Brown's Daily Word 7/16/15

Praise the Lord for another stunning and spectacular summer day here in central New York.  Yesterday we drove through the countryside, surveying the hills, vales, and mountains, the rivers and rivulets, the farms including blueberry farms, and corn fields. The whole topography resembles the majestic " Downs" England. You can see the beauty and blessings of the Lord all around.  Our church hosted a church-wide Wednesday evening dinner yesterday.  It was prepared with much love and served with much grace.  Many people of all ages came and gathered in the church hall for a great time of fellowship, laughter, and love.  In the Kingdom God "the cup is always full" with love and grace.  There was even plenty of  food left over.  It was an evening of great sharing and rejoicing.
    As I write I am filled with gratitude to the Lord who is the Resurrection and Life, for the life and witness of Juna, who was part of our lives for the last 25 years.  She entered into the arms of Jesus in her sleep, this past weekend at the age of 90.  She was a sweet servant of Jesus who loved Him, loved His church, and loved his people.  She was a great prayer warrior.  She prayed fervently until something happened .  She never missed worship on Sundays.  She never missed prayer meetings.  She never forgot to tithe.  She exuded the pure joy of loving the Lord and being loved by Him.  We praise the Lord for Juna, who made it easier to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ our Lord.

    It is summer time.  We often watch the Weather Channel for breaking news.  We hear about tornados, hurricanes, thunder storms, typhoons, and floods.

    One day, Jesus was out in a boat on the Sea of Galilee.  We read about this miracle in Mark 4.  Jesus was out there with his closest friends, Peter, James and John, plus the other disciples.  The boat was large enough to handle all of them. His three friends were experienced fishermen who knew the mood of the water, its ugliness, and its surliness.  According to the Biblical story they were out there with several other boats.  Jesus had become famous and so when he got into a boat and sailed out into the Sea of Galilee, everybody got into their boats and followed him, just as crowds today follow famous people.

    They were all out there in the middle of the Sea of Galilee when suddenly, like a tornado in the Midwest of America, along came a wind squall from the east side of the lake, down through the crevasses, down through the gullies.  The waves on the lake can be suddenly five to six feet tall. A vicious storm hit and the waves started to get really big and the waves started coming over the side of the boat. Even these experienced fishermen knew it was time to panic.

    Rembrandt captured the scene on canvas.  Our Lord Jesus, who had a great sense of humor, was sleeping in the stern of the boat.  A pillow was under his head and he was sleeping soundly while the muscular fishermen were fighting for their lives.  The disciples were afraid.  As experienced fishermen they weren’t easily frightened by storms but this storm was nasty enough to make them afraid.  They grabbed Jesus’ shirt and shouted, “Jesus, wake up.” They spoke that classic line from Biblical literature when they said, “Don’t you care?  Don’t you care that we are perishing in this storm?”  That question, "Don't you care that we are perishing in the storm?" has echoed down through the centuries.

    Jesus woke up and said to the storm, “Be still,” as if he were casting out a demon.  When Jesus cast out demons from people, he had said, “Be quiet.  Be still,” and Jesus quieted the storm inside of people.  But now Jesus was quieting the storm itself on the lake.  Suddenly, it was very calm and Jesus turned to his disciples and asked, “Why are you so afraid?  Why are you so afraid of the storms of life?  Don’t you have faith?  Don’t you trust that I am with you during the storms of life?  Where is your faith?”

    This same question has echoed down through the centuries, "Why do you have so little faith in the midst of the storms of life?"  The disciples became quiet because they had not seen anything like this before.  That somebody who controlled the winds and the waves must be, they believed, the Son of God.

    Thus ends a great story, one of those great eyewitness stories.  Simon Peter must have been the one to have told this personal story. Simon Peter knew this story because he was there, on the scene, on the lake, in the squall.  He knew this story well.

This miracuolous event  is an invitation for us to trust our Lord. To trust in Him, not merely when life is good, in the the good times when we have plenty of health, cash and family around. But to trust in Him, in the midst of the storms of life. The disciples did not realize that the power and presence of the Lord  was with them during their storm.   We are invited to trust God, especially during our own personal storms of life.

Life as we know it is filled with storms. In the midst of all the storms of life, when the powers of Satan are all around us, our intuitive instinct is to be afraid. It is to have a panic attack. It is to ask God, “Don’t you care?” Into those situations, Jesus asks a profound question, “Why are you afraid?” “Why aren’t you trusting?” “Why are you so afraid of the storms of life?”

 I was reading about Dr. Alvin Rogness, who was the president of Luther Seminary in St. Paul Dr. Rogness wrote several books but one of his most famous devotional books is entitled, HE WAS ONLY TWENTY FOUR. When his son, Paul, who was only twenty four, the Oxford scholar, his oldest boy, came back from England and got off the bus in Minneapolis, he was hit by a car and killed instantly. Dr. Rogness wrote this devotional called, HE WAS ONLY TWENTY FOUR. He wrote, “Life doesn’t begin when you are old. My son was only twenty four and he was living life to the fullest.”

In that book, Dr. Rogness also had a chapter called STORM CENTERS. He wrotethe following words, “You and I are built for storms. We are not built for cozy, safe little harbors. The Lord is with us. With him, we have the kind of craft that can weather any storm. In fact, we should head out for the storms. One of the great perils that faces the church in our day is that we will steer people out of the storm centers. We are not to anchor our lives in some sheltered cove and let the storm tossed world go by. The Lord’s call is not like that. Not to an easier task but a greater cause. Not to peace but to battle. Not to a cozy harbor but to the sea of storms. We are not built for safe harbors. We are built for storms.”

Dr. Rogness' words are true: We are built for storms.Amen.

In Jesus our Lord,

  Pastor Brown N.

https://youtu.be/77SuukJEJ2Q

Brown's Daily Word 7/13/15

    Praise the Lord for this glorious and gorgeous day in Central New York, particularly in the town of Marathon.  He blessed us with His love and grace in His House yesterday.  The Church family hosted a fellowship hour after worship in our honor.  It was a great blessing.  We had some family and friends who joined us for Sunday dinner in our new home.  In the evening we walked around, meeting our new neighbors.  It was a blessing.  Our newsiest granddaughter Rosalind is doing well in Abington, PA.  Our oldest daughter, Janice, and her daughter, Micah, drove down from Boston to Abington, Pa  to spend some time with Rosalind and her family.  Ad I write this I occasionally hear the tractor trailers driving past, sharing the road with some farm tractors, trucks, cars, and even Horse and buggies driven by the Amish people.  They all intersect the train tracks where the train runs twice a day.   I can hear beautiful and gentle morning doves serenading in the early morning joining with other birds that love to sing and offer sweet melodies to the Lord.  We are surrounded by His matchless beauty, endless love and grace, and  never-ending faithfulness.  We are blessed and loved.

    It is always a treat to be in church worshiping the Risen Lord.  Somehow Jesus comes and gives us the victory.  Followers of Jesus have been given different names over the centuries.  At first, they were called "Christians," which means "Christ ones" (Acts 11:26).  The commonest word for these committed to Jesus is disciple, which means a learner.  In his epistle, Paul addressed the Christians as saints, those set apart for God.  They are also called believers, beloved, or children of God. Each of these names describes a distinctive characteristic of the lives of those who follow Christ.  John suggested another name for Christians: overcomers.  A Christian is one who overcomes.

    The description of a Christian as an overcomer is confirmed in other places in the New Testament.  Revelation says this about the saints of God: "They overcame him because of the Blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony (Revelation 12:11).  Paul said to the Romans: "But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us" (R4omans 8:37). Paul urged the Corinthians to give thanksgiving to God "who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 15:57). God's children are to be overcomers. We are to experience victory in our Christian lives.
An overcomer is one who acknowledges the problem. The word overcomer implies that something stands in our way, that we are confronted by an obstacle, that we have problems which we have to overcome. An overcomer is not someone who breezes through life without any opposition or obstacles in his way. An overcomer is one who realizes each day will present another problem, another barrier, another obstacle that stands in his way, another opponent who criticizes him.  He acknowledges the problems and then sets out to deal with them.

    Whether or not you are an overcomer has nothing to do with the circumstances around you.  It has everything to do with the commitment inside you.   Everyone has circumstances.  The key is what you do with those circumstances. Problems will constantly confront you as you live out your Christian life.  A Christian has a problem to overcome if he is to win victory in his Christian life.  He sees those problems as challenges he has to overcome.  An overcomer acknowledges the problem.

    John said -- and he repeated it for emphasis -- that the Christian can overcome the world.  That is the promise of God's word.  You do not have to be defeated by the devil.  You do not have to be disgraced by sin.  You do not have to be destroyed by suffering.   You can win the victory.  You can overcome.  is the promise of God's word.

    Joseph was in the dungeon, but God released him.  The Hebrews were in slavery, but God delivered them.  David was overwhelmed by the guilt of his sin, but God forgave him.  Daniel was in the lion's den, but God preserved him.  Jonah was in the belly of the fish, but God retrieved him.  The world is Satan and his plans.  The world is sin and its pressure.  The world is suffering and its pain.    The world is that which stands in opposition to God.  It tries to destroy our Christian witness.  It tries to distort our desires.  It tries to confuse our value system.  It tries to dilute our interest in God's Word.  It tries to squeeze us into its mold. It tries to draw us away from God.  The problem is the world which tempts us to forget who we are and whose we are and to live beneath our privileges.

    "This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith,"
All of life is lived on faith, and every person has faith in something.  We open a can of food and eat it because we have faith that it is not harmful to us.  We get on a plane and sit back with assurance because we have faith that the person who is flying the plane knows what he is doing.  John is not talking about this general kind of faith, however.  He is talking about a particular kind of faith.  He who overcomes the world is "he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God."  Christian faith means to put our faith in Christ.  A faith in Jesus which causes us to believe in Him, talk to Him, walk with Him and abide in Him -- that faith is the key to overcoming the world.

    When David Livingstone, the great missionary to Africa, was called back to London to receive an honor, he was presented the award before a great gathering of well-wishers.  Someone asked him how he had been able to make it through when natives rose up against him and when the power of darkness seemed about ready to overwhelm him.  He opened his well-worn New Testament and said, "let me share with you the verse that helped me make it through: 'Lo I am with you always, even to the end of the age.'"

In Christ,

  Pastor Brown N

https://youtu.be/r0Xvr8maR34

Brown's Daily Word 7/10/15

Praise the Lord for this Friday.  We drove down to Abington, PA, near Philadelphia to visit our newest granddaughter Rosalind.  She is the daughter of of our youngest daughter, Jessica, and her husband,Tom.  She was born exactly on her due date.  Our grandson Simeon was also born on the 8th of July, but 8 years ago.  Jessica was born on the first of July.  There is so much to celebrate.  Rosalind is beautiful and precious.  We praise the Lord for this tiny child, a most precious one.  Both mommy and Rosalind are fine.  They will be going home today.  Tom, the young daddy, is excited and beyond thrilled. Tom's parents and his grandparents, who live close to Jess and Tom, are celebrating and praising the Lord. 
    We drove back to Marathon yesterday evening.  We drove across the majestic mountains of Northeastern Pennsylvania.  The highway runs through the  mountains, valleys, and a tunnel, all the time surrounded by enormous beauty.   As we were driving I came into some Monsoon-like rains.  I was contemplating on the vastness of our Lord's creation, the way He surrounds us with so much beauty.  The enormity and the beauty of God’s creation is one of the ways that he displays his glory. 

    Francis Collins is a scientist who headed up the Human Genome project and has all kinds of credentials.  He’s a world famous scientist, but he was also an atheist.  After a long period of searching, which included grilling a pastor and reading CS Lewis, Collins finally came to Christ after watching the beauty of creation.  This is Collin's description of that life-changing encounter:

I had to make a choice. A full year had passed since I decided to believe in some sort of God, and now I was being called to account. On a beautiful fall day, as I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains during my first trip west of the Mississippi, the majesty and beauty of God's creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ. (The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief)

    King David, who spent much of his younger days in the glorious outdoors of Israel, composed Psalm 8.  During these summer days let us take a walk outside in some remote place, look up, and worship the God who created all of this.  Let us look at the beauty of what He has created all around us, and then bow down and surrender our lives  to Him.   Then may we realize that the praise of the weakest person is stronger than the most powerful of God’s enemies.  Let us Praise him for the staggering enormity of creation.  According to David, despite our size in the universe there is something utterly unique about us.  If we created a continuum of every creature that’s ever been created, from bacteria all the way up to angels, we would be right next to angels.  We are not even far below them, the psalmist says.  Out of all that God has created, it is men and women alone who have been made in His image and crowned with glory and honor.  We have a unique role within the universe.  We have been given dominion over all that He has made.

    When we consider all of this together, it leads us to worship.  When we realize that the praise of the weakest Christian is more powerful than the strength of God's most powerful enemies, it leads us to worship.  When we see the vastness of what God has created - the beauty of the Milky Way, the knowledge of the vastness of the universe - it makes us want to worship.  When we think that out of all that God has made, that He has zeroed in on us, it makes us want to worship.

    Moreover, hundreds of years after David wrote this psalm, God Himself became a man and lived on this speck of dust which we call planet Earth. Not only was He mindful of us, not only did He care for us, but He became one of us.  In His infinite love for us He offered up his life for us so that we could be made right with God.  Psalm 8 is often quoted in reference to Jesus.  Verse 6 says that God has put all things under our feet.  When Jesus became one of us, He became our forerunner, and everything is already at His feet.  He has already been crowned with glory and honor.  Hebrews 2 quotes Psalm 8 when it says:

"But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone." (Hebrews 2:9)

    We have not fulfilled God’s plan to put everything under our feet, but there is one who is single-handedly fulfilling God’s plan on our behalf, and that is Jesus.  I love how Dale Ralph Davis puts it:

"That is the point of Hebrews 2.  It says: Psalm 8 is not a pipe dream.  We don’t yet see it full-blown.  But we see Jesus — one man is already reigning!  And that is the assurance that redeemed man, his brothers and sisters, will one day rule as well.  “He has made them a kingdom, priests, to our God, and they shall reign on earth” (Rev. 5:10).  How can you doubt your royal future when the Man Jesus has already begun enjoying it?  The Way of the Righteous in the Muck of Life: Psalms 1-12

    When we have surrendered our lives to our great God and put our trust in Jesus who has done this for us, then we will be able to say with David:

"O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!"
In Jesus our Lord.
  Pastor Brown N
https://youtu.be/oC6-F4v18BU