mercy

The Year of the Lord’s Favor

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“He came to Nazareth where he had been reared. As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place. When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written,

   God’s Spirit is on me;
      he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to
       the poor,
   Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
      recovery of sight to the blind,
   To set the burdened and battered free,
      to announce, “This is God’s year to act!”
He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the place was on him, intent. Then he started in, “You’ve just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place.” (Luke 4:17-21)

I have a  few questions for you to ponder.

What if we choose to see 2012 as the Year of the Lord’s Favor?

What if we not only read these words as only words written 2,000 years ago, but as the very living and breathing words of God that still speak and resonate today?

What if we truly believed that we as Jesus’ body on earth, His hands and feet, could see these things happen with our own eyes?

I’ve been thinking a lot about a conversation I had with a good friend recently at Starbucks. The conversation was about how we could help people walking through struggles and issues and addictions and hurts and help them see that they’re not walking alone. About how we could come alongside them and walk with them and show them the way to freedom the way someone did for us.

We could see people set free from bondage. We could see those who were blind to the truth all these years suddenly seeing the great love the Father has for them. We could see those crippled by the past suddenly walking in the liberty where there is no more shame or guilt, only forgiveness and joy. We could see Jesus healing people through us.

I think if we believe with radical and unquenchable faith in the Jesus who made these words come true, the same things will happen again. I believe if we are willing to stop merely assenting to our faith and live it out in the open for all to see, crazy things will happen.

I believe if you and I say “YES” to whatever Jesus asks us to do and wherever He asks us to go, whenever He asks, there’s no telling what He will do in us and through us. Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, as the Bible proclaims, what God has in store for us who believe with our hearts and lives and not just our heads.

Do you believe that? Then say “YES” to Jesus now.

Christmas Is Over?

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I can remember on December 26 that I always had a sort of letdown feeling. It didn’t matter that I got everything on my wish list or that I saw all my family happy and together. I still couldn’t help but feeling a bit depressed on the day after.

If Christmas is just a day, then that’s a natural feeling. If we spend so much time and energy in anticipation for one day of presents and food, then there’s no way the actual day can live up to all the hype. Especially these days when there is more and more pressure to buy the perfect gift and to go into debt to do so.

But if Christmas is a frame of mind, then we know that the best gift has already been given. There’s no need to try and compete with the perfect first gift of Christmas, wrapped by a teenage peasant in swaddling clothes and laid in a feeding trough. This gift isn’t for just one day a year, but for all 365 days a year.

If Christmas isn’t just about giving and receiving, then it doesn’t disappoint. If Christmas is about honoring the first gift, about celebrating the birth of Emmanuel, then Christmas takes on a whole new meaning. If we strive to fill the stocking of the Christ-child, so to speak, we find ourselves asking a whole new set of questions.

What would He want most from us? What gift could we bring that would most honor Him who gave everything for us? Who came to earth on December 25 expressly for the purpose of taking our place and dying the death we deserved, so we could have more full and abundant life than our wildest dreams could conceive?

I think what Jesus wants from us is us. Not out wallets or our talents or our calendars, but us. Living sacrifices and vessels set apart for God to use whenever and however He chooses. Vessels of mercy, kindness, grace, and above all, love.

I want to wake up tomorrow and live out a thank you to Jesus. I want everything I do and say, everywhere I go, to be Jesus working and speaking through me. I want to live out the true meaning of Christmas, not just one day a year, but every day of every year for as long as God gives me breath.

I hope and pray that every day for you will be Christmas where you seek to give Jesus the best present you have to give Him– your heart.

Thoughts from a Good Conversation with a Friend Tonight

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 2 Comments

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.

Advent Thoughts

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I love Advent. Even though I grew up in a Baptist tradition that didn’t include Advent, I am so glad I have found the joy and anticipation that Advent brings. Christmas isn’t a day on a calendar or even a season; it’s an event that changed absolutely everything.

I love the fact that God Almighty became a fetus inside the womb of Mary. I love that He was born to Mr. and Mrs. Nobody in a barn trough and grew up in Nowhere and chose other nobodies and nowheres to be His disciples and first missionaries. I, too, once was a nobody and an outsider who didn’t fit in. In some ways, I still am.

I love the fact that Jesus walked in my shoes and felt all my feelings and saw the same kinds of troubles and pain that I see. I love the fact that He walked my road perfectly and offered up to God for me the kind of obedience I could never even dream of, much less carry out.

I love the fact that God still has a heart for the orphan and the widow, the homeless and the outcast, the broken and the ignored, and all those who don’t fit in anywhere. I love the fact that God has His affections set on me and an loved me with an unquenchable love that I can’t lose or destroy or run off.

I love the fact that while people are human and will eventually fail me and I will fail them, my Jesus never will. While everyone I know, including me, is fickle and changeable as the wind, Jesus is the same in all my yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows, and forevers.

I love the idea that we are celebrating this Christmas season the impossible becoming possible, the unthinkable becoming reality, and all lost causes finding hope again. I love to think that God did this to show that yes, Love would go that far.

I love most of all that today after I forgot again the reason for this Season, You reminded me. You always do. I’m always running away and You’re always waiting for me with open arms. I’m always breaking promises and being weak and denying You, but You are always ready and more than willing to forgive and to finish this great work You’ve started in me.

These and so many other reasons are why I love Advent.

Unclean

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For the better part of two days, something that Mike Glenn said at Kairos has been running around in my brain.

He related the story of how God showed Peter a vision in which a whole assortment of food came down from heaven and God said, “Eat.” Peter said, “But that’s unclean and against my religion (I’m paraphrasing a bit here).

God said, “What I have made, don’t you dare call unclean.”

Did you catch that? Let me put it this way. “God said, “I made you, and what I have made, don’t you ever call unclean or ugly or second-rate or worthless or no good. Don’t you dare put down the one I made, because when you do, you’re insulting Me.”

God made you. That gives you great worth. After you fell into sin and brokenness, He redeemed you. That makes you priceless.

Hear this. You are not what you own. You are not what you do. You are not what you drive or where you live or what you wear.

You are not the names people call you or the names you call yourself. You are not your past or your failures or your shortcomings.

You are not your usefulness or your abilities or your net worth or your talent level. None of these things.

You are who God says you are. You are His child, Ransomed, Redeemed, Living Temple, Saint, Saved One, and, my favorite, Beloved.

I love what Henri Nouwen says. Prayer is listening to the One who says good things about you. The One who calls you Beloved and invites you to His lap time and time again.

The Creator God who made all that is knows your name. He knows every deep, dark secret you keep and every promise broken and every lie told and every intention unfulfilled.

And He loves you anyway.

Because of what He did sending Jesus to the cross for you in your place, you are holy, righteous, blameless, innocent, perfect, and His forever.

You are unclean no more. You are the BELOVED!

Going Deeper

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I’m not one to call myself a prophet or to claim I receive prophetic words from God. I think He speaks to me, like He did today, but I’m not the one to judge whether what He said to me was prophecy. The word was “Go deeper.”

That’s what I believe the Spirit of God is telling the people of God: “Go deeper.”

You can stay in the shallow end of your faith and stay comfortable and have one foot in the kingdom of God and one foot in the flashy, multimedia world. You can stay where the water is only ankle-deep and where what you say doesn’t have to match up with how you live.

But You will always live defeated. You will always be a victim and never a victor. Your worship will always be dead, your prayers cold, your Bible just words on a page. You will always be ruled by fear and doubt. You will always give in to temptation and never see deep healing in the deepest , darkest places of your heart.

Going deeper means that maybe you have to sacrifice the hip and trendy crowd for the homeless and the broken crowd. You may stop hanging out with the oh-so-cool artsy crowd and go to the outcasts and the hurting and the shamed.

Going deeper means trading in a feel-good sentimental kind of love for a selfless sacrificial kind of love. It means that you give without any expectations of ever getting back. It means you are willing to lay down your life in a million tiny deaths each day.

Going deeper means that you say YES to Jesus, no matter what. You go where He says go, you give what He says give, you love who He say to love, and you do what He calls you to do.

I will be the first to admit that I have been a casual fan of Christ far more than I have been a follower. But that’s what going deeper means– to stop being a sideline fan who roots for the Home Team and be a follower who gets your hands and feet dirty and messy, but find out that those are the very hands and feet of Jesus touching, reaching, and healing a broken world through you.

This isn’t my normal positive, encouraging blog. This is my blog that says that if you want to know more of this love that is deeper than your sin, wider than your understanding, and higher than your imagination, you have to surrender.

As always, I’m just a nobody trying to tell everybody about Somebody who can save anybody. I’m just one beggar telling other beggars where to find the Bread of Life. I’m a ragamuffin who has joy because my Abba Father calls me His beloved.

What Community Means: Part 2

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In yet another sellout, I am putting out a sequel to my last blog. But before you accuse me of going Hollywood, let me offer a few words of explanation. I left out some stuff in my last blog. Deep, right?

Being a part of the community of faith means these things as well:

You are only a stranger once; after that, you’re family. You are a fellow pilgrim travelling along the same narrow road.

No matter where you go, you will always carry your brothers and sisters with you in your heart, in your mind, and in your soul. Each brother or sister is only a prayer away.

You are always held and carried by strong arms of prayer and by the God who hears them. That’s in good times and bad, through sunny weather and storms. Regardless.

Sometimes, you will be strong for someone else who can’t be and speak to God on their behalf; sometimes, you will be weak and need someone else to stand in the gap for you.

Your family isn’t just those who are related by blood to you and share a common ancestry, but all of those who seek after God with hearts made alive and minds transformed and lives changed by the resurrection power of Christ.

Last of all, community means that above all, we seek to be in unity and to have the mind of Christ in all matters. That we do everything in our power to make our relationships work and to seek reconciliation and restoration when they don’t. It means to put others’ needs before our own and to seek to serve rather than be served.

That’s what community means.

The Way of Downward Mobility

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Tonight I was touched by these words from Henri Nouwen. I will let them speak to you the way they spoke to me, unedited and in his own words, not mine:

“Prayer means letting God’s creative love touch the most hidden places of our being and letting Jesus’ way of the cross, his way of downward mobility, truly become our way.  And prayer means listening with attentive, undivided hearts, to the inner movements of the Spirit of Jesus, even when that Spirit leads us to places we would rather not go. . . .

I say this with great compassion: we are living in an upwardly mobile society, a society in which making it to the top is expected in some degree of all of us. And aren’t we tempted to use even the Word of God to help us in this upward mobility? But that is not the way of God, the Father, Son, and Spirit. God’s way is not the way of upward mobility but of downward mobility. You know, as well as I do, that the question we will finally hear is not going to be: “How much did you earn during your lifetime?” or “How many friends did you make?” or “How much progress did you make in your career?” No, the question for us will be: “What did you do for the least of mine? What did you do for the lonely in your cities, the prisoners in your country, the refugees within and below your borders, and the hungry all over the world? Have you seen the humiliated Christ in the faces of the poor?”

God has chosen to be revealed in a crucified humanity. That is a very hard realization to come to, yet all authentic prayer will eventually lead us to it. I hope you are able to feel with me our hesitation to let God truly love us in God’s way and to respond fully with our whole being.”