2 phrases reached out and grabbed me out of John 20 as I read it.

The first appears in verse one and says, “…while it was still dark…”. John writes this as a description of the time of day.  But nothing in the Scriptures is incidental and I want to draw a simple application.

Jesus was dead.  His friends and followers had watched him be brutally beaten and killed.  Their dreams and futures suffering the same fate right along with Him.  Consequently, their worlds were shattered and extremely unstable.

It’s the middle of the night, leading to day 3 since Jesus died.  The disciples were all at home, hiding and grieving and scared.

It was night in more ways than one; their world was dark.

Little did they know that although it was still dark, God was working and Jesus was alive.  Light was breaking through the darkness.

It’s truly is no different with us.  Regardless of how dark it is in your life right now, or how dark it may become in the future – God will be working in ways that you cannot see and could not possibly imagine.

The second phrase appears at the beginning of verse 11.  It reads, “Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying.”

Isn’t the juxtaposition of this scene interesting?  Mary is standing and sobbing at the empty tomb of the Son of God who has been raised from the dead and is standing behind her while she is talking to two angels!!

Say what!?!?

Of course, we know she’s crying because she doesn’t understand what has happened.

Again, this isn’t too much different than experiences I’ve had in my life with God.  I’ve stood right smack in the middle of the incredible work of God in my life and in the world terrified, broken, and crying – not being able to fully understand or see what God was doing.

What’s the point of all of this?

The point is that, at our very best and most faith filled moments, we are looking through a dim and skewed glass simply trying to make out what God is doing.  We cannot possibly know or fathom.

As you read today, check out 1 Corinthians 2:9 and hold on to the reality that God is at work in your life and in your darkest situations.

You don’t know what He is doing.  But you don’t have to.   You can trust that He is busy loving you and working on your behalf to bless you and make you into the image of Jesus.

Have a wonderful day!

John 19:24b – “This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled…”

Happy New Year!  It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve blogged.  It’s good to be back.  Just had a couple of thoughts (one specific, and one more general) I wanted to share with you about today’s reading.

First, the specific.  The believability of the Scriptures struck me in a completely fresh way again today.

The events that occurred and the writers who recorded and wrote about them were all pointing to something.

And they were all validated by things that had been written thousands of years before.

I love how God is careful to spell it all out for us as well.  Why?  Because context matters, right?

It would be a small nuance that gives the story depth that the soldiers didn’t tear his clothes and gambled for them.  However, when it is the fulfillment of an ancient prophetic uttering, it becomes paramount.

Over and over and over again in the story of Jesus we are given this incredible historical, prophetic, Scriptural, and all important refrain, “This happened that the Scriptures might be fulfilled.”

Secondly (and more generally), I think this same idea lends context to our lives as well.  Particularly the difficult and painful moments.

Yes, the events of Jesus’ life were fulfilling some very exact Scriptural texts and would ultimately be a part of the mountain of evidence that he was the Messiah.

But in a general sense, the events of Jesus’ life happened as the plan of God unfolded for Him.

The same is true for us.

We have a tendency to ask ‘why’ when life is painful.  The Scriptures tell us that, as believers, God is busy using life to shape us in the image of Jesus; working all things for our good.

They also tell us that he cannot give us anything except good gifts.

So, what is happening to you right now is happening so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled in your life.

I’ve resolved to lean into that this year.  I want the Scriptures to be fulfilled in my life.  I want to be more like Him.

How about you?

This week I’m posting some of my favorite songs of the season.  This song has appeared on a couple of Christmas albums.  It is one of my favorite hymns.   It is beautiful.  Worship and enjoy…

Wasn’t that amazing?  The second verse says, “Here I raise my Ebenezer, here by thy great help I’ve come.”  Ebenezer means “hitherto the Lord has helped us”.  Love that!

Ok, now on to todays’ reading – John 7.  There is a lot going on.  Here are some things that grabbed me as I read:

1.  vs. 1-5 – Jesus didn’t dance for anybody, not even for those closest to him.  He knew exactly who he was.  He felt no compulsion to prove himself to anyone.  As I’ve said before though, he always willingly revealed himself to those truly seeking him.

2.  vs. 8, 10 – I love that Jesus was being all clandestine here.  He tells the others he isn’t going, but then he secretly goes.  I wonder if he wore a disguise.

3.  vs. 14-24 – this is actually pretty comical – Jesus is having a conversation and those he’s talking too and with have no clue what he’s talking about.  It all seems so random that at one point they conclude that he must be demon possessed.  It’s not until vs. 25 that anyone starts to catch on to who he is and what he’s talking about.

4.  vs. 27 – the people of Jesus’ day struggled with his being completely human – his origins just weren’t mysterious enough for them.  I talk to a lot of people today who aren’t really any different.

5.  vs. 30 & 44 – this is just cool.  I wonder exactly how that all went down.  I hope there’s video footage in heaven.

6.  vs. 37 – talk about stealing the show!  Jesus masterfully waits for just the right moment and makes a clear invitation that left no doubt he is claiming to be God.  Also, this festival was about celebrating God’s provision, complete with a daily water-drawing ceremony and procession.  What an amazing context for Jesus’ invitation.

7.  vs 45-46 – I LOVE these verses.  The temple guards had been dispatched to arrest Jesus.  Upon hearing him speak in verses 37-38.  They knew something transcendent and powerful was going on and declared, “No one has ever spoken the way this man does!”  That statement remains true today.

Take a few minutes and spend them in silence, listening for his voice.  No one can speak to your soul like he can.  Allow him to speak to you today.

A little Christmas as we begin today.

Love this song and probably the best performance of it that I’m aware of…absolutely stunning and moving.  There is a cool little story at the beginning of the video you can skip to 1:30 to go directly to the song.

Prosper is defined as “to thrive; flourish”.  Whether it’s relationally, financially, or medically, it’s what most people are chasing.  At the very least, it’s the preferred state of being for most of humanity.

The Scriptures talk a lot about being prosperous.  There are instructions and stories that help us understand how to and how not to.

Unfortunately, some Christians have hijacked the word and built an entire theological framework around it.

One of the verses from today’s reading talks a little bit about this idea and it caught my attention.  Here it is:

Proverbs 28:13 – “Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.”

You know one of the things I’ve learned from parenting my children?  No one has to teach us to hide our sin.

We lie, cheat, hurt, gossip, betray, back-stab, steal, slander…..and more….and then we’ll go to some pretty incredible lengths to lie and cover it up; to conceal it.  It’s pretty much been that way since Genesis 3.

But Wisdom says, “Don’t conceal it.”  Wisdom says, “Don’t hide.”  Because concealing it the true failure.  Hiding it is when we lose.

The strange thing is that it’s completely counterintuitive.  The motivation for most of us to hide our failings and conceal our sin is to skirt the consequences, avoiding the failure and loss that comes with being found out.

What’s needed?  A step action plan:  confess and renounce.  The Biblical word for this is repent.  There really is something too the adage, “confession is good for the soul.”

But, if all we do is confess, we’re only half way there.  Renouncing is a necessary ingredient.  Our renouncing becomes the evidence of true contrition and not simply feeling bad that we got caught.

The beautiful ending is that when we repent (confess and renounce our sin) we find the mercy we so desperately need.

One last thought, I firmly believe that we need someone to confess to.  Yes, confession before the Lord is necessary and most important.  He is the only one who can forgive our sins.

However, we all need a couple of people in our lives who know our dark sides.  People who we let see us at our ugliest and worst moments.  And it usually only works when the nature of the relationship is mutual and reciprocal.

It takes time and a lot of work to build that kind of trust in a relationship.

Is there something that you’re concealing and is eating at you?

What do you need to confess and renounce before God right now?

Is there someone in your life you can confess to?

The answers to these questions will go along way in determining whether or not you prosper!

See you tomorrow…

**LONG POST ALERT**

There are certain portions of Scripture that can leave me scratching my head.   I know, I know, we’re always supposed to act like everything make sense and that we understand perfectly.

But, I think if we’re honest, that’s just not the case.

The first part of John 5 (vs. 1-15) is like that.  I come away with lots and lots of questions.  I wanted to share some of those questions, as well as some thoughts that occurred to me about this story.

Some of them really big.  Some of them a little more trivial.

1.  vs. 1 – I love that Jesus made time to participate in the Jewish festivals.  We all need regular traditions, celebrations, and ceremonies that have meaning and connect us more deeply to God and to each other.

2.  vs. 2-3 – the pool by the Sheep Gate had to be a pretty depressing scene, and one that most people probably tried to avoid.  I wonder how many rabbis and religious leaders would find themselves there?  Yet, there’s Jesus right in the middle of it all.

3.  vs. 4 – You have to read the footnotes in a lot of translations of the Bible to read this verse because it wasn’t included in all of the original manuscripts.  But it was included in some.  If it’s true, why would God do things that way?  It’s like winning the healing lottery.

It doesn’t have anything to do with faith or belief, just who could get to the water the fastest.    The invalid in the story spent his whole life there, inches from healing.  Inches away from a completely different life.

Let me just stop here and say some things about healing:  Jesus performed lots healings and miracles as part of the evidence of who He was.  His motivation was always love and compassion.  God still heals today.  Healing doesn’t always happen this side of eternity.  Physical healing isn’t always the point.  That’s tough to embrace when you’ve been disabled for 38 years, waiting and hoping to be healed.

4.  vs. 6 – Moved by the man’s suffering, Jesus asks the guy the craziest question ever – “Do you want to get well?”  Why in the world would Jesus ask him that?

5.  vs. 6 – Maybe Jesus was trying to get him to see something different.  Is it possible that we get locked in to the thought that God only works one way?  That our miracle, our healing, our help can only happen according to what we know?

Is it possible that Jesus is wanting to do something in your life and my life that will blow away how we are currently thinking?  Yes.  Still a crazy question though.

6.  vs. 7 – how tragic that this guy had NO ONE who cared enough to help him out.  Contrast this to the guy in Luke 5:17-19.  We were meant to live our lives in community.  No matter how broken or lame we are.

One other thought on this verse – sometimes we need to be helping people find the help and healing that is obvious and right in front of them; at other times we need to be helping them challenge their current thinking and situation.  Whatever the case, we need to be helping people see Jesus.

7.  vs. 10 – no matter how significant and miraculous the work of God in your life, there will ALWAYS be haters – people who have a problem with how it happened or what you did afterward.

I think it’s important for us to wrestle with things that don’t have easy answers and that make us uncomfortable.  It’s the only way our faith can have any credibility and authenticity…even within our own hearts.

Spend some time talking through some of this stuff with God right now.  He’s waiting for you….

John 4

3/4 of today’s reading takes place in a Samaritan village.  It centers around the story of Jesus’ encounter with a woman at a well.

It’s a fascinating story on many levels, but something spoke to me today that I’ve never really paid much attention too.  It’s found in verses 39-42.

John tells us that many people in the town where the woman lived became believers because of her testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.”

Maybe it’s because these people knew her checkered marital and relational history.   I’m sure they probably knew that no Jewish rabbi would have anything to do with a divorced Samaritan woman living in adultery.

But Jesus was different.  He told her everything she ever did….and still he loved her.  He still offered his life to her.

I remember when I first encountered the message and love of Jesus, it was a powerful and life changing revelation that he knew everything I’d ever done and yet he still loved me and offered his life to me.

Have you had that moment?  Do you remember it?

The other powerful truth I’ve been thinking about all day is that the people around her believed initially because of what Jesus had done for her.

What they experienced of Jesus was through her and her testimony at that beginning.

But something happens after Jesus is in town for a couple of days.  They no longer believe “just because” of what the woman from the well had experienced.

They had now experienced it personally.

Isn’t it interesting though that they somehow believed before it was personal?  We don’t know how or to what extent they believed, but John tells us that it was some level of belief.

I want to live my life in such a way that the messy work of God in my life isn’t hidden from the people I rub shoulders with everyday.

I want them to know my testimony – he told me everything I ever did.

I think there’s a temptation for us to hide the messy, broken parts of our lives; the parts that Jesus is in the process of redeeming.

But when we do, we rob people of the critical step of believing before it’s personal.

For some people, their first step of faith and belief will be a personal one.  But others will take their first step of faith and belief because of what God is doing in us.

Chew on that for awhile….and thank God that he knows everything you’ve ever done….and he still loves you!

John 3

As I read today’s reading, I couldn’t help but process through so much of our conversation from Sunday.  It really captures God’s perspective with the story of Christmas.

I shared a little bit from Fredrich Beuchner’s “Secrets In The Dark” on Sunday.  When I reflected on the first half of John 3, his words continued to resonate deeply with me.  I wanted to post them here and share them with you.

Here’s what he wrote:

“Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of Him again.  Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of man (emphasis mine).  If the holiness and awful power and majesty of God were present in even this, this birth of a peasant’s child, then there is no place or time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present there also.  And, this means that we are not safe, that there is no place where we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from his power to break in to and recreate the human heart because it is where he seems most helpless that He is most strong and just where we least expect Him that he comes most fully.”

I think he perfectly captures so much of John recorded that Jesus said here in this chapter.  The coming of Jesus is awesome and beautiful.  But, at the same time, it can be perplexing and scary.

I mean think about Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus.  We almost laugh and scoff at Nicodemus for his ignorance.  But we benefit from a couple of thousand years of teaching, reflection, and understanding.  Imagine hearing this for the first time.

Or, look at some of other things Jesus lays out.  I think this is why he talked about those who are afraid to live in the light in verses 19-21.

All of this is truly the wonder of this season.  The ludicrous reality that God took on flesh.

Merry Christmas!

John 2:22 – “After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.” (emphasis mine)

This verse in today’s reading is both comforting and challenging.

When you read the story of this chapter, it contains images of Jesus at opposite ends of the spectrum.

On the one hand he’s partying with his friends and family at a wedding reception and turns water into wine.

This is significant because no matter what spiritual reason we come up with for why he did this, in the end he performed this miracle to spare the bride and groom some embarrassment and to keep the party going.

On the other hand you have Jesus, whip in hand, throwing tables over and driving people out of the temple.

In the middle of it all, some of the Jews incredulously ask him, “who do you think you are to be doing all of this?!?!??!  They demand for Jesus to prove that he has the authority and credentials to be doing the things  he’s doing.

That’s where the communication breaks down.

Jesus starts talking temple (his body) and they’re hearing temple (big, giant stone building for worship and sacrifice).  As a communicator, it makes me feel pretty good that even Jesus struggled with his audience understanding him.

Then there’s this verse quoted above.  After Jesus was raised from the dead, they recalled and then believed.

Here’s what really struck me, there are moments in my life and faith where God’s actions (or lack thereof) just don’t seem to jive with what makes sense to me.

Unfortunately, I have even been known in some of these moments to huff and puff and doubt and request (ahem…maybe I should say “politely demand”) that God prove to me his credentials and that he knows exactly what he’s doing.

Only to have God do exactly what he said he was gonna do that I just couldn’t see or understand at the time.  It’s usually then that it all makes sense and I believe fully in what he said and did.

It’s “after the fact” faith.  After God acted.  After he kept his word.  After he came through.  After….then I remember and believe.

I wanna work on breaking this cycle in my life.

I wanna trust him right from the jump.

I wanna believe the Scriptures the moment I hear/read them.

I wanna trust him no matter what is happening or how uncomfortable life becomes.

I don’t want to wait until after.

What about you?  Do you see the pattern of “after…then” faith in your life?

Will you purpose to grow in this area with me?

I long for the day when our church is filled with hundreds of people who take God at his word and place their complete faith and trust in him regardless of their circumstances.

Have an amazing day!

How fitting that we begin the Book of John, one of the Gospels, during this season!

Three verses/phrases grabbed my attention this morning.  Verse 14, 16, & 26.

Verse 14 has been particularly meaningful for me this Christmas season.  I’ve read it and thought about it almost every day for the past week.

He took on flesh and dwelt among us.  Wow!

We have seen his glory.  Not just any glory.  The glory that only the Son of God who has come from the Father can have.

He was full of grace and truth.  Could there be a more liberating combination than perfect grace and truth?

For someone to see us, know us, and speak truth to us.  Not just about God, about ourselves.

Yet, at the same time be completely gracious, loving, and kind – not crushing us with the weight of the truth.

Verse 16 says that it is out of HIS fullness that we ALL have received grace in place of the grace ALREADY given.   What??!?!?!?

You know how much grace he gives you?  Even your grace has grace.  We’ve been given grace upon grace upon grace.

Note:  it’s only out of his fullness that this grace flows and it is given to all people everywhere.  Makes me feel silly, embarrassed, and convicted for giving anyone anything but grace.

It tells me that I am not yet full of Him.  When his fullness fills my live, grace will pour out of me.

Lastly, this phrase in verse 26 that rocked me this morning, “but among you stands one you do not know…”

Two thoughts occurred to me from this statement by John the Baptizer.

First, it’s possible to get so lost in the trappings of religion that God could literally be standing next to you and you not recognize him at all.

And second, God is all around and “among” people who are far away from him.  It’s our privilege to help make him who is invisible to them, visible.

What a sacred privilege.

As you head into your day, pause and ask God how you can help people see the One they don’t know but who is standing right beside them.

I don’t know about you, but I have found the book of Titus to be incredible.

Before we get into today’s thought, I wanted to share a new favorite song with you.  It’s laid over the top of a powerful scene of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.  Let’s worship together…

I almost can’t stay in my seat toward then end of that one!  So powerful and moving.

What struck me today as I read was a simple phrase in the middle of verse one.  Check it out – Titus 3:1 - “…to be ready to do whatever is good…”

You know from the last couple of days that the Apostle Paul has been laying out some pretty specific stuff about what the life of a Jesus follower looks like.

Even during his parting thoughts here, he continues to give instructions.  One of them is to be ready to do whatever is good.

We’ve talked often about how we can struggle to understand what it is we’re supposed to be doing and how to discover the “will of God”.

I’m not sure this instruction could get any more basic and easy to live out.

Be.  Ready.  To.  Do.  Good.

Struggling at work with a decision?  Do the good.

Wondering what to do next in your marriage?  Do the good.

Curious whether you should help those in need or let someone else handle it?  Do the good.

It’s actually quite freeing, isn’t it?

And when we come to a crossroads where we’re choosing between 2 or more things that would all bring good, choose the one that brings about the most good for the most people.

“But what if I’m not supposed to take that risk and do that good?”  I think God would rather me act out to do good on his behalf and be wrong than sit safely in the comfort of my own complacency.

“What if you do the good and it fails or doesn’t work out?”  I’m more afraid at succeeding at something that really doesn’t matter than at not quite getting it right while doing good.

DO THE GOOD!

Also, notice how he says to “be ready”.  I wonder how many of us can’t do the good God intends for us too, simply because we’re not ready to do so.

One other thought that I can’t resist sharing.  Look at verse 2.  It outlines 3 qualities that should characterize our posture toward others:  peaceable, considerate, and gentle.

How should we treat Muslims (or people of any other religion or faith)?  Peaceably, considerately, and gently.

How should we treat the poor, the rich, Democrats, Republicans, gays, the religious, the intolerant, the violent, sex offenders, haters……………………………..?

Why?  Read verses 3-5.  Enough said.

See you tomorrow.