Hopeful?

On Sunday, Margaret handed me a yellowed copies of two magazine pages from 1994. It was an article I had written titled “Fearless Living in Fearful Times.”  22 years ago I wrote of the fear that so many experience when change comes. “Change is  frightening to most of us.    We are made comfortable  by  the traditions and habits of our lives, shaped by time and tradition. However, America is a society in a time of re-structuring.  ... Yes, the church is changing too.  … Christians are wrestling with choices about behavior trying to discover the guidelines for a holy life in these changing times.”  22 years later, the pace of that change of which I wrote is increasing.  Fear is rampant. From it, hopelessness grows to take over so many people’s lives. I hear this from many, “I am overwhelmed by life.  I just exist because I cannot see the future.”

There is HOPE for us, dear friend.  There is a future. We have a promise that holds even through death itself! The writer of Hebrews reminds us that though the world is under the judgment of God, those who trust in Jesus are secured in a hope that is certain. "God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them. We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, in order to make your hope sure." (Hebrews 6:10-11, NIV)  Speaking of God’s inability to lie, the Word continues to say that "We who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure." (Hebrews 6:18-19, NIV)

Time changes everything except the promise of eternal life in Christ! When I look back over my brief life, I remember finding temporary hope in so many things;  love, family, accomplishments, experiences of delight, and recognition that came my way.  The light of each of those things dimmed with the passing of time. The kids grew up, moved away, and found their own lives as they should. My achievements were surpassed by those who came after me.  Even, love was shattered by death’s arrival. But, God’s love and promise only grows stronger.  

Advent is a time that looks in two directions.  We remember the coming of the Baby to Bethlehem, God in flesh, to save the world from sin. Our hope, as we read in Hebrews, is anchored in the Cross and the Resurrection. And we turn to the future, anticipating the coming of the Lord of Glory.  His arrival will make all things right, bring justice, and erase the Curse that causes suffering and death.  And so we sing- both remembering and hoping – ‘Joy to the World, the Lord has come. Let Earth receive Her King!’

Christian, are you just existing day to day, surviving, but without vision, struggling to find meaning and purpose?  Like that guy in the old Dunkin’ Donuts™ commercial do you rise each morning with a groan because ‘it’s time to make the donuts.’?  It is no cliché to say, “Look to Jesus!”  We are more than flesh and blood, more than creatures destined to die.  We are, through Him, children of the Heavenly Father, who work with Him to bring Life and Light to this world and then, because HE has promised, we will go home to a place prepared for us.

Meditate on this word from the Word. Matthew quoted this passage from Isaiah’s prophecy as a wonderful description of the promise we find in Jesus. My prayer is that these ancient words will take life for you today and become a source of hope as they point you to the One who is our true hope for life  - now and forever.  

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations.
He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.
In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;
he will not falter or be discouraged ‘till he establishes justice on earth.
In his law the islands (the far flung nations of the earth) will put their hope.” (Isaiah 42:1-4, NIV)

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O Come O Come Emmanuel (Veni Emmanuel)

O come O come Emmanuel

And ransom captive Israel

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear

Rejoice rejoice Emmanuel

Shall come to thee O Israel

O come Thou Dayspring come and cheer

Our spirits by Thine advent here

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night

And death's dark shadows put to flight

O come Desire of nations bind

All peoples in one heart and mind

Bid envy strife and quarrels cease

Fill the whole world with heaven's peace

John Mason Neale | Thomas Helmore

© Words: Public Domain

Bitter? or, Broken?

Susan put a note on Facebook expressing her thanks to God for her recovery from cancer. It is marvelous and I rejoice with her.  She contacted me telling me that she hesitated to write of her gratitude for recovery as she remembered Bev and her death. As I read it I smiled because the response she anticipated is one that happens so often.  There are those who experience loss who turn inward and become bitter!  Before I put  on my angelic halo, I will confess that I have felt that temptation, too.  I see couples my age walking hand in hand and my heart feels such loss.  I came home last night ‘round 9 after a good meeting and turned on a Christmas music program. In that moment, I keenly felt the loss of my late wife. That would have been our time to sit close and be ‘in love.’  

When that feeling comes, there is a part of me wants to question God, to accuse Him of failing, to tell Him of the unfairness of it all. But, I will not. Becoming bitter, allowing the disappointments to deform my soul, will destroy me. If I let Self take over and live in anger it will ruin my relationships. Bitterness will rob me of being able to appreciate beauty and keep me from serving the Lord, Who is my hope and comfort.

Paul tells us to "Get rid of all bitterness … as well as all types of evil behavior." (Ephesians 4:31, NLT) Choosing to be bitter is not only unhealthy, it is a sin against God!  The antidote for bitter's poison is to find contentment. If we are looking around, comparing our lives to those of others, complaining about how much they have, the position they enjoy, wondering why not me, envy will rise in us and poison our mind and heart with bitter resentment – towards God and others.

You may be asking, “But, Jerry, what of the pain, the sorrow?  Must I just deny it?”  No, please don’t even try to do that. Live authentically! We cannot ignore the reality in which we live. Last night, as those Christmas songs played, deep emotions stirred in me and I wept, broken in heart.  In our brokenness, there is an opportunity to know the comfort of God, to be reshaped by the work of the Spirit, to become tender.  That requires a choice to trust God, even when His ways are hidden.  Tears are not sign of weakness, they are an acknowledgment of our humanity. Paul spoke of his own sorrow saying, "I have done the Lord’s work humbly and with many tears. I have endured the trials that came to me." (Acts 20:19, NLT)  David reminds us that God knows our sorrows writing this phrase that is so descriptive – “You have collected all my tears in your bottle.” (Psalm 56:8)

What is your greatest desire, friend?
Is it to know happiness, to live an untroubled life, or to know the Lord with deep and intimate communion? 

He holds out His hand, but we must take it. He gives us the promise of His love but it is our choice to know it.  Don’t be bitter; becoming hard and cynical.  Instead, be broken, pliable in the hands of God.  Here is a word from the Word.  Meditate in it.  Let your soul marinate in the truth found there and He will help you to stand.

" I realized that my heart was bitter, and I was all torn up inside. I was so foolish and ignorant— I must have seemed like a senseless animal to you. 

Yet I still belong to you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, leading me to a glorious destiny. Whom have I in heaven but you? I desire you more than anything on earth. My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever.

Those who desert him will perish, for you destroy those who abandon you. But as for me, how good it is to be near God! I have made the Sovereign Lord my shelter, and I will tell everyone about the wonderful things you do." (Psalm 73:21-28, NLT)

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Joy

There's beauty in my brokenness,
I've got true love instead of pain
There's freedom though you've captured me,
I've got joy instead of mourning

You give me joy
Down deep in my soul [x3]
You give me joy
Down deep in my soul [x3]

I never been so free
Caught in your love for me
I never been more secure
Knowing your heart, Lord

Copywrite – Vashawn Mitchell

Beyond the Honeymoon

I was playing the church organ when I first saw her that June Sunday morning in 1974. A week later, when we first kissed, an explosion of emotion made me delirious with desire. Six months later we were married. Our honeymoon was just what it ought to have been.  Then, came life.  In two years, there was a child, then another.  By year 7, she was a tired Mommy of toddlers and I was at work, in those days preoccupied with making a mark in the world. I’d be lying if I said I did not sometimes long for another honeymoon. 

And yet, it was the steadiness of our love, our interdependence, that made each of us better together than we could possibly have been apart.  What that young man could not imagine was the kind of love that would be discovered beyond passion! It is a treasure of inestimable value.  Bev and I discovered the importance of life-long love just after our 39^th anniversary when cancer came uninvited into her life. For 20 months we walked, hand in hand, together up to that moment when death tore us apart. It the most intense experience of love we had ever known!

Too many marriages end around year 7 when passion is maturing into something new and often not all that appreciated.  For some the feeling of being ‘in love’ is more important than love itself. They want to experience the honeymoon again and again.  Unwilling to move beyond the heart-stopping emotions of early passion, some end their marriage before it becomes something their present knowledge cannot even imagine! That is not to say that marriage has to ‘settle’ into some kind of dull drudgery! There is an experience of love that can be developed that goes beyond hormones and roses! That old couple that finishes each other’s sentences, that sit together silently communicating, have found a kind of ‘love’ that a couple in their first year does not even know exists.

The Bible often uses marriage imagery to describe God’s relationship with His people. It is an apt illustration. We come to Christ, often in a time of crisis or deep searching. Our initial experience is a kind of honeymoon, finding the Love of God, the relief of guilt and shame, a sense of purpose we had never known.  But, then passion ebbs and we find ourselves bored.  We read the same passages of Scripture once thrilled us with hope and think “read that before.”  We pray but our words only seem to echo in the room. We fidget through church, the ‘worship’ more going through the motions than a real act of adoration.  Too often, instead of anticipating the deepening of intimacy with God, we long for another honeymoon.

What many do not know is that beyond the boredom there is a kind of mature life-enhancing faith that can be found in the practice of spiritual disciplines, in faithfulness to Him through the silence.  Thinking that there is something wrong with their Christianity they find another church, or even abandon the practices of faith succumbing to seductions of life or slipping into spiritual apathy.  Raised in Pentecostal practices, I now realize that much of what I heard described as “revival” was really a kind of longing for the emotional excitement of new faith.  True spiritual renewal does not look back; it reaches forward to find the Spirit’s life for this time, this place, these challenges. Yesterday may be a sweet memory, but we cannot relive the thrills!

In this Season of Advent may I suggest that you look for a deepening of your love for Christ? 

Will you let go of your demand for church services that leave you all tingly with excitement, that you start to work on forming a life-long relationship with a church body, building strong relationships that will serve you well in times of crisis that will surely come your way? 

Will you learn to love God beyond the emotion, beyond the ‘happy,’ with a kind of devotion that endures the periods of silence, that presses through the tests and temptations?

Pray for faith to grow, to be led into an experience of the Holy that you cannot even imagine exists. Learn new forms of prayer. Appreciate the importance of the church in your life with God, a body of Believers whose shared worship and service carries you through times of spiritual dullness.  Read books that go beyond the experience based devotional material, that speak to the depths of your soul, calling you deep into the life of the Spirit of the living God.

Hope in God! Here is a word from the Word.  Though from a passage that is likely familiar, spend some time pondering the call to mature love, then go love God and live in the fullness of His joy in your world.

"Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless. When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. 

But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love."
(1 Corinthians 13:7-13, NLT)
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Love Came Down

If my heart is overwhelmed

And I cannot hear Your voice

I'll hold on to what is true though I cannot see

If the storms of life they come

And the road ahead gets steep

I will lift these hands in faith I will believe

I'll remind myself of all that You've done

And the life I have because of Your Son

Love came down and rescued me

Love came down and set me free

And I am Yours I am forever Yours

Mountain high or valley low

I sing out remind my soul

That I am Yours I am forever Yours

When my heart is filled with hope

And ev'ry promise comes my way

When I feel Your hands of grace rest upon me

Staying desp'rate for You God

Staying humbled at Your feet

I will lift these hands and praise I will believe

'Cause I am Yours and I am Yours

For all my days Jesus I am Yours

And I am Yours and I am Yours

For all my days Jesus I am Yours

 (Oh) I am Yours I am Yours

All my days Jesus I am Yours

Brian Johnson | Ian McIntosh | Jenn Johnson | Jeremy Edwardson | Jeremy Riddle

© 2009 Jeremy Edwardson Music (Admin. by Bethel Music Publishing)

Mercy / Vineyard Publishing (Admin. by Vineyard Music USA)

Bethel Music Publishing

CCLI License # 810055

All Your Promises are “Yes”

Thanksgiving week starts today.  Are you thankful? I know that I have a choice in that. Do you?  This has been a year of personal loss without compare. Grief is my companion most days, never far away. But, I choose gratitude.  Am I thankful that death visited and took my beloved? Not at all. I am thankful that my Father gifts me with life and hope; that in spite of the sorrow, He is a good God that offers me the promise restoration and resurrection!  My healing comes through faith.

Isaiah, the preacher whose heart was broken by the terrible tragedy that had overtaken Jerusalem, saw beyond the ruins and, in the Spirit, caught the vision of God’s promise. "I am overwhelmed with joy in the Lord my God! For he has dressed me with the clothing of salvation and draped me in a robe of righteousness. I am like a bridegroom in his wedding suit or a bride with her jewels. The Sovereign Lord will show his justice to the nations of the world. Everyone will praise him! His righteousness will be like a garden in early spring, with plants springing up everywhere." (Isaiah 61:10-11, NLT)  "Never again will you be called “The Forsaken City” or “The Desolate Land.” Your new name will be “The City of God’s Delight” and “The Bride of God,” for the Lord delights in you and will claim you as his bride. Your children will commit themselves to you, O Jerusalem, just as a young man commits himself to his bride. Then God will rejoice over you as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride." (Isaiah 62:4-5, NLT)

Through Isaiah, God reminds us that we are never too far gone, never without hope. 

Jerusalem looked destroyed. The Jewish people appears to be beyond restoration. But God had promised and He kept His word. 

I hope that this Monday morning finds you with every reason in the world to sing and dance.  But, if it doesn’t, there is still reason for thanksgiving – God’s promise!  Not even death itself can rob us of hope.  Pray to ‘see’ that “God will rejoice over you as a groom rejoices over his bride.”  He has not written you off, turned His back on you.  He holds your destiny in His hands, has written His promises in a covenant that was purchased at the cost of His Son’s life.  So, even if you can’t find reason to be thankful for where you are at in this moment, be thankful for the love that secures you for all eternity.

"Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.
He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.
My salvation and my honor depend on God;
he is my mighty rock, my refuge.
Trust in him at all times, O people;
pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge. Selah" (Psalm 62:5-8, NIV)

"One thing God has spoken, two things have I heard:
that you, O God, are strong, and
that you, O Lord, are loving.
Surely you will reward each person according to what he has done." (Psalm 62:11-12, NIV)

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All Your Promises

Oh Lord our Lord

How majestic is Your name

Your words are true

Your mercy does not change

All Your promises are precious

Reviving our faith

Ev'ry one of them

Will be fulfilled one day oh

All Your promises

Are yes and amen Jesus

Your promises are true

All Your promises

Are yes and amen Lord Jesus

We'll keep running after You

We will run

We'll run and not grow weary

We will rise upon the eagle's wings

In the presence of the Lord

Our spirits will soar

Till we one day gaze upon our King oh

Andrew Smith

© 1995 Mercy / Vineyard Publishing (Admin. by Vineyard Music USA)

Vineyard Songs Canada (Admin. by Vineyard Music USA)

CCLI License # 810055