“O, Holy Night” has a really cool backstory that reminds me about how God often chooses the most unlikely people to accomplish His mission. Much like He used an obscure engaged couple from a small village called Nazareth, some blue-collar shepherds, and an empty stable in the birth of the Messiah, the writing of “O, Holy Night” is full of surprises.
God’s Math: ADDITION + MULTIPLICATION > DIVISION + SUBTRACTION
I don’t know how well that would hold up in an Algebra I class, but I do know that it holds up in life and in the way Christ-followers live their lives. I think it is doing math God’s way. Addition and multiplication are definitely greater than division and subtraction.
The story of Christmas, the story of Jesus’ birth, gives us hope and reminds us that in less than ideal situations, when things don’t turn out how we believed they would, God is still with us. In this less than ideal situation, Jesus was born as Immanuel, “God with us,” and that’s a visible and tangible reminder of God’s faithfulness to be with us in every circumstance and situation. It’s a messier story than we often portray. There is a lot more uncertainty and risk than we sing about. But it’s a real story. And it’s a story that doesn’t just offer joy and hope during the holiday season; it’s a story that we can cling to when life gets real, all year long.
While there have been times when something I worried about did go wrong, it was never as bad as I had feared, and my worrying didn’t change it anyway. I know all of this, but I still find myself anxious or stressed about one thing or another.
What about you? Do you ever “pay interest” on problems you don’t end up owning?
If you have ever been in a second chair, low-key, or behind-the-scenes role, you may have felt like Plan B. Maybe you were the understudy for the lead in the school play, or you came off the bench for your high school basketball team. You were only going to get in the game or onto the stage if someone else faltered or couldn’t handle their role. They were Plan A, and you were Plan B. When we aren’t in the spotlight or the first one picked, it is easy to feel overlooked and underappreciated. But know this—just because you may have come off the second chair doesn’t mean you aren’t God’s first choice.
Growing up, we all daydream about being the player to shoot the championship-winning basket, not about making the pass to that player. We imagine standing in the concert spotlight, rocking the crowd, not being the roadie who set up the spotlight. We want to write the New York Times bestseller, not proofread it. Who wants to be the sidekick when you could be the superhero?
R. G. LeTourneau, a Christian industrialist, dedicated his life to “being a businessman for God.” He was very successful, designing and developing his own line of earth-moving equipment. LeTourneau was the creator of nearly 300 inventions with hundreds of patents in his lifetime.
As he succeeded financially, he increased his giving to the point where he was giving 90% of his income back to the church. Some of you may think, “I could give 90% too if I was a multi-millionaire.” Maybe so, but LeTourneau didn’t start out wealthy. We have to be faithful in the small things before God gives us more.
When it comes to missions—taking the whole message of Christ to the whole world—our role is three-fold. We can pray, we can give, and we can go. When we pray for our missionaries and for nations and people groups around the world, our prayers can go where we never will. When you and I are praying for South Africa, Kosovo, Thailand, Nicaragua, Cambodia, Liberia, Mexico, and other nations where we have mission partners, those prayers have an effect, even if we never set foot in those countries. When we give to missions, we enable missionaries and mission works to go into communities all over the planet and tell people about the God who loves them. Your missions giving makes that possible. Together we are funding the mission to fulfill Jesus’ Great Commission. And sometimes we have the privilege of going and serving, either right in our own community with the Des Moines Dream Center or for a short-term mission trip in a foreign country and culture. Our prayers, our giving, and our going matter!
2020 has been a tumultuous time for our community, nation, and world. COVID-19, civil unrest, political division, economic peril, and even wildfire and rare weather events have combined to make this a year to remember (although most of us would probably like to forget it). It is not an easy time, and if you have been struggling, you are not alone. Yet, we know that the church is made for this moment. We are here to bring help and hope. We are here to remind each other, and those in our community, that we have a hope and a future.
There is a huge contrast between how God is portrayed today and how He is portrayed in the songs and sermons of church history. Those messages focused heavily on the greatness, the power, and the holiness of God. If our current culture has reduced God to someone like us, the historic church leaned in the opposite direction. They magnified Him as a great, all-knowing, all-powerful God, but also as a totally impersonal deity. So who’s right? Is God one of us, or is He watching us from a distance (another hit song) with His finger hovering over the lightning bolt button?
No pain, no gain is a phrase that’s often used in endeavors like athletics, military training, or physical labor. But you have probably learned that it ends up applying in a lot of your life experiences. Like when you were halfway through your undergrad program and didn’t know if you’d make it to graduation. As a newlywed, when your marriage hit a rough patch and you wondered if it would last. Or maybe when you started a business or tried a new profession, and it imploded, and you wondered what you would do next. If you gave up in the middle of those experiences, you probably ended up going through them again later. But if you stuck it out, if you learned and grew from those experiences, you found out that the pain did indeed lead to gain.
There have been times in my life when everything looked fine on the outside and the people around me, even my own family, would have assumed that I was doing great. But under the hood, in the core of my being, in my soul, I was struggling. I felt empty. Hollow. I was going through the motions but felt like I didn’t really have anything left to give. I was running on empty.
Do you look forward to the time of music and worship at church on Sunday mornings? Maybe your answer varies depending on how your morning or week went. Maybe you purposely show up late, so you don’t have to participate. I mean let’s be honest, clapping hands, swaying bodies, and raised arms can be a little creepy.
Or maybe worship is the highlight of your week.
Regardless, it can be incredibly difficult to enjoy or partake in worship whether it’s on Sunday morning or any other day of the week. Many times, our hearts are overflowing with anxiety about today, tomorrow, or life. Our minds are flooded with unanswered questions and uncertainty. Worship is challenging, or even unappealing, because it requires a certain level of peace and acceptance in the areas where we feel out of control.
The story of life began with God at the center (Genesis 1:1), which means finding peace involves letting go of the faux control we often impose on ourselves; and instead putting God at the center of every area of your life. With God at the center, we free our hearts and minds to hear how He is speaking to us through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit desires to permeate the areas we attempt to fill on our own. When we allow this, it liberates us from the anxiety and uncertainty that holds us back from engaging in meaningful worship.
Often when explaining the Holy Spirit to children, we describe Him as our ‘helper’. After we give our hearts to Jesus, he washes them clean and puts the Holy Spirit inside us. Then when we need help, we can stop to listen for what He is saying in our hearts. But God’s desire is that we grow to see the Holy Spirit as so much more than a helper! The Holy Spirit is our comforter, our counselor, the one who convicts, the one who encourages, and the most tangible member of the trinity. It’s a wonder why we don’t actively desire more of Him. The Holy Spirit is not a force, or a “feeling”, but rather a person who desires to be active in our daily lives.
When we let go of all that’s weighing down our spirit, worship suddenly becomes a time where we can connect to God in a unique way. Worship through music or singing seems to open a direct connection between our hearts and God, through the Holy Spirit. Something incredible happens when we allow ourselves to take part in a musical experience, especially in a congregational setting. The atmosphere of the room changes. There might be a sensation in your body, comparable to mild electricity. You could even physically feel something in your chest or heart. Not something bad; it’s glorious! Like a fire! This is the Holy Spirit filling you with the presence of God; reminding you that Jesus is alive in your heart. The priests of the Old Testament described similar situations where they “could not remain standing to minister…for the glory and brilliance of the Lord filled the house of God” (2 Chr. 5:14, APM).
The idea of having intimate access to God through personal worship did not exist in the Old Testament. Instead, corporate worship was restricted to certain people, places and times. The presence of God could only be found in the temple, near the tabernacle. However, Jesus replaces these Old Testament arrangements. He promised to, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:20, ESV). In other words, inviting Jesus into our heart means our body is now the temple; the place where God meets us, demonstrates his presence, and deals with our sin (John 4:21–24).
In Romans 12:1 Paul writes, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” This means New Testament worship isn’t confined to sacred times and places like church on Sunday. Instead, worship should saturate our whole lives. Our faith unites us with Christ, and the Holy Spirit dwells within us, signifying that the temple of God is us individually and collectively. As a result, corporate worship in the New Testament includes everything from reading and preaching Scripture to singing Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs together. It includes praying, celebrating baptism and communion, and encouraging each other to love and do good deeds.
Find the worship that grants your heart a connection to God and it will trigger your heart to sing. When the Spirit causes a heart to sing, profound worship happens. Transformation happens inside us as we’re filled with the Holy Spirit and commit everything we are to worship, praise, and thanksgiving to our heavenly Father.
And so is dating, marriage, and relationships. And for as big a deal as relationships are in our lives, we don’t get a lot of instruction on how to get them right. You probably got more instruction on how to drive a car or do your job than you ever got on how to get a relationship right. So, you learned by observation; and depending on the examples you studied, that could be really helpful, or really horrible…
The story of Christmas is a story we can cling to when life gets real,
all year long.
Have you ever had a less-than-ideal Christmas? I have. It happened during my junior year of college when I was working my way through school as a security guard. I was a week away from final exams and a month-long Christmas break, trying to figure out how I would miss those four weeks of work and still come up with enough money to pay for my second semester of college, when my boss came up to me. He asked me if I had any interest in sticking around over the Christmas break to work. I would get paid double time, and the work would be pretty easy. I wanted to go home to see my family for Christmas and hang out with my friends, but I really needed the cash so I decided to stay. It really wasn’t too bad most of the time I was there. Most students and faculty were gone and things were pretty quiet. It was just kind of lonely and desolate.
