Brown's Daily Word 10/16/15

Praise the Lord for this Friday.  Sunday is coming.  Those of you who live in the area please join us for our weekly Television outreach this evening at 7:00 PM  on Time Warner Cable channel 4.  We will meet for Sunday school hour on Sunday at 10 AM and for worship at 11:00 AM.  Praise the Lord for the sweet sleep and rest the Lord does give us.  I get up early in the morning  to the sounds of the songs of the morning birds.  I also get up to the sounds of the heavy tractors trailers and other vehicles as they begin their early morning expeditions with thundering voices.  I have never needed an alarm clock.  Praise the Lord for every new day covered with morning dew and bathed with the morning glory of the Lord.   

 

    Yesterday was a brilliant day with which the Lord blessed us here in Central New York.  The sun was brightly beaming every where  you went.  The hills and mountains were aglow with autumn colors.  The the hills and mountains were laughing, the trees were shouting and singing praises to the Lord.  I spent much of the day in the Triple Cities yesterday visiting some friends at the hospital.  One woman had open heart surgery. She is recovering well. She is beautiful person who loves the Lord and has served Christ faithfully.  I visited anther person who had gone through a major surgery and is recovering well.  Her husband was with her.  They both shared about the Lord, about His faithfulness to them and to their family, and to their extended family.  They shared about their church and how the church family has been a great blessing to them.  While in the hospital I met a medical personnel from Bosnia, a new immigrant.  She shared about the blessings of being in America the beautiful.  Much of her family lives in Bosnia and some of them live in Germany.

 

    In the evening I visited a dear couple.  The wife had a surgery and is home recovering.  It was gorgeous evening.  They live on a lovely spot surrounded with beautiful meadows, trees, and pasture land. 

 

    Yesterday I found out about the death of a saint of the Lord.  He was 89 years old.  He and his wife were married 68 years.  They were committed and devoted servants of Jesus.  They led weekly Bible Studies in their home for over 30 years. They had also led Lay Witness Mission teams for over 25 years.  They led Holy  Land tours. They were partners in ministry with us for many, many years.  We had lead one tour to Israel together.  It was a blast.  They had also served on short term missions South Africa and Central America.  I praise the Lord for the witness and obedience of this servant of Jesus.  "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints."

 

    “May the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus"  are words of parting and benediction from the Book of Hebrews.   This speaks of the power of the resurrection.  The author of Hebrews reminds us in this benediction that it is the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ which is at work in us in order that we can live the Christian life.  By the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God equips us to live as He wants us to live.  In Romans 8:11, the apostle Paul tells us this.  “If the spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies, through His Spirit who dwells in you.”  He’s talking about the power of God, the power that raised Jesus from the dead, being at work in us to give us new life. 

 

    In John 10, Jesus told His disciples, “I am the Good Shepherd.”  In saying this, of course, He was pointing back to Psalm 23 and God’s shepherding providence over His people.  We are never in the valley of the shadow of death without our God being there with us.  The author of Hebrews is reminding us that our great Shepherd, by virtue of the resurrection, is alive, and He ever lives to intercede for us, and watches over us all the time.  He doesn’t call us to live the Christian life on our own.   “I will never leave you or forsake you.  Lo, I am with you always,” He said in the Great Commission.  He is with His people as the great Shepherd of the sheep, watching over us as we live the Christian life.  The God of peace grants us His peace for the living of the Christian life.  God, who by His power raised Jesus from the dead is working by that same power in us to live the Christian life.  Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep, is still, in His providence, looking over His Church and watching out for us.

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

T. S. Eliot

  In Christ,

   Brown

https://youtu.be/9BzvA5abiTs

Brown's Daily Word 10/15/15

Blessings and Honor be to Jesus our Lord.  The Lord blessed us with a beautiful Wednesday evening gathering.  The fellowship was sweet and warm.  The Lord blessed us with a sense of humor and  laughter.  Praise the Lord for the way He infuses His joy into our hearts and into our midst.  

    During my morning devotion I was reading some prayer  devotions by the Scottish Theologian Donald Baillie.  "Let me keep in mind how uncertain is my hold on my bodily life.  Let me remember that here I have no continuing city, but only a place of sojourn, and a time of testing and training.  Let me be in this world but not of it.  Let me be as having nothing yet possessing all things.  Let me understand the vanity of the temporal and the glory of the Eternal.  Let my world be centered not in myself but in Thee."  

 

   Colossians 3 states, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.  For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.  Put to death therefore what is earthly in you:  sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.  On account of these the wrath of God is coming.  In these you too once walked, when you were living in them.  But now you must put them all away:  anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.  Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.  Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, and free; but Christ is all, and in all."

 

    During my random readings I have read a small book by Edwin Abbot called, Flatland.  It is a satire about the nature of hierarchy in his culture in which, the narrator is a square -  literally.  He is a square that lives in a two-dimensional world called Flatland.  In a dream one day, he visits a one-dimensional world called Lineland and he tries to persuade the king of this world that there’s another world beyond his own.  After his persuasive attempt he ends up concluding, “It seemed that this poor, ignorant monarch as he called himself was persuaded that the straight line, which he called his kingdom and in which he passed his existence, constituted the whole of the world and indeed the whole of space.  Not being able either to move or to see save in his straight line, he had no conception of anything out of it.  Outside his world or line, all was blank to him.  Nay, not even a blank; rather all was nonexistent.” 

 

    In Colossians 3 we are called to think outside our normal perspective, to look at ourselves from another dimension, another world.  Paul calls us to remember our true home and calling in Christ and in light of that to think and to live as if our home is in another place. 

 In Jesus.

Brown

https://youtu.be/4-EUg3LVj6s

Brown's Daily Word 10/14/15

    Praise the Lord for this Wednesday.  We will gather for our Mid-week study and fellowship at 6:00 PM.  We will have a special meal.  Best of all there will be a great fellowship.  We are excited.  Praise the Lord, for the He lavishes us with stainless and sweet seasons.  We are the objects of His matchless love and unreachable riches.  The sweet summer days are gently making room for some cooler days.  It is all refreshing and reinvigorating. 

 

    I drove to one of the largest farm stands that is in one of our neighboring counties.  It was a very pleasant drive in the countryside.  The autumn  colors are still holding on to the trees and bushes .  "A thing of beauty is a joy forever".  The farm stand is always full of local produce including potatoes, New York Apples, pumpkins, and winter squash.  There is an overwhelming supply of all kinds of produce.  Praise the Lord for His abundance from the earth.  While I was one of young woman working said, "I know you.  You are Laureen's dad".  She shared with me that she is part of the same prayer and praise group that Laureen attended, which met in Binghamton.  In few moments a couple drive to the stand, dear friends of ours going home after closing their summer cottage for the off-season.  We shared about the Lords faithfulness and His grace in our lives over these many years. 

 

    Praise the Lord for the amazing harvest season.  Our children Janice and Jeremy, living in the city of Boston, buy much of their food  directly from the farmers in Vermont and Massachusetts, along with many of their friends who are  city dwellers.  

 

    In the evening I called a friend of our ours.  He had gone big game hunting to Canada along with nine others.  Each one got a moose.  Our friend got a big bull moose.  He was excited and feeling like a young boy.  I was reminded  of my dad, who was a brave and smart hunter back in the village where I was born and raised.  He hunted both small and big games.

 

    While in Boston this past weekend I spent some time reading from Psalm 119 with my grand daughter Micah.  “Let my cry come before you, O LORD; give me understanding according to your word.  Let my plea come before you; deliver me according to your word.  My lips will pour forth praise, for you teach me your statutes.  My tongue will sing of your word, for all your commandments are right.  Let your hand be ready to help me, for I have chosen your precepts.  I long for your salvation, O LORD, and your law is my delight.  Let my soul live and praise you, and let your rules help me.  I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek your servant, for I do not forget your commandments.” 

 

    Don Carson and company in the New Bible Dictionary say that you could really divide this section of the psalm into two parts.  They say you could say verses 169 to 172 are saying, “Lord, hear me,” and then verses 173 to 176 say, “Lord, act for me.”  One of the things that the Word teaches us is about prayer. 

 

    William Plumber says, “good men are often so situated that the only resource left to them is prayer.”   We all have been  put into situations like that repeatedly in our lives  where the only thing we  could do about our circumstance was pray.  There was literally nothing left that we could do so we  had to completely leave our situation in the Lord’s hand.  God often designs for us to be precisely in that circumstance so that we will lean on Him and the resource of prayer.  Plumber goes on to say that prayer is never produced in our hearts because of the difficulty of our circumstances, but the Holy Spirit working in the difficulty of our circumstances sanctifies those circumstances to our spiritual resort to prayer.   Plumber says, “Prayer is never performed aright as to be answered until we are taught by the Holy Spirit” and he points us to Romans 8:26.  Then he continued, “Distress is a natural means of stirring us up to prayer only when sanctified to us by the Holy Spirit.”    

 

    One of the great hymns of the church we sing is “How Firm A Foundation.”   There is one stanza that intrigues me, as it says, “Sanctify to us our deepest distress”.  Distress, in and of itself, does not create in us a spirit of prayer, but the Holy Spirit will sanctify our distress to us so that we resort to dependence upon God in prayer.  When we sing, “Sanctify to us our deepest distress,” we are  saying, “Lord, by Your Spirit, make even our deepest distress and our darkest dangers, by the work of the Holy Spirit, grow us in grace and prayer.”  Even so the psalmist is once again reminding us that living by faith is living by prayer.  “Let my cry come before you, O LORD; let my plea come before you.”

In Christ,

Brown

https://youtu.be/r0Xvr8maR34

Brown's Daily Word 10/13/15

   Praise the Lord for the wonderful days of October.  We drove to Boston to spend a few days with our grandchildren and their parents.  We drove through  the beautiful States of New York and Massachusetts.  The autumn colors were at their peak.  The skies were cloudless and the mountains and the hills, fields, and meadows were colorful.  As we drove it seemed as if beauty comes mingled with blessing that seemed unending.  Many tourists come from around the world to drive through and enjoy the amazing beauty and magnificent colors the Lord of creation displays once in a year in due season in this region.  We exalt His Name. Our time with our grand children is always a special treat.  We read books to them.  We saw them ride their bikes, build intricate lego houses, and do all kinds of crafts with much imagination.  We took long walks  in the city, and on Sunday afternoon we walked around one of beautiful parks, where Simeon climbed the rocks.  We all went to church Sunday Morning.  During the offering time four year old Ada had 50 cents to put in the offering but instead she took $1.00 out of her wallet to put in the basket. 

      Praise the Lord for the way He imparts His peace to us.  He is the Prince of peace.  The peace of the Christian is only possible because of the presence of Christ, and the peace of the Christian is the presence of our Lord.  We can hear the Lord saying in Psalm 23, “Though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I am with you.”     Frederick Buechner talks about the blessings that the Lord gives His people and yet, at the same time, the trials that His people go through.  He says something like this, “Jesus says to you, ‘Here is your life.  You might never have been, but in my goodness, I brought you into existence and into this world.  Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen, but do not be afraid, I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us.  I am next to you.  I am for you.  I love you.” Buechner is almost paraphrasing Romans 8, but with a little bit of John 14 to 16 thrown in.  What we need in the darkest places of life is to know that we're not alone, but that the Lord is with us.    One of the saddest verses in all of the New Testament is found in 2 Timothy 4:16 in which Paul wrote, “At my first defense, no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me.”  That really is astonishing.  Ever since Paul's arrest in Judea, his whole goal in the Christian life had been to be taken all the way to the high court in Rome, just a few blocks from the emperor's palace and testify to the grace of Christ in the Gospel in the court of Caesar.  When the day finally came for Paul to be able to give that testimony, Paul wrote that no one - no friends, no family, no fellow Christians, no fellow ministers - came to be by his side.  It seemed that Paul was absolutely alone, but in reality he wasn't.  The very next thing that Paul said is,  “But the Lord stood by me.”   When Paul was all by himself before the powers Rome , the Lord of Heaven and Earth was there standing by him.  The Same Lord is with us at all times at all junctures , at all detours  of life.   When He is there by our side .. we can say all is well.  His Peace passes  all understanding.  His love never fails.  His mercy never ends.

In Christ,

 Brown

https://youtu.be/e02UNZRsdSQ