Have you ever heard God's voice, and you know that you know that you KNOW that you heard Him?
I mean, there's times when you hear Him whisper or nudge, and you have to think about it a bit before acting. But then there's other times when it just hits you with so much clarity that you can't deny it. There's no shadow of uncertainty. There's only peace.
That's what Paul was talking about when he said "peace that passes understanding" (Philippians 4:7).
Recently, I stumbled upon a familiar story about Abraham. After he's waited decades for the birth of his long-anticipated son, Isaac, God asks Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice, then stops him at the last minute. The biggest take-away of this story is that it is a type and shadow of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. However, I think this story might offer us a couple of checkpoints to know that God is speaking to us.
Read it with me from Genesis 22:
Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."
Let's stop there.
Hearing God's voice, checkpoint #1: He FIRST calls you by name.
Keep in mind here that God was about to ask Abraham to sacrifice the very promised child that He Himself had given him. The miracle son. This was going to be a big, scary, confusing surprise to Abraham. He needed to be sure that the Lord was speaking to him.
So the Lord called him by the name that He had given him.
Note that God had promised Abraham that he would father nations long before He changed his name. I won't do a detailed exegesis of the whole book of Genesis (even though I kind of want to.... #nerd). Long story short, when God promised Abram he would father many nations (in chapter 15), God made the promise, and God gave Abram a sign to confirm it. It was more like an info session than a conversation. God had called Abram to be the father of nations, but his name hadn't been changed.
However, when Abram responded to God's faithfulness with action--circumcision--his name was changed by God to reflect his identity (chapter 17). Abram showed God that he believed Him so much that he was willing to, you know, cut off a part of his own body to prove it. That's commitment.
The name "Abraham" signified God's faithfulness to him as well as Abraham's faithfulness to God. It was a relational name, one that God called him to mark their friendship. God was the first to call him by that name. It was special and set apart. So needless to say, Abraham recognized the voice of God when He called him.
When I think back on moments when I know that I know that I KNOW that God is speaking to me, they have something in common: God always calls my name first.
I don't mean that He appears to me, checks my birth certificate and driver's license, and states my full name. I mean that I feel called by name. This is something difficult to describe. This called-by-name feeling is the same as being lost in worship and knowing that you are the daughter or son of God. It's feeling the ultimate, all-consuming, irrefutable concentration of your identity in Christ, when nothing else matters but Him knowing you and you knowing Him.
Whenever the Lord is about to speak something important to me, He doesn't come as a burning bush or a scary angel or a booming voice. He comes as a Father who gently whispers into my spirit, "Hey, daughter...my beloved one...my own little girl."
If you're a man, He probably doesn't address you that way. But children know their father's voice among the voices of all other men. Sheep know the shepherd's voice (John 10:27). When you hear Him calling your name--the name He gave you--you know it's your Father speaking. In that moment, the connection you feel between you and Him is the pure connection that Jesus had in mind when He died on the cross to reconcile us to our Father. It's as loud and clear as the boy prophet Samuel heard the Lord for the first time calling in the night: "Samuel! Samuel!" (1 Samuel 3).
Notice that Abraham did not respond with, "Is that you, God? Are you sure?" He simply said, "Here I am."
I don't know if it feels the same for everyone, but I imagine you are probably thinking of several times in your life when you've heard the call and felt in your spirit, "Here I am." If you aren't a believer, you probably have felt bits of it and didn't know that it was Jesus.
Maybe you haven't heard Him speak because you don't recognize your name when He calls it. The world's labels, your own construction of your identity, get in the way. The solution to that is to read His Word and learn who He is, that you might learn what He calls you.
In short, you know when the Lord is speaking because you suddenly, strongly know who you are.
But back to the story of Abraham.
After God, called him by name, He continued speaking.
He said, "Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac [Abraham could make no mistake about which son God was talking about] and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you." So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son; and he split wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. (vs. 1-3)
Wait....Abraham did not argue with God. He had just been told something confusing: that the son that God had promised him, whom he'd waited for for decades, was to be a sacrifice. How in the world was he to be the father of nations if he killed the child who was to inherit that legacy?
But Abraham didn't argue, because he knew that he knew that he KNEW that God had spoken. He just woke up the very next day and did what God said.
That's checkpoint #2 for hearing God's voice: It requires response.
I don't imagine that Abraham was too happy about the news that his beloved son was going to be slaughtered at his own hand. (He couldn't have dreamed that the Father Himself was going to do the same to His own Son so many years in the future.) God sometimes asks us to do confusing things. Things that derail our own plans. Things that shut down the joy rides of our imaginations.
But when we know we heard Him speak, we are compelled to do it, and not three weeks from now. We have to do it TODAY. Or tomorrow, in Abraham's case. We must do it as soon as we possibly can.
Just because something is confusing doesn't mean it's God, the same way that just because it's not confusing doesn't mean it isn't (bear with my linguistic fumbles here). But I will say that He does often ask us to do things that don't make sense to us, whether it's forgiving someone who hurt us horribly, or choosing a career path we said we'd never choose (ahem), or selling everything to become a missionary, or getting another degree, (ahem ahem), or moving to Texas (ahem ahem AHEM...for those of you who know me). Or it could be that He is just asking you to do something you know is right but don't want to do, like surrendering an area of your life that you don't want to give up.
God's voice demands obedience. Not because He is a king who desires groveling slaves. (If He'd wanted that, He would have just programmed all of us to follow Jesus without question.) God loves that we get a choice. He delights in allowing us to choose Him. And when He speaks, He demands obedience because obedience is not an act of fear but an act of trust. A child may not understand the directions given by a father, but he does know that obedience will lead to his good in some way, whether he understands it now or not, because he knows that his father has his best interest at heart.
It's when we're children thinking we know more than we do that we get in trouble.
When He comes to you calling your name, get ready to be uncomfortable. Because He loves us, He will never let us stay in a season for too long. That's why, when He speaks suddenly with direct instructions, we must respond. Even if our response is to disobey Him, we have still made a choice. Just like His words to Abraham, those moments of clear direction from God leave no room for misinterpretation. A good Father may give directions we don't understand from our current context, but He will never be confusing about what He expects us to do.
If you're now saying, "I don't think I've ever heard Him that clearly," I want to challenge you to look back on your life and ask yourself if maybe you weren't listening. Or avoiding asking the right questions (and I'm guilty as charged). He is always speaking. He wants the perfect plan for your life more than you do. It just may not look how you think.
It's true that there are times of silence, when we feel that we are not hearing from Him, and we must wait patiently. But prepare for that day when suddenly, clearly, He calls your name. Immediately listen, and respond in obedience. Obedience is the next step to your destiny...no matter how small, weird, or unexpected the instructions may be.
And your destiny is to look more and more like the person He knows by name, the person you were created to be: in deep relationship with Him.
Friday, July 22, 2016
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
My Good
"And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."--Romans 8:28
Every good Christian knows that verse. You probably even memorized it in Sunday school when you were a kid. It's comforting to know that all things work together for our good. "All" means everything, even the bad stuff.
But what is the "good" that the all is working together for?
Kids at VBS (and even some of us adults in the Western world) probably think that "good" is a new house, a white picket fence, 2.5 kids, great job, fancy watch, football on the weekends--you know, the American Dream. We paste this verse all over our t-shirts and wall art like a good luck charm, reminding ourselves that even if we didn't get that promotion, or even if our significant other breaks it off, surely our life goals will come to pass because God is on our side.
I'm not here to say that God is against our dreams or life goals. But I think the "good" in this verse has nothing to do with material blessings or our own goals achieved. It has to do with what Jesus died for on the cross. And, surprise surprise, that wasn't a two-car garage or a Tiffany engagement ring (sorry, ladies). It has to do with complete restoration of relationship with the Father.
Let's let scripture interpret scripture:
"My flesh and my heart may fail,
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
For, behold, those who are far from You will perish;
You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to You.
But as for me, the nearness of God is my good;
I have made the Lord God my refuge,
That I may tell of all Your works."
--Psalm 73:26-28
The measure of how "good" your quality of life is not the size of your bank account or how many cupholders your car has. Your "good" is directly related to how near you are to the Father.
Paul had been sent to prison, beaten, shipwrecked, dragged before courts, ridiculed, and hated. When he said "all things," he wasn't talking about getting broken up with or missing his vacation flight or somebody gossiping about him at work. He was talking about solitary confinement in a tiny cell with rats and open sores and no food and the threat of execution. How could someone say that those things worked together for his good?
Because his "good" wasn't his circumstances. His "good" was knowing the Father's heart. And I bet he learned a whole lot about the Father's heart in those dangerous, scary, unpredictable situations.
I'm not saying that God gives us "bad things" in our lives just to test us. I think bad things happen because we live in a fallen world. But I think the great redemption of the cross is that God takes what the enemy intended to destroy us and turns it around 180 degrees to bless us, if we are willing to see that He wants to use every circumstance in our lives to draw us close.
We were created to be in God's family. The greatest good we can experience is to be near to Him, loving Him, becoming like Him. That's what we were made for. That's the end He has in mind. And if we are in Christ, He does everything in His power (and that's a lot of power, like the kind that generates galaxies) to turn everything that happens, positive or negative, small or big, into something that gets us right up under His wing.
I can guarantee you that God has bigger plans for your life than you do. And His plans involve you becoming the image of His Son. Looking like Jesus means being close to the Father.
Read the rest of Romans 8:
For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and those whom He predestined, He also called; and those whom He called, He also justified; and those whom He justified, He also glorified.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?.....But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The extent and finality of Jesus' victory is astounding. NOTHING can work against you. There is no situation that He can't redeem. His blood is the trump card. It destroys the enemy at every turn.
His mercy is just that great: that when we feel hopeless in our circumstances, He's working it for our nearness to Him. And, just like a good good father, He knows that no enemy can come near us when we are in His arms. And THAT'S good.
Every good Christian knows that verse. You probably even memorized it in Sunday school when you were a kid. It's comforting to know that all things work together for our good. "All" means everything, even the bad stuff.
But what is the "good" that the all is working together for?
Kids at VBS (and even some of us adults in the Western world) probably think that "good" is a new house, a white picket fence, 2.5 kids, great job, fancy watch, football on the weekends--you know, the American Dream. We paste this verse all over our t-shirts and wall art like a good luck charm, reminding ourselves that even if we didn't get that promotion, or even if our significant other breaks it off, surely our life goals will come to pass because God is on our side.
I'm not here to say that God is against our dreams or life goals. But I think the "good" in this verse has nothing to do with material blessings or our own goals achieved. It has to do with what Jesus died for on the cross. And, surprise surprise, that wasn't a two-car garage or a Tiffany engagement ring (sorry, ladies). It has to do with complete restoration of relationship with the Father.
Let's let scripture interpret scripture:
"My flesh and my heart may fail,
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
For, behold, those who are far from You will perish;
You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to You.
But as for me, the nearness of God is my good;
I have made the Lord God my refuge,
That I may tell of all Your works."
--Psalm 73:26-28
The measure of how "good" your quality of life is not the size of your bank account or how many cupholders your car has. Your "good" is directly related to how near you are to the Father.
Paul had been sent to prison, beaten, shipwrecked, dragged before courts, ridiculed, and hated. When he said "all things," he wasn't talking about getting broken up with or missing his vacation flight or somebody gossiping about him at work. He was talking about solitary confinement in a tiny cell with rats and open sores and no food and the threat of execution. How could someone say that those things worked together for his good?
Because his "good" wasn't his circumstances. His "good" was knowing the Father's heart. And I bet he learned a whole lot about the Father's heart in those dangerous, scary, unpredictable situations.
I'm not saying that God gives us "bad things" in our lives just to test us. I think bad things happen because we live in a fallen world. But I think the great redemption of the cross is that God takes what the enemy intended to destroy us and turns it around 180 degrees to bless us, if we are willing to see that He wants to use every circumstance in our lives to draw us close.
We were created to be in God's family. The greatest good we can experience is to be near to Him, loving Him, becoming like Him. That's what we were made for. That's the end He has in mind. And if we are in Christ, He does everything in His power (and that's a lot of power, like the kind that generates galaxies) to turn everything that happens, positive or negative, small or big, into something that gets us right up under His wing.
I can guarantee you that God has bigger plans for your life than you do. And His plans involve you becoming the image of His Son. Looking like Jesus means being close to the Father.
Read the rest of Romans 8:
For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and those whom He predestined, He also called; and those whom He called, He also justified; and those whom He justified, He also glorified.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?.....But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The extent and finality of Jesus' victory is astounding. NOTHING can work against you. There is no situation that He can't redeem. His blood is the trump card. It destroys the enemy at every turn.
His mercy is just that great: that when we feel hopeless in our circumstances, He's working it for our nearness to Him. And, just like a good good father, He knows that no enemy can come near us when we are in His arms. And THAT'S good.
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
Beauty
God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear,
though the earth should change
And though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea;
Though its waters roar and foam,
Though the mountains quake at its swelling pride.
--Psalm 46:1-3
When I read that this morning, I started to picture what it literally says: epic landslides and tsunamis and the earth imploding. This Psalm is about holding on to God in the midst of chaos. If our earth suffered unexpected catastrophe, and even the natural world--mountains, seas, etc.--fell apart, we would have nothing to make sense of our lives except for God. He is our only calibration. And then the Psalm tells us that, in that event, we actually would not have to fear because He is bigger than the biggest disaster we can imagine.
I was like, "Ok, gotcha. God is big. We literally have NOTHING to fear." That alone was impressive and reassuring to me as I sat pondering. Then I felt the Holy Spirit prompt me: "Who do you think made the mountains and the sea?"
The natural world is the manifestation of the imagination of our God. YOU are the manifestation of the imagination of our God. He is a creator. I mean, He speaks, and galaxies happen. He thought of DNA. He built you from scratch. He can't help but create. It's His nature.
Psalm 46 continues: "He raised his voice, the earth melted." His words are able to create or destroy. But He has to consciously decide to destroy. His default setting is "create" and "unimaginable beauty." All His ways are perfect. He makes things alive and colorful just by going near them. Think on that for a second.
He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.--Ecclesiastes 3:11
This verse is clear: we cannot understand the intricate plans of God. But we are built to seek after His heart and long for His beauty.
God is the definition of "beautiful." Unless He chooses to destroy, He cannot touch something and NOT make it beautiful.
If you let Him touch you, if you let Him come even a little bit near you, you will not be able to help being restored to life and beauty. He is the essence of beauty; He is a creator; and He created YOU.
How could you not be beautiful?
"Cease striving and know that I am God"--Psalm 46:10
That one is pretty self-explanatory.
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear,
though the earth should change
And though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea;
Though its waters roar and foam,
Though the mountains quake at its swelling pride.
--Psalm 46:1-3
When I read that this morning, I started to picture what it literally says: epic landslides and tsunamis and the earth imploding. This Psalm is about holding on to God in the midst of chaos. If our earth suffered unexpected catastrophe, and even the natural world--mountains, seas, etc.--fell apart, we would have nothing to make sense of our lives except for God. He is our only calibration. And then the Psalm tells us that, in that event, we actually would not have to fear because He is bigger than the biggest disaster we can imagine.
I was like, "Ok, gotcha. God is big. We literally have NOTHING to fear." That alone was impressive and reassuring to me as I sat pondering. Then I felt the Holy Spirit prompt me: "Who do you think made the mountains and the sea?"
The natural world is the manifestation of the imagination of our God. YOU are the manifestation of the imagination of our God. He is a creator. I mean, He speaks, and galaxies happen. He thought of DNA. He built you from scratch. He can't help but create. It's His nature.
Psalm 46 continues: "He raised his voice, the earth melted." His words are able to create or destroy. But He has to consciously decide to destroy. His default setting is "create" and "unimaginable beauty." All His ways are perfect. He makes things alive and colorful just by going near them. Think on that for a second.
He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.--Ecclesiastes 3:11
This verse is clear: we cannot understand the intricate plans of God. But we are built to seek after His heart and long for His beauty.
God is the definition of "beautiful." Unless He chooses to destroy, He cannot touch something and NOT make it beautiful.
If you let Him touch you, if you let Him come even a little bit near you, you will not be able to help being restored to life and beauty. He is the essence of beauty; He is a creator; and He created YOU.
How could you not be beautiful?
"Cease striving and know that I am God"--Psalm 46:10
That one is pretty self-explanatory.
Saturday, June 11, 2016
The One Thing That Will Change Your Life
But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.--Matthew 6:33
I want to ask you, if you're a Christian: what is the kingdom of God?
It seems like, if Jesus told us Himself that seeking it was the most important aim of our lives, we ought to know what it is. But I bet most Christians have never even considered how God defines His kingdom. And we're going to have a hard time finding it if we don't know what we're looking for.
This whole time, I've thought that the kingdom of God was getting people to accept Jesus and have their lives radically altered by Him. Not to mention peace and joy and hippie Christian commune in the Holy Spirit. Casting out demons. Seeing the blind receive sight and the lame walk. In short, heaven on earth.
But the most important thing in the kingdom of God, I have thought, is for us to know our identity in Christ. If we know we are sons and daughters of the King, of course heaven will naturally come to earth. It all has to do with how much we understand our own identities!!!..............Right?
So I've sought and sought to find out who I am in Christ. I've made it my one true aim. I opened the scriptures every day to find out what He says I am.
And I've been frustrated.
Let me tell you why. The Bible is addressed to me and talks about me, but I (and you) are really only minor characters. Reading the Bible to find out your identity in Christ is like reading backwards. There is only one true star of the whole script.
It's kind of a "duh" moment, but I just realized that the Bible isn't about me. It's about God.
In our culture, we are constantly instructed to "find ourselves." I spent years looking everywhere for myself. I finally ended up a Christian because I understood that God was the only source of my identity. But I've gone about this Christian life with the wrong aim. I've been looking for me instead of Him.
I've heard message after message about "hearing God," my "identity in Christ," "prosperity," "grace," "God's will for your life." These messages aren't bad; but if they're all I'm hearing, I have a problem. All of these topics are about ME. We listen, and we take our new little "nugget"of "revelation" home and try to apply it to our lives. We live from revelation to revelation. Snack to snack. And we are hungry and frustrated. And I can tell you with absolute certainty that I am way more boring and less satisfying than He is.
What if my one singular purpose in life, what He created me to do, is not to find out who I am, but to find out who He is?
David wrote, "You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever" (Psalm 16:11).
He does tell us what path to take. But that's not the point of this verse. I think the kingdom of God is this simple: fullness of joy in His presence. Knowing HIM. Who cares about us and our identities? I only want to care about HIS identity.
I mean, He made the whole world just by speaking. Don't you want to get to know someone like that?
I don't know about you, but I want to know the same kind of intimacy with the Father that drove Jesus to the cross. He didn't give up His life for an ideal, for His country, or even really for us. He gave it willingly because His Father asked Him to.
What kind of goodness must the Father possess if people, including Jesus, are willing to die for Him? They must really know who He is. No one will die for a tyrant. But for someone they love, they will sacrifice their lives.
What if we knew the Father so well that we would do anything for Him?
When I read the Old Testament, I see that time after time, the Israelites forsook the God of Abraham and went after idols. And all the way from Genesis to Malachi, the Lord repeats the same complaints: "They don't know me." He is angry with their blatant sin, but He always points out that the reason they are sinning is because they don't know Him.
The Israelites didn't continually turn from God and serve the Baals, sacrificing babies and committing adultery with temple prostitutes, because they didn't understand who THEY were. It was because they didn't understand who HE is. They did not understand His righteousness.
Oh, wait--didn't we hear something about righteousness in that verse about the kingdom of God?
"Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness."
If we don't know what the kingdom of God is, maybe we should just look a few words over. The kingdom of God is HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS. In other words, His character. Who he is. His identity.
You will never perform a miracle because you know who you are. You will perform a miracle because you know who He is.
I've tried a thousand times to approach a sick person to pray for them by pep-talking myself about my authority and identity in the kingdom of God. But I haven't tried to approach them with the simple thought that He is the God who created light, ocean tides, mitochondria, and seahorses....Like, "awesome" doesn't begin to cover it.
I've spent so much time asking God, "Who am I?" Maybe He'd appreciate it just a little bit if I started waking up every morning and asking Him, "Who are you?"
My pride and selfishness will only leave me frustrated. A humble heart toward the Lord will ignite me to my true purpose.
I don't mean to step on any toes (and I'm preaching to myself, too), but you aren't going to get to know Him that well just by sitting on your butt. You will only get to know Him as He is by spending time with Him and asking Him.
"But I don't hear clearly from God," you might say. Well, can you read? Obviously, because you're reading this. Read the Bible as if all you are looking for is what it says about HIM.
I have a right to say this to you, because I'm just now realizing it myself. Our culture has jipped us. And the church is missing it just as much as secular culture. Church is not about us. It's about Him. Anytime we reduce it to anything less than that, it's a frustrating experience. It may draw people in briefly, but it will ultimately drive them away, dissatisfied.
Do you know why? Because the only satisfaction we can find in life is in God. That's it. There's nothing else. We can't find purpose even in our identity as believers. Yes, it's good to know our identity, and good to embrace it. But identity is a by-product of knowing Him. Our identity is not our purpose. Knowing His identity is.
When I had this gentle revelation, I felt like I felt the day that I first really decided to follow Jesus. I felt a sense of overwhelming relief, and a feeling that everything is going to change for good.
We don't need self-help books and personality tests and themed Bible studies. These are not bad things. But they aren't what we NEED. They are the things that are "added unto us." But the thing about adding is that you need a foundation to add to. The fact is that, if you don't understand that knowing Him--His heart, His righteousness, His goodness, His beauty--is the most important thing, even your greatest revelations about your identity in Christ are like Legos on quicksand.
What if the whole church stopped straining to make ourselves into "who we're supposed to be" and just started seeking His face? What if we stopped continuously seeking to preach and buy and read our "identity in Christ" and just spent every day asking Him about His identity?
I tell you what would happen. We wouldn't have to search out our identity in Christ. We would just become it. And we would change the world.
I want to ask you, if you're a Christian: what is the kingdom of God?
It seems like, if Jesus told us Himself that seeking it was the most important aim of our lives, we ought to know what it is. But I bet most Christians have never even considered how God defines His kingdom. And we're going to have a hard time finding it if we don't know what we're looking for.
This whole time, I've thought that the kingdom of God was getting people to accept Jesus and have their lives radically altered by Him. Not to mention peace and joy and hippie Christian commune in the Holy Spirit. Casting out demons. Seeing the blind receive sight and the lame walk. In short, heaven on earth.
But the most important thing in the kingdom of God, I have thought, is for us to know our identity in Christ. If we know we are sons and daughters of the King, of course heaven will naturally come to earth. It all has to do with how much we understand our own identities!!!..............Right?
So I've sought and sought to find out who I am in Christ. I've made it my one true aim. I opened the scriptures every day to find out what He says I am.
And I've been frustrated.
Let me tell you why. The Bible is addressed to me and talks about me, but I (and you) are really only minor characters. Reading the Bible to find out your identity in Christ is like reading backwards. There is only one true star of the whole script.
It's kind of a "duh" moment, but I just realized that the Bible isn't about me. It's about God.
In our culture, we are constantly instructed to "find ourselves." I spent years looking everywhere for myself. I finally ended up a Christian because I understood that God was the only source of my identity. But I've gone about this Christian life with the wrong aim. I've been looking for me instead of Him.
I've heard message after message about "hearing God," my "identity in Christ," "prosperity," "grace," "God's will for your life." These messages aren't bad; but if they're all I'm hearing, I have a problem. All of these topics are about ME. We listen, and we take our new little "nugget"of "revelation" home and try to apply it to our lives. We live from revelation to revelation. Snack to snack. And we are hungry and frustrated. And I can tell you with absolute certainty that I am way more boring and less satisfying than He is.
What if my one singular purpose in life, what He created me to do, is not to find out who I am, but to find out who He is?
David wrote, "You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever" (Psalm 16:11).
He does tell us what path to take. But that's not the point of this verse. I think the kingdom of God is this simple: fullness of joy in His presence. Knowing HIM. Who cares about us and our identities? I only want to care about HIS identity.
I mean, He made the whole world just by speaking. Don't you want to get to know someone like that?
I don't know about you, but I want to know the same kind of intimacy with the Father that drove Jesus to the cross. He didn't give up His life for an ideal, for His country, or even really for us. He gave it willingly because His Father asked Him to.
What kind of goodness must the Father possess if people, including Jesus, are willing to die for Him? They must really know who He is. No one will die for a tyrant. But for someone they love, they will sacrifice their lives.
What if we knew the Father so well that we would do anything for Him?
When I read the Old Testament, I see that time after time, the Israelites forsook the God of Abraham and went after idols. And all the way from Genesis to Malachi, the Lord repeats the same complaints: "They don't know me." He is angry with their blatant sin, but He always points out that the reason they are sinning is because they don't know Him.
The Israelites didn't continually turn from God and serve the Baals, sacrificing babies and committing adultery with temple prostitutes, because they didn't understand who THEY were. It was because they didn't understand who HE is. They did not understand His righteousness.
Oh, wait--didn't we hear something about righteousness in that verse about the kingdom of God?
"Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness."
If we don't know what the kingdom of God is, maybe we should just look a few words over. The kingdom of God is HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS. In other words, His character. Who he is. His identity.
You will never perform a miracle because you know who you are. You will perform a miracle because you know who He is.
I've tried a thousand times to approach a sick person to pray for them by pep-talking myself about my authority and identity in the kingdom of God. But I haven't tried to approach them with the simple thought that He is the God who created light, ocean tides, mitochondria, and seahorses....Like, "awesome" doesn't begin to cover it.
I've spent so much time asking God, "Who am I?" Maybe He'd appreciate it just a little bit if I started waking up every morning and asking Him, "Who are you?"
My pride and selfishness will only leave me frustrated. A humble heart toward the Lord will ignite me to my true purpose.
I don't mean to step on any toes (and I'm preaching to myself, too), but you aren't going to get to know Him that well just by sitting on your butt. You will only get to know Him as He is by spending time with Him and asking Him.
"But I don't hear clearly from God," you might say. Well, can you read? Obviously, because you're reading this. Read the Bible as if all you are looking for is what it says about HIM.
I have a right to say this to you, because I'm just now realizing it myself. Our culture has jipped us. And the church is missing it just as much as secular culture. Church is not about us. It's about Him. Anytime we reduce it to anything less than that, it's a frustrating experience. It may draw people in briefly, but it will ultimately drive them away, dissatisfied.
Do you know why? Because the only satisfaction we can find in life is in God. That's it. There's nothing else. We can't find purpose even in our identity as believers. Yes, it's good to know our identity, and good to embrace it. But identity is a by-product of knowing Him. Our identity is not our purpose. Knowing His identity is.
When I had this gentle revelation, I felt like I felt the day that I first really decided to follow Jesus. I felt a sense of overwhelming relief, and a feeling that everything is going to change for good.
We don't need self-help books and personality tests and themed Bible studies. These are not bad things. But they aren't what we NEED. They are the things that are "added unto us." But the thing about adding is that you need a foundation to add to. The fact is that, if you don't understand that knowing Him--His heart, His righteousness, His goodness, His beauty--is the most important thing, even your greatest revelations about your identity in Christ are like Legos on quicksand.
What if the whole church stopped straining to make ourselves into "who we're supposed to be" and just started seeking His face? What if we stopped continuously seeking to preach and buy and read our "identity in Christ" and just spent every day asking Him about His identity?
I tell you what would happen. We wouldn't have to search out our identity in Christ. We would just become it. And we would change the world.
Monday, May 9, 2016
It's Personal
Recently, I had a dream about being sucked up in a tornado.
At first, I was terrified of not being able to breathe because I’ve heard that
the air pressure in a tornado sucks out your breath. (Although it would seem
that there would be bigger problems if you were flying around in a twister.)
After a minute, though, I discovered that I could still breathe, although I
could not see and had no idea what was happening. I felt a sense of peace in my
dream because I just knew that God was there.
I know that’s a wacky dream, but I think that following
Jesus is kind of like that: flying around in a tornado, unharmed and able to
breathe.
I’ve long believed that life isn’t worth living unless
you’re doing something that scares you a little bit. I’m not talking about
being an aimless, thrill-seeking adrenaline addict; I’m talking about living
into your full potential in Christ. Life with Him is just plain exciting….that
is, if you trust Him.
The Bible speaks about Abraham, the ultimate faith warrior,
in this way:
He did not weaken in
faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was
about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s
womb. No distrust made him waver
concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory
to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is
why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.”—Romans 4:19-22
It’s a common misconception that “faith” means manufacturing
a feeling in yourself to produce some kind of result. “Believe for your
healing!” people say. “Have faith for your miracle!” For one thing, that mentality
makes it seem like faith is all you. But my Bible says that faith is a fruit of
the Spirit—which means it comes from Holy Spirit, not from you.
But more important, thinking of faith in this context leads
us into the mindset that faith is only belief in what God can do.
However, the true definition of faith can be found in the above
description of Abraham: “No distrust
made him waver.” Faith is not about objectively believing in God’s sovereignty
or power. It’s wholeheartedly, sincerely trusting
in WHO HE IS—even to the point of giving up all else to seek His heart. It’s
being in a tornado: completely unable to see the path clearly, but holding on
to who He is.
Now that’s personal.
A lot of people talk big about being a Christian, but in
their hearts, they feel constantly afraid. You can agree with the Word of God
and all His promises as much as you want to, but if you don’t really know Him, you’re not going to believe
that He is who He says He is. The result
is that the tornado is coming for you—and you’re terrified of suffocating.
I’m not saying this to be condemning, because I think most
people in America are used to drive-thru church, a vending machine relationship
with God. In fact, riding on the highway just now, I saw a sign that advertised
“free wi-fi and mini-fridge” at a nearby hotel…you know, so you don’t have to
actually talk to or interact with anybody. I think many Christians are simply
afraid to get personal with the Lord (or anybody else, for that matter).
Belief is objective. Trust is personal.
The opposite of faith is not scoffing unbelief. It’s more
sneaky than that. The opposite of faith is fear that comes from deep-rooted
distrust of God.
Distrust can come from a variety of sources. The enemy is
endlessly creative in his ability to inspire suspicion, resentment, and
bitterness toward God. It may be consistent failure in your life. It may be
that people you trusted deeply let you down. It may be bad things that happened
to you, which can turn into an opportunity for the devil to whisper in your
ear, “God doesn’t really love you. He’s not going to be there for you.” Distrust
of God is often disguised as lack of confidence in yourself, but that is only
distrust of who God says you are because you don’t trust who HE is. Real faith
is simply believing that God is not a liar.
Satan’s very first lie was a planned attack against Eve’s
trust in what God had told her (Genesis 3). She replaced God’s word with
Satan’s, and the result was disastrous.
The devil doesn’t often get Christians to believe lies based
on logic (although he does disguise them that way). He gets personal. He goes
straight to the heart and attacks your relationship with God. He doesn’t care
how religious you are, how many rituals you keep, how many works you do, if he
can only keep you shrinking away from the presence of God, because that’s where
real change happens and where we reach our true tornado-riding potential in the
Spirit.
Surely, signs and wonders inspire and build faith. But real
faith is responding to your life in the way of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego:
“O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so,
our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and
he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O
king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you
have set up” (Daniel 3:16-18).
That’s personal. They refused to serve other gods. I hate to
tell you, but fear is an idol. These three young men knew God well enough that
their conviction was more powerful than the idol of fear. They knew that God’s
plan was best, because they knew that God
was good. They trusted Him.
Turn around and tell the devil, “We have no need to answer
you in this matter.” THAT is FAITH.
Trust is something I’ve been learning a lot about over the
past few months. I’ve been coming to believe Him when He says, “Seek first the
kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto
you” (Matthew 6:33).
For my whole life up to this point, my prayer routine has
consisted primarily of me telling God everything I needed for Him to do. I’d go
through every minute of the upcoming day, asking Him to do this or that for me.
I believed big enough that He heard my prayers and that He would do it; but I
did not believe enough to trust that He was good and could do it on His own,
even if it didn’t look like what I wanted.
This prayer list looked like great trust because I was
“submitting” every detail to Him. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing in general.
Passionate intercession has its place. But there’s a fine line between
intercession and control in your personal prayer life. I felt like I had to
tell God what I needed or wanted in every situation because I thought that He
would forget about me if I didn’t. I thought that my expectations and vision
were correct; therefore, I needed to tell God exactly what to do, rather than
walking blindly into what He already had planned. If I trusted Him, He might do
something I didn’t want.
But when you know His heart, you honestly, genuinely want
what He wants, because you know how much He loves you and how irreversible and
unconditional His love is.
A week or two ago, I woke up and felt like I heard Him say,
“Today is the day. “ I thought, “The day for what?” In my prayer time, I felt
nudged to just stop praying for every detail and just say, “Whatever you want,
Lord, I will accept.” I was able to say that because, for the first time in my
life, I believed so much in God’s love for me that I knew that whatever He had
planned was for my good.
It’s a basic concept, but it’s so hard to grasp.
That very day, I received a phone call from the school where
I’ve wanted to work for two years, offering me an interview. I got the job and
will sign the paperwork today. Yes, ask for what you want from God—and then
stop asking. Trust that He has it taken care of, or that He has something even
better for you.
It takes tremendous faith to pray big. It takes bigger faith
to set aside time just for looking into His face and asking Him nothing. The
greatest faith is believing that He is all you need, and that His heart toward
you is good.
Trust means throwing away everything to go after God’s own
heart. The adventure is just a side effect.
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Superman
After an unintended blogging sabbatical, I'm back! Teaching pulled me down into the vortex. Suffice it to say, I love the place where God has called me, but it's been a rocky three months, and spring break was sorely needed. (People who roll their eyes at teachers for getting the summer and holidays off should try teaching for a while without a break.)
Anyway, after He let my brains settle back into my head for a few days, the Lord started speaking to me about aliens. I'm not talking about the Roswell kind. (We'll get to those in a minute.) I'm talking about this verse:
"...remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world" (Ephesians 2:12).
Paul was speaking to Gentiles, not Israelites. Before Christ, the Jews had at least known who God was. The Gentiles, however, had NO hope. All they had was a bunch of wooden idols, human sacrifice, empty philosophy, materialism, sin, and death--none of which, of course, present hope or purpose. And nobody had a personal, familiar relationship with God.
Paul goes on: "For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God" (v. 18-19).
Members of the household of God. Because of Jesus, both Jews and Gentiles can experience the beauty of becoming God's children.
I rarely watch movies, but I actually did watch the Superman movie with my family (the new one). It's going to sound silly, but this movie made me think about Jesus.
I think the writers of this comic were searching for a messianic story, and they didn't even know it. Before you roll your eyes, listen to the similarities in plot line. An alien baby from a powerful place appears in the home of two ordinary, blue-collar people. They raise him as their own, but before long, it becomes pretty evident that he has superpowers beyond humanity's abilities. When he is thirty-three (no joke, that was Clark Kent's age in the movie), he has a conversation with his real dad, and he must decide whether or not he is going to risk his life to save the human race.
Maybe Jesus' Father did not appear to Him as a hologram in an abandoned alien outpost in Antarctica, and Jesus probably smiled WAY more during his lifetime than the actor who played Superman. (I mean, haven't they heard of comic relief?) The Man of Steel's eyes are burning with x-ray vision, not the flames of the fire of God. So it's a stupid comparison, but watching the feelings and adaptations of the main character in Man of Steel kind of shocked me into realizing how Jesus must have felt on earth. You see, at the end of the movie, Clark Kent decides to risk his life for humanity because he has lived with them. He is an alien, but he is also a farm boy from Kansas. He feels distant from most of humankind, yet he LOVES them.
As I watched the movie play out, I realized that Jesus probably had way more feelings wrapped up in humanity than I had thought. I mean, duh, He loves us, but I thought it was some kind of transcendent, pure, self-sacrificial God love. Which, of course, it was. However, Jesus was fully God AND fully man. And He had love toward humanity that was born in a human heart familiar with human experience.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:5-8).
Jesus could have decided not to die for us. But He had grown up with a front row seat to humanity's utter helplessness. He watched deception and sin eat people alive. Maybe He saw his childhood friends abused, neglected, or beaten. Likely, He walked past beggars and sick people on a regular basis. He probably watched family members die. He heard people fighting. He saw daily stress and depression. Maybe kids made fun of Him or beat Him up. As a God-man without sin, He surely felt alienated from humankind; as the son of a carpenter and a girl from Nazareth, He had a love for humanity that came from being one of us.
When He was obedient to death, even death on a cross, He wasn't just dying for an ideal. He was dying for actual human faces that He knew. He died and rose for the joy set before Him: millions and millions of people who would become found in the Father. He loved us with the powerful indwelling love of God through the Holy Spirit. Yet He also loved us because He had been held by a human mama. He had laughed with his friends over a fish fry. He had heard babies, even His own siblings, cry, and had probably seen some of them buried.
He knew our names. He knew just how depraved and messed-up we were, because He had seen everything first hand with his own eyes.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die--but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God (Romans 5:6-9).
Hardly any of us would be willing to give up our lives for even a really good person; yet Christ died for a whole bunch of people who were enslaved to sin. I have to think it was because He had lived among us, and though He had seen the absolute evil that humankind was capable of, He also saw the helpless tears of a people enslaved to evil, captive to the whims of Satan. He loved us because He was God, but He also loved us because He was our brother.
God gave up His only Son for a time, entrusting Him to the care of a regular, run-of-the-mill carpenter family from a small town that nothing good had ever come from. He traded His Son to us in exchange for us to become His children, too.
No doubt the Lord has great compassion for people. Compassion is one of His qualities. He invented it. But for some reason, He wanted to feel it in human skin. He wanted to touch it, to experience it, to let us know: "I'm with you."
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:15-16).
We can draw near to Him, confident of His mercy toward us. His mercy is not a sterile ideal. It is a visceral, living, breathing reality, as profound and personal as one man's blood dripping down a wooden cross.
For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation (Romans 5:10-11).
If you have ever felt estranged, unwanted, outcast, remember this: you are not an alien anymore.
God Himself didn't come and live here with us simply so that He could die an antiseptic, legalistic death. He didn't rise again so that we could be labeled "saved" and carry on with the same lack of purpose and identity as before. He could have done it that way. He could have simply made a business transaction with the devil, a ransom of power, a signed contract. But that would make us His prisoners-of-war and not His children.
It took being one of us to make us one with Him. He died and He rose so that you could become a member of the household of God. That's intimacy.
Just as Mary held Jesus, your heavenly Father holds you. Receive His mercy today.
Anyway, after He let my brains settle back into my head for a few days, the Lord started speaking to me about aliens. I'm not talking about the Roswell kind. (We'll get to those in a minute.) I'm talking about this verse:
"...remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world" (Ephesians 2:12).
Paul was speaking to Gentiles, not Israelites. Before Christ, the Jews had at least known who God was. The Gentiles, however, had NO hope. All they had was a bunch of wooden idols, human sacrifice, empty philosophy, materialism, sin, and death--none of which, of course, present hope or purpose. And nobody had a personal, familiar relationship with God.
Paul goes on: "For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God" (v. 18-19).
Members of the household of God. Because of Jesus, both Jews and Gentiles can experience the beauty of becoming God's children.
I rarely watch movies, but I actually did watch the Superman movie with my family (the new one). It's going to sound silly, but this movie made me think about Jesus.
I think the writers of this comic were searching for a messianic story, and they didn't even know it. Before you roll your eyes, listen to the similarities in plot line. An alien baby from a powerful place appears in the home of two ordinary, blue-collar people. They raise him as their own, but before long, it becomes pretty evident that he has superpowers beyond humanity's abilities. When he is thirty-three (no joke, that was Clark Kent's age in the movie), he has a conversation with his real dad, and he must decide whether or not he is going to risk his life to save the human race.
Maybe Jesus' Father did not appear to Him as a hologram in an abandoned alien outpost in Antarctica, and Jesus probably smiled WAY more during his lifetime than the actor who played Superman. (I mean, haven't they heard of comic relief?) The Man of Steel's eyes are burning with x-ray vision, not the flames of the fire of God. So it's a stupid comparison, but watching the feelings and adaptations of the main character in Man of Steel kind of shocked me into realizing how Jesus must have felt on earth. You see, at the end of the movie, Clark Kent decides to risk his life for humanity because he has lived with them. He is an alien, but he is also a farm boy from Kansas. He feels distant from most of humankind, yet he LOVES them.
As I watched the movie play out, I realized that Jesus probably had way more feelings wrapped up in humanity than I had thought. I mean, duh, He loves us, but I thought it was some kind of transcendent, pure, self-sacrificial God love. Which, of course, it was. However, Jesus was fully God AND fully man. And He had love toward humanity that was born in a human heart familiar with human experience.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:5-8).
Jesus could have decided not to die for us. But He had grown up with a front row seat to humanity's utter helplessness. He watched deception and sin eat people alive. Maybe He saw his childhood friends abused, neglected, or beaten. Likely, He walked past beggars and sick people on a regular basis. He probably watched family members die. He heard people fighting. He saw daily stress and depression. Maybe kids made fun of Him or beat Him up. As a God-man without sin, He surely felt alienated from humankind; as the son of a carpenter and a girl from Nazareth, He had a love for humanity that came from being one of us.
When He was obedient to death, even death on a cross, He wasn't just dying for an ideal. He was dying for actual human faces that He knew. He died and rose for the joy set before Him: millions and millions of people who would become found in the Father. He loved us with the powerful indwelling love of God through the Holy Spirit. Yet He also loved us because He had been held by a human mama. He had laughed with his friends over a fish fry. He had heard babies, even His own siblings, cry, and had probably seen some of them buried.
He knew our names. He knew just how depraved and messed-up we were, because He had seen everything first hand with his own eyes.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die--but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God (Romans 5:6-9).
Hardly any of us would be willing to give up our lives for even a really good person; yet Christ died for a whole bunch of people who were enslaved to sin. I have to think it was because He had lived among us, and though He had seen the absolute evil that humankind was capable of, He also saw the helpless tears of a people enslaved to evil, captive to the whims of Satan. He loved us because He was God, but He also loved us because He was our brother.
God gave up His only Son for a time, entrusting Him to the care of a regular, run-of-the-mill carpenter family from a small town that nothing good had ever come from. He traded His Son to us in exchange for us to become His children, too.
No doubt the Lord has great compassion for people. Compassion is one of His qualities. He invented it. But for some reason, He wanted to feel it in human skin. He wanted to touch it, to experience it, to let us know: "I'm with you."
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:15-16).
We can draw near to Him, confident of His mercy toward us. His mercy is not a sterile ideal. It is a visceral, living, breathing reality, as profound and personal as one man's blood dripping down a wooden cross.
For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation (Romans 5:10-11).
If you have ever felt estranged, unwanted, outcast, remember this: you are not an alien anymore.
God Himself didn't come and live here with us simply so that He could die an antiseptic, legalistic death. He didn't rise again so that we could be labeled "saved" and carry on with the same lack of purpose and identity as before. He could have done it that way. He could have simply made a business transaction with the devil, a ransom of power, a signed contract. But that would make us His prisoners-of-war and not His children.
It took being one of us to make us one with Him. He died and He rose so that you could become a member of the household of God. That's intimacy.
Just as Mary held Jesus, your heavenly Father holds you. Receive His mercy today.
Sunday, December 20, 2015
Baby Daddy: A Christmas Revelation
He went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, "Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him.--Mark 6:1-3
And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.--Luke 2:6-7
I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.--John 14:18-20
"Is this not the son of Mary?" That question would have hung in the air like an accusation. Everyone knew (or thought they knew) that Jesus was illegitimate. Where did he get off, doing miracles in the name of God? How dare he--a despised orphan, a fatherless castaway--go around telling them he knew THE Father of creation. What's more--that he was His own son.
Didn't he know who his mother was? The people of Jesus' hometown didn't give Him a family name. They called Him by the world's epithets: unloved, rejected, unclaimed, insane, futureless.
That's because they hadn't been there thirty years earlier in a stable in Bethlehem where a baby was wrapped up and placed in a manger. They didn't know what the shepherds knew: that angels sang when Jesus was born because He was the only person in all of creation since Adam to NOT be born an orphan.
When I was a little girl, I was fascinated with the figure of the baby Jesus in our manger scene. I would take it and study it every Christmas. I would let my sister put in the other figures, but I had to place the baby Jesus in his rightful place, between Mary and Joseph, where the motionless shepherds and wise men could stare blankly at him from their porcelain faces. Something felt right in that ritual, physically placing the baby where he was supposed to be. Even then, I was intrigued by the mystery of the baby Jesus.
The Bible says that Jesus is the "second Adam" (1 Corinthians 15:45). But Adam was created a full-grown man; why did Jesus have to be a baby? Why couldn't He just descend to earth in a pod like Superman, or emerge an adult from a seashell like in that story about Aphrodite? I can tell you one thing, it would've made a pretty dramatic impact if He had washed up on the shore of the Sea of Galilee as a full-grown man and said to the fishermen, "Hey, follow me."
Superman and Aphrodite aren't real (sorry, comics fans), but Jesus is. And He was born in the same way all of us are. (I'll spare you the details.) What's more, He was born into a stable, surrounded by smelly animals and probably a lot of other people, who were likely talking about the suspicious and inconvenient circumstances of this birth.
We can imagine that "all of the fullness of the Diety dwells bodily" in the full-grown figure of Jesus (Colossians 2:9). But imagine all of that goodness and purity and power in a baby. Probably no more than six or seven pounds--just a baby, too little to talk, too helpless to do much more than cry and sleep.
Yes, the body of the man Jesus on the cross reveals impactfully His humility. But this is a fresh revelation for me this Christmas: the figure of the baby Jesus gives humility a sweetness and touches a chord somewhere even deeper in our hearts.
That's because if there is a baby, there is a father. Even the people of Nazareth knew that. A full-grown man can try to make it on his own. But a baby represents the existence of someone with ability and authority who will raise this helpless little being from infant to adult. A baby represents the presence of a patriarch who will make this tiny, seemingly useless human into an heir based on nothing but the testimony of blood.
Sadly, in our world, there are too many babies whose fathers are not present. But that doesn't change the fact that the fathers exist. You cannot create a baby without a father. It is impossible.
So the miracle was not as much that a virgin conceived without a father, but that there was a father, and the father was God himself.
If you think it's weird, you're not the only one. I'm sure Mary thought it was weird more than anybody.
Children are precious to God. They are so precious that He allowed His son to become one of them--helpless, weak, having done nothing yet to deserve accolade or fame--and then put on a concert of angels singing, "This is my Son; in Him I am well pleased." When Jesus was too little to defend Himself, too little to throw a punch, too little to talk, even too little to walk, His Father protected Him from Herod's wrath. His Father carefully chose earthly parents to take care of Him. According to Jewish law, His Father gave Him His own name and an inheritance. And the inheritance was His own Spirit, His own image, His own words, which brought light to an orphaned people and adopted them as children of God.
You see, the Nazarites thought that Jesus was fatherless and abandoned, a nobody; but just the opposite was true. He was the first baby born who had a heavenly Father. And He was born that way so that we could have a heavenly Father, too.
Very few of us can identify with the brutality Jesus experienced on the cross, but all of us can identify with a baby. We are all babies. It is important for us to come to the cross and realize that He became our sin. But it is also important for us to come to the stable and realize that He came as a son. He was a son first.
Jesus had to be born so that He could be the "firstborn among many brothers" (Romans 8:29): the first of a new family of people who would never be orphans again. When the devil points at us and says, "You're an orphan!", Jesus points to the angels who sang in a starry sky the night He was born and says, "No, we are fathered. We are loved."
The angel choirs are singing for you, too.
Merry Christmas!
Sing to God, sing praises to his name; lift up a song to him who rides through the deserts; his name is the Lord; exult before him! Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation. God settles the solitary in a home...--Psalm 68:4-6
And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.--Luke 2:6-7
I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.--John 14:18-20
"Is this not the son of Mary?" That question would have hung in the air like an accusation. Everyone knew (or thought they knew) that Jesus was illegitimate. Where did he get off, doing miracles in the name of God? How dare he--a despised orphan, a fatherless castaway--go around telling them he knew THE Father of creation. What's more--that he was His own son.
Didn't he know who his mother was? The people of Jesus' hometown didn't give Him a family name. They called Him by the world's epithets: unloved, rejected, unclaimed, insane, futureless.
That's because they hadn't been there thirty years earlier in a stable in Bethlehem where a baby was wrapped up and placed in a manger. They didn't know what the shepherds knew: that angels sang when Jesus was born because He was the only person in all of creation since Adam to NOT be born an orphan.
When I was a little girl, I was fascinated with the figure of the baby Jesus in our manger scene. I would take it and study it every Christmas. I would let my sister put in the other figures, but I had to place the baby Jesus in his rightful place, between Mary and Joseph, where the motionless shepherds and wise men could stare blankly at him from their porcelain faces. Something felt right in that ritual, physically placing the baby where he was supposed to be. Even then, I was intrigued by the mystery of the baby Jesus.
The Bible says that Jesus is the "second Adam" (1 Corinthians 15:45). But Adam was created a full-grown man; why did Jesus have to be a baby? Why couldn't He just descend to earth in a pod like Superman, or emerge an adult from a seashell like in that story about Aphrodite? I can tell you one thing, it would've made a pretty dramatic impact if He had washed up on the shore of the Sea of Galilee as a full-grown man and said to the fishermen, "Hey, follow me."
Superman and Aphrodite aren't real (sorry, comics fans), but Jesus is. And He was born in the same way all of us are. (I'll spare you the details.) What's more, He was born into a stable, surrounded by smelly animals and probably a lot of other people, who were likely talking about the suspicious and inconvenient circumstances of this birth.
We can imagine that "all of the fullness of the Diety dwells bodily" in the full-grown figure of Jesus (Colossians 2:9). But imagine all of that goodness and purity and power in a baby. Probably no more than six or seven pounds--just a baby, too little to talk, too helpless to do much more than cry and sleep.
Yes, the body of the man Jesus on the cross reveals impactfully His humility. But this is a fresh revelation for me this Christmas: the figure of the baby Jesus gives humility a sweetness and touches a chord somewhere even deeper in our hearts.
That's because if there is a baby, there is a father. Even the people of Nazareth knew that. A full-grown man can try to make it on his own. But a baby represents the existence of someone with ability and authority who will raise this helpless little being from infant to adult. A baby represents the presence of a patriarch who will make this tiny, seemingly useless human into an heir based on nothing but the testimony of blood.
Sadly, in our world, there are too many babies whose fathers are not present. But that doesn't change the fact that the fathers exist. You cannot create a baby without a father. It is impossible.
So the miracle was not as much that a virgin conceived without a father, but that there was a father, and the father was God himself.
If you think it's weird, you're not the only one. I'm sure Mary thought it was weird more than anybody.
Children are precious to God. They are so precious that He allowed His son to become one of them--helpless, weak, having done nothing yet to deserve accolade or fame--and then put on a concert of angels singing, "This is my Son; in Him I am well pleased." When Jesus was too little to defend Himself, too little to throw a punch, too little to talk, even too little to walk, His Father protected Him from Herod's wrath. His Father carefully chose earthly parents to take care of Him. According to Jewish law, His Father gave Him His own name and an inheritance. And the inheritance was His own Spirit, His own image, His own words, which brought light to an orphaned people and adopted them as children of God.
You see, the Nazarites thought that Jesus was fatherless and abandoned, a nobody; but just the opposite was true. He was the first baby born who had a heavenly Father. And He was born that way so that we could have a heavenly Father, too.
Very few of us can identify with the brutality Jesus experienced on the cross, but all of us can identify with a baby. We are all babies. It is important for us to come to the cross and realize that He became our sin. But it is also important for us to come to the stable and realize that He came as a son. He was a son first.
Jesus had to be born so that He could be the "firstborn among many brothers" (Romans 8:29): the first of a new family of people who would never be orphans again. When the devil points at us and says, "You're an orphan!", Jesus points to the angels who sang in a starry sky the night He was born and says, "No, we are fathered. We are loved."
The angel choirs are singing for you, too.
Merry Christmas!
Sing to God, sing praises to his name; lift up a song to him who rides through the deserts; his name is the Lord; exult before him! Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation. God settles the solitary in a home...--Psalm 68:4-6
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