Advent Week One

Our Advent theme this week in the Long-Expected Jesus (Nazarene Publishing House) devotion book is "He is Coming".  We focus on the reality that just as Jesus came to earth as a baby boy in Bethlehem we believe in the reality that Jesus will come again.  Paul wrote the church church in Corinth - Now you have every spiritual gift you need as you eagerly wait for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 1:7NLT)  Some simple lessons from this verse!

1. We are called to be prepared by gaining every spiritual gift God has for us in our lives.  If we want to be ready and prepared for Christ return or for Christ to show up in our lives when we are willing to seek the Holy Spirit.  Most of us don't like being caught unprepared in our lives.  School work undone, work presentation not completed, people showing up at your house and turkey still frozen... the list goes on for times when we don't not being prepared.  Spiritually we want to be prepared!  Growing in the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives!  Connected with Christ in a way we are comfortable when He shows up!

2. When we are prepared we eagerly wait for Jesus to return.  There can be a great since of anticipation when Jesus shows up in our lives or when Jesus comes to restore the world to its proper order.  We don't have to live in fear of those moments.  We don't have to be embarrassed that we caught off guard.  We can live eargerly longing and waiting for Jesus.  

For 400 years the people of Israel lived without hearing from God.  No prophet spoke to the people.  No glory of God came down on the temple in Jerusalem.  They waiting for a Messiah to come.  When the Messiah did come the people of God where not prepared to receive Jesus.  We are honored to live in a day when the Holy Spirit of God dwells in our heart and His Spirit can help us live connected with God and prepared for Jesus to show up in our lives or in the world! 

Thankful for Adversity

In the sermon Sunday morning (November 5, 2017) I talked about having a growth mindset and embracing challenges of life.  God sometimes helps me to practice what I preach!  With some news of set backs and challenges on Monday morning I went to the Lord in prayer with a "Why me?" attitude mixed with a "revenge" attitude.  Whining about people's choices and practicing my "if I have the opportunity to speak..."  God subtilly reminded me of embracing the challenges!  Finding the good that God is wanting to work through the struggles that I face and the circumstances I can't control.  Reminding me that every person is created in the image of God and many I deal with are children of God just like me and God loves them just as much as He loves me.  

Isaiah 26:3-4 You will keep in perfect peace  all who trust in you,

    all whose thoughts are fixed on you!
4 Trust in the Lord always, for the Lord God is the eternal Rock.

Today and everyday I long for the peace of God that comes from trusting Him over my circumstances and my setbacks.  I want to so completely trust God that I can look for His working in challenges before I start complaining and seeking revenge.  That my heart of peace would be full of thanksgiving to my Rock!

The proverb reminds me I must keep my thoughts fixed on God.  It is so easy to look to the left or to the right for comfort or escape; but what I need the most is to continue to look straight at the God who is my Rock!

Henri Nouwen Words On Peace

When we gather around the table and eat from the same loaf and drink from the same cup, we are most vulnerable to one another. We cannot have a meal together in peace with guns hanging over our shoulders and pistols attached to our belts. When we break bread together we leave our arms - whether they are physical or mental - at the door and enter into a place of mutual vulnerability and trust.

    The beauty of the Eucharist is precisely that it is the place where a vulnerable God invites vulnerable people to come together in a peaceful meal. When we break bread and give it to each other, fear vanishes and God becomes very close.

Henri Nouwen, Daily Meditation

Mysteries Revealed

Daniel 2:28 but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries.

Daniel is getting ready to let King Nebuchadnezzar know the dream that the king had received and what the dream means.  But before he does "the reveal" he makes sure the king understands that Daniel's insight and wisdom is not his own, but comes from the Lord.

What type of mysteries might God want to reveal to us today?  If God is the same today as He has always been then it makes since that God might want to reveal some mysteries of our day to the people of God.  Why is it today that we don't anticipate God to reveal to His followers anything about the mysteries of the world today?

1. Dreams seem so unreliable to us we tend to not trust them as a way God reveals mysteries to people.

2. We expect science and the scientific method to be the only reliable source for revelation of mysteries.

3. We have had too many people say they know mysteries and then are proven wrong, so we shy away from believing God still works in this way.  (Example - the world is going to end on January first 2000 was a prediction that didn't stand the test of time)

4. Mysteries revealed seems to "out there" type of religion.  That is only for the religious fanatics!

Whatever our reasoning might be, the reality is that much of the Bible must be tossed out or counted as unreliable if we don't deal with God revealing Himself and realities of life through dreams.  There are significant times when God revealed Himself to people in dreams - Jacob, Daniel, Mary, Joseph and Peter - just to name a few.

A good way to filter our dreams is to use the Wesleyan Quarderlateral - do our dreams pass the test of:
Scripture  is it consistant with the Word of God?   Predictions of the end of the world are not consistent with God's word saying "no one knows the times")
Tradition -Does what God reveal to us consistent with how God has revealed Himself in the past to others?  
Reason - is it reasonable what God is revealing to us?  Many times we see reason as anti-faith, but the reality is our minds are God given and God created.
Experience - is there an authenticity of the experience in your heart? God speaks to the human heart and if we are connected with the Holy Spirit in our hearts we can desern what is real and authentic.

What might God want to reveal to you?  What mysteries might He want you to know?  Paul found out what decision to make on a missionary journey through a dream.  Peter found out God wanted him to visit a Gentile's home through a dream.  Are we listening to God speak in all ways He might be trying to communicate to us?  Dream on!

Freedom and Obedience

Freedom and obedience are incredibly balanced and displayed in the life and the words of Jesus.  Jesus understands that he is free in that he has the power of choice!  To truly believe Jesus was fully human means that he had the ability to choose to follow God's will and plan for his life or to do his own thing.  Jesus also was divine and so he realized he had power to do miracles and could have tried to rescue the world in a different way than the Father had in mind.  But Jesus kept his humanity and his divinity in check and lived out obedience to the Father and the will of the Father.  Jesus willingly laid down his life to rescue all those who would believe in Him! Jesus words describe this so beautifully: 

John 10:17-18 (NLT)  “The Father loves me because I sacrifice my life so I may take it back again.  No one can take my life from me. I sacrifice it voluntarily. For I have the authority to lay it down when I want to and also to take it up again. For this is what my Father has commanded.”

The question for those who follow the way of Jesus today is can we continue to live out the example of Jesus?  Can I learn to live in freedom and obedience? Understanding freedom is not a selfish concept but rather knowing that I do have the freedom of choice and free will in my life, but I choose daily to surrender to the will of the Father.  

God has been leading me on this journey about my own daily rhythms of spiritual living.  Teaching me about morning prayers and evening prayers with some more structure to develop more healthy spiritual rhythms in my journey. I am working on more reflection on my day and the work of the Holy Spirit in my life - 2 Simple questions for reflection on the day: 
  1. How did I partner with the Holy Spirit today to do the will of the Lord? 
  2. How did I resist the Holy Spirit today and hinder the willl of the Lord? 

Two Types of Wisdom

Truth and knowledge come to us ultimately from the Lord!  All truth in the world is from God because God is truth!  In a Wesleyan Theology Class material that I was teaching from the question was asked would you rather have a really smart, excellent brain surgeon who was an atheist or a fairly intelligent, mediocre brain surgeon who is a Christian? 

So there must be something beyond truth that matters and the book of James describe it as two types of wisdom.  Truth and knowledge are available to all but wisdom is what you do with the truth and how you apply truth to your life.  

James 3:13-15 13 If you are wise and understand God’s ways, prove it by living an honorable life, doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom. 14 But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don’t cover up the truth with boasting and lying. 15 For jealousy and selfishness are not God’s kind of wisdom. Such things are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic.

Godly wisdom leads us to living an honorable life of doing good works in a humble way!!  

Worldly wisdom leads us to living bitterly jealous lives full of selfish ambition.  We end up boasting about our knowledge and not being truthful.  We end up being jealous and selfish! 

If we take an honest look at our lives in this moment - which of these wisdom's are we more like?  How can me move closer to a Godly wisdom in our lives on a regular basis?  

Seasoned with Salt

Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. (Colossians 4:6 NIV) 

Paul is reminding the church that it is essential that we pray and live in such a way that we will impact people around us with the Good News of Jesus!  It is so important how we live our lives because people won't want to hear a word we say when our actions are inconsistent with our message!  

Then there are our words!  Do our everyday conversations add flavor and goodness to life?  I know for my own journey I continue to work on two areas of my tongue - 

1. Sarcasm is a negative humor that I resort to a times when I am trying to hide my true feelings. Often the flavor of sarcasm is more like the flavor of habanero peppers instead of salt.  Sarcasm is rarely full of grace and it seldom has an answer that people are looking for in my words.  

2. Harshness in my responses when I get pushed in a corner.  I continue to work on this reality that when I don't communicate well with people in the first place - that I will allow things to build up and  "BAM" some pretty harsh word can come out of my mouth.  I am sure my wife and family know this more than the rest of the world.  I can usually see the reasons for these outburst along with failing to communicate up front and they are things like lack of sleep and stress that cause these words to come out when I wish they wouldn't have been said.  

Evaluate your conversations today - are your word like a seasoning salt that brings flavor or are they more like habanero's that bring pain?