Christmas

⁶ For to us a child is born, 
   to us a son is given, 
   and the government will be on his shoulders. 
And he will be called 
   Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, 
   Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 
--Isaiah 9:6

What Christmas especially means to me this year:

• We can approach the throne of grace with confidence (Hebrews 4:16).  Because of Jesus, we are now able to boldly approach God and have an intimate relationship with Him.  We no longer will be struck down because of our sinfulness and God's holiness, but we have been justified and have Jesus' imputed righteousness.
• The God of the universe became flesh and made his home among us (John 1:14).  He descended to our level to help us to see God and His love.  He went through the stages of development, even beginning as a helpless baby.  He came to earth knowing full well what the end of His live would be.  He came down knowing that he would be misunderstood and hurt, even by His closest friends.  He came knowing that He would be rejected and wrongfully punished.  He knew that He would experience separation from God for the first time of His life.  He knew he would be flogged unjustly.  He knew one of his closest friends would deny him; another would turn Him in.  Knowing all this, Jesus still came down and willingly subjected Himself to the will of the Father.
• Jesus endured the pain of life on earth and in crucifixion for the joy to come (Hebrews 12:2).  He had the eternal perspective:  we endure temporary pain now for eternal joy later.
• We no longer have to continually offer the sacrifices of animals because Jesus' sacrifice paid for all sins for all time (Hebrews 9:13-14).  We all can take hold of Jesus' sacrifice paying for all of our sins if we open our hearts to Him.
• Jesus lived on earth and experienced trials of all sorts and thus understands the depths of trials in our lives (Hebrews 4:15).

Without Jesus, I could never have a personal relationship with God.  Without Jesus, I would have had to try hard to earn salvation and still inevitably fail.

With Jesus, I have abundant life, both here on earth and in eternity.

Thank you, Jesus, for your love for me.

Merry Christmas!

Freedom

“We are not fundamentally free; external circumstances are not in our hands, they are in God’s hands, the one thing in which we are free is in our personal relationship to God. We are not responsible for the circumstances we are in, but we are responsible for the way we allow those circumstances to affect us; we can either allow them to get on top of us, or we can allow them to transform us into what God wants us to be.”  (Oswald Chambers, Conformed to His Image, 354 L)

Illuminate

I recently returned from the 2011 West Coast Epic Conference.  Students from all across California, and Oregon, Minnesota, Hawaii, and many other places gathered together to meet God.  It was so exciting to see so many students passionately seeking God and so eager to hear from God. :)  And also to see students mobilized and sent out around San Francisco during the day of outreach.

The theme verse was 1 Peter 2:9--But you are a chosen people a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

Here are some media highlights from the conference:

• Epic West Coast Conference in action video:  http://www.facebook.com/video/?id=155054654532795
• Epic West Coast Conference Highlight slideshow:  http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=845720642048
• Epic West Coast Conference Illuminate video:  http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=819475742037&comments

This video is one about a student's changed life that was shown at the Epic Conference that happened in Dallas, TX over the same weekend:  http://vimeo.com/18849861

Idolatry

“The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.  It begins in the mind and may be present where no overt act of worship has taken place….Wrong ideas about God are not only the fountain from which the polluted waters of idolatry flow; they are themselves idolatrous.  The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true.”  --A.W. Tozer

Good without God?

Back in October of last year in New York around the time when Greg Epstein’s book Good without God was released, there was an advertising campaign with the slogan “A Million New Yorkers are Good Without God.  Are you?”  (More about it here:  http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/good-without-god-atheist-subway-ads-proclaim/)  (This summer, I saw some signs that I suppose were done in response to this advertising saying, “I am good with God.”  (More about this here: http://www.goodwithgod.org/thecampaign.html).

So in thinking about this, I wasn’t thinking of whether I think people are good with or without God because I believe what the Bible says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).  None of us is good without God.  People are imperfect and are incapable of being perfect.  And because of this we deserved a separation from God [death]:  “For the wages of sin is death.” But instead, God gave us the greatest gift:  “eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).  And so Jesus exchanged His righteousness for our unrighteousness and He paid the penalty for our sins.  So now, when God looks at us, He sees Jesus’ righteousness and not our unrighteousness.  Because of Jesus we were made righteous.

But anyways, I digress.  What I was thinking was okay, so people who are not Christians say that they are “good without God.”  But I wonder, how many people in the Christian community, in how they live their lives, are saying the same?  Perhaps they are not broadcasting it our saying it out loud, but how many people’s lives are demonstrating the exact same thing?  How many Christians are trying to become “good” people without God’s power?  How many people are focusing on conforming to society’s standards of “good” behavior or conforming to the church’s standards of “good” behavior, rather than abiding in God, remaining in Him, and being transformed from the inside out and bearing much fruit?  How many Christians are trying to perform, perform, perform for other people and for God?  How many people are trying to live the Christian life out of their own power and strength?  Instead of remaining in the vine as it says in John 15.  Or how many people rely on their strategies and their methods to try to see life change in people rather than depending upon God? 


I know I’ve definitely seen this in my own life.  Those are the times when I think the Christian life is so difficult.  Those are the times when I realize of course it’s difficult because I’m not relying on God to do the transformation.  I’m trying so hard to change the outside through my actions, when it’s my heart that really needs the transformation.  It’s in those times that I need to remind myself of Jesus’ words in John 15:5—“I am the vine, you are the branches.  If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

Psalm 37:4

I believe that Psalm 37:4 is true—Delight yourself in the LORD and He will give you the desires of your heart.  God knows deeply what the desires of our heart are.  He sees beyond our feeble attempts to fulfill our desires and sees what we really need.  He sees what our deepest longings are; He sees how to most fully satisfy those desires.  And He is more than capable of meeting those desires.  It reminds me of a quote of Amy Carmichael—“It is a safe thing to trust Him to satisfy the desires He creates.”  


But why is that contingent upon our delighting ourselves in the LORD?  I think that God knows that He is the only one who can satisfy.  I think that He knows that by giving us other things, they could potentially draw our eyes away from Him and onto something else.  It is only when we have deep satisfaction in God that we have become trustworthy enough to have Him satisfy the desires of our hearts.  When He knows that we will follow Him regardless of what He gives us or takes away from us, that’s when He’ll most fully satisfy the desires of our hearts.  


And the psalmist says “Delight ourselves in the Lord.”  He doesn’t say, “Obey all the Lord’s commands.”  He doesn’t say, “Follow God wholeheartedly.”  He doesn’t say, “Have daily quiet times.”  What is most important is to “Delight ourselves in the LORD.”  To love Him to the utmost that our hearts can, to regard Him not as a Master, but as a Lover, to run to Him eager to spend time with Him, to smile when thinking about Him.  All these things are signs of delighting ourselves in the LORD.  It is God's desire for us to delight in Him, not just obey Him.

Broken

[I'm currently in week 2 in a 5 week long summer project/missions trip in NYC.  I'll post more stories soon!]

If there was one word that I could use as the theme of my time here in New York, I would use the word broken. Not that brokenness is only seen in New York and not anywhere else, but that God is really opening my eyes to see how things are not as He had intended or designed. And it breaks my heart. To see such deep family hurts in students’ lives, to see homeless people sleeping on the stairs in the subway station, to see sex shops on street corners, it breaks my heart. Then I realize that as much as these things break my heart, I’m sure it grieves God all the more. He fully sees what the world was meant to be and He fully sees how far the earth is now.


And yet, I have hope. The world has hope. This, right now, is not the end of the story. Students with deep hurts is not the end of the story. People going to those sex shops on the street corners is not the end of the story. Homeless people sleeping on stairs is not the end of the story. In Him, we have hope; we indeed have hope in Him who sees the beginning from the end. God is the ultimate Redeemer and He is coming to redeem the world. He will come back to restore the world to the way it was supposed to be. And I can’t help but long for that great day. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away (Revelation 21:4). How I long to live in the world that is as God designed and intended!