Praise the Lord for this most wonderful time of the year. It has been
snowing off and on, just enough to blanket the fields, the meadows the
hills, and the valleys with fresh and friendly snow. The other day Alice
and I walked through fresh snow, frolicking almost like children. I
have been resting and, best of all, leaning on the promises of Jesus
during days of my forced sabbatical. I am feeling stronger and sturdier
day by day. The Lord has placed some countless angels to minister to me
during these days of waiting and trusting. Thank you all for uplifting me in
pray, so faithfully and fervently. So many friends have offered
transportation to the doctors and hospital. Friends have come and cared
for the driveway, shoveling it and making it a perfectly clean. Some
have offered to bring foods.
I
spent part of the day yesterday with a dear brother who drove me for my blood
test. It was fascinating to hear the story of his pilgrimage with
Jesus. He was a medical school student but he dropped out to become a
craftsman who works with wood. The Lord blessed him with a wonderful gift
and talent. He shared about his involvement in the ministry of the
Gospel, how the Lord has been faithful during the days of trials and triumphs.
He is blessed with a beautiful family including children and
grandchildren.
One
of our friends who lives of State has plans to come and spend some
time caring for me. My younger brother got two goats from a farmer friend
of mine and dressed them out. A young friend of ours shot a deer for me
and is dressing it out for me. Thank you for your cards, Christmas
greetings, and gifts. I used send hundreds of Christmas greeting cards
around the world every year. Due to unavoidable physical
circumstances I will be not be able to do so even though I had all the cards
purchased for this year. We will be posting our Christmas
letter on facebook and sharing it on our E-Mail distribution list.
We
are getting ready for release time with children today at 2:15
pm. We are blessed with faithful servants of Jesus who love the
children and love to minister to them. The Downtown Singers, along withe
Binghamton Philaharmonic, will be presenting the timeless Handel's Messiah this
Saturday, the 17th of December,at 7:30 PM. It will be held at
the Historic Forum Theater in Binghamton. For tickets call
607-723-3931. On Sunday morning, December 18, we will be meeting for
Sunday school at 9:30 AM and worship at 10:30 AM. In the evening there
will be a program of lessons and carols at 6:30 PM, led by our resident
musician, Nancy Barber. There will be a reception following the
program. All who live in the area, please join us. On Saturday,
December 24, we will be gathering at 6:00 PM for a Candlelight Christmas Eve
Service.
One
of the most poignant and powerful Scripture passages, which is pregnant with
the hope and promise of the coming of the Messiah, is found in Isaiah
9. I preached on this same passage a couple of weeks ago. In
these verses the Lord of promise turns the peoples' gaze from the present
to the future, yet it is cast in the past tense, as though it's already
happened. This is because from God's perspectives it has. It
is an accomplished fact. All was accomplished through the gift of a son,
the birth of a child. "For to us a child is born, to us a son
is given" (Isaiah 9: 6a). This is such a remarkable answer to
all of our problems.
Ray
Ortlund put it so well when he said, "God's answer to everything that has
ever terrorized us is a child. The power of God is so far superior to the
Assyrians and all the big shots of the world that he can defeat them by coming
as a mere child. His answer to the bullies swaggering through history is
not to become an even bigger bully. His answer is Jesus."
Isaiah
9 is a magnificent chapter which gives us the prophet's first major exposition
of Israel's coming king. Isaiah had already hinted at the birth of
this world-transforming child in chapter seven, when he announced that
"[t]he virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him
Immanuel," (7:14) which means "God with us." In
chapter nine Isaiah elaborates at greater length about who this child will
be, using four more names: "And he will be called / Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God, / Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace" (v. 6b).
Let
us consider Jesus as the Wonderful Counselor. Though this is a name
given to the child, it also refers to God himself. The child reveals God
to be a wonderful counselor. Whether a wonder of a counselor (that
is, an extraordinary counselor)or perhaps a counselor of wonders, (one who
counsels amazing things) this child to be born—this son to be given, named
Jesus—is a wonderful counselor. He reveals God's wonder-filled wisdom for
the world, and it causes us to say, "Wow!" His plans are beyond
our comprehension; they mesmerize us with the miraculous, show us unexpected
flashes of grace, and cause us to gasp, with a sharp intake of breath, and say,
"Wow!"
Every
saving encounter with Christ, every act of conversion, is what C. S. Lewis
calls a case of being "surprised by joy." When we come to
Christ, we meet the wonderful counselor and learn about his mesmerizing
and miraculous plans for our life, and it fills us with both surprise and delight. Of
course, the delightful surprises continue throughout the whole of our life: not
just at the first, when we first meet Jesus, but as we learn to walk with
Jesus and discover that he is indeed the "Wonderful Counselor."
His plans are always perfect; his ways are not always what we would
expect, but they're always gracious and good, full of delight and surprise.
As we
walk with Jesus, we begin to realize that what he has said is in fact
true: There is strength in weakness; there is blessing in brokenness; there is
exaltation in humility; there is comfort in affliction; there is even life in
midst of death—all because of Jesus the wonderful Counselor. Though it is
counterintuitive it is full of deep and lasting joy.
In
Christ,
Brown
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