Brown's Daily Word 1-29-09

Good Morning,
One of the great blessings of this life is being a grand father. (A very young grandfather, I might add.) Our granddaughter calls me on a regular basis on her mommy's cell phone. She told me yesterday evening that she had a great day. Her daddy was coming home soon from work. She was going get a bath, eat her supper, read her Bible, and go to bed... She asks me often, "How are you doing, grandpa? What are you doing? Are you in your study? Where is grand mom? Are you home by yourself? Are you hanging out with yourself? Have a good time in the church." Simeon cannot talk very well yet. He just listens to me talk over the phone. He just says, "Uh, ooh".
One of Micah's favorite hymns is, "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing". She knows all the words by heart. This hymn was composed by Robert Robinson . Robert Robinson was just a small boy when his dad died, and this meant that he had to go to work while still very young. Without a father to guide him, he fell in with a bad crowd of friends. One day his gang harassed a drunken gypsy. Pouring more whiskey into her, they demanded she tell their fortunes for free. Turning to the young Robert Robinson, the bleary-eyed gipsy fortune-teller pointed a quivering finger and said, “And you, young man, you will live to see your children and your grandchildren.” Robert Robinson suddenly paled and said, “You’re right. She’s too drunk to know what she’s saying. Leave her alone. Let’s go.” But her words haunted him the rest of the day. “If I’m going to live to see my children and grandchildren,” he thought, “I’ll have to change my way of living.” That very night, half in fun and half seriously, he took his gang to an open air revival service nearby where the famous evangelist, George Whitfield, was preaching. “We’ll go down and laugh at the poor deluded Methodist,” he explained. Two years and seven months after hearing that sermon, twenty-year-old Robert Robinson made his peace with God, and “found full and free forgiveness through the precious blood of Jesus Christ.” Joining the Methodists and feeling the call to preach, the self-taught Robinson was appointed by John Wesley to the Calvinist Methodist Chapel, Norfolk, England. There, for the celebration of Pentecost (Whitsunday) in 1858, three years after his marvelous conversion, he penned his spiritual autobiography in the words of this hymn. Come, Thou fount of every blessing Tune my heart to sing Thy grace Streams of mercy, never ceasing Call for songs of loudest praise Teach me some melodious sonnet Sung by flaming tongues above… He preached for many years until he came to a hard place in his life and then left his church because of unfair accusations. That deeply hurt him and he walked away from his faith and became very lonely, deeply angry and extremely critical in his old age. One day as a miserable man, he was riding in a stagecoach and a lady sitting across from him apologized to him for singing, “Come Thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing Thy grace…." And then Robert said, “Lady, I am the poor unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds to enjoy the feelings I had then.” At the end of his life, coming back to his faith, he said, “I lost that great emotion because I failed to flame the embers of love in order to keep joy burning bright in my life.” How joyous will our lives be at the end of life’s journey? This is one of the most probing and personal questions that could be asked of every single one of us ! Do you know someone whose joy has gone sour – their living in a tower of bitterness and over- powered by emptiness? Will this be your existence some day? William Barclay said that, “A gloomy Christian is a contradiction in terms, and nothing in all religious history has done Christianity more harm than its connection with black clothes and long faces.” C.S. Lewis wrote, “It is not so much the joy of the Lord we are seeking as the Lord of joy Himself.” In Acts 16:25, 26 it is written, “But at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were loosed.” Remember what Robert Robinson said, “I lost that great emotion because I failed to flame the embers of love in order to keep joy burning bright in my life.” May the Lord of Joy infuse His Joy into us so that we can declare that the Joy of the Lord is our strength.
In His Joy,
Brown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG5ZhFN1DXk