Notes From My Advent Journey

God got me thinking about advent well before Thanksgiving, which is a blessing because I usually think about advent about halfway through and then I sort of feel it’s too late and say. “We’ll get ‘em next year.” (That happens to me during Lent, as well) To aid my advent journey, God also provided me with two companions for my advent journey, two books actually: Living the Christian Year by Bobby Gross, and Stations of the Crib by Joe Nassal. Living the Christian Year was a gift from IV Press (one of the perks of still being on IV staff), while Stations of the Crib was a delightful, random find at St. Francis Springs retreat center.

I would highly recommend both of them, for different reasons. Living the Christian Year gives you plenty of Scriptural food for thought, offering 6 different Scriptures each week of advent, and a short meditation on each Scripture. For example, this week’s focus was on lamenting the brokenness of the world, and I have found my heart crying out over the darkness all around, saying, “Come, Lord Jesus,” echoing the haunting cry of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”

Stations of the Crib is a powerfully-written call to hope consisting of 15 meditations on the birth of Christ. The writing is simple, beautiful, and it speaks directly to the heart. I have been particularly struck by three meditations: a call to be silent and ponder Christ’s coming, written in response to Zechariah’s forced silence before John’s birth; a call to be hopeful not just for the future, but hopeful for the past, knowing that while we cannot undo our past, Christ’s grace and mercy enables us to see it with hopeful eyes; and a call to let Jesus interrupt the hurry of life, to get in our way and force us to deal with the presence of this holy one who has come.

In some ways I feel pressure to have an “aha” experience, to be able to write down “Advent 2009 was about FILL IN THE BLANK.” But this morning the Lord reminded me that advent is about creating space for Him to fill our soul more and more fully, to birth something new that might not be immediately seen or understood, yet would be present and real all the same. And so I will continue to wait.

Fullness of Joy

Last week I had the chance to preach at our church, and the topic given to me was “joy,” going with an advent theme. Hoenstly, I was surprised at what came out (though I shouldn’t have been, as most of my GUPY’s would tell you that I only have one sermon that I preach – Christ in you, the hope of glory). My take home truth (sermon-class talk for "main point") is that if we truly knew that Jesus came to give us more than forgiveness, that He came to give us life, we would live lives of joy-fueled obedience. If you’d like to listen to it (it’s not long), click here and download it to your favorite PC/Mac/iPod. Below is my closing (I was preaching out of 1 Peter 3:3-9; 13-15):

In the first episode of The Beverly Hillbillies, Jed, Granny, Jethro and Ellie Mae pull up to their new home and go inside. Their mouths hang open as they stand in the foyer and look at the chandelier and the spiral staircase. Granny tells Jethro to bring her iron cook stove in from the truck and asks Ellie Mae to gather wood so that she can cook supper, despite being told that there is a brand new stove for her to use in the kitchen. When she sees the kitchen oven, she sets to work building a fire inside it. Jethro comes down from the upstairs and says, “There’s a whole other house up here, Uncle Jed,” to which Jed replies, “Git down from there – like as not that belongs to someone else.”

If only they'd known that they had a stove that would cook without a fire. If only they'd known that the whole house belonged to them, not just the downstairs.

And while we laugh at the Hillbillies, we are so often the same way with our salvation. We are amazed at the forgiveness of Jesus, as we should be, but we never begin to explore the fullness of the life that He has given us. We try to apply our old way of doing things to the new life that He has given and it just doesn’t work. We doubt that all that God says about His love for us and His work in us could possibly be true. And so we stay in the foyer of faith, missing out on the fullness of joy.

Could this Christmas season be the time where you discover afresh the joy of Jesus Christ? Will you fix our eyes upon Jesus? Will you prepare your mind for action, looking at all you have been given in Christ, and will you respond with a loving obedience, fueled by joy, that our lives might be consistent with the life of Christ in us.

Lights on Silver Avenue

It’s no secret that I love Christmas, pretty much everything about it. I especially love the lights that people put up, and my wife has done such a wonderful job of putting simple, beautiful lights on our home.

But as I drove home the other night, seeing my house made me realize that there aren’t many Christmas lights on Silver Avenue. I don’t think it’s because people are “too poor” to put up lights, though some are. But I think it speaks to the lack of ownership that people have on my street and in my neighborhood. College students just passing through and renters just finding the least expensive place to stay. I remember when I was a renter, I didn’t do much of anything to decorate the outside of my home; we just put up a tree and some decorations inside. But as an owner it’s different for some reason.

I wish there were more lights on Silver.

Grace in the moment

In a recent sermon, I told a nice story about a time where I was arriving home from work exhausted, and I remembered to pray to the Lord, asking Him to be my life and to love my family through me. It was a nice analogy of holiness working its way from the inside out, and it happened to illustrate what happens when we remember on the front-side to depend on Jesus.
But often times the rubber meets the road for me when I am in the midst of an independence streak and I realize the fruitlessness of my actions. At that moment, when I realize that I am failing the Lord and others, I tend to just press on in my funk, reasoning that since I didn’t get it right from the beginning, it’s too late to start now.

Yet isn’t that where faith and grace really kick in, when we’ve already taken the wrong turn, made the wrong choice? When I’ve already overly-fussed at my son for pooping in his bed and decided internally to have a grumpy morning from that point on? When I’ve already decided that I am too tired and frustrated to try depending on Jesus so I am just going to handle things my way, no matter how bad they get? Those are the very moments where, despite the enemy’s whispers to run, my call is to stand and remember. I have been given new birth into a living hope, and that truth is good all the time and is not dependent on my past five minutes of behavior. It is dependent on Jesus Christ and the loving grace of our Father, who takes the time to interrupt my independence and offer me life.

I think that for most of us, we swing and miss the first time through. But our identity has not changed, and God is calling us to surrender our way, surrender our guilt, surrender the thought that we’ll just get it right the next time, that we might see Jesus meet us in that very moment, giving us, as Peter wrote, “everything we need for life and godliness.” Amen and Amen!

Christmas Music Suggestions

Need some new music to get your Christmas spirit goin’? Let me be your guide. First, my top three Christmas albums:
1) Joy by Bebo Norman, Ed Cash, and Allen Levi
2) Behold the Lamb: The True Tall Tale of the Coming of Christ by Andrew Peterson
3) The Silent Stars by Alli Rogers

The first two have been on my list for years and would be a welcome addition to any musical library, but I have to say that Alli’s record is getting pretty much constant play on my iPod right now. She has written some amazing original songs, and has redone a few Christmas hymns. Her voice is very soothing and it’s a worshipful, relaxing Christmas CD. Check it out on iTunes.

Also, if you are strapped for cash, go to www.noisetrade.com and check out free music by lots of great artists. My favorite free Christmas finds there are the offerings from Justin McRoberts , JJ Heller, and So Elated (and Justin’s “Deconstruction” CD is amazing, too).
You can also go to this site http://vanguardrecords.com/downloads/Holiday/ for a free holiday download featuring one of my favorite artists that I found on noisetrade, Katie Herzig. I have liked all of the songs on the CD.

Steps to Resisting the Storm - Refocus

Many well-meaning Christians have begun to wage a war against “the war on Christmas,” urging us to boycott stores like Old Navy because they say “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas.” If Old Navy employees said “Merry Christmas”, though, would it infuse hearts with Jesus? Would He receive glory from the sale of yet another sweater sewn by poor hands? It’s doubtful.

The greatest way that we can resist the storm of Christmas commercialism is to set our hearts and minds on Jesus. It’s one thing to say that Jesus is the reason for the season; it’s another to seek Him with earnestness and conviction in the coming weeks, getting to know His heart and His ways beyond the story of His birth that we are celebrating.

Instead of lamenting the loss of Christ in Christmas at the mall, our time and mental energy could be better spent thinking on all that was given to us in Christ. Our time and physical energy could be better spent giving generously to those who cannot repay us, just as God gave His life to a world that could never repay Him. Our time and emotional energy could be better spent praising the Author of Life rather than reviling those who ride the cultural wave each December trying to make a buck.

There was a lot to pay attention to during the days of Jesus’ birth and early years. Shepherds came stumbling into the stable late at night, smelly outcasts rejoicing over a tiny baby. A jealous and evil king destroyed all of the Jewish boys ages two and under. Wise men came from far away lands to give ludicrously expensive gifts. An old man and an ancient woman in the temple of God broke out in prophecy and praise of God when Jesus was carried into the room by His parents.

And Luke tells us that Mary looked at all those things, all the commotion, and treasured them and pondered them in her heart.

Perhaps resisting the storm is built on quiet pondering and on treasuring, not being engulfed by the hubbub all around (or railing against it), being consumed with the One who has sparked all the commotion.

Steps to Resisting the Storm, A Word About Budgets

Budgets can be restrictive or they can be freeing. We can celebrate our decision to willingly limit what we spend in order to give more away, or we can labor under a false law that says in order to really be a Christian we have to deny ourselves stuff. We can see budgets as keeping us from getting what we want, or we can see them as protection and freedom from the byproducts of overindulgence. And they can be a product of grace and love, as ask Christ to help us allocate well what He has entrusted to us. Paul urges the Corinthian church to excel in the grace of giving (2 Corinthians 8:7). Giving is by grace, and a budget empowered by grace enables us to excel in the grace of giving.