And
the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of
great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this
day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
-- Luke 2:10-11 ESV
To
kids, sometimes all Christmas means is toys and presents. They get
easily distracted by these gifts and forget everything else. Don't we
sometimes forget as adults too? We can get so distracted by travelling,
by gift purchases, by sending out cards, and by preparing for the
feasts that we lose sight of the true meaning of Christmas. Christmas
was invented by men long ago to celebrate the birth of Christ. The
Christmas season is one where we do get very busy but we are also
reminded of the birth of Christ by what is all around us. Even though
it may not be a religious day for many people, they do acknowledge that
it is a day about the birth of Christ. As Christians, we need to
remember the birth of Christ not only during this busy season when our
minds are overly occupied, but at all times throughout the year. For
without Christ's birth, we would not have the blessing of his life to
model ours after. Without Christ's birth, we would not have the blessing
of his life story and the story of his disciples to read. Without
Christ's birth, we would not have the blessing of his death on the cross
to purify us before God. Without Christ's birth, we would not have the
blessing of his resurrection to show us death is defeated for those who
believe. Without Christ's birth, we would not know the true extent and
depth of the grace and love of our Father. We
must remember Christ's life and let it dwell richly in our hearts if we
are truly to call ourselves Christians, not just on Christmas day or in
the Christmas season, but all of our lives. Jesus is Christ the Lord.
He came to Earth to find lost people and offer them salvation from
themselves. And he did just that, perfectly. We can help each other
remember Christ all year round. We can help each other live our lives
in the love of God and the joy of Christ's life. We can share Christ's
light with one another and all we meet if we always remember that it all
started with the birth of the son of God in a lowly manger in Bethlehem
one night thousands of years ago. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
-- Luke 2:14
Now
the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in
Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and
examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
-- Acts 17:11 NIV
We
are all on our own spiritual journey through this life and have to work
out things for ourselves and live by our choices (Philippians 2:12-13).
We are taught the way that God wants us to live our lives through His
words in the Bible but sometimes we feel the need to answer the callings
of our heart and learn things for ourselves. We come to believe that
God would want us to be happy in whatever we want to do and so we step
out on our own understanding. Or we can think that God is not there
for us because He wouldn't make life so difficult to bear so we tend to
forget Him as we live our lives as best we see fit. But as in the
parable of the lost son in Luke 15:11-32, in all these times God is
there waiting for us to turn to Him. God is the source of eternal life
and has revealed His nature and ways through His word and His love for
us all through His son Jesus (1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, John
3:16-17).I
became a Christian late in my life, just 13 years ago, but I almost
always knew that God was there. I never truly doubted Him, I just
ignored Him and did things my own way often times choosing a dark path.
Since becoming a Christian, there have been many times where I wished
God was different and wanted different things for me, that He would
understand me and my needs better and not make it so hard on me. But
then I remember, wait, this is the creator of the universe who didn't
have to create me but did, a loving father who sacrificed His own son
that I might be in His joyful presence eternally. I don't understand
why, and many times I know I don't deserve it, but He did that for me
and for all of us. And He continues to be there for me even still. I
don't have all the answers, not even close. I just know my life is so
much better since I decided to follow Jesus as I read about Him in the
bible. It is my constant prayer that I seek God where He is and not
just where I want Him to be, and that I remember that His love is always
available to those who walk in His light (1 John 1:6-10). I will keep
on praying no matter what is going on in my life, good or bad, and
sincerely try to always look to scripture to find out if the things that
people say are true (Acts 17:11). I want to embrace His Spirit in all
that I do (Colossians 3:17) and do that which He asks of me in
scripture, always loving Him with all my mind, heart, soul and strength
(Matthew 22:36-40). I hope that as I walk on my journey I can share
God’s light within me by showing others the way and offering the hope
they need (2 Timothy 2:15, Mark 16:15). If together we test all things
against God’s word and align our hearts with God’s nature, even though
we stumble, we can never fail.To
him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before
his glorious presence without fault and with great joy— to the only God
our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ
our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.
-- Jude 1:24-25
But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. And because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, “Abba, Father.” Now you are no longer a slave but God’s own child.
-- Galatians 4:4-7 NLT
I
write software for a living and as such have a pretty logical mind. It
helps in my line of work as the computer will do exactly what I tell it
to, no more, no less, and it will do it very fast. It doesn’t care if
what I tell it to do is right or wrong; it has no emotion about it at
all. It won't do anything but what I tell it, even if it is wrong and
turns the computer into a smoking hole. So getting things in the right
order and having all the steps needed to do something is kind of second
nature to me at work. And I find that sometimes I treat my study of
God’s word and what He wants me to do in this life in that way. All the
steps are there in the Bible for me to follow. If I just do those in
that way, then it will all work out.We
tend to think that logic and emotion are two separate things, that they
don’t coincide. People might say “if you could just put aside your
emotions for a second we could talk rationally.” But we can’t seem to
do that. Some emotions are very logical. Things like loving your child
, being attached to your family, and disliking evil are all emotions
but are very logical for survival. They all make sense on both on a
personal level and on the grander scale of humanity. This is all
because this is how God designed us. In Matthew 22:37-39, Jesus said
“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and
all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second
is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” God created us
with both emotions and reasoning and He intended that we should use
both. We're not meant to be robots reasoning things through without
feelings. We are instead meant to be so much more.If
we read Luke 10:25-37, we see the story of the Good Samaritan. The
priest and the temple assistant (Levite), men of great wisdom and
learning of the day, walked on by. The Samaritan felt compassion for
the man who was attacked and so he helped him. It was his emotion that
made the logical action of helping the man seem so natural. So remember
that God wants us to listen to our hearts. He wants us to know that
feeling the Spirit within ourselves and sharing that joy is just as
important as knowing what it means to be a Christian and living the
life. Share your joy today and watch as everything else just seems to
make sense.
Instead,
speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the
mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.
-- Ephesians 4:15
To
the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching,
you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the
truth will set you free.”
-- John 8:31-32
Let
no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one
another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The
commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,”
“You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command
there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as
yourself.”
-- Romans 13:8-9
Did
you ever say something and then realize oops, that didn't come out
right? You may have been right about everything but either the way you
said it or how it was taken just made it all wrong. It's hard to take
that back sometimes, hard to explain that you didn't mean it that way.
And the damage is done; the message is lost not because of the message
but because of the delivery. God knows this about us and gave us the
way to get around this. In order to speak the truth, we must know it.
And as we see in John 8:31-32, the truth is in Jesus teachings as we
find in God's word. Read it, study it, embrace it and learn from it.
Only in that way can you speak of what you find there.
If
we then are to speak these truths in love, does that mean we do so with
all these warm fuzzy feelings or does it mean something more? It is
not the same love as we have for football or pizza or whatever which
makes us feel good when we experience it. That is too shallow a love.
The love we are to have for our neighbor is based on the love we have
for God and what He has done for us. It is a deep soul changing love
that guides our daily walk and lasts forever. We can try to speak the
truth to others with gentleness or only pleasing words so as not to
offend them but that can lead to a shallow understanding on their part
that never takes root. We can speak the truth no matter how harsh
saying it is out of love for them but then they reject that harshness
and thus the message. We need to remember that oftentimes people are
not as afraid of God's eternal judgement as they are of our judgement
here and now. What is really needed is to be scripturally sound and
humanly compassionate. On many occasions, Jesus would simply tell
people the truth of their sin and then the message of hope and
forgiveness and leave it to them to decide. The need for following
Christ has to be the desire of that person's heart and soul and neither
we nor our God can give that to them. All we can do is reaffirm to her
that we love them and want for them what God has given to us. If we
remember God's hope in us, faith in us, and best of all love for us, and
we know the truth from knowing and believeing in His word and embracing
His son Jesus, we can speak what we know in love and let them decide.
Therefore
be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ
loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice
to God
-- Ephesians 5:1-2
Parents
love their children. Even when their children make it hard to love
them, we love them nevertheless. It's part of our design as human
version 1.0; we parents just can't help it. And so it is with God since
we are designed in His image. The message that God loves us, His
children, is so often repeated in the New Testament that you would have
to go out of your way to ignore it. And as our children imitate our
behaviors and traits, Paul asks us to imitate God in the same way. We
need to imitate Him in our love for one another, in our goodness towards
all, in our forgiveness for when others wrong us, and in our patience
with those who do not follow in His way. God does this for us and so we
in turn should learn from that example and walk in the same loving way
He does as best we can. As
parents, we understand that our children not only look like us to a
great degree, but follow our example in what they say and do. When we
do good things, they follow that. When we do bad things, they follow
that too. When we say good things, our children repeat them. When we
say bad things, our children can repeat them too, much to our
embarrassment. Children have no greater example to follow than their
parents. They learn to interact with the world through watching how we
do it and imitating that example. As children, we look to our parents
for how to do things. We don't know anything else for a very long time.
We know that is why they are there and we love them because they love
us and help us. We can learn the hard way that doing or saying the
wrong things just because our parents did is not always acceptable. And
so we learn to imitate the good examples and ignore the bad ones. God
gave us all the example we will ever need in Christ Jesus. Jesus is
the ultimate example of the most free and generous love that ever was.
We can all take great comfort in knowing that He loved us all so much
that he gave himself as a sacrifice for our sins. It is all the proof
we will need of His love. So let us all walk together in love for God,
for Christ, and for each other and imitate the example God has placed
before us in Jesus as best we can.
Consider
it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many
kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces
perseverance.
James 1:2-3
In
his poem "The Rainy Day", Longfellow concludes "Into each life some
rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary". While the poem
starts our gloomy, it ends with the realization that everyone has to
deal with dark things at times in their lives but at the end of every
one of them, there is hope and sunshine. It seems to me that it is easy
to fall into a funk but so difficult to get out of it. I think we can
allow ourselves to dwell on the gloomy and dark things a bit too much
and we miss the fact that God is there waiting and wanting to help us.
We can sometimes get lost in our sadness and can no longer see a way
out and then fall easy prey to temptations. God
promises to us that there is always a way out as we read in 1
Corinthians 10:13, "No temptation has overtaken you except what is
common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted
beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide
a way out so that you can endure it.". Notice that it doesn't say He
will do this for you sometimes but that there are some things He just
won't help you with. He will not abandon you. He has a plan for you.
He loves you more that you can really understand. Like the sun behind
the clouds in Longfellow's poem, He is there. If He is there when we
fail Him, how much more will He be there when we are hurting? Some
trials are really hard to bear. Regardless of what we know and how hard
we try to maintain our faith, some hard times are just going to hurt.
And then we can get easily confused and angry and ask God what He
thinks He is doing. But as James points out, these trials are designed
to build our trust in God. Rather than go it alone, believe in your
faith, trust in it, and seek God all the more.If
we remember Romans 8:28, "And we know that in all things God works for
the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his
purpose", we can make it through anything. There is some purpose in our
dark days, ones we may not understand just yet. But God is love and is
always there for each and every one of us. Seek Him out even more so in
the dark times and He will show you the way.
The
Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will
rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will
exult over you with loud singing.
Zephaniah 3:17
Praise
the Lord, all nations! Extol him, all peoples! For great is his
steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures
forever. Praise the Lord!
Psalm 117:1-2
As
a kid, when we received a gift we usually shouted with joy. We could
not contain ourselves; we jumped and hollered and sometimes even
remembered to say thanks. And if we did remember, it was usually
something like,”thankyou!!!thankyou!!!thankyou!!!thankyou!!!!" The
Bible is an amazing and wonderful gift from God. It contains everything
we would ever need to know to live our lives in peace within ourselves
and with each other (2 Timothy 3:16-17). As we see in those words,
Jesus was the ultimate gift from God, the gift of eternal salvation for
those who believe (John 3:16). God has done so many things to show us
that He loves us, doesn't want us to be miserable, and wants us to have
eternal life in heaven with Him that we cannot help but be thankful and
sing praises to Him. Many
people think that praise and worship is only singing songs at church
and being there on Sunday mornings to do the Lord's supper and hear a
sermon. But God tells us how to praise and worship Him in His word.
John 4:23 says, "But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true
worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father
is seeking such people to worship him." God wants us to worship him
with sincere hearts, hearts full of love for Christ and for each other.
If we do this, it doesn't matter if we are in a special building at a
certain time or we do the various things we see as patterns in the bible
in a certain order. Paul discusses a style of worship in 1 Corinthians
14 that had apparently gotten out of hand due to spiritual gifts they
had received. Rather than let them continue down that path, he states
that "all things should be done decently and in order" (v. 40) so that
unbelievers might come to know Jesus and believers could be increased in
their faith. And so we should strive to ensure that as we come
together, we should align hearts and minds to thoughts of Christ and
God's great gifts to us. We should exalt God and express our love and
awe to Him who gives us more than we deserve. We should make sure that
we do our own little parts in harmony with one another to ensure that
the message that we love Him is received by God and by all those in
attendance. So
leave your life’s baggage at the door when you come in. God knows of
these things and will answer your prayers. Be on time and prepared if
you are on the worship team to make sure everything is in order. And be
sure to take the love and peace that you feel as you worship and let
that be the everyday you that everyone else sees so that they know that
you "Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul
and with all your strength." (Deuteronomy 6:5)
