Brown's Daily Word 1.10.18

Jesus is exalted and praised and, above all, worshiped and adored.  He is the author of life, liberty, and peace.  He removes the mountains, exalts the valleys, and fills the empty places.  He makes all rough places plain.  I am listening to “Oceans” by Hillsong. It is powerful and provoking.  Praise the Lord for this new day which paved with His fresh grace.  Praise the Lord for sweet rest and sleep, given out of His great love and mercy.  It is going to be a mild and beautiful today.  Alice and walked yesterday evening, gazing at the winter skies, and anticipating the return of Spring along with all the birds, flowers, and new vegetation.  Praise the Lord for our daughter Sunita who arrived safely in Manila.  It was a long flight flying via Seoul, South Korea.  I was in Seoul, South Korea in March of 2003.  It is one of the most beautiful Airports in the world.  

I have been looking at some of the pictures of the village of Muklingia, where I was born and raised.  These were posted by Mrs. Sushmita Pradhan, one of my relatives.  She had ventured towards my village on a picnic expedition.  In the region where I come from it is the season for picnics and outings. People welcome the New Year by indulging in picnics and outdoor revelries.  They make any occasion a celebration.  The village where I was born is situated around 3500 feet above sea level.  The village is surrounded with majestic mountains and endless beauty.  A man-made reservoir just 2 miles East of the village is the playground for people of all ages.  This is indeed the epicenter for the picnics. Churches use the reservoir for Baptismal services.  It is also a place for fishing and other water sports.  Less than a mile from my house there is huge Coffee plantation, where it is harvest time for coffee. The Coffee growers also grow all kinds of aromatic  spices, such as black pepper, cinnamon, bay leaves, etc.  The village farmers grow ginger, turmeric, and other cash crops.   The Village is not far from some rain forest in the area which is the habitation of wild elephants, wild buffaloes, and other big Game.  Tigers also frequent this region, wreaking havoc on cattle.  My dad, who was a farmer, also was an avid hunter.  To his credit he killed tigers, water buffalo, and all kinds of small and big game.

 

Growing up in the village life was simple but very rich.  The total population of the village was around 100.  The village is surrounded with some breathtaking scenery and settings.  British Missionaries frequently used surrounding spots for their picnic settings.  Whenever dignitaries came to the area they were ushered to these sights.  Praise the Lord for the beauty of His earth.  We are blessed to be the recipients of His matchless love and peerless salvation.

 

The Good News is that we are made to worship.  If we do not worship the Lord God who has made us then we begin to worship the idols we have made with our own hands in our own image.  In worshiping the true and living God we find freedom, we discover joy, and we are imbued with His divine power.  In the narrative of the Magi traveling to seek Jesus, they announce to King Herod that they have come to worship Jesus, the King of the Jews, the New Born Prince.  The story continues by saying that once they come to Jesus they are filled with exceeding joy and they worshiped Jesus and offered to Him their treasures, gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.   

 

Once we surrender our lives to Him, and worship and serve Him as Lord and Savior, our God will not leave us unattached in life.  He has sent His Holy Spirit to stand with us and walk with us in the gray and gloomy days.  He will give us perseverance and encouragement as He escorts us through the down days, never leaving your side. As Chuck Swindoll has observed, “Discouragement may be awful, but it is not terminal.”  Something wonderful happens when we begin worshiping God either in private or as a community of believers.   

Someone wrote, “Worship is used as an act of homage or reverence” (W.E. Vine).  Another definition of worship is that it is our response to God’s revelation to humankind.  Worship magnifies God, lifts our horizons from the burdens that weigh us down, changes our gloomy perspective, and renews and refreshes our spirits.  

Let us take a few moments today, whether or not we  are discouraged, and worship.Let us look up to God, who is always near.  He stands by us now!  As you begin to worship and feel His presence, we  will be lifted beyond.  The good news is that even in the midst of our gray and gloomy days, salvation is still ours, and it comes to us when we recognize who Jesus is in life  .  He brings redemption from sin to anyone who asks through resurrection faith  .

 

Albert Palmer wrote, “Salvation is not something that is done for you but something that happens within you. It is not the clearing of a court record, but the transformation of a life attitude.”

God will encourage us in our lives today if we let Him.  He brings people, circumstances,, and love along our journeys.  Our job is to recognize Him along the way.  Let encouragement be our new word for the new year!  Shout it out, and pass it along to others.  Be encouraged in Christ!

https://youtu.be/nQWFzMvCfLE

Brown

Brown's Daily Word 1-8-18

Praise the Lord for this New Day.  The Lord of the earth and the Lord of all seasons is ushering some warm weather into our region.  I just glanced at the weather map and read, to my surprise, that it snowed over 15 inches over the Sahara Desert.  The temperature reached 117 in Sydney, Australia, where it is summer.  Spring is not far away.  My wife gave me a Seed Catalogue for Christmas, so I am examining all the seeds, looking forward to another gardening season.

 

The Lord blessed us in His house yesterday with His joy, grace, and sweet fellowship.  It was wonderful and joyful to be in His house with His people on the first Sunday of the New Year.

 

 I have shared in of recent blogs that Jesus, the mighty warrior, confronted the enemy, the adversary, the devil, head on.  It is written that the devil is pacing up and down in this earth as an adversary, like a lion, seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8).  Satan (literally, the Adversary) boasted of the same thing long ago when he appeared amongst the sons of God in heaven (Job 1:6-7; Job 2:2).   However, the LORD, being Sovereign, the accuser of the brethren (Revelation 12:10) can only push us as far as God allows (Job 1:12; Job 2:6).  The enemy of our souls is a dog on a leash, a lion on a chain, subject to the overall control of God.  Ultimately, whatever seeming victories Satan has, he is overcome by the blood of the Lamb (Revelation12:11).   Satan sought to destroy Simon Peter, but failed because of the prayer of Jesus (Luke 22:31-32).   Since our Lord was persecuted, his servants can expect nothing less (John15:20).  Satan sought to destroy Jesus from the very beginning.  The LORD is not mentioned in the book of Esther, but His providence is seen throughout.  An attempted genocide of the Jewish people threatened the seed from whom Messiah would come. Good Queen Esther took her life in her hands, and dared to appear uninvited before her husband the king of Persia.  He held out the golden scepter towards her in acknowledgement, and answered her petitions.  If we come before God at any time, in the name of Jesus, we are received, and our prayers are just as surely answered (Hebrews 4:16).   

 

According to God’s sovereign and infallible plans and purposes, wise men from the East came seeking the newborn King, the Bright and Morning Star.  Presuming the King would be born in the palace, the wise men made their way to Jerusalem, where they found themselves in the court of Herod the Great.  Having heard the news of the newborn King, Herod was both disturbed and distressed.  To Herod, He posed a threat.  Though Herod was coronated with power and prestige, he was insecure, unstable, and terrified.   The good news is that we find our security in and through Christ, the Rock of Ages. 

 

Herod feigned interest, but intended all along to destroy Him.  Having gathered all the chief priests and scribes together, he inquired where the Christ was to be born (Matthew 2:4).  They searched the Scriptures, and at last found the answer in Micah 5:2. “Bethlehem in Judea,” they answered (Matthew 2:5-6).   Herod sought to find out the truth in order to defy the Truth!  Having found the answer, Herod sent the travelers on their way, still pretending that he wanted to do homage to the holy child (Matthew 2:8).  

 

However, after the wise men had found Him, they were warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, so they wisely returned home by another route (Matthew2:12).  Sometimes our dreams do have meaning, especially when we have been in the divine Presence!    The good news is that, once we encounter the newborn King and worship Him as the Lord and Savior, our lives, direction, and destiny change forever. 

 

Herod's paranoid reactions showed his true desire.  Herod had no desire towards “the desire of all nations”.  Herod had all the baby boys in Bethlehem murdered because he desired to destroy Him, to eliminate any perceived threat to the throne.  (Matthew 2:16).  We are rightly appalled at the horrendous atrocities of Herod.   The murder of babies in particular strikes a sympathetic chord with us.  Yet is our generation innocent of this same crime with our abortion-on-demand? 

 

The Lord, in His infinite wisdom, outwitted Herod, who was too late in his attack against the children.  Joseph had received instructions from an angel, and he had taken the Child and His mother and they had all escaped to Egypt (Matthew 2:13-15).  There seemed to be no consolation for the mothers in Bethlehem. Rachel, who was buried there after her own death in childbirth, is portrayed by Jeremiah as weeping for her children as they went into exile (Jeremiah 31:15). Matthew sees her weeping again, in another fulfillment of this Scripture, when the infants in Bethlehem were so cruelly massacred (Matthew 2:17-18).   Jeremiah's prophecy does not stop with Rachel's weeping, but proceeds to offer her counsel (Jeremiah 31:16-17).  “Refrain from weeping.” says the LORD through Jeremiah. “They shall come back!  Your children shall come back to their own border.”  The Jewish people did return from exile seventy years after Jeremiah's prophecy.  They have done so again in our own generation, against all the odds, after a second exile of nearly 2,000 years. 

 

“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5).  Terrorism is thought to be a modern phenomenon, but when you think of it, Herod was a terrorist.  The idea is to instill fear upon the intended victim, prior to destroying him entirely.  Herod the Great came to his end alone and in agony one year after the slaughter of the innocents.  In fact, it was five days after he ordered the execution of his own son.  (Not a nice man)   The devil seeks to terrorize our own souls, but he will fail.  The irony is that when we suffer reproach on behalf of Jesus, it carries its own benediction (Matthew 5:11-12).  In the end Satan cannot eliminate the anointing within us.  We find rest in the midst of reproach, and in the end all his failed attempts redound to the glory of God (1 Peter 4:14). 

 

https://youtu.be/dy9nwe9_xzw

Brown

Brown's Daily Word 1-6-18

Praise the Lord, for today is Orthodox Church Christmas Eve.  Tomorrow millions of Christians that belong to the Orthodox tradition will celebrate Christmas.  The party is on.  We are getting ready for worship tomorrow for the First Sunday of 2018.  We will be joining untold millions who will be celebrating the Lord’s Supper tomorrow.  We are planning for a church wide fellowship hour following the worship service.  Plan to be in the Lord’s house wherever you might be.  Joining in corporate worship every Sunday faithfully and regularly is part of the holy habits of a Christian.  May we all commit our service to Jesus and to His kingdom afresh and anew this year.  May we keep abiding in Him that we might bear much fruit.  May Jesus provoke us to remain faithful in witness and service this new year.  I was listening to a song titled, "Did You Hear the Mountain Tremble?" by Delirious?.  When people old and young turn to Jesus and sing, mountains tremble and the oceans roll.

   

I was reflecting on the song and on the witness of Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist.  Elizabeth was, for years, barren, bereft, and broken.  Suddenly the Lord of miracles intervened.  Elizabeth, like Sarah, became pregnant in her old age.  When Elizabeth met Mary and heard what God was doing in her, the unborn child in her womb leapt for joy.  Elizabeth then broke out in joyful exclamation!  How Zechariah (stricken mute) must have wished that he, too, could sing with his wife about the news!

Elizabeth’s was a blessed song—a happy song that spoke of the absolute fulfillment in the marvelous conception of Jesus Christ to people aware of their need for a Savior.  In Elizabeth’s song, we are given a Spirit-filled reply to Mary, which focuses on the blessed consequences of God’s grace in sending Jesus for every believer.  When she heard that her relative Mary was carrying the Messiah of God, Elizabeth cried out, “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.”

 

In Luke1:44, Elizabeth sang forth the truth that as soon as Mary announced the good news, the unborn John the Baptist leapt in her womb.  The good news of the Messiah shaped the household of Elizabeth and Zechariah and their little boy.  One heard and rejoiced, and the Holy Spirit came upon the other.  Here is a glorious consequence of Christ’s coming: every member of a family was impacted by the announcement of the Lord’s salvation.

 

When Jesus comes into a home, He brings joy.  When families yield to the Savior and embrace and follow Him as Lord of their homes, Christ sends rivers of joy through their families.

 

In  Frederick Buechner’s The Longing for Home, Buechner’s deeply moving book of reflection and recollection on his own life and longing for home ended with some thoughts about what he called, “The Jesus Who Was and the Jesus Who Is”.  He wrote that “the Jesus Who Was” is a largely historical Figure who came, who lived, who died, and  who rose again from the dead.  However, “the Jesus Who Is” is the Lord who brings vision not only to blind eyes in the gospels but to our own narrow and blurred vision.  He not only is the Jesus who opened the ears of the deaf but the One who speaks to our deafened world, as Buechner put it, in “a voice unlike all other voices.”  Buechner said: “the Jesus Who Is” is the one whom we search for even when we do not know that we are searching and hide from even when we do not know that we are hiding.”

 We can read Elizabeth’s testimony, her song of blessings, which come to those who welcome the good news of Jesus Christ.  The only thing remaining for each of us is to make certain we welcome not the “Jesus Who Was” but the “Jesus Who Is,” the Son of God, the Dayspring from on high, the Promised One for humble servants, who came, lived, died, rose again, ascended, and—right now by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit—stands in our midst, bidding needy people to open the doors of the secret places of your lives that He may come in and dwell with you.

 In Christ.

 Brown 

https://youtu.be/ek26sskZERQ

Brown