Brown's Daily Word 6/26/16

  Praise the Lord for the lingering summer.  It has been very warm, hazy, and brilliant.  The Lord sends friendly rains which come in welcome interludes, refreshing the land, the farms, the orchards, and the gardens.  The Lord of the harvest brings forth an abundance of every blessing.  I spoke to Sunita this morning, as she called from Washington, DC.  She shared that Gabe is getting ready for his preschool class.  One of Sunita's college classmates from Gordon College in Boston will be Gabe's teacher.  Asha will be turning one year old on the first of September.  She has started taking some steps on her own.  We are getting ready for  worship this coming Sunday, the Lord's DAY.  We will meet for worship at 11:00 AM.  We are planning for a church-wide dinner following the morning worship, to be served at the Cornell's Camp not too far from the Church.  There will foods, desserts, and salads galore.  The Lord always  blesses with His bounty of great fellowship and mirth.  There will be a  Baptismal service at the Camp prior to the dinner.  We are excited.

    The Bible describes Christian life not as a playground, but as a Battle Ground.  We are invited to put on the whole Armor of God, and we are also reminded that the battle belongs to the Lord.  We serve under a captain who has never lost a battle.   Indeed, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us and still loves us.  Martin Luther remarked that the soldier’s test of loyalty is whether or not he shows up where the battle is hottest.  Anyone can be a soldier behind the lines, but it takes a special kind of courage to go where the bullets are flying.  Paul’s message to his timid yet loyal protégé  Timothy ( 2 Timothy 1) is clear: “Timothy, stand fast for the gospel.  Never be ashamed of what you believe. And don’t be ashamed of me because I am in chains.”  If any of us feel unequal to the task, remember that God has given us all that we need to be strong in the Lord. When we consider all that God has done for us, all that Christ has provided for us, and the Holy Spirit who lives within us, there is no excuse for halfhearted Christian commitment.

    We live in amazing times.  The world itself seems to be undergoing a seismic change.  Long-held opinions are being overthrown and new ones embraced by millions of people.  All over the world men and women cry out for freedom.  They march in the streets of the Middle East, and they gather to pray in Jerusalem.  This is no time for neutrality!  Everyone we meet is going to heaven or hell.  There is no third option.  Jesus said, “He who is not with me is against me” (Matthew 12:30). Each person makes a choice and then we live by the choices we make.  We are either for Christ or against him.  Do we  stand with Jesus or against him?

    We are given a clarion call not  to despair and never to lose hope.  These are great days to be alive, perhaps the greatest days in all history.  The vast moral decay and pervasive godlessness, immorality, persecution, and atrocities against Christians should not discourage us.  These things were known to God from the beginning and were clearly predicted in the Bible.  "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."  Ultimately, it is God himself who stands behind the gospel message.  Truth does not depend on us but on the Lord himself.  He will preserve the truth and will cause the light of the gospel to shine in the darkness.

    Our part is to be faithful.  We are propelled to stand fast by the power of God, to be bold in our witness, to entrust the future into the hands of the Lord, and to live for Christ no matter what it costs.  Paul said, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.”  It is imperative that we are not ashamed either. 

In Christ,

 Brown 

https://youtu.be/sv55FMjeMV0?list=PL089D8AFA5E9ADEC1

Brown's Daily Word 8/25/16

   It is the 25th of August.  We are just 4 months away from Christmas Day, 2016. WOW!  The temperature outside is reading in the higfh 80s.  Praise be to our God and King, the Lord of the Universe and our eternal Home.  As the summer is coming to screeching halt, it is still warm and hazy.  We have been blessed beyond measure by the wonders of His love and grace.  Alice and I celebrated our 41st Wedding anniversary on the 23rd of August.  We are the recipients of His countless blessings and innumerable mercies over these years.  We praise the Lord for the way the Lord of our lives and our homes covers us with His mysteries and mercies, forgiveness, healing, forgiveness, and restorations.  He navigates our lives as the Pioneer and the finisher of our faith.  We spent a few days with our dear friends and fellow servants of our Lord, Warren and Linda,  in Burlington, Vermont.  They always minister to us with special care and love.  We had a wonderful time sharing laughing, eating, and praying.  We returned home to New York, blessed and refreshed.  Today we spent some time with our nephews and nieces sharing a very special dinner before they all return back to school and college.

    A few years ago I met Elizabeth Elliott in person near Boston during a worship service.  She wrote many books including, "Through Gates of Splendor".  This book is the account about the martyrdom of her husband and his fellow missionaries, including Nate Saint.  Every time I read this I am brought to tears and am provoked to love the Lord and serve Him with great abandonment.

    Most of us recognize the names  of Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, and Jim Elliot.  In 1955 these five young men (all under the age of 35) gathered in Ecuador with a vision of reaching a tribe of Indians called the Aucas (the word means “savage,” a name given to them by other tribes) who lived deep in the rain forest.  No one had ever presented the gospel to them.  These five missionaries—all highly trained and deeply devoted to God—began praying about ways to make contact.  In September they began flying over an Auca village, lowering a pot containing gifts for the Indians.  Eventually the Aucas took the gifts and replaced them with simple gifts of their own.

    In January 1956, the five men decided the time had come to make contact in person.  After much prayer they established a base camp on a sandy beach of the Curaray River.  On January 8, 1956—at about 3:30 PM, they were speared to death by the Indians who mistakenly thought they had come to hurt them.  The news shocked the world.  Many people wondered how young men with so much promise could waste their lives that way.  When the journals of Jim Elliot were published several years later, they were found to contain this sentence: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." 

    The Apostle Paul would agree.  Once we  decide that our lives won’t last forever, we  are free to invest it in a cause greater than ourselves.  We give up what we  can’t keep so that in the end we  gain what we  can never lose.  This is what Paul meant when he said, “Whether by life or death.”  We live in Christ, for Christ, by Christ, through Christ, and from Christ.  He is the beginning, the middle and the end of life.  He is truly the Alpha and Omega, the A and Z, and every letter in between.

In Christ,

 Brown

https://youtu.be/4WYK6TxWX7s