Happy New Year 2016

12.29.15

On this day fifteen years ago my wife and I welcomed our daughter into this world. It became clear to me immediately upon holding her for the first time that my life would be forever changed. Up until then I had loved, I had cared, I had connection with family and friends, but never to the level which I soared to instantly when her big eyes looked up at me. Over time I have learned that she is made in the image of my wife and I in many ways. Reflections of us, but unique in her own right.

As we wind down 2015 and look forward to 2016, my thoughts turn to our heavenly father. What joy and love and passion he must have to see us, his children, look to him and connect on a deep and spiritual level. We are made in his image, reflections of Him, just as my daughter is a mirror of her parents' traits. But which traits? My wife is a joker. She loves silliness and laughter. She loves cuddling and physical connection. I tend to be more serious, and my humor is dry at times, and I feel just as connected sitting on separate couches as she does sharing the same recliner. My daughter is more like me. She and I will watch movies alone on individual couches, while my wife and our son share a seat.

With our heavenly father we have many traits and characteristics to mimic. He has made us all unique and special. In 2016 I am challenging myself, and others via this blog, to consider which character traits of God will you choose to show this year? Maybe select a top three or top five or if you are ambitious, perhaps you want to pursue a top ten. I will share with you my top three in hopes to inspire your thoughts and start the process:

1. Creativity

In Genesis chapter 1 we read that "God made". He made everything. He was creative. From the beginning God demonstrated that he is expressive in his thoughts and creation. Black and white are sufficient to give a universe definition, but God chose seven base colors (ROYGBIV) as a palette to work from. With these seven colors he allows an endless variety of shades and nuances.  He gives us blue skies and a yellow sun. He made green grass and trees, and a completely different green for the ocean. He is a creative God, and in 2016 I will seek to reflect this.

 2. Loving

John 3:16 famously tells us the "God so loved". The letters by John known as 1, 2nd, and 3rd  John expand on this theme of love, and goes so far as to tell us "God is love". Perhaps this is a given for some. Perhaps you are a person who naturally loves, cares, or nurtures. The challenge for me is not that I fail to love, I fail to love people too often in a way in which they need to be loved. In John 3:16, we read that he loved us so much that God gave us what we needed most: His son. Why? To provide a way for us from everlasting punishment and into eternal life. This year I will strive to love others as they need to be loved. This may be a kind word, a card in the mail, a physical help with a project, or it may mean shared scripture and biblical discipline. The challenge is knowing who needs what. For this, I will seek God's direction. After all, He is love.

3. Consistent

 Jesus was and is our example of how humans should live. Many things can be learned by his life, but perhaps one of the more difficult traits is found in Hebrews 13:8, which tells us that he is "the same yesterday, today, and forever". Jesus, like his Father, has remained the steadfast same since the beginning. Too often we complain in a sporting event because the officials seem to call certain actions as fouls for one team but not the other (usually this is an issue if the fouls are called on our team). But God the Father and Jesus the Son are not like this. In our lives, or at least in mine, it is an exercise in endurance to remain steadfast in convictions, faith, and godly habits. I cannot consider the full 366 days of 2016 (there is a leap day) as my goal. That is too much. I will focus on today. On this hour. In this minute. In this second. It is in the now that I will strive to be consistent.

So what are your top traits for 2016? Which ones will you be asking yourself and perhaps others to join you for accountability? The beauty of the birth of a new year is the ability to start fresh. To mark off this past year's failures and shortcomings as experience, not an expectation. Learn from 2015, but live in the new year!

May God bless you and keep you in 2016!  

Make Room For Jesus

Christmas 2015

The sun begins to set on the dusty horizon. A man walks along the worn path leading his animal. The two clop along in unison with a steady gait. Upon the back of this animal sits a woman swollen with expectation of her first child. She rises and falls with each step the animal takes, absently rubbing her round abdomen. Soon, very soon by the contractions that ripple through her, she will give birth. The foretelling signs of her child’s arrival are compounding the sickness she feels riding along on this beast. The ever present sand flows through her hair and across her face, and the cool of night begins to wrap around her so that she shivers despite her cloak.

The man and woman approach a town. A village more like it. It is their destination. From his home in Nazareth, some seventy miles away, the man has come here with his pregnant wife by order of proclamation from the King. His feet hurt, his back aches, and he is weary from the experiences of the past nine months. He reaches the first buildings of the town and unwillingly fulfills prophesy for tonight his wife will give birth and the child will be born in Bethlehem.

A knock on a door, a face appears, and a head shakes “no”, there is no room. A second door, and a third, but although they are different doors, they offer the same answer. Finally, a sympathetic soul offers the use of his stable. The man leads his animal to join the others resting for the night. He helps his wife disembark her ride and tries to give her privacy in this makeshift delivery room. He reads her face and knows that the time of arrival is near. She cries and pants from effort. He holds her hand and offers words of encouragement. With a scream and a final push, the sound of a small cry is heard in the world that is different than any other child’s cry that has ever lived. The woman holds this small wriggling bundle and is amazed. If what the angel told her is true, then in her arms she holds the indwelling of God in human form.

Do not be quick to judge those shaking heads and denial of a room for the arriving baby. This child, this Christ, arrived in a world where he was neither wanted nor accepted, but today is no different. Today we plod through our busy daily life and when he knocks on the door of our heart, we are too quick to shake our heads “no” and offer him no room. Tonight as we celebrate the Advent, the Arrival of Jesus, we ask the question, do you have room for Him?

Christmas 2015 - In The Fullness Of Time

12.20.15

“In The Fullness Of Time”

We scoffed at stores who set out their trees and decorations in August just before Labor Day. We rolled our eyes at shoppers who mixed the red and green of Christmas with the black and orange of Halloween in their shopping carts like some twisted scene from Tim Burton’s “The Night Before Christmas”.  We began our shopping consumer frenzy mere hours after our Thanksgiving feast, regretting that most of the “good stuff” had already been bought! Now mere days before winter’s top holiday, we are wrapping and packing and along with some 100 million other Americans, planning our trips to visit friends and family both near and far.

I remember those days before Christmas as a child when I would watch my mother cook and prepare dish upon dish of stuffing, salads, deserts, and more. We would sign card after card for cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends, most of whom we could never match a face to go with the name on the front of the envelope. Gifts would be wrapped. Preparations made. And then the moment would come when my parents would announce: “It is time.” Time to pack the car, time to visit, time to celebrate.

Each year we celebrate Christmas we are celebrating the time that Jesus was born. There may be debates as to what day it was, which time of year it was, and we can say with certainty that it was not December 25th. The beauty of Christmas is not that we get the exact date correct, the beauty and wonder we celebrate is the fact that Jesus came at all. We read in scripture that he was there before the creation of the universe. There with his Father God creating and shaping, and now sustaining this awesome spectacle that is our existence. At Christmas we celebrate that he came to earth as one of us, and that he came at the right time.

I have two children and I recall the period of time leading up to their birth and being antsy with anticipation. Each moan of discomfort from my wife lead me to believe that this could be “the time”. Unlike those wonderful Butterball turkeys we are so fond of at Thanksgiving and other holidays, babies do not come with a built in pop up “I’m done” indicator. They come when they are ready. More to the point, they come when God is ready for them to come. It was no different for the birth of his Son, Jesus.

The early church leader and writer, Paul, shares with us in his letter to the church in Galatia that “When the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.” The Greek phrase here translated in English as “time has fully come” is sometimes translated as “the fullness of time”. It is the Greek word “play-ro-mah”, which is defined as “that which is filled”. Picture a ship in dock, filled with goods to trade in faraway places, its decks filled with sailors ready to follow the captain’s orders and bring the ship home again after its voyage. There were preparations made, positions filled, weather accounted for, tides calculated, and when the time is “play-ro-mah”, that is to say when the time is just right, they set sail. This is the term Paul uses to describe the arrival of Jesus into this world. When the time was at its fullness of preparation, expectation, and all conditions were just right – He was born!

Paul tells us that he was born to redeem us. He was born to rescue us. Redeem and rescue from what? For that, we turn to another of Paul’s writings. This time we turn to his letter for the church in Rome. In this letter we read that “all have fallen short of the glory of God” – all have sinned and this sin causes a separation between God and mankind. We celebrate his arrival for this purpose, but one might ask “why then”? Why wait to arrive on a dark night in the unimportant town of Bethlehem in the neglected Roman providence of Judah? This whole sin issue started so long before that, why not then?

I want to explore today why Christ didn’t appear when Adam and Eve first ate of the forbidden fruit? Why not present himself then as an atoning sacrifice for these two people and their sin? Why not appear when Cain committed the first murder and killed his brother Abel? Why not step in when man had rebelled so much that it made God regret creating them, causing God to destroy the earth and save only one family on an ark. Why not send Jesus to the Jews when they cried out for salvation while in slavery to the Egyptians?  God sent them a leader, a leader who took them out or Egypt and they eventually became a nation. As a nation, they asked God for a king, but still Jesus did not appear.

The people of this nation rebelled and turned away from God. God sent prophets, men to speak for him, but still the time for Jesus to come to earth was not right. The people refused to follow these prophets, and they paid the price of rebellion with exile to foreign lands. When God returned the Israelites to their land, it was men like Ezra and Nehemiah that helped them rebuild a nation and re-establish their morality. Still, Jesus did not come. Later when Romans marched to occupy the land of the Jews and they looked for a savior, he did not come as they expected. So the people of Israel and the people of the world waited and anticipated the arrival of this child. This Christ, the savior of the world.

Then the moment came. The time was right, and the Father sent his Son into the world so that the people of the world would believe in the Son and the Father and have freedom from their sin. So the Son came to earth in the form of a child. An infant. Born in an animal shelter and laid in a food trough. This one-day savior lay wrapped in strips of cloth and bore the flesh of his own creation. After all these years? After all these cries for salvation, God chose to send a baby? What type of plan is this?

It is a God type of plan. The same type of plan that gives us exactly what we need when we need it. Like Noah on the ark; one boat with one family to save all of mankind. A plan like sending Joseph into Egypt as a slave and turning him into a ruler to one day protect his family from famine. The type of God moment that leads Moses to the edge of the Red Sea with the Egyptian army bearing down on his rag tag group of refugees, and then seeing God split the sea open to provide safe and dry passage across to the other side. The type of God plan that sends a young shepherd out to face a giant with a sling and some rocks or the type of God plan which positions a Jewish girl in exile to become queen so that she can stop an evil conspiracy from killing all the Jews in the ancient world.

God has a plan. He started this plan before he laid the foundation of the universe. He regretted, he mourned, and he waited to send his Son, the perfect and final redemptive action necessary to save all of mankind from sin for all of time. And when this moment came, he sent the unexpected – a baby. This baby would one day grow to be a man. This man would die for you and I on the cross, redeeming us and freeing us from sin forever!

So why a baby? Because God demands perfection, and we are incapable of it, but his Son was able to be born as a baby, grow into childhood, graduate into adulthood, and remain perfect or sinless the entire time. He accomplished what we could not, and he finished what we could never hope to even start. Although he deserved only praise, he took God’s punishment in our place. There is a bible term for this: propitiation. A fancy way of saying that he was a substitute for us. Imagine getting caught by a parent or school principal for something you have done wrong. You face the consequences of your actions and are sentenced to disciplinary action by the authority over you. Then, at just the right time, and in just the nick of time, someone steps up and offers to receive your punishment instead. Not only that, but this person who has accepted your punishment has done nothing wrong and has all the Gold stars and stickers to prove it! That would be amazing! And while this is exciting news, because this is exactly what Jesus did for us: stepped in and took our punishment; the truly amazing part is that he shares his perfection and all of its rewards with us as well! We are rescued from all the dread of sin and it is exchanged for all of the beauty and blessing of his perfection!

Talk about your best gift exchange ever! We give him our sin – tagged with punishment and death; and he gives us his right standing with the judge (his father) so we can share in his eternally blessed life! This is the meaning of Paul’s writing that “When the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.” This term “adoption to sonship” is a Roman legal term which indicates that we are now in full standing as an adopted child and heir to all the Father has for us! I cannot tell you for sure why Jesus did not come at one of those earlier times when it was perceived necessary. I cannot tell you why he did not wait until today with the development of technology and the means to reach millions instead of only a few thousand during his life here on earth. I can tell you that whatever the reason, it was because the time that he was born was the fully right time to be here!

What about you? What about Jesus in your life? Have you had moments in your life where you cried out for help in slavery to sin as the Israelites in Egypt and it felt like no one heard you? Have you faced giants like addiction, depression, illness and you wish you had the courage of that shepherd boy David as he stared down Goliath? Have you felt exiled from family or friends by your rebellion and disobedience? Have you ever wondered “Where is a person to save me from what I am going through?” Today I share with you the announcement that the angels gave when Jesus was born:
 “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.  Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.”

Whatever you have done, whoever you have been up to this point in time, the wait is over. It is the fullness of time in your life, at this “play-ro-mah” moment you are ready to be set free from sin and receive your inheritance of eternal life!

Playbook For Christian Living - Be A Living Witness

Play Eight: Living As A Witness For Christ
12.13.15

In Mark chapter 5 we read a story of a man who is demon possessed. This man lived among the dead and wiled and moaned all hours of the day and night. He was in misery, alone, isolated, and dejected. Then Jesus came into his life and things changed. He was restored, reborn, and returned to his sanity. This man naturally wants to follow Jesus, but Jesus tells him to stay and share what God has done for him. Jesus is essentially asking him to be a living witness of what the Lord has done in his life.

Four things I believe we can learn from this story:

1. Tell Who You Were

The man in the graveyard's actions were described as "night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones." The people of the town knew who he was an how he acted. Perhaps your story is less dramatic. Maybe you were like me and you started attending church at birth. You grew up in a stable home and for the most part did what was right. Or maybe your story is one of reckless abandon, isolation and broken relationships. Either way, we should be prepared to tell our story honestly and sincerely. "All have fallen short of the glory of God" according to Romans 3:23, so we all have a story of life in sin to tell.

2. Tell What Jesus Did In Your Life

In Mark 5:15 we read that when the people from the city came to see what had happened, they found the demon possessed man sitting there dressed and in his right mind. In your story about the journey you have had with Jesus there will have been times when you needed him. Perhaps it was courage or hope or strength, it does not matter what it was that Jesus did for you - tell about it! If you find that there is nothing you can find to tell I suggest one of two situations: One, you do not have a relationship with Jesus and therefor have no story to tell because yours has not started yet. Or two, you need to pray to have eyes to see what He has done for you. Once you have your story, tell it, write, and perfect it. It is your testimony.

3. Share As Jesus Leads

Jesus was on a mission. He was telling people far and wide about the coming Kingdom of God. He had thousands who followed him. He had a core twelve that he mentored.So why not one more? Yet when this man who had been radically saved asked to tag along, Jesus told him to stay. "Go home to your people" Jesus told him.  The man followed the directions of Christ and went to his home town and began to tell what Jesus had done. If you were like me, when I was younger I was certain that if I told Jesus I would tell others about him it would have to be in a far off country. Sometimes that is true. But often what I see is a commitment for Jesus to start right where you are. Your family, friends, neighbors are all in need of Jesus too, follow Him and tell where he leads.

4. Be Ready To Be Amazed

This ambassador for Jesus, this living witness, followed the lead of Christ and told his home town people about what the Lord had done. The result? Verse 20 in Mark 5 tells us that "all the people were amazed."

What about you? Have you met Jesus? Has he changed your life? If so, great! Go and tell! Be a living witness! If not, consider watching the video below as it explains how you can begin your story now.

Playbook For Christian Living - A Life With Good Deeds

Play Number Seven: "Good Deeds Done Right"
12.6.15

Good deeds are completed by millions everyday. Some of those deeds are conducted by Christians, others are not. Today I want to explore some of the reasons why those deeds completed by Christians are different than those of non-believers. As we play out the Christian Playbook, we see that it is important that our Good Deeds are Done Right.

In Ephesians 2:10, Paul writes:

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

When we set our minds to do good, we must recognize that we do these things in accordance to the plans that God prepared for us. There are four truths I want to share concerning our service to God and the Good Deeds we accomplish for Him.

1. We Are Shaped By God

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful.

Psalm 139:13-14

This verse has been used numerous times to explain our physical development. I would extend this shaping and knitting as the Psalmist writes it to also include our personality, talents, intelligence, and other quirky traits that make us who we are as individuals. God shapes each of us to fit into his plan for the sharing of the Gospel and the ultimate glory he desires and deserves. We see this expressed in the passions and commitments of various Christians, churches, and groups to champion a variety of causes and needs. God makes us all unique to fit together and be the Body of Christ - his church. 

2. We Are To Be Useful And Valuable

In Matthew 25 we read a story that Jesus tells his followers of a king who left town and set three servants in charge of some resources of his to be watched over in his absence. When he returns, he asks them for an accounting of what they did with the resources he left in their charge. When the first servant returns his portion with great interest by wise investing, Jesus tells us that the king responded, "Well done, good and faithful servant!" 

In the children's book series, Thomas The Tank Engine, the highest praise the little trains can receive is the praise that they are "really useful engines" by their company's owner, Sir Topham Hat.  The author, Reverend Wilbert Awdry, used these stories to convey the biblical truth that God, the owner and operator of our life, has a purpose for each of us and as we fulfill that purpose we are recognized as being "very useful". 

3. Our Good Deeds Are To Be Practical And Purposeful 

Later in Matthew 25, Jesus tells another story of the day when he will separate those who believed in him and those who did not. He commends those who truly believed by telling them:

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

There are numerous things we can do for God. Here we read simple, practical, daily activities that we can conduct ourselves in which result in eternal value. The simple acts of charity such as drink, food, clothing, etc. can have everlasting rewards if done in the name of Jesus and for him. This is where Christians separate from others who do good: the core reason we do good deeds is the spiritual value. 

4. Our Good Deeds Brings Glory To God

Peter writes in 1 Peter 2:12 that we should live a life among non-believers so that "though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us." 

Our good deeds should bring glory to God, not us. Sure, there may recognition here on Earth, but the final glory will and should go to God. Jesus tells his disciples in Matthew  that those who do good things for the sake of receiving glory here on earth will receive their only reward here in this life. When we store up our rewards in heaven, we can be sure that they will not diminish or tarnish, but be available to us for all eternity. 

So whether you care for someone who is sick, or crusade to end an illness world-wide, the key to being successful and Doing Good Deeds Right, is doing them for the LORD.