Thinking about an Incredible Christmas Gift

One of the blessings of God in my life was being raised in a family that loved God and loved each other. A noted result of that is Christmas is filled with many positive memories for me. Memories from the wonder of a six year old looking at the presents wrapped under the tree to 30 family members filling my parents’ home for Christmas dinner seem to bubble up for me this time of year.

Another memory that seems to re-surface each year is of being a college student teaching Sunday school. A couple of years in a row, as I taught 6^th graders and then moved up to work with junior high students (7^th-9^thgraders), the story of the angel appearing to Joseph seemed to be a part of the curriculum at Christmas time. Though the story has much richness to it, one verse repeatedly struck me:  Matthew 1:23. It reads:

"Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel" (which means, God with us).

For a number of reasons the words “God with us” have always wowed me. The Lord Jesus came as a baby to save us from our sins, as Matthew 1:21 states, but the reason He did that was to be with us. Perhaps because as a college student I struggled with issues of personal worth and value, I was taken back in a good way by the statement that God the Son came to be with us. God desires to have a relationship with us to the extent that He reached out to us by coming to us. Though the analogy is far from perfect, indulge me for just a moment. As a child, and maybe even as an adult, there is something about having another child knock on your door and ask if you wanted to play. In coming, the Lord Jesus is like the neighbor kid coming and knocking on the door asking us to come out and play with Him. As I said, I know the analogy is not perfect, but it strikes me that Jesus came to be with us. I do not deserve His interest or attention, but I am dramatically blessed by it. We have been given an incredible gift in Jesus’ coming.

No longer being in college – now we have two sons and a daughter-in-law in college, with a third son starting next fall – that Sunday school teaching college student era seems like a life time ago, but the wowness of Jesus coming to be with us still shows up every Christmas. And I suppose part of the reason why is because before the Lord Jesus ascending to heaven, He made an amazing promise at the very end of the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew 28:20 ends with the words:

And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

The gift of God’s presence at Christmas is not just a Christmas thing. Jesus is not just present during the time you have your nativity set out. If you are a follower of the Lord Jesus, He has promised to be present always. That is a Christmas gift that keeps giving and giving to us all year round. God gives the most incredible gifts. I pray your Christmas is about celebrating and thanking God for the amazing gift of a relationship with Him this Christmas.

Being Impacted

Since I was in the 11^th grade and God brought me into a personal relationship with Himself through the Lord Jesus, the Bible has been really important in my life. As I have studied the Bible and had lots of opportunity to teach the Bible, I have become increasingly convinced that the Bible is a gift from God to us to mark our lives. Perhaps more exacting, I should say that I believe is vital to us really being able to live life. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 have influenced me to reach that conclusion. Those verses read:

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, ¹⁷ that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

That belief seems like a pretty big claim. Claims are easy to make, but do they actually happen in life? It feels trite to say that the Bible can promote or stimulate change in your life so you can really life. In the trenches of real life, we want to that it does, and we want to know how we can experience the impact, influence, and outcome of the Bible in our lives.

This Christmas season we have been studying Luke 1 and 2 as a church family. In going through those chapters I have been hit by a couple of things related to the above discussion. One is that Zechariah, hesitant to believe a message from God, was given 9 months of silence. Coming out of that period, he was changed (see Luke 1:5-20, 57-79). Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus, is described in Luke 2:19 and 51 as treasuring and pondering the things said concerning the Lord Jesus.

Then, as I have trying to do work ahead on the series we will be doing in the New Year from the book of Joshua, the words of Joshua 1:8 captured my attention:

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

Zechariah, Mary, and Joshua are three people who were greatly impacted by God’s Word. A common thread in their stories seems to be either by choice (Mary), command (Joshua), or consequence (Zechariah) the impact of God’s Word can be traced to their noted reflection on God’s Word.

There are a multitude of things that constantly clamor for our attention, and often it is the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. To be impacted by the Bible so that God informs our attitudes and actions, maybe I need to see the Bible as a squeaky wheel. I need to give noted attention to what God says, so my life is shaped by God and not by those other sounds. A God-shaped life can look pretty good according to Psalm 1:1-3:

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; ² but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. ³ He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.

Sounds like if we want to prosper as 2013 ends and 2014 begins,  we need to take some time to mull over God’s Word so God, through His Spirit, does some molding and moving work in us. 

Who Am I? How Reconciliation Should Impact Your Answer

In getting ready for Sunday’s message that will finish our 4 week Involveagram series, I was encouraged to think about the gospel – the good news that Jesus came, died for our sins, and rose again, making it possible for us to be forgiven and reconciled to God if we would repent and trust the Lord Jesus as our Savior. Specifically I was encouraged to think about some of the impacts in our lives of being reconciled to God, impacts that should inform how I look at myself. 2 Corinthians 5:14-21 is a passage that has helped me think about those impacts. It reads:

For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; ¹⁵ and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.  ¹⁶ From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.  ¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. ¹⁸ All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹ that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰ Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. ²¹ For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

In brief, here are five impacts those verses tell us are true about followers of Jesus:

·         Impact #1 – You Receive a New Life – 2 Corinthians 5:17 – In being reconciled to God, we receive new lives – literally we are new creations.

·         Impact #2 – You Gain a New Outlook – 2 Corinthians 5:16 – instead of looking at people based on gender or ethnicity or socioeconomic status, we can look at people in light of eternity. So often we put barriers between ourselves and others people because of short-term stuff. But when with the new perspective we gain through being reconciled, we can invest in relationships across what used to be barriers.

·         Impact #3 – You Report to a New Leader – 2 Corinthians 5:15 – being reconciled means that the Lord Jesus is really the driver of my life bus, which means that my life is being led by the smartest, most powerful person there is. But that raises a question: Why I follow the best leader? My life can be very different when I do.

·         Impact #4 – You Are Stimulated by a New Motive – 2 Corinthians 5:14 – Lots of things can be the driving motive of our lives. Paul wants us to know love can be that motive of our lives, specifically verse 14 it telling us that we can be motivated by Christ’s love for us. Sometimes starting a new day is hard, but think of how different each day can be when the spark in our lives is not the cup of coffee we might crave, but will soon wear off, but instead is Jesus’ love for us that He declared in dying on the cross while we were His enemies.

·         Impact #5 – You Have a New Mission – 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 – when you receive Jesus, you are given the privilege of joining God’s State Department as His ambassador to your home, school, neighborhood, workplace, and social networks. There is a very real purpose for your life.

If you are a follower of the Lord Jesus you need to see yourself according to those impacts. That is who God reconciled you to be. Lots of things can influence how we view ourselves. But because of what the Lord Jesus did on the first Christmas, first Good Friday, and first Easter, one influence can truly be the most influential. Please, live according to the person God has reconciled you to be. Many will be blessed by the impact of you being the God-reconciled person you are in the Lord Jesus.

Praying for Central

Prayer is an incredible gift from God to us. But for many of us, prayer is something we struggle with and find hard to do. As a church, Central needs to be praying, but we can struggle with how to do that too. The more I try to study about prayer and look for ways to help people, including myself through the struggles we seem to have related to prayer, I keep being pointed to the same conclusion: to become a "pray-er," I need to pray, but then I run into my struggle as if it is a reinforced brick wall. In an effort to help all of us grow in prayer, please read this helpful article -Simple and Strategic Prayer for Your Church - by one of my professors. I pray it helps you and me grow in prayer.

Is God Central?

Recently, a man whom God has used greatly in my life, Dr. Gary Inrig, spoke at the Fall Bible Conference at Grace University, where our second son and our first son’s wife are currently students. Thanks to internet technology I have been able to listen to those messages (you can too by using this link http://blogs.graceuniversity.edu/gracelife/ and scrolling down). Dr. Inrig began his first message by quoting from the first sentence of A. W. Tozer’s book, The Knowledge of the Holy, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”

I have been pondering that sentence since hearing it. I am confident that there is much more to Tozer’s words than I have grasped or can write in a blog post – after all, the sentence was the springboard to an entire book – but I would like to share a couple of thoughts that I trust are of some value.

First, I believe the sentence reminds us of the centrality of God to all of life. Romans 11:36 I believe underlines that truth:

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

Often, too often, I can be self-absorbed and view life as if everything revolves around me. I suppose a good word to describe that is pride. But my pride is baseless. Things do not revolve around me or you. That in no way means we have no value. We have value, but that value is derived from God. What I mean by that is each person has value because each person is created in the image of God. That fact should have huge bearing on how we treat other people, recognizing God’s fingerprints on and purpose for their lives. In addition, when a person receives the Lord Jesus as his or her Savior, Ephesians 2:10 says that we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us. God believes we have something significant to contribute, we bring value to life.

If I forget or do not live in light of the centrality of God, I will actual undermine or even remove the basis for my personal value. Thinking that what I think about God is the most important thing about me does not diminish me, it allows me to see myself accurately. Though that is contingent on at least one factor, which is the second thought I had.

If Tozer’s sentence is true and God is central to life, including my life, then it becomes really important for me to have an accurate understanding of who God is. To process life, I need to think correctly about God. On page three of The Knowledge of the Holy, Tozer offered, “I believe there is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God.” Thinking about God is a theological concern. But if God is central to life, then if I have mixed up thoughts about God, I can have some pretty mixed up attitudes and actions in my everyday life. To function well, I need to think rightly about God. If I do not, there will be disconnect, and sadly I may not even be aware of that disconnect. Tozer, on the second page of the book noted, “We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.” If my thoughts about God are off, a lot of things will be off. I need to seek to understand God as He revealed Himself in the Bible, not how I would like God to be.

Please let me know your thoughts about thinking rightly about God.

What Made Moses Moses? Prayer?

I have always wondered how different biblical characters came to play the roles they did and become the people they did. After Christmas we will be doing a series on Joshua, so I have been thinking about Joshua, but whenever I think of Joshua, I think of Moses, whom Joshua followed as the leader of Israel. Deuteronomy 34:10 gives us some idea of how Moses was viewed:

“Since that time no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.”

Yet, when Moses started out, Moses was incredibly reluctant to assume the responsibility of serving God. Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. described Moses, at the being of his ministry, as “timid, unsure of himself, and shrank back from any self-assertiveness that his divine commission demanded of him.”[1] How did Moses become the hero of Israel and an incredibly prominent figure in the Bible?

A brief editorial insertion in the golden calf narrative of Exodus 32-34 may offer the answer to that question. Exodus 33:7-11 read as follows:

Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the LORD would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp. ⁸ Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise up, and each would stand at his tent door, and watch Moses until he had gone into the tent. ⁹ When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the LORD would speak with Moses. ¹⁰ And when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship, each at his tent door. ¹¹ Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.

Please notice three observations from these verses that seem to explain how Moses changed and how following Moses’ example could stimulate change in our lives too.

First, Moses’ action in verse seven of putting up the tent suggests that Moses regularly took time to meet with God. Moses’ life and his service for God operated out of the context of his continuous interaction with God. Moses’ time with God, in prayer, empowered him and gave him life for the tasks and responsibilities he faced.

Second, verses 8 to 10 provide somewhat of an explanation to the people of Israel and us of why Moses changed. People saw that Moses actively sought time with God. It probably helped them to understand that when Moses spoke, his words undoubtedly came from his time with God. Moses’ leadership was not from Moses’ skills, it was from his pursuing the leadership of God in his own life.

Third, the story ends with a reference to Joshua, son of Nun, Moses’ servant. The narrative seems to suggest that Joshua not only stayed when Moses left the tent, but also was present when Moses met with the Lord. Joshua directly saw how Moses commitment to prayer and his relationship with God changed Moses; that vantage point undoubtedly marked Joshua. It also must have made God’s words to him in Joshua 1:5 emphatic:

No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you.

Donald H. Madvig observed, “The secret of Moses’ success had been God’s presence with him. It would be the secret of Joshua’s success also, and it continues to be the secret of success for the church (cf. Matt 28:19-20).”[2] Moses was changed by God, in part because Moses sought God in prayer.  Out of that habit, he was empowered and able to do things he did not think he could do. As people watch his example, they saw the secret of his success was his relationship with God. From a front row sit, Joshua saw how being God transform a person and lead a person to do incredible things for God, because God is present.

Often we think that prayer is about bring requests and asking God to do things for us. Requests are a part of prayer, but prayer is so much more than that. Prayer can be a tool God uses to transform us to  become people that do things beyond what we would have ever imagined ourselves doing for God’s glory.  Let’s pray like Moses.

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[1]Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Exodus, in vol. 2 of The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein and J. D. Douglas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, Regency Reference Library, 1990), 318.

[2]Donald H. Madvig, Joshua, in vol. 3 of The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein and J. D. Douglas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, Regency Reference Library, 1992), 256.

Does God Only Give Us What We Can Handle?

Given that we live in a fallen world, because of things like social media and the context of what I do for a living, I will regularly hear stories of people who are dealing with incredibly difficult situations. In short, they are facing the harshness of life and are having to experiencing incredible levels of suffering. How should we respond when that happens? What should we say to them? In reading the book of Job I know that I do not want to be like one of the Job’s friends and say things with great intentions but which are inaccurate, wrong, hurtful, and even harmful.

One expression I have heard used a number of times, and probably have said myself, is either stated positively, “God only gives you what you can handle,” or negatively, “God does not give you more than you can handle.” I am confident those words are offered with good intentions of seeking to offer comfort and encouragement. But there is a problem with those words, whether stated positively or negatively: those words are not exactly from the Bible, and they do not seem to ring true in our experience. As such, the good intentions fail to deliver the intended outcome. I do not believe it is accurate to say that God only gives us what we can handle.

So where do we come up with this idea? So where did this expression come from? The words probably come from a less than complete understanding of 1 Corinthians 10:13 which reads:

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

I believe the words “not temped beyond your ability” may have been twisted to mean that God will not give us more than we can handle. I do not believe that is what the verse means though. The verse is talking about temptation not suffering. The point of the verse is that as followers of the Lord Jesus, we can never be tempted by something that is beyond the resources available to us to defeat. As a follower of Jesus, I can say no to sin. Temptation does not have to triumph. God does not allow me to be tempted in a manner that I have no choice but to give into the temptation. There is always a way out for us from temptation – God provide us that.

So what should we do about or with suffering? If I venture to say anything what should I say? When I am suffering is there any scriptural hope or promise that I should lean on? Or does God just let stuff happen? Does He just stand by and watch us or ignore us struggle? If God does not promise that we will never be given more than we can handle, what does He do?

In the midst of suffering God promises His people that He will be with us. Verses like Isaiah 41:10, 13, and 43:1-5 speak not of perfect or even good circumstances, but of God’s presence in ugly circumstances. And when God is present, He always brings his mercy and faithfulness (Lamentation 3:22-23).

For reasons that are hard to fathom, and probably we will not find a completely satisfying reason this side of eternity, God does not crush all of the ugliness of life yet – He will, but not yet. He is aware that we hurt and sometimes that hurt grows to be a huge mountain balancing on a fragile person. But what He does do is to promise His presence (Psalm 34:18).

I wish I could say more or offer more when we suffering. There is a degree of mysterious discomfort in suffering that is beyond intellectual processing. But in the midst of that God offers Himself to be with us in our sorrow and suffering. The suffering may go on, but God’s presence endures.  What God offers all of us this side of eternity is not a wonderful life, but a reconciled relationship with Him, a relationship in which He is present. That is what He offers each of us.