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All of us who were old enough remember the tragedy of 9/11. The Twin Towers in New
York were destroyed and the Pentagon in DC was badly damaged by three highjacked
commercial passenger planes. A fourth plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field. The death toll, including the passengers on the planes as well as the people in the targeted buildings, was nearly 3,000. Each of those three thousand people whose lives were so sadly cut short left behind loved ones whose unspeakable pain continues today, more than twenty years later. In fact, people across America and even the world felt the pain of that terrible day’s loss. It was the most tragic national event of my lifetime.

On the heels of that horrible day in 2001, was another day, not of terror but disappointing nonetheless, that not many remember or even recognized. It was the third Sunday after 9/11. Vivid in my memory are the worship services on 9/16 and 9/23. Those were
the two Sundays immediately following 9/11, and churches all across our nation were packed. I remember the sentiment of the day as everyone turned to God for comfort and answers. We were hurting and confused, and for two weeks we were keenly aware of our need for God.

But that third week something happened. We were suddenly okay. Not really, we only thought we were. And by 9/30 the desperation was noticeably absent. The masses’ hunger for God was short-lived. Church attendance was back to pre-9/11 numbers. I remember being in our worship sanctuary, expecting to see those same people who had attended the previous two Sundays, but they weren’t there. I was far more surprised at their return to life as usual than I had been at their rush to find God’s comforting presence two weeks earlier. That we would run to God in the wake of national calamity made sense; to become disinterested so quickly did not. How quickly apathy had supplanted our anguish.
Jesus said “I didn’t come for the righteous but for sinners…It’s the sick who need a
doctor, not the healthy…blessed are the poor in spirit/those who mourn/the persecuted…for theirs is the kingdom of God/they shall be comforted/great is their reward.” The poor in spirit are those who are aware of their need for God and are willing to seek Him out as beggars to get His help. Those who mourn are they who are fervently aware of loss and depend on God for comfort and restoration. The persecuted, those who have been wrongly harmed. 9/11 left behind people in all three of those categories. We knew we needed help, and for a mere three weeks we turned to God for it.
For two weeks our national personhood was poor in spirit, mourning, sick, stinging from
terrorist attacks. But then…it wasn’t. It was fine without God.
The world’s biggest problem can be summed up in this attitude: we believe we’re fine
without God. America demonstrated it in the three-week aftermath of 9/11. And most of us
demonstrate it every time we hit a crisis; we seek God for comfort, but then end that pursuit prematurely. I’m certainly guilty of it, and I propose that we all are because it’s a natural desirefor us to assume ourselves self-sufficient.

I’ve read through the Old Testament several times. Every time something that’s jumped
out at me is how quickly a generation of Israelites could forget God, despite His recent
intervention, and become dependent on some idol, a false god or their own strength. Now I’m not at all saying the 9/11 attacks were God’s intervention. Some well-meaning but off-base preachers proclaimed the attacks were God’s judgment on a nation that had turned its back on God. I don’t believe that. What I believe most ardently about the 9/11 attacks is that God will somehow use them (and already has used them) to bring about something good for those who love Him and embrace His purposes (Romans 8:28). And I believe those attacks should have caused us to turn to God for help and healing, relentlessly pursuing Him for the rest of our vulnerable lives. Even though we can’t blame Him for those murders, we could and should give Him our humble and complete attention, not for blame but for help. When we turn our attention away from God it’s usually a gradual process. We’re usually like the proverbial cold- blooded frog in the pot of tepid water on the stove. We aren’t thrown into water already boiling; rather, we’re sitting in comfortable water, and eventually, when it’s too late, realize we’re being boiled to death.

I understand that we can be mesmerized into destruction. What puzzles me is how relatively short the mesmerizing is, how soon we can self destruct. In the Old Testament, scenarios usually involved a generation or longer – though some were far shorter than that – before God’s people realized they had done a one-eighty from Him. The speediest one I can think of was during the generation that wondered through the wilderness for forty years. It was a mere three days of travelling after God had performed the most famous miracle in pre-Messiah history – the parting of the Red Sea. In three short days the Israelites had taken on an attitude of faithlessness and complained against God and Moses. Little did they know, God already had a plan to give them the fresh drinking water they needed. So as is always the case, turning their hearts defiantly away from God proved futile.

I recently had an old friend call me. He’d had a near death experience. Emergency
medical workers had to use CPR on him. Fortunately, he revived after a single chest
compression. It got him thinking about the brevity of life and being prepared for what’s next. We texted back and forth for several days, looking for an opportunity to get together. By the time we met for lunch, about two weeks after he first called, he was no longer interested in discussing eternity. I was very disappointed. I felt like the incident a couple weeks before woke him to the most important things, and by the time we got to talk, he’d fallen back asleep. He’s still in my prayers and I’ll continue to try to be there whenever he’s interested again. I hope that interest is sparked again, hopefully this time without a medical emergency.
I certainly have no room to pass judgment. I know I frustrated people who worked so
patiently through prayer and persuasion to help me come to Christ. And even since God gave me life and His very Spirit I’ve had frustrating patterns of cooling off in my devotion to Him.
Nevertheless, whether it’s we as a nation, my old friend, or I myself, the problem of
apathy toward such a powerful and loving God is unfortunate. Our solution? Like David, we
should hide God’s Word in our hearts, so that we won’t sin against Him. What Word? Here’s a good one:

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful. (Hebrews 10:23)

It’s been a long time since I was single. Seems like single life was a whole separate
existence before this one. One thing I remember about it is how hard – at times frustrating – it was to find mutual attraction. It seemed like most girls I was interested in weren’t interested in me. And many of the girls who showed interest in me, did not appeal to me. So there was this ongoing frustration of a yearning never satisfied.

therooster.com (a site I’ve never read or even heard of, but came up when I searched
“odds of finding your soul mate”) says “the odds of finding your soul mate during your lifetime are 1 in 10,000 [but]that figure doesn’t take into account the fact that 9,891 of those people probably live in a place you’ll never conceivably go.
Now I’m not one to think in terms of odds for something like finding the person you’ll
spend your life with. I was just curious what would come up in a search. “Odds” are never valid anyway when you factor in God, and it’s far less stressful for us to trust Him to lead us to the person He’d like us to marry.
But I’m not really writing today about inter-human love.

God’s Word tells us that He loves us so much that He gave up His only Son to die for us.
It tells the stories of a shepherd who found his lost sheep and rejoiced, a woman who found her single lost coin and invited her friends over to celebrate, a dad whose wayward son returned home to him and the dad threw a fattened-calf-killing celebration and that shook the neighborhood. All these parables, found in Luke 17, express the love God has for us and the joy He has when one of us accepts His invitation to join Him.
God has never been incomplete, like we often feel in our single days, but it’s clear in
Scripture that He has yearned to have intimate fellowship with us ever since humankind was separated from Him by the sin of the first two of us.
Ever since then, throughout human history, He has loved us with a longing we could never
completely understand but could only remotely fathom by that feeling we’ve all had of deeply, and for a long time, loving someone who didn’t love us back.

I remember the joy that came over me as I realized the girl I’d longed for, for a long
time, was actually also interested in me. She worked in her parents’ Christian bookstore, and I first went in to buy my first Bible soon after coming to Christ. Subsequently, I went in about every week or so and bought a lot of books I never actually read. I’d go in just to see her. Eventually, I mustered the courage to invite her to go on a date. When she accepted I was ecstatic. As we went out a second and third time, and so on, I fell ever more deeply in love with her, and it became apparent that she loved me back. I enjoyed a satisfaction like I’d never really had before.

It must be like that for God concerning us. He waited, longingly for more than twenty-
one years before I would respond to His love, millennia for humankind in general. Finally, after really seeing His love for me, somehow for the first time, I loved Him back. According to the Bible, the day I loved Him back, He was so overjoyed that He threw a Heaven-wide celebration. The one He loved finally loved Him back! Imagine that: the sovereign Creator of the universe could hardly contain Himself because His love for me was requited at last.

In closing, two things:

1. Please don’t get the idea that I think I’m more loved by God than any other person.
   God has the ability to – and actually does – love each of us as if there were only one
   of us. He’s as joyful over you as He is over anyone.
2. If you haven’t come to the place in your life of loving God back, please know that He’ll be absolutely thrilled when you do. You have the power to make God happy.

Listening to our lead pastor, Ron Barnard, this past Sunday as he preached his message,
an interest sparked in my mind that I’ve never had before exactly. It was actually Redemption Sunday, a holiday created by, recognized by and celebrated by 828 Church, our church. The 828 in the church’s name comes from Romans 8:28, which reminds us that, regardless of the occurrences and circumstances in our lives, God causes them all to work together for our good– our meaning those who love God and who submit themselves to His purposes for them. The holiday, Redemption Sunday, is the Sunday each year closest to August 28 (8/28). When Ron and his team launched 828 Church in February of 2015, there was a deeply personal reason for their settling on that name.

In 2006, Ron saw that a little boy who was crossing the street was walking into the path
of an oncoming pickup truck. Ron darted (my word, not his) into motion to hopefully save the little boy. He did save the kid, but sustained very serious injuries himself as the truck hit him.

Lying in the ditch with a shattered femur and several badly damaged vertebrae, Ron woke to his wife, Karen, praying for him. He was soon airlifted and taken into surgery. Long story short, Ron survived literally getting hit by a truck but with some major challenges ahead of him. He still endures significant back pain today (and definitely can’t dunk a basketball anymore).
But here’s the 828 connection. Ron soon realized that, even though getting hit by a
truck was in no way a good thing in itself, God caused many good things to come about by
working his accident together with other factors at play. For example, the driver of the truck
that hit Ron (I believe his name is Tony), a self-proclaimed atheist up to that point, put his faith in Jesus Christ as he saw the faith of Ron & Karen and the undeniable protection God provided for Ron and for the little kid. Also, God gave Ron many opportunities to tell the story about how a guy can get hit by a truck, live to tell about it and continue to be used by God to help people spiritually and physically. Many people have come to know Jesus and many have benefitted from Ron’s pastoral ministry, myself included. Because of his story of redemption, Ron eventually became known as 828 Ron. Naturally, the name of the new church he would lead would be 828 Church.
As he does every year on Redemption Sunday, Ron preached a masterful message about
how God redeems everything for all of us in Christ. (Watch that sermon below.)

After hearing Ron’s message, I noticed that aforementioned spark in my mind. After the sermon was concluded, my wheels continued to turn all afternoon about the idea of redemption.
From an economics standpoint, redeem means converting something valuable into
something useful. God redeems not only the things in our life; He actually redeems us. He
considers us of great value, but we can be infinitely more useful to Him once He redeems us. He converts us into being supremely useful for His divine purposes. That’s what happens when wesurrender to Him and put our trust in Jesus Christ. We’re born again. The old is gone (the condition we had before we became supremely useful), and the new has come (now given the Divine Spirit who births in us a very useful new love for God and for people). We’ve been converted, redeemed.

A hundred dollar bill, in itself, is useless to us. But when we redeem it by purchasing something useful – converting it into something with one hundred dollars’ worth of
usefulness – it’s been redeemed. That’s us. We’re the ones who, because we’ve been
redeemed, love God back and embrace the purposes He has for us. What’s cool is that He
doesn’t stop by redeeming us, but He continues to redeem everything for those who have
allowed Him to redeem them. He redeems all things for all the redeemed. This week we
celebrate that. Happy Redemption Week!

And we know that God causes everything to work together for those who love God and are
called according to His purpose for them. – Romans 8:28

God created the universe and all it contains. To the ones He created in His own image He gave the instruction to be fruitful and multiply. The message from the heart of the Creator is essentially I want more of you. That God wants there to be more of us is a surprising idea if we view Him as being displeased with us and ever poised for pouring out His wrath in judgment. So maybe He isn’t as displeased with us as we’ve come to believe. God knew when He issued the commandment to fill the earth with people that Adam and Eve would eat the forbidden fruit, that their son would kill his brother, that by Noah’s generation people’s intentions would be continually evil. Yet He still wanted more of us.

So the history of mankind’s actions is tarnished with disobedience and rebellion against God. But there’s one natural and passionate obedience that abided in them. So many evil intentions, so much sinfulness, yet this one passion seemed as natural to them as their need for food and air. They possessed a natural longing to procreate.

Consider Lot’s daughters. Their hometown of Sodom had been decimated by the fires of judgment, only they and their father escaping to the mountains. Both of his two daughters possessed such a yearning to have children to promulgate their father’s heritage that they did the unthinkable. They got Lot drunk and took turns from one night to the next sleeping with their own father to produce sons from him. (Incidentally, Lot is the only person I know of in history to be both father and grandfather to the same children.) Whatever appalling reasons anyone can think of for those women to do what they did, it was trumped in their minds by their desire to produce children.

Then there’s Tamar. This lady was so desperate to have a child that she tricked her father-in-law, Judah, into sleeping with her by posing as a prostitute after never having become pregnant by either her first or second husband, Judah’s two now dead sons. She actually risked her life to become pregnant, since being found with child as an unmarried woman would have gotten her stoned in her culture, and it almost did. That was the power of her natural drive to have a child.

Look at the anguish of Hannah. One of her husband’s two wives, she being the one he loved dearly, she was barren and could find no comfort as long as she was childless. Her desire to birth a child was so strong that she promised God she would literally give the child up for His service if He would make her womb fruitful. That child was Samuel, and Hannah was good for her word.

Boaz demonstrated the priority of producing children by his willingness to marry Ruth and have a child with her that wouldn’t even be his heir, but rather Ruth’s first husband’s who had died and left her childless. He held a desire to be fruitful, not just to promulgate his own legacy, but to fulfill the God-given desire to bring children into God’s world.

Fast forward more than a millennium and Jesus, the original Creator all things, issued a new command not that different fom the original one. Instructing His disciples to go and make disciples, He’s still saying I want more of you.

Then we see a very similar innate desire to reproduce themselves in the disciples that we saw in the earth’s earlier inhabitants. Peter preached passionately at Pentecost to win three thousand newbies, those in whom old things had passed away and all things had become new. They’d been born again.

Soon there was trouble. Of the persecution persuasion. But the persecuted Christians didn’t stop everything and put their heads between their knees. No, the simply took the life-giving gospel all over the known world as they fled to keep themselves and God’s kingdom alive. They continued to make disciples everywhere they went. The sense in the early church is that Christians had a passion to reproduce themselves.

Now let’s fast forward two more millennia. Where is that very natural passion to birth new believers? Something has perverted our very natural desire to cooperate with God in making more of us. The literal meaning of pervert is to turn completely away from the goodness of God (vert: turn. per:through or thorough) Our enemy, the devil, would pervert any and every one of us. And I doubt there’s a higher priority for him than to pervert our producing more of us for God.

The most direct antonym of pervert is repent. It means to turn all the way back around to God (pent: turn. re: again.) So our response to becoming perverted as agents of reproducing is to repent.

How do we repent? We turn back to God. But in what way, exactly? There are a couple things that need to happen. First, we need to walk according to the Spirit. God has given His Spirit to those who follow Him. It’s the Spirit from whom we’ll regain our natural passion to see more people become followers of Jesus. That’s the most important change we need to make. It isn’t about trying hard to implement a method. It’s about being in step with the Spirit who makes anyone new.

And yet there is method we need to follow, and it’s surprisingly simple. Maybe not always easy, simple to understand. It’s simply love.

 First it’s Jesus followers loving each other. That means we don’t criticize each other, but speak highly of one another. It means we don’t neglect one another, but we come to each other’s aid when they need help. 

That’s it. It’s that simple. Onlookers who aren’t following Jesus yet will have their interest piqued and decide to follow Jesus themselves. We can get back on track with helping God have more of us. And it’s simple: the Spirit and love of Christ. Be fruitful and multiply!

Lot’s daughters

Tamar

Boaz

Hannah

Make disciples

Acts (Pentecost, dispersion, Paul)

How: Love inside and out

It was more than twenty years ago now that I was serving as associate pastor at a
church in Dunn, NC. I was fulfilled in my role there, but at the same time, I longed for an
opportunity to do more than I could do in that role.
I saw Chris, the leader of our denomination, at a meeting and conveyed my sentiments to him.
“If something comes up that you think may a good fit for me, please let me know; I’d love an
opportunity to take on more.”
He said he’d keep that in mind and called me one evening a few weeks later. He told
me there was a church in the town a half hour from ours that needed a lead pastor, and he
thought I could be effective there. He told me the likely salary, which was a step up from my
current salary at that time.
I told him I’d like a night to pray about it and that I’d give him an answer the next
morning. He seemed surprised at my response. Maybe he thought I’d jump at the opportunity especially since I’d recently conveyed my desire for a change and it seemed like a natural next step for a pastor on their ministry journey. But he agreed to give me the night to seek God about it.
I hung up the phone and immediately got on my knees beside my bed. I said, ”Lord, I’m
not sure what to do, so if I don’t hear otherwise from You, I’ll call Chris in the morning and tell him I’d like to pursue that lead pastor role.” I told my wife, Sharlene, what had transpired and went to bed.

I’m not a person that often has meaningful dreams. I usually can’t remember my dreams
longer than fifteen minutes after I wake up, and even then struggle to make sense of the
jumbled abstract pieces I can recall at all. But the night I prayed about how to respond to Chris, I had a dream that was vivid when I awoke and still is to this day. In my dream, I was standing in a freshly plowed field; the hand of God came down and made three furrows in the dirt. The first one was relatively shallow, the second one deeper and the third deeper still.
Then, God asked me, “Which one do you want?” I can’t describe how I knew, but I knew
the first furrow represented staying where I was. No change, no risk, just remaining in my
comfort zone. The second furrow represented the lead pastor role Chris invited me to consider. The third one represented planting a church, going into “Satan’s territory” and helping people find freedom in Jesus and live as citizens in God’s kingdom.
“I want the deepest one, Lord,” The answer seemed obvious to me.
And the Lord’s reply made me think it indeed should’ve been obvious. “That’s the one I
want for you, too.”
I woke the next morning excited to have heard from God in such a vivid dream, that He
had answered my prayer, and that He wanted me to do something that would have deep
impact. I could hardly wait for Sharlene to wake up so I could tell her what I had experienced. I knew she’d be excited too, and I was right – she was!

A few months later we moved to Wilmington, NC and led a team to launch a church. Our
new church, Grace Harbor Church, had an intense focus on outreach into the underprivileged, underserved community, many of whom struggled with drug and alcohol addiction. Out of GHC, we helped launch Christian Recovery Houses, a discipleship ministry for people recovering from addiction. CRH just celebrated its fifteen year anniversary. Many times over the past several years, CRH’s founder and president, CJ, has reminded me of my dream and choosing that deepest furrow.

I grew up on a farm and have spent a lot of hours on a tractor pulling a bottom plow
over hundreds of acres. When you use a bottom plow, it’s called breaking land because the bottom plow point breaks through a low layer of soil and turns it up (kind of like a surfer’s wave rolling water up and creating a tunnel) toward the top of the ground. It’s important to go slow enough for the plow point to reach deep below the top layer of soil. So you can’t go very fast when you’re breaking land; you have to go slow, sometimes annoyingly slow. If you go too fast, the plow will just ride along on top of the bottom layer of soil and defeat the purpose of using a bottom plow. When you plow deeply enough, it creates a deep furrow in which you drive the wheels on one side of your tractor each pass you make through the field. Shallow furrows mean you aren’t plowing effectively.
Once, when I was about thirteen years old, my dad was planting corn when he whistled
and motioned for me to come over to him. I ran across the field and got up on the tractor with him and rode along standing on the footrest. The tractor and planter were bouncing along as we rode because the ground was bumpy.
“You feel how bumpy this ground is?” my dad asked me.
“Yessir.”
“That’s what happens when you’re in too big of a hurry, and you go too fast for the plow
to go as deep as it’s supposed to.”
I had no defense. I was busted.
“Now some of these corn seed are planted deep enough and some of them ain’t.”
All I could do was ride along, embarrassed, not daring to look him in the eye.
“If you ever do this again, I’ll…” (I’ll spare you the unpleasantries.)
He never had to… I learned my lesson.

Deep furrows take time to make. They go at a different pace than we’d often prefer to
go.
When I chose the deep furrow in my dream, I was choosing to invest deeply in the lives
of people, helping them overcome difficult barriers and learn to walk in the profound freedom God offers us through Christ Jesus. Real ministry – serving people – takes time. It can be tempting to glide over the difficult issues people need help with, but that’s when I usually remember the deepest furrow commitment. That dream has come to mean more than launching Grace Harbor Church or helping lead Christian Recovery Houses. I now know God was inviting me to a lifelong lifestyle of working in the deepest furrow. I’m so thankful He led me to that choice. I deeply recommend it to anyone.

Jesus came to our small group Christmas party. He just showed up.  Everyone was so excited to see Him in the flesh. After sharing a wonderful meal together, we all took turns sharing our answer to the question: What does Christmas mean to you? It was embarrassingly obvious that everyone was trying to impress Jesus with their answer. One guy’s clever answer was, “To me, Christmas is about Jesus, and I really sense His presence tonight.” 

It drew laughs from all around the room. But Jesus was quick to reply, “Any more corny jokes like that and you’ll sense His absence.” Then He reassured the jokester with a smile.

The question made its way round the group as four or five others shared their perspective on Christmas.

The lady next to Jesus said, “I hate to sound holier than thou, but I truly do feel closer to the Lord than anybody else in our group.”

“That’s it! I’m outa here!” Jesus rose from His chair and started moving toward the front door.

“No! No! Stay! Please! Don’t go! No more jokes, we promise! Staaayyy!” we all begged.

Jesus stopped two or three steps from the door and turned around, “I’m just kidding.” He went back to His seat and sat down, “I’d never leave you nor forsake you, especially at My birthday party.” He smiled and everyone laughed.

It’s Your turn,” several people reminded Him.

Jesus looked across the room into the flames in the fireplace. Then He gave His much anticipated perspective:

“To Me, Christmas is like Heaven.  In the beginning of the season, the parents tell the kids, ‘We’re gonna celebrate Christmas in a few weeks!’ The kids get so excited. As the days go by, their anticipation grows. Eventually, it’s all they can think about. Their parents give them hints about their coming gifts. The kids can’t wait. Will they really receive what they’ve asked for? It’s a lot! Could life really be that perfect for them? ‘Only one week ‘til Christmas!’ Mom and Dad remind their children. Then, ‘Can you believe Christmas is in two days!?’ The kids feel like they’re in Heaven! Christmas is so awesome! And it’s almost here! Then, on Christmas morning, one of the kids wakes up before the rest of the family. She jumps out of bed and runs through the house shouting to her family, ‘It’s Christmas! It’s Christmas!’ Her little brother comes romping down the hall behind her, “Let’s go downstairs and see our presents!’ They’re down the stairs in a jiffy, almost flying like angels. ‘Look! I got it! It’s just what I wanted!’ ‘Me, too! Look at mine!’ The kids run to their parents’ bedroom, screaming to them what they’ve gotten for Christmas. ‘That’s great honey!…Wow sweetie, that’s so cool!’ is all Mom can get out before fading back into her Christmas morning coma with her husband. Eventually, they get out of bed and make their way downstairs where the kids are dancing and shouting and jumping, exploding with joy. The whole family looks at the kids’ gifts. It’s the most perfect morning.”

After the party and the last of the guests had gone home, Jesus and I were cleaning up the kitchen. He was washing, and I was drying.

I couldn’t resist, and worked up my courage, “That was a great story tonight about Christmas. But will You please explain it to me? I’m not sure I completely understood it.”

“You didn’t understand that story? How, then, will you understand any of My parables?” He cut His eyes at me and curled up one side of His lips into a half-smile. Then, full of grace and mercy, came His explanation:

Thousands of years ago, God announced that Christmas was coming; He spoke it to Adam, and to Eve. Then he foretold it to Abraham, then to Moses, and then to David. Through many prophets He told of the Christmas gift – where and how He would come. Finally, God sent word to Zechariah, to Mary, and to Joseph. Then on Christmas morning, the first Christmas morning, Heaven was so excited they could hardly contain themselves. Angels burst through the night sky, announcing the Christmas gift to shepherds near Bethlehem. Heaven shouted and praised God as earth received her King. The shepherds went to see, and then ran down the streets announcing what they’d all gotten for Christmas. It was Heaven’s gift to earth, and the greatest gift ever given.

Jesus washed the last pot, gave it to me to dry, and said, “Gotta go.”

I dried the pot, bent down to put it away, and turned to see Him standing facing me with arms spread wide. I stood and we embraced.

“Merry Christmas.” He whispered into my ear.

“Thank You.” 

It was all I could say…

One of the many interesting parts of the Christmas story is how God communicated with its various characters. He began His messaging about the coming of the Son of God to the earth centuries before He came by foretelling some of the specifics through the prophets. Isaiah wrote in the eighth century before Christ that God would come in the form of man and be born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14, 9:6). A few years later, through the prophet Micah, God revealed that the child would be born in the town of Bethlehem. But as the time of the Savior’s coming drew very near, the Lord chose to speak to His chosen people by either sending an angel, giving them a dream, or both (having the angel appear in a dream). 

God sent the angel Gabriel to two different people. The first was Zechariah, a priest who was on duty for burning incense in the presence of God in the temple. The angel appeared to Zechariah while he was carrying out his priestly duty, and told him he would have a son. (This son would be John the Baptist who would turn many people to the Lord.) Zachariah had trouble believing that he, an old man, and his elderly wife, who had been barren even as a younger woman and was now past the age of child-bearing, could have a child, so he asked the angel for a sign. Wrong answer. Here’s the thing. If you’re standing in the very Holy of holies, the one place on earth that God has committed His presence (at the time), and an angel, the one who stands in the Heavenly presence of God awaiting His instructions, appears to you and gives you a message from the Almighty, accept it. Regardless of how many obstacles to that message exist, believe it. The lesson? God’s Word trumps any obstacle, all obstacles. 

A little over six months later, Gabriel stood in Nazareth before a teenaged girl named Mary. She was engaged, and a virgin, and heard the angel say that she was about to have a positive pregnancy test.  After hearing Gabriel explain that she would conceive, not by a man, but by the Holy Spirit, and that her baby would be the eternal King, and called the Son of God, Mary gave the right answer: Let it happen to me as you have spoken. The lesson? Always say yes to God, because with Him nothing shall be impossible.

So Mary is pregnant before she marries her fiancé Joseph. There must’ve been quite the buzz around Nazareth. Everybody could see the emerging bulge, and there’s only one way it could’ve happened, right? So was Joseph premature in becoming intimate with his promised bride (Could he not even wait until they were properly married?)? Or was Mary so promiscuous that she sought pleasure from someone other than her betrothed? Doubtless, Mary’s story about an angel and the Spirit of God was met with whispers and sneers from the Nazarene town folk. And Joseph must’ve landed somewhere amid angry, confused, and puzzled about how to respond. But then the only thing that could clear this whole thing up happened, at least for Joseph. God spoke to him. And He did it in a dream. The Lord told him how Mary, indeed, became pregnant (by the Holy Spirit), what he should do next (marry the girl), and what he should name the child (Jesus, “for He shall save His people from their sins”). (Jesus means Jehovah saves.) And Joseph did as the Lord commanded him. The lesson? When circumstances confuse, let God’s Word clear it up for you.

Once Mary became Mrs. Joseph, and the newlyweds, their marriage still not consummated, traveled to Bethlehem for a Caesar-decreed census, and the time came for the child to be delivered, God again sent an angel with a message. This time the angelic message was announced to shepherds near Bethlehem. A child had been born in town, and this child is the Messiah, the Savior. Here’s how they’d know it’s Him. He’d be swaddled and lying in a feeding trough. The shepherds did go into Bethlehem and verify what the angel said, and they worshipped the baby Messiah. But before they left the sheepfolds in the pastures, a multitude of angels joined the one who’d delivered the message, and they all praised God, saying, “Glory to God in the highest way! And may peace now come to the earth and goodwill come to mankind!” The lesson? Don’t be surprised. God may speak to anyone anywhere anytime.

Wisemen from the East later came, following a phenomenon in the sky, probably the one we just experienced on December 21^st, when Jupiter and Saturn moved into alignment from earth’s perspective, presenting as a super-brilliant star. They found the Christ child in Bethlehem, gifted Him generously and worshipped Him. When the time came for them to return to their home, God spoke to them in a dream, warning them to take a route that wouldn’t lead them through Jerusalem, where King Herod awaited their information about the child born King of the Jews, so he could carry out his secret plan to abort Him. The lesson? God’s Word will direct us as we play our part in His greater plan.

Since Herod was a danger to the child, God gave another dream, this time to Joseph again, and in this dream was an angel who warned Joseph to take his family to Egypt, because King Herod wanted the child dead. Joseph did immediately what God instructed him to do, and it preserved Jesus for His purpose. The lesson? Immediate obedience to God is key for us as we fit into His big picture.

The Christmas story is a story of God expressing Himself to mankind. Christ, Himself, is the expression of God in human form. And God also spoke to individuals by angels and in dreams. The lesson? Always be ready to hear God speak. He usually does when He’s about to do something phenomenal. (Read the whole story of Christmas in the first two chapters of both Matthew and Luke. And have a Merry Christmas!

I lead a ministry called Christian Recovery Houses (CRH), which is a discipleship ministry for people recovering from addiction. So I have a front row seat to see people walk with God as  they recover from addiction. Some of what I’ve observed in them has been both interesting and surprising. Although every person who’s been enslaved by the chains of addiction has known a darkness many others haven’t, their recovery journey requires of them certain necessary priorities that serve them advantageously, many times over their brothers and sisters in Christ who aren’t recovering from addiction. These observed advantages are too good not to share with the non-recovery community. Perhaps we can take advantage of them and gain a new appreciation for our siblings in Christ who are also in recovery as we consider – and, hopefully, adopt for ourselves – these seven advantages:

1. They realize honesty is critical.

The healthy recoverer is keenly sensitive to any hint of dishonesty in their own heart. They’ve learned that deception is always the forerunner of using, so wise recoverers keep a vigilant check on their heart for that  

2. They submit to accountability.

Among the most dangerous enemies to the recoverer are secrets, casting shadows wherein one can hide and find the privacy to which the enemy longs to lure them in hopes of tempting and ensnaring them. Light is the recoverer’s friend, and light often shines from the lamp of others in the recovery community who hold one another accountable.

3. They have a healthy respect for relapse.

Having been, often recently, in the throes of addiction, recoverers remember all too freshly the pain and loss of active addiction. They know that one step in the direction of their drug of choice (DOC) could lead to maxed out credit cards, destroyed families, sitting in jail, intense damage to their health, or even accidental death, all in a matter of hours, With indelible memories of such terrible consequences, someone walking the path of recovery keeps a healthy distance from anything in the vicinity of their DOC. 

One of our key verses at CRH is Proverbs 5:8. The context is a warning to men about the trap of the adulterous woman. And verse 8 warns to stop well in advance of the woman’s bed, or bedroom. Its prudent warning is: “Do not go near her door.” Of course, the adulterous woman serves as the stand-in for any luring, destructive bait of Satan.

4. They embrace humility.

Once you’ve owned your loss, come to terms with your failure being  placed on public display, and accepted that you’re nothing without God, and can do nothing without His help, shame is no longer your master. Free from shame, but aware of your weakness, now you’re correctly positioned for God’s work of restoration. Such is the positioning of a recoverer with the right perspective. As long as we remain humble, God can pour into us the seed of His life-giving Word. 1 Peter 5:6 says, “Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.” What an inspiration to see recoverers walk up the mountain of restoration in step with God, letting Him set the pace, and reach the summit of life and freedom.

5. They’re growth minded.

Speaking of being exalted, recoverers are hungry for higher altitudes. When you really hit rock bottom, you can only go up. Recoverers find themselves having hit that bottom, and desperately rising from the ashes of their incinerated life. They have a renewed sense of vertical direction, a growing hatred for the low, and a humble longing for a high like they’ve never known before. Ever present in them is a deep desire for personal growth.

6. They’re service minded.

Inherent in addiction recovery programs, including ours at CRH, is a responsibility to serve. Recoverers need sponsors. Since each recoverer benefitted from their sponsor, they want to be a benefit to another recoverer. Not only that, but there’s an awareness of the personal benefit of living a life of giving, helping, pouring oneself out for the benefit of others. And as long as a person focuses on serving others, and serving God, that person won’t be consumed with their own problems.

You see what I mean? These people society looks down on so often, these recovery people, they’re really doing better than the rest of us in a lot of ways, aren’t they? My charge to the readers and this writer is twofold: 1) Let’s adopt these advantageous traits for ourselves; 2) Let’s support the recoverers we know with our prayers and with our encouraging words and actions. 

I feel like there’s a pretty big gap when it comes to Non-Christians understanding Christians’ attitudes and intentions. Here are four points that may help close that gap.

1. We don’t see ourselves as better than you in any way.

The way we became Christians is by receiving a gift from God, not by doing anything. I repeat, anything. How can we see ourselves as better than others when all we’ve done is receive something? What’s more, the same gift we’ve received – salvation through faith in Jesus Christ – is offered to you. We’re recipients of God’s grace. Grace means unmerited favor; in other words, we have God’s favor, but not because of anything we’ve done.

I have six kids. Last year I wrote and sang them a song. Watch it here:
https://gabrieltew.com/my-favorite/. All their lives I’ve told each one of them, whispering in
their ear, “You’re my favorite.” It’s been true every single time I’ve whispered it, because I’ve
never meant it in a comparative sense. I simply meant that I favor them. They would smile at me sheepishly, and I back at them, like we were keeping a secret from their five siblings. But they all soon figured out I was actually saying those same words to each of the others.
That’s how God’s favor is. He doesn’t favor some above others. He offers every person the
same grace (unmerited favor) that He would offer if there were just one of us. God’s favor isn’t comparative. It’s amazing for everybody.

What’s more is that the people who accept the gift of salvation from God do so because they know they’re lost without Him. So we Christians are keenly aware of our depravity and our need for God’s forgiveness. We don’t look down on anybody; we see ourselves as the lowest of the low. But we also see ourselves as forgiven, because that’s the whole purpose of Jesus’ coming and dying. So we don’t see you as lower than we, but we hope you’ll see yourselves as needing of Christ, and accept His invitation to salvation.

2. We don’t want you to act a certain way or believe like we do; we just want you to
know Jesus.

I know we’ve been misrepresented in this (by our own behavior), but please know that
behavior is not our priority for you, and neither is your adoption of our beliefs. The only thing we want is for you to experience a relationship with God that will last forever, and wherein you will be happier than you could ever be otherwise.

If we do push for certain behaviors in our culture – and I speak for myself, although I suspect other Christians feel this way – it’s so our kids (and everyone, really, but mainly our kids) won’t have unGodly examples lived out before them. We hate for our kids, whom we want to know and walk with God, to have to overcome cultural norms that are displeasing to God. Lifestyle models in a culture are huge in shaping values for its children. We just want our kids to have an advantage in this way when possible.

3. We don’t identify with a certain political party; no party can accurately represent us.

Our identity is in Christ, and in Him alone.
Nothing in this world can contain Him. Whatever earthly thing He enters, He destroys and gives new life. Even the human heart, which is really the only thing He came to indwell, He doesn’t improve, but makes new. Old things pass away when we are born again, and we become new. Jesus used the analogy of new wine and old wineskins (Luke 5) to illustrate the impossibility of fitting God’s kingdom into worldly systems. Human governments and political parties are like old wineskins. Jesus didn’t come to overthrow Rome and establish His government in its place, which was the expected mission of the Messiah in the context of first century Judea. And He doesn’t offer us a political platform, liberal or conservative. He offers us eternal life, and the promise of guiding us, by His Spirit, through the challenges we face in this life.

4. When we disagree with you, we still love you just as much as if we agreed.

One of the most frustrating things for us is when people equate approval and affirmation with love. Which means that, if we disagree with you, we hate you. We aren’t going to affirm
someone’s immoral lifestyle choices that God has made clear in His Word are unacceptable to Him. We cannot condone what God says is wrong, even if the whole world says it’s right. As much as we are called to love you, we are called to love God first. If you require that we either love you and your sin, or hate you and your sin, I’m sorry. We must exercise a third option: we will love you and call your sin what it is. Wrong. But it isn’t wrong because it’s your sin. Our sin is wrong too. There’s a misused adage: Love the sinner; hate the sin. I tell my Christian brothers and sisters it’s fine to take that approach as long as we begin by hating our own sin.

Jesus instructed His followers to love even their enemies. That’s the standard of love to which we are called. I’m sorry that we haven’t always lived that out, but that’s our intention to do so.

I hope this helps Non-Christians better understand Christians. But I’m not so naive to believe this one blog post clears it all up. Maybe it can instigate discussion. Please let me know your thoughts.

I can boil my reasons for being a creationist down to two. Here they are.

1. Because conclusions are commonly drawn at the beginning of an experiment, not the end.

My wife and I visited The Creation Museum in Kentucky near Cincinnati a few years ago. The first exhibit we saw when we entered the museum was about a dig made by two archeologists. One was a Creation scientist, and the other an Evolution scientist. The whole point of the exhibit wasn’t about the findings of the dig itself. Rather, the exhibit showed that each of the two scientists went into the dig with certain assumptions that determined the conclusions they ultimately drew.  So the Creationist, going into the dig with the assumption that there was a global flood several thousand years ago, concluded that the fossils uncovered in the dig were from a much more recent time than did his Evolutionist counterpart.

            I think the word preposterous is an interesting word. It’s two word parts (plus a suffix) put together. Pre means before and post means after. So what belongs in the front (or the beginning) is at the back (or the end), and what should be at the back/end is, instead, at the front/beginning. The proverbial cart before the horse is the perfect word picture for preposterous. And that’s what that scientific process really is: preposterous. Our conclusions, which should come at the end, are established – albeit usually unknowingly – at the beginning. I suppose it really speaks to the power of one’s worldview, because it’s our worldview that most powerfully informs how we see, and what we believe about, pretty much everything.

            I’m certainly not exempt from preposterity. (I think I just invented a word!) And neither is anyone else. That’s why it’s uber-important to have a worldview built on assumptions that are correct. I’m convinced that the Bible is God’s written Word, and I try to build my worldview completely upon its principles, so I know going into reading an article that I’m not buying any assertions that don’t somehow line up with Biblical Scripture. I won’t be swayed on that issue. But if I’m preposterous based on God’s stated truths, I’m in good company, God Himself is preposterous in the most awesome and holy sense:

For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done. – Isaiah 46:9-10 NKJV

2. Because I know the Creator.

I believe we must go outside all the things we can study intellectually in order to find the truth about origins. Once we find that truth, we can study it intellectually. Once we encounter the Creator of everything that exists, we can view it all with the knowledge that He created it. Once we have that perspective, the creation itself serves as evidence. When I see a night sky, massive ocean waves running up to a sandy beach, or a majestic rocky mountain reaching up to a beautiful blue sky, I see God’s handiwork. I see it that way because God has introduced Himself to my heart, and has helped me understand His Word. Speaking of preposterous – getting things backwards –  it’s preposterous to expect someone to believe God created the universe before knowing Him intimately. I see God’s creation because I know God. I didn’t see the world and exclaim, “Wow! Who created this?! I want to meet Him!” I met Him, and now He helps me see His work as His work. Jesus said in John 14:6 “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” If He is the Truth – and He is – then it’s in Him that we’ll find the real story of how the universe originated. We can look forever in the wrong places, and we’ll never find the truth.