Brown's Daily Word 4-12-11

Good morning, Praise the Lord for this new day a gift from the Lord. It was one of the warmest days of April yesterday. The crocuses in front of the parsonage are full bloom. The bees are back, hovering over the flowers with a sweet sound. The daffodils are popping open all around along with the trees, the leaves of which are about to burst forth in brilliant vivant colors. Our Lord makes all things beautiful in His time. As we get near to Palm Sunday and Holy Week, we continue to look at the cross. Our Lord God displayed His power and grace in and through the foolishness of the cross. I was reading sometime ago that a few hundred years ago, on the south coast of China, high on a hill overlooking the harbor of Macao, Portuguese settlers built an enormous cathedral. They believed it would weather time, so they placed a massive bronze cross as its centerpiece. Not too many years later, a typhoon came and God’s finger work swept away man’s handiwork, leaving only fragments of the front wall and the cross. Many years later a shipwreck stranded hundreds of men not far out in the same harbor. Some died; some lived. One man was hanging onto the wreckage of ship, disoriented and frightened, having lost sight of land. Yet, each time the ocean swells lifted him out of the waves, he spotted the cross, which eventually guided him to safety. To countless millions, that is what the cross means. It is a glowing symbol of rescue, leading stranded souls, shipwrecked on sin's jagged reefs, from the shadow of death’s darkness to the shining light of new life dawned. It is also a place of hope to countless Christians who come back to the cross, bringing the scattered debris of their lives. It is on the cross that we see the passion of Christ so vividly portrayed. "Passion" comes from the Latin word for suffering. Passion comes from same word as passive. He endured the cross passively for us. Hebrews 12:2 – "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." As we survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, may Jesus grant us a passion to live for Him in holiness and purity. May He grant us a passion to proclaim His passion to all the world. In Rembrandt’s famous painting, "The Three Crosses." we can look first at cross, then at the crowd around cross. At the edge of the painting, a figure stands, almost hidden in shadows. Art critics say it represents Rembrandt himself. We are there at the crowd. May we behold His Passion, His Glory, and, best of all, His victory beyond the Cross. In Christ, Brown http://youtu.be/0QtQlCzr4q8 Saturday evening worship service. Location: First United Methodist Church 53 McKinley Avenue Endicott Sponsored by the Union Center United Methodist Church, 128, Maple Drive, Endicott Saturday, April 16, 2011 6 PM Coffee Fellowship 6:30 PM Worship Service Worship Music:Laureen Naik Speaker: Rev Earle Cowden

Brown's Daily Word 4-11-11

Good morning, Thank Jesus for it is Monday. I trust that you had a blessed and a very beautiful weekend. We drove to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to the wedding of our niece Jovita. Jovita and her Grove City college friend Torr got married on the Cape, in a marriage ceremony held at Brewster Alliance Bible Church. Jessica was the matron of honor. Laureen, the bridesmaid, brought the music for the wedding. The reception was held in one of the Yacht clubs. The Lord blessed the wedding ceremony and the reception. Torr and Jovita after their honeymoon in Virgin Islands will be living in Cape Cod. Janice and Jeremy were the official photographers for the wedding. We rented a house in Cape Cod for the weekend, so that all of our family were together except Micah and Simeon. Jeremy, Janice, Ada, Laureen, Andrew, Sunita, Tom, Jessica, Alice and I were able to share the weekend together. Little Ada is a huge blessing and she is a charm. Micah and Simeon were cared for by their other Grandma for the weekend. We all traveled back to our respective homes safely yesterday. The Gospel Reading for yesterday was taken from John 11. This is the seventh and the last miracle by our Lord Jesus that is recorded in the Gospel according to John. Lazarus, whom Jesus loved, became sick and died. Jesus, though informed about Lazarus' sickness, delayed in coming to visit him. By the time Jesus our Lord came to Bethany, Lazarus was dead and buried. He had been in the tomb for 4 days. Ecclesiastes 3:2 reminds us that there is a Time to be born and a Time to die. As we continue with the story, we find the shortest verse in the entire Bible. Surrounded by family and friends, Jesus was deeply moved and asked where the body of Lazarus was. When he viewed Lazarus, he could have said something extremely profound. Instead, John 11:35 tells us what Jesus did -- “he wept.” Jesus of Nazareth, the world’s most complete, most perfect man, was attending the funeral of a friend and openly weeping, without embarrassment, without apology. In fact, those watching him said, “See how much he loved him!” Jesus said to Mary and Martha in verses 25-26: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me will live, even though he dies. Do you believe this?” Jesus didn’t merely say that there is a resurrection. He claimed to be the resurrection. The fact that He would rise from the dead was the guarantee that others would too. We often think that we are in the land of the living, and that when we die we go the land of the dead. The opposite is really true – this is the land of the dying, when our life here is over, we are transferred into the land of the living – either to a place of eternal joy or to a place of eternal torment. There are really only two possible destinations. There is only one requirement for entrance into resurrection life. It is not a matter of trying to be good, the only requirement is that we personally believe that Jesus exchanged his life for ours by absorbing our sins on a cross and that He rose again so that those who put their trust Christ shall also be raised up. James 4:14 says, “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” Life is unpredictable. We don’t even know what will happen tonight, much less next week or next year. The truth is that no one can predict the future. Life is brief. Our lives are like a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. The Greek word here is the word atmos, from which we get the word “atmosphere,” which is that invisible layer of water vapor that encircles our planet. Our lives are like a mist in the grand scheme of things. Life is too unpredictable and too brief to live it without God at the center. We count our lives in years but God tells us in Psalm 90:12 to number our days. In a sense, this instructs us to make each and every day count. The truth of the matter is that all of us are just one heartbeat away from eternity. In 1 Samuel 20:3, David said, “Yet as surely as the Lord lives and as you live, there is only a step between me and death.” Praise the Lord, for He is the Resurrection and Life. In Christ, Brown http://youtu.be/CYTQ6gpcuYA Saturday evening worship service. Location: First United Methodist Church 53 McKinley Avenue Endicott Sponsored by the Union Center United Methodist Church, 128, Maple Drive, Endicott Saturday, April 16, 2011 6 PM Coffee Fellowship 6:30 PM Worship Service Worship Music:Laureen Naik Speaker: Rev Earle Cowden

Brown's Daily Word 4-8-11

Good morning,
Praise the Lord; it is Friday and Sunday is coming. It is going to be one of the ten best days of April. The fields and the lawns are rapidly getting greener. A profusion of daffodils and tulips are popping up all around us. The birds are singing ever so sweetly, praising the Lord God , the maker of heaven and earth. Those who live in the area, please join us for our weekly TV outreach this evening at 7 PM on Time Warner channel 4.
` As part of my Lenten devotions I have been listening to Handel's Messiah. I never get tired of listening to "Messiah". From the very beginning our Lord God knew what he was doing. We only get three chapters into the Bible before we are given a prophecy of what God was going to do. The plan was that Jesus would crush the devil and destroy his work (Genesis 3:15). The entire Old Testament rings with the excitement of the coming Messiah and God’s ultimate plan for the world. Peter wrote about Christ: “He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake” (1 Peter 1:20). The book of Revelation describes Jesus as, “the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). The book of Revelation gives us a glimpse of what God had in mind, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). In the end Jesus Christ will reign and we will reign with him. He will overcome the world and reconcile everything to himself. God reveals his ultimate plan for us in the scripture that says, “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6-7). That is a wonderful end to a wonderful story.
I love to read John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress". There is a a fascinating part in the epic drama where Interpreter leads Christian into a place where there is a perplexing sight. He sees a fire burning beside a wall. It continues to burn under extraordinary circumstances. There is someone standing beside the fire who is continually throwing water on the fire in an attempt to extinguish it. But instead of the fire going out, it only burns brighter and hotter. Then Interpreter takes him behind the wall and shows him what he could not see before. Behind the wall is another man who is continually feeding the fire with oil. Christian cannot understand the whole thing until Interpreter explains to him that the man putting water on the fire represents the devil. He is always trying to dampen and extinguish the work of God in the world. But what he and the others on that side of the wall cannot see is the man on the other side of the wall who represents Christ. He is continually fueling the fire with the oil of his Spirit, and the devil can never put it out.
The meaning is clear. Those of us on this side of the wall only see the discouraging signs of what the evil one is doing to extinguish the work of God in the world. What we do not see with our natural eyes is that Christ is stoking the fire of God and causing it to burn hotter and brighter in spite of all the enemy is trying to do.
God knows exactly what he is doing, and no one can put out the fire that God has begun in the world. He begins with things that look like nothing; things that seem to be easily defeated by the devil. The Bible says, “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things — and the things that are not — to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him” (1 Corinthians 1:27). The more the devil tries to put out the fire of God, the more he is frustrated by what he is trying to do.
It is written in Philippians 2, “Jesus. . . Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:5-11). In the end, every knee will bow — the knees of those who despised him, rejected him, and ignored him, along with those who loved and served him. Let us bow the knee now in love and obedience, or we will bow the knee later in fear and subjugation, those are the choices. In the end, every knee will bow. In the book of Revelation, John described his appearance when Christ returns, “His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance” (Revelation 1:14-16).
“He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32).

In Christ,
Brown