“For to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.” Luke 2:11 (RSV)

 

The Spirit of the Season.

It is in the old Christian carols, hymns, and traditions–those which date from the Middles Ages–that we find not only what makes Christmas poetic and soothing and stately, but first and foremost what makes Christmas exciting.  The exciting quality of Christmas rests on an ancient and admitted paradox.  It rests upon the paradox that the power and the centre of the whole universe may be found in some seemingly small matter, that the stars in their courses may move like a moving wheel around the neglected outhouse of an inn.

–G.K. Chesterton

 

I wish all my readers a very merry Christmas and a Christ-centred New Year.  A verse for you this Christmas is Micah 6:8, “He has told you men what is good and what it is the Lord requires of you:  Only to act justly, to love faithfulness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

I read this quote some years ago and it caught my attention because it seems that people are always searching for evidence as to God's existence.  I always saw the quote as meaning the Bible is the only evidence one needs.  It sure has never let me down.  Over the years it has continued to draw me close to my Creator.

"Those who are the most inclined to trust God without any evidence except His Word always receive the greatest amount of visible evidence of His love."

- Charles Gallaudet Trumbull

We are interesting folk, those of us who follow Jesus.  If you’re wondering why I say that, read what A .W. Tozer has to say on the subject of why we can afford to wait.

A real Christian is an odd number anyway.   He feels supreme love for One whom he has never seen, talks familiarly every day to Someone he cannot see, expects to go to heaven on the virtue of Another, empties himself in order to be full, admits he is wrong so he can be declared right, goes down in order to get up, is strongest when he is weakest, richest when he is poorest and happiest when he feels worst.  He dies so he can live, forsakes in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible and knows that which passeth knowledge.  The man who has met God is not looking for something–he has found it; he is not searching for light–upon him the light has already shined.  His certainty may seem bigoted but his is the assurance of one who knows by experience.  His religion is not hearsay; he is not a copy, not a facsimile print; he is an original from the hand of the Holy Spirit.

We have not here described a superior saint–merely a true Christian, far from perfect and with much yet to learn; but his first hand acquaintance with God saves him from the nervous scrabble in which the world is engaged and which is popularly touted as progress.  No doubt we shall yet hear many a tin whistle and see many a parade bravely marching off toward the Universal Brotherhood of Mankind or the Age of Atomic Progress, and we will be expected to fall into step.  Let’s be cautious.  We are waiting for a trumpet note that will call us away from the hurly-burly and set in motion a series of events that will result at last in a new heaven and a new earth.

We can afford to wait.

 

–A. W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous

Last Sunday, Rhys talked on the subject of disappointment.  After the service, as I made my way out to the car I spoke to several people.  Later I was reflecting on the conversations and how each of the people I spoke to were going through tough times in their lives.  I remember feeling frustrated that I wasn’t able to do anything to ease their pain.  When I started this blog a little over two years ago, I mentioned that one of the first books I ever read was called Where Is God When It Hurts? and some months ago I read an article by that same author titled Those Who Mourn.  I believe it is one of the best accounts of how we handle life when friends and loved ones are going through difficult periods in their lives.

Because I have written books with titles like Where Is God When It Hurts? and Disappointment With God, I have spent time among mourners.  They intimidated me at first.  I had few answers for the questions they were asking, and I felt awkward in the presence of their grief.  I remember especially one year when, at the invitation of a neighbour, I joined a therapy group at a nearby hospital.  This group, called Make Today Count, consisted of people who were dying, and I accompanied my neighbour to their meetings for a year.

Certainly I cannot say that I “enjoyed” the gatherings; that would be the wrong word.  Yet the meetings became for me some of the most meaningful events of each month.  In contrast to a party, where participants try to impress each other with signs of status and power, in this group no one was trying to impress.  Clothes, fashions, apartment furnishings, job titles, new cars–what do these things mean to people who are preparing to die?  More than any other people I had met, the Make Today Count group members concentrated on ultimate issues.  I found myself wishing that some of my shallow, hedonistic friends could attend a meeting.

Later, when I wrote about what I had learned from grieving and suffering people, I began hearing from strangers.  I have three folders, each one several inches thick, filled with these letters.  They are among my most precious possessions.  One letter, twenty-six pages long, was written on blue-lined note paper by a mother sitting in a lounge outside a room where surgeons were operating on her four-year-old daughter’s brain tumor.  Another came for a quadriplegic who “wrote” by making puffs of air into a tube, which a computer translated into letters on a printer.

Many of the people who have written me have no happy endings to their stories.  Some still feel abandoned by God.  Few have found answers to the “Why?” questions.  But I have seen enough grief that I have gained faith in Jesus’ promise that those who mourn will be comforted.

-   Philip Yancey

    The Jesus I Never Knew, pp 123-24

I read a wonderful story on forgiveness–one which reduced me to tears as I read it.  In a time when it seems that forgiveness is seen as optional for some Christians, the following story washes away any hint of that concept.  Forgiveness can never be conditional in God’s eyes.

“At one Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing [in South Africa after the end of apartheid], a policeman named van de Broek recounted an incident when he and other officers shot an eighteen-year-old boy and burned the body.  Eight years later, van de Broek returned to the same house and seized the boy’s father.  The wife was forced to watch as policemen bound her husband on a woodpile, poured gasoline over his body and ignited it.  The courtroom grew hushed as the elderly woman who had lost first her son and then her husband was given a chance to respond.  ‘What do you want from Mr van de Broek?’ the judge asked.  She said she wanted van de Broek to go to the place where they burned her husband’s body and gather up the dust so she could give him a decent burial.  His head down, the policeman nodded agreement.  Then she added a further request, ‘Mr van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give.  Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him.  And I would like Mr van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him, too.  I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real.’  Spontaneously, some in the courtroom began singing Amazing Grace as the elderly woman made her way to the witness stand, but van de Broek did not hear the hymn.  He fainted, overwhelmed.  Anyone who says he is walking in the light of Christ but dislikes his fellowman is still in darkness.  But whoever loves his fellowman is ‘walking in the light’ and can see his way without stumbling around in darkness and sin.  I John 2:9,10

–Phillip Yancey, Beyond Justice

"How has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of Lights to illuminate our understanding?  In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine protection.

"Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered.  All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending Providence in our favour . . . And have we not forgotten that powerful Friend?  Or do we imagine we no longer need His assistance?

"I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth - that God governs in the affairs of men.  And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it possible that an empire can rise without His aid?  We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that 'except the Lord build the house they labor in vain that build it.'  I firmly believe this.  I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel; we shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and byword down to future ages.  And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance despair of establishing government by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest.

"I therefore beg leave to move that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven and its blessings on our deliberations be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business."

--Benjamin Franklin’s address to General Washington and delegates from all thirteen colonies at a meeting in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 seasoned by differing opinions and flared tempers.

I have just returned from a trip to the United States and heard much talk about the coming election for the next president.  On the same day that I read this account in a book called Living Under God, I went searching in a US Today newspaper for an item that might reflect somewhat similar circumstances to that of the American founding fathers when desperately desiring independence from Great Britain.  Certainly the presidential race, I must admit, is not the same as in Franklin’s day, but there was a story about the raising of funds by both the Democrats (Obama) and Republicans (Romney).  As it turned out, the President’s political party had raised less money than the Republicans to which the campaign’s chief operating officer, Ann Marie Habershaw, was quoted as saying “we didn’t close the gap enough [i.e., money raised].  If Obama loses to Romney in November it will be because we didn’t close the gap.” USA Today, Tuesday, July 12, 2012, p. 4A

We have come a long way in politics in the 225 years since Benjamin Franklin gave his address to the delegates in Philadelphia, but sadly in the wrong direction.

The 10 Second Testimony

I remember soon after I became a Christian, I heard people talk about giving their testimony. I asked, "What's a testimony?" The reply was, "It's how you came to know Jesus." I've heard a lot of testimonies in my time - some were long and others were short. But I remember hearing a man preface his sermon by saying that he would give his testimony and it would only take 10 seconds. The following is Charlie (Tremendous) Jones' testimony and I've never forgotten it. "My life story is: I'm not what I think I am. I'm not what I'd hoped to be nor am I what I ought to be. But by the grace of God, I'm not what I was. I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind but now I see."

The Inadequacy of "Instant Christianity"

By "instant Christianity" I mean the kind found almost everywhere in gospel circles and which is born of the notion that we may discharge our total obligation to our own souls by one act of faith, or at most by two, and be relieved thereafter of all anxiety about our spiritual condition and we are permitted to infer from this that there is no reason to seek to be saints by character.  An automatic once-for-all quality is present here that is completely out of mode with the faith of the New Testament . . .

. . . It is true that conversion to Christ may be and often is sudden . . . the true Christian has met God.  He knows he has eternal life and he is likely to know where and when he received it . . . but the trouble is that we tend to put our trust in our experiences and as a consequence misread the entire New Testament.  We are constantly being exhorted to make the decision . . . and those who exhort us are right in doing so.  There are decisions that can be made and should be made once and for all . . .

. . . The question before us is, Just how much can be accomplished in that one act of faith?  How much remains to be done and how far can a single decision take us?  Instant Christianity tends to make the faith act terminal and so smothers the desire for spiritual advance.  It fails to understand the true nature of the Christian life, which is not static but dynamic and expanding.  It overlooks the fact that a new Christian is a living organism as certainly as a new baby is, and must have nourishment and exercise to assure normal growth.  It does not consider that the act of faith in Christ sets up a personal relationship between two intelligent moral beings, God and the reconciled man, and no single encounter between God and a creature made in His image could ever be sufficient to establish an intimate friendship between them.  By trying to pack all of salvation into one experience, or two, the advocates of instant Christianity flaunt the law of development which runs through all nature.  They ignore the sanctifying (to set apart) effects of suffering, cross carrying and practical obedience.  They pass by the need for spiritual training, the necessity of forming right religious habits and the need to wrestle against the world, the devil and the flesh.

Undue preoccupation with the initial act of believing has created in some a psychology of contentment, or at least of non-expectation.  To many it has imparted a mood of disappointment with the Christian faith.  God seems too far away, the world is too near, and the flesh too powerful to resist.  Others are glad to accept the assurance of automatic blessedness.  It relieves them of the need to watch and fight and pray, and sees them free to enjoy this world while waiting for the next.

Instant Christianity is twentieth-century orthodoxy (traditions).  I wonder whether the man who wrote Philippians 3:7-16 would recognize it as the faith for which he finally died.  I am afraid he would not.

–A. W. Tozer

Philippians 3:7-16  But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.  What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.  I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ–the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.  I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.  But one thing I do.  Forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

All of us who are mature should take such a view of things.  And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.  Only let us live up to what we have already attained.

“I am the way, and the truth and the life. The only way to the Father is through me.” John 14:6
Why is Truth so elusive? Because Truth is not a set of beliefs or statements or mathematical formulas that can simply be memorized. It is not a philosophical system or the end of a journey where you can arrive and then be done. Truth is a person–Jesus Christ–and knowing the Truth is a relationship. Just getting to know a person takes time, getting to know Jesus can happen no faster.

–dc talk, Jesus Freaks

Isn’t that true? I know in my life I’ve thought, There isn’t anything more to know about my
relationship with Jesus. He’s the Creator, I’m the created. Let’s just get on with life and hope for the best. When I read this, I thought to myself, That’s right. Getting to know people does take time and effort. People whom I’ve known for many years, whom I call friends, constantly catch me off guard by my learning something new about them that I never knew before. As the author said, getting to know Jesus also takes time. It’s a living relationship that will continue to paradise and beyond.

I want to warn you, the closer you walk with Christ, the greater the faith required. The more you trust Him, the more you’ll risk on His behalf. The more you love Him, the more you will love others. If you genuinely embrace His sacrifice, you will joyfully embrace a sacrificial
life. Your expectations of Jesus will change as your intimacy with Him deepens. When you begin to follow passionately after Jesus, you will inadvertently find yourself innovating. After all, Jesus is transforming lives, writing history, creating the future, and unleashing the Kingdom of God. If you plan to step with Jesus the Pioneer, you’d better expect some changes.

- Author Unknown

There are moments when our greatest act of faith is to remain faithful. There will be times
where no level of faith will change our circumstances. Faith is not always a way out of a crisis. In fact, I am convinced it rarely is. Faith gives us strength and confidence to see every challenge and crisis through to the end. There is resilience that erupts out of faithfulness where you just don’t quit! You learn to never give up. Faith is a confidence in God that results in faithfulness. That faithfulness gives us the power to persevere. In the midst of our perseverance, we find the wisdom of God to help us understand and see our way through.

–Erwin McManus, Uprising