hope

Of All the Gifts You Get This Christmas . . . . .

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Out of all the many Christmas presents you receive this year, I pray that most of all you get Jesus. I pray you get as much of Jesus as you can possibly stand — and then some — until He’s running out your ears and eyes and pouring out of your conversations and eminating from your actions.

I pray you get His peace that can’t be understood, but only experienced. I pray this peace will guard your hearts and minds tonight so that fear and doubt can’t creep in.

I pray you get His love that is wider than your imagination, deeper than your experience, longer than your history, and wilder than any love you have ever known before. I pray this love fills you up and spills out on to every single person you meet.

I pray you get the Everlasting Arms underneath and above and all around you. I pray you know that there is never a moment where you are outside of the Father’s watchful providential care. Not one sparrow lands without Him knowing it, so you can rest assured He knows where you are, even when you don’t.

I pray you get the same joy you first had on the first Christmas you can remember. I pray for the joy that overwhelmed you in those first moments of your salvation. I pray that uncontainable, unexplainable, unlimited joy will be yours.

I pray you can love yourself as your Abba loves you and love others the same. I pray you love God most of all, with every cell you have in your body. Mostly, I pray you can receive the Love that won’t let you go and let that Love flow through you to those who need it most.

I pray you cherish each moment as the gift it really is and the people in your life. Never take anything or anyone for granted and may your life be one big THANK YOU back to Jesus for all He’s done for you, not only this Christmas, but every single day of your life.

Amen.

A Very Un-Christmasy Blog, Or Hard Lessons I Learned Again

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This isn’t the ususal yuletide greetings and jolly fat wishes for a happy and merry Christmas. This is what I had to learn yet again because my head is harder than that fruit cake you’lll probably get from FedEx, courtesty of Aunt Marge.

You can’t make anyone like you or be interested in you. You can only be who God has called you to be and run as hard as you can after Jesus. If God has someone for you, you’ll find them running just as hard as you in the same direction.

You can’t make anyone return your friendship. You can only be a friend for your part and keep being a friend, whether the kindly gesture is returned or not.

In fact, the truest love gives without expecting anything back. Love seeks the best for the other, no matter what it costs the giver, and never seeks what’s best for self over the other person.

Jesus loved like that. He came and gave all His love to a world that either rejected it, or –much worse than that– ignored it. Jesus died for ungrateful people who have yet to acknowledge His gift, much less receive it.

So maybe this is a kind of Christmas blog. It comes with a Yuletide Challenge: Find one person to give a gift to who you know won’t repay the favor. Seek out those who are unloveable and love them. Seek out those who are unwanted, and show them Christ wants them. Give not just presents or money or time, but you– your life, your aspirations and goals and dreams, everything you are. Give yourself away this Christmas.

I will probably need to re-learn these lessons again, but hopefully not for a while. They’re not the kind that are easy to learn. But every now and then, we need to be reminded.

I love what I heard someone say when explaining why we sing to God every week. It’s not that He needs to be reminded, but we do. We’re the ones who forget who we are and how much we need God and how faithful God has been, is, and will ever be toward those who trust in Him.

Now go drink some wassail.

An Advent Plea: The Final Day

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“Oh, come, Desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind;
Oh, bid our sad divisions cease,
And be yourself our King of Peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!”

For us who see a broken world filled with broken homes and broken families, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who see wars and rumors of more wars and neverending strife and conflict in every corner of the globe, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who can’t seem to quiet the inner chaose and noise inside and are drowning in a sea of voices telling us who and what we are, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who have lost nearly all hope and are hanging on to our faith by a very slim thread, come to us, Emmanuel.

Come in the midst of the conflicts among nations and bring peace on earth, good will to men. Come in the midst of broken homes and bring wholeness and healing and restoration. Come in the midst of inner chaos and bring Your calm to the midst of our raging storms within.

For us who know that we don’t work right and never will until You come with healing wings, come to us Emmanuel.

“Bring Your peace into our violence Bid our hungry souls be filled

Word now breaking Heaven’s silence Welcome to our world, Welcome to our World”

(Chris Rice).

An Advent Plea Day 6

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“Oh, come, our Dayspring from on high,
And cheer us by your drawing nigh,
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!”

For us who have been touched by death’s dark shadows, both near and far, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who have seen loved ones get sick, grow old and frail, and pass away, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who know death isn’t natural or right, that it isn’t the original plan, but a product of the sin of Adam and Eve, come to us Emmanuel.

For us, who long to see broken bodies made whole, sickness healed, feeble minds grow strong, blind eyes given sight, lame made to walk, and the dead raised to new life, come to us, Emmanuel.

Come to us who long for perfect healing that can only come from You. Come to us who long for the day when we shall never grow old or mourn anymore or have to say goodbyes to those we love. You who are our peace and comfort now in days of loss and sorrow will be our joy and triumph in the days of restoration and joy yet to come.

Come, Lord Jesus, come.

An Advent Plea Day 3

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“Oh, come, oh, come, our Lord of might,
Who to your tribes on Sinai’s height
In ancient times gave holy law,
In cloud and majesty and awe.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!”

For us who are weak and frail, come to us, Emmanuel, in Your power and might.

For us who keep making promises that we fail to keep and vows that we never fulfill, come to us, Emmanuel, who fulfilled both Your end and our end of the Law.

For us who struggle through bad days where everything goes wrong and nothing goes as planned, where it is all we can do to survive through the next moment, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who have come to realize that we will never change or break old habits or start new godly ones without Your indwelling Life lived inside us, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who have a path littered with little golden calves and homemade idols of power, success, fame, popularity and all the other gods we’ve tried to replace you with, come to us, Emmanuel.

We who stumble in the dark need Your Light. We who are drowning in a sea of voices all around us that confuse us and cause us to lose our own identity need to hear Your still small voice that can silence all the other voices and remind us of our true selves, who we are in You. Only You can bid the chaotic waves in our hearts and minds be still and bring peace to our inner world.

Come, Lord Jesus, come to us.

An Advent Plea Day 2

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“Oh, come, our Wisdom from on high,
Who ordered all things mightily;
To us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!”

For us who have lost our way again and again and need once more to be taught the way in which we should walk, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who feel crowded and bombarded by all the voices telling us a myriad of different things, telling us who they think we are and who they think we should be, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who lack wisdom and understanding, who often feel more like victims than victors, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who just need to hear once more the Voice that says good things about us and calls us Beloved and can drown out all the other voices with a whisper, come to us, Emmanuel.

Come be our Wisdom. Come be our Strength. Come be our Confidence and Security. Come show us the way to go and guide us in it, for You Yourself are the way. Come reveal truth to us, for You Yourself are the truth. Come and make our lives full and abundant and overflowing, for You Yourself are the life. Our life.

Come, Jesus, Come.

More Glorious Impossibilities

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First of all, yay for vacations. And boo for places that don’t have free wi-fi. Hence, the lack of blogging the last 4 days.

I did read an Advent devotional that pretty much rocked my world. It’s from a fantastic little book called The Christ of Christmas by Calvin Miller. It’s a 31-day devotional that covers the month of December. I shamelessly urge you to go out and buy it today.

The devotional I read centered on Elizabeth, who was geriatric and pregnant, and Mary, who was a virgin and pregnant. Two opposite ends of the spectrum, yet still recipients of the miraculous. The glorious impossible.

Like when you were once dead in sin and to every thing that really mattered in life, including God, but now you are gloriously more alive than you’ve ever been and awake to all the riches God has for you. Glorious impossibilities.

Like when you were stamped with failure and disaster, but God stamped you with His own signature, making you priceless, and called you BELOVED. Glorious impossibilities.

Or when you were a stranger and alone and had no one who understood you or your pain, but God has given you a forever family who walks with you through every possible joy or trial, where your joys are multiplied and your sorrows divided (my kind of math). Glorious impossibilities.

Like where the King of the Universe whom creation and everything in it could not possibly contain coming down as a tiny fetus into the womb of a 13-year old. This same God who knows your name, who saw your face in your darkest moment of weakness when even you couldn’t love yourself, and loved you and thought you were worth dying for.

Glorious impossibilities. The kind that you will see every day of your life if you keep your eyes open to all that God is up to in and around you. The kind that He will accomplish through you if you just give Him the tiniest bit of room to work and offer to Him the frailest of agreements.

The kind that made the Christmas season a reality.

Thoughts from a Good Conversation with a Friend Tonight

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I can’t remember who said it, but I love where I read that true friendship (or any other relationship born out of mutual love of Jesus) is where the Jesus in me recognizes and responds to the Jesus in you.

That’s what happened tonight. I met with a friend and we had really good conversation. It was not just information that got passed along. I think somewhere in the midst of all the spoken words, I found healing and I felt burdens slip away that I wasn’t even aware I had been carrying all this time.

There really is something beautiful about fellowship where we mutually encourage each other, pray for each other, carry each other’s burdens, and be strong where the other is weak. We pray for the other when the other can’t find words of their own.

Sometimes the only way you can love yourself and see yourself as you truly exist in God’s eyes is to have someone else see it in you. Sometimes, you never know how the small acts of kindness you do matter, and you may be completely unaware that you did anything at all, until someone else notices.

True friendships require that I am willing to take time I don’t have to spend with you. It means that I sacrifice convenience for the sake of Christlikeness in the other person. I can’t just be on the receiving end all the time. I must be willing to pour my life into someone else, too.

I am thankful for those small moments when I am comfortable with me and content with all that I have in my hands. I am thankful when I really see that I am far more blessed than all I could ever hope to deserve and all those obstacles are just more ways that God can bless me by showing Himself strong in my weakness.

Thank you, friend, for being Jesus to me tonight and showing me Jesus in myself. May everyone else you meet be as encouraged and blessed by your faithfulness to God as I was tonight.

Lights in the Dark

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“Everything was created through him;
      nothing—not one thing!—
      came into being without him.
   What came into existence was Life,
      and the Life was Light to live by.
   The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;
      the darkness couldn’t put it out” (John 1:4-5)

In a sermon I heard today, I was reminded about the difference between light and dark. Darkness is nothing but the absence of light. It has no inherent power of its own.

All the darkness in the world flees away before the power of one single candle. You never heard of darkness putting out a light before, did you?

The only reason the world is in darkness and people can’t find their way and families are adrift is that the lights aren’t shining. Too many people have lit their candles and stuck them under baskets out of fear or conformity or shame.

The only way that people around you can see their way clearly to God is if you shine. That’s what stars do, after all. They don’t fire cannons or raise banners or sing anthems. They just shine.

We are stars in a dark world. When we shine, we reflect the glory of God and show people what He looks like. If we don’t shine, how will anyone be able to know how good this God is or how strong He is to save?

You may not be able to preach a sermon or recite an entire chapter out of the Bible. You may not be able to lead worship or create artistic masterpieces. But there’s one thing you can do as well as anyone else.

You can shine.

No one can tell the story of what God has done in your life better than you can. No one can walk beside someone who’s going through the same tragedies and heartbreaks and obstacles that you went through as well as you can.

Remember that Advent is all about the coming of the Light of the world. All the powers of hell couldn’t overcome Him and the world has never been the same since.

I pray that you will simply reflect the glorious beautiful Love that Jesus shines on you to others. May you be a beacon of hope to those trying to find their way Home.

I pray you shine!

Stopping the Parade

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Some moments are so precious and rare that they stop you in your tracks. Some are so beautiful that they become engrained in your mind the same way an image is burned on to a strip of film.

Today, as I wached the Christmas parade in downtown Franklin, I noticed a man standing with his arms around a little boy who had Down’s syndrome. I watched how loving the man was toward the boy and assumed he was the boy’s father.

At one point, an older man stopped the parade, got out of his car, walked over to the boy, and handed him a stuffed toy dog. I think that image will be forever in my memory.

At one time, we were all in a parade like that. Slowly marching through history, trying anything and everything to fill the deep aching inside. None of the flashing lights or sounds could fil the void or fix the brokenness inside.

Then God stopped the parade. He entered human history in a hidden corner of the world in a lowly barn to a peasant couple in backwoods Bethlehem. God became one of us to find us and rescue us from our sins and ourselves.

That man, Jesus, lived a life we could never hope to live and satisfied the requirements of God that we never could. He climbed up a hill and died a criminal’s death that should have been yours and mine and rose from the grave, leaving all our sin and brokenness and fear of death behind in the grave.

Where were you when God stopped your parade? Where were you when Jesus entered into your history and became something more than a historical figure or religious icon? Where were you when Jesus saved you?

I know at the end there will be a different kind of parade. We will all be in it, along with every saint who ever lived and followed Jesus. It will be a triumphant parade with songs of victory and shouts of joy. Jesus will be the grand marshall and this parade will never end.

I hope during this frantic Christmas season, Jesus will stop your parade and speak peace over you in the few moments of stillness. I pray He will remind you that it’s His birthday we’re celebrating and what He wants more than anything is your heart surrendered and you being a vessel that He can love and reach and heal people through.