Hey guys, I pray that all is well with you. Today I will be brief. This is a big week for the Browns. My youngest daughter, Emma, graduates from high school this Friday. Then, Sunday we begin the yearly migration that all UM clergy in the WNCC perform, our trip to the annual conference in Lake Junaluska. I ask that you please pray for traveling mercies for my family and all the pastors and their families driving to the mountains. Pray for our meetings as well. As a result, th

Greetings everyone, I pray all is well with you and yours. Sorry, this is a day late. I was actually off yesterday with my family. Thank you Jim for covering. I pray that at some point yesterday you reflected upon those who have died protecting our freedoms. I praise God that I was born in this country. That said, all we do, all we read, all we teach, and all we live and testify to is contained in two words, Jesus Christ. Today we will finish up our look at the Old Testament

Greetings all, Today we will continue our look at the scriptures that I believe Jesus would have focused on as he “opened the minds” of his disciples after his death and resurrection. There is no real record of what OT scriptures that he used, however, many editors have speculated and I have taken some of these scriptures for us to look at. Last week, in Isaiah 53, we focused on Christ’s sacrifice for us while he was on the cross. This week, we will look to Christ’s ushering

Greetings all, I pray all is well with each one of you. My goal today is to help you “unlock” scriptural understanding of the Old Testament, if you have not yet done so in your life. To do this we will continue our look as to how Jesus ‘opened the minds” of the disciples after his resurrection. His teaching here focuses their minds in a way that Israelites had never focused their minds before. Instead of the focus being on Abraham, Moses, the Law or the Prophets, or the teach

Greetings everyone, I pray that all you mothers had a great day yesterday. In fact, I just want to give a brief message today on this subject, motherhood. Much of our society's problems today can be traced directly to the gradual breakdown of the family. This has been a downward spiral over the last 60-70 years. Of this, this must be said: None of this is due to our mothers. In fact, If not for the hard work of our mothers this situation would be much worse. So, my prayer for

Greetings in the name of the Lord, I pray God’s blessings on you all. What a beautiful spring weekend. I love springtime. After what has seemed to be two years of Covid winter, I pray that you can bloom during this season. Staying in God's Word will feed your growth. Last week, we walked the Emmaus Road with Jesus, Cleopas, and an unnamed companion. We finished this reading from Luke with verse 27, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was

Greetings everyone, I pray that you have had a wonderful Easter. Easter used to be a great celebration within the church. Now, however, due mainly to Covid-19 and politics, the church struggles to celebrate anything anymore. In the early church Easter celebrations would last for a couple of months, day after day, it was quite the celebration. The church needs to learn how to celebrate again. Let’s get into the word. The tomb is empty. Jesus died, fulfilling the scriptures, bu

Greetings to you all, I wish you all a Happy Easter. Christmas and Easter are important celebrations for all of us. To me, they are very different from one another though. Christmas, to me, is nostalgia, memories, family, traditions, and celebration. Easter, on the other hand, remember this is for me, is a paying of respect, remembering a fallen brother (who happens to be my Savior), a fresh start or a new beginning. Christmases are always similar to one another. Easters are

Happy Easter greetings all, I want to begin by thanking all of you for your prayers. We feel them. As we begin today I have no idea what will happen here at OH this week. Only that, whatever it is, it will be ordained by God. I’m fine with that. I’m praying for an Easter miracle for God’s glory. Please continue to join me in this prayer. Thank you again. As we begin our Easter week I would like for us to continue to look at the promises of God, only now we will focus on the p

Greetings all, I pray that you are looking at and to Christ this Lenten season. Today we will continue our look to the promises of God. God loves you, please do not doubt this fact. God loves you all. No matter what is happening in the world, no matter what you are doing, God loves you. We will begin today with a promise that God made to Solomon. Now, though God made this promise to Solomon, it is a general promise, meaning it applies to all people and not just Solomon. This

Greetings all, It is hard to prepare a preamble to any sermon or TFT that I write anymore. Things are changing so quickly around the world that when I write something just a couple weeks back, there is a great chance that it will be overwhelmed by more immediate headlines. We were so enamored with our battle with Covid-19 and our fear with that disease, that we forgot that there are other concerns, such as war, and even nuclear war, that we need to address. This is why qualit

Greetings all, I pray that you are well and encouraged. I discern, sadly, that many are not. To help combat this discouragement I give you today’s message. Please share this with others. Please know that I am happy to add people to my email list. Just forward me the emails. Today we will continue to look at some of God’s promises. I am firmly convinced that most people have no idea how much God loves them. God loves us so very much. I also believe that most people have no ide

Greetings everyone, I pray that spring is in your heart. I also pray that Jesus is in your heart as well. Let’s talk about this. I am so excited. We are living in a time that is of critical importance. Doesn’t it feel that way to you? It feels like an important time, does it not. I am glad to be alive at this time. It’s a critical time. A time for the people of faith to step up. It’s harvest time. I find that many disagree with me on this subject. This is because many of us

Greetings all, When I was living in sin, 33 years ago and more, I wanted nothing to do with Jesus. I did not want to be associated with God or his son. In fact, I wanted nothing to do with the Christian lifestyle, or just being a Christian period. It looked boring to me. It sounded boring, it appeared boring. It was a blah lifestyle compared to my exciting hedonistic sinful lifestyle. A couple things happened to me. First, I grew up, I matured, and suddenly my sins seemed bor

Greetings everyone, It’s been a difficult couple of years. 2020 was the shutdown year, where we were going to flatten the curve, and those in high risk health situations were supposed to be vaccinated. Last year was the year of the attempted mandate, where government, medical, and business bureaucrats decided that everyone had to be vaccinated. But something happened on the way to the mandate. Several things happened, I should say. First, some vaccinated people started to fee

Happy Valentines Day everyone, I pray God’s grace upon you all. Whatever grace you need is available. It is always this way, you need only to ask God. Stay in his will and in the Spirit of God and there is nothing you cannot do. Today we will complete our brief series on God’s grace. We have looked at God’s prevenient grace, God’s grace before we know or are even aware of God. Then there is God’s justifying grace, the grace of salvation, that very moment when God enters our

Greetings all, I pray this cold wet morning finds you all well. Today we will continue our look at grace, the grace theology of the Methodist Church. I am a Christian because of Jesus, but I am a Methodist because of John Wesley’s grace theology. It’s not complicated, and it is easy to understand, and, I believe, resonates with the believer. It is easy to share. It resonated with me, when I was a new believer in Christ. When speaking of grace, as United Methodists, we recogn

Greetings all, I pray that your new year has gotten off to a great start. I know that for some of you, you or family members are struggling with health issues. All of us are struggling with Covid-19 issues: vaccine effectiveness beginning to wane, mandates, people losing jobs because of mandates, lack of truth in much of the medical bureaucracy, neighbor being pitted against neighbor, even family member being pitted against family member. I thought that I would start off the

Greetings all, As move on to the new year I thought it would be appropriate to review our last few years. 2020 was a year lost to Covid-19, the shutdown year. This past year, 2021, was a year of understanding how to live with Covid-19. A year in which we struggled to develop an understanding of how to cope with Covid-19. This new year, 2022, I hope and pray is the year that we figure out how to live with Covid-19. Because Covid-19, sadly, is here to stay, for a while at least

New Year greetings to all, I pray God’s blessings upon you and yours. I thank God for you daily. Due to my downtime with Covid, we will begin the New Year with a couple Christmas messages. I pray you don't mind. By the way, Kristi and I are fine now. Thank you for your prayers and your messages of encouragement. There have been many important births throughout human history. Many of these births we could easily agree as being of great benefit to mankind. We probably could als