LESSONS OF CHRISTMAS--JESUS

Jesus. The whole reason for the season. Christmas, the night of his birth. The night God gave up His Glory so He ouuld experience life in our shoes. As a child, when we felt wronged by someone my grandmother would say, "Walk in the other person's shoes for a mile." God walked in our shoes for a lifetime!!
Does Jesus jump from being an infant to twelve years old to a man of 30 years before he starts being a person to you? If you meet someone as a child or young adult or when we are in the latter portion of our life are they any less a person to us? Oftentimes, we say, if only we had more information of the missing years we could better relate to him. We could better believe he was for real. God gave up His Diety to become man. To experience life as man, to have the same emotions. The fact we don't have information on several years of his makes him no less real.
All too many times, Jesus goes from the cradle to picking his disciples by the Sea of Galilee. We rarely picture Jesus having his diapers changed, falling as he learned to walk, having tummy aches, getting his first tooth, having his mother teaching him life lessons through her eyes, learning life lessons at Joeeph's knee, learning a trade from his father. What other things did he learn from Mary and Joseph?
Paul tells the Philippians that Jesus, "being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness." And, to the Corinthians he says about Jesus, "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He (God, I added) became poor, so that you through his (Jesus, I added) poverty might become rich." For you, for me, God came to this earth as man; experienced everything we experience, suffered a death worse than we can ever think of experiencing, rose from the dead, and sits at the right hand of God so we might have life, and have it abundantly.
Sarah Young in JESUS CALLING helps us to see Christmas from Jesus's viewpoint, "I accepted the limitations of infancy under the most appalling conditions--a filthy stable. That was a dark night for Me, even though angels lit up the sky proclaiming 'Glory!', I became poor so that you might become rich."
God came to this earth as a baby, Jesus, and walked this earth for 30 years doing the very same things you and I do every day. Then, for three years Jesus taught and healed and showed us how we can fulfill the purpose God created us to fulfill. Never before or since in the history of man has a god become man! God became man so we are able to have a relationship with Him. Allow this to soak deep into your soul. Ostwald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest asks the question to consider for this Christmas lesson, "Have I allowed my personal human life to become a 'Bethlehem' for the Son of God?"

GOD'S GIFTS

No, I haven't discontinued my series Lessons of Christmas. The remaining lessons concern groups associated with after Jesus' birth. Therefore, today I'd like to focus on blessings or, as I like to call them, God's gifts.
In a few days, the majority of us will be be opening presents given by friends and loved ones. All to often we miss the most important gifts of all; the ones given to us by God. His most precious gift is Jesus. "For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believed in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." John 3:16, NIV. However, God gives gifts to us every day. Some people call them blessings. Personally, the word "gift" seems to be more applicable this time of year. Those totally unexpected, unexpected, unexplained events which happens that benefits you. Money, healing, a car moving just in the nick of time; any one of many occurrences that occur in our daily life.
Many times we attempt to explain them away or they go by completely unnoticed because we are not in the habit of looking for them. Unfortunately, all too often we are like children. On Christmas morn the children are excited to open their presents. They gleefully, thankfully receive them. They are overjoyed. And then, time passes. We go into their room or their play area and there the once treasured gift lays on the floor, dirty, broken, sullied, forgotten. Or we may be the child who absolutely must know how a toy works so he takes it apart and there it lays strewn all over the floor, unable to be put back together again. The healing we prayed for over and over, the answer to the long asked why He finally answered, the relationship He healed, the marriage He healed, the job He guided opened the doors to, and the list goes on. Which one are you?
From this moment forward, when we receive a "gift" from our Heavenly Father let's not fling it aside, tear it apart, or allow it to gather dirt in the recesses of our life but thank Him for it, tell others what He gave us. It is these experiences that comprise our "story", our testimony of how Jesus or God interacts with us in our life. It is one of the many reasons we know Jesus is our Savior.
This Christmas if you haven't accepted God's most precious gift, Jesus, I pray this Christmas you will  accept him as your Savior. Marry Christmas!! Happy Birthday, Jesus!! See you next week with another Lesson of Christmas--The Magi.

LESSONS OF CHRISTMAS--SHEPHERDS

Ah!! The Shepherds. As mentioned in my first post of this series the shepherds would be equivalent to today's homeless. Some of Israel's greatest heroes were shepherds; Abraham, Moses, David, Jacob, and his son Israel. However, mostly shepherds were hired and were not very reliable. So why were shepherds the ones God chose to be the first to hear about His Son's birth? Maybe, by looking closer at the duties of a shepherd we can discover the answer.
It was the responsibility of the shepherd to move his sheep from meadow to meadow so they would have nourishing food to eat. The shepherd had to water the sheep and if water wasn't nearby, it was there duty to take the sheep to a well and dip a pouch into the well. If the flock was large, this could take many hours. He had to protect them from snakes that could bite them as they fed or thieves that might steal them at night or wolves wanting one for its evening meal. To protect his sheep, at night he would lay across the opening to the sheepfold literally laying down his life for his sheep. If a sheep was killed under the care of a shepherd, by law he was required to show proof it was an animal that killed him and not the shepherd. (Was Jesus referring to this law 33 years later when He told His Father, he had not lost one). Was God showing us what was expected of His Son?
It was the shepherds who were the first to spread the news concerning the birth of a Messiah, a Savior, the Lord. After finding the Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger (this identified where the baby could be found) they went and spread the word, telling everyone what had happened to them and everyone was amazed.   Paul tells us in I Corinthians 1:27, "But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak of this world to shame the strong." Was Paul thinking about the shepherds when he wrote this?
Or was God pointing us to the day Jesus speaks about when he says, "When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory. And before Him shall be gathered all nations and He shall separate them one from another, as a SHEPHERD divides his sheep from the goats. And He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left." The ones on His right will be blessed and the ones on His left will be told to depart from Him. For we know His birth point to His death, His death to the resurrection, and the resurrection to the promise of His return.
Finally, upon returning to their fields, we find them :  "glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told." That's a very busy, very eventful time for the shepherds. We don't have their individual names but as a group they probably performed the second most important act of the evening, they did as they were told; they obeyed. And because they obeyed every year we will read about them. Ordinary people who did extraordinary things because they said "Yes" to God.

LESSONS OF CHRISTMAS--MARY AND JOSEPH

Matthew and Luke tell us the events leading to the birth of Jesus. Some of us have read these verses many times; for others of us, it's the first time. Six months apart, the angel Gabriel appeared to Zacharias and then to Mary. To both of them he said a son was going to be born. Zacharias responded with disbelief. Under the same circumstances, most of us would have reacted in the same manner. A young, betrothed, virgin does not react with disbelief but questioned why she was being addressed in this manner, then questioned how, and then assurance. So be it! Never giving any consideration to the reality of the very good possibilty of being stoned to death. She knew God would protect her.  Put yourself in Mary's sandals: She is approached by a total stranger, told she is favored by God, then told she is going to become pregnant with the Son of God. Can we come up with a crazier scenario for not believing it's God talking to me? We question if we can do what God is asking of us? Many times we are like Zacharias and respond with complete and total disbelief. It is the disbelief that silences Zecharias until the birth of his son John.  It is our disbelief that silences us, that cripples us with inaction. Mary believed Gabriel immediately. Federica Mathewes-Green in the book,  Lost Gospel of Mary says: "It is this same woman, so holy and God-loving, so real and human, who is lauded with extravagant praise. She is held up as the example for all Christians to imitate. She is honored for one particular moment in her holy life: she said yes to God." Mary was an ordinary woman who became extraordinary by saying "Yes" to God. Mary teaches us to surrender ourselves physically, emotionally and spiritually to God and God will give us the necessary tools to complete His assignment.
Joseph hearing of Mary's pregnancy was also filled with questions: I didn't, then who? What do I do now? He couldn't believe Mary would be unfaithful, but she was pregnant. I don't want her stoned, but how can I marry her now? I'll be the laughinstock of the whole village if I marry her? Lord, what do I do? Help me here!! We know well how Joseph feels. The circumstances may be different but the questions are the same. We have been in this very same situation. We are told, "It is God!!" But if you follow through with it, people are going to think your crazy. But, just a minute, God didn't leave Joseph with questions and He's not going to leave us with questions. We need to ask. We need to converse with Him. We must earnestly seek God. We must be completely open to receiving God's answer. When Joseph was given the complete picture by the angel he no longer cared what others thought, he knew what he had to be done. Joseph surrendered physically, emotionally and spiritually to God.and God gave him the necessary tools to complete His assignment.
Once surrendered, Mary and Joseph were given the strengeh, the tenacity, the courage necessary to birth God's Son. Mary and Joseph, ordinary people able to perform an extraordinary feat by saying "Yes" to God. This Advent Season chosoe to say "Yes" to God.

LESSONS OF CHRISTMAS

Here we are, once again, preparing for Christmas. The Christmas Scriptures may be excitingly new or boringly old. Some of us have heard them so many times we could almost repeat the Christmas story word for word from memory. What else can we learn from hearing the story again? During this Advent season we are going to focus on five groups of people that can teach us valuable lessons to apply to our lives.

First take the small family of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. Through them God explodes the box we keep Him in and chooses a young, poor, virgin and a carpenter to bring His Son into the world and to raise him. The righteousness of two ordinary people glorify God as they obey, as they say Your Will not mine,  and as they spiritually, emotionally, and physically surrender themselves to Almighty God.

God shocks us again when the angels announce His Son’s birth to the lowliest of the low, the shepherds. Really, SHEPHERDS today that’s like announcing it to a group of homeless people. But wait. He chose Abraham, a shepherd, to father nations. He chose David, a shepherd, the one who had a heart like God’s, to be the line in which His son would be born. Then there was Moses, a shepherd, He chose him to free His people from Pharaoh. Through these three shepherds we learn ordinary people can do extraordinary things when we are obedient to God.

King Herod, the chief priests, and the teachers of the law were seeking the Messiah for the all the wrong reasons. Here was a group of people who were seeking the Messiah intellectually but refused to bend their knees to the sovereignty of God, the power of God, or the Son of God. The sole purpose in seeking the Messiah was to deny and kill him. The lesson here is a difficult one. God will not show Himself to ones whose sole purpose is to deny Him, His power, or His sovereignty. We do not find the Messiah with our mind, it is only through our heart we can find the Messiah.

The Magi are not important for who they were but for the reason they traveled the great distance they did to see this Child. These men recognized this Child as the Messiah when the Jews could not. The Magi illustrate that we must diligently and purposely seek out this baby called Jesus, Immanuel (God with us), Savior before we can discover the gifts He has for us.

Finally, we come to the synagogue to meet Simeon and Anna. Two people who waited a lifetime to be able to see this “babe wrapped in swaddling clothes” who was the Savior, the Son of God, the Promised One. Through these two we learn patience and trust is rewarded by God. “God is who He says He is and God will do what He says He will do.” (Beth Moore, Believing God)

Join me next week as we look closer at Mary and Joseph. Do they have more to teach us?