Brown's Daily Word 1-31-14

    Praise the Lord for this last Friday of January.   Praise the Lord for the new month.   In America the beautiful, in two days it will be is Super Bowl Sunday.  This year, for our friends around the globe, the Super Bowl is to be held  in New York .  This is one of the biggest sports events of the year.  We are planning to watch it with our nephews and nieces this Sunday afternoon.  The Winter Olympics will start in a few days. This evening I am sharing from Mark 1 on our weekly TV outreach on Time Warner Cable channel 4 at 7 PM.  On Saturday we will be having an "Almost Spring" celebration at Wesley, starting at 5 PM.  It will be a great time of food and fellowship.  Sunday is the Day of celebration in worship, witness, and Fellowship.  Plan to be in the Lord's house to worship the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

    Paul frequently illustrated the Christian life with references to first-century athletic events.  He talked about "fighting the good fight."  He referred to himself as one who had a "run the race" and described himself as close to finishing the course.  He lived in the world of chariot racing, boxing matches, even gladiatorial fights.  He knew what was involved in the Olympic Games.  He was familiar with the long-distance run of the marathon.  He never used the image of the race to tell people how to be saved.  Instead, he used the athletic analogy to encourage Christians as to how to live the Christian life.  In order to be a contestant in the Greek games, one had to be a citizen before he could compete.  Citizenship in  heaven is obtained through our faith in Jesus Christ, so we are set on our course, and we run to win the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus.  We are not running in order to be saved.  We run because we are already saved.

    Paul's analogy is not only that of the long-distance marathon, but it is also referring to the shorter races within the arena, in which each runner was to stay in his assigned lane.  Paul was urging the Galatians to run the race of faith as did those veterans of the faith listed throughout the Old Testament Scriptures and so beautifully portrayed for us in Hebrews 11.  The words of Hebrews 12:1-3 give encouragement and inspiration to us: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart."

In Christ,

 Brown

http://youtu.be/HcnfT4arZtI

        If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
        And treat those two imposters just the same…
        If you can fill the unforgiving minute
        With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run –
        Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
        And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!
            - Rudyard Kipling,

         “Every morning in Africa, an antelope wakes up.  It knows it must outrun the fastest lion, or it will be killed.  Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up.  It knows it must run faster than the slowest antelope, or it will starve.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or an antelope – when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.” – African Proverb

Brown's Daily Word 1-30-14

    Praise the Lord. It is getting a little warmer here today.  Praise the Lord that Spring is not far away.  The Lord blessed us with a wonderful Wednesday fellowship and study.  We have been looking at how the Lord Jesus came to the disciples, interrupted their lives, and called them to a life of great adventure.  Often the Lord comes to us seeking and looking for us.  He declared that He came to seek and save that which was lost.  This is the nature of our Lord.  He comes to seek the lost in the same way that He came seeking for Adam and Eve in the garden.  

    I get intrigued when I reflect on the life of Jacob.  Jacob did not seem to make much time for God.  We never read of any conversations about God or with Him before he left home.  We never read about him worshiping, nor any encounters with God in all of his life up until the Lord surprised him one night in a very far away, lonely, desolate place.  Jacob had little time for God, because he had been too busy scheming and planning how to get ahead.  Too much of his time was  wasted thinking only of himself.  There was no time for God, and there was no time for anyone else but himself, but God was about to dramatically interrupt his self-centered life.

    Jacob was on the go all day, running from his problems.  Finally, night came and he fell asleep, a rock for a pillow under his head, and above his head, the open heavens.  As he is slept, God revealed himself to Jacob.  In his dream there was what appeared to be a large ladder, or staircase of light, the top of which reached to heaven and the very throne of God.  On it the messengers of God were traveling up and down between heaven and earth.  They were delivering people’s petitions to God and bringing God’s help to the people of the earth.  Jacob was one of the privileged few who saw with his own eyes the workings of the kingdom of God, the spiritual activity of heaven itself.  Here God revealed himself and gave his promise to Jacob that Jacob would be the heir to the promises which God had made to his father Isaac, and his father Abraham before him.  The Lord repeated those promises to him personally saying, “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac.  I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.  Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth.  All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.  I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land.  I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you” (Genesis 28:13-15).

    Jacob called the place Bethel, which in Hebrew means ‘House of God.’  This special place seemed to him to be the very dwelling place of the Lord.  Jacob had met God.  He wasn’t expecting to meet him.  He wasn’t even thinking of God.  It was purely grace.  It was probably the last thing on Jacob's mind.  He did not even want to meet God.  He was only thinking of getting away from his brother.  His mind was full of thoughts about where he was going and what was ahead of him, but God broke into Jacob’s self-absorbed world in an amazing way.  God came to Jacob even when Jacob was not seeking God.  God opened his world to Jacob, even when Jacob had closed his world to God.

    This whole incident tells us something very important about the Lord.  Isaiah the prophet quoted God as saying, “I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me.  To a nation that did not call on my name, I said, ‘Here am I, here am I’” (Isaiah 65:1).  God is full of surprises.  Just when you do not expect to meet Him, he comes to you.  God can interrupt our self-centered lives in the most amazing ways.  Think of the times in the Bible when God came into people’s lives in surprising ways.  Moses was not expecting to see God, and he was certain that God was not interested in seeing him, but God had a surprise for Moses while he was out tending his father-in-law's sheep.  Paul, on the Damascus road, had only hate on his mind when the Lord stopped him in his tracks and changed his life.  Gideon was busy with his job, threshing wheat, when the Lord came to him and announced that he was going to use his life in ways that Gideon had never dreamed of.  The list of Bible characters could go on and on, but there is enough evidence even in this short account to show us that God sometimes interrupts the ordinary in our lives to come to us in extraordinary ways.  He is still doing it today. 
In Him the Hound of Heaven,

    Brown

http://youtu.be/ttKnLwwHlig

Brown's Daily Word 1-29-14

    Praise the Lord for this new day.  It is going to be sunny and brilliant.  We will meet for our Wednesday Bible study and fellowship this evening at 6 PM with a special meal.  We will be looking at John 1 and 2.  The choir will practice at 7:30 PM.  Those of you who live in the area please join us this evening at 6 PM.  One of the powerful passages in the New Testament is found in Titus.  This passage is usually read during Christmas eve readings, “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.” Titus 2:11

    In his book "Spirit, Word, and Story", Calvin Miller writes, “Grace we define as ‘unmerited favor,’"  John Bunyan wrote, “O Son of God, grace was in all thy tears; grace came bubbling out of thy side with thy blood; grace came forth with every word of thy sweet mouth; grace came out where the whip smote thee, where the thorns pricked thee, where the nails and spear pierced thee.  O blessed Son of God, here is grace indeed!  Unsearchable riches of grace! Unthought-of riches of grace!  Grace to make the angels wonder, grace to make the sinners happy.”

    With his wonderful sanctified imagination, C.S. Lewis wrote about a bus that was leaving hell to take a tour of heaven.  While riding through the streets of gold, one of the guys in the bus sees an old friend walking through the streets of gold, and all of a sudden he jumps up and starts yelling, “It’s not fair, it’s not fair, he was a sinner all his life, it’s not fair.  I want justice, I want justice.”  Then one of the people walking through the streets of gold turned to his neighbor and said, “Poor guy.  He doesn’t know that we’re not here because justice has been imparted to us.  We are here because we have been given grace.” 

    The Good News of Grace is recorded throughout the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.  One of the beautiful stories of Grace is recorded in 2 Samuel 9.  This passage records that after David became king over Israel he asked, “Is there no one still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show God’s kindness?”  David, the man after Gods own heart was demonstrating the counter-culture of the time.  The Ancient Near Eastern culture would dictate that he kill everyone in Saul’s family.  David found out that there is one man, Mephibosheth, Jonathan’s son, was still alive.  He was a man who was crippled in both feet.  “Where is he?”, David asked.

    “He is in Lo Debar.”  In other words Mephibosheth had nothing going for him.  He was in “no man’s land”, but David said to Mephibosheth, “Don’t be afraid for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan.  I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.”  Notice Mephiboshet’s response.  “What is your servant that you should notice a dead dog like me?”  In other words he was saying, "I am crippled; I don’t belong; I don’t fit with the intelligent, with the good looking, with the beautiful.”  Nonetheless he experienced GRACE, because the king came to tell him, “You sit at the table anyway.” 

    Metaphorically, Lo Debar is not a permanent place.  It is a waiting place.  Remember, the king knows where we  are.  Even Lo Debar is a place of grace.  God is ready to pour grace upon us .  I love the story of Mephiboshet because his story is our  story.  Sin has crippled us and we are lame.  We may be lame in our talk.  That is, we stutter or we have an accent.  We might be lame in our motives,causing us to do the right thing for the wrong reason.  Whatever our "lameness", God our King says to us, “You sit at My table anyway.”  That’s grace.   One day we will sit at the King’s table, and our feet will be crippled no more, because He will make all things new.

 In Jesus our Lord,

  Brown

http://youtu.be/dy9nwe9_xzw

Brown's Daily Word 1-28-14

       Praise the Lord.  Praise the Lord for His generosity.   Looking back in our lives, reflecting on the Lord's generosity, I praise Him.  His mercies are new every morning.  Great is His faithfulness.  I have known quite a few who are involved with the mission and ministry of the Gospel of our Lord through the witness of Wycliffe translators.  Even As I write this reflection I am thinking of those who are brave and courageous in serving the Lord in some of the tough places in the world today.  

    I was reading some of the writings of Berny May from Wycliffe.  He writes about the Aztec Indians in southwestern Mexico.  He says there is a peculiarity to their culture in which people do not wish you well very often.  He further said if you asked a skilled craftsman how he learned to craft the wood, the craftsman would not want to tell you. May said it is difficult to find teachers in that culture, because no one wants to share. Even Christians find it difficult to share the gospel with other people, because their culture propagates the concept of limited good. So, if I wished you well, I would be giving away some of my happiness to you, which would mean I had less happiness.  According to the same principle, having a second child means you cannot love the first child the same as you once did, because there is limited love to give.  To teach somebody a craft  would mean you end up with less knowledge, because you have given away part of what you possess.  That is mentality of scarcity, and many of us so live in fear that we will lose what we have that we live self-protectively.

  Jesus came down to to earth to give us life and give it  more abundantly.   When we become servants of Christ, we are called to live by the ethic of abundance. In Luke 6:38, Jesus says, "Give, and it will be given to you.  Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap.  For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you."  The measure you give to others determines the size of the scoop that God will pour into your life.  But we prefer to look at the size of scoop that God is pouring into our lives and let that determine how much we will give away, because we don't want to give away too much.  Here is the amazing concept that Jesus taught: It is the scoop by which you give away that causes you to step into the dimension of the abundance and generosity of God.  Matthew 6:33 says, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you."  When you rightly prioritize the Master's needs, his mission, and his self-imposed need to have harvest laborers, then you step into the abundance of God.  If you act in self-protection, you cannot be a good servant.

    When we  step into the dimension of the generosity of God, our self-protecting mindset is dismantled, and we  are able to live like a true servant, because you realize God's kingdom is one of never-ending abundance.

In Jesus the Abundant One.

   Brown

http://youtu.be/dy9nwe9_xzw

Brown's Daily Word 1-27-14

    The Lord blessed us with a full and celebratory weekend.  On Saturday we had a service of death and resurrection for a man who was 88 years at his death.  He was man of great dedication and devotion.  He was a loving husband, great father and a wonderful grandfather. He left behind a great legacy of love.  Yesterday we had a baptism service during morning worship.  It was another event for celebration and joy. 

    One of the readings for yesterday was taken from Mathews 4:12 ff.  Here our Lord Jesus was walking along the lake shore of the Sea of Galilee.  Fishermen were busy in their daily tasks, when Jesus interrupted their lives.  He said, "follow me".  Immediately they left everything and followed Him.  Their lives were changed forever.  For too long we have said to people, "Invite Jesus into your life."  Jesus doesn't want to merely be in our lives  because our lives are wrecks.  He wants to call us out of our lives into His life.  He wants to take us boldly where we've never gone before, into the life of the kingdom of God.  He wants to take us on a great adventure. That is exactly what he means when he says, "Come and follow me,"  Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

    In his book, Divine Appointments, Erwin McManus suggests that many of us church folks unintentionally become sideliners. In fact anybody, not just church folks, can become a sideliner to the great adventure of life.  McManus defines a sideliner as, "An observer rather than a liver of life, somebody who is more a spectator than a player."  These are people who live more vicariously than valiantly.  They find their romance in "Twilight" or "Fifty Shades of Grey" but never do something really passionate and wild to demonstrate their own love for somebody else.  They fight their battles through fantasy proxies like James Bond or Katniss Everdeen.  Sideliners admire and applaud the great servants, courageous heroes, and spiritual superstars, but they do not get up out of their chairs.  They do not rise to their feet and shout.  They do not leave the room in which they are sitting.  They don't get up and actually go with God to those places. They think to themselves, "When I grow up I might go there."  They still have not realized that it is only by going with God to those blank spaces on the map they've never been to before that they will actually grow up.

    Let us consider putting at the top of our resolution list this commitment: "I will take some deliberate steps—meaning motion—to go on the great adventure with Christ this year.  I will get out of my chair, I will get off of the sidelines, and I will go with Jesus to some place out there on a map."  Let us resolve that we are  going to try and be genuine travelers with Christ and not simply tourists.

In Christ ,

 Brown

http://youtu.be/CoxopsRSfdU