Grace Begets Grace

Several months ago now, a faithful man of God was accidentally killed while jogging with his dog in Robbinsville.  At the time he was killed, Steve Mayer was the superintendent of the Robbinsville, NJ, school district.  When I first met him, he was the principal of the brand-new Grover Middle School that my frightened, learning-disabled daughter entered as a seventh-grader.  The next two years were as close to miraculous as anything I have seen as the learning environment built by Principal Mayer empowered Ruth to fully and enthusiastically engage in her education. 

When Mayer was killed, one of the many anecdotes that became public was his philosophy to make someone’s day, every day.  It was something he practiced and something he shared with his family.

Now, as Steve Mayer’s fellow heirs of faith living on this side of the kingdom during a dreary New Jersey winter, we have the privilege and the pleasure of following Mayer’s most excellent advice.  The Apostle Paul has observed that the time is short (I Cor. 7:29).  It seems to me that today, and tomorrow, and every day thereafter provide wonderful opportunities to make someone’s day.  It need not be a grandiose gesture of munificence.  We simply do not know how a kind word or simple act of kindness might manifest the kingdom of God to a soul in need of the Lord’s gentle touch. 

Steve Mayer is now among the cloud of witnesses cheering us on.  May we give him something to cheer about as we follow his example in honoring our Lord.

Thought For The Day

"No road is long with good company."

                                Turkish Proverb

Thoughts For People Pleasers

"A 'No' uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please."

                                                                                                   Mahatma Gandhi


"I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: Try to please everybody."
                                                                                                    Henry Bayard Swope


"Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good thing for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point."

                                                                                                    C.S. Lewis


Quotes courtesy of Les and Leslie Parrott, You Matter More Than You Think

The Power of Intimacy

"Changing the future...that's marriage."

                                    Amy, to Dr. Who
                                    Dr. Who, Series 7

Thought For The Day

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

                                                                             Plato

Beyond a Happy New Year

So here we are, face to face with a new year.  Over the past many years, I have expressed dismay at the traditional New Year’s resolutions ritual in which we inflict a performance review on ourselves and then decide what we need to do to improve ourselves.  My objection to this annual exercise is that it promotes a focus on ourselves and greatly minimizes a focus on God; it also engenders a self-righteousness that moves us away from God and others rather than toward them.

I would like to suggest an approach that I believe is more Biblical and more constructive.  Please consider with me the Apostle Paul’s words in his letter to the Philippians:  “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”  This passage expresses the mystery of the Christian life: that we are responsible for our part, but it is God who is the author and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2).

But how do we go about following Paul’s command?  How do we do our end of the “work” while remaining focused on our Lord?  I think King David can help us here.  King David knows something about falling short.  After initiating an illicit love affair with a married woman (adultery in David’s time was punishable by death via stoning), David responds to Bathsheba’s resulting pregnancy with a cover-up plan designed to deceive Bathsheba’s husband Uriah and the public.  When that plan fails, the King of Israel resorts to having Uriah killed, again in a deceitful way. 

We don’t have to wait until a New Year and a personal self-examination by David before the story continues.  The Lord sends Nathan the prophet to confront David, and David responds with an honest confession.  David also remains focused on the LORD rather than plunging into some self-directed self-improvement project.  We can read a more in-depth passage about David’s wrestling with his own sin in Psalm 32:

            How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,

            Whose sin is covered!

            How blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity,

            And in whose spirit there is no deceit!

            When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away

            Through my groaning all day long.

            For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me;

            My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer.        Selah.

            I acknowledged my sin to You,

            And my iniquity I did not hide;

            I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD”;

            And You forgave the guilt of my sin.

It is easy to think that since none of us is the King of Israel with a personal prophet at our disposal that we might need to take the personal sin issue upon ourselves.  But please consider with me another passage in the Psalms written by David:

            Search me, O God, and know my heart;

            Try me and know my anxious thoughts;

            And see if there be any hurtful way in me,

            And lead me in the everlasting way (Psalm 139:23-24).

David most helpfully models for us an open heart that invites the LORD to search his heart.  By doing this David not only exhibits humility in resisting the option of examining himself, he also demonstrates his desire for genuine holiness by involving the LORD into the examination process, the LORD who is not deceived by even the most deceitful heart.

I still do not entirely understand how this working out our salvation as God works in us comes together.  But I believe that King David has given us a good start.  It seems to me that cultivating a humble heart before God is essential.  To be sure, God can search the proudest and most self-focused of hearts, but it is the humble heart that will be able to hear Him.  Humility is hard to fabricate, but we can follow King David’s model and study and meditate on God’s Word.  As we do that, we will be better able to recognize who He is and who we are before Him.  And as we add prayer to Bible study and our daily life routine, we will be putting ourselves in a position to see and hear Him personally.  And finally, like David, we can be wise about the company we keep.  By pursuing relationship with one another and by remaining open to learning and hearing about the less than pretty parts of our hearts and lives, God can do His sanctifying work in us.

The wish for a happy new year is nice, but may we not stop there.  May we begin 2017 in full pursuit of our loving and sanctifying Savior, walking before Him with open and humble hearts.

Preparing For Christmas

We are in the heart of the holiday season, and most of us have one eye on Christmas even as we go about our daily tasks.  We shop, cook and bake, plan gatherings and parties, decorate, and send greeting cards.  It is a time of preparation!  In the midst of our busyness, though, I think one of the most important ways that we can prepare for Christmas is to consider how God prepared for Christmas.  Please join me in a brief journey through Scripture to observe a few highlights of God’s preparation.

In the Bible, the story of Christmas begins well before the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s birth.  It starts even before Genesis.  We read in Ephesians that our salvation in Christ is established before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4).  Our all-knowing, time-transcendent God starts to prepare for Christmas even before He creates the earth—and us!

We read in Genesis the very familiar account of the creation, of the Godhead working in concert to create—out of nothing—this glorious planet and the living things on it.  By the third chapter we read of the fall, of the broken relationship between God and the man and his wife.  But as God pronounces the consequences of their pride-driven choice, He also offers a glimpse of His redemption plan: sometime, somewhere, Eve’s seed—Christ, God Incarnate—will crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15).

Generation after sinful generation follow, to the point where we read that the violence and Godlessness among mankind cause God to regret His creating them (Genesis 6:6).  But still God prepares for Christmas.  He calls Noah to build the ark and then saves him and his family as the remnant through whom Eve’s Seed would come.

Generations after Noah, through Noah’s son Shem, Abram is born.  God calls Abram and establishes His covenant with Abram, promising to make a great nation through Abram and to bless all families of the earth through him (Genesis 12:2-3).  God uses Abram to introduce the concept of righteousness by faith, and it is through Abram that we meet Melchizedek, the mysterious high priest of God Most High, a priest whose ministry is apart from the Law that is to come and who is forerunner of Christ. 

God continues to prepare for Christmas.  As He renames Abram Abraham and Sarai Sarah, He empowers them to have a son, Isaac.  Isaac and Rebekah have Jacob and Esau, and again, we see God’s careful preparation as He chooses the younger son, Jacob, to bear the covenant forward.  The story of Jacob and Esau does not make for pleasant reading, and the ugliness continues among Jacob’s twelve sons.  But God is not deterred, and His preparation for Christmas continues.  He uses Jacob’s 11^th son, Joseph, to keep His chosen people alive in the midst of famine, and as Jacob—called Israel by God—dies, his blessing of Judah contains a prophetic glimpse of Christ the Messiah: “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.”

The Hebrew people demonstrate an appreciation for their heritage as the people of God, and even as they endure centuries of slavery in Egypt, careful record of tribes is kept.  When God finally calls Moses to lead His people out of Egypt, Judah’s descendants are among those rescued.  After 40 years in the wilderness, He calls Joshua to lead them into the Promised Land.  God’s plan for Christmas includes a place as well as a people. 

The Hebrew people are not particularly good at being God’s people, even after God has established them as a nation.  Even King David, the man after God’s own heart, commits  adultery and murder.  But King David’s flaws do not distract God from His plans.  We read in Psalm 89 of the LORD’s covenant with David, and His promise to establish His throne by a descendant of David, who is, of course of the tribe of Judah.  What is truly extraordinary is that in revealing a bit of His Christmas plans to David, God also gives future generations—and us—substance upon which His Messiah can be recognized.

As Hebrew history continues, the prophets are given glimpses of the coming Messiah.  Isaiah announces Immanuel born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14), and he speaks at length of God’s plan to bring to His people the Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace who as a descendant of David will rule for all eternity (Isaiah 9).  Jeremiah communicates a word of encouragement from the LORD, that He will make a new covenant with His people and that His plans for them are for a future and for hope (Jeremiah 29:11).  Micah reinforces the Davidic line of the promised Seed in proclaiming that the coming Savior would be born in Bethlehem, David’s place of birth.  And again, the prophet’s words give those who heard them hope and give future generations assistance in recognizing the Messiah so that they could celebrate Christmas.

God’s plans for Christmas become increasingly detailed and specific as the moment approaches.  He breaks through a lifetime of infertility and the limited faith of Zechariah as He sends Gabriel to announce to Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth that she will conceive the forerunner to the Messiah.  Six months later, He sends Gabriel to Mary to announce that she is the chosen bearer of the awaited One.  Shortly after, God communicates with Mary’s betrothed Joseph via an unnamed angel to assure him that Mary’s highly unusual pregnancy is of His doing.  And sure enough, Mary and Joseph are descendants of King David. 

As history’s clock ticks, God moves in the heart of the Roman Emperor to declare a census that requires Joseph and Mary to travel from their hometown of Nazareth to Bethlehem just before it is time for her to give birth.  Legions of angels await the opportunity to proclaim the great event.  And then it happens, a real event in real time, orchestrated by an eternal God.  The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke record the first Christmas, and we see the fruit of God’s preparations.  The long-promised and highly anticipated Messiah has come!  His natal star bears witness to this great event so that we see confirmation in the form of the three Magi who arrive probably a year or two later to worship the newborn King. 

God’s preparations for Christmas have been concluded, but as we read further in these Gospel accounts and beyond in the New Testament, we see that the birth of Christ is only the beginning of the great plan.  Approximately 30 years after that first Christmas, Christ, the Lamb of God, takes away the sin of the world by dying on the cross.  Redemption has indeed been accomplished but not yet completed.  We learn that God is not yet done with His preparative work.  While His plans to reveal the Messiah at the first advent of Christ have been accomplished and Christ’s saving work on the cross is finished, we know that He continues to plan and work toward the second advent of Christ, when the redemptive work of Christ will come to its full fruition, and the eternal reign of Christ will begin.

So as we continue to scurry and plan, may we turn thankful hearts to the Lord of our Christmas feast and joyfully appreciate His loving preparation on our behalf.  And may we also remember that God continues to prepare for the second advent of Christ and remain alert in eager and confident anticipation.