Two words

There are two words in the Bible that I love. I love them so much because they give me hope. They give me a sense of security. They show me love, mercy, grace, kindness, patience and give me a reason to rejoice. They strengthen my faith. These two words show me that even when I am living in sin. When I have chosen to run from God. When I am mad, sad and rotten towards God, He is still there. These two words are profound and show us what kind of God that we have. They are two words that most of us when we see them in the Bible skip right over them because we want to get to the good stuff. But the truth of the matter is the good stuff is in these two words. Because these two words give me life that no one else can give. They give me a salvation that no one else can give. They show me that my life has nothing to do with me. They show me that no matter how much I try and do for God He will always out do me. They show me that no matter how much I try and be for God He will always be more. It shows me that I can't do it on my own, I actually can't do anything at all with out these two words. It shows me that God serves me, fills me, and gives me what I do not deserve but He graciously pours out on me and in me because He loves me. The two words are simply this... But God. Ephesians 2:1-10 says it all  
¹ And you were dead in the trespasses and sins ² in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— ³among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. ⁴But God, being rich in mercy,because of the great love with which he loved us, ⁵even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— ⁶and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. ⁸For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing;  it is the gift of God, ⁹not a result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. 


Read over this verse and see yourself in those first three verses and then see in the rest what God does for us despite who we are. WOW we have an amazing GOD!!! Because without those two words I remain the person in the first three verses and I never become the last seven. Two of the most powerful words in the Bible...But God.

The weary world rejoices

Christmas time is one of those times that is crazy because of all the busyness that we find ourselves in. We go out shopping and the lines of traffic and in the parking lots and in the stores wear down our stress levels and patience. We get home and we are not only exhausted physically, but also mentally. This time of year also challenges our spiritual walk as we have to be patient and loving. Then we have the family time which can be sometimes exhausting yet energizing. It depends on your dynamics. You got in-laws and your own family and these times can just get crazy. For some of us it is a time of emotional pain as we remember broken relationships with family and friends. Or we remember lost loved ones.Then you have Christmas eve service, and this year Christmas Day service. Some of you go and serve those in need by preparing a meal or giving gifts. And don't forget about all those holiday Christmas cards of the family that you have to send out every year.  Are you exhausted yet? Let's just simply say that Christmas should be a time of celebration and instead more often than not when it is over we are looking for some time to take a nap. The holidays can make us weary. And I am reminded of a few things that I hope will energize you during this season. In the song O Holy Night there is a line that says "The weary world rejoices." As I pondered this line in my own life and as I looked at the words of Jesus who says "come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden. Christmas I believe can be a time of healing in our lives. As we think about Jesus and we think of that line in the hymn that we will sing in just a few short days. I pray that your weary world can rejoice. That as you stand in lines buying gifts. As you wait patiently in parking lots, check out lines, and grocery stores. As you remember those broken relationships, and lost loved ones. As you spend time with family. Sit at Church. I hope that you rejoice because our world is weary because we forget that Jesus' birth brought us reasons to rejoice, to be patient, to remember our loved ones, to heal broken relationships. So I pray during this Christmas season that you rejoice that Christ was born and remember that when you are weary. Because Christ's birth gives us hope and a reason to rejoice in this weary world. All we have to do is come to Him and he will give us rest from all the busyness and heartache in our lives. So rejoice yourself out of your weary world because Christ was born so we could rejoice in Him forever.

The cultural external vs. the eternal internal

Our culture is ever changing. It is a culture that loves one thing one moment and the next that same thing is in the trash and irrelevant. Clothing styles have come and gone. Hair styles have come and gone. Technology changes about every five seconds. And in order to keep up with the culture that we live in we must be ever changing as well. One of the struggles I have with the Church is that we try to keep up with culture in a way that is not good. I am not speaking in terms of music, technology, teaching etc. because I fully believe we need to adapt and be relevant in these areas. But what I see is that the culture can shape externals like music, technology, etc. But what I see is that the culture shapes more and more internals in us than we think. For instance I work primarily with Middle School and High School students but for every student there is a parent or two. And I often see a dip in our attendance during certain times of the year when sports, drama, music etc. are in full force. Now these things are not bad but what I find is that these things are shaping our thinking about God. The externals of the culture are shaping the internal heart of our lives. For instance if a student has a game or practice for something they will not miss it. Even if the student does not want to go. The parent will say something like you have made a commitment to this and you need to keep our commitment. Now take this same scenario and apply it to Church. The student does not want to go because they "have to much homework," or they are tired and usually they are allowed to stay home. Now wait a minute we are committed to an external thing like sports, music, drama etc. but we are not committed to the Church of Jesus Christ. This is always interesting to me that the cultural things have more priority over the things of God. That the cultural things which are really only going to shape you externally in your life have more power over us than Church or the internal things that will shape you forever. Is not interesting that we excuse not just our kids but even ourselves from Church for the externals of the world. For most Christians they would rather do anything else besides go to Church. They would rather play in the culture of externals than sit in the house of God and grow internally. No wonder that most Church's are declining in the world. No wonder most Church's can't meet their budgets. No wonder most Church's have massive amounts of debt. Our loyalties are with the external culture and not with the internal Jesus. Our commitments are to what people can see and what they think of us. Rather than to Jesus. Our cultural allegiance is shaming the Church and our allegiance to Jesus is so weak that it is proving to the culture that everything else is more important than our faith. Think about the scenario of making a kid keep his commitment to a team but then in the same breath not making him keep that same commitment to Church. So in essence you are telling that child that a commitment to a team or the culture is more important than their commitment to the Jesus. Or take how we spend our money on new toys that most of us do not need, and take a look at the financial status of the Church. What you buy and spend your money on tells you that you care more about the culture and the toys than you do about the Church of Jesus. You can play this scenario out in so many ways. Now I realize that there are things that we should be committed too. I realize that there are things that we need to spend our money on. I am not condemning these things but I am asking myself this question and I as you the question as well. Where is your commitment? Is it with the external things of the culture or the internal things of Jesus? How will you live? And if you have kids what will you show them is most important? I have been looking at this in my own life and have realized that more often than not my heart is torn, which tells me one thing that I need more internal focus on Jesus so that so that as I live and breathe in this world I can focus on the internal struggles of those around me and not just give them external solutions for internal problems. But the only way to do this is to commit to the internal heart of Jesus because the internal things will last and the external things will fade away.

Compare, Complain, or Pray

I have had crohns disease for 12 years now and it has been a battle. You have ups and downs in life. Your weight fluctuates. Your moods can swing from one extreme to the other sometimes. You have no energy most days, yet you get up and do what you need to do. As I have been thinking about my disease and the toll it has taken on me I have to be honest and say it is hard. There are days where I want to do nothing because of the exhaustion but I keep moving. There are days where I want to crawl into a hole because I am very sick, but I keep moving. I always find it amazing that God has given me strength through all of this. I think of what Jesus went through for me and what I have does not even compare. I also think of Paul  and his troubles and mine does not even compare. I often think of those who have cancer or other diseases that sometimes take their life or make their life very difficult. There is always someone who has it worse than we do. But I am not sure God calls us to compare our lives, our struggles with others. For very person their struggle is real to them whether it is big or small. There are real emotions tied to it. There are personal struggles with everyone. I think one of the struggles that we have is that we sometimes don't deal with our emotions and feelings because there is someone who has it worse than we do and we think that we are complaining. But Jesus wants us to cast all cares on Him. To come to Him when we are weary or heavy. I don't think that Jesus wants us to compare but to cast our cares to Him. He wants to know what is going on in our life and not hide it from Him. I think that our comparing culture has kept us from interacting with our Savior in a real and honest way. Our comparing culture has driven us to hide our feelings, hurts, pains, and sickness. And as a result we stay hurt, and sick rather than be healed and restored by Jesus. So maybe we should stop comparing and start praying to Jesus. The other side of the story is that sometimes we look at people and we compare them to us in a ways that say "they have it better than I do." I think that when we do this we begin to complain to God and others rather than pray to Him. So I have to make a choice in my life and so do most of us... will we compare, complain or pray.

Remember Verse 11

Growing up we had this tradition in our house where we would read the Christmas story before we opened gifts. So go grab your Bible and read Luke 2:1-21. 

How many of you read this story before you get to open gifts on Christmas morning?  Now it is really hard to listen to this story on Christmas morning, is it not because you have all these gifts sitting in front of you and your dad or mom or someone who is half asleep is reading the story and you just want to know what is in those packages. And besides you have heard the story about a million times anyway. You practically know it by heart right? You know there was an innkeeper, and no room in the inn, there was a manger, Jesus was born in a smelly stable around all the animals, there were shepherds and wise men that came. You know the story. 

And because we know the story we sort of just tune it out, or we are trying to make our siblings laugh and giggle. Or trying to figure out who is getting the big huge box and what the heck is in it. But I think as we think about this story, as we process the Christmas story we forget on one major thing.

You know I love christmas, I love giving people gifts, I enjoy getting things that I need. I love spending time with family and eating all the christmas goodies. I love seeing all me nieces and nephews open their gifts. It is so awesome to see the joy and excitment on their faces and their little hearts and lives are changed for a few moments. And this is how we are too I think when we get gifts we are excited and joyful, hopefully thankful. 

Christmas is one of those times that you see all the presents under the tree and you hope that you get the one thing that you asked for. The one thing that is going to change your life. Maybe its a new piece of technology so you can now be up to date with that. Maybe its some new clothes so you can fit in with your crew. Whatever it is we hope we get the things that are going to change our life.

Growing up there was a tradition in our house that someone would get what we called the BIG GIFT. Now this was no ordinary gift, it was not your socks and underwear gift. This was something better than all the gifts under the tree. And there was a rotation of this gift between my siblings. So someone different got the BIG GIFT every year. And it was always the last gift. My dad would say something like oh there is one more gift and he would go and get the Big Gift from the garage where he was hiding it. Then he would make whoever it was for close there eyes and he would proceed to bring it in and put it right in front of them. 

Well I remember when I was maybe 10 or 11 I learned that it was my year for the Big Gift and so we opened all the meaningless gifts and then it was time for my dad to make his voyage to the garage to bring in my gift so he goes out and gets it comes in with it tells me to shut my eyes so I do, my heart is pounding out of my chest but of course I am trying to keep in my excitement and be totally cool about getting the Big Gift even though I want to scream with excitement. So he brings it in and sets it in front of me and says open your eyes. And there in front of me sits a big box so I open it quickly and inside is no other than a Huffy BMX bike. Now at 10 this Big Gift is life changing. It’s like getting your license when you are 16 except your only 10. You now have freedom, and can go wherever you want, as long as your parents say it is ok. You can go out and do tricks and pretend you are a BMX rider. You can make jumps, show off to your friends, start a bike gang with all your other 10 year old buddies. I mean this is awesome. This bike was going to change my life. And I rode that bike into the ground until I was 16 when I got my license and then it was bye bye bike hello car.

And that gift that I got was so momentary but I thought it would change my life forever. And I think that this is how we often think in our lives. That on Christmas morning we pass quickly through the story of Christ so we can get to the things that we think will change our lives. And we spend so much money on these things that for most of us end up in a closet or the trash a few months or years later. And we miss a really important part of the Christmas story. Check out verse 11 for me. It says this “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a SAVIOR who is Christ the Lord.”

Listen I know that at this time of year all us preachers talk about how we can’t forget the most important gift which is Jesus. But here is the reality in our lives, every year Christmas comes and we forget about the BIG GIFT of Jesus Christ. You see I think that for a lot of us we treat Jesus just like we treat most of our Christmas gifts. He is awesome when you first get Him. He is going to change your life. He is going to make everything better. Then like my bike, you take Him for a ride, for a few weeks, months maybe a few years and then all of the sudden we upgrade to something better and Jesus once again gets put in the attic for awhile.

But if you look at verse 11 it says that “unto us a Savior was born who is Christ the Lord.   The Lord came, Jesus came to be our Savior, to be our everything. To be our Big Gift. But I think for a lot of us we are still looking under the tree for our Savior. Yeah we might have Jesus but more often than not He is just like the socks and underwear we get every year and so we put Him aside and look and hope for something better. We look for the Big Gift that will be our “savior” to our friends, our job, our emotions our habits and just as soon as we get that gift it is not enough to save us from our insecurities. It does not save us from our emptiness. It does not save us really in anyway. The only thing it does is distract us from the real Savior who was born to you and he is the Savior because He is the Lord.

And He is the only gift that will save you from your insecurities, from your emptiness, from your habits. He is the only gift that gave back to you in a way that no other gift can.  He is the only gift that not only gave himself to you but continues to give himself to you so that you can not only know the Savior but you can be saved.

So this Christmas when you are sitting around the tree reading the christmas story remember verse 11 “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a SAVIOR who is Christ the Lord.” Remember that no gift will ever save you from anything unless that gift is Christ the Lord.