That Jesus was 'special' is a drastically pallid understatement. But that is the reminder for me this Christmas season. It is easy to be so wrapped up in the nativity to forget that there was something eternally special about this child. When I read the story, I forget the air that must have come around this baby. I think of who He was to be and become and the Spirit in Him. The Spirit that IS Him.
The only way He could be more special is if He lived on forever, and He does. The only way that story become as magical and mysterious as a child makes Santa to be is if Jesus Christ also never dies and lives on in our hearts forever. Of course, He does in truth and reality. He lives on in the truth as His Spirit takes hold of our heart and spirit for the rest of our lives.
I tend to focus a great deal on the humanity of Jesus when I think of Christmas, because after all, God came close in Jesus. God came into our flesh that we may truly know Him and that He might truly know our human condition enough that He might redeem it. The humanity of Christ is truly a gift, but I also have to remember to direct my attention and expectation to the Holy. I miss the divine. I miss the greater relationship found in and with Christ.
This is the challenge of my heart and mind this year. Don't forget that Jesus is more than special. He is Holy! We celebrate a holy invasion of earth that lives on in the hearts of men and women who will not ignore the sacred realities of Jesus Christ, which still play out for us today and throughout eternity.
On Church Competition and The Brothers Karamazov
The Simple Solution to a Restless Heart
Catch for us the foxes: my address to my daughter's husband
As I have been reading through Bryleigh's Bible, it has brought me to the Song of Songs. I have been very interested to see what this time and entanglement will bring for my heart as I address her in writing regarding a book that Jewish boys were not allowed to read until they became men. Today, I read chapter 2 and came across verse 15. The bride says to her lover, "Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that are ruining the vineyards while our vineyards are in blossom."
As The Song can be applied to both our relationship as a bride to our bridegroom, Jesus Christ, it can also be applied to the true love relationship we have with our spouse.
These foxes are any of those things which keep us from Jesus and the life He intends for us. Catch the foxes! Remove the foxes! They must be caught and removed from your relationship with God.
But they ALSO must be caught and removed from your relationship with your spouse. This is an address to husbands! Catch the foxes! Remove the foxes. They must be caught and removed. The good marriage relationship will be one in which you both, but especially the man, DOES the work of catching any foxes which hinder your relationship and your marriage.
I wrote this in the margin of Bryleigh's Bible, and it has stuck with me all day: "If your husband is unwilling to do this sort of work, I doubt his love for you."
So many men are willing to work hard to make money for the family. They are willing to protect their wife from physical harm. I have known countless men who are unwilling to do the work of catching the foxes for their marriage and their family when it comes to the actual relationship. This will require work; uncomfortable work. Your hardest day of work may not compare to the hard work you will do in addressing those things which hinder your relationship and harm your wife to a far deeper place than any physical harm would bring to her. But if you truly love your wife and your family, you must catch the foxes! You must remove the foxes.
If you are unwilling to do this, I question your love for your wife.
On weeping for Jesus' Cross
In our remembrance of the Passion of Christ, what do we mourn? What brings us sadness? I wonder if it is the same thing Jesus would have us mourn and be sad over. Do we still get sad for Jesus; do we do as Christ tells the Daughters of Jerusalem in Luke 23 on his way up the hill to Golgotha? "But Jesus turning to them said, 'Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children." (vs 28)
Do we weep for Christ at Easter or our remembrance of the cross throughout the year? Or... Do we weep for ourselves and the condition of the world? Do we weep for CHrist when we remember the cross (which he did conquer), or do we weep for the condition our own hearts are still in?
On hearing and understanding God
One of the reasons we do not hear God as we did in the Old Testament is because our sin has grown to do this to us. Humanity has been so sickened with sin that we have lost our hearing and we no longer even speak God's language enough to understand Him if we even could hear His voice.
Hearts have been so hardened over time that we are too incredibly foreign to God whose image is actually imprinted upon us. We who are in His very image are terribly foreign to Him because of our sin.
The good news is that God desires his imprinted people. He desires connection, contact, and conversation once again. The silence we hate is as hurtful to God.
He had to speak a language we would finally be able to understand. Jesus is that language. "Jesus is God spelling Himself out," wrote SD Gordon.
Jesus is God Himself. Jesus is God Himself speaking a language our foreign sin-soaked hearts can finally understand.
That intimacy we once knew in Eden is possible now only in Jesus.
Prone to wander
Our hearts are truly and terribly wicked. THey need to ALWAYS be focused and disciplined to obey, follow, and love God above all else. But because of the fact that our hearts just really are so so wicked (depraved) there simply is no room for comfortable apathy in this life. Every day my heart is drawn toward its own wickedness, and I have to intentionally focus my heart each and every day on Jesus Christ and the God who demands that I follow Him and obey Him.
My heart is so easily turned away; like terribly easy to be turned away. This depravity and wickedness angers me. I hate that my heart is aligned toward sin and terrible choices, but over and over again I see this in my life.
O God, my heart is so wicked and prone to wander, I am truly prone to leave the God I love and turn from you.
Here is my heart, LORD, take and seal it for thy courts above. Seal and cap my heart for you and your alone. O God, my heart is prone to wander. It is so easily turned from you. Seal my heart. I hate my wickedness. I hate that I am always turning from you if I am not remembering the grace you have given me in Christ. I desire to follow you and lead your people with a fear of you, but heart pulls me.
My heart is depraved and wicked. While I have been redeemed in the blood of Christ on the cross, I still feel prone to wander and leave the path of the God I love. I hate and despise that feeling.
I also realize if I am not intentionally focusing my wandering heart, I will be too easily turned. So seal my heart. Draw me close to you and I will obey you. I will follow you and honor you.
With Psalm 80 I pray, "O God, restore me, and cause your face to shine upon me and I will be saved."
My heat is truly wicked and prone to wander from you. When I do wander, I find brokenness at every turn. So I pray for restoration, and I pray this on a consistent repeat.
Restoration is a return to an original condition before wear and tear and brokenness began to set in.
Loving eyes
His love is more potent than any other
because His eyes are more powerful than the rest
His eyes see through the filth and crust
they see through perversion
His eyes caught and catch glimpses of the Divine intention hidden in every person in every way His first loving act is to give new eyes
Ends and Means
Matthew Henry writes, "All who are chosen to happiness in the end, are chosen to holiness as the means."
I have had this quote in my head for a couple weeks now. There is a great reminder to us in a culture obsessed with happiness. Over and over again we see people come through our doors prepared to end commitments and covenants because someone has told them, "Don't you deserve to be happy?" This very thing has lead to the breakdown of our lives, and it has lead us also to our addictiveness.
This is the very nature of addiction. Things are addicting because they always leave you wanting more, and they destroy you all along the way. They cannot fulfill you. Whether it is sex or substances. Whether it is more stuff in our closets, driveways, or pockets. We are addicted to these things when we think the only important thing is our happiness, and we start to believe these things will make us happy. And they do…for only a moment. That is the very point of these things; to only make you feel good and happy for a short time so that you want it again. Do you have something you desire and crave more than Jesus and a connection with Jesus? Do you see how CRAZY and absolutely LUDICROUS it is for me to desire and crave anything more than I crave a loving real connection with Jesus Christ?
Heaven without Jesus
Jesus, I want to love you so much I desire you more than this earth. I want my heart to desire you and not simply the things you give me through the cross or the things you promise in my heavenly home. I want to know that my heart would want nothing of heaven's beauty if you were not there. I want to know that you would not need to wean me from this earth the hard way because I would happily leave any comfort this world offers me to be with you. I want my heart to be more concerned with what you are to me instead of what you did for me. I want your cross to daily be more than a utility and instead focus on the beauty of the One who died upon it. I want to stay awake and long for your coming instead of being comfortable and sleepy where I am.
I want all these things and regret that my heart does not always often live and act the same way.
You are my greatest love, and I want to live in such a way that I do not lie.
Listen up, Soul
Soul, I will address you as the Psalmists do. Oh my soul within me, why do you continue to focus on the discouragement, shame, and self-defeat? Why do you not focus on Jesus and the rest he gives to you? (Matthew 11:28-29) Why do you believe the lies of the Imposter within you? Listen to the truth of Jesus' words, come to Him, and he will give you rest.
In Jesus, you find your rest. In Jesus, you find rescue and refuge from your troubles. In Jesus, you will find rest you crave and desire. Oh heart within me, you are under the weight of defeat, and you need rest. Only in Jesus will you find rest from self-defeat, hopelessness, and shame. Listen up, soul! You need rest! Only when you are focused on Jesus will you not be be focused on the destructive lies and inner-dialogue.
Oh my soul, come to Jesus this morning [and tomorrow....and the next day], and you WILL find rest.