Brown's Daily Word 3/20/15

Praise the Lord for the first day of Spring 2015. I saw lots of birds yesterday singing and praising the Lord.  Canadian Geese are returning back to their familiar habitats in droves.  Praise the Lord; He has ushered in the Spring Season with so much beautry and with so much promise.  I am excited and jubilant.  I am going to walk with my barefeet on the green and soft grass again, chasing Robins, gazing at the bees, standing by the blooming daffodils and tulips, and pondering anew how beautiful is our Lord.  He makes the world so beautiful beyond our imagination for us to enjoy and to  glorify Him.  I am  including the brilliant piece by Vivaldi, "Four Seasons: Spring".  I hope you will take some time to listen.  I have that that piece in my cell phone as Ring Tone.  Join us, those of you who live in the region, for our weekly Television  ministry this evening at 7:00 PM on Time Warner Channel 4.
    As we come close to the Passion Week of Lord Jesus, I am reflecting on suffering.  For example, Acts 14:22 says that Paul told all his young churches, “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom.”  In suffering we come to hope more fully in God and put less confidence in the things of the world.  We come to know Christ better when we share his sufferings. For example, Jerry Bridges’s book, Trusting God, Even When Life Hurts, is a deep and helpful book about suffering and going deep with God through affliction.  It’s not surprising from this title to learn that when he was 14 years old, he heard his mother call out in the next room, totally unexpectedly, and arrived to see her take her last breath. He also has physical conditions that keep him from normal sports.  Just a few years ago his wife died of cancer.  Serving God with the Navigators has not spared him pain.  He writes with depth about suffering because he has gone deep with Christ in suffering.

    One of my favorite Scottish theologians and Hymn writers is Horatius Bonar,  who wrote a little book called Night of Weeping, or, When God’s Children Suffer.  In it he said his goal was, “to minister to the saints . . . to seek to bear their burdens, to bind up their wounds, and to dry up at least some of their many tears.” It is a tender and deep and wise book.  It’s not surprising to hear him say,

It is written by one who is seeking himself to profit by trial, and trembles lest it should pass by as the wind over the rock, leaving it as hard as ever; by one who would in every sorrow draw near to God that he may know Him more, and who is not unwilling to confess that as yet he knows but little.

    Bonar shows us that suffering is a path deep into the heart of God.  God has special revelations of his glory for his suffering children.

    After months of suffering, Job finally said to God, “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee” (Job 42:5).  Job had been a godly and upright man, pleasing to God, but the difference between what he knew of God in prosperity and what he knew of him through adversity was the difference between hearing about and seeing.

    When Stephen was arrested and put on trial for his faith and given a chance to preach, the result was that the religious leaders were enraged and ground their teeth at him.  They were just about to drag him out of the city and kill him when, as Luke tells us, “Stephen was full of the Holy Spirit and gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55).  There is a special revelation, a special intimacy, prepared for those who suffer with Christ.

    Paul met Christ, the Son of the living God, on the Damascus road.  Christ told him how much he would have to suffer (Acts 9:16), and Paul prepared himself.  The way he prepared himself is described, “But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.”   “Whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss.”

    May the Lord open our eyes to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ!

In Christ,

 Brown.

https://youtu.be/6LAPFM3dgag

Brown's Daily Word 3/18/15

Praise the Lord , Spring that is in the air. The other day I saw a big flock of robins fluttering in the fields and the grounds around the parsonage. They seemed joyful and carefree to be back in their familiar territories. Alice and I, in one of our evening walks, saw a large flock of Canadian geese flying North with their classic V formation making Holy Honks. In midair they changed their formation. We can see and hear all kinds of spring birds invading their public domain once again serenading songs and music of sweet spring.
  I also heard morning doves cooing sweetly and gently. The daffodil patches by the parsonage are beginning to be seen bursting forth.. the Crocuses are coming into full bloom once again. The Lord is upon His throne. He makes all things beautiful in His time. All honor and glory belong to Him. I attended a sports banquet for one of nieces yesterday that was held at the Traditions at the Glen. All of my nieces and nephews are honors or high honors students. They love the Lord. I was reminded the days when our girls were involved in the sports and music.
 We attended those banquets. It was in the last century. WOW! We will meet for our Wednesday Fellowship and Study at 6 PM. We will be looking at John 12. There will be special time for children with Bethany. Choir will practice at 7:30.
In John 12, Mary comes to Jesus, where she crashes the dinner party and breaks an alabaster jar to pour very expensive perfume at the feet of Jesus. Jesus graciously accepts the gift of love and adoration. How the world is full of broken things - broken bones, broken windows, little birds with broken wings, not to mention broken hearts and broken homes. We consider broken things to be useless, and we usually throw something away if it breaks. This is not characteristic of God, though. God uses broken things, He blesses broken things, and He manifests His glory best through broken things.
God used Gideon’s broken jars (Judges 7:19) when Gideon led the Israelite army against 135,000 Midianites. The army Gideon lead consisted of only 300 men. Each man had a trumpet in one hand and a torch inside a jar in the other hand. When Gideon gave the command, all of his men were to blow the trumpets and break the jars. Gideon followed God's instructions, so he split his company of 300 into three parts and surrounded the camp of the 135,000 Midianites in the valley. 300 men, each armed with a trumpet and a jar with a torch, surrounded 135,000 men armed with swords and shields and spears. When Gideon gave the signal, the men of Israel blew the trumpets and smashed the jars. The Midianites saw the 300 torches that looked like 300 columns of men and God caused the army of Midian to turn on each other. Israel gained a great victory that day.
God also used Mary’s broken jar (John 12). Jesus was at a dinner being given in His honor with Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead, and Mary and Martha, who were grateful towards Jesus for raising their brother from the dead. At this dinner, Mary came up to Jesus with a pint of pure perfume. She broke the bottle open and poured the the perfume (which had cost a year's wages) over Jesus’ head. Since it was such expensive perfume, the others criticized Mary for wasting the perfume, but Jesus thanked her for anointing Him for burial. God can perform wonders with whatever is available, like a boy’s lunch in feeding the 5000. We are not useless no matter what has happened in our past or how untalented we think we are. The Lord says our lives already do count because of His Son.
 God wants to use us, with all of our brokenness, because God can put the pieces back together in a different way that will have greater meaning and wholeness. Jesus came to put back together all the humpty dumptys of the world. He is still putting them back with His love and grace. In Christ, Brown https://youtu.be/U-6YnBeXX8M

Brown's Daily Word 3/16/15

   Praise the Lord for this marvelous Monday.  The Lord blessed us with a wonderful weekend.  Laureen was visiting some of her friends in Beirut, Lebanon for a few days, and she returned back to Washington, DC yesterday.  The Lord blessed her days in Lebanon.  She said she walked where Jesus walked in Sidon, a part of Lebanon.  Lord gave her His favor and His grace.  The Lord blessed us  with His joy and gladness in His House with His people in House yesterday.  All Praise belongs to Him.

    One of the readings for yesterday was taken from Ephesians 2, "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins  in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—  among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.  But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,  even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—  and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus."

    From my readings I have  discovered that the highest spot in the continental United States in Mt. Whitney in Northern California.  It stands a majestic 14,495 feet. From it’s top, a beautiful panoramic landscape unfolds.  But just 80 miles southeast is Death Valley, the lowest spot in the Unites States at 280 feet below sea level.  Death Valley is also the hottest in the country with temperatures reaching 134 degrees in the shade.  It is a stark contrast to Mt. Whitney.

    In these verses Ephesians 2 we see the stark contrast between the "Death Valley" of sin and despair and the mountain peak to which God lifts us up.  D. L. Moody once said: "God is so anxious to save sinners He will take everyone who comes.  He will take those who are so full of sin that they are despised by all who know them; who have been rejected by their fathers and mothers, who have been cast off by their wives and their husbands.  He will take whose who have sunk so low that upon them no eye of pity is cast."  Because of His great love and mercy,  our Lord reaches down to the very depths of our sin, saved us from death and lifted us up. Indeed He "has raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus".

In Christ,

  Brown

https://youtu.be/VmiebkAEzfc