My New Book - A Christmas Devotional

 

My new book is now available on Kindle. Just $4.99.

The Great Invasion: 31 Days of Christmas.

Softcovers are coming, hopefully, in a few days.

Here is the Introduction to my book.

Blessings!

INTRODUCTION 

This is a book about Christmas. Which means, a book about Christ. I have thirty-one thoughts about Christ that I want to share with you. 

As I was completing the book, I had some “Oh no!” moments. “Oh no! I left this out of the book!” “Oh no, I should have also added this!” So many important things about Jesus are not in my book. 

I recognize this. Which is a good thing. The life of Jesus the Christ is deep, wide, long, high, and vast, as is His love. Christ transcends our human understanding. 

I have spent over fifty years studying Jesus. This includes doctoral research. I wrote one of my doctoral qualifying exams on the Christological controversies of the first four centuries of the Church. These controversies led to development of the great Christological creeds of the Christian faith. (‘Christology’ is the study of Christ.) 

I did another doctoral comprehensive exam on hermeneutics. Which is: interpretation theory. How to interpret texts. Beyond that, how to interpret anything at all. Hermeneutical principles are humming in the background of my mind, as I research Jesus.  

My doctoral dissertation (Northwestern University, 1986) was a hermeneutical thing on metaphor theory, and how it refers. I looked how words are used, literally and figuratively, to speak of events and concepts in the Bible. Since my seminary and doctoral studies, 

I have amassed a significant library of books about Jesus. I have not stopped reading, praying, and following after the life of the Living Christ. 

This includes seven years of preaching, in my church, through the four Gospels, chronologically. 

All this has led me to the conclusion that Christ is the Immanent One and the Transcendent One who cannot be fully captured by my tiny cognitive capacities. He is the familiar stranger. He is the mighty invader. He is the incarnate Word. He is the irresistible force. He is…  

The thesis of this little book is: To study and learn more about Jesus shapes and deepens our understanding of and experience of Christmas. 

I offer this to you as an opportunity to join me on a deep dive into the glory and majesty of this universe’s rightful King. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!. 

***

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Introduction 

#1​​ Jesus Is the Agent of Creation 

#2  ​​Jesus Was Born of a Virgin  

#3​​ Jesus Descended into Greatness 

#4​​ Jesus Existed 

#5​​ Jesus Grew Up in Galilee 

#6 ​Jesus Was a Jew Who Wore Torah on His Sleeve 

#7​​ Jesus Is "Immanuel." 

#8​​ Jesus is God and Man  

#9​​ Jesus is God  

#10​ Jesus is True Humanity  

#11​ Jesus Was Baptized by John the Baptist  

#12​ Jesus Taught About the Kingdom of God

#13​ Jesus is King 

#14 ​The Method of Jesus 

#15​ Jesus Mentored 12 Disciples  

#16​ Miracles Were Performed Through Jesus 

#17 ​Jesus Cast Out Demons  

#18​ Jesus Is After the Human Heart 

#19 ​Jesus Had a Preferential Option for "the Least of These"  

#20​ Jesus Restored Purity Outside the Sacrificial System 

#21​ Jesus Reinterpreted the Jewish Festivals in Terms of Himself 

#22​ Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath  

#23 ​ Uncovering Jesus at Christmas 

#24​ Violent Night (An Alternative Christmas Story)

#25​ Christmas Day - Jesus Comes to Save Us from Our Distress  

#26​ Easter Week - Jesus Takes the Second Cup  

#27​ Jesus Bore Our Horror on a Cross  

#28​ Jesus Screams in the Absolute Darkness  

#29​ Jesus Was Raised from the Dead 

#30​ Jesus Will Return to Restore Heaven and Earth  

#31​ Jesus Instructed His Followers to Abide in Him  

APPENDIX 1​ Jesus Was a Minimalist

DECLARATIONS of THANKSGIVING

(Flowers, in our green room)

DECLARATIONS of THANKSGIVING

THE SCRIPTURE

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. (Philippians 4:6)

THE DECLARATIONS

• My heart is filled with thankfulness because I am encountering God’s goodness and enduring love. (1 Chronicles 16:34)
• As I listen to worship music I find I cannot stop giving thanks to God. (2 Chronicles 5:13)
• As I share with others what God is doing in my life, my gratitude overflows onto them. (Psalm 9:1)
• Today I am approaching God with thanksgiving, music, and songs. (Psalm 95:2)
• I never fail to remember how God has rescued me. (Psalm 118:21)
• Sometimes I wake in the night and find myself saying “Thank you” to God. (Psalm 119:62)
• I see God transforming deserts into gardens, causing joy and gladness to flourish in my soul. (Isaiah 51:3)
• I am being supernaturally delivered from sin and darkness. (Romans 7:25)
• I live each day with a victorious mindset. (1 Corinthians 15:57)
• An ocean of God’s grace is overwhelming me, causing an overflow of thanksgiving that glorifies God. (2 Corinthians 4:15)
• God is using me to supply the needs of the Lord’s people, resulting in many expressions of thanks to God. (2 Corinthians 9:12)
• As I remember my brothers and sisters my soul is saturated with prayers of thanks for them. (Ephesians 1:16)

(Special thanks to Steve Backlund.)

Prayer with Thanksgiving Is an Anxiety-Buster

 

(Monroe County)

I have a list of things I am thankful for. Sometimes I print the list out, carry it with me, and pull it out to re-read it. Regularly doing this defeats my sometimes anxious heart.

J. P. Moreland writes about this in Loving God with Your Mind: Essays in Honor of J. P. Moreland.  

"I practice the discipline of gratitude. Due to my heredity and upbringing, I have a predisposition to anxiety and depression. One way to avoid these is to train yourself to see the glass half full and not half empty, that is, to habitualize a positive, thankful approach to life. And the best way to do that involves a negative and a positive step. Negatively, learn to spot early on any catastrophizing or totalizing thoughts you have in which you take fears and so forth, blow them up out of proportion, and engage in fearful, negative self-talk. When you spot the negative thought, tell yourself that it isn’t true, that it is overstated, and seek to undermine the thought. Then, positively, turn to God in prayer and thank Him for, say, five to six things in your life, ranging from little things like the taste of coffee to large things like friends and family. I will do this around one hundred times a day, and by now, such expressions of gratitude have become a habit and they have colored my perception of life. The discipline of gratitude keeps one from becoming sour on life and is very, very life giving." (p. 225) 

In Philippians chapter four Paul instructs Jesus' followers to "not be anxious about anything." The Greek word for 'anxious' is one used in contexts of persecution. It's used in Matthew 10:19, where Jesus tells his disciples, "When they arrest you, do not be anxious about what to say or how to say it."

When Paul counsels the Philippian Christians to not be anxious, it's not like they are sitting down to a sumptuous Thanksgiving dinner in a peaceful, non-threatening land. He writes from prison. The context is: persecution. The Jesus-followers were suffering under opposition from their pagan neighbors, just like Paul and Silas had suffered when among them (Acts 16L19-24; Phil. 1:28-30). 

I know what worry and anxiety are like. I have, in some especially troubling times, felt consumed by them. So I ask - how realistic is it to be told, “Be anxious about nothing?” Paul’s answer, and his experiential reality, is found in his rich, ongoing prayer life. He writes: 

Do not be anxious about anything, 

but in every situation,

by prayer and petition,

with thanksgiving,

present your requests to God.

I have proof that this works, (following Henri Nouwen, in his book Gracias!). It's this.  When I don’t pray, when I don't count the many reasons I have to be thankful,  I am more easily filled with worry and fear. In the act of praying I enter into the caregiving of the Great Physician, who dials down the anxiety.

In everyday prayer-conferencing with God, I present my requests to him. I lay my burdens before him (See 1 Peter 5:7). I remember that I have a Father God who loves me, in whom I trust. Where there is trust, there is neither worry nor anxiety. A person with a thanks-filled, praying life, grows in trust and diminishes in anxiety. A praying person discovers, experientially, that thankful trust and anxiety are inversely proportionate. 

Paul writes that our prayers should be accompanied “with thanksgiving.” Ben Witherington comments on this. He writes,

“Paul believes there is much to be said for praying in the right spirit or frame of mind.” This is significant for the Roman Philippians, since pagan prayers did not include thanksgiving. Roman prayers were often fearful, bargaining prayers, not based on a relationship with some loving god.

Witherington adds: “Prayer with the attitude of thanksgiving is a stress-buster.”

John Wesley said that thanksgiving is the surest evidence of a soul free from anxiety.

J. P. Moreland counsels that the discipline of gratitude thwarts catastrophic thinking.

The antidote for worry and anxiety is: praying, with thanksgiving.

Jesus, Aborted

 

Philip Yancey writes:

Malcolm Muggeridge observed that in our day, with family-planning clinics offering convenient ways to correct “mistakes” that might disgrace a family name, “It is, in point of fact, extremely improbable, under existing conditions, that Jesus would have been permitted to be born at all. Mary’s pregnancy, in poor circumstances, and with the father unknown, would have been an obvious case for an abortion; and her talk of having conceived as a result of the intervention of the Holy Ghost would have pointed to the need for psychiatric treatment, and made the case for terminating her pregnancy even stronger. Thus our generation, needing a Savior more, perhaps, than any that has ever existed, would be too humane to allow one to be born.”

- Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew, p. 32

Muggeridge quote from Jesus, the Man Who Lives, p. 19

Destined to Be Creatures of Thanksgiving

(Montana Rockies - Bozeman Pass)

The older I get, the more thankful I am becoming. Giving thanks is habitual. I often find myself saying, to myself, or out loud in a whisper, "Thank you God."

This happens several times a day. I think of something God has done for me, I see something he has given me, and reflexively the words rise up and come out of me.

I wake in the morning and say "Thank You" for waking in the morning and moving into a new day.

Dallas Willard, before he went to be with Jesus, was grateful. Gary Moon describes Willard's last words. 

"At 4:30 a.m. a nurse came in to turn Dallas in the bed. Her visit awakened [Dallas’ good friend Gary Black who was in the hospital room with him]. Moving Dallas awakened him too. Gary took Dallas’s hand. Dallas turned to him and told him to tell his loved ones how much he was blessed by them and how much he appreciated them. … Then, as Gary described, “In a voice clearer than I had heard in days, he leaned his head back slightly and with his eyes closed said, ‘Thank you.’” Gary did not feel that Dallas was talking to him, but to another presence that Dallas seemed to sense in the room. And those were the last words of Dallas Willard. “Thank you,” he said, to a very present and then finally visible to him God."

Gary Moon, Becoming Dallas Willard (IVP, 2018), page 240

Gratitude is moving from volition to embodiment. This is good. I am being prepared.

In the great throne room scene of Revelation 4, the awesome four living creatures are spotlighted, as they levitate around the throne of God. They give splendor to the One who sits on the throne. I am destined to do the same. I am being prepped for full-being God-glorification. The creatures give value to him who occupies the throne. I have the same destiny. I am being shaped into a God-honoring creature.

The four living creatures give thanks. 

An eternal outpouring of gratitude. 

I will one day join this mighty chorus! 

I am being mentored in this, by the Holy Spirit.

All I am meant to be is summed up in the great outpouring of glory, honor, and thanks to him who sits on the throne and lives for ever and ever. (Revelation 4:9)

This outpouring of magnification is too much for the twenty-four elders. The threefold amplification of the four living creatures drops the elders to their knees before the Lord, and they worship him. (Revelation 4:10)

Listen, all you who are in Christ! This is your transcendent destiny, which, in your current immanent embodiment, you are being schooled for. 

To be creatures who radiate glory, display honor, and sing thanksgiving to the God who reigns for ever and ever. To be, as C.S. Lewis once said, "everlasting splendors."

Thank you.

Getting Into a Relationship Won't Heal the Wounded Heart

Linda and I, in Cancun (the sun was bright!)

Every heart has its wound. 

Some have multiple wounds. What can mend a broken heart? Not: getting into a relationship. Not: getting married. And not committing emotional adultery. (See here, and here, and here, and here.)

The person with an unhealed, bleeding heart brings their bloody mess into every relationship and, if the other gets close enough, they get bled on. Probably they are wounded too, and that's why, unknowingly, they are attracted to another hurting person. Misery loves company. People that bond in their misery form dysfunctional relationships.

Who a person is pre-maritally is who they are maritally. Unless, of course, they change. But just being in a relationship doesn't bring healing. Often the opposite happens. Old, oozing scars get re-opened. We cannot restore the souls of others.

God, on the other hand, is the Soul-Restorer (Psalm 23:3). Therefore, know and be known by him. I've seen this work, in my own life and others. In relationship counseling Linda and I attempt to bring people back to this.

After countless hours of counseling couples, pre-counseling them, post-marital counseling, and wedding-doing over the past forty-five years, we have seen marriages get restored. This happens when husband and wife stop viewing each other as either "savior" or "destroyer," individually look to God, cry out "Change me, God!", and respond to God's counsel.

Can God use a partner to mediate healing? Of course. But that's God, not the partner (who gets some credit for being a vessel of God, like a mug is to be affirmed for containing a great blend of coffee). God has mediated much healing to me through Linda, and she would say the same about me. But neither of us is The Great Healer. It is bad news relationship-wise if one is viewed that way, or views the other that way. What happens is big-time disappointment.

If you are hurting and lonely, even while married, the answer to your personal hell is not "I need to find someone!" Way too many mistakes are made at this point. Someone dates as a cure for their inner tragedy. Two unhealed people "fall in love." Never date or marry as relief for tragedy. Unless you want to experience hell on earth in a failing marriage, with children.

Every person's story is different, especially in the details. Here's part of mine. I was twenty-one years old. I had just become a Jesus-follower. I tried to get back into a previously failed dating relationship with a girl who was not a Jesus-follower. Eventually, she broke up with me. I thought, "I am messed up." God told me to take a year off from opposite-sex relationships and work on my own self. I did. It was a wonderful year! I thought, should God ever bring someone into my life, and should we get married, and should we have children, I want to be healed of a lot of stuff inside me.

Every person is healable. None of us have it all together, inwardly. Getting in a relationship is not the cure. Success in acquiring a life-partner does not equal a life of emotional flourishing.

In this regard Miroslav Volf, in A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good, writes about how "success" fails to bring lasting satisfaction. 

"God delivers us from the melancholy emptiness that sometimes accompanies our very success. We’ve achieved what we wanted—we have gotten the corner office—and we still feel empty. We are like a child who wants a toy and, when she gets it, plays with it for a day or two and then craves another. Melancholy inevitably sets in when we forget that we are made to find satisfaction in the infinite God and not in any finite object." (Kindle Locations 574-578)

We achieved what we wanted. The thrill dissipates. We still feel empty. Bill and Lynn Hybels wrote about this pattern in their still-excellent book on marriage, Fit To Be Tied.

The answer that heals was never meant to be found in another person.

***
My book on prayer is Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God (May 2016)

My book on leadership is Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Joy Is Non-circumstantial

 

                                                        (Redeemer church, Monroe, MI)

Joy, like contentment, like the fruit of the Spirit, like influence for Christ, like manifestations of the Spirit, finds realization independently of the vicissitudes of life. 

Henri Nouwen writes,

"Joy does not come from positive predictions about the state of the world. It does not depend on the ups and downs of the circumstances of our lives. Joy is based on the spiritual knowledge that, while the world in which we live is shrouded in darkness, God has overcome the world. Jesus says it loudly and clearly: “In the world you will have troubles, but rejoice, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33)."

The Pro-Life Psalm

 

(Redeemer Church, Monroe, dark outside, lights on in the sanctuary)

PSALM 139:13-18

For you created my inmost being;

    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.

How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
    How vast is the sum of them!

Were I to count them,
    they would outnumber the grains of sand—
    when I awake, I am still with you.

FORGIVENESS: Some Resources

 

(Leading the Presence-Driven Church students, Faith Bible Seminary, NYC)

(I'm re-posting this to keep it in play.)

A QUIZ

Which one is the road to freedom?

a. to forgive

b. to nurture an offense

Linda and I are always talking with people about forgiveness. Here are  links to things I have written about forgiveness.

We all need it, and need to learn it, and practice it. 

For Jesus-followers, this is the heart and soul of the Gospel. 

I bless you all with hearts of forgiveness!

Why Is Self-forgiveness Harder than Forgiving Others?

Confess and Forgive

Self-Forgiveness and Liberation from the Past

To Forgive or to Punish?

Moving From Self-Hatred to Self-Forgiveness

Confession & Forgiveness: The Foundation of All Authentic Relationship

C&F (Confess & Forgive)

Sermon Notes - Forgiveness as a Gateway to Healing

Self-Forgiveness Often Includes Making Amends with Others

How to Forgive Yourself

Forgiving Others - Three Stages

The Best Book on Self-Forgiveness Is...

Are You a Forgiving Person? Take The Forgiveness Quiz

To Withhold Forgiveness is the Core Evil of the Kingdom of Darkness

***

For empirical research on the benefits and power of forgiveness, see Robert Enright's International Forgiveness Institute.

BOOKS

Lewis Smedes, Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don't Deserve

David Seamands, Healing for Damaged Emotions

Everett Worthington, Forgiving and Reconciling: Bridges to Wholeness and Hope

Worthington, Moving Forward: Six Steps to Forgiving Yourself and Breaking Free from the Past

Robert Enright, 8 Keys to Forgiveness (8 Keys to Mental Health)

Enright, The Forgiving Life: A Pathway to Overcoming Resentment and Creating a Legacy of Love

David Augsburger, Caring Enough to Forgive

Timothy Keller, Forgiveness: Why Should I and How Can I?

Truth Excludes (as does every community)

 

Downtown Monroe

Humans are tribal. We need to belong to groups. We crave bonds and attachments, which is why we love clubs, teams, fraternities, family. Almost no one is a hermit. Even monks and friars belong to orders. But the tribal instinct is not just an instinct to belong. It is also an instinct to exclude.

Yale Law professor Amy Chua

From her book Political Tribes

Former USC philosopher Dallas Willard writes:

"There is a certain logical exclusiveness built into knowledge as such, and it must be respected... This is due to the fact that knowledge (not mere belief, commitment, sentiment, or tradition) involves truth. Truth by its very nature is exclusive in the following sense. If any belief is true, that by itself excludes the truth of any belief contrary or contradictory to it. And this “exclusion” is not a matter of what anyone wants or hopes to be true or false. For example, if “Sue’s dress is red” is true, then “Sue’s dress is white” and “Sue’s dress is not red” are false. It does not matter what anyone may think or want. It is simply a matter of the objective logical relations between the beliefs (or statements or “propositions”) involved."
- Dallas Willard, Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge, pp. 170-171

Truth marginalizes. Truth excludes.

You have a worldview, a set of beliefs through which you interpret reality and experience. Your worldview excludes masses of people. 

Here is an example. 

When I was speaking in India, the hotel I stayed in had an altar in the lobby. Every morning a young Hindu priest, dressed in a white skirt, lit incense sticks on the altar, and offered prayers to the god of the hotel. This scene can be captured in the following statements:

1. There is a god who watches over the hotel.
2. Appeasing this god with the burning of incense and other sacrifices helps ensure that the hotel will succeed financially.
3. Uttering prayers of worship to this god increases the probability that the god will show favor towards the hotel.
4. To not perform #s 1 and 2 may cause the god of the hotel to be angry, and bring harm or disaster to it.

Take statement 1. If it is true, then I, who think it is false, am wrong. Such is the nature of truth. The Hindu priest knows something I do not. I am logically excluded from such knowledge.

I think statement 1 is false. If I am right, then statements 2-4 are false, since there exists no "god of the hotel" to be appeased.

It is not rude or impolite to talk like this. It is not disrespectful. Marginalization is epistemically unavoidable. Willard writes: 

"It is not arrogant and unloving merely to believe that you are right about something and that others are wrong... There have, after all, been many people who were strongly convinced of the rightness of their beliefs, in religious and other matters, without being arrogant and unloving." (Ib., 170)

What if you embrace the belief-system of postmodernism? And you claim, We can't know truth. I have two thoughts about that. 1) You just excluded me and all like me who believe we can know truth; and 2) You just made a truth claim which, on your postmodern thinking, is self-contradictory.

In embracing the truths of your worldview, you have excluded many. That's just the way truth works.