The Word became Flesh to Contradict False Words

John 1:10-13   He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.  11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.  12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God — 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

God understood that at the very heart of living life on this earth is using words to convey thoughts.  He designed us to be social creatures that thrive in community.  He created us and made us with the ability to learn—especially to learn about each other.

Can you imagine that moment when Adam and Eve first met? A brand new world sparkles and vibrates with color and movement.  God’s anesthetic has just worn off from the first surgical procedure and Adam has just awakened and looked into the face of God, wondering what had just happened.   God simply re-directs Adam’s gaze over at Eve and for the first time they see each other.  God speaks an introduction.  “Adam, this is Eve.  I have made her to be a companion for you.  Eve, this is Adam.  You’re just going to love this guy! I’ve have made you and he to be perfect companions.  I’ve already told him what needs to be done.  Help him do it, would you?” Adam and Eve both nod, but are too lost in the wonder of the gift of each other.  

Adventist Artist, Nathan Greene captured what it must have been like in his painting “The Introduction”.  I love that painting. You may have seen it.  It is a stunning portrayal of that first moment of man's special blessing from God.  Adam and Eve gaze with a wonder and tenderness to set the standard for all time.  And from that moment on, they spend hours getting to know one another.  They form their thoughts into words and share what is in their minds.  They converse and exchange ideas.  And love grows.  They thought they were in love to begin with, but they find that as they express their thoughts and feelings, love deepens.  Then it begins to be seen in their actions towards each other.  This was the perfect marriage.  A match truly made in heaven.  And the actions and words and emotions converge to bring them back to gratitude for a God so loving that He would provide so abundantly for the two of them by giving them a perfect world and each other.  Words were never cruel, never harsh, never impatient or demanding.  Nor were they ever unkind.  And they were never, ever false.

Which is why the words of a serpent in the tree were so easy to believe. Eve had never heard a lie before.  Only truthful words had ever been spoken.  And she suddenly finds herself in conflict, because here is a beautiful snake contradicting God himself.  Unfortunately, she bit on the lie and we were cut off from face to face contact with the Word.

That’s why it was necessary for the Word to come to earth in the form of a Baby.  When man first sinned, they could remember what it was like in the Garden, and could communicate that to generations before the flood.  Adam and Even lived over 900 years, so they told and retold the story of their introduction and what life was like in the garden.  They told of the fateful day when a serpent had deceived them, and how they had been removed from their garden home so that they could not eat any longer of the tree of life and thus perpetuate sin.  They told of how Abel had already died and that each of them was doomed to death, but that there was a Savior coming to redeem them.  The Word Himself. 

But the longer man was out of the Garden, the more man forgot the Word of God.  The farther man got from the Word, the more man’s words were harsh and cruel and untrue. Lies abounded. And the more lies that were told, the less God was recognizable in our world.  And as God became so obscure in the lives of men, He knew that if He were to redeem us, He would have to speak a Word so powerfully that it would resonate down through the corridors of time to all future generations.

And so the Word became flesh. John 1:14   The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

That’s exactly what we needed from the Father.  One who came full of grace and truth.  We needed to once again see God and to sense His presence among us.  So the Word came and He lived a vibrant and passionate life in the midst of the grayness of our existence.  Where we saw shadows, He brought light.  Where we felt pain, He brought healing.  Where we found ourselves mired in the endless cycle of toil, pain and death, He brought joy, hope and life.

Deck the Halls...with Grace!

Luke 2:4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.

5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born,  7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

No fanfare.  No Santa’s.  No blinking lights and tinsel.  Here we arrive at just a quiet stable cave and a feedbox—the original Christmas.  No wish lists. No blaring music or irritating advertising.  Just peace at the end of the labor of childbirth, as Grace Himself, came into the world.  No decorations. No icicle lights on their cave or lighted deer in the front yard.  No ringing bells. No trumpets. Nothing.  Except Grace.  The Grace of a God who would leave the treasures of heaven for the filth of this earth.  Grace that would step out of eternity into time in order to allow us to step out of time into eternity with Him.  Grace that loved His creation so much that He would rather die than live without us.  He would rather risk having us reject Him for eternity, than know that He could have done something to rescue us, but didn’t.

You see, when Jesus came, He decked the halls of this world with nothing more and nothing less than Grace.  He splashed grace around as He decorated lives with it.  The colors of grace brightened the crowds after He had passed by. The touch of grace was felt on the hand of a little dead girl and she lived once again.   The sounds of grace filled the ears of those who heard, “Neither do I condemn you.”  Or “Go in peace, your faith has made you well.”  The smell of grace was in the air as the rotting, oozing flesh of lepers was suddenly fresh and clean.  And the taste of grace filled the stomachs of at least 5,000, not to mention the 12 at the last supper.  Everywhere Jesus went, he decorated lives with grace.  And there is nothing more beautiful than a grace-filled life.

There is nothing so amazing as seeing one who has been caked with the filth of sin suddenly clean.  Nothing so lovely as seeing one who has suffered unimaginable abuse suddenly free to sing.  Nothing quite so attractive as a once-harsh life, now softened and considerate of others.  There is nothing so appealing as a grace-filled, gracious person.

And that’s why He came.  That’s what gets lost in the celebration of our times.  That’s what the ads cover up and the commercialism smothers.  That’s what the frenetic pace causes us to forget.  That God decorated our lives with grace, and wants us to extend that same grace to others.  He wants us to realize each Christmas that He is actually calling  us to help Him decorate for the season!  He wants us to actually be a seasoning for the season.  To be people who have been changed by grace, and can joyfully splash his grace around a graceless world.  To be so changed by his grace that your very being is different from those in the world around you, and you can’t help decking the halls with His grace.

Why Did God Pick the Wrong Place?

Can you hear Mary?  We often try to deify her, but come on, she was a teenager.  Even the most spiritual teens I know will gripe.  I can hear her on that last day, as the labor pains begin saying, “ I didn’t know when I said yes that it would mean I would have to do this.  It’s too hard God!  I can’t make it.  I can see Bethlehem off in the distance but this pain is too great.  I can’t make it.  And as they seek lodging, she is to the point where she is having to stick her sleeve in her mouth so it muffles her screams of pain from the labor.  And now she’s stuck in a barn, with the smell of animal poop filling it.  She knows it is time and I’m sure between contractions she must have wondered about the irony of it all.  I’m sure she must have said, “No God, not here!  Your Son deserves better than this.  Please find us a better place!  Get us out of this dump!”  Pretty hard to say at a time like this, “I am the Lord’s servant, may it be done to me as you have said.”

So why did God pick the wrong place?  Why didn’t he just whip up an ultra-modern hospital out on the plain with a giant rotating beacon to guide them in?  His Son of course would be the sole occupant and then the beacon could forever guide the faithful on their pilgrimage to the hospital shrine.  The birthplace of Jesus.  But the barn?  Wrong place!

You may feel you are in the wrong place in your life.  You may have committed your life to Jesus and then feel He abandoned you.  Take a lesson from Mary.  Such is not the case.

The message of Christmas is that God intrudes upon the weak and the vulnerable, and this is precisely the message that we so often miss. God does not come to that part of us that swaggers through life, confident in our self-sufficiency. God leaves his treasure in the broken fragmented places of our life. God comes to us in those rare moments when we are able to transcend our own selfishness long enough to really care about another human being.

He must necessarily lead us through those dark places, not to burden us or to scare us, but to change us.  We look at our circumstances and say “I don’t like that.”  God isn’t concerned about our circumstances.  He is interested in our heart.  I like how Rev John Schmidt put it.

Maybe where we are right now in life feels like the wrong place.

Either looking back to what was or looking forward to what might be. 
-- Just not here and now!

We assume that we are going to have to leave this place to get to the right place.

But God is present in all our "wrong" places. God is at work there.

Our circumstances are not the most important thing in life. God is, and our response to Him.  God uses the wrong places of life to make the right changes in us.

Our focus is on making things right for us.  God's focus is making things right in us.

We need to do what God has given us to do.  Right now, right here.

On the wall of the museum of the concentration camp at Dachau is a large and moving photograph of a mother and her little girl standing in line of a gas chamber. The child, who is walking in front of her mother, does not know where she is going. The mother, who walks behind, does know, but is helpless to stop the tragedy. In her helplessness she performs the only act of love left to her. She places her hands over he child's eyes so she will at least not see the horror to come. When people come into the museum they do not whisk by this photo hurriedly. They pause. They almost feel the pain. And deep inside I think that they are all saying: "O God, don't let that be all that there is."

 (from Sermon Illustrations.com)

God's hears those prayers and it is in just such situations of hopelessness and helplessness that his almighty power is born. It is there that God leaves his treasure. As for Mary, so it is with you and I that it is there, right in the middle of the brokenness, right in the middle of the stench, right in the middle of the darkness, when you feel you are lost or in the wrong place,  that’s when Christ is born anew within.
 

Don’t miss it.  Let it happen in you once again and you will find the Hope of the world will restore your hope and give you strength to go on.

But Why? Why Do We Celebrate Christmas?

When was the last time you really thought about why you celebrate Christmas? Oh, we celebrate… buy why do we? In this season where it seems the whole world jumps on board to decorate and sing songs of cheer and give gifts, doesn’t it seem a bit odd that though many can mouth the words, “to celebrate the birth of Christ”, they have no idea what they are really saying?

Doesn’t it strike you as a bit curious that when you ask people on the street what the true meaning of Christmas is they respond: revenue to get the end of the year sales up. Or, a time to celebrate with family and friends. Or, it’s where you get a lot of stuff in one day. And if you were to push that idea and ask why we get lots of stuff in one day, you would get, “because that’s what Christmas is all about.” Yeah, but why?

When was the last time you slowed down to really reflect on the why of Christmas?

There is a one verse in scripture that puts it rather succinctly: For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

There it is. Wrapped up in a single line. For God so loved the world that He gave….

Ponder that. God loved…He gave… Not just a little love… He so loved… One version says: God loved the world so much that He sent His only Son

God was way before Hallmark…but He cared enough to send the very best!!!

That’s good news in itself. God loved us enough to send the very best. Himself. That would be enough to celebrate right there. God comes to town!

Just His coming would be reason enough to celebrate!  But that’s not the end of the verse.  God had a purpose in coming.  He was on a mission.  He loved…and that prompted action.  He saw His newest planet go awry.  He watched as His youngest creation walked away from Him, following another of His wayward children into outright rebellion.

He cried as he heard the words, “We heard your voice and we were afraid…”

He knew, as every parent of a defiant teen knows, that unless drastic action was taken, this young world would be forever lost.  And so He came…  why?

…that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

Ponder that.  I know you’ve heard the words a million times, but slow down a minute and reflect on what that means. Stop your conversation with your neighbor.  Stop trying to impress her.  Stop worrying about lunch. Stop your racing mind.  Just stop. //  And ponder the words that are as familiar as Christmas commercialism.

…that whoever believes in Him, should not perish…  What?  Perish from what?  What do you mean perish?  That’s such an ugly word…perish.  According to the dictionary it means to die, for example, because of harsh conditions or accident.  To come to an end or cease to exist.  Perish.

It is both of these definitions that John was trying to encapsulate with that one word.  Without help, you and I will die because of harsh conditions.  Sin created such harsh conditions, that you and I cannot endure it.  We will perish.  Which means that we will come to an end and cease to exist.  Bottom line…there was no hope of getting out alive.

But God wanted us to live.  In the middle of that cold hard reality, stop.  Stop and listen to what God says. 

God is saying—I LOVE YOU!!!  Ponder that.  I LOVE you.  I love YOU!

Let’s look at that whole verse:  For God (the greatest good) so loved (the greatest action) the world (the greatest need) that He gave (the greatest example) His only Son (the greatest sacrifice) that whoever (the greatest invitation) believes in Him (the greatest response) should not perish (the greatest fate) but have everlasting life (the greatest gift).

That’s the reality of the Christmas season.  To find the Christmas you’ve always longed for, you have to slow down for reflection.  Stop in the middle of the madness and reflect.  Ponder the love behind the greatest gift.  Think about the meaning of God coming down to this little speck in the universe.  Reflect on His invitation to you.  Step out of the rush and do some unhurried contemplation.   Reread the story.  Put yourself there.  Look and see the baby.  Smell the smells.  Hear the sounds.  Feel God’s love surround you.  Slow down for reflection.

And celebrate. Celebrate the Christ in Christmas.

And KNOW

In my last post, Breathe, we looked at the first part of a verse in Psalm 46.  "Be Still..."  Today, I would like to finish that verse..."and know that I am God."

We come to trust things and people in our lives only after they have been shown to be reliable.  Our lawnmowers, our computers, our cars, our appliances, even the pews you are sitting on, have all shown themselves to one degree or another, to be reliable.  How does that happen? We put our trust in them and use them until they prove themselves to be unreliable.  And as soon as we find them to be unreliable, we replace them.  Our 12 year old refrigerator had to be replaced because it became unreliable.  We didn’t know from one day to the next if it would be ice cold or toasty warm when we opened the door.  Ice cold, was freezing our food and toasty warm was ruining it. Eventually, it got to where it was more on the warm side and almost never cold. Cleaning the coils, replacing the thermostat and more didn’t solve the problem, so we decided it was time for a new one.  It is keeping things reliably cold.  We trust in the new one again…and we will continue to do so until it proves itself unreliable.

So what does a refrigerator have to do with being still and knowing He is God?  Great question.  I’m glad you asked.  First, many have come to view God as unreliable.  He didn’t answer my prayer.  He didn’t heal my dad.  He isn’t feeding the hungry.  He doesn’t protect the innocent from being killed and stuffed into a suitcase.  And on and on we go attempting to show how unreliable God is.  But if we were able to sweep back a curtain in order to view the supernatural realm, I bet we would be amazed that in every instance, the devil would look up surprised to find us looking at him as he seeks to maim, kill and destroy and then would point at God, blaming Him for not stopping the carnage.  And I bet if we could look closer, we would see a God who is always working to protect, yet within the bounds of respecting human freedom of choice, which the devil never respects.  He continues to push and cajole and tempt and pressure and persuade and lead us ever farther away from God…sometimes against our own free will, using our natural inclinations  toward sin against us.  God has always been reliable, even when the devil tries to make Him look otherwise.  God is ever-present.  Ever watching.  Ever-loving.

To truly understand this command of God to be still and know that He is God, as well as understand how to weather life’s storms, we must see this passage in it’s complete context.  

Psa. 46:0   For the director of music. Of the Sons of Korah. According to alamoth. A song.  1   God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.  2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,  3 though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. Selah 4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.  5 God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day.  6 Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts.  7 The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah 8 Come and see the works of the LORD, the desolations he has brought on the earth.  9 He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire.  10 “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”  11 The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah

 

Do  you see it?  Do you see the main reason He wants us to learn to be still?  When life is uncertain, when everything in your world is going wrong, when we come to the end of time, when we don’t know which way to turn, when things are crumbling all around us and it seems like we are totally going down, God says…don’t panic.  Don’t freak out.  Don’t go running around spewing forth a stream of hopelessness as if all is lost and freaking everyone else out.  He says: Be still, and KNOW that I…Am…GOD.  Not you.  Me.  You don’t have to control this, He says, I’ve got it.  You  be still!  You rest in me.  You don’t lose hope and grow discouraged.  Be still.  Breathe.  Pray. Inhale. Obey Exhale.  And I will bring a renewed sense of hope, courage and peace into the chaos.  Breathe.  Pray. Inhale.  Obey. Exhale.  Don’t worry about anyone else and how they are doing with me.  Worry about you.  And if I ask you to share with someone…obey.  Be still. Pray. Obey.

We may not know what will happen, but we can be at peace because we know that no matter what happens,  God is still God and has all things under His control.  Be still and know that He is God.

Breathe!!!

Have you noticed that not being able to breathe stirs up panic feelings in us? I’m a lifelong asthmatic and I know what it feels like not to breathe.  It’s scary.  It can create a lot of anxiety.  But the worst and most frantic time I remember was the swim meet my Senior year of academy. 

I was entered in the long-distance race.  The year before, since no one else had signed up for it, I had volunteered and much to everyone’s surprise, including my own, I had won it by almost a pool length.   So this year, I was favored to win.  It was 4 laps or 8 lengths of the pool.  The whistle blew and we all dove in.  I took the lead very early, and continued to hold the lead through the first three laps.  I made the turn to start my last lap and pushed off of the wall, and was over halfway down the pool,  when suddenly my whole body seized up.  Just froze in mid-stroke.  One arm was locked above my head and the other was down at my waist and nothing would move.  I remember looking up at my classmates lining the pool and hearing them scream, “Swim.  Swim!” 

But I couldn’t move.  And then, I began to sink.  I couldn’t even breathe in or scream out.  Just quietly began to sink with my muscles rigid and locked.  I remember my feet going down, then my head just silently slipping under the water.  My eyes wouldn’t even close as the pool water stung them.  I felt myself going farther and farther down in the deep end of the pool and could do absolutely nothing to help myself. I felt both anxious and overwhelmed.  I desperately wanted to breathe, but could not get back to the surface to save my own life.

Finally, after what seem like minutes, though I’m sure it was only seconds, one of my classmates dove in, came to the bottom and pulled me up to the surface.  As I broke the surface, my lungs inhaled sharply and it broke the muscle spasm which had gripped my whole body.  They pulled me out of the pool, and I just lay there on the sidewalk and gasped for air.  Let me tell you, not breathing creates a lot of anxiety.

We talk a lot about our need for prayer, about how good prayer is, about how necessary it is to our spiritual walk, yet we seldom seem to take the time to pray.  It has been said that prayer is the breath of the soul.  If this is so, then perhaps the reason we so often feel anxious or overwhelmed in life is because we are not breathing! 

In order to do away with the anxiety and panic in our lives, we must allow our souls to breathe deeply.  And one of the primary reasons we are not breathing deeply enough is because we are not still long enough to do so.  “Be still”, God says.  Being still is the first requisite to breathing well. 

When difficulties come; breathe.  When it feels like life is going to run you over; breathe.  When you feel uncertain or scared or anxious; breathe.

Ellen White, in her book Desire of Ages, page 667, says,  “The path of sincerity and integrity is not a path free from obstruction, but in every difficulty we are to see a call to prayer. There is no one living who has any power that he has not received from God, and the source whence it comes is open to the weakest human being. {DA 667.4}

Thankfulness as a way of Life

When bad things happen, we rarely challenge our own thoughts as to their rightness or wrongness.  We simply assume that if we thought them, they must be right.  We have the arrogance to believe that we are the final authority on what we see and we have little room for a change in perspective. We hold to our own opinions so tightly that we refuse to see any possibility that we just might be wrong.

A life of ingratitude is the result.  Nothing that happens around us can then be good enough to suit us.  Nothing is worthy of our lofty heights, and it is easy to dismiss it all with a sweep of the hand as being beneath us.  Then, when trouble comes, it is also very easy to fall into a victim’s role rather than a student’s role.

We complain and cry that life isn’t fair and that we don’t deserve all of this pain and often conclude that if there is a God, He must hate us to put us through all of this misery.  In short, our perspective has become our god.  And our perspective is what causes us to either make thankfulness a way of life or miss out on it.

Either we see things from a perspective of being grateful, or from a perspective that leaves us wanting more and feeling like we not only deserve it, but that we are getting ripped off it we don’t get it.

Many of us are growing past the material side of things.  That is, we’ve seen that more material possessions won’t make us any happier, but we still want more.  We never seem to be satisfied.  A new computer. A new car.  A new sofa. A new job.  A new house.  You may say, “Nope…I’m satisfied.  Don’t want any of that.”

What about more power?  More influence?  More skill?  More money for the job you are being asked to do?  Nope…not me.  I’m happy.  Well…maybe a little more money.  But really, I’m good.

More intimacy in my marriage.  More time for doing what I want.  More respect.  More love.  More appreciation from others.  Are we getting closer to home?

We spend our lives thinking if only we had more of something then we’d be happy.  And while we know that’s not necessarily true, the fact is, we are right.  We do need more of something.  The catch is having more… of the right stuff.

If we only had more of Jesus in our lives, we would be.  If we had more trust in Divine power and less trust in ourselves, we would be more settled.  If we had more belief that God really did love us and has our best interest in mind and less doubt, we could learn to relax in His care.  Again, it’s a matter of perspective.  And where do we get that perspective?  Let’s go to the Word.

Phil 4:6-7 NIV  6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Phil. 4:6-7 NLT    Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.  7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

I like the way that reads, don’t you?  It makes it readily understandable. Look at verse 6 again.   Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. This is the part we looked at a few weeks ago when we were talking about worry.  Don’t worry, instead pray.  Now let’s look a little more closely at this last part of verse 6.  Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 

It is not wrong to have needs.  God knows what you need—but He wants to hear from you.  He wants you to articulate what you need.  Not just what you want, but what your needs are.  See—we so often tell God what we want that we’ve often confused the two.  And there is nothing wrong with telling God what you want—but remember that He has only promised to supply what you need, though often He will go far beyond that to supply some of the wants as well.

Tell God what you need.  Do you really know what you need?  Is it truly more money?  Or is it a more trusting heart in God and a willingness to watch His provision?

Is it for your loved one to be healed?  Or is it for you to learn to yield yourself to the will of God?  Which do you want and which do you really need?

Is it for your kids to be kept safe physically or spiritually?  Sure we want our kids to be kept safe physically—but we need our kids to be kept safe spiritually.

The very act of determining our wants from our real needs can help change our perspective. Tell God what you NEED.  Not worrying—praying.  Tell Him what you need, and then look at the last statement of the verse: and thank Him for all He has done.  Go back and recount what God has already done for you.  Not just a blanket, generic, “Thank you for all your many blessings”, but where you begin to realize that He has provided for so many of your needs and wants, starting with your greatest need—salvation, and working from there.  The perspective of gratitude gives you purpose.

 You and I can live our days with that purpose because there was One who took our diseases upon Himself, and our worst disease, sin, was enough to do Him in—not because He had to die.  He was perfectly healthy in every way.  It was we who were sick and doomed to die.  But when He began to do a character transplant, our sickness required so much of Him that it cost His very life.   With that realization should come gratitude that changes the way we live our lives.

Phil. 4:6-7 NLT    Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.  (Then notice the by-product.) 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

Those four statements can change your world. Don’t worry about anything; instead pray about everything.  Tell God what you need.  And thank Him for all He has done.

That’s how you develop thankfulness as a way of life.  And the thing you are looking for becomes reality.  Peace.  You can have God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand.  And it is His peace that will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

Don’t worry.   Pray. Tell God what you need.  Thank him for what He has done.  That will change your perspective.  And that will bring you peace in your life.