god

An Advent Prayer from Henri Nouwen

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

I realize that we are past Advent. If you follow the ancient ways, then you are aware that this is the third day of Christmas, so it still counts. Also, this time of the kingdom of God being now and not yet feels like an extended Advent season as we wait for Christ’s return:

“O Lord,

How hard it is to accept your way. You come to me as a small, powerless child born away from home. You live for me as a stranger in your own land. You die for me as a criminal outside the walls of the city, rejected by your own people, misunderstood by your friends, and feeling abandoned by your God.

As I prepare to celebrate your birth, I am trying to feel loved, accepted, and at home in this world, and I am trying to overcome the feelings of alienation and separation that continue to assail me. But I wonder now if my deep sense of homelessness does not bring me closer to you than my occasional feelings of belonging. Where do I truly celebrate your birth: in a cozy home or in an unfamiliar house, among welcoming friends or among unknown strangers, with feelings of well-being or with feelings of loneliness?

I do not have to run away from those experiences that are closest to yours. Just as you do not belong to this world, so I do not belong to this world. Every time I feel this way I have an occasion to be grateful and to embrace you better and taste more fully your joy and peace.

Come, Lord Jesus, and be with me where I feel poorest. I trust that this is the place where you will find your manger and bring your light. Come, Lord Jesus, come.

Amen” (Henri Nouwen).

Highly Favored

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“This hit me.. Another perspective of being ‘highly favored.’

She was ‘highly favored’ but was almost put away by the man she loved the most.

‘Highly favored’ but she was rejected by every person in Bethlehem.

‘Highly favored’ but she laid on the dirt floor of a barn and gave birth to a baby she carried nine months.

‘Highly favored’ but in the middle of the night had to leave all she knew and move to a strange town because God said so.

Favor never looks like favor at first. Favor sometimes takes you through frustration, failure, and fear. You want to be favored of God? It may be in darkest night or deepest valley. But there in that place where no one sees you and you feel like no one understands whisper to yourself, ‘This is only the beginning not the end. This will turn out for my good and His glory. This is because… I’m Favored.’”

Repost Brent Carr

#thelindsaychronicles #highlyfavored

You’ve probably heard of the expression “favor ain’t fait.” I think in this case, it’s true. Mary’s life would have been way less complicated if she hadn’t been chosen and favored by God. But no one would have remembered her name. No one would have her example of faith to follow.

Because of her embracing God’s calling, she got to witness the in-breaking of God into the world as a baby. She got to hold Emmanuel, God with us, in her arms.

She also lived to see that same son crucified. She also witnessed all of His agony and weep while He was tortured to death. She saw the place where they laid Him in a tomb and saw the stone rolled in front to seal Him in.

But best of all, she was eyewitness to Jesus rising from the dead and from that tomb. She saw with her own eyes the hope of the world and how death and hell had been defeated and how the grave would no longer have the last word. She saw the true fulfillment of salvation that was to be for all people, given to those who receive it in faith.

She was highly favored. That doesn’t mean she was guaranteed an easy or a comfortable path, but she knew the glory that awaited at the end of the road. She knew God was with her on that journey and that at the end was the redemption she had hoped and prayed for all her life.

Who Is Jesus?

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

Recently, I read a post that bothered me. It basically stated that Jesus was a bleeding heart liberal socialist whose sole purpose was to stand for everything that conservatives hate. To me, that’s just as wrong as reinventing Jesus as a middle-class white Republican who is all about capitalism and the American dream.

The problem with both is that they make Jesus too small. Way too small. To reduce Jesus to something that fits comfortably into your social and political worldview is to recreate Jesus into your own image the way God created us in His. It’s to pare the claws of the lion of Judah and make Him tame, as Dorothy Sayers put it.

But Jesus is far beyond and above our politics. He’s far beyond and above our likes and dislikes and our opinions. He’s fully part of the Godhead trinity just as He is 100% God and 100% man. You can’t take in the totality of His words and believe what He said without recognizing Him as no less than God incarnate in human flesh.

Jesus Himself stated that to get Him wrong is to get the Father wrong. Did you get that? To get Jesus wrong is to get God wrong. To get God wrong is to get life and eternity wrong.

Those in the Bible who met Jesus and understood who He was fell on their faces and worshipped Him as God. They left everything behind and followed Him, willing to take up their crosses and suffer the way He suffered. They were all willing to lay down their lives for Jesus rather than deny Him (even Peter who got it wrong the first time was willing to die for the sake of his Savior).

This is the Jesus of the Christmas story. Not a Democrat or a Republican, liberal or conservative, socialist or capitalist. This Jesus is the very God who made the heavens and the earth and who is Lord of lords and King of kings. This is the one who came to save us from our sins. This is Jesus.

White Stones

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it” (Revelation 2:17, NIV).

I learned something interesting recently. When the Romans were building their roads, sometimes they used small white stones known as either tiger eyes or cat’s eyes in between the larger stones. The purpose was for those smaller white stones to reflect the moonlight at night to help people see where they were walking at night.

I don’t ever want to be guilty of reading too much into any biblical text or seeing something that isn’t there, but I wonder if there’s a connection. If the white stones were guideposts along the road, then someone with a white stone would be able to help others find their way to God.

I remember that Jesus told us that we were the light of the world and a city on a hill that can’t be hidden. When we live out of the overflow of God’s provision and in accordance to His will, we reflect God to those around us and help those who are lost find their bearings and their way.

Just as the moon doesn’t generate its own light but only reflects the light of the sun, so we don’t in our own strength or wisdom lead people but only so far as the image and light of God is reflected in us and through us. That only comes through surrender and obedience.

When the people of God truly live out their calling, they don’t point people to themselves or to their impressive churches or activities but to the awesome power of God who meets us where we are but doesn’t leave us that way.

No More Fear

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’ The psalm does not pretend that evil and death do not exist. Terrible things happen, and they happen to good people as well as to bad people. Even the paths of righteousness lead through the valley of the shadow. Death lies ahead for all of us, saints and sinners alike, and for all the ones we love. The psalmist doesn’t try to explain evil. He doesn’t try to minimize evil. He simply says he will not fear evil. For all the power that evil has, it doesn’t have the power to make him afraid” (Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark).

I used to be terrified of the dark. I had to have a night light or some other kind of light so I wouldn’t be completely in the dark, because that’s where the monsters lived. At least that’s what I told myself. More truthfully, it’s the unknown that I was afraid of.

But the older I get and the more I know of God, the less reason I have to be afraid of the dark. I still get the heebie jeebies when I’m in the dark sometimes, but I know there’s no real reason to be afraid. I know that with one click on a flashlight or one tap on my flashlight app, all that darkness goes away without a fight.

The Bible say not to fear the one who can kill the body, but the one who can destroy the soul. I take that to mean that anything other than God is no longer a threat or a reason to be fearful. I know that God is for me and has promised to never leave me nor forsake me, much less destroy my very soul. So I have no reason to fear.

Of course, the default setting for most of us is fear. It’s not like we make the conscious decision to be afraid. It’s our bodies’ reaction to certain stimuli like a perceived threat. Sometimes, especially when we’re tired, it’s easy to let anxiety get a foothold.

But that’s when all those promises of God come in handy. That’s when it’s helpful to have a storehouse of memorized Scripture to draw from when those fearful moments come. That’s when you need people around you to speak life and peace over you.

A good attitude to take when scary things happen is that the worst that can happen to me is that I die and go to be with Jesus. Anything less than that is doable. And nothing can separate me from God’s love or cause Him to stop loving me, so I know God is with me no matter what. And God is with those I love.

That’s when evil and the dark lose their power to make me afraid.

Fix Your Eyes

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“Fix your eyes on the rising Morning Star. Don’t be disappointed at anything or over elate, either. Live every day as if the Son of Man were at your door, and gear your thinking to the fleeting moment. Just how can it be redeemed? Walk as if the next step would carry you across the threshold of Heaven. Pray. That saint who advances on his knees never retreats.”

Those were words quoted by Jim Elliott to his 15-year old sister Jane. These words still ring true in this day and age, long after Jim was martyred for his faith by the people he was trying to reach for Christ.

These words seem like a real Christianity as opposed to the emasculated form of niceness that passes for faith these days. If you read the words of the saints of old, you realize just how far the bar has fallen for the American churches.

But ultimately it’s not about us now versus us then. It has always been about fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Morning Star and the Author and Finisher of our faith. That’s always been the true litmus test of faith — following Jesus and obeying His words, no matter what.

May that be true of those of us who claim the name of Christians.

The Incarnation Is Everything

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“… without the incarnation, Christianity isn’t even a very good story, and most sadly, it means nothing. ‘Be nice to one another’ is not a message that can give my life meaning, assure me of love beyond brokenness, and break open the dark doors of death with the key of hope. The incarnation is an essential part of Jesus-shaped spirituality” (Michael Spencer).

These days, lots of people seem hell-bent on reinventing Christianity to be more socially acceptable. In the process, you end up losing everything that makes Christianity transformative and life-changing. Instead of being counter-cultural, this new version of faith ends up looking and sounding exactly like the culture it’s trying to influence. It ends up almost polar opposite to what Christianity and the Church looked like in the New Testament, particularly in the book of Acts.

Christianity is Christ. Christ is 100% man and 100% God. As a writer of old once said, Jesus is God spelling Himself out in a language humanity could understand. But when you take away the divinity and the incarnation, what you end up with is someone who meant well and tried very hard, not the Savior of the world.

This Advent season is all about how since we couldn’t get to God through religion or rules or right living, God came to us. God came near in the form of an infant born to a virgin teenager and a peasant carpenter. Jesus is the only one who lived the righteous live God requires that we couldn’t live and died the death that we deserved, taking the punishment our sins have earned upon Himself.

May the incarnation be the true reason for the season this Advent and Christmas season. The incarnation isn’t expendable. It’s essential. It’s everything.

Why Church?

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

Church is not about worship. I mean that anybody can worship at anytime in any place. You can worship God by yourself.

What church is about is worshipping corporately. It’s about gathering together in community because we are better together than we are apart. We are stronger together than we are apart. The old saying is true that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

I believe that in Acts 2 when the Holy Spirit came upon the early believers, He empowered and indwelled the collective church. That means that where two or more or gathered, Jesus is there and there is power — more power than if we each prayed or worshipped or read the Bible separately.

I also still believe that it’s more about being the church rather than going to church. Church isn’t a place or a time or an event that we participate in but it is us. We together are the church who meet together regularly because we need each other and we need God most of all.

The Bible never gives a reason for any of us to neglect the assembling together of believers. At least, I can’t find any good reason. When we isolate ourselves from the body, we open ourselves to falling into temptation and wrong beliefs. We are more easily prone to wander away from the Church and the truth.

I love the old joke that if you ever find the perfect church, don’t go there because you will mess it up. There are no perfect churches because there are no perfect people. There is only a perfect God who meets us where we are and leads us daily closer to being more like Jesus.

Broken Crayons

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

Have you heard the saying that broken crayons still color? It’s true.

It’s also true that God uses broken people to bring out the colors in the world. Those, and not the perfectly whole people, are the ones God favors to work in and to work through.

God uses wounded healers because He is a wounded healer. He still bears the scars from His wounds by which we were healed.

Those marks on His hands and feet are to remind us that we weren’t healed and saved to bask in our deliverance, but to turn around and help others find healing. We have been reconciled through shed blood in order to facilitate a ministry of reconciliation based on the Prince of Peace.

Do Thou for Me

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“Do Thou for me, O God the Lord,
Do Thou for me.
I need not toil to find the word
That carefully
Unfolds my prayer and offers it,
My God, to Thee.

It is enough that Thou wilt do,
And wilt not tire,
Wilt lead by cloud, all the night through
By light of fire,
Till Thou has perfected in me
Thy heart’s desire.

For my beloved I will not fear,
Love knows to do
For him, for her, from year to year,
As hitherto.
Whom my heart cherishes are dear
To Thy heart too.

O blessèd be the love that bears
The burden now,
The love that frames our very prayers,
Well knowing how
To coin our gold.  O God the Lord,
Do Thou, Do Thou” (Amy Carmichael).

There are times when we simply don’t know how to pray for a circumstance or a loved one. Try as we may, the words will not come.

I think even then God hears the groans and sighs of our petitions and knows what they mean. He hears the deepest desires of our hearts and knows best how to grant them.

Even when we have words, they aren’t always the best ones. Sometimes, we ask without such a limited point of view. Sometimes we ask selfishly. Sometimes we have too small a view of God and ask too little.

In Jan Karon’s Mitford series, Father Tim Kavanaugh always has his go-to prayer, or “the prayer that never fails,” as he calls it. The prayer goes “Thy will be done.”

You can never go wrong with leaving the matter in God’s hands.