Another Monday

[Hebrews 4:14-16 The Message] Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.

(Tom’s) alarm clock wakes him up as his mind tells him “Another Monday.”  He had rather not have to get up but feels like going back to sleep. He is worn out from this past weekend. He considers calling in to work sick but his conscious would dog him. Then there are the bills and the groceries he needs the money for. His wife will get up and then get the kids off to school and go to her job. He wishes he had won the Saturday night lottery drawing as that ten million would rescue him and his family from this daily grind. After showering and saying good bye to his wife and kids he is off to work. The twenty minute drive on the freeway can be enjoyable or unbearable; depending on the traffic he shares it with. Listening to the radio his mind remembers something the preacher said yesterday morning. He had not really wanted to go to church but his kids love it so he and his wife go for their sakes. The preacher said something to the effect that Jesus understood how we feel all the time. He begins to wonder how that could possibly be. Jesus never had a wife, or kids, or a job for that matter. He never faced the daily ho-hum of life of paying bills and mowing grass. He went around healing people and preaching to them all day and the main point, He was God according to the preacher. “God living life as a man, yeah right” he thought. Arriving at work and punching the clock he heads to the coffee machine for a quick shot of caffeine. (Jim) is there getting coffee too. (Jim) is a big religious dude. If you talk to him long he will preach you a sermon. He is a nice guy though and seems to have a good outlook on life. “Hey Jim, how’s it going?” Jim answers, “Good Tom, how about you?” “Okay”, Tom says. “Let me ask you something Jim; the preacher said yesterday God knows how we feel all the time. How could He possibly know what it’s like to go to work every day when He never had a job or a family?” Jim smiles, takes a sip of his coffee and answers; “I think the preacher was saying that God was human, just like us. Regardless of who we are or what we do, God knows how humans feel.” Tom then asks, “So how does that help me? Knowing He knows how I feel?” Jim says, “Because He knows you as you know you Tom! He doesn’t have to ask us how we are doing; He knows! No other human can actually know how another human truly feels.” Tom asks again, “Yeah, but how does that help me Jim?” Jim pats him on the back as he walks away and says, “It won’t help you Tom, until you care about how He feels about you.” As the coffee machine drops the cup and fills it, Tom gazes up.

What Awaits In 2013?

Ecclesiastes 7:14 [New International Version NIV]

 When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider this: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, no one can discover anything about their future.

Would you really like to know what lies ahead for you in the year 2013?  If it were all good I am sure you would. Suppose for just one moment that God sent Gabriel to hand you a calendar of events for your life in 2013. You would scan the pages with apprehension and fear. I would count the pages first to see if there were 12 of them. Scanning them quickly I may see days with a list of events and other days with only a few lines. Just imagining being able to do that causes an unsettling feeling.

God has such a calendar. He has our calendar from start to finish. I would rather have it that way. He knows my human mind and emotions are not capable of handling such things. I would be so depressed if I knew up front what sorrow may await me. The happy times would not be happy if I knew the sorrow first. Every time I would try to look forward to the happiness the sorrow would dampen the joy. What a miserable state to live in until the events unfolded. One more thing, I would try to somehow change the circumstances that I may not experience the sorrow. If I could I would cancel all the sorrowful events and fill my year with nothing but happiness and joy! You and I both know that is not humanly possible, don’t we?

Therefore I end this year with memories of sorrowful days and happy days. Fun filled vacation days with my family and sad times having to conduct funerals for friends but during both events, Jesus was with me.  I have come to the close of my 55^th year on earth and enter my 56^th one. What lies ahead? I have no idea but I know who does, and He will be there in good or bad times. Because He has my life in His hands I can enter 2013 with faith. So can you if you will put your faith and trust in Christ. When making your New Year resolutions, resolve to give your life to Jesus and then enter each day in His power and embrace each day and each moment as He has intended for you.

The Day After Christmas

After seeing him, the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child. [Luke 2:17 New Living Translation]

The day after Christmas used to be a letdown for me as a kid. All the anticipation of waiting to see if I was going to get what I had wanted ended after the paper was ripped off the packages on Christmas morning. Whether I got all I wanted or not seemed irrelevant once I began to play with and enjoy what I did get. Then the day ended with a family meal and most of them leaving before dark. Waking up the next day was not near as exciting as it had been the day before. Everyday tasks were back to normal just twenty four hours after the big day. Leftover turkey and stuff would be served for lunch or dinner and the excitement of the season had slipped away somewhere. Kind of depressing in a way I would say.

I wonder what the day after Christmas was like in Bethlehem. For the majority of the folk most of them never knew that Christ was in the world. There was a select group however that did; the shepherds. The Bible is clear on what these guys did the day after Christmas. The excitement of all they had experienced beginning with the visit from the angels and ending with the visit to the stable. The day before Christmas they were just plain old shepherds but the day after Christmas they were evangelists; spreading the Good News!

For many Christmas is depressing for different reasons. Some have no family and live alone. Some are in poor health; others are grieved because loved ones have passed on.  For many Christmas was just another day just as it was for many of the residents in Bethlehem. Taxes still had to be paid, the Romans were still in charge, and life was still difficult for many. However the shepherd’s lives would never be the same. They had met the Savior.

I hope that perhaps you had a chance to meet Him this Christmas. Maybe in a church service, maybe at a Christmas play or perhaps you thought about Him during a quiet time in your home. The one thing I can tell you for sure is that if you did meet Him, you will be changed just as the shepherds were. The Spirit of Christmas never leaves! Jesus is the Gift that keeps on giving!

What Should We Expect?

Isaiah 3:9   Amplified Bible (AMP)

 Their respecting of persons and showing of partiality witnesses against them; they proclaim their sin like Sodom; they do not hide it. Woe to them! For they have brought evil [as a reward upon themselves].

Sick. Sick, sick, sick. That’s how I feel about what happened in Newtown, Connecticut last week. That is also how I feel about the fact of how blind this nation as whole really is in regards to evil. I just watched HLN interview a child psychologist and ask, “How do we talk to our children about this. What do we tell them?” It makes me sick as a pastor to sit and listen to explanations that have no reference to the evil that is so deeply rooted in this society. When will people come to the knowledge of the truth? Better yet, when will people finally believe it? Did you know that over the past three years in Chicago there were two hundred and sixty kids killed in their public schools? Not all at once of course but still tragic. That does not grip us as much as these all killed at one time but it is every bit as tragic! Hundreds of children die each year at the hands of murderers, many of them killed by their own parents. What should we expect? When a nation tries to regulate the murder of children by calling it prochoice why should we expect God to be merciful toward us? The question is not why does God allow things like this to happen, the real question we should be asking is what have we done in order to deserve it? I agree with President Obama, we need to change as he said in an interview yesterday.

Here is what we can learn from all this. There is a deep spiritual problem in this country as well as in the world. Society as a whole does not want to face the truth. The truth is we have turned our backs on God. We have refused to acknowledge Him. We ignore His attempts to reach us and make fun of those who try to tell us about Him. In all the research in trying to place the blame on why this happened there is one that you will not hear his name mentioned; Satan. We will blame it on the guy’s mental health, his childhood, his relationship with his mom, the guns he had access to, and on and on. You will not hear anything about his spirituality. What you will not hear the mainstream administration and media consider is the influence of Satan upon our nation. When a people turn from God they turn to Satan; whether they want to believe it or not. How many evil acts will it take to wake us up? When will we seek the real truth?

Here is what to tell your kids. Tell them about God. Tell them about the evil that is rampant in society. Tell them about Jesus. That is, if you know Him. We cannot regulate evil and we will never be able to legislate righteousness. Jesus is our only hope. When we place our trust and faith in Him we will have a better understanding of why He came.

Cut The Legs Off Your Bed.

Isaiah 9 (NIV, the New International Version)

² The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.

A fellow goes to see a psychiatrist because he has trouble sleeping. He tells the doctor that monsters hide under his bed and when he turns out the light they come out and terrorize him. The doc suggests a night light and the man says that is why he cannot sleep; he keeps a light on. The doc tells him it will take several sessions but he will help him. The man tells a friend about it and the friend calls his pastor. The pastor sets up a meeting with the man. After a few weeks the psychiatrist office calls to see why the guy has not come back. He tells the doc he talked to a pastor and he resolved the issue. “What did he tell you?” The doc asked. “Let me guess; he said to pray and trust God and He would protect you; right?” Said the doc. The man replied; “No. He just said to cut the legs off the bed.”

If there is one thing we have managed to do over the centuries it has been to complicate the Gospel. God uses the analogy of light and darkness to illustrate to us the difference between our lives without Him in it, and our lives with Him in it. There is nothing simpler than the difference between light and darkness. At the start of creation we are told the earth was without form and darkness was over the surface of the deep (Genesis 1:2 NIV). We can say the same thing about the world before Christ came into it. We can say the same thing about our lives; those of us who have allowed Christ to come in.

There are millions today walking around in darkness; their understanding is darkened. You may be one of them. Their minds are full of darkness; they wander far from the life God gives because they have closed their minds and hardened their hearts against him (Ephesians 4:18 New Living Translation).

This Christmas season allow the Light to shine into your heart. Quit trying to make sense of it all on your own. Stop trying to fix all the issues yourself. It is not that complicated. Surrender it all to Jesus then allow Him to help you. “Cut the legs off your bed.”

Christmas Is Not Coming: It Came!

So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. (Luke 2:6 NKJV)

The cartoon titled How the Grinch Stole Christmas should be renamed to How the Grinch failed to Steal Christmas. The Grinch did not want Christmas to come to the people of Whoville. He was a secluded creature that caused him to be miserable and in order to produce some gladness in his heart he decided it could be accomplished by stealing the joy of others. Hmmm, sounds like another miserable fellow I have heard of; the devil. He too would have liked to keep Christmas from coming. Neither the Grinch nor the devil could stop it however.

We know the Grinch is a storybook character but the devil is real. The Grinch was converted by a mountain top experience; the devil will never be converted. The devil is at work in the lives of people at this very moment, maybe even yours, trying to stop the joy of Christmas from coming into their hearts. Keeping our attention with shopping and busyness to distract our focus from what Christmas really is. If the devil could have stopped God from coming to the earth in person he would have. He tried to talk Joseph into putting Mary away privately; that would have gotten her stoned for adultery. Mary summed up Christmas in her statement, “His mercy is on those who fear Him from generation to generation” (Luke 1:50 NKJV).

The old Grinch never stopped Christmas from coming, it came. The old devil never stopped it from coming either; Jesus came! The devil will try to steal your joy just as the Grinch tried to steal the Whos’ joy. The Grinch found out that the joy of Christmas does not exist in things but in the heart. You can have that joy in your heart today regardless of your circumstances. Accept the Gift to you from God; Jesus. Allow the Christ of Christmas to come into your heart and your life. Then you will be singing, Fah who for-aze! Dah who dor-aze! Welcome Christmas! Christmas Day!

Thank You Lord For The Church Down The Road.

1 Thessalonians 1

New Living Translation (NLT)

² We always thank God for all of you and pray for you constantly. ³ As we pray to our God and Father about you, we think of your faithful work, your loving deeds, and the enduring hope you have because of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁴ We know, dear brothers and sisters, that God loves you and has chosen you to be his own people.

Our corn [i.e. wheat] did prove well, and God be praised, we had a good increase of Indian corn, and our barley indifferent good, but our peas not worth the gathering, for we feared they were too late sown. They came up very well, and blossomed, but the sun parched them in the blossom. Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty. (Edward Winslow's account, which he wrote in a letter dated December 12, 1621).

History teaches that this was the first thanksgiving celebration. There are no records indicating it was ever celebrated again until George Washington set a couple of one time thanksgiving days. It would not be until 1863 that Abraham Lincoln would designate the last Thursday of November as a national holiday of thanksgiving. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939 (approved by Congress in 1941), changed it from Abraham Lincoln's designation as the last Thursday in November (which could occasionally end up being the fifth Thursday and hence too close to Christmas for businesses), to the fourth Thursday.

It is interesting to note that at the first celebration the people that came together to praise God for His favor would eventually over the course of history become enemies. Now let me make an observation here in Christendom. It seems to me that at the out start Christians prayed for other Christians. Churches were not in competition to see who had the best programs, the best music, the best preachers, the most members. They all pulled for one another. When was the last time you thanked God for the church down the road or across town? “Are you kidding me? They took some of our members away from us.” Hopefully none of you reading this ever said or thought that. Chances are you know someone who has. When we begin to think of all the things we will thank God for this week let’s not forget our other brothers and sisters as Paul reminds us, they too are Gods people.