Christmas Brings Out The Best in Us!

The city lights have now become giant snowflakes.  One by one, homes are adorn with lights and wreaths and mangers and the words, Merry Christmas.  The sounds of Christmas are being heard loud and clear.  Choirs are singing Joy to the World and Silent Night is heard in the background as shoppers walk through the stores to find that perfect gift for their loved ones.  Jesus is now the topic of conversation.  Jesus is now at the center for billions around the world.  Jesus gets the attention and the praise he deserves.  It is Christmas!  It is Christmas! 

Christmas is unlike any other holiday.  Christmas brings out the best in most everyone.  Christmas is love and faith, and Jesus.  Christmas is hope and peace.  Christmas is gifts and laughter.  Christmas is family!  Christmas is kindness and generosity and joy!

When we get right down to it, Christmas should be three hundred sixty-five days of living.  Everything Christmas brings out in each of us should be lived out January through November, too.   Jesus said, “Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.” (MSG)  Living the Jesus life will help a child in May.  It will give food to the hungry in August.  It will put clothes on someone is March.  It will walk two or three miles with someone who is hurting in October.  It will pray over someone who is struggling with sin in July.  It will open the doors of opportunity to tell the Jesus story in April. 

The essence of Christmas is sharing and giving to those in need.  We have a tendency to rally our givers together in December to give to those less fortunate.  However, when January rolls around, we are proud of what we’ve accomplished in December and we begin to quickly forget those who we helped and need up more January through November.    

If Christmas is celebrating Jesus, then we must also do it with the intentions of telling them that his birth is so significant that it will change your life.  The angel of the Lord told Joseph in a dream that the baby Mary was going to deliver would be the savior of the world.  His name will be called Jesus because he will save everyone from sin. 

Giving Jesus was a demonstration of God’s gift to us.  John 3:16 says “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son….” (MSG)  God didn’t stop sharing, and loving and being kind and generous at the birth of Jesus, it was only the beginning of what was to come.  God continue to demonstrate his gift giving and “love for us: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8 (NIV) God isn’t a one-month giver out of the year; rather, he is continually seeking to ensure we have all that we need. 

The best gift any of us will ever receive is the gift of salvation.  Being saved is a huge load off our minds and it puts us in a right relationship with God.  There is no magical formula to receiving the gift.  All it takes is a desire for the gift.  Make this Christmas the most memorable of them all by making Jesus your Lord and Savior.  By allowing him to live daily in your life and by resurrecting into the new life that Scripture calls baptism.  

May this Christmas be a time of joy and giving and loving!  Mostly, may is be a time of receiving the most significant gift of them all, the gift of salvation.  If you want to know more, call me at 931-545-7543. 

Remember, Be God Controlled!

Brian 

Being Thankful Even When It's Tough Times

"Give thanks in all circumstances…." 

How?

My daughter is fighting a war in Afghanistan.  I am fighting diabetes.  I have no job.  My son is doing drugs.  My child has died.  My marriage is falling a part.  I’m depressed.  My bank account is overdrawn.  I’m tired of being sick and tired.  

Circumstances affect each of us differently.  It is easier to say, “give thanks in all circumstances” than to actually do it.  Especially, if the person saying it has never gone through troubled times. 
In this case, the one saying it knew exactly what he was talking about.  Paul, an Apostle of Jesus had his moments in the suffering department.

            Flogged 5 times with the Jews 39 lashes.

            Beaten by Roman rods 3 times.

            Betrayed by those who pretended to be a friend.

            Pummeled with rocks.

            Many sleepless nights and missed meals.

Paul said, “And that’s the half of it, when you throw in the daily pressures and anxieties of all the churches.” 1 Corinthians 11:28 (MSG) 

No doubt, circumstances can make life difficult to deal with.  The pain is real. Adversity is hard.  And, trials take us on a journey of suffering.   If allowed, difficult circumstances can wear us down, zap our joy, and defeat us. Our vision is blurred by what isn’t possible, rather than, what is possible.

Thanksgiving comes when we walk with God even with life’s journey is tough to deal with.  God will lead us to the very place that restores our joy and hope.  He allows us to take a breather and regroup so that we will be refreshed and strengthened.  

Our circumstances may take longer than we desire and life may seem like it is crashing down.  Never allow your hand to lose its grip from God’s hand; nor your eyes to wondering off to find a quick solution.  Trust God’s leading.  

Remember, Be God Controlled!

Brian

New President…Same God…Trust

Finally!  The presidential election is over.  Political signs will be taken down. Political commercials will stop.  Political pundits will reroute their talking points. 

As the announcement was made that a new president was elected, there was joy on one end of the street and total disbelief on the other end.  Some were crying tears of heartbreak, while others were crying tears of happiness. 

For some, there is fear of what the future will bring; for others, it is a day of hope and optimism for America’s future.  There were millions who went to bed in disbelief that their presidential candidate lost; while millions for the winning presidential candidate went to bed believing in a better tomorrow. 

No matter if your candidate won or lost, it is God who is ultimately in controlled.  Trusting God is key!  I truly believe that the more we trust God, the calmer life is and the more we can see clearly God providing exactly what we ultimately need.  The psalmist said it best in Psalm 13:5, "But I trust in your unfailing love. I will rejoice because you have rescued me."  God is clear in Psalm 50:15 “I want you to trust Me in your times of trouble so I can rescue you and you can give Me glory.” 

No matter who the President of the United States of America is, God is still the most influential leader that humankind will ever know.  Proverbs 21:1 declared that “The king’s heart is like a stream of water directed by the Lord; he guides it wherever he pleases.”  Trust must be in God!  We must trust that God knows what he is doing and who he allows to be appointed in positions of great authority. 

God is in the business of ensuring we have what we need, when we need it.  Trusting God’s timing can be one of the most difficult parts of life.  It is in our trusting God that will relax and calm us.  Through Jeremiah, God reminded Israel that He would restore them, but they must trust his timing and his reasoning behind his decision of when that will be.  Jeremiah encourages the people that God is aware and that there is hope for the future: “I’ll show up and take care of you as I promised and bring you back home. I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.” (Jeremiah 29:11 – MSG)

There are all kinds of situations in life in which trusting God is the only avenue we have to get through the difficult times, situations or elections.  God is on the scene doing what he does best.   

God is never distant!  God is present.  Available.  Listening. 

Trust!

Remember, Be God Controlled!

Brian

Who is My Neighbor?

Jesus was asked a question by an expert lawyer in Luke 10:25-37, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Jesus asked two questions back to the lawyer: “What is written in the Law and how to you read it?”  The lawyer quoted from Deuteronomy 6:5, “Love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.”  Jesus affirms the lawyer’s answer and says, “Do it and you will live.”  As a lawyer will typically do, he asked Jesus another question, “Who is my neighbor?”  Jesus then takes the lawyer on a journey of what it looks like to be a neighbor no matter what ethnicity, skin color, social status, nor gender. 

The expert lawyer knows full well who his neighbor is, but because he is bent on justifying himself to limit his social obligations to treat everyone fairly and with dignity, he asked the question, “Who is my neighbor?”  Jesus uses three men to describe how a man who was left to die was treated by those who saw him bloodied and about to die. 

In Matthew 25:31-40 Jesus illustrates a fact that there will be a separation between the righteous and the unrighteous.  Jesus illustrates it by talking about how one treats others when they are hungry, thirsty, a stranger, needing clothing, sickly and a prisoner. The righteous responded to Jesus my asking, “When did we do these things?” Jesus said, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

The accounts of Matthew and Luke illustrate a unique way in which we are to help our fellow neighbor.  James Wiseman, writes about his experience of homeless men in Washington D.C., he entitled it, The Parable of the Good Samaritan and Those in Need.  James Wiseman seems to struggle with his own obligations to the homeless men due to his job and time restraints.  After all, he was a monk who had taken a vow of poverty, meaning he owns no possessions.  What could he really give to the homeless?  How could he actually help?  Busy could be an excuse like the priest and the Levite in Luke 10.  Or, he didn’t have food, water, or clothing to aide the homeless.  Jesus tells the lawyer to go and do like wise and Jesus tells the righteous, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”  The question remains: Who is obligated to help the homeless?  The answer is:  Every neighbor. 

Margaret Aymer’s writes about Fredrick Douglass’s Use of the Good Samaritan in Abolitionist Rhetoric, Douglass presents a speech to the Free Church of Scotland for their decision to take funding from the southern U.S. slaveholders.  Douglass metaphorically compares the one left on the side of the road in Luke 10 to that of a slave in the deep south of the United States.  Douglass goes so far as to call out the churches in the south as the perpetrators of hurting and leaving the man lying on the side of the road to die.  The men lying on the road to die are the slaves who were bought by the slaveholders.  These were the same slaveholders who were financially giving money to the Free Church of Scotland.  If we are going to take Jesus’ words literally in Luke 10, then we have to believe that our neighbor is everyone and everywhere.  If one is mistreating a neighbor no matter where they are in the world, we are obligated to help.  Douglass concludes that once we realize who are neighbors are, we have a moral and ethical obligation to help bandage the wounds and use all resources such as food, water, shelter and clothing to help the one hurt to heal. 

Our neighbor may be hungry, sick, or in need of clothes.  The question is:  What will we do about it?  Jesus said, Jesus said, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

Remember, Be God Controlled!

Brian