure  and thrill.  Something amazing has come to meet us in the person and the mission of Jesus Christ to draw us out of where we  are living now into His life.  When He says to us, "Come follow me," it is the most amazing invitation we  will ever get.  Let us say yes to His invitation.  Let us take some steps in His direction and we will have a life that is much more incredible than anything we could ask or imagine.

 In Christ,

  Brown

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  http://youtu.be/y3NmfmVGblw

Brown's Daily Word 1-9-14

The Lord blessed us with a wonderful Wednesday evening gathering.  The Food was fantastic.  The fellowship was sweet.  The time of study was brilliant.  During the day time  I had visited three people, whom I call senior saints.  One woman in her 80's, though frail and confined, had a wonderful sense of peace and deep sense of the presence of Jesus.  Some how she was saying non-verbally, "All is well".  During the time of study one man shared that 14 years ago yesterday his teenage son died accidentally.  The Lord, through massive grief and sadness, has given him peace.  Another man shared that his young grandson, 4 years old, died in a tragic fire the day before.  In the midst of grief and sadness we turn to the Savior, the Man of sorrows who is acquainted with our grief.  

    I am struck and provoked when I read the Christ-event in the life of Paul and Silas as it is recorded.  “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them” (Acts 16:25).  So what would you do when you have been arrested, beaten, imprisoned, placed under guard, with your feet bound in stocks, for nothing more than preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ?

    If you were Paul and Silas at midnight, you would start praying and singing hymns of praise to God.  Acts 16:25 says that the other prisoners were listening to them.  No doubt these two strangers looked like a mess after being severely beaten.  The fact that they were in stocks and under close guard told the other prisoners that Paul and Silas were not ordinary criminals.  It throws light on the darkness of that prison cell in Philippi where Paul and Silas were singing and praying at midnight.  It is insructive to us from the Word of God and from the witness of Paul and Silas that we go and serve the Lord wherever we  happen to be, even though it may not have been our first choice.  That’s why Paul and Silas were singing at midnight.  They knew that God had sent them to the jail to bear witness for their faith.  As Paul and Silas sang and the prisoners listened, they had no idea of the earthquake that was about to set them free (vv. 26-28).  Neither did they know that soon they would lead the Philippian jailer and his whole family to the Lord (vv. 29-34).  That was all hidden to them.  As far as they knew, they would stay in prison a few days or a few weeks or a few months, and then they would go on trial.  After that, no one could say what might happen.

    Paul and Silas weren’t praying and singing in prospect of some great miracle.  They simply bore witness to the goodness of the Lord in a most difficult situation.  God’s call to you and me is the same.  We are where we are because the Lord wants us here.  When He wants us  somewhere else, we will be somewhere else.  “Stay where you’re put” doesn’t mean passively accepting all the bad circumstances of life, and it certainly doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try to change things if you can.  

    Paul and Silas weren’t trying to be quiet in the jail.  Evidently they prayed and sang loud enough that a crowd of prisoners listened to them, amazed that two men in stocks, having been beaten and roughed up, no doubt a sight to behold, would seem so cheerful and full of faith. . . In jail! . . . At midnight!

 E. Stanley Ott who offers this insight:

“In every case, the person whom God called simply replied with the Hebrew word hinnainee (hin-nay’-nee), the word of the servant - which means “here I am"  - available - ready to serve - what may I do for you?”

    When God calls, we can always find excuses to make: “Not me, Lord.”  “Go ask someone else.”  “I’m busy.”  “I’m happy right where I am.”  For all of us, the issue is not our personal desires but our response when the call comes.  In the truly tough stuff of life, we rarely get a choice in advance, which is probably a good idea because if we did, we would be sorely tempted to run the other direction.  It is in moments like this that we discover the promises of the Lord. 
    We should not be surprised that Paul and Silas sang in prison.  Some of God’s best work gets done in prisons.  John Bunyan went to prison for preaching the gospel and wrote “Pilgrim’s Progress.”  Dietrich Bonhoeffer went to prison in World War II and died testifying to God’s grace.  Chuck Colson went to prison and God gave him the vision for Prison Fellowship.
    I wonder what Paul and Silas prayed at midnight?  Could it have been something like what Paul wrote several years later in 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17.

"May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word."

    Eugene Peterson gave us his version in The Message, where he started back in verse 15 and came up with:

"So, friends, take a firm stand, feet on the ground and head high.  Keep a tight grip on what you were taught, whether in personal conversation or by our letter.  May Jesus himself and God our Father, who reached out in love and surprised you with gifts of unending help and confidence, put a fresh heart in you, invigorate your work, enliven your speech."

I like that. “Take a firm stand, feet on the ground and head high.” We all need that, don’t we? 
    In Christ,
   Brown
http://youtu.be/KYP--c2LTfg

Brown's Daily Word 1-8-14

   Praise the Lord that it is getting warmer here in New York.  A "heat wave" is being forecast for the weekend.   Spring can't be far away.  We will gather at 6 PM for our Wednesday evening fellowship and Bible study, followed by choir practice.  Tonight we will be studying the Book of John.  Praise the Lord for this new and exciting year.  The Lord has prepared for us some exciting blessings and challenges this year.   We are praying and planning to go to India to share in a centennial celebration of the coming of the Gospel in that particular region.  This will be a week-long celebration.  The planners are expecting 20,000 people for this gathering and celebration.  It reminds me of Abraham, who went out by faith.  "By faith Abraham, when he was called to go to a place he would later receive as an inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going."  (Hebrews 11:8) 

    When God calls, there are no guarantees about tomorrow.  Abraham truly didn’t know where he was going, didn’t know how he would get there, didn’t know how long it would take, and he didn’t even know for sure how he would know he was there when he got there.  All he knew was that God had called him.  Period.  Living by faith means no guarantees and no certainty about the future.  If you truly want to do God’s will, sometimes you will find yourself exactly where Abraham was—setting out on a new journey that doesn’t seem to make sense from the world’s point of view.   Hebrews 11:8 says he “obeyed and went.”  There was no greater miracle in his life than that.  Everything else that happened flowed from this basic decision.  God called, he obeyed.  That truth is the secret of his life.  He stepped out in faith even though there were no guarantees about his own personal future.

    Living by faith means stepping out for God and leaving the results to him.  It’s no guarantee of long life and good success.  You may have it or you may not.  The life of faith means, “I am going to be the man or woman God wants me to be no matter where it leads.  I don’t know the future, but I’m trusting him to work out the details. In the meantime, I step out by faith and follow where he leads me.”  “By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise” (Hebrews 11:9).

    There is within all of us a natural desire to settle down. The older I get, the less I like to move, and the more I value coming home to the same places and the same faces every day.  Moving has a way of making us feel unsettled, uprooted, and adrift in the world.  It is written Abraham “lived in tents.”  I know many people who like to camp on vacation, but I don’t know anyone who voluntarily lives in a tent as a permanent residence.  Tents speak of impermanence, of the possibility of moving on at any moment, of the fact that you live on land you do not personally own.

    So it was for Abraham.  He did not own anything in the Promised Land.  God had promised to give him the land, yet he lived like a “stranger in a foreign country.”  If you don’t own the land, you can’t build a permanent dwelling there.  God had promised him the land, but he had to scratch out an existence in tents.  Hundreds of years would pass before the promise was completely fulfilled.  Abraham never saw it happen.  Neither did Isaac or Jacob.  God’s timetable is not the same as ours.  He’s not in a big hurry as we are.  God works across the generations to accomplish his purposes.  This means that we may have to live in tents for awhile.  Who can say what tomorrow will bring?  Our challenge is to be like Abraham and cling to the promises of God no matter what happens.  We may have to say at some point, “We would rather die with the Lord than live without him.”  In God’s timetable every promise will be fulfilled.  Meanwhile, we watch and wait and walk by faith.

One of the verses of that familiar hymn seems especially appropriate for these days:

    “Fear not, I am with thee; O be not dismayed,

    For I am thy God, and will still give thee aid;

    I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,

    Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.”

    We are called to build our lives on Jesus Christ.  He is the one true firm foundation that can stand the test of time.

 In Him,

Brown

http://youtu.be/q1ZQMAMqOXw

Dear Friends and Family,

    Praise the Lord for 2014.  It is going to be an exciting year for ministry and the mission of Jesus Christ, our Lord.  May Jesus our Lord bless us as we find the ways and means to celebrate His grace and love.  We are planning for an evening of great celebration on Saturday, February 8.  It will be held at 5 PM at the Fellowship Hall, Union Center United Methodist Church, 128 Maple Drive.

   Our own chef Danny Snyder will be preparing a very special banquet.  This will be prepared and served with much love.  Our own Aric Phinney, a gifted and talented musician, will be ministering to us in music.  There will be a time of testimonies and praises.  Please join us.

Come, Share , Rejoice

   See you then and there.

         Brown

Brown's Daily Word 1-7-14 (2)

Praise the Lord for this brand new day.  Today is Christmas Day in the Orthodox Church.  It is going to be very cold today.  The good news we have is that it will be warming up by Thursday.  

    I drove to attend a luncheon meeting with our Bishop yesterday.  It was held in the Conawasco Retreat and Conference Center on the Shores of Lake Owasco.  I drove through some scenic routes of New York.  In this mid winter It is all breathtaking.  Praise the Lord for the seasons He gives.  The meeting was held in one of the gorgeous Halls with a breathtaking view of the lake.  I was watching some the ducks diving into the water and swimming carefree and jubilant.  I was reflecting how the Lord of the earth has given the Church best facilities all over the world.  Our son in law Andrew comments that Jesus has the best view wherever you go.  Churches, chapels , cathedrals, conference and retreat centers are given to and for ministry and mission to the world.  May Jesus fill us this new year with new zeal and vigor to be about His Kingdom business. 

    I love the story of Toby, who had Downs syndrome.  Toby also had a dream.  He wanted to be in the Special Olympics and try to run a 50-yard dash.  Toby was nearly 30 years of age, very overweight, and had asthma, but he had a dream.  He knew he could do it.  So, a group of special needs people lined up on that sunny day at a football field, the gun sounded, and off they went!  You probably would not have recruited any of them for your track team, but they were giving it their all. Toby was so heavy and had such problems breathing that he was way behind and finally just fell.  There, flat-faced in the grass, his tears now mixing with the sod, his big body heaved with disappointment.

    Then, out of the corner of everyone's eyes came his dad.  Toby's daddy also had a dream, and it was greater than his son's dream.  He wanted that race for Toby more than Toby wanted that race.  He only wanted him to finish, not to compete or necessarily to win.  He wanted his boy to have a victory, so he ran out, picked up that big boy and started running with him thrown over his shoulder.  He started hollering to his boy, "You are going to make it Toby!  You will make it all the way, son!"  Toby got into it, as well, and started hoping and hollering!  "Yeah, Dad!  We gonna make it!"

 

    We are Toby.  We will be victorious not because of  our own strength but because of the  Loving Savior who is unwilling that any should be lost.  He will see victory.  He will see that we  are kept, that our lampstands will be in place when He comes again.  He wants it more than we do.  He promises He will turn our heartaches to rejoicing.  He is strongest in our weakness.  Of that, I am confident and sure.  His sovereign grace and His unstoppable kingdom leave me no other option to believe.  

  In Christ,

    Brown

http://youtu.be/aH1ROPuyBro

Brown's Daily Word 1-7-14

Dear friends and family,  

    Praise the Lord for the year 2014.  It will be a great year in the Lord.  It was in 1914 the World War 1 started where  over 9 million in Europe died.  The World War came to an end in November, 1918.  It was in 1793 that William Carey, the father of modern Missions traveled to India to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ our Lord.  He labored in Calcutta, India for over 7 years, having never seen a single convert.  It was after seven years that one man came to trust the Lord as his personal Lord Savior.  His name was Ram Pal.  From that small and fragile beginning of the work of the Gospel in Calcutta by William Carey, the Gospel eventually traveled to Orissa, and reached the area where I was born in the early 1900's.  Under the work of pioneer missionaries from England in our area, where several of them died, Five Hindu Converts were baptized on Easter Sunday, 1914.  The Gospel had come to our area.   

    Soon after that my grandfather accepted Christ.  Then I came to trust Christ as young boy of 3 years.  The church has grown since those days of early beginnings.  In recent times, the church went through a great persecution by militant Hindus.  It was in 2008 that over 100 Christians were murdered.  It was in 1999 that Graham Stains, missionary from Australia, was burned to death along with his two young sons.  In spite of the severe persecution the Church in Phulbani has grown miraculously.  There are now over 500,000 Christians who live in the area.      

    The church in Phulbani, Orissa will be observing the centennial celebration of the first Hindu Converts who were baptized on Easter Sunday, 1914 (April 14,1914).  It will be held April 11-14, 2014.  I have been invited as the preacher for the event.  Laureen will be joining me along with Andy and 10 others from Washington, DC.  A missionary from here named David Coles, who has been serving in Indonesia for the last 24 years, will be joining us in India.  They are expecting over 20,000 people for this event.  Please keep us in prayer.  I will be in India for a month, and I will be preaching in India on Easter. 

     Each short term missionary is paying for his or her expenses.  The church in Phulbani is raising the funds to organize the centennial celebration.  They have asked us to come alongside in prayerful and financial support.  We are trusting the Lord for $10,000 (Ten Thousand  to help finance the costs of the conference.  We are also planning to organize a pastors' conference while we are there.  These funds will enable us to help with a two day pastors conference and the four day centennial celebration.  I am writing this prayerfully that you might prayerfully consider to invest joyfully in this mission endeavor.  Whatever the amount the Lord will multiply it. 

    You can make checks to "Union Center United Methodist Church" and mail them to the church at 128 Maple Drive, Endicott, NY  13760.  Memo:  Orissa Mission Fund.  Thank you. 

    I am asking you to join us in praying for this mission trip.   

With much gratitude,

       Brown

http://youtu.be/twuLr5rQmp0

UCUMC Jan. 5 2014 Bulletin

Brown's Daily Word 1-6-14

    Praise the Lord for this new year.  We have had lots of snow already, but it is melting today as it is raining.  The Lord blessed us yesterday in His House in worship and fellowship.  I preached from Mathew 2.  It is the account of the visit of  Jesus by the wise men.  January 6, which is 12 days after Christmas, is also the feast of Epiphany.  Epiphany is a public holiday in many countries.  Epiphany is commonly known as Twelfth Night, Twelfth Day, or Three Kings’ Day.  It is the feast that celebrates the coming the magi to worship Jesus, the new born King.  The magi were pagans who have been drawn to Jesus.  Consider how little they knew. They had seen a star and they knew a baby called “the king of the Jews” had been born.  Yet, with nothing more than that, they risked everything and left their homeland to find the baby, bring him gifts, and worship him.  This is the one of the greatest examples of true faith in the entire Bible.  They didn’t know very much about Jesus but what they knew spurred them to action.
    When the magi reached Jerusalem, they assumed that everyone would know where the baby was.  On the contrary, they were in for a great surprise as they discovered that not everyone shared their desire to find Jesus.  The reaction of Herod is fascinating.  Matthew 2:3 says that “when Herod heard the news, he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.”  The word “disturbed” really means to “shake violently.”  Herod was all shook up.  Herod the Great was a killer. That was his nature.  He killed out of spite and he killed to stay in power.  Human life meant nothing to him, but the idea that the "King of the Jews" had been born terrified him.
    Herod had been given the title “King of the Jews” by the Roman Senate but he was no Jew.  By birth he was an Idumean, a descendent of the ancient Edomites whose father was Esau.  The Jews hated him and chafed under his brutal rule.  The notion of a baby “born” king of the Jews was a direct threat to Herod’s throne. No wonder he tried to kill Jesus.  In his eyes, he had no choice.  It was kill or be killed, and now, in the twilight of his life, he was ready to kill anyone who threatened him, even a tiny, helpless baby.
    Herod stands as a symbol of the kind of world Jesus entered.  He represents the world’s welcoming committee for the Son of God.  Jesus was born and the rulers tried to kill him.  The Bible says, “He came to what was his own, but his own did not receive him” (John 1:11).  Herod stands for the bloodthirsty, cruel, vindictive side of the world system, a world where human life is cheap and where killing is accepted and even expected.
    To this day there are those who are offended by Jesus, even by the mere mention of his name.  They oppose spiritual truth and want to erase every trace of Christmas from public life.  This group includes those cowardly school administrators who want even the word “Christmas” banished from the classroom and the lawyers who sue to have the manger scenes removed from city halls across America.  Herod would be proud of them.  Before Herod could get rid of the baby, he put on a pleasant face.  He had to seem interested in helping these strange visitors find the Christ child, so he turned to the scribes and priests for advice.  He asked only one question: Where is this child to be born?  The scribes don’t have to look it up.  They already know the answer.  Seven hundred years earlier the prophet Micah had predicted the Messiah’s birth in Bethlehem.
    If you add what the scribes knew to what the Wise Men figured out, you surely conclude that the signs of Jesus’ coming were clear enough for anyone to see.  It is sometimes said that God always speaks loudly enough for a willing ear to hear, as happened in this instance.  The Magi knew and they did something about it; the scribes knew and did nothing.  So, when Herod asked, “Where is the Messiah going to be born?” they knew the answer immediately.  Micah 5:2 said that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.  End of story.
    Bethlehem is only six miles from Jerusalem, close enough that you could walk the distance in less than two hours.  Today Bethlehem is like a suburb of Jerusalem, but even then people lived in Bethlehem and went to Jerusalem to buy and sell and to go to the Temple.  It was an easy journey on good roads.  It was only six miles, but none of the scribes cared enough to go and check out the rumor that the long-awaited Messiah had been born.  They were a mere six miles from Jesus, six miles from salvation, six miles from forgiveness, six miles from eternal life.  As I read Matthew 2, one fact strikes me above all others.  That is, everybody involved had the same basic information.  They all knew a baby had been born in Bethlehem and they all knew who the baby was.  Herod knew and tried to kill him; the scribes knew and ignored him; the Wise Men knew and worshipped him.
    For all those who feel they are too busy to join the search for Jesus, C. S. Lewis wrote these words: “Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay.  But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”
    Jesus stands at the end of life’s road for all of us.  In the end there can be no middle ground.  To ignore him is the same as to hate him because you end up without him either way.  Perhaps hatred is more noble than casual disinterest because when you hate, you at least must pay attention to the object of your hatred, and that very attention may lead someday to a change of heart.  To ignore Jesus altogether means to live as if he doesn’t matter at all, but no one can ignore him forever.  We all have an appointment with Christ sooner or later.
    What will you do with Jesus?  Some hate him.  Some ignore him.  Some seek him.  The ultimate question is not how someone else responds but how we personally respond to Jesus.  That’s really the only thing that matters.  Are we  with Herod, or with the scribes, or with the Wise Men?  Are we hostile to Jesus?  Are we too busy to get involved?  Are we coming to worship Him as Savior and Lord?
    Let us come to Jesus and live.
In Him ,
Brown
http://youtu.be/Lx35_DRIZ8g