Brown's Daily Word 2/13/16

    Praise the Lord for this Saturday in Central New York.  It is frigid everywhere.  It is, however, a light and momentary affliction because next week it will be warming up.  I woke up early this morning and listened to the best of Handel, including parts of Handel's "Messiah".  I am getting ready for worship tomorrow.  Sunday school will be at 10:00 AM, followed by worship at   11:00 AM.  My wife, who loves winter, is planning to drive toward Binghamton this morning, braving the cold winds to go out shopping. 

     Praise the Lord for this beautiful and holy Lenten Season. We join the Church around the world and around the corner in recalling and remembering the Passion and suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is written, "But God commendeth (demonstrates) his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8) "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" (Romans 8:35) "Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved (loves) us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:37-39)

I was talking with some of my family back in Orissa yesterday, who shared with me that Christians from different denominations are coming together in worship and witness during this Lenten season to remember the Passion of Christ. These are believers who underwent tremendous persecution in 2008. In one historic area over 100,000 Christians gathered to share in the fellowship of suffering in Jesus Christ. They expressed their deep solidarity with the suffering Christians in the Middle East. During this Holy season, we are called to pray for suffering Christians and Christian martyrs all around the world, for the persecuted Church is dear to the heart of Jesus.

 

Praise the Lord for each one of you, who have blessed us and prayed for us. Praise the Lord for the way that our church family from Marathon continues to serve the Lord both in our community and around the world.

    I love the story of the Prodigal Son and the magnanimus and loving Father. This parable was part of my high school English reading from the King James Version in 1963, taught in the Public Schools in Orissa, India.  The father had been waiting lovingly for his son to come home.  When his wayward son finally came home, he put a ring on his finger, a coat on his back, shoes on his feet, and he threw a party. This same father deeply loved the son who had stayed home, and this loving father went out onto the porch to find his older son, and said, “Son, I love you. Son, my inheritance is yours.  Why don’t you come inside and see your brother.”   We find that the father loved both prodigal sons, the one who stayed home as well as the one who wandered away.

    Pausing and pondering about the father, we see that the father in the parable represents God the Father, who loves prodigals like all of us.  Some of us are lost in a far away country and some are lost in "the house".  

    My favorite story about the waiting father is an old classic sermon illustration. The young son had gone to San Francisco.  He was out of money, out of friends, and out of options.  He hit bottom and was at his wit's end.  The lost son wrote a letter home to his parents, who were living in the Seattle area.  He wrote, “Dear Mom and Dad, I have sinned deeply against you.  I have sinned against you and I have sinned against God and I am not worthy to be called your son.  There is no reason for you to love me or welcome me back home.  I am at the bottom of the barrel and I need to come back home.  I hope that you would welcome me.  I have been given a ticket for a train to get me back to Seattle.  The train comes past our farm south of Seattle.  It comes around the bend and right past our farmhouse.  If you want me to come home, please put a white towel on the clothesline, out in the back yard near the tracks.  I will then know that you want me to come back home.  If there is no towel there, I understand.  I will understand that it is not right for me to come back home.” 

    The young man sent the letter, got on the train, and started heading north.  As he came closer and closer to home, he became more nervous inside and was pacing up and down the center aisle of the train.  As the train came closer and closer to his farmhouse, he couldn’t bear it anymore.  He was momentarily sitting next to a man, and he said to him, “Sir, around this next corner, this next bend, there is going to be a farm house of the left.  A white house.  An old red barn behind it.  A dilapidated fence.  There will be a clothesline in the back yard.  Would you do me a favor and look and see if there is a white towel hanging on the clothesline?  I know it sounds peculiar, but I can’t bear to look.”  The train came closer and closer to the bend and started to go around the bend, and the young man’s heart was racing as fast as it could.  The man said, “Look, look, look. Open your eyes.”  The whole clothesline was covered with white towels.  The oak trees were covered with white sheets.  The barn roof was covered with sheets.  The old dilapidated fence was covered with white sheets.  There were sheets everywhere.  The father and mother so deeply wanted their son to come back home.

    So it is with God our heavenly Father in His relationship with you and me when we have wandered away from Him, (and we do), when we take our God-given inheritance and get wrapped up in the things of this world so that we forget God, we live and feel as if God does not exist.  Sometimes, we come to our senses and we come back home to an intimate loving relationship with God and his family.  God is so happy when we do.

    It is also true that sometimes, though we have stayed at home in the church, that  our hearts may calloused and hard (not to our children, grandchildren and friends).  Yet our hearts may become calloused and hard to those outside the church, and sometimes we start to feel that our sins are less "sinful" than their sins.  Sometimes our hearts become sour, loveless, and acidic to people who are very different than we are.  Sometimes, in those instances, we wake up and come to our senses and we come back home to God, a loving God who wants so deeply for us to come back and live as loving children within his house.

Please join me in praying for our dear friend, Roger Vick, a faithful servant and joyful singer of Jesus.

  In Christ,

    Brown 

https://youtu.be/FsgwfliQoqg

Brown's Daily Word 2/11/16

Praise the Lord for this new day.  One of my granddaughters reminds me, "It is brand new day".  Alice and I traveled back to New York yesterday.  The Lord blessed us with a safe and sweet journey, traveling(with stops) over 6 hours. Yesterday was Ash Wednesday.  We have entered the Lenten season of reflection, renewal, and rejoicing.  I have been listening to  pieces from Handel's Messiah this morning: "He Shall Feed His Flock", "I Know that My Redeemer Liveth".  The music and message of Handel's Messiah fill my soul, inspire my heart, and cleanse my mind.  Thank you all for your fervent prayers on our behalf, standing with us as we sojourn as pilgrims on the road to the Eternal City.  The road that we travel was traveled by our Lord Jesus, the pioneer and the finisher of our faith.  Alice is going back to Schooll to teach today.Our  church Family  in Marathon,   has been gracious to us in every way.  They have cared for the preaching and teaching  and missional matters.  Praise the Lord for the way He provides His boundless grace. 

       During the season of Lent we all think about Spiritual discipline and self denial.  Most of us  think of  giving up something when it comes to Lent.  For example, we often hear, "I'm giving up coffee," or, "I'm giving up chocolate," or, "That's nothing, I'm giving up Facebook."

    We understand about these habits.  Jesus said to his followers: "When you give to people in need … when you pray … when you fast."  He assumes that you will do these things.  As a follower of Christ it will be a part of your life to choose spiritual disciplines like this.  He made this one central point: When you do them, don't ever do them to try to prove to yourself or someone else how spiritual you are.

    The only reason to engage in the spiritual disciplines that we choose is because  we have a Heavenly Father who sees us, who longs to draw us close, and who wants to reward us with the intimacy of his presence, with the tenderness of his compassionate word to us, who wants to give us the grace that we need for this moment.  That reward should be so compelling that we would even do these disciplines as difficult as they are.  It is not easy to give money when we know we might need it.  In fact, we do need it.  It's not easy to pray, to set aside time and to stop our motion and the self-management of our life and cry out in need.  It is not easy to fast and go without food and feel the pains of hunger.  

    In Matthew 5:11 Jesus said, "God blesses you when people mock you and persecute you and lie about you and say all sorts of evil things against you because you are my followers."  I don't know one person who said to themselves this year, "You know what I'm going to do for Lent this year, I'm going to be mocked, lied about, and slandered; that's my discipline for this season of my life."  Yet a sovereign God allows this type of discipline into our lives.  Why would he do that?  How do we make sense of that?  How would we even begin to respond to that?

    First of all, the spiritual disciplines we  don't choose, that are thrust upon us, are described by James as trials of many kinds.  Our trials will be different from the trials faced by others.  In other words, they can come in all shapes and sizes, but they have this in common: they test our faith.  They knock us off balance, they make us wobble in our faith, and suddenly we ask questions like, "God, where are you?  What possible sense could this situation have for me?"  The many of kinds of trials that James talks about are the trials that come to test our faith.

    Last year a woman named Margaret Geary made the news. She was an 85 year old nun who lives in a convent near Baltimore.  All of the other sisters in her convent were going to a three day conference and she had to stay behind, so for three days she was left alone in her convent.  Shortly after they left, she came down from her room to the kitchen to get a snack.  She went to the refrigerator, pulled out a jar of water that had celery sticks in it, and walked back to elevator, got on and pressed the up button.  The elevator went up about two feet and then it stopped.  She thought, "Uh oh," and she tried to pry open the doors  Right then the electricity went out.  Then she realized, "Oh, don't worry about it, I have my purse with me and it's got a cell phone."  So she rummaged in her purse, pulled out the cell phone, and realized, "I can't get a signal inside this elevator shaft."  At that point she started to panic.  Then she realized, "You know what, I can either panic or I can pray.  It looks like I'm going to be taking a three day prayer retreat and I didn't have to reserve the space."  So she sat on the floor of the elevator and ate some of the celery sticks and prayed, and then she drank some of the water and prayed.  Then she rummaged in her purse and pulled out some of the cough drops down in the bottom and sucked on those, and prayed.  When she got tired she curled up and used her sweater as her pillow and put her purse in her back to keep that from hurting as much, and she prayed.  When the other sisters finally got back three days later and got her out of the elevator, they said, "What were you thinking?  What was it like for you?"  She said, "Well, I finally realized God had provided for me an opportunity to draw closer to him." 

    Please join us praying for Thomas B, the son of very dear friends, who is battling some very precarious health concerns.  He is one of very dear friends and fellow sojourners in Jesus.

In Jesus our Lord.

    Brown

https://youtu.be/Rdf0Qyhc82Q

Brown's Daily Word and Update 2/10/16

Dear family and friends,

    Praise the Lord for this beautiful day here in Boston. I trust that you all had a good day and are getting ready for rest and repose. Praise the Lord for the way He gives us both day and night, to live, to serve, to rest, and to relax, renewed. One of my daughters sent me the following verses from Psalm 111: "Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who have pleasure in them. Full of honor and majesty is his work, and his righteousness endures for ever." Through these days of surgery and recuperation, and even suffering, we have experienced the measureless love of our Lord Jesus, and the magnitude of his grace, which is unfathomable. We have heard from so many of you from around the corner and around the globe. We have heard from those who have overcome cancer in so many ways, with such courage and grace, running the race for Jesus well. I am reminded of a verse from Revelation, "And they overcame him (Satan) by the word of their testimony and the blood of the Lamb."

Alice and I are writing this to declare God's amazing faithfulness in our lives, the way He has provided His covering over us, every step of the way, all the way. He has provided for us a beautiful dwelling in the Boston area while I am recovering. This has been provided to us by the kind generosity and extravagant love of our family and very dear friends, fellow servants of Jesus. We begin the next step of my care on February 16, and met up with the treatment team on Monday of this week. Everyone was very kind, caring, concerned, and compassionate. We have felt the hand of Jesus orchestrating all of the procedures and care. Thank you all for your continued prayer. Thank you for standing with us, fervently and faithfully standing before the Lord on our behalf.

One of the blessings of being here has been to spend much time with our grandchildren. I call them our Boston blessings. Five year old loves to do puzzles, tell stories, play games with her Grandma and just cuddle with her. Simeon is an eight year old bundle of boundless energy who loves to play indoors and out, and to build with legos, planks, and all kinds of construction toys - building well-engineered and designed castles, the "great wall" and a great many other things. Micah is very musical and artistic, plays "fiddle" and is also learning classical violin, writes poetry,is kind and compassionate, and wonderful at looking out for me.

Sunita and Asha (our youngest granddaughter)are planning to fly to Boston next Monday to spend a few days with us. We look forward to spending some time with them. We praise the Lord for our daughter Janice, who is in the medical field here, who was able to work through the intricacies of the Boston medical system to expedite my care. Her help was invaluable.

In the midst of suffering and sorrows we celebrate life and stand secure on the promises of Jesus and on the "sure and certain hope" we have in and through Jesus.

I praise the Lord for the life and witness of Duane V, a sweet sweet servant of Jesus, who served Him fearlessly, boldly with grace, and faithfully for so many years, who has now gone to be with the Lord.
We celebrate the birth of a little daughter to my nephew and his wife in England.
We ask prayer for Jan, who lives in Virginia, who is suffering from pain in her back and hip. She asks prayer. She will be seeing a neurosurgeon later this month.
Pray for one of my second grade classmates, who is in a coma back in India. She and her husband have served Jesus faithfully and joyfully for these many years.
I thank the Lord for each one of you as you have expressed your love and compassion through cards, texts, emails, and facebook messages. I received a card from a residential school run by the Church in the Binghamton, signed by many students. My heart was warmed.
I received a card from a colleague who took early retirement 30 years ago, who has had 7 heart procedures through the years.
Pray for three year old Amos, who is battling cancer. We are trusting for a miracle for him.
May the Lord surround us with His amazing love and keep us in the grip of His grace. May He provoke us to love and live, knowing that we serve under a Captain who has never lost a battle.

In His blessed assurance,
Brown
https://youtu.be/l-bAXm-A3Ls