Brown's Daily Word 5/22/15

Praise the Lord for this fabulous Friday.  Sunday is coming.   For my friends outside the USA, it is Memorial Day weekend in America the Beautiful. This coming Monday is set aside as the day for remembering the brave and selfless men and women who have served in the US Armed Forces and given their lives in the line of duty for the sake of freedom, justice, and peace. Still today men and  women of the Armed Forces are serving and standing against human tyranny and oppression and laying down their lives in the line of duty. 

    Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of summer in the US.  It is also the official start of the camping and gardening seasons.  We love it!  We love camping, gardening, farming, and traveling.  When the girls were young we made the best use of this season, going to the beach, camping, or traveling around this great land. 

    I woke up early this morning to the sweet singing of the morning doves.  Back in the hills and mountains of Orissa, where I was born, morning doves are prolific.  They sing the songs with sweet melodies.  Whenever I am back in Phulbani I love to listen to the morning songs of the morning doves.  I was in Oxford, England a few summers ago, where I recall listening to the songs of the morning doves both in the morning and in the evening.  The songs of the morning doves were melodious and dominant, drowning out the songs of others birds.  It is very possible they are jubilant in singing joyful and  triumphant songs to the Lord of  all creation since the time of Noah and the Flood event.  The Lord of our Redemption made the reference to doves and said, "you must be gentle as doves"

    I love to get up early and wait for the sunrise.  The Sunrise in Australia, India, Alaska Russia, Israel , UK, Austrian Alps, German Black Forest, and the Mountain region of Orissa India are all spectacular and stunning.  I love the verse, “For the Lord God is a sun and a shield; the Lord gives grace and glory; no good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly” (84:11).  This is the only time in the Bible that God is directly referred to as the sun ( Mal. 4:2; Luke 1:78-79).  In Psalm 84, the metaphor is in the context of travelers.  During the Biblical  times there were no lighted streets or cars with headlights.  When you were traveling in the wilderness and it got dark, you had to stop.  It got cold when the sun went down.  Wolves howled in the darkness.  For these reasons travelers huddled together and waited for the dawn.  The rising sun meant that you could see your way again.  It brought warmth and cheer.  It brought a new day that would take you closer to God’s lovely dwelling place, the temple.

    The sun sustains all life on earth.  It is a never-ending source of energy.  It cheers our sagging spirits when it breaks through the clouds after a storm.  Even so the Lord God is a sun to us.  The sun gives light and nourishes life; the shield gives protection from our enemies.  Without the shield, we would be vulnerable to all sorts of dangers in our pilgrimage to heaven.  The sun and the shield balance each other.  With the sun only, a band of pilgrims would be more conspicuous to their enemies.  So God also is a shield for them, keeping them safe to their journey’s end. This blessing and beauty is due the grace of the Lord.

    Grace humbles us because God only gives grace to the undeserving.  If you earn it or deserve it, it is not grace, but a wage that is due (Romans 4:4-5).  Salvation is entirely due to God’s gracious choice, apart from any foreseen faith or works, which would nullify grace (Romans 11:6).  We receive God’s grace at salvation, but we also need His grace daily in order to walk with Him.  God’s abundant grace in Christ motivates us to serve Him (1 Corinthians 15:10).

    I love the story of Mathew Henry, the well-known pastor and Bible commentator who, in 1714, was on his deathbed at age 52.  He was relatively young and had not finished his commentary (others finished it from his notes).  He had endured the loss of his first wife and of three of his nine children.  He could have complained about his hard life.  But he said to a friend, “You have been used to take notice of the sayings of dying men.  This is mine—that a life spent in the service of God, and communion with Him, is the most comfortable and pleasant life that one can live in the present world” (Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible [Revell], p. 1:xiv).

    Let us not believe Satan’s lie that following God is a drag. Following the Lord is the most blessed life possible.  The many pleasures that the Lord gives to satisfy our souls should fuel our desire to be in His presence, both individually and when His people gather to worship Him.

 In Christ,

 Brown

https://youtu.be/8xc9sWYKvs4

Brown's Daily Word 5/21/15

Praise the Lord for another beautiful day. It is going to be a brilliant day. The weekend leading to Memorial Day promises to be brilliant and glorious. The Lord blessed us with a wonderful Wednesday evening. It was full of holy laughter, depth sharing and sweet fellowship. Praise the Lord for His promises, that there is fullness of joy in His presence and in His house. We had so much rain the other day that it looks like rain forest all around us, lush, green, and lively.
One of Satan’s most insidious lies is that the Christian life is void of joy, indicating that pursuing sin brings real satisfaction. Puritan Thomas Gataker wrote that "it is the purpose of Satan to persuade us that ‘in the kingdom of God there is nothing but sighing and groaning and fasting and prayer,’ whereas the truth is that ‘in his house there is marrying and giving in marriage, … feasting and rejoicing’”. “William Tyndale described the Christian gospel as ‘good, merry, glad and joyful tidings, that maketh a man’s heart glad, and maketh him sing, and dance, and leap for joy’” .
We do not, however, need the citations of the Puritans to refute Satan’s lies. The Bible itself repeatedly proclaims the soul-satisfying joy of knowing God. David exulted
(Ps. 16:11), “In Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever.” Psalm 34:8: “O taste and see that the Lord is good; how blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!” Psalm 36:7-8: “How precious is Your loving kindness, O God! And the children of men take refuge in the shadow of Your wings. They drink their fill of the abundance of Your house; and You give them to drink of the river of Your delights.”
Psalm 63:3-5: “Because Your loving kindness is better than life, my lips will praise You. So I will bless You as long as I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name. My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth offers praises with joyful lips.”
These verses do not sound like the wounded cries of a deprived soul who was enduring a life devoid of pleasure! Over and over the Psalms tell us how blessed we are if we follow the Lord.
 Psalm 84 is another example as it begins by exclaiming, “How lovely are Your dwelling places, O Lord of hosts!” Then, three times the psalmist exclaimed, “How blessed!” In verse 4, “How blessed are those who dwell in Your house! They are ever praising You.” Verse 5: “How blessed is the man whose strength is in You….” And, verse 12, “O Lord of hosts, how blessed is the man who trusts in You!”
These repeated exclamations teach us that the pleasures that God gives to satisfy our souls should fuel our desire to be in His presence. God motivates us to seek Him with the pleasures and satisfaction of being in His presence. Further, those pleasures are not all delayed until we arrive in heaven. Many begin now.
 As Jesus proclaimed with reference to His sheep (John 10:10b), “I came that they may have life; and have it more abundantly.”
In Christ,
Brown
https://youtu.be/jdE03zRJtxw

Brown's Daily Word 5/20/15

Praise the Lord for this Wednesday.  It was hot and humid yesterday, but the Lord has turned on the Air Conditioning around this region.  It is very comforable and cool today.  We will gather for our Wednesday gathering for fellowship and study at 6:00 PM, followed by Choir Practice at 7:30 PM.  It is beautiful and brilliant around here.  Praise the Lord He ushered in summer season in the midst of Spring.

    One of my favorite passages of the Scripture is found in Romans 5.  Christ arrived right on time to make this happen.  He did not, and does not, wait for us to get ready.  He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready.  Further, even if we had not been so weak, we would not have known what to do anyway.  We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice.  God, however, put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him. Romans 5:8The Message (MSG)

    I believe that the Good News of Jesus Christ is always directed to those are in need, to those who are hurting:  the sick, the hungry, the poor, the weak, those whose lives are all messed up or screwed up.  Phillips Brooks, in his Lectures on Preaching, 1877, wrote a line that I really like:  "The preacher's/ the person’s instinct is to feel instantly, how Christ and human need belong together."  Christ and human need belong together.  Christ connects to the need of the person we  are talking to.  In the world of suffering Christ and human need belong together.  To come alongside those who are lost, those who suffer, those who are under the bondage of the enemy is to know what it means to connect the love of Christ to their human need.  In so doing we become, in the words of Henri Nouwen, "wounded healers". 

    The first disciples always related Christ to the human need of their friends around them:  blindness, leprosy, death, whatever it was.  So it is with us two thousand years later, as we always relate Christ to the deepest needs of the person we encounter in daily life situations.  When we seek the Lord to bless others He gives His heart and His mind.  He does not give us a mind for  cynicism,  and criticism.,  People are in their life situation and there is nothing that can be done.  Only Christ the power to transcend the situation.  He has the power to  redeem our situations. He does not call us to offer condemnation, but we are called to offer Christ.  Christ Comes as the Wonderful Counselor to those life situations.  He brings about wellness and healing and He restores and makes all things new.

 In Christ,

 Brown.

https://youtu.be/7BuquFCyOzk

Brown's Daily Word 5/18/15

It has been like a mid-summer day, hot and humid.  The temperature was reading in the high 80s  Now it is thundering and raining.  The Lord is sending the natural coolant.  The trees are looking a luscious green.  My wife said that she has only 17 instructional days left in this school year.  In some parts of the nation high schools seniors have already graduated and most college students will be graduating or have graduated this month.  It is all celebration and thanksgiving. 
    I have been reading the bracing declaration of our Risen Lord.  "Then Jesus came to them and said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me'”.  We live in a world that worships money and power.   The disciples, however, were propelled by the Holy Spirit to move out and go into the world.  Those who went south would soon encounter the mighty pyramids of ancient Egypt.  They would see the Sphinx rising from the hot sands.  In Alexandria they would encounter the greatest library of the ancient world.  Those who went north would come to Antioch, another seat of learning.  Eventually a man named Paul would arrive in Athens, the cultural seat of the ancient world.  There, in the land of Socrates and Aristotle, surrounded by altars, marble statuary, and underneath the shadow of the mighty Acropolis, he would proclaim the Good News of Jesus and call men to repentance.  Eventually the early Christians would come to Rome, with its magnificent Colosseum and the vast, staggering grandeur of the Roman Empire.  Who would dare to preach Christ there?  In time some would take the gospel east to India and on to China, lands filled with teeming masses of people who were living unaware that Jesus had come to the earth.

    In our  minds, we might wonder how the Christian message could have survived?  It survived all the assaults against it because all power in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus Christ.  When the disciples entered Alexandria, they need have no fear because there was no power in Alexandria greater than the power of Jesus Christ.  They could appreciate the glories of Athens but they need not be intimidated because there was no glory in Athens greater than the glory of Jesus Christ.  In Rome, the seat of imperial power could not compare to the power resident in the One who sits at the right hand of the Father Almighty.

    We have nothing to fear because the power of Jesus far surpasses the power of the rulers of this world.  We have nothing to fear as we go into the world because the power of Jesus far surpasses the power and authority of the rulers of this world.

    Think about the rich and powerful people of this world - who are they compared to the Lord Jesus Christ?  They are nothing at all!

    Jesus gave a great mandate, called the Great Commission:

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you”.  We go in the name of the name that is above all names, who has power and authority in Heaven and on earth.
In Christ,
 Brown
https://youtu.be/Y8R9ZPT2T-I