Brown's Daily Word 8-7-08

Good morning,
This has been a beautiful and blessed summer though we have had some trying times and difficult moments in our family back in India. Thank you for praying for us. Please keep on praying for my younger brother Patel, whose wife died on June 16, 2008. One of the huge blessings of the summer was that our grandson Simeon turned one year on July 8. Jeremy and Janice, Micah and Simeon came down to Endicott for a great birthday party for Simeon. All the family joined the celebration. Alice preached on the 13th of July. Jeremy took his Bar exams in August. He is going to start his new job on the 2nd of September in Boston. Our nephew Arnold has an interview in September with an agency with the Federal Government.. Please pray for him.
In the 1993 movie, In the Line of Fire Frank Horrigan was a Secret Service agent assigned to protect the President. Horrigan had protected the life of the President for more than three decades, but he was haunted by the memory of what had happened thirty years before. Horrigan was a young agent assigned to President Kennedy on that fateful day in Dallas in 1963. When the assassin fired, Horrigan froze in shock. For thirty years afterward, he wrestled with the ultimate question for a Secret Service agent: Can I take a bullet for the President? In the climax of the movie, Horrigan does what he had been unable to do earlier: he throws himself into the path of an assassin’s bullet to save the President. Secret Service agents are willing to do such a thing because they believe the President is so valuable to our country and the world that he is worth dying for. Obviously they would not take a bullet for just anyone. At Calvary the situation was reversed. The Creator of the Universe actually took a bullet for us. At the Cross we see how Jesus died in our place. And he did that while we were still sinners. As one of the modern song writers pens "He took the fall and thought of me above all". There are many blessings of justification for those who have been justified by faith. Praise the Lord for the extravagant blessing of peace with God, standing in grace, rejoicing in hope, and rejoicing in suffering. The amazing love of Jesus is supremely demonstrated at the cross of Calvary. It is difficult to put into words the greatness of His love for his own. Someone once tried to express the greatness of God’s love by printing on a little card a special arrangement of John 3:16, with certain descriptive phrases added. The twelve parts of the verse were arranged down one side of the card, and the added phrases were printed across from them. It went like this:
God. . . . . . . . . . .the greatest Lover
so loved. . . . . . . . the greatest degree
the world. . . . . . . .the greatest company
that he gave. . . . . . the greatest act
his one and only Son. . the greatest gift
that whoever. . . . . . the greatest opportunity
believes. . . . . . . . the greatest simplicity
in him. . . . . . . . . the greatest attraction
shall not perish. . . . the greatest promise
but. . . . . . . . . . .the greatest difference
have. . . . . . . . . . the greatest certainty
eternal life. . . . . . the greatest possession
The title for this card was: “Christ—the Greatest Gift.”
One of the greatest expressions of the love of God is in the words of a hymn written by F. M. Lehman. The first time I heard this hymn was in the summer of 1969. After my graduation from University, I spent the summer of 1969 with OM( Operation Mobilization)". It was one of the crucible summers of my life. I saw the Lord at work performing miracles, answering prayers and being available to His own 24/7. Lehman wrote most of this hymn, but the final stanza was added to it later, after it had been found scratched on the wall of a room in an asylum by a man said to have been insane. The first and last verses of the hymn and the chorus, go as follows:The love of God is greater farThan tongue or pen can ever tell;It goes beyond the highest star;And reaches to the lowest hell.The guilty pair, bowed down with care,God gave his Son to win:His erring child he reconciledAnd rescued from his sin.Could we with ink the ocean fill,And were the skies of parchment made;Were every stalk on earth a quill,And every man a scribe by trade;To write the love of God aboveWould drain the ocean dry;Nor could the scroll contain the whole,Tho’ stretched from sky to sky.Chorus:Oh, love of God, how rich and pure!How measureless and strong!It shall forevermore endure –The saints’ and angels’ song. And yet I feel that I have not even begun to fathom the greatness of God’s love. So, let us remind ourselves, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
In Christ,
Brown