Its A Miracle!

God wants to birth a miracle through you. “What? I’m not qualified. I don’t know much about the bible and I have lots of doubts about how all of this God thing works. There has to be someone more worthy and qualified than me.” Don’t sweat it. God doesn’t need your ability. God simply needs your availability so God can work the miracle through you.

Jesus said….”Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” Jesus was speaking of the Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit that conceived the miracle of Jesus in Mary’s womb indwells in every devoted Jesus follower. God births miracles through ordinary people.

Jesus was ordinary. Isaiah said…”He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” Does that sound like the profile of a world movement leader to you?

Most of us can relate to being ordinary. From the time we are children we become cruelly proficient in developing a social pecking order. Who is cool, smart and beautiful and who is not is often determined in the first weeks of kindergarten by the natural leader and the class clown.

Jesus himself was at the bottom of the pecking order. He came from the lowest socioeconomic class and a speck in the road community called Nazareth. Jesus would have never made People’s magazine list of top fifty beautiful people in the world or been listed in his high school year book as the most likely to do anything.

Throughout Scripture God chooses ordinary unqualified people to do miracles like the ineloquent Moses, child David, barren Elizabeth, a teenager named Mary and a day laborer named Joseph. God unleashes his extraordinary power through ordinary people to perform miracles that change the world. I don’t know about you but that is great news because I am about an ordinary as they get!

But to be used to birth a miracle, we must be willing to be used and to pay the price. Grace is free but it is not cheap and the birth of a miracle is always costly. Ostracism, rejection, changing your plans are just some of the costs of birthing God’s miracle. Becoming pregnant with God’s son was not the miracle for which Mary and Joseph had been hoping and certainly not before they were married.

At Christmas we celebrate the birth of a Messiah who was born not only to die sacrificially on the cross but to show us how to live sacrificially. Sacrifice is not a pleasant word. It makes some of us uncomfortable and most folks would rather have a holly jolly Christmas than to give themselves as a “womb” for an honest to God Christmas miracle, and yet we cannot separate the manger from the cross.

I received an email several years ago that said…”I cannot take another Birthday Gift to Jesus Christmas so our family is going to search for another church home that celebrates Christmas more like the traditional Christmas we know.”

How biblical is the “Christmas we know?” Most of our Christmas traditions start with little biblical truth. Even our Christmas Carols are sanitized versions of a rather traumatic event….”The cattle are lowing the baby awakes, the little Lord Jesus no crying he makes.” Yeah right! Who can relate to a newborn who doesn’t cry? The biblical Christmas was a snapshot of poverty and anxiety not good warm fuzzies. I don’t blame the former member, because we have all grown up with those feel good Santa Claus Jesus Christmases where we are oblivious to God’s heart for those who suffer in our own backyard and to the ends of the earth.

The miracle of Christmas is about a sacrificial gift. It is easy to get excited about a newborn warmly wrapped in a manger bed of straw but the cradle comes with a cost. You cannot separate the cradle from the cross. The cross is the center of the entire Christian message including the message of Christmas.

Jesus call to follow him in the way of the cross challenges every Christmas tradition and value we hold to be truth. Miracles do not appear out of thin air like magic. We will not receive and deliver God’s miracle unless we are ready and willing to pay the cost.

Christmas is about a miracle and miracles don’t just happen. They are born through the pains of labor. Pain is not comfortable, but if we are willing to go through it, God will conceive and deliver a miracle through us. If we do all that we can, God will do what we can’t.

One week from today we will assemble for Christmas Eve worship. Have you stepped out of your comfort zone yet and invited someone to join you for Christmas Eve worship? Two Christmas Eve’s ago I was pulling out to get ready for worship when I stopped to speak to one neighbors while they were checking their mail box. As I drove off I did the uncomfortable and invited them to Christmas Eve worship. Their response: ”I thought you were never going to ask. We would love too!” People are waiting for your invitation.

And have you set aside or yet determined the offering you will bring to celebrate Jesus birthday? Have you sacrificially down sized your own Christmas so that God can use you to birth a miracle? Are you prepared to give a financial gift to Jesus that at least matches the value of the gifts you are giving to family and friends? Are you ready to take the next step and acknowledge by your sacrifice that Christmas is not your birthday?

Yes, God performs miracles through ordinary people like you and me, but like Mary and Joseph, we must be willing to commit to the pains of labor so that God can do the impossible through us.

Invite your family, friends, neighbors and bring your sacrificial offering, Birthday Gift to Jesus, on Christmas Eve. Then get ready for the miracle God will perform through you into the lives of people you know and love and even to those who dwell in Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Mexico.

Are you ready for God to birth a miracle through you? I am!!

Christmas Eve Worship

3:00 PM Contemporary, Family Friendly

5:00 PM Contemporary

7:00 PM Traditional

Merry Christmas,

Rick

Come Home for Christmas

“Then the Lord said to me, ‘Go and love your wife again, even though she commits adultery with another lover. This will illustrate that the Lord still loves Israel, even though the people have turned to other gods and love to worship them.” (Hosea 3:1)

Christmas is the anticipated time of year when family members gather from different corners of the country and beyond to celebrate the best of what we hold dear in our relationships. Yet for some, it can also represent the ominous presence of past hurts and even current relational pain, making Christmas depressing or lonely.

Dallas and I see Christmas as a great opportunity to celebrate the gift of family. All three of our boys will come home and join us in the parade of Christmas celebrations. Dallas and I are blessed to have parents who are flexible when we can show up for Christmas so we take turns from year to year who we are with on Christmas Day but over a three day period we will be in three different homes praying, eating, telling stories, laughing and exchanging gifts.

One of our favorite Christmas traditions is to huddle up like we used to when the boys were small and watch a movie together. Christmas Vacation is the annual movie of choice on Christmas Eve but in the days to come we will watch one or two others. Last year we watched the DVD “He’s Just Not That Into You.” The movie is about a young single woman named Gigi who is caught up in the cycle of superficial serial dating. Gigi repeatedly misreads comments and actions from her male dates as authentic interests. After each date, which tends to culminate in a brief bedroom encounter, Gigi returns home and obsessively sits by the phone, waiting for the call that never comes.

Everyone wants to know that he or she is important to someone. Remember how kids passed notes back and forth in grade school? “I like you. Do you like me” Check yes, no or maybe.” That’s because God created us for intimate, authentic relationships.

Unfortunately, we are all capable of compromising our most fundamental beliefs to make such intimate connections. Why else do people stay in abusive relationships or commit to others who have conflicting belief structures?

At some time in our lives, each of us will experience rejection. Whether we are young or old, rejection is painful. Whether it be on the school playground, the board room or the bed room, rejection makes a huge imprint in our development as persons. Is it any wonder that we learn early on to portray ourselves as being someone other than who we really are and create layers of emotional defenses to protect ourselves from relational pain?

Worse, our esteem deficiencies carry over into our relationships with God. Most of us have no problem believing in God but we struggling being secure of God’s belief in us. Do you ever think…”How can God believe in me? How could God ever possibly desire me?”… Most of us are pretty adept at hiding our imperfections and deficiencies from others while being fully aware that we can’t hide them from God.

So what do we do? Like Adam and Eve we run and hide from the sound of God’s approaching footsteps because we are ashamed. We create an emotional barrier between us and God. God is not emotionally detached or running from us. We run away from God.

Christmas is the heralding of God who comes to be with us. God is the one who pursues us. The Incarnation is the revelation of God’s scandalous love affair with humanity! Father God sends Jesus to invite us to come home for the family celebration!

One of the most passionate illustrations of God’s love affair with humanity is in the book of Hosea. God’s chosen people, Israel, had wandered from the Lord. Hosea described their wandering as the worse kind of infidelity and compared it to prostitution. God was saying “cheating” on him was killing the relationship. Jesus himself said…”You can’t have two lovers. You will always favor one over the other.” (Matthew 6:24)

But God demonstrates his unrelenting love for Israel by telling Hosea to go and marry a wife of “whoredom” and have children of “whoredom.” Can you imagine marrying someone you knew would be unfaithful and spending the rest of your life wondering if your children were really your own? Who would knowingly set themselves up for such a life of hell? God.

God’s love is not rational. God’s love makes no sense. Thank goodness beauty is in the eye of the beholder and when God looks at you, God’s heart pounds like a mom witnessing her son walk through the door at Christmas even though he has just spent days in jail for some heinous crime. And when that daughter shows up, the Father smiles from ear to ear even though she spurned his values and is living as a concubine with an ungodly man. That is what you call crazy, scandalous love.

And that is what you call Christmas. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” (John 3:16) I don’t know how you are being unfaithful to God or how far away you have drifted, but this I do know, with a scandalous love God is relentlessly pursuing, inviting you through his Son to come home, come home for Christmas.

Christmas Eve Worship

3:00 Family Friendly

5:00 Contemporary
7:00 Traditional

Rick

Who Does God Look Like?

Too often we view God like Santa Claus, a genie in a bottle here to fulfill our three wishes. All we have to do is name it and claim it, believe it and receive it. We have created a Santa Claus Jesus in our own image, a golden calf messiah who promises to fulfill all our earthly wants and wishes, an idol of consumption who supports the human quest for meaning and purpose in material things outside of a relationship with God.

Think of how we describe Santa…”He sees you when you are sleeping……He knows if you have been bad or good.” Our popular notion of Santa reflects the way we have reduced God to a mythical watchdog who judges our niceness or naughtiness and metes out rewards and punishment accordingly.  

This is not the God we see in Jesus. Jesus was not the messiah most people were expecting and hoping for. He did not come shimming down the chimney bearing gifts for good boys and girls.  God’s gifts cannot fit in a stocking but must be received in our hearts.  Neither does God leave a lump of coal  for those who have erred off the plan. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn but to save.” (John 3:17)

This is important because the picture you have of God has everything to do with the shaping of your faith and values. If your picture of God is distorted, your life perspective will be skewed.  With this faulty image of Jesus as magical gift giver, it is no wonder our expectations of the Christmas season have become distorted. God doesn't do magic. Magic is an illusion, meant for entertainment and not for transformation. God came to work miracles in broken lives that live in a broken world.

The ideal magical Christmas experience is unattainable. We stress ourselves out and even go into debt to create that warm fuzzy feeling for both ourselves and our families, but that feeling doesn't last. The real meaning of Christmas gets lost in the chaotic clutter of shopping, spending, escalating debt, making exhausting preparations and building stacks of gifts that most of don’t want, don’t need and or will never use.   Anyone besides me have items in their closet from Christmas past that have never been worn?  In the chaos of the holiday season we miss the true gift, Emanuel, God with us.

Enjoy all of your family Christmas traditions, decorate, shop and bake. Take your children to see Santa and delight in the blessing of gift giving and gift receiving. At the same time, remember to teach an accurate and clear picture of who Jesus really is to your family.  Here are a few teaching points.

Everything about a Jesus life stood in stark contrast to our worldly priorities and values.  He arrived on the scene not in strength but in weakness.  He was born among an oppressed people, living his early years as a refugee in Africa eluding political genocide. He grew up in a working class family. As a man he lived in tension with organized religion.  He resisted the world’s obsessions with wealth, pleasure, power and recognition.  He identified with the weak, the powerless, the widow and the orphan.  He did not condemn but defended the sinner.He came to show us God as the perfect parent who offers us unconditional love and the encouragement to live a godly life. 

So who does God look like, Santa or Jesus? Like Jesus!  Jesus was the embodiment of God’s values and priorities.  He is Emmanuel, “God with us.”  In Jesus we see not only the face of God, but all the fullness of his humanity, who you and I are created to me. I can believe in a God who looks like Jesus.

Can you?  Santa does.

Peace,

Rick

Christmas: Revolutionaries of Hope

I love the Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. Tolkein. The three books are not only exciting adventure stories but also demonstrate what it means to be the people of God. The third book of the trilogy, The Return of the King, always reminds me that we are living in that “between” time right now, the time between Jesus first appearance on Planet Earth and the moment of his return.

Sam and Fredo, the two hobbits of the trilogy know they must leave the safe comfort of their Shire to become revolutionaries for good. Against their better judgment and peace loving, risk averse nature, they set off for the evil land of Mordor, risking hearth, home and even their very lives to move against the forces of darkness. In one particularly bleak moment deep in the enemy’s territory, Sam is able to spot a single star shining out of the darkness above the heavy clouds of Mordor.

Sound familiar?  “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:5) Even in the darkness the true light has come into the world and the darkness can never eradicate it.

Within the Church, especially in the past century, we have reduced Christmas to pageants, presents, candle lighting and carol singing. We converted Saint Nicholas into Santa Claus and then rolled both into our picture of Jesus. We have memorialized the birth of the Savior through fun yet expensive family Christmas traditions and familiar watered down comfortable Christmas Eve worship services instead of following him into battle against the kingdom of darkness. We forget, or ignore entirely, that we are to be kingdom operatives, like Sam and Frodo, serving as Christ’s revolutionaries of hope in the world.

This year, let it be a different kind of Christmas. Instead of simply preparing for Christmas, prepare for Jesus to do a new thing in your own life. Instead of  spending all of your time and energy preparing your house for Christmas, prepare your heart to be the manger where Jesus can be born anew.  The miracle of Christmas looks nothing like the materialistic Christmas of our culture. Instead of getting sucked into the false promises of wall street advertising, be drawn into the real miracle, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” (John 1: 14)

Expect the miracle, be the miracle, share the miracle, until the return of our King and the full restoration of his Kingdom, until his will is done in you and on Planet Earth as it is in heaven. 

Peace,

Rick

Thanksgiving or Black Thursday Night?

We are only two days away from Thanksgiving, a holiday that now simply seems to herald the arrival of Black Friday. In fact this year, the Big Box Retailers are getting a jump start on the competition with an opening volley of “door buster” deals starting at 8 PM Thanksgiving Day soon to be known as Black Thursday Night. By the time you factor in the two hour early arrival lot many of us will reduce Thanksgiving Day with our families to “Thanksgiving Afternoon.” How ironic is it that we will cut short a day intended to count our blessings in order to accumulate more stuff we certainly don’t need and really can’t afford?

I am challenging you this year to join me and my family in having a different kind of Christmas, one that abdicates the over spending, overeating and the materialism typically associated with the Advent Season and focusing on the life changing impact of God arriving on planet earth in the flesh as a baby.

To help those who accept this challenge, I will blog five short Advent Devotions on successive Monday mornings beginning Monday November 26. Advent does not begin until December 2 but I am afraid that the power of marketing and “Blockbuster” sales will have already sucked you in so we will start a week early. I will also pause Thanksgiving Night and again early “Black Friday” morning with your weekend prayer requests in hand. Dallas and I will be praying for you even as you strive to resist the temptations of our gluttonous world.

We love you and yearn for you to this year have a different kind of Christmas, a Christmas where you are able to enjoy Christmas traditions without consuming more than you can afford or need, a Christmas where you experience the reality of the “Word Became Flesh” and are so transformed that God will be able to use you to change the world, one person at a time with the incredible life changing love of Jesus.

“The Word became flesh and lived among us.” John 1:14

I am praying for you. Please pray for me.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Rick

We Are Growing!

When my dad was three or four he would often follow his own dad into the corn fields to check on the crop. Regularly my papaw Owen would hunker down in the middle of the field, draw my dad between his knees and say….”Mather……If you get real quiet….and listen…..you can hear the corn grow.”

The more I listen to you worship, watch you serve, read of your small groups, hear of your increasing passion to be in the Word I have become starkly aware that you, we are growing….spiritually! We just passed the halfway mark of 2012 and the harvest has been plentiful in many ways.

- 11 have professed their faith in Jesus, 22 have been baptized, 74 adults have joined the church

- Your are engaged in worship from beginning to end and most of you are even showing up at the beginning! Our summer worship attendance is at all time high and new attenders walk in our doors EVERY weekend.

- We have a greater percentage of the body engaged in Small Groups than ever before in our history. Thus far 43 new groups have formed in 2012 and more are being birthed right now. You have become a disciple making machine!

- A group of 50 plus are reading the bible together in a single year and are dialoguing via the internet.

- Your tithes and offerings to the Lord have been generous. Thus far our general fund income has been $946,685 , expenses $ 857,180. You gave $140,000 last Christmas for our Birthday Gift to Jesus and the funds are making a huge impact in Ethiopia. ( more on Ethiopia at a later date)

- $100,000 has been given to start a new scholarship fund for high school seniors and several other second mile gifts have been received to honor and celebrate loved ones.

- You are serving at the Night Shelter, the Johnson County homeless lodge, the Patriot House, the Harvest House and countless other benevolent organizations. In April you invested over 500 man hours in our area communities on Change the World weekend. Thus far in 2012, you have sent two mission teams to Ethiopia, one to Mexico and we are exploring a partnership with Orphan Network in Nicaragua.

- 2,000 people enjoyed the community Easter Egg Hunt you hosted.

- Anne Terry and Becky prince recruited, trained and empowered 234 Vacation Bible School servants to serve 333 different children while sharing with them the Good news of Jesus.

- Our Family Ministry efforts are bearing fruit as more and more parents are buying into making their homes the center of their life with Christ.

- Our Wednesday night Children and Youth ministry is making such a huge impact that we are quickly running out of space to meet the growing demand for all that are attending. Thanks be to God!

- Around 200 children, youth and 30 adults will attend Summer Camp.

- Our Ministry to Men is making progress in challenge men to step up and act as the spiritual leaders in their homes.

- We have a growing and impactful singles ministry and a surging interest in a ministry to post high school young adults.

I woke up early this morning to begin the day walking in the footsteps of my heavenly Father. After we arrived deep into the vineyard, he hunkered down, drew me between his knees and said….”Rick,…if you get real quiet….and listen…..you can hear the people called St. Matthew growing.”

Thanks be to God!
Peace,
Rick

Dads: Let's Set Our Children Free

Week after week I visit with men and women, young and old who are battling the demons inherited from their childhood of origin. No adult when discovering they are going to be a parent dreams of their child’s future being impeded by family baggage and yet that is exactly what happens generation, after generation, after generation.

Each and everyone one of us are products of the families in which we were raised or not raised. God does not hold children responsible for the sins of their parents, but the sins (baggage) of the parents often hold children hostage and cling to their souls like barnacles on the bottom of a ship. They create drag thus reducing the speed of travel and over time slowly erode the ability of the vessel to stay afloat.

Day after day, our sons and daughters sail into the headwinds of life, seeking to find and fulfill the reason for their birth but their journey is pirated by the DNA of their family tree and many of them are sinking fast. If our nation and world is has any hope of righting the ship called humanity, we must return to the foundational principles that launched this ship in the beginning, faith, family and friendship.

The teaching of these three values must begin at home and where there is a man in the house, it is paramount that the father lead the way. Surveys, psychologists, adult children and the Bible all agree, as goes the dad so goes the family.

Men, we can change the destiny of our children, by changing the legacy of our family tree. Take the next step men. Invite men into your life circle who share your hopes and dreams for family. Dare to engage in our Family Ministry efforts to make Christ the center of your home. We will teach you, but you have to get involved. Make worship your priority and see how your children respond. Let your children see you pray, read your bible and or a devotional book on a regular basis. Reserve time to play with your children, listen, tuck them in at night, pray over them as they drift to sleep. Establish boundaries for them and know where they are going. Be aware of their life activities and friends. Get involved! Show up when you are expected to show up!

Most of all, honor the mother of your children in their presence with words of praise and expressions of affection. If you are divorced, still speak well of her in the presence of your children, regardless of how she speaks of or treats you.

Do you still need guidance? Go to stmattcpc.org and check our family ministries and ministry to men web pages. Contact Leslie Lummus or Jeff Gehle if you want need a coach or mentor. Contact Our Pastoral Care center if you need counseling. Changing the family legacy is not easy, but wanting to for the sake of our children is the first step.

Together, let’s set our children free from the baggage of our past so they might freely sail into their future and claim the abundant treasure filled life God has in store for each of them.

Happy Father’s Day,

Rick