Christmas Memories

This morning I am reminded of Christmases past, of family celebrations both as a child and as a parent watching my children enjoy the beauty of Christmas morning. 

I am reminded of times my grandparents made the drive to our house for Christmas, or times we went to their house, with their metallic Christmas tree. 

I am reminded of gifts stacked around the Christmas tree, all of us kids waiting at the top of the stairs for our parents to give us the ok. 

I am reminded of years with our kids, us up early to fill their stockings, sitting by the fire in the library while we opened gifts. 

I am reminded of years where Christmas was white and we would spend Christmas Eve sliding at Pamela Park, trying to kill some time before festivities began. 

I am reminded of singing Happy Birthday to Jesus, gathered in our hallway in front of the statue of Mary and Jesus my dad carved. 

I am reminded of so much, and while the memories are sweet, I am reminded that today we are really celebrating the Son of God coming to earth. He is the true gift and we are all the recipients.

I am reminded that we have been celebrating His birth, for centuries now, and His birth is just as impactful today as it has ever been. Let us celebrate Jesus today, and the choice He made to freely come and set us all free!  His incarnation was a choice, birthed out of love! 

I am reminded that ultimately today is a celebration of love, God's love for us, our love and gratefulness to God.

John 3:16-17 NIV:
[16] "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. [17] For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."

The Greatest Gift...

In meditating on the word today, I am reflecting on a few verses from the Letter to the Hebrews 1:1-3 NIV:

[1] "In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, [2] but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. [3] The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven."

I was just thinking how we still are working to understand the mystery of Christ's birth, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension!  When I look at my grand-daughter, watching her grow and develop, it is just amazing to think that Jesus, the exact representation of the Father, the creator of the world, came to earth in the exact same way, being born, and growing and developing as any child.  What an amazing humbling expression of His desire for us! 

I can't wrap my head around the mystery of the son of God laying aside His divinity that He might perfectly represent us in fulfillment of the Law.  As prophesied 700 years before His birth, He was born of a virgin and was Emmanuel - God With Us.  ( Isaiah 7:14 NIV: "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.)  He wasn't just with us, He perfectly represented us to the Father, even as He represented the Father to us!

He did all of this, accomplished the Father's plan perfectly, and restored that which was lost, namely opportunity for relationship with the Father!  When we look at Jesus' prayers in John 17, we so often read them from our present perspective, knowing all that Jesus accomplished, but let us think on them with fresh eyes and mind this Christmas Eve.  Here are a few of the statements made by Jesus and others about His Father:

Matthew 11:27 NIV:  “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."

John 1:18 NIV: "No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known."

John 14:6-11 NIV: "Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. [7] If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

[8] Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

[9] Jesus answered: “Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? [10] Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. [11] Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves."

Finally, as we look at His perfect humanity, we see God's purpose in Jesus becoming like us, explained- Hebrews 4:14-16 NIV:  "Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. [15] For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are---yet he did not sin. [16] Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need."

-and-

Hebrews 7:24-26 NIV: "but because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. [25] Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.

[26] Such a high priest truly meets our need---one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens."


So, in the midst of this season where we celebrate Jesus' birth, let us remember that He is really expressing and representing the heart of the Father, who desires that all might be saved and in relationship with Him.  He is representing the Father in everything He does and says, and in turn, He is representing us to the Father.  He is, even now, seated on His heavenly throne, interceding for us, representing us to the Father.  He loves us, and has made a way for us!  Even though we can never fully understand or comprehend the full extent of all He accomplished, we can certainly celebrate that which we do understand!  He is the greatest gift ever given, and we can embrace Him, and embrace the Father and Holy Spirit because of  Him. 

Amen!

The Ultimate Treasure of Relationship

Yesterday, I was reflecting on the uniqueness of my relationship with the Lord, and today I was wandering through some different thoughts, pursuing the Lord's word for me.  Sometimes it seems I am walking down a path remembering certain things I heard and saw, waiting for something to pop out.

As I was thinking though te conversations and thoughts I had yesterday, I was reminded of the ministry of Heidi and Rolland Baker in Mozambique and much of the world.  They founded and run an organization called Iris Global and it amazing to read of all the things they are doing and involved with worldwide.  Fore more details you can go to the Ministry web-site at Iris Global

I was reading through some of their newsletters, and came across the letter from 2014.  It seems to me that they capture very well the one key theme that has been resonating in my heart for some time - that our walk is all about relationship with Jesus.  Here is a long excerpt from their letter from 7/16/2014:

"What motivates us to keep going? What puts energy into our spirits when we run out of answers and resources? How do we stay patient and upbeat when the outlook seems bleak, yet again? Where does our power to live, serve and give come from? The question is important, because missionaries do get tired, discouraged and down. Christians of all kinds run out of motivation, no matter how much they have. Leaders with huge responsibilities lose their peace and joy. Ministries become more like businesses, and preachers more like sales managers. But what makes the Kingdom run? What is the fuel that fires us effortlessly? What is the real thing?

Every day we find out more of the answers to these most fundamental questions, and every day we learn that what used to motivate us is no longer enough. We are going higher, pressing on to what lies ahead. We keep learning what Jesus is interested in, and lose interest in what we used to pursue. And we learn that unless Jesus is interested in what we are pursuing, the going gets tougher than we can bear.

But there is a secret place, a hiding place, a lower place, a holy place that exceeds our dreams. It is not found in anything external and impersonal. It is not found simply in activity, sacrifice and dedication. It is not found in goals, projects, productions and progress. It is not found in finances and growth. It may be missed entirely even when preaching, teaching, training and discipling. It may be forgotten completely when evangelizing and praying for the sick. The greatest and most powerful gifts don’t necessarily contain it. Even ministry to the poor may become an impersonal effort that misses that greatest and most intensely motivating creation of God, that supreme display of His glory: relationship!

Love is a gift of relationship, not just self-sacrifice. The secret place is not necessarily found in a prayer closet or a posture of soaking, or in battling for a just cause, or in a massive prayer and fasting effort. Even the most amazing miracles can leave us lonely and without relationship. We can run out of motivation advancing the most noble ideals and working at all levels to transform society. We can minister until we have no more strength, and still go home and lie in bed without the relationship for which our hearts are made.

Everything is okay with relationship. It is all that Jesus cares about, all that motivates Him. He could do many more amazing miracles and dazzle the world with His powers, but He is interested only in relationship. The entire creation, all the grandeur of the physical world, and all His works are designed to serve one thing: relationship. Revival has no content without it. Renewal and manifestations are pointless apart from it. Miracles only find their meaning in it. Joy is shallow and groundless unless rooted in it. Without relationship we are the living dead.

There is no pressure in genuine relationship. When it turns into work, it is gone and finished. It is effortless to maintain. It is not the goal of struggle, but the fire of life. It brings the utmost peace, and washes away all tension. It is the point of living, the substance of existence, the atmosphere of heaven. It motivates to heroic heights, bringing out our best. In relationship we know we are alive, we have arrived, we are satisfied. When we turn away from relationship to pursue anything else, we lose. We have no strength to give and love without it. It is a haven, a rock, a river of living water, the perfect source of motivation to keep going.

As our Perfect Savior, Jesus provides us with relationship. For this He died and rose again on our behalf. He provides not only His Word, His promises and His gifts, but also freely fills our lives with relationship in response to the desire He has put in our hearts. No guilt and condemnation can keep us from drinking in all the relationship with Him that we desire. Nothing in our past can block us. No attitudes in others can prevent us from tasting and seeing that He is good. And from this tree of life that is our Savior, we can branch out into more and more relationship with those all around us. He takes away our loneliness. In Him we end our search and find our destination.

So in this experience of revival in Africa, our values have been refined in the fires of pressure, opposition and disappointment. Thousands of churches and testimonies of supernatural power do not keep us motivated. Huge feeding projects are not enough for us. We need more of a goal than to target people groups and disciple followers. Education and development don’t keep our hearts alive. Mobilizing world-wide support still falls short. Academic missiology lacks the energy that Africa needs.

No, our hearts must have perfect relationship, a perfect union between us and our Savior, in the Holy Spirit. We were never meant to be alone for a moment. Our whole motive is to live life and do everything together with our God, to take pleasure in His company always. Our power to live comes entirely from our satisfying relationship with Him, and to stay there is to stay in our own private revival that cannot be disturbed by anything else. Only when that relationship is golden, incandescent and pure enough do we have the power to delight in all that God has richly provided for us to enjoy.

Therefore in Him we do not pursue revival, but rather revival pursues us! Church growth and miracles pursue us. His presence pursues us. He Himself follows us, responds to us, and takes pleasure in making us happy, for we make Him happy. We care how He feels. We satisfy His longing. To stay close to Him is no effort, but a relief, a release, a door to freedom. To get a miracle is never the point, but in our relationship with Him miracles are a delight for Him to perform on our behalf. In fact, we cannot live without miracles, and in the normal Christian life we recognize that everything is a miracle, “for in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

Love in Jesus,
Rolland and Heidi


My prayer is that our hearts might be stirred by this same treasure, relationship with Jesus!  Let us embrace this opportunity to celebrate and know Him fully in this season of joy and peace, as we celebrate His birth.

Amen!

Of Hidden Work and Wrong Judgment

This morning I am once again reading and thinking about some verses from Paul's letter to the Romans.  He communicated so clearly about the Gospel of Grace, and how we should individually embrace this gospel.  Here are the verses - Romans 14:1-4 NIV:

[1] "Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. [2] One person's faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. [3] The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. [4] Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand."

I love verse 4, "Who are you to judge someone else's servant?"  We must learn to trust that the Lord is able to be Lord over and in each other's lives.  He has different calls, different plans and a unique relationship with each and every one of us, and sometimes His call and direction for some else is pretty different than what He is doing in our life.  We need to learn to be accepting of His ability to deal with each of us in a different way. 

Secondly, I REALLY love verse 1 and wish that we, as a church, would learn to embrace this fully.  We must learn to embrace those who are just starting in their faith walk, those who are struggling, and those who are just learning what it means to live a life of faith, without hitting them with a bunch of rules about how to live life as a Christian.  We must give each other grace to grow in areas where the Lord has already touched our lives, and grace to embrace things that God hasn't called us to change in our own lives.  I wish Paul had listed some of the disputable matters, as that would have been helpful, but it would just create another list of rules, that we are so fond of creating and following, so we can keep score and judge our behaviour against someone else's - which brings us back to verse 4.

Our walk with the Lord really is about our relationship with Him.  Each of us will find a unique experience within that relationship, for we are each unique.  My relationship and interactions with the Lord are quite different than what my honey experiences.  She hears him differently than I do, our prayer times are different from each other and the things the Lord is doing in my life, are not the same as He is doing in hers!  It is amazing to me, how gently and perfectly the Lord deals with each of us, and yet how very different His ways are, even though we are in a deeply intimate relationship with each other.  He truly loves and directs each of us as we need, and that is so encouraging to me.

My prayer is that I would learn to leave the Lord to His Lordship over everyone else, and I would focus on my own walk with Him, and not compare myself to others, or make judgments about their walks based on what I see!  I know for me, the majority of what the Lord has been doing and saying to me are between He and I, and externally most likely not evident.  I just thought of an interesting analogy - when a house is being built, it an look complete on the outside and still have months of finish working being done on the inside, all of which would be hidden from external view.  Even though things don't seem to be changing externally, internally the house is changing radically.  Can I trust that the Lord is able to do the same in the lives of those around me, without my knowledge? 

Finally, I was just thinking about this some more and realized that much of the work the Lord does in my life is hidden from my view, as I am so often not aware of the spiritual realm, and the Lord clearly is doing things in my spirit, without my knowledge.  I have many times seemed dry and unmoving in my faith walk, seeming to not move for months at a time and then suddenly make some significant progress!  I believe that is due to all the work the Lord has been doing in my spirit, but I was just unaware.  There are times that people have asked me what the Lord was doing in my life and I have no clue.   Then, after several months I look back and can clearly see that the Lord was at work the whole time, and even see the specific things He was doing at the very time the person asked me (which I was not aware of at that time).

I guess I could summarize this whole reflection by simply saying I need to give myself and everyone around me grace to follow the Lord in whatever way He is leading.  I need to trust that He is the Lord of my life, and even though I may not see it, He is at work always in my life, conforming me into His likeness.  I can trust that He will lead me and guide me, and that He will do the same for every brother and sister in this great Body of Christ.  Finally, I need to lay down my judgmental ways and trust that the Lord is at work in ways that are not known or hidden from my view.

Amen!

A Life Dependent on the Father - the Radical Example of Jesus

Lately I have had a thought rolling around in my heart and mind.  I have been thinking about the relationship Jesus had with the Father.  Essentially, this relationship with the Father, that Jesus modeled, is the opposite of what we experience naturally.  In the natural, we are 100% dependent on our parents for the first number of years and then we grow to become more and more independent, finally able to think and act fully on our own and our parents become advisors if we let them!  Jesus demonstrated pretty much the opposite of that.  He grew up perfectly obedient to the Father, and in His ministry only said and did what the Father told Him and showed Him to do.  We could say that Jesus' ministry was 100% dependent on the Father's direction through the power of the Holy Spirit.  He spent His life looking to the Father, not trying to be independent from Him.

As I think about it, our invitation to join ourselves to Christ is more like marriage is supposed to be than it is like growing up from a child to an adult.  We are supposed to be constantly growing more and more in love,  experiencing greater and greater intimacy, and our motivation to act comes out of a place of love and affection.  We are invited into a holy union, joining ourselves to God.  This is really quite a radical pursuit if we really embrace it.

Looking at some of the statements Jesus made about His relationship with the Father is helpful.  He gives us a path to follow.  Here are just some of the verses that relate to this theme.


John 6:28-29 NIV:  "Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” [29] Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”


John 6:38,46-47,63 NIV:

[38] "For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me."

[46] "No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. [47] Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life."

[63] "The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you---they are full of the Spirit and life."


John 8:28-29 NIV:

[28] "So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. [29] The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.”


John 10:37-38 NIV:

[37] Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. [38] But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.”


John 12:49-50 NIV:

[49] "For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken. [50] I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.”


John 13:15-17,34-35 NIV:

[15] "I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. [16] Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. [17] Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them."

[34] “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. [35] By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”


Now the real question is how to move forward in pursuing that more dependent and obedient life-style?  How do I make practical changes to my attention and focus, listening and hearing, in such a way that I am more consistent and intentional in being conformed to the likeness of Christ?  Lord, how do I pursue hearing and obedience with the same focus you did??

I like to think that if there is a will, there is a way.  In this case, if it is God's will and purpose for me to walk in deep intimacy with Him, then there must be a way available to me, that He has provided. If His desire is for me to be fully engaged, representing Him through my unity with Him, then He must make a way for me to step into and walk out this level of obedience and intimacy.

Clearly, prayer is key, as that provides the opportunity to converse.  However, if you are like me, your day becomes quickly busy and full of all sorts of other concerns.  That is where I need real help hearing, Lord!  I am so easily distracted, and needing to give my attention to my work and business that I feel like I loose connection to the Lord, due to the noise of all that I am needing to do.

Again, looking back at the idea that our faith walk should be more like a marriage, I am never not conscious of being married to my honey.  I do find that this covenant relationship definitely changes the way I think and act, which is a good thing.  In the same way, my relationship with the Lord must impact my life, my words and actions.  However, I want to go deeper still, pressing forward into that which Jesus descried and modelled.  I do want to walk in unity and intimacy and obedience.

Lord, I am not sure how to move forward, but I know You have made a way, and I am about finding that way forward, in You!  Help me to pay attention, to embrace all that You have for me and call me into.  Help me to become more and more dependent and obedient in midst of all the swirl of my daily life.

Amen!