The Reason

Some Christians argue against celebrating Christmas. He wasn't born this time of year, they say; or He never suggested, much less commanded, that we should observe His birthday; or Christmas is overwhelmingly secular in our culture, so isn't this "reason for the season" stuff a little disingenuous-- especially since it is not His birthday and so many of the people celebrating it are not His people? Fair enough. If anyone has convictions against keeping Christmas, they shouldn't do so. Romans 23b says, "Whatever is not from faith is sin [whatever is done with doubt is sinful]" (AMP 2015). 

But what if we approach this by taking a look at the Resurrection? Resurrection Sunday (more commonly called Easter) is the most important date on the Christian calendar, and rightly so. Without Christ's resurrection, his death doesn't save us. Without Christ's resurrection, His birth doesn't matter. 

Which means His birth matters a whole lot; His resurrection makes it so. Our births matter, too, because He is risen. Without the resurrection, the fact that any of us were even born would be cause for relentless mourning and weeping, because we would have been born only for destruction. Jesus died and rose to redeem us, yes, but also to make sense of human existence. 

So, because we celebrate the resurrection, we can celebrate events that take on meaning because of it. Birthday parties now make sense, because the fact of our births has been made worthwhile. Yes, His birthday may not be December 25, but how could He have saved us if He'd never been born as a man? No one can re-surrect unless He first surrects, to use an archaic term that means rises. If the resurrection makes the birth meaningful, then the birth makes the resurrection possible. 

And besides all this, Matthew and Luke, in their first and second chapters, were inspired to record the details--the most important of which is that Jesus was born of a virgin whose pregnancy was caused by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. A supernatural star appeared. Angels sang the good news. In the face of such miracles, how can we not sing the news, too? And as lovers of the Lord, how could we let others rejoice that Jesus is born! while choosing to sit it out? I can't imagine doing so. 

And so, I wish you Merry, Merry Christmas, to you and your house. 

   

Foretaste

When I smile at what I create, and I think, "This is good," I give thanks that it's only a shadow of the beauty He has made.  

How much more beautiful the beauty of what God creates?

How much homier the home we have with Him?

Encouraging Yourself in the Lord

We all welcome encouragement, especially when things aren't going well. But when things really, really aren't going well, or maybe it's that we have a really, really big task to face, and we know we're not enough, the world's platitudes, such as "You got this," can fall flat. What do we do then? And what do we do if we're all alone, with no one there to even urge, "Believe in yourself!" 

We can follow David's example and encourage ourselves in God.

David was Israel's most prominent king ever. He was called a man after God's own heart. He fathered the wisest, and perhaps richest, man who ever lived. He killed a giant in his youth, after the entire army of Israel couldn't do it. He was blessed with undying friendship from the man who in the natural should have inherited the crown: Jonathan. He was Jesus' most auspicious ancestor. But David also lived years and years of going through the absolute ringer.

One such episode is recorded in 1 Samuel 30. David and his men returned to Ziklag, which was his home for a time, to find that the Amalekites had raided and overthrown the city, setting it on fire. They enslaved every single person there, male and female, adults and children, including David's two wives, and carried them away. Ziklag was empty of life, and nothing was left but a heap of smoking ashes. 

David and those with him wept until they could weep no more, verse 4 tells us. For some time, then, they did nothing but mourn. To add to this, David's men began turning against him, blaming him for the tragedy and talking of stoning him. But David, says verse 6, felt strengthened and encouraged in the Lord his God. He immediately asked the priest for an ephod, and sought the Lord as to whether to pursue the band of raiders. He was given the go-ahead, and he recovered everything that had been taken.

The story in 1 Samuel doesn't tell us how David became strengthened, but we see David's process of encouraging himself in several of his psalms. In Psalm 22, for example, he begins, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" (Psalm 22:1 AMP 2015)? He is, of course, prophesying of Jesus through the first 18 verses of this psalm, but he's also expressing his own sense of separation from God during a time of anguish. The tide starts to turn in verse 19 when he writes, "But You, O Lord, do not be far from me; O You my help, come quickly to my assistance." From vv. 19-21, he prays for help and expresses confidence of an answer. Verse 22 begins, "I will tell of Your name to my countrymen..." Now he's sharing the good God has done for him in the past when he cried for help.

David takes yet another step forward when he says, in verse 25, "My praise will be of You in the great assembly." By the end of the psalm, in verse 31, David has the entire world and those yet to be born praising the Lord, having come quite a distance spiritually from feeling forsaken. I like how the Amplified version ends with its bracketed note, bringing the psalm full circle back to the voice of Jesus: "They will come and declare His righteousness to a people yet to be born--that He has done it [and that it is finished]" (Psalm 22:31 AMP 2015). 

So how does David encourage himself in God? He: 

--Starts by laying out his full lament. He gets it all off his chest and tells God exactly how he feels.

--Asks for help.

--Expresses confidence that this help will come.

--Tells others of God's goodness.

--Recalls answered prayers of the past.

--Praises the Lord.

--Declares God's goodness in all the earth.

You know--after one has done all that, it becomes a perverse kind of pride to feel that maybe you will be the first person ever that God didn't help. When we belong to Him, go to Him, ask for help, and remember who He is, we too can encourage ourselves in God. Because of who He is, and because He never leaves nor forsakes, we will get through it together. 

The Body

 No stitch too small

no thread too fine

for its unique space

its singular place

in the whole.

Driven vs. Led

 

Have you ever felt driven, or is it something you say about yourself? We may say, "I'm driven," when we're enthusiastically pursuing something and feel that inner impetus to achieve. But is "driven" what we really want to be? If we're driven, who's doing the driving? Is it us? Is it people who just want something out of us? Is it even, possibly, the accuser of the brethren?

You see, I don't think God drives us, so if we feel driven, we might want to consider who has the reins, the steering wheel, or their foot on the accelerator of our lives, and whether or not they should. 

The Holy Spirit leads. When we follow Him, we are led. The Spirit leads us into all truth (John 16:13). All who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God (Romans 8:14). Jesus was led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 4:1). He also teaches, reminds, helps, intercedes, and guides, according to various verses. The closest thing I can find to "drives" (other than God driving Adam and Eve from the Garden, in Genesis 3, which is about punishment, not the giving of direction) is Paul's being "compelled" by the Spirit to go to Jerusalem (Acts 20:22). Very possibly, the Holy Spirit's leading had to be especially strong at that point, since God knew people would beg Paul not to go and prophesy to him of what would happen there (Acts 21:10-11). 

In short, when we speak of motivation, driving has a frantic note to it that doesn't square with God's gentle but authoritative voice. Be careful of being driven, as that may well be the world, the flesh, and the devil. Instead, be led by the Spirit of God. 

 

What Story and Praying in Tongues Have in Common (Disparate Things #2)

I enjoy drawing parallels between seemingly disparate things. So how is story--dare I say "fiction"--like praying in tongues?  

I know, I know--anyone reading this who doesn't believe the sign gifts are for today may see no disparity: "They're both made up!" they may reply. But I don't agree, and that's not where I'm going with this.

Let's look at one of my favorite Scripture passages, 2 Samuel 12. Here, the prophet Nathan confronts King David about his sin with Bathsheba, particularly from the angle of how it affected her husband, Uriah. 

"And the Lord sent Nathan [the prophet] to David. He came and said to him, 

"There were two men in a city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of flocks and herds. But the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had purchased and nourished, and it grew up together with him and his children. It ate his food, drank from his cup, it lay in his arms. And it was like a daughter to him. Now a traveler (visitor) came to the rich man, and to avoid taking one from his own flock or herd to prepare [a meal] for the traveler who had come to him, he took the poor man's ewe lamb and prepared it for his guest" (2 Samuel 12:1-4 AMP 2015)

What does David say to this? He's as angered as anyone else would be and declares that the rich man deserves to die. Then Nathan lowers the boom. "YOU are the man!" 

Whoa. 

You see, this is what story does. Is the story made up? More than likely, but fiction isn't equivalent to "fake" or frivolous, as so many Christians seem to believe; it's a scenario crafted to make a point. No, what story does is bypass our defenses. It's a door into ourselves and others that we don't always take or even see. It can slip the truth into us--or skewer us with it--when other methods would fail. It does an end-run around the mind. Would David have cried, "Off with his head!" or something similar if Nathan had strode in and begun thundering the Lord's judgment (which he does detail in verses 7-14)? I don't know, but I have no doubt he'd have been indignant at the very least. Defensive, in other words. Nathan got a lot more done, a lot faster and more effectively, by telling David a story. His story engaged David's heart to listen and hear.  

Bypassing our defenses, doing an end-run around the mind, are what praying in tongues also does. Our minds are limited, and our vocabularies are limited, and sometimes we just can't pray, don't know what to pray, are bound and determined to pray what we want instead of God's will even if subconsciously, or don't know how to ask the right questions. Praying in tongues says, "Holy Spirit, pray for and through me right now because I don't have the words, I don't know God's perfect will--and even if I do, You can add to my prayer and go far beyond what I can do in my own understanding." Praying in tongues was the norm in the early church; it was a part of the empowerment bestowed at Pentecost, and Paul prayed both "with tongues and with understanding" liberally (1 Corinthians 14). 

No one is suggesting we disregard our minds (we are to be transformed by their renewing, for one thing), but they have foibles and limits. Both story and tongues are gifts and tools to bypass those limitations. 

If the Wedding Guest

 

If the wedding guest makes the best wine,

what delicacies the groom at the marriage supper?

It's from celebration to celebration

He reveals Himself.

He offers star-diamonds to the beloved of God--

 what other earthly creature has even seen?

He browses among the lilies

refreshes us with apples.

Some say He cares little for our happiness,

yet appoints new husbands to rest from duty

to make their wives happy for a year.

How much more, longer, better the bridegroom?

How, then, to explain

pleasures at His right hand forevermore?

Feast, sing, exult, serve, laugh, love

in all purity and excellence

thank, thank, thank again

rejoice, submit: our groom has made us glad.

Trees of Righteousness

'Tis the season. Closeups of tree by day; tree by night.

Not all Christians believe in putting up a Christmas tree. But looking at and thinking about the tree reminds me that believers are likened to trees in Scripture. One such place is Psalm 1:3--"He [the one who delights in the Lord] is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields fruit in its season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers" (NIV). Isaiah 61:3 is another: "...that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified" (KJV). 

When people are compared to non-human things in Scripture, such as trees, sheep, a temple, and more, it's interesting to ask what characteristics are being compared. We're often taught that a tree's root system grows as deep as its canopy is tall, and that if it weren't as massive underground as it is above ground, it would too easily blow over in the wind. The truth may actually be more spectacular than that. In many cases, the root system stays shallower but spreads two to five times wider than the canopy in its search for nutrients, creating a massive foundation for the tree. The point is that the beauty, shade, wildlife homes, crop, or lumber produced by the part we see is made possible only by the strength and reach of the part we don't see. 

It's the same with believers. The more visible works God wants to do with and through us--the more fruit He wants to bear--the deeper we need to be in Scripture, prayer, and time spent with Him. The more nutrients we need to draw, the more faith we need to develop, the more we need to understand that we can do nothing without Him (John 15:5). It's the other way around, too. The more intimate we become with God, the more humble, the more dependent, the more often closeted away with Him just to meet with Him, the more He can entrust great works to us and the more faith we will have to pursue them (Colossians 2:7).

This season, and all year 'round, I want to sink my roots deep and wide into God and the things of God, so that I might be the best tree He can make of me. Yielding fruit in its season. Not withering. Being a planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified.