Brown's Daily Word

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Brown's Daily Word 10-2-13

Praise the Lord for this First Wednesday of October. It has been like summer, both warm and brilliant. I drove up to Syracuse yesterday to pick a friend who traveled in from Indianapolis, Indiana to spend a couple days with us. The drive to Syracuse on Interstate 81 was stunning. The fall colors were brilliant... so colorful... so magnificent. Only our Lord, the Lord of beauty, can exhibit beauty of that magnitude and depth. While Sunita and her family were here last weekend from Washington, DC she commented at the sight the bursting Fall colors, "It's like eating candy!" As we gaze at the colors and sights all around us, we can exclaim, "How Great is our God"! Indeed, "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever".

We will gather for the Wednesday Gathering this evening at 6 PM. Praise the Lord that the Lord takes us in to the top of the mountain experiences. There also are times He allows us to go through the valleys of life. One of the famous verses is found in (Ecclesiastes 3:4), where it says, "there is a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance . . . "

Frederick Buechner, a minister and author who loves God, has lived in a valley of sorts for years. Suddenly he found himself in a valley, according to his story Telling Secrets, when he was a child and his father committed suicide.

The Psalms speak to the condition of the human soul. Of the 150 sacred songs of David and others, there are several genres to be identified: Psalms of Ascent, Psalms of Praise, Petition, Liturgical Psalms, and Psalms of lament. Psalms 42 and 43 are of that variety and go together.

Paul says that we are in the middle of spiritual battles in Ephesians 6:12: "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rules of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." Our Lord Jesus was the Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3) who identifies with us so well in these times: "For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses . . . (Hebrews 4:15)." We have the Good News. The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit. Many of the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all."

In Christ,

Brown

http://youtu.be/AHe_qmo3gX4

Saturday, October 5 at 6:30 PM - ILLUSIONIST - will be in our sanctuary. The Young at Heart Committee is sponsoring a family program with an Illusionist, Jeremy Biesecker. This is a great opportunity to invite your neighbors.

Prayer Conference : Sponsored By the Union Center United Methodidt Church and the Binghamton House of Prayer.

October 18-20 ,2013

“Stir Up Our Hunger”
Prayer Conference with Rev. Nigel Mumford from By His Wounds
Worship by Binghamton House of Prayer
    October 18-19, 2013 at First UMC in Endicott
        Friday Oct 18th: 6 PM - Registration opens
        7 PM - Worship and Teaching

    Saturday Oct 19th: 9 am - Doors Open
        9:30 AM- Worship and Teaching
        1 PM - Healing Service
        7 PM - Worship night with Binghamton House of Prayer

Sunday October 20th
Rev. Mumford will be sharing at the 8:30 and 11:00 AM services at UCUMC

** Please note that Friday and Saturday sessions will be held at First UMC in Endicott to allow for more space for prayer ministry.
To register, please go to www.binghamtonawakening.eventbrite.com

Friday, October 25, 2013 at 7:30 PM - Old Time Hymn Sing at Wesley UMC, Cosponsored by the Wesley UMC and the Reformed Presbyterian Church.

NYC trip to Radio City Music Hall for the Christmas Extravaganza, Thursday, December 5, 2013. $80 for bus and ticket to the show. Depart at 6:00 AM, with one stop on the way in, free time in city, and the show at 5:00 PM. The return bus leaves at 7:15 PM, getting home by 10:30 PM (no stop).

The deadline is Oct. 15 for reservations and $40 deposit on the trip.
Remaining $40 due Nov. 10. Make the check payable to the church, memo line: NYC trip. Again, the cost of the trip is just $80.00, including Bus Fare and the ticket to the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. You don't have to be a member of the Confirmation Class to join us in this adventure. All are welcome, but when the bus is full, it's full, so get your reservation in right away. We would love to have you join us. Call the church office 607-748-6329 or email us at umcgospel@aol.com

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Brown's Daily Word 10-1-13

Praise the Lord! He gave us a super Saturday and super Sunday this past weekend. All my children and grandchildren came to celebrate my birthday. Jessica and Tom came in Saturday night after completing an 80 mile bicycle ride from Philadelphia to Ocean City, New Jersey. We gathered for praise and worship Saturday Evening at the First United Methodist church followed by a special meal. It was great time testimony and celebration. Sunday was great day of worship and celebration. All our grandchildren were with us. It was such a treat. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord for all the birthday cards, gifts, and greetings I received. I thank the Lord for you. I am so blessed. Praise the for Lou P. and his team that prepared a banquet for my birthday. Praise the Lord for Diane E. and her team, who turned the our Church fellowship hall into a beautiful banquet Hall. Thank you Sheila S. and her team that cared for the cleaning after the banquet. Praise the Lord for festive times and seasons. Praise the Lord for ordinary times, too.

An ordinary time is what one person has called a "non-festive time." As someone has put it, "life is so daily." This dailiness of life can seem so mundane, so routine, so non-spectacular. Yet, during this "ordinary time" our Lord Jesus is at work in us in extraordinary ways.

Richard Foster in his wonderful book on prayer wrote: "The discovery of God lies in the daily and the ordinary, not in the spectacular and the heroic. If we cannot find God in the routines of home and shop, then we will not find Him at all." (Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home, p.171)

I heard about Hannah in the Old Testament from my mom, when I was a very little boy. Hannah, as we recall, was childless. Year after year she faithfully went to the temple and prayed, pouring out her heart before the Lord. These were the ordinary days full of sadness and brokenness for Hannah. It is written, "This went on year after year." This sad scenario wasn't just played out once. It was the way things were for several years. Does that sound like anything we experience? Sometimes it feels like we're in 'ordinary time' while other folks are celebrating and in festive time. That makes our 'ordinary time' particularly hard to bear.

The wonderful story of the Lord in the life of Hannah unfolds in a way that was beyond anything she could have imagined. When we think it is all over, that our chances have run out, the Lord of the second chance is about to do something magnificent and glorious. He is about to do some thing that will blow us away.. That kind of God, who specializes in impossibilities, is the very God whom we worship and serve. So it was for Hannah that ordinary time came to an end for her! She conceived and gave birth to a son. She named this little boy "Shamuel," - "God has heard", and Hannah praised God in a wonderful prayer similar in sound to the great prayer of Mary, mother of Jesus.

"My heart rejoices in the Lord . . .", Hannah sang. Read it in full in 1 Samuel 2.

Hannah, once infertile, over time had three more sons and two more daughters. For maybe three years, Hannah did not go on the annual trip to Shiloh, but stayed home and cared for little Samuel, but when the little boy was weaned, Hannah made good on her promise to God. Taking little Samuel to Shiloh, Hannah and Elkanah offered sacrifice and left Samuel under the care and guidance of high priest Eli.

In Hannah's ordinary time, a time of year-after-year sadness, God WAS at work. God was at work, though not on Hannah's timetable. Nor did God remove Hannah's suffering and trial for several years. Nevertheless, in ordinary time, God was bringing good things to birth.

God IS at work in 'ordinary time' whether we see what God is doing or not. God IS at work even in the 'ordinary time' of our sadness and grief. God is at work in the stuff we'd rather not go through. Moreover, out of that difficulty and suffering there can be a birth of something new and vital, even extraordinary.

She began as an ordinary sister in a Calcutta, India convent, but in the midst of her ordinary life, she had an extraordinary dream. She shared her heart's ambition with her superior. "Well, how much money do you have?" asked the Mother Superior. "I have two pennies!" replied Sister Teresa. "Oh, you cannot start an orphanage with just two pennies," said Mother Superior. "No, but with two pennies God and I can start an orphanage," replied the nun, whom we have come to know as Mother Teresa. She and God did start an orphanage and a ministry that has spanned the world! In ordinary time, in the lives of ordinary people, God brings good things to birth.

In Christ,

Brown

http://youtu.be/gtjL-l9sVAw

Oct. 5th Sat. at 6:30 PM - ILLUSIONIST - in our sanctuary. The Young at Heart
Committee is sponsoring a family program with an Illusionist, Jeremy Biesecker.
This is a great opportunity to invite your neighbors. Hand-out notices are on the
back table to be shared.

    Saturday Oct 19th: 9 am - Doors Open
        9:30 AM- Worship and Teaching
        1 PM - Healing Service
        7 PM - Worship night with Binghamton House of Prayer

Sunday October 20th
Rev. Mumford will be sharing at the 8:30 and 11:00 AM services at UCUMC

Friday, October 25, 2013 at 7:30 PM - Old Time Hymn Sing at Wesley UMC, Cosponsored by the Wesley UMC and the Reformed Presbyterian Church.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Brown's Daily Word 9-26-13

Praise the Lord for this new day..We are less than three months from Christmas. I have started listening some Christmas music already. It is a great thrill to think about Christmas... the music, the message of it , the mystery of it, too. Praise the Lord the way He ushers in the wonderful Autumn season with so much beauty and so much bounty. In our area harvest has begun. Grapes, pears, and apples are already being harvested. We have peaches and apples in our trees here. Our grandchildren who live in the city of Boston are coming home this weekend. I want them to pick peaches and pears with their own hands. There is something magical and mystical when we have the sensory perception first hand. We will make them pick tomatoes, eggplants, pumpkins, and squash from our little garden that the Lord blessed with a big harvest.

The Lord blessed us beautiful Wednesday Bible Study gathering. The sharing and discussion was thought provoking and challenging and life-giving. We were looking at Hebrews 4. We all need friends in high places from time to time. We need someone who can cut through the red tape and help us when we can't help ourselves. In Hebrews 4:14-16 that Jesus is exactly the friend we need. Jesus is the friend we need because he is the Right Person with the Right Past in the Right Place. “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess” (Hebrews 4:14).

I prefer the King James rendering of this verse: “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” Consider that lovely phrase “touched with the feeling of our infirmities.” Jesus is “touched” by the weakness of our feeble flesh. Whatever touches us, touches him. To say “I feel your pain” has become cliche today but in Jesus’ case it is true. He is moved by our sorrow, aware of our tears, and touched by our failure. He knows what we are going through.

That’s what the verse means when it says that Jesus is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. He knows our pain, he sees our weakness, he understands what we are going through. Because he was a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” he truly knows what we are going through. How good it is to know that he was tempted just as we are. The verses means that Jesus faced every kind of temptation we can face. Jesus has defeated the devil. Where we failed, he succeeded. Where we gave in, he stood strong. Where we collapsed under pressure, Jesus obeyed his Father. He was tempted, yet he never sinned by giving in. I find great comfort in these words of C. S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity:

"A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of the wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.…Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means."

This has enormous implications for our spiritual life. Because Christ was tempted and never gave in, we may be sure that he is never surprised by anything we say or do. We gave in too early so we never felt the full force of temptation. But Jesus let the waves of temptation rush over him and stood like the Rock. When we pray we don't have to worry that we will somehow shock him. He has heard it all and seen it all before. We can go ahead and be totally honest about our failures. He knows about it even before we tell him.

John Newton expressed this truth in these words from an old hymn: “Thou art coming to a King, large petitions with thee bring; for His grace and power are such, none can ever ask too much.”

We have a friend in high places. We have connections in heaven. We have a friend at the throne of grace who delights to answer our prayers . He’s the Right Person with the Right Past in the Right Place.

In Christ,

Brown

http://youtu.be/Xs0LxtqIor0

An Evening Praise and worship ...

September 28, 2013

First United Methodist Church, 53 Mckinley Ave., Emdicot

5.30 PM Praise and Worship and a time of Testimony.

Preacher: Pastor Marshall Sorber.

Followed by a special banquet. All are welcome. For Information call 607-748-6329