Praise the Lord for
this day, as Summer 2016 has made its debut with a bang. The temperature
yestery registered here in Central New York in the lower 90's. it
is going to be in the 90's today as well. It is for my friends overseas
to know that the temperature sometimes climbs to 115 F in the Midwest of
America the beautiful. In fact, it is cooler now in the region of Orissa,
India, where I was born, as the Monsoons of 2016 have made a grand
entrance. Schools and colleges are reopened after the summer
vacations in Orissa, India.
Summer
has come officially. The summer vacations will soon begin. The
colleges and universities are already closed for summer. The public
schools will be closing this week here in the New York, the Empire State.
My wife's last day of school is this Thursday the 23 rd of
June.
The
Lord blessed us in His House with His generosity and abundance. I had a
fantastic Fathers' Day. All my daughters called with Fathers' Day
love and grace. Sunita called from Armenia. One of my sisters
prepared a huge Fathers' Day banquet with traditional Indian cuisine. It
was all a blast. Alice and I attended the Baccalaureate Service
of Marathon High School last evening. Alice was chosen as the
speaker representing the Faculty. I said, "she is the "
Preachers' wife". One of her former students, who is in the faculty
of the Marathon Christian Academy, was the Baccalaureate Speaker. It was
a great occasion for celebration. The parents, friends, community
well-wishers, and Faculty joined the graduating CLASS IN A GRAND
CELEBRATION.
One
of the most beautiful portraits of God is found in Psalm 68. The Bible describes God saying, "A father to the
fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in His holy dwelling. God sets
the lonely in families" (PS. 68:5-6). The
church is the setting in which God puts the lonely into a family. Rick
Warren wrote: "Church is not a place you go to; church is a family you
belong to." When God puts you into His forever family, there are
both blessings and responsibilities.
When
Paul wrote to the believers in Thessalonica, he compared his love for the
church with the love of a mother and a father. These are family
relationships. The actual phrase, "The family of God" doesn't
appear in the Bible, but there are dozens of verses that refer to the church as
a family. This family not only extends to believers here on earth, but
believers in heaven are also part of God's family. Paul wrote, "For this
reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the
whole family in heaven and earth is named" (Eph.
3:14-15).
God's
family is a forever family. We become a part of His family here on earth;
and after we die, we're still part of God's family in heaven. The Bible
teaches that the main reason we gather together as a church is to encourage one
another… "Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love
and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of
doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the day
approaching" (Heb. 10:24-25).
Jesus
told Nicodemus he had to be born again to see the kingdom of heaven. We enter
God's family through a new birth. The Bible says: "To all who
received Him, (Jesus) to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to
become children of God—children born not of natural descent…but born of God"
(John 1:12-13). The Bible says God chose us to
be a part of His family: "You received the Spirit of sonship; and by Him
we cry, 'Abba, Father'" (Rom. 8:15). The usual word for father in
the Bible was pater. That's the formal word; but when
Jesus talked to God, He called Him Abba, which means "daddy" or
"papa." The Holy Spirit allows us to cry out to God in this
intimate way. You can call the Creator of the Universe "Papa."
The
church isn't perfect because it's made up of imperfect people, LIKE ME.
but we serve a
perfect Savior. The church isn't a club; it isn't an institution; it
isn't an organization; it's a family. Everybody needs a family.
Sometime
ago I read this story: Three weeks before Christmas 1993, 43-year-old Wolfgang
Dircks died while watching television in his Berlin apartment. His rent
continued to be paid out of his bank account, and none of his neighbors noticed
he was gone. Five years later, when his bank account was depleted, the
landlord entered the apartment and found his skeletal remains in his chair.
His television set had long since burned out.
That's
why we exist as a church. We are the place where God puts the lonely/ the
solitary into a family, and we are the hands and feet of
Christ. We are called to reach out and show the love of Jesus to people
who are still outside the fold and "the Family of God".
In Christ,
Brown.
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