Brown's Daily Word 5.23.14

    Praise the Lord for this Friday.  We are getting ready for this Memorial Day weekend.  Those of you who live in the area, join us on Time Warner Cable channel 4 at 7 PM this evening.  Women of the church will gather for a great time of food and fellowship tomorrow at noon at the Church hall.  Julia Kellaway, from the Family Life Network, will be the speaker for the event.  Our men are preparing and serving a very special meal.  We will gather for worship at 8:30 and 11:00 AM at Union Center and at 9:30 AM at Wesley. In America, the Beautiful, it is  Memorial Day weekend.  We praise the Lord our great nation, the best place on earth to live.  May Jesus, the King of kings and the prince of peace, shed His grace and peace on us.  May we worship and serve Him with joy and gratitude.  

    Sunita called from Cyprus yesterday.  The Lord is blessing her family in Cyprus.  I talked to Micah and Simeon yesterday in Boston.  Jessica and Tom are coming home from Philadelphia today for the long weekend.  Laureen will also be home for the weekend.  We are blessed and grateful.  We are getting ready for our Annual Conference of our church that will meet in Syracuse next week.  We are blessed to have Bishop Mark Webb as our Bishop.  Bishop Webb loves the Lord and loves to serve Him.  We are excited about the Kingdom of Jesus, which is Eternal and unshakable.

    I was looking at one verse  from Psalm 86, “Give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name” (Psalm 86:11).  Eugene Peterson (MSG) gives us this colorful rendering: “Put me together, one heart and mind; then, undivided, I’ll worship in joyful fear.”  I like this because it sounds like the way I often pray: “Put me together, Lord, because right now my life is scattered in a thousand directions.”  Most days my heart doesn't seem “undivided,” and it certainly feels like it needs some kind of “uniting." So I like this phrase both ways:

    “Unite my heart to fear your name.”
    "Give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.”
    The first speaks of my need.  The second speaks of my desire.  Because my heart is so often divided, I need the Lord to unite it somehow so that I might worship him with nothing held back.  That is the situation many of us face.  Our hearts are fragmented because we are pulled in so many directions at once.

    Sometimes we treat trinkets as if they were treasure.  Often we all battle with the narcissist in all of us.  A narcissistic person is unable to commit to anything outside of himself.  He flits from one relationship to another, from one job to another, from one friendship to another, from one church to another, from one promise to another, never staying in one place long enough to make anything stick.  He promises and then makes excuses.  He says, “I’ll call you tomorrow,” and then forgets and apologizes later, or maybe he never remembers at all. 

    The Word of the Lord depicts some men who had undivided hearts, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and like their friend, the daring Daniel.  1 Chronicles 12 describes some warriors who had undivided loyalty.  We read about some  soldiers who came to David’s aid when he was in Ziklag and later in Hebron. These soldiers from various tribes in Israel realized that even though David was not king over Israel yet, God’s hand was upon him and he was bound to replace Saul sooner or later.  We read the list of men from Benjamin, Gad, Manasseh, and so on.  Perhaps the most famous are the men of Issachar (1 Chronicles 12:32) who “understood the times and knew what Israel should do.”  They are described as "experienced soldiers prepared for battle with every type of weapon, to help David with undivided loyalty" (v. 33.. 38).

    This was a great host of trained soldiers who came to David ready to fight.  They showed up in full battle gear, with shields, spears, and bows, ready to go to battle at a moment’s notice.  That, however, was not their finest quality.  There is something even better to be said about them, that they were men of “undivided loyalty.”"  Single Mindedness".  They were prepared to follow David wherever he led, to join the battle at David's word, and to serve only at his command.  Three thousand years after the men of Issachar came to David, we remember them not for their military prowess (which must have been great) but for their hearts. 
    This brings me  back to the beginning, back to Psalm 86:11, “Unite my heart to fear your name” and “Put me together, Lord.”  As Spurgeon contemplated this verse, he offered this succinct summary:

A man of divided heart is weak, the man of one object is the man.

That’s why David prayed, “Unite my heart, O Lord.”  We, also, should, “O Lord, take the scattered fragments of my heart and unite them so that I may praise you.”  Only God can do this, but God can and will do it if we will come to him in humility and sincerity. 
These lines from Come, Thou Fount speak to our deepest need:
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.
If the first two lines describe our need, then the last two lines describe our prayer.   May God take our scattered hearts and unite them, seal them by his grace, that we might serve him with joy on earth as one day we will serve him in heaven.
    Unite our hearts to fear and honour  your name. Amen.

http://youtu.be/imGO5KUEZo4

Brown's Daily Word 5.22.14

  Praise the Lord for this new day.  He blessed us with a wonderful Wednesday Evening gathering.  The fellowship was sweet and sharing the Word of the Lord was a great blessing.  While in Calcutta recently I visited some of the mission work dating back to the days of William Carey, who sailed to India in 1793.  He labored there for 7 years, having not a single convert.  The Lord brought for one convert at the end of seven years of labor of love.  From that small beginning  the good news has spread  like a wild fire.  I came to put my faith in Christ some 160 years after Carey came to India.  I am sure William Carey experienced discouragement, having not seen fruit of his labor for 7 years. 

 

    Consider the discouragement of a young missionary named David Brainerd (Ruth Tucker, "From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya", pp. 90-93).  In the 1700s David Brainerd felt called to bring the message of Christ to the native Americans.  Brainerd faced constant discouragement as he tried to share Christ’s love with the native Americans; they had seen too much American greed and abuse to believe Brainerd’s message of grace.  Brainerd wrote in his journal, "My heart sunk.  It seemed to me that I’d never have any success among the Indians.  My soul was weary of my life.  I longed for death."  For two years nothing happened, as he constantly battled one discouragement after another. Finally, three and half years into his work, he saw about 150 native Americans come to faith in Christ.  Though that is not much by today’s mass evangelism standards, it was a real start.  Unfortunately, David Brainerd died a year later, at the age of 29, and his work seem to stop completely.

    This is not the end of Brainerd's story.  Someone published his journals that he had kept during those times of discouragement.  Those journals fell into the hands of a man named William Carey the man widely known as the father of modern missions because he ignited the modern missionary movement that continues to this day.  Carey’s efforts and inspiration have been the impetus for literally millions and millions of people coming to faith in Christ.  When someone asked William Carey what inspired him to devote his life to missions, he pointed to the journals of David Brainerd.  God used David Brainerd beyond every limit.

    Several years ago Grace Baptist Church in Philadelphia had to turn away a little girl named Hattie May Wiatt from children’s ministry because of overcrowding there.  That day Hattie May Wiatt started saving her pennies to help the church make more room in their children’s ministry.  Two years later, Hattie May tragically died.  In her pocketbook next to her bed her parents found 57 pennies and a piece of paper with a note saying that the money was to help the church build a bigger children’s ministry.  At Hattie May’s funeral, her mother gave that 57 cents and the note to Pastor Russell Conwell, the pastor of Grace Baptist Church.  That Sunday, Pastor Conwell shared Hattie May’s story with his congregation.  People’s hearts were touched; a realtor give the church a piece of land to expand the children’s ministry, asking for 57 cents for a down payment.  A local newspaper carried the story, and soon news about Hattie May Wiatt’s 57 cents spread across the country. The pennies grew far beyond Hattie May’s initial 57 pennies.  Grace Baptist Church not only built a new children’s ministry wing, but also a new ministry center, today seating over 3,000 people.  Out of that movement of generosity from Hattie May’s example the church built Temple University in Philadelphia, and Good Samaritan Hospital.  In fact, you can visit Temple University today and find a picture on the wall of Hattie May Wiatt, a little girl who’s 57 pennies were used by God far beyond the limits of her life.

    God likes using us beyond our limitations because He gets the glory for it.  He likes taking a temple ( Haggai) that seems pathetic in comparison to the first temple, and visiting that second temple with His Son.  He likes using a faithful servant like David Brainerd to inspire others to share Christ.  He loves using people like Hattie May Wiatt to inspire the rest of us to a new level of generosity and giving toward God’s work.  When we stay focused in the midst of our discouragement, God uses us beyond our limitations.

 In Christ,

   Brown

http://youtu.be/GI2dXQ3Eckg

Brown's Daily Word 5.21.14

Praise the Lord for this new day.  We will meet for our Wednesday gathering at 6 PM today with a special meal.  We will be looking at John 21," Risen but not Recognized."

    I have been praying  with some this week who love the Lord and yet face danger and disease.  I am praying for the Sudanese woman facing death for her faith in Christ.  In the times of State-sponsored terror against Christians all around the world, I love to read about the three faith giants: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  Because of their faith, these three young men are unquestionably biblical heroes.  The writer of Hebrews says, "through faith … [they] quenched the power of fire" (Hebrews 11:34).  With great courage they expressed their faith by refusing to bow to the image of gold.  Yet, when Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego's obedience put them on the brink of the king's fiery furnace, they did not pretend to know what was going to happen to them.  They did not claim to know what their circumstances would hold or what their God would do.  Even though they affirmed that God was able to deliver them, they added, "But if not, be it known to you, O King, that we will not serve your gods" (3:18).

    Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego said that even if God did not deliver them from death, that they would only serve Him.  Their words tell us that faith is not measured by the strength of our expectations but by the strength of the conviction that "whatever my God ordains is right" (Samuel Rodigast, 1676).  Biblical faith calls for each of us to acknowledge that God's provision is sufficient, loving, and good, even if it falls short of, or contradicts, immediate desires that cannot fully anticipate his plans or fathom his wisdom.  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego trusted their God because time after time he had delivered their forefathers from enemies, despite Israel's sin and rebellion (   Daniel2:23).  God had been faithful even when his people had not.  God even had promised that He would save his people from their captivity in Babylon (2:44).  Although things looked awfully grim in the immediate, the faith of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego was not shattered, because it was not rooted in present circumstances but in the nature of their God—a God whose purposes are loving and eternal can be trusted (3:17).

    This can be our great confidence, too, when we express faith that tragedy does not mean God has vanished; danger does not indicate that he has failed; difficulty does not imply that he is weak.  Our Risen Lord is in control.  Difficulties may still arise, but He enables us to surmount them.  Grief may still come, but He gives strength to bear it. His hand is never capricious or clumsy.  True faith simply acknowledges that God knows and does what is right.

    To trust God as He desires, we must believe that we can entrust ourselves to His care.  To do this we need to know that God is worthy of our trust.  Biblical faith is not merely the confidence that our God is able; it also requires the confidence that our God is good.

    Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego affirmed God's goodness when they removed all doubt from their assertion of their ultimate rescue from Nebuchadnezzar.  They affirmed that God was able to deliver them from the fire, but they did not say that He would.  "But if not …"

  In Christ,

  Brown

http://youtu.be/3qEjRLlL9iE