Brown's Daily Word 2/1/17

    Praise the Lord for the first day of February.  It is already Springtime somewhere on God's wonderful world.  The Lord blanketed our region with some fresh and magnificent snow.  It is a snow lover's paradise.  People of all ages enjoy the wonderful creation and its beauty.  As the sun begins to dawn the hills and meadows are sparkling.  Praise the Lord for His imminence in the world, and for His intervention and even Holy interruption in the affairs and events of the world. His unseen hand, mighty and merciful is at work in this world.  Praise the Lord for the One who hears our prayers.  He knows our names.  He answers our prayers.  Thank you all for praying fervently and passionately for me.  I am feeling stronger and feel the wellness of the Lord within and without.  I am deeply grateful and thankful.  Alice and I will be driving to Boston today for a routine visit with my doctor in Boston.  The best part of this trip is being able to visit with our grandchildren in Boston: Micah, Simeon, and Ada.  Micah is now 11 years old.  She is a born musician, who is gregarious and friendly, and is blessed with s servant heart.  Simeon is  9 year old.  He is energetic, and is very creative with an engineering mind.  He can build some amazing and spectacular structures with Lego.  He has deep knowledge about the Lord.  Ada just turned 6 last month.  She is daring and bold, and very independent at times.  They are all winsome and beautiful.  We thank Jesus for them.

    Robert Bellah, in his book, "Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life", which is a sociological study of modern America, and probably the most important book written in the 80’s, quotes one of the people in his case study as saying, “I don’t think there are answers in life.  I think there are only really good dialogues.” When Bella asked what a good dialogue might be like, the person said it would be one where “there’s just no one right.”  How typical of so  many in our culture today.  The problem we are faced with is that there is Someone who is right, and until we learn to submit our minds and hearts to him, until we learn to follow him and seek for his truth, we will miss the whole point of life.  It is that crucial.  Dr. Richard Lenski, a great Bible teacher and writer, once said, “The Gospel is not. . . an argument, a piece of reasoning that is gauged to convince [people]; it is only an announcement.  And the astounding thing about this announcement is the fact that it meets our hearts square on, in a direct clash, that it aims to reverse them completely, to set them going in the very opposite direction.”

    When we meet Jesus face to face, our lives are changed.  He captures our lives and seizes our hearts and transforms them through His wonderful grace and power.  in this direct confrontation, Jesus always wins.  In the words of Bishop Gustaf Allen, "Christ is the Victor, and He never loses a battle."  We come to Jesus in full surrender, with our mind, our heart, and our will made subject to Him.  In the words of the hymn writer, "All to Jesus I surrender; all to Him I freely give.  I will ever love and trust Him, in His presence daily live."  We report to Him, once we have surrendered to Him and become His captive, and it is there that we find our total freedom.  In serving Christ there is perfect freedom.  According to St. Augustine, "God was a master, 'whom to serve is perfect freedom'". 

    The Bible says, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6).  There is a peace and a confidence that comes when we realize that God is more real than we are, and we surrender to his truth.  What is important is not so much that we believe in him in a general sense, but whether we belong to him body and soul.  We cannot exist one moment without him.  We need him and we need to understand that He is with us, and that He has a direction for our lives.

    The Bible says, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. . . . By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible” (Hebrews 11:1,3).  He is so much more than just impersonal or artificial Intelligence.  He is irresistible Joy.  He is eternal, inexhaustible Love.  He is rapturous Beauty.  He comes to us and opens himself to fellowship with us, his creation.

In Christ,

Brown

https://youtu.be/764ad4lTS_Y

Brown's Daily Word 1/31/17

    Praise the Lord for the sights and sounds of a new dawn and a new day.  Praise the Lord for the sweet rest and sleep the Lord of grace grants us all.  He wakens us, reminding us that "All is well".  He is in full control.  He is sovereign and all- powerful.   Praise the Lord for this last day of January.  We are entering the shortest month - February.  We are just few weeks away from  daylight savings time and the arrival of sweet spring.  Alice and I walked yesterday evening.  It was past 5:00 PM, yet was still bright and brilliant.  The western sky was getting colorful, and the sky was looking bluer than the ocean.  We saw one solitary Canadian goose flying, honking and possibly surveying the land and the fields, perhaps taking the good news to her company of the committed.   

    I had a sweet visit with a couple from Pittsburgh. They are avid Steelers fans.  He is in his seventies. He and his siblings were born and raised on a dairy farm.  The Church is the epicenter of their family life.  All of the siblings are blessed beyond belief.  They all love the Lord and serve Him.  My friend is an avid bicyclist.  He has ridden bike from the West Coast to East Coast.  He has traveled with his daughter to Europe on bicycling adventures.  Amazing!  He and his wife faithfully serve the Lord with much joy and obedience.  They are the members of a large Methodist church near Pittsburgh which has exciting and vibrant ministries and missions. His dad, who was in his seventies, went with me on a short term mission to India in 1993.  WOW!  It is a wonderful joy, privilege indeed, being loved by the Lord and by His grace to  worship and serve in this life and to run the race well and finish it well by His grace alone.

    Every year without fail I get to preach from John 2 on the miracle of the wedding at Cana in Galilee.  My wife asks, "are you preaching from John 2 again?"  I say, "Yes, indeed".  We all have short memories.  We often forget in 7 days or less what we heard.  I love to preach from John 2, the wedding story.  Jesus blesses common places with His  presence.  He is present in common things and performs miracles.  He uses people like the servants in the story as the partners in miracles. The bride, the groom, the master of the feast, and the wedding guests did not know what happened.  It is written that only the Servants knew the secret of the miracle.  The Lord let the servants in on the mystery and wonder of it all.  Our Lord is the Lord of abundance.  He is the Lord of the   magnificent generosity.  

    I was talking to one of our friends who suffering with intense pain, going through long nights of waiting, tears, and anguish.  The Lord intervened and now she is free from pain.  We all can celebrate and affirm, "weeping may tarry for the night but joy comes in the morning".  Even in a fallen world, God's business is joy.  Ultimately he is in the wedding business.  I love to say that it is not just the grace business, not just the joy business.  Our Lord and Savior, Jesus, is in the wedding business.

    In Isaiah 25 the prophet spoke about a great hardship that was coming upon the people of God due to their rebellion against him.  But then he said, "God will rescue you.  There will be a Messiah.  What will mark him"?  Isaiah 25:6, "On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well aged wine.  Of rich food full of marrow and of aged wine well refined." The Lord is the giver of the finest wine, the best wine.  The wine stands for the Blood of Jesus that cleanses us from all our sin.  There is indeed a wonderworking power in the  Blood of the Lamb.  There is life in the Blood of the Savior.  It is written, "the Lord  will give life to all people.  He will swallow up death forever and the Lord God will wipe away tears from their faces."  John brings the glorious and spectacular, extravagant consummation and conclusion of the the story in the book of Revelation, in which he announces at the great consummation as all the peoples who have trusted in Jesus come together, that there will be a great wedding of feast before the Lamb.  A great wedding feast of the Lamb!  At the great wedding feast the people of God, the new Jerusalem, will come down from heaven adorned as a bride and at that point God will wipe away "All tears from their eyes."  What a promise!  What a conclusion!

In Christ,

Brown

https://youtu.be/iPeVIuRjUi4

Brown's Daily Word 1/28/17

    Praise the Lord for this last weekend of January.  We are getting ready for worship tomorrow.  We will meet for Sunday School at 9:30 AM and at 10:30 AM for worship.  Plan to be in the House of the Lord tomorrow wherever you might be.  May Jesus be praised.  For His is the Kingdom, Power, and Glory for ever.  Jesus makes our lives sane and beautiful.  Without Christ, life can be obscene, demonic, bizarre, violent, or vulgar.  Jesus touches bitterness through the power of the Cross and makes it sweet.  He touches depths of darkness and He sheds His light and  grace on us.

    There was a march for life that took place yesterday in Washington, DC.  One of the features of the march was the presence of many young people who love life and stand for life.  Scripture tells us that God has a very special heart for the vulnerable, for those on the margins of our society.  For example, Psalm 68:5 says God is "  father to the fatherless, a defender of widows."  We who bear God's image—and that would be all of us—are called to do the same.  In Micah 6:8, in words which I pray are iprinted, on the very soul of every follower of Jesus Christ, God says to us, "He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.  And what does the Lord require of you?  To act justly and to love mercy  and to walk humbly with your God."  In Proverbs 31:8, we are called to "speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute."  In Proverbs 24:11, we are called to "rescue  those being led away to death"; and to "hold back those staggering toward slaughter."  We are going to care for the vulnerable, for those who cannot speak for themselves, and who, in some cases, are being led away to death.

    King  David, a man after God's own heart, declared  "You knit me together in my mother's womb….My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place…Your eyes saw my unformed body" (Psalm 139:13, 15-16).  In other words, God saw your body when you were being knit together in your mother's womb, and God loved you and valued you even then.  In the Book of Jeremiah, we are told that God set aside Jeremiah as a prophet for his people when Jeremiah was still in his mother's womb (Jer. 1:5).

    We have very recently celebrated Christmas.  In Luke 1, in a remarkable passage, Elizabeth (six months pregnant with the baby who will one day be known as John the Baptist) had a visit from her close relative Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus. As they greeted each other, John the Baptist "leaped for joy" (v. 44) in his mother's womb because he recognized that the baby who was to be borne by Mary, just a tiny embryo, was in fact Jesus Christ, the Messiah.  John recognized this through the power of the Holy Spirit.

    In John the Baptist, in Jesus, in Psalm 139, and in the story of Jeremiah, we see that God values babies while they are still in their mothers' wombs.  I have known several couples who have experienced  painful miscarriages.  They keep on trusting Jesus.  He is faithful and true.  He turns their mourning into dancing. 

    I read about Dan and his wife Caryn  who experienced a painful miscarriage just over a year ago.  As they began the new year, they were praying, hoping, that one day God would give them a child.  In the spring, they conceived, and from the earliest moments of this young one's life, still in Caryn's womb, they referred to this life as their baby.  Through the use of ultrasound technology, they were able to discover that their baby was a girl, so they started to describe their baby as their "girl."  When you want a baby, whether you believe in God or not, you describe the life growing in you as your baby, as your child.

    I read another story which was both fascinating and heartwarming, the story of Joanne Simpson, who was a graduate school student back in 1955 when she became unexpectedly pregnant.  Her partner would eventually leave her.  She felt that, with all the pressure of being a graduate school student, she could not become a mother.  She could have easily chosen an abortion, but she quietly decided to bring her baby to term and then to offer it up for adoption.  A couple from California named Paul and Clara, who had not finished high school, took her son.  Frankly, Joanne was disappointed; here she was a graduate school student, and her son was being adopted by a mom and dad who had not finished high school.  But they loved him.

    That boy's name was Steve Jobs.  He went on to found the technology company Apple, and  many of  us   have benefited from his company and his creativity, because you have an iPhone in your back pocket or in your purse right now, or you have an iPad at home.  Yet, even if Steve Jobs had not founded Apple, even if he was destined to spend all of his working life cleaning toilets and sweeping the streets, his life would have been worth saving because God valued his life. Perhaps God would have had an even deeper affection for Steve, in some way, if that had been his lot, because the Bible tells us that God has this special concern for those who are vulnerable and on the margins of our society.

    God has a very special heart for the poor and the vulnerable.  I believe God continues to call us to bless those who cannot repay us, to not neglect the homeless, but to also embrace children.  We are to embrace our own children within our own family, children within our neighborhood, and vulnerable children throughout the world.  As we bless these children, we will be honoring  their Creator.  We will, in fact, be blessing Jesus directly, because Jesus once said, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these you have done for me."   May Jesus, the lover of children,  endue us with an open, receptive heart toward children to bless those who cannot repay us.  May we be attentive to the leading of the Spirit.

In Christ,

Brown

https://youtu.be/LMFRt2aLuMI