relationships

An Advent Plea: The Final Day

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“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 4

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

“Oh, come O Rod of Jesse’s stem,
From ev’ry foe deliver them
That trust your mighty pow’r to save;
Bring them in vict’ry through the grave.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!”

For us who have listened to our fears and doubts yet again when we should have listened to You, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who trusted in friends and family who are just as frail and human and we are when we should have trusted in You and You alone, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who have felt abandoned and alone in our greatest hour of need, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who failed to see You in the person who spoke encouragement to us or gave us a helping hand or comfort, come to us, Emmauel.

For us who fear too much the grave and do not fear the One who overcame the grave (for a reverent fear of You is the beginning of wisdom), come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who too easily forget that You have already won the victory and overcome any foe we will ever face and that Your victory is our victory, come to us, Emmanuel.

Come to our fears and transform them into faith by your perfect love. Come to our doubts and transform them into wonder and awe by Your steadfast love and faithfulness. Come to our needs and be the God who is enough.

Come, Lord Jesus, come.

Nothing is Impossible

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 3 Comments

Do you really believe that nothing is impossible with God? I for one pay lip-service to the idea, but usually in my day-to-day life, I don’t believe it. In fact, many times my life says exactly the opposite.

 But this is the same God who caused Elizabeth to be pregnant in the geriatric ward. The same God who brought forth the Savior of the World from a penniless 13-year old virgin.

Don’t you realize that you yourself are living proof that nothing is impossible with this God?

Weren’t you once dead in sin and shame but are now alive to God and everything good in this life?

Weren’t you a stranger to God, to everyone else, and especially to yourself, but now you belong in a forever family with God as your Abba Father and Beloved as your new name?

Weren’t you without a hope in the world and headed for a dead-end destination but now you’re future is secure and the promises of God toward you as true as the God who made them?

Didn’t you at one point have nothing to offer anyone but now you are a living testimony of God’s grace and His very hands and feet to the world?

You are more than your net worth. You are more than your social status or your marital status or your assets.

You are proof that absolutely nothing is too hard for God. That what seems impossible to us is ridiculously easy for God.

You are living proof that no one is beyond hope of redemption, that no one is too broken to be made whole or too used to be made a new creation or too unloveable to be made beautiful.

Just remember that when someone else tells you you’re a nobody. Remember that when you are far down on someone else’s list of priorities.

Jesus thought you were worth dying for. And you are the evidence that the impossible became reality and the unthinkable happened.

Because nothing– not one thing– has ever, is, or will ever be impossible for this God who saved you. Period.

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.

Advent Thoughts

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

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.

Going Deeper

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

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.

Jesus Loves Me, This I Know

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 3 Comments

Jesus loves me, this I know,

Even when I can’t feel it or touch it or see it.

Jesus loves me, this I know,

Even when I don’t love or even like myself.

Jesus loves me, this I know,

Even on days when I can’t get one solitary thing right.

Jesus loves me, this I know,

Even when I see friends turning and walking away from me,

Jesus loves me, this I know,

Regardless of what I think or feel, regardless of how I perceive it,

Jesus loves me, this I know,

No matter what Hollywood or Wall Street or the ads on TV say.

Jesus loves me, this I know,

Just the same way He loved me the first day and just the same way He will love me into eternity.

Jesus loves me, this I know,

For the Bible tells me so,

And that’s all I need to know.

Amen.

A Prayer for My Friends Tonight

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

God, I bring my friends before you tonight. I know that You know what they need better than I do and even better than they do.

God, they are burdened and heavy-laden with work and with school, with spouses and with romantic relationships, with family and friends.

Grant them Your perfect peace tonight and enfold them in Your arms so that they can feel You near to know that You are just as near when they can’t feel You.

Grant them the joy than transcends circumstances and events, good or bad. Joy that can only come from You and that other people can only attribute to You.

Give them wisdom in their friendships. Bring people into their lives who will draw out the God-colors in them and inspire them to hunger and thirst after righteousness and to above all yearn for Jesus more than life itself.

Remove the people who hinder them being who You called them to be. Lord, even me, if I am a hindrance to Your work in their lives. Give them the grace to let the people go who You take out of their existance.

Above all, give them a single passion and vision: to follow hard after You, regardless of what it costs or what anyone else around them thinks. May they see only You and love only You. May their love for others be Your love flowing through them.

Lord, cause Your face to shine on them and be gracious to them. Take them to the lowliest people and let them be Your hands and feet to those who will never be able to repay what You do to them through my friends.

I pray for success and prosperity and good fortune for my friends. More than that, I pray intimacy and a deeper, wilder love for You, even if it comes at the expense of success and prosperity and good fortune.

Thank You for my friends. May they know how grateful I am. Much more than that, may they know each and every day and all through the night how You love them and how fond You are of them and how You call them beloved and how You are their Abba Father. May they each hear the sweet sound of You singing with joy over them in the deep waches of the night.

That’s my prayer for them tonight. Amen.

What Community Means: Part 2

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

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.

What Community Means

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

When you and I said an eternal YES to Jesus, we became a part of the universal community of faith. That means:

You and I are stuck with each other. There’s no way biblically you can justify turning your back on me and no way I can ever give up on you.

You will never walk a single day through a single storm alone. You will never walk through the deepest darkest valley by yourself.

Your joys will be my joys, your sorrows will be mine, and your burdens lightened because I will share your load.

You can be yourself, warts and all, and I can do the same, and neither one of us will ever have to fear judgment or condemnation.

We will speak the truth in love to each other and gently guide the errant ones back on to the path and keep each other honest, transparent, and steadfast with our eyes on the prize.

Since this community of faith is made up of broken and imperfect people, we will often hurt and neglect each other, but the hallmark of this community is forgiveness and second chances.

We have one God, one Savior Jesus Christ, one faith, one baptism, one goal, and one love to share with a fragmented and scarred world.

Every single person matters, and every single person is essential to the community bringing forth the visible image of God into our world.

You can only be you and I can only be me. We each have a unique place in the mosaic of faith that no one else can fill, and a part to play in God’s unfolding drama that no one else can play.

The Church is all of us. The Church is not you and the Church is not me. Alone, we are vulnerable and susceptible to enemy attack, but standing together under the banner of Christ, nothing can overcome us or separate us from God’s love.

Community means all these things and much more. Community means that you and I are unique and special. That we are not alone. That we are wanted and deeply loved by the Father who called us all into this koinonia, this fellowship of saints.

That’s what community means.