Brown's Daily Word 2-20-14

  Praise the Lord for this day.  It is brilliant and almost balmy here in New York.  Thank you, Jesus.  The Lord blessed us with a wonderful Wednesday gathering.  The fellowship was sweet; the study of the Word was a great blessing.  I read some time ago that the average person has 10,000 separate thoughts each day. That works out to be 3.5 million thoughts a year.  At this rate, if you live to be 75, you will have over 26 million different thoughts in your lifetime.

    Already most of us  have had well over 5,000 separate thoughts since we  got out of bed this morning.  We  probably have another 5,000 before you sleep tonight.  Then you will start all over again tomorrow.  Every one of those 10,000 thoughts represents a choice we  make, a decision to think about this, and not about that.  Suppose someone gave you $10,000 this morning and said, “Spend it any way you like as long as you spend it all before you go to bed tonight.”  You would be careful how you spent it, maybe even down and take inventory of what you could do with that much money. 

    How sad that we devote so much time to how we spend our money and so little time to how we spend our thoughts.  How sad that one seems so important and the other so trivial.  Our thoughts represent ourselves, our personalities.  Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Beware of what you set your mind on because that you surely will become.”  Norman Vincent Peale said, “Change your thoughts and you change the world.”  Henry Ford gave that truth a different spin when he declared, “Thinking is the hardest work in the world, which is probably why so few people engage in it.”  Then I ran across this perceptive comment, “Two thoughts cannot occupy the mind at the same time, so the choice is ours whether or not our thoughts will be constructive or destructive.”

    Change your thoughts and you will change the world.   "The choice is ours.” God gave us 10,000 thoughts today, but it’s up to us what we do with them.  2 Corinthians 10:5 says that we should “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”     

 "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." Philippians 4:8

 

In Jesus,
Brown
http://youtu.be/62J434N0w1c

Brown's Daily Word 2-19-14

    We are having a great week.  Our grand children from Boston, whom we call our "Fresh Air Kids", are with us for a week.  We are blessed and are having a wild week.  We will meet this evening at 6 PM for our mid-week fellowship and study.  We are planning for a special ministry with the children at 6:30 PM that will conclude at 7:30 PM.  The children and their families are invited to join us for a special meal at 6 PM.

    The reading for last Sunday, taken from Deuteronomy 30, was the last sermon Moses preached.  Michelangelo’s Moses is a towering figure, a powerful figure, an incredible figure, much larger than life.  Michelangelo’s sculpture of Moses is enormous.  And, figuratively, so was Moses.  He seemed to be larger than life itself. As the Israelites were getting ready to enter the Promised Land, the land of Canaan, the people of the Lord had been in the wilderness for forty years.  Those who survived during the 40 year journey had experienced God’s majesty, Mount Sinai, the parting of the Red Sea, and the manna and the quail to eat in the wilderness.

    Moses foresaw that the people of God would be ensnared and brought down by the Canaanite religion in the land to which they were going.  They would be ensnared by the Canaanite people who sacrificed their children on altars, burned their children as sacrifices, practiced witchcraft and idolatry, and used cult prostitutes.  The people of God stood in front of Moses, east of the Jordan River, before they entered the Promised Land.  Moses was saying goodbye to them, as he gave his last sermon.  The Bible says he was 120 years old; that he was strong in body and his eyesight was still very, very sharp.  Moses stood before the people on the banks of the Jordan River,when he gave his farewell speech.  “Today, I am giving you a choice…between good and evil, between life and death, between blessing and cursing.  God is our witness.  I say to you: choose life.  Choose life.  Love the Lord your God.  Serve him.  Obey him.  Do his laws.  Be faithful to God, and then…it will go well for you in the land.”

    The Christian faith has always been a faith  of life.  Life is a good word, a core word, a key word.  Our Lord said in John 10:10, “I have come to give you life and give you life more abundantly.”  Jesus said, “ I am the bread of life.  I am the water of life.  I am the resurrection and the life.  I am everlasting life.”  The opposite of  Jesus is Satan who is the prince of death, the source of death, the essence of evil.  Jesus said, “I have come to destroy the powers of death and hell.”  The love of life is found in the first pages and the last pages of Scripture.  In the first pages of our Bible in the story of the Garden of Eden, we hear about the tree of life.  At the very end of the Bible, in the very last chapter of the last book of the Bible, we see that hell and death are thrown into the fire, and all that remains is the tree of life, for God is life, eternal life, everlasting life, immortal life, abundant life.

    In the first book of the Bible that the living God breathed life into Adam.  God gave Adam the first breath of life.  We human beings are sacred because we are made in the image of God and we have the sacred breath of God within us.   At the very core of our Christian heritage, from beginning to end, ours is a heritage of life. We are pro-life, because our Lord is pro-life. 

    The people of God were standing at the edge of the Promised Land, going into the land of Canaan, with all of its pagan degradation and child sacrifice, burning their children on altars, and cult prostitution.  God said to his people through his prophet Moses: “Today, I am giving you a choice…between life and death, good and evil, blessings and curses.  God is our witness this day.  Chose life.  Serve the Lord your God.  Love God.  Be faithful to God.  Obey God’s laws and … then…it will go well for you in the land.”

"Come to Jesus and live"

 In Him,

  Brown