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Let the sleigh bells ring!  I love Christmas!  Let the carolers sing.  The more Santas the merrier.  I don’t complain about the crowded shops.  I don’t grumble at the jam-packed grocery store.  Well—it’s Christmas.

I love it because someone will ask the Christmas questions.  What’s the big deal about the baby in the manger?  Who was he?  What does his birth have to do with me?  The questioner may be a soldier stationed far from home.  She may be a young mom who, for the first time, holds a child on Christmas Eve.  The Christmas season prompts Christmas questions and answers.

Because of Bethlehem, God is always near us.  Always for us.  Always in us.  We may forget Him, but God will never forget us.  He called Himself “Immanuel”—God with us!

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Worry has more questions than answers, more work than energy, and thinks often about giving up. Not enough time…luck…credit…wisdom…intelligence…we’re running out of everything it seems, and so we worry.  But worry doesn’t work.  You can dedicate a decade of anxious thoughts to the brevity of life, and not extend it by one minute. Worry accomplishes nothing.

God doesn’t condemn legitimate concern for responsibilities but rather the continuous mind-set that dismisses God’s presence.  Destructive anxiety subtracts God from the future, tallies up the challenges of the day without entering God into the equation.  Jesus gives us this challenge:  “Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs.  Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need” (Matthew 6:32-33).

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We don’t like to talk about hell, do we?  In intellectual circles the topic of hell is regarded as primitive and foolish.  It’s not logical.  A loving God wouldn’t send people to hell.  So we dismiss it.

The doctrine of hell, however, is not one developed by Paul, Peter, or John.  It is taught primarily by Jesus himself.  And to dismiss it is to dismiss the presence of a loving God and the privilege of a free choice.  He leaves the choice to us.  He invites us to love him.  He urges us to love him.  He came that we might love him. To take that choice from each of us, for him to force us to love him, would be less than love.  God explains the benefits, outlines the promises, and articulates very clearly the consequences.  And then, in the end, he leaves the choice to us!

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The supreme surprise of God’s love?  It has nothing to do with you. Others love you because of you, because your dimples dip when you smile or your rhetoric charms when you flirt.  Some people love you because of you.  Not God.  He loves you because he is He.  He loves you because he decides to.  Self-generated, uncaused, and spontaneous, his constant-level love depends on his choice to give it.

Deuteronomy 7:7-8 says, “The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples.  But it was because the LORD loved you.” You don’t influence God’s love.  You can’t impact the tree-ness of a tree, the sky-ness of the sky or the rock-ness of a rock. Nor can you affect the love of God.

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Romans 8:32 says, “God did not keep back his own Son, but he gave him for us.  If God did this, won’t he freely give us everything else?”

Take your anxieties to the cross—literally. Next time you’re worried about your health or house or finances or flights, take a mental trip up the hill. Run your thumb over the tip of the spear.  Balance a spike in the palm of your hand.  Read the wooden sign written in your own language.  And as you do, touch the velvet dirt, moist with the blood of God. Blood he bled for you.  The spear he took for you.  The nails he felt for you.  The sign he left for you.  He did all of this—for you.  Knowing this, knowing all he did for you there, don’t you think he will look out for you here?

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God said, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God.  In it you shall do no work; you, nor your son, nor your daughter” (Exodus 20:9-10).

God knows us so well.  He can see the store owner thinking, Somebody needs to work that day.  If I can’t, my son will.  So God says, “Nor your son.”  Then my daughter will, thinks the store owner. “Nor your daughter,” God has declared.  No, God says, one day of the week you will say no to work and yes to worship. You will slow down and sit down and lie down and rest.  Still we object.  We offer up one reason after another.  God’s message is plain.  If creation didn’t crash when I rested, it won’t crash when you do.  Repeat these words after me– It is not my job to run the world!

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Holiday travel.  It isn’t easy.  Then why do we do it?  Why cram the trunks and endure the airports?  You know the answer.  We love to be with the ones we love.  The four-year-old running up the sidewalk into the arms of Grandpa.  The cup of coffee with Mom before the rest of the house awakes.  That moment when, for a moment, everyone is quiet as we hold hands around the table and thank God for family and friends and pumpkin pie.  We love to be with the ones we love.

May I remind you?  So does God. How else do you explain what he did? Between him and us there was a distance—a great span.  And he couldn’t bear it.  He couldn’t stand it.  So he did something about it.  Philippians 2:7 reminds us, “He [Jesus] gave up his place with God and made himself nothing!”

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Are you in prison?  You are if you feel better when you have more and worse when you have less.  If your happiness comes from something you deposit, drive, drink, or digest, then face it—you are in prison, the prison of want.

That’s the bad news.  The good news is that you have a visitor.  And your visitor has a message that can get you released.  Make your way into the receiving room.  Take your seat in the chair, and look across the table at the psalmist David.  He motions for you to lean forward.  “I have a secret to tell you,” he whispers, “the secret of satisfaction. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”  It’s as if he is saying, What I have in God is greater than what I don’t have in life.  You think you and I could learn to say the same?

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God endows us with gifts so we can make him known.  God endues the Olympian with speed, the salesman with savvy, the surgeon with skill.  Why?  The big answer is to make a big to-do out of God.  Brandish him.  Herald him  Magnify your maker!

Scripture says, “If anyone speaks let him speak the oracles of God; if anyone ministers, let him do so with the ability God supplies so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion for ever and ever.  Amen!  (1 Peter 4:11).  So, exhibit God with your uniqueness.  When you magnify your Maker with your strengths and when your contribution enriches God’s reputation, your days grow suddenly sweet!

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You’ve had enough of human love…haven’t you?  Enough tabloids telling you that true love is just a diet away. Enough mornings smelling like the mistakes you made while searching for love the night before. Don’t you need a fountain of love that won’t run dry?

You’ll find one on a stone-cropped hill outside Jerusalem’s walls where Jesus hangs, cross-nailed and thorn-crowned.  When you feel unloved, ascend this mount.  Meditate long and hard on heaven’s love for you.  Both eyes beaten shut, shoulders as raw as ground beef, lips bloody and split.  Fists of hair yanked from his beard.  Gasps of air escaping his lungs.  As you peer into the crimsoned face of heaven’s only Son, remember this:  “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8).

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After Christ’s forty-day pause in the wilderness, the people of Capernaum tried to keep him from leaving them.  But he said to them, “I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also, because for this purpose I have been sent” (Luke 4:42-43). He resisted the undertow of the people by anchoring to the rock of his purpose; employing his uniqueness to make a big deal out of God everywhere he could.

And aren’t you glad he did? Suppose he had heeded the crowd and set up camp in Capernaum, reasoning, “I thought the whole world was my target and the cross my destiny.  But the entire town tells me to stay in Capernaum.  Could all these people be wrong?” Yes they could!  In defiance of the crowd, Jesus said no to good things so he could say yes to the right thing– his unique call!  I’m praying we do the same.

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Doubt.  He’s a nosy neighbor.  He’s an obnoxious guest.  He’ll pester you.  He’ll irritate you.  He’ll kick the stool out from under you and refuse to help you up.  He doesn’t offer solutions, he only raises questions.  Had any visits from Doubt lately?

If you find yourself going to church in order to be saved and not because you are saved, then you’ve been listening to him. If you find yourself doubting God could forgive you again for that, you’ve been sold some snake oil.  If you are more cynical about Christians than sincere about Christ, then guess who came to dinner?

I suggest you put a lock on your gate.  I suggest you post a “Do Not Enter” sign on your door. James 1:6 says, “Anyone who doubts is like a wave in the sea, blown up and down by the wind.”

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Tears represent the heart, the spirit, and the soul of a person.  To put a lock and key on your emotions is to bury part of your Christlikeness! Especially when you come to Calvary.

You can’t go to the cross with just your head and not your heart.  It doesn’t work that way.  Calvary is not a mental trip.  It’s not an intellectual exercise.  It’s not a divine calculation or a cold theological principle. It’s a heart-splitting hour of emotion.

Don’t walk away dry-eyed and unstirred.  Don’t just straighten your tie and clear your throat. Don’t descend Calvary cool and collected.  Please. . .pause.  Look again. Those are nails in those hands.  That’s God on that cross.  It’s us who put him there!  No wonder they call him the Savior!

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None of us pray as much as we should, but all of us pray more than we think, because the Holy Spirit turns our sighs into petitions and our tears into entreaties.  He makes sure you get heard!

Now, suppose a person never learns about the sealing and the intercession of the Holy Spirit. This person may assume that salvation security resides in our works, not God’s; and that the power of prayer depends upon our prayer and not the prayers of the Spirit. What kind of life will this person lead?  A parched and prayerless one.  But what if you believe in the work of the Spirit?  Will you be different as a result? You bet your sweet Sunday you will. Your shoulders will lift and your knees will bend as you discover the buoyant power of praying in the Spirit. A higher walk…deeper prayers.  And most of all, a quiet confidence that comes from knowing it’s not up to you!

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Those who don’t believe in Jesus take note of what believers do.  They make decisions about Christ by watching us. When we’re kind, they assume Christ is kind.  When we’re gracious, they assume Christ is gracious.  But when we’re dishonest, what assumption will an observer make about our Master?

No wonder the apostle Paul says to “be wise in the way you act with people who are not believers, making the most of every opportunity. When you talk, you should always be kind and pleasant so you will be able to answer everyone in the way you should” (Colossians 4:5-6).  Courteous conduct honors Christ.  It also honors his children.  When you make an effort to greet everyone in the room, especially the ones others may have overlooked, you honor God’s children with a love worth giving!

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Luke 17:33 says,  “Those who try to keep their lives will lose them.  But those who give up their lives will save them.” Heaven may have a shrine to honor God’s uncommon use of the common.  If so, it’s a place you won’t want to miss.  See Rahab’s rope, David’s sling, and Samson’s jawbone.  Wrap your hand around the staff that split the sea and sniff the ointment that soothed Jesus’ skin and lifted his heart.

I don’t know if these items will be there.  But I’m sure of one thing—the people who used them will be there.  The risk takers– Rahab who sheltered the spy; David slinging a stone; and Samson swinging a bone.  And Mary at Jesus’ feet…what she gave cost much, but somehow she knew what he would give would cost more!

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When God entered time and became a man, he who was boundless became bound.  For more than three decades, his once limitless reach would be limited to the stretch of an arm.  His speed would be checked to the pace of human feet.

I wonder, was he ever tempted to reclaim his boundlessness? When the rain chilled his bones, was he tempted to change the weather?  If ever he entertained such a thought, he never gave in to it.  Not once did Christ use his supernatural powers for personal comfort.  With one word he could have transformed the hard earth into a soft bed, but he didn’t. With a wave of his hand, he could have boomeranged the spit of his accusers back into their faces.  With the arch of his brow, he could have paralyzed the hand of the soldier that braided the crown of thorns.  But he didn’t.

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Why does a mother love her newborn?  Because the baby is hers?  Even more.  Because the baby is her!  Her flesh.  Her blood.  Her hope.  Her legacy.  It doesn’t bother her that the baby gives nothing.  She knows a newborn is helpless and weak.  She knows babies don’t ask to come into this world.

And God knows we didn’t either.  We are his idea.  We are his.  His face.  His hands. His eyes.  His touch.  Look deeply into the face of every human being on earth, and you will see his likeness.  Though some may appear to be distant relatives, they’re not.  We are, incredibly, the body of Christ.  And though we may not act like our Father, there’s no greater truth than this:  We are his.  Unalterably, He loves us.  Undyingly. And nothing can separate us from the love of Christ!

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Much of life is spent fixing lunches; turning in assignments; changing diapers; and paying bills.  Routine…regular…more struggle than strut.  You thought marriage was going to be a lifelong date?  You thought having kids was going to be like baby-sitting?  You thought the company who hired you wanted to hear all the ideas you had in college? Then you learned otherwise.

The honeymoon ended.  Oh, there are moments of glamour, days of celebration.  We have our share of feasts, but we also have our share of baloney sandwiches.  And to have the first we must endure the second. I’ve learned that God comes. And, in the right way, he appears.  So don’t bail out.  Don’t give up.  He is too wise to forget you and too loving to hurt you.  When you can’t see him, trust him.  He is praying a prayer for you that he himself will answer.

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It’s one thing to suffer for doing wrong. Something else entirely to suffer for doing right.  But it happens.  And it washes away the naïve assumption that if I do right, I will never suffer.  Just ask the faithful couple whose crib is empty and whose womb is barren.  Or the husband who took a chance and forgave his wife, only to be betrayed again.

Why does God wait?  I don’t know.  I only know his timing is always right and he will do what is best.  Luke 18:7 promises that “God will always give what is right to his people who cry to him night and day, and he will not be slow to answer them.”  Though you hear nothing, he is speaking.  Though you see nothing, he is acting.  With God there are no accidents.  Every incident is intended to bring us closer to him!

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