He is always with us!

The promise of Christmas was spoken of 700 years before the birth of Jesus by the Holy Spirit. The promise was spoken of through the Prophet Isaiah:

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14)

The Gospel of Matthew also tells of the birth of Jesus:
“All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"—which means, "God with us."” (Matthew 1:23)

Right from the very beginning the promise was that Jesus would change everything and that God would be ‘with us.’ It is interesting that some of the last words Jesus spoke reiterate the reality that He would be with us. In Matthew 28 Jesus said:
“I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

Jesus’ time on this earth started with ‘God with us,’ and His time on the earth ended with ‘I am with you always, to the very end of time.’ This is a wonderful promise and a fearful promise. It is wonderful to know that no matter whether I’m on the mountain top of life or in the deepest valley of life He is with me. This is amazing, wonderful and so reassuring. It can’t get any better than that! The Creator of the Universe is always with you!

It is also a fearful promise because whatever is happening in my life, there He is. ‘I am with you always!’ This means in the midst of our bad attitude, our harsh words spoken, our unkind reactions, etc., He is ALWAYS there! There is nothing hidden from Him, not even our thoughts. There is nothing we say that He doesn’t know about. There is nothing we do that He doesn’t know about.

The Christmas Promise: He is always with us! The Christmas reality: He is always with us!

Giving Different At Christmas

The real meaning of Christmas so often gets buried under the peripheral celebrations of Christmas: the giving and receiving of gifts, the songs, baking and special meals, events and programs, church and social parties, etc. Somewhere in the midst of all the hoopla is the real meaning of Christmas.

Christmas is the celebration of God’s gift of Jesus Christ to the human race. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son.” Christmas is a celebration of God’s greatest gift to us, not a celebration of gifts that we given or received.

Americans spend $450 billion on Christmas – that’s $450,000,000,000 - on Christmas gifts for each other! What percentage of that ends up in the garages, storage sheds and garage sales across America? Is all the gift giving about blessing others, or is it more from mixed up motives such as buying love, covering up guilt or showing off?

It is estimated that it would cost $10 billion – that’s $10,000,000,000 - to provide clean water around the world. So if Americans gave 2% less in total gift giving and instead gave it to groups that were working to provide clean water around the world, within a few years every person would be cooking, cleaning, bathing and drinking clean water. Just 2% less!

Please don’t think I’m trying to tell people where to give, how much to give or whether to give at all. My intent is to encourage each of us to think differently about how we celebrate God’s gift to humanity. Giving to someone who can’t do anything for you in return and who you will probably never meet will be the greatest gift you can give to celebrate Christmas.

I can’t give $10, 000,000,000, but I can give my 2%.

Christmas Chaos Peace

One of the promises, that was spoken of numerous times, regarding the coming of Messiah Jesus, into the world is 'peace.' Peace was foretold by the prophets and was heralded by angels. The peace that Jesus brought is not the peace that people were looking for or expected. Most people think of peace as an absence of conflict or as the result of having enough of what they want. This is not the peace that was promised or that Jesus brought into the world.

Those two sentiments regarding people’s understanding of peace can be heard in the statements; 'Can't we just all get along?' and 'There is enough for everyone.' The peace that comes from everyone getting along or from having enough is just a small taste of the real thing. It is not real peace and it is short lived.

When I was growing up my Mom always had homemade maple syrup for pancakes and waffles. The syrup was made from white sugar, something called ‘Mapleline’ flavoring and boiling water. It had a maple flavor but it was not made with pure maple. It was a watered down substitute but that is what my family could afford.

There is a peace that circumstances offer but it only tastes like peace. That peace is not made with real peace but with peace flavoring and it is watered down.

Jesus said; "I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don't be troubled or afraid. (John 14:27 NLT)

True peace is not like the flavored peace. True peace is deep and constant and unchanged by life's circumstances. True peace comes from resting in the shelter of God's care.

God gave us the Word that creates peace in our hearts and lives. He didn’t say that we would be without conflict and trials. He told us that we would have peace because of Him and what He has told us. “I have told you all this so that you may have peace in Me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33 NLT)

Seek Real Peace – Not the watered down peace made by flavoring!

Christmas - Does it have to be that way?

This week starts the busiest segment of the year. The two biggest shopping days of the year happen during the upcoming weeks. The biggest shopping day of the year is the last Saturday before Christmas. The second biggest shopping day of the year is Black Friday. What is often referred to as the ‘season of cheer’ becomes what one writer referred to as the ‘season of fear.’ This happens as people’s schedules speedup, people impose expectations on themselves, there are expectations put upon people by family, friends, schools, and church and work – all of this becomes almost unbearable at times. Advice found in last week’s USA Weekend was: “Don’t let social phobia ruin your holidays.” The term ‘social phobia’ is used to describe the symptoms that a significant number of people suffer during this segment of the year.

The day after Thanksgiving is often referred to as ‘Black Friday.’ The term was first used by police and retail workers to describe the day’s unimaginable traffic jams and badly-behaved customers. The term has migrated to refer to the day when retailers begin to see their income statements move from ‘red’ to ‘black.’ Black Friday has become such a nightmare that dozens of news agencies are offering advice to those who can’t stay home on how to survive the day.

Oklahoma's Enid News & Eagle offers these thoughts this year: “These stampede-type sales have gotten out of hand. … Let's all just keep our cool, enjoy the bargains and — most of all— be safe.” There is an iPhone app called ‘Dealnews’ that offers the latest news on Black Friday. All of this reporting, news and advice comes one year after a Long Island Wal-Mart employee was tragically trampled to death as the doors opened for in the early morning of ‘Black Friday.’

So everyone: Get in. Sit down. Put your helmet on. Make sure your seatbelt is tightly fastened around your waste. Get ready for takeoff. Let me remind you that in case of a loss of cabin pressure an oxygen mask will appear before you. Simply place it over your face and breath. Then continue to follow the stampeding crowds as the race of the year continues. Do not slow down or you will miss the buyer’s remorse and post holiday blues that are a benefit of how we do what we do. Merry Christmas.

Does it have to be that way?

Diagnosing Unforgiveness Attitude and Action Checklist

Here are some indicators that you may have ‘unforgiveness’ issues in your life. As you read through them you will likely be reminded of people, situations and memories where these attitudes and actions occur. The healing comes to you as you forgive.

Signs of Unforgiveness
o Judging others: Seeing the ‘speck’ in someone else’s eye while not seeing the ‘log’ in your own eye.
o Ongoing anger and resentment towards someone.
o Keeping score.
o Thinking of ways to get even with others who have hurt you.
o Making others ‘pay’ for no reason.
o Carrying bitterness and anger against those who have offended you or willfully wronged you.
o Constantly doubting his/her loyalty and motives.
o Retreating into isolation from others – creating walls – pushing people away.
o Avoiding those who have hurt you.
o Not wanting to deal with a person or situation
o Walking the other way when you see the person.
o Hoping he/she doesn’t show up somewhere.
o Feeling sick in your stomach when you see the person.
o Erupting in anger, or ‘boiling’ inside – sometimes for no apparent reason.
o Burying the wrongs done to you without really addressing them.
o Gossiping about somebody instead of resolving the issues that you have with that person.
o Acting like nothing happened, instead of confronting issues that have hurt you.
o Instead of stating the truth, you make excuses for those who have hurt or wronged you.
o Feeling sorry for yourself.
o Occasionally, thinking you’re some kind of martyr.
o Feeling like nobody has had it as bad as you.
o Wanting to get even with people who have caused you pain.
o Insulating and protecting myself behind a wall of defensiveness.
o Not trusting others.
o Regularly thinking about and talking about what occurred and about the person who offended you.
o An unwillingness or inability to ‘bless’ the other person and to want ‘God’s Blessing’ on them.
o Thinking or saying: I just ‘can’t’ forgive (usually means I won’t forgive).
o Being angry with God for allowing bad things to happen to you.
o Shallow friendships. You can be ‘friendly’ but you can’t go deep with others.
o Being too sophisticated to be outwardly critical and mean, but inwardly you’re distant, shallow and self-protective.


How do you know if you have a grudge?
o You find yourself holding on to offenses.
o You can’t get over your past.
o You have imaginary conversations with those who have offended you in your head.
o You avoid them at all costs, or when you do see them you wish you could hide.
o You compare yourself to and dismiss them.
o You are constantly looking for ammunition to gossip about the person’s life: “They did it to me, now I get to do it to them!”

Unforgiveness Builds Walls

Not all unforgiveness issues and grudges create anger, tension and animosity. Instead, they may create distance as people build an emotional wall between themselves and others. As time goes on the wall gets higher, thicker and covered with ivy and moss. Eventually the wall has been around so long that people live with it between them with very little thought as to the reason for the wall or the reason to tear the wall down.

Robert Louis Stevenson, the famed author of Treasure Island, tells the story of two unmarried sisters who shared a single room. As people who live in close quarters are apt to do, they had a falling out with each other. Their dispute was over a theological issue. The dispute was so intense that, instead of agreeing to differ, they simply didn't speak to each other ever again.

The division between them became so bad the two sisters drew a line with chalk down the middle of their room to mark off their respective territories. They continued to exist, (they were existing, not living) in the same room together, but never said a word to each other again.

Each of the sisters endured the cold shoulder and silence of the other over the years even as friends came around or as they ate meals. The sisters lived out the remainder of their lives in this miserable condition.

At graveside services, funerals and memorials I almost always encourage people to forgive one another, to not build walls and to tear down walls. Life is too short and too precious to exist separated from others.

‘If you’ve drawn a line on the floor in chalk,’ I would encourage you to forgive and to erase the line. You will only experience health, and remove bitterness and grudges when you forgive. Jesus said, “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” (Luke 6:27-28 TNIV)

Thoughts on Forgiveness

During this teaching series on FORGIVENESS I’ve talked about how forgiving and forgetting are not the same thing. Sometimes we forgive and we do forget. Other times we forgive and yet the memory still lingers for a while. Other times we forgive and yet there are things that continually remind us of the past, past relationships and people that hurt us.

What we do with the memories is what is important. Will we use the memories to ‘get even’ with the other person or someone else? Will we use the memory to feed our sorrow and dysfunction? Will we do the healthy thing and by forgiving turn the memory into a thing of the past that will have no control over our present?

Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, was reminded one day of a vicious deed that someone had done to her years before. As someone tried to get her to remember the incident she acted as if she had never even heard of the incident.

“Don’t you remember it?” her friend asked.

“No,” Barton replied, “I distinctly remember forgetting it.”

What will we do with our memories?

Someone has said: One of God’s better jokes is the ability to remember the past without the capability of undoing it.

Clara Barton was not saying that she forgot but that she was not going to dwell on the offense. It was not going to come up again. It was not going to control her. She was not going to use it to ‘get even’ with someone. As far as she was concerned – the past is the past is the past.

Let’s learn to ‘distinctly remember forgetting’ those things that we’ve forgiven.

Matt

Forgiveness - Clara Barton

Forgiving and forgetting are not the same thing. Sometimes we forgive and we do forget. Other times we forgive and yet the memory still lingers for a while. Other times we forgive and yet there are things that continually remind us of the past, past relationships and people that hurt us.

What we do with the memories is what is important. Will we use the memories to ‘get even’ with the other person or someone else? Will we use the memory to feed our sorrow and dysfunction? Will we do the healthy thing and by forgiving turn the memory into a thing of the past that will have no control over our present?

Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, was reminded one day of a vicious deed that someone had done to her years before. As someone tried to get her to remember the incident she acted as if she had never even heard of the incident.

“Don’t you remember it?” her friend asked.
“No,” Barton replied, “I distinctly remember forgetting it.”

What will we do with our memories?

Someone has said: One of God’s better jokes is the ability to remember the past without the capability of undoing it.

Clara Barton was not saying that she forgot but that she was not going to dwell on the offense. It was not going to come up again. It was not going to control her. She was not going to use it to ‘get even’ with someone. As far as she was concerned – the past is the past is the past.

Let’s learn to ‘distinctly remember forgetting’ those things that we’ve forgiven.

Forgivenss - Forgive Your Spouse Today

Marriage is a place where people have the most opportunities to practice living a life of forgiveness. There are more opportunities for cross words, bad attitudes, failed expectations, disappointments and general feelings of resentment. Since there are more opportunities for all these modes of hurt there are also more opportunities for forgiving. Every year that goes by new opportunities to learn lessons of forgiveness arise.

Martin Luther, the 16th Century reformer, once wrote about marriage and hurts: “Think of all the squabbles Adam and Eve must have had in the course of their 900 years.” Think about it 900 years! 900 years is a lot of history, a lot of hurt and pain and a lot of opportunity to practice forgiveness.

Can you imagine the conversations as they headed into disagreements or arguments? Every time and argument came up - Eve would say, “Hey we wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t eaten that apple…this is your fault.”

Adam of course couldn’t let her get away with a comment like that. He would retort – “Hey, now don’t you blame this on me – you started it all - you gave it to me.”

Blaming has never been a weakness for humans. Instead blaming tends to be an underlying strength. The natural reaction of men and women is to blame and get hurt.

If each of us, who are married, would practice first and foremost choose and act to forgive – ALL human relationships would be different, history would be different and life today would probably be unrecognizable.

Forgive your spouse TODAY!

Forgiveness - Corrie ten Boon

Corrie ten Boon is a famous Christian author who lived through the concentration camps of World War II. Many of her family died in the death camps. Corrie lived to travel the world speaking to people about Jesus and the power of forgiveness. The Hiding Place is a powerful book that chronicles portions of her life.

Here is one event from her life about the power of forgiveness:
Corrie ten Boom told of not being able to forget a wrong that had been done to her. She had forgiven the person, but kept rehashing the incident and couldn’t sleep. She asked the Lord to help her put the problem behind her:
“His help came in the form of a kindly Lutheran pastor to whom I confessed my failure after two sleepless weeks.”
“Up in the church tower,” he said, nodding out the window, “is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding, then dong. Slower and slower until there’s a final dong and it stops. I believe the same thing is true of forgiveness. When we forgive, we take our hand off the rope. But if we’ve been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we mustn’t be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming for a while. They’re just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down.”
“And so it proved to be. There were a few more midnight reverberations, a couple of dings when the subject came up in my conversations, but the force — which was my willingness in the matter — had gone out of them. They came less and less often and at the last stopped altogether: we can trust God not only above our emotions, but also above our thoughts.”
Choose to forgive and the ‘ding-dongs’ of the hurts will slowly fade away. You will find healing.

Forgiveness - A vaste subject

Forgiveness is a big subject. A church could teach on the subject of forgiveness every week and still be very relevant and applicable because not a day or week goes by that almost everyone of us are hurt, disappointed, let down, betrayed, etc… by someone else. Not a day or week goes by without each one of us hurting, disappointing, letting down, betraying or etc… others. There is no shortage of a need for forgiveness to be extended.

Someone has defined forgiveness as giving up the desire for a preferred past. That is an interesting way to look at life. “Giving up the desire for a preferred past.” We each have a desire in some ways for a preferred past. There are things that I wish I had never done. I have regrets about things that I did and how I know that I hurt God and hurt others. I also have regrets about things that happened to me at the hand of those I knew and that happened at the hands of those I didn’t know. I know that I have been forgiven by God and others and that I have forgiven others for wrongs. Even though I have regrets I don’t allow those regrets to consciously alter or impact my life today.

The power of forgiveness is that I don’t have to be controlled or impacted by the ways that I harmed others in my past and that I don’t have to allow anyone or any previous hurt to control or impact my present or my future. I am free because I have been forgiven by God and others and I am free because I have forgiven others.

It is difficult in the moment of pain and in the ‘wake’ of having been hurt to understand the power that can be released in a person’s life when they choose to receive God’s forgiveness and to forgive those who have hurt them. When a person is forgiven and forgives the power of the grace of God is released.

Someone else has said: To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was YOU.

Begin the process today – Choose to forgive. Become the prisoner that is set free by choosing and acting on that choice.

Forgiveness - Clara Barton

Forgiving and forgetting are not the same thing. Sometimes we forgive and we do forget. Other times we forgive and yet the memory still lingers for a while. Other times we forgive and yet there are things that continually remind us of the past, past relationships and people that hurt us.

What we do with the memories is what is important. Will we use the memories to ‘get even’ with the other person or someone else? Will we use the memory to feed our sorrow and dysfunction? Will we do the healthy thing and by forgiving turn the memory into a thing of the past that will have no control over our present?

Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, was reminded one day of a vicious deed that someone had done to her years before. As someone tried to get her to remember the incident she acted as if she had never even heard of the incident.

“Don’t you remember it?” her friend asked.
“No,” Barton replied, “I distinctly remember forgetting it.”

What will we do with our memories?

Someone has said: One of God’s better jokes is the ability to remember the past without the capability of undoing it.

Clara Barton was not saying that she forgot but that she was not going to dwell on the offense. It was not going to come up again. It was not going to control her. She was not going to use it to ‘get even’ with someone. As far as she was concerned – the past is the past is the past.

Let’s learn to ‘distinctly remember forgetting’ those things that we’ve forgiven.