Brown's Daily Word 6/19/15

Praise the Lord for this wonderful day, as we are about to welcome the sweet and spectacular summer in a couple of days. We have already had a foretaste of summer here in this region. People are gearing up to celebrate and share the season, the wonderful gift of the Lord once again. Colleges are already closed after graduations and local high schools are winding down and preparing for graduation. It is also a season of transition for many of us. We are packing and preparing for the next step. I gave away a third of my library to be used by other pastors. The Lord had blessed us with many hundreds (thousands) of books over the past 40 years. I have a passion for books even as my wife has a passion for fabrics. It is bittersweet to see an empty space where my beloved books stood.


Just a reminder - we are looking forward to seeing all of you at our gathering on Saturday, the 27th. at 5.00 PM Our Church Family and Our daughters are all planning and preparing for this sweet event.


I am reflecting on Philippians 4:13-14. "Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. I love the fierce concentration implicit in the words “one thing I do.” To excel in any area of life, a person must say, “This one thing I do”. It is difficult, if not impossible to concentrate on “These 20 things I do.” A single-minded focus in any endeavor generally wins a great reward.
A great artist must say, “One thing I do.”
    A gifted teacher must say, “One thing I do.”
    A championship athlete must say, “One thing I do.”
    A single parent raising her child must say, “One thing I do.”
    A student who wants to graduate with honors must say, “One thing I do.”
    Greatness in any arena comes to those who can say with the Apostle Paul, “One thing I do.” In Paul's case, it meant looking to the heavenly goal of winning the prize. That phrase covers all that God has for us when we finally stand before Jesus Christ and hear him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of the Lord." Most of us find ourselves saying, “I have so many things to do”. This is true for so many of us, and so we become fragmented people. But Paul (who was the consummate man of action) could truthfully say, “One thing I do.”
When famed missionary Dr. David Livingston returned from Africa to England, he was asked, “Where are you ready to go next?” “I am ready to go anywhere,” he replied, “provided it be forward." This must be the attitude of the child of God every single day. We say, “Lord, I am ready to go wherever you lead, no matter where that takes me.” “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus" (v. 14).
 In the spiritual life, direction makes all the difference. True believers aren’t in heaven yet, but they aim their steps in that direction. Paul's life and ministry involved both a sanctified forgetting and a resolute pushing forward.
In 1905 a young man from a wealthy family entered Yale University. His family intended that after completing his degree he would enter a suitable career in America, but God gripped his heart with the needs of China and he volunteered to go to that country with the gospel, much to the dismay of his family and friends. He left America but never made it to China, succumbing to a disease before reaching that distant shore. After his death, a note was found in his Bible that summarized his life: “No reserves. No retreats. No regrets.”
 I wonder how many of us could say the same thing? Whatever we do, let us continue to press on toward the goal.
In Christ,
Pastor Brown.
https://youtu.be/GoYgi0sdOqc

Brown's Daily Word 6/17/15

Praise the Lord for the another Wednesday.  We will have one more Wednesday here at our present location.  We will meet for our Wednesday Gathering this evening at 6:00 PM.  The Lord blesses us with abundant foods in these meetings.  Best of all He blesses us with sweet fellowship.  We have been meeting on Wednesdays since 1990.   The Lord has blessed us, His Sprit has provoked us,  and He has filled our cups to the brim.  Recently we had some friendly and invigorating rains.   I drove by some of the countryside yesterday, where everything is all green.  All the corn fields look vigorous and jubilant, praising the Lord and dancing before Him.

 

    One of the headlines I read recently said, "Missionary Pioneer Elisabeth Elliot Passes Through Gates of Splendor ".  I praise the Lord for the courageous, valiant,  and fearless witness of Jim and Elizabeth Elliott.  Jim Elliott  passed through the Gates of Splendor in 1955 as a very young and a very passionate missionary along with four other winsome missionaries.  I have been moved and blessed by the witness and the writtings of Eliabeth Elliott.  I met her in person a few years ago in Boston.

    A recent survey revealed the nineteen most popular stars on Twitter.  The list consisted of the people from the entertainment world who are often confused and lost.  I do not envy them nor do I begrudge them their moment in the spotlight.  But it did make me stop and think, "Who are the stars from God’s point of view?"  In my view, Elizabeth Elliot is a star.
 Jesus himself said, “You are the light of the world . . . Let your light shine before men, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in Heaven" (Matthew 5:14, 16).  Paul said the same thing in Philippians 2:15, “You shine like stars in the world.”  The word “star” was also used in the first century for a navigational beacon that would shine in the dark to lead the ships safely into the harbor.  Christians are bright stars in a dark world.  We are put here to shine the light and so guide others safely home to God.
    Paul told the Philippians that they were “stars in the world.”  Many centuries ago Tertullian declared that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Wherever the church has gone, the cost of a new field has always been paid in blood.  I read about an inscription that  read something like this, “We plant this seed in the hope that it will someday bear a harvest of souls for the Kingdom.”

    The world has its stars and God has His.  Many Christians are martyred in the world today.  It is open season on faithful and joyful, defenseless Christians.When I think of Jim and Elizabeth Elliott, my mind runs to Hebrews 11:35-38 and its list of believers who suffered for their faith.  “Others were tortured and refused to be released . . . Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison.  They were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated.”  And then this wonderful phrase, “The world was not worthy of them.” 

In Christ,
Pastor Brown
https://youtu.be/zHnmy0A9qTY

Brown's Daily Word 6/15/15

    Praise the Lord  for this new day.  He blessed us with a bountiful weekend.  Sunita and her family spent the weekend in the gorgeous Shenandoah Mountains at a retreat center with friends.  Laureen had one of her Grove City College friends for the weekend in Washington.  On Friday she had the opportunity to worship on the mall (near the Smithsonian and the Washington Monument) with Kari Jobe, Mercy Me, and others.  Janice and her family spent the whole weekend in beautiful Boston.  She texted that Ada Asked her mommy,"I am sad.  Why?  Birds can fly, I cant."  Janice said also that the children were tired out spending the weekend in the favorite places in Boston.  Jessy called and shared that she and Tom were busy, making the house ready for arrival of the little baby.  The Lord blessed us with a wonderful and a very blessed day in His house yesterday.  Alice preached at Wesley and I preached at Union Center.  The Lord visited us.  We sensed His very presence.  It rained torrentially in the evening and almost all night.  They posted flash flood warnings for the area.  Alice said that as a child she had heard about monsoon rains of India.  She had never seen in her life until she went there.  She said, "After you moved the States the monsoons followed you here."  I said thank you Jesus, I love monsoons.  They remind us of the showers of blessings of Jesus.

    I am pausing and pondering on our Lord's majesty and might as I look back in my life serving the Lord and walking with Him.  You are all part of that blessing and grace of the Lord. 
    Our Loving Lord often puts us in situations where we are doomed to failure in order to force us to depend totally on him so that when the miracle comes, he alone gets the credit.  This is a divine strategy repeated many times in the Bible and in our own experience.  We often find ourselves in desperate straits with no way out, no good options, and no human way of remedying our situation.  God allows this to happen so that we will cry out to him.  When the deliverance comes, we are obliged to give the Lord the total credit.
    All too often we conclude that some thing can’t be done, and so we don’t bother trying to do it.  If Moses had taken that attitude, the Jews would still be in Egypt.  If Joshua had felt that way, he would have merely marched around Jericho.  If David had adopted that opinion, Goliath would still be terrorizing the Israelites.  You never know in advance what God may do so don’t rule out the possibility of a mighty miracle coming your way.
    God asks us to do the impossible and then he gives whatever we need to obey his command.  Erwin Lutzer, of the Moody Church in Chicago, points that Jesus often told people to do impossible things.  To a lame man he said, “Rise, pick up your bed, and walk.”  To a dead man, he cried out, “Lazarus, come forth.”  There is a true sense in which every command of God is totally impossible for us to obey. We always lack what we need to obey God’s commands, but God is faithful to give us whatever we need when we ask him.  What God demands, He supplies.  He “bids us fly and gives us wings.”
    When we offer our meager resources to God, we discover that the impossible  really is not impossible.  Years ago I ran across a quote from J. Hudson Taylor, a great man of faith whose missionary efforts helped open China to the gospel.  Time and again he saw God do amazing things in the face of hopeless circumstances and murderous hostility against him.  Reflecting on his experiences, he remarked that “there are three stages in any work attempted for God: Impossible, Difficult, Done.”  I am very encouraged by that because there are many moments when we all seem to be stuck in the “impossible” stage of life. Cheer up, we never know but our impossibility may simply be “Stage 1” of a mighty miracle Jesus  will perform on our behalf.
 What a Christ we serve!
In Him,
  Pastor Brown

https://youtu.be/KsoOG2mYegk