This blog is dedicated to the growth of believers. Lack of growth hinders us from enacting the mandate of Jesus: spread the gospel, help people get saved. The Lord has told us to seek wisdom, and He has promised the Holy Spirit would fill us with power. We need wisdom and power to “save others by snatching them from the fire"(Jude 23). The Holy Spirit in us is ready to bestow this, but we must pursue it! Doing His work until He returns is a partnership with Him…yes, He is coming back, very soon!
The last three weeks, three things have been on my heart. I don't want to hit the world with a super long blog post, but I wanted to put these items out here for others to mull over and pray over with me:
God is not done with the world yet.
We are most certainly in the end times—MUCH evidence points to that—but the Lord is yet very hard at work in the souls of men and women across the world. So many go through tremendous persecution and pain, but God is every day saving souls and growing His Kingdom.
God is not done with the Church in America yet.
Church congregations led by pastors who are bowing to the culture may seem to be hopelessly caught in the web of deception the enemy has spun for them. But the Holy Spirit will continue to prod the souls of individuals and stir hearts to return to a Biblical worldview, to cast off the attitude that "Everything is permissible."
I have no idea how He will do this, but I have become convinced that the Lord is responding to our prayers for repentance and revival. I will not presume to predict a sweeping revival—though He could certainly do something BIG—but we may yet see even little rebellions by individuals who are in apostate churches.
God is not done with the Faithful yet.
You and I, Saints...we go through times where we feel so distant from God, where we do not feel His good pleasure in us...times when we feel like failures because of our actions and inactions. We feel like our fire is dying. We feel like our faith is dying. We question everything around us. We grow discouraged.
But God has not changed. He hasn't budged, not even a tiny bit. We cannot give up. We must get into the Word. We must keep whispering our small prayers. We must pray for ourselves, that the Lord will raise us up to accomplish His purpose in us. We must not allow these "down" times to stop us from seeking Him.
He will grow us. He will strengthen us. He will still use us to snatch others from the fire.
Please pray with me:
Prayer
Oh, Lord, I number myself among the weak. There is so much to be done in my own small world, and so much I want to do for You in Your vast world. You have called me to faithfulness, to wisdom, and to power. It is only through the Holy Spirit that Your purpose can be accomplished, and not through any strength of my own.
I come before You on my own behalf, and on that of the precious Saints who read this. Lift us up, Lord. If you send any discipline our way, may we embrace it and allow it to produce in us a harvest of righteousness. May each of us take a deep breath and endeavor to strengthen our feeble arms and weak knees. A bruised reed you will not break, Lord. Heal us. Call us, Help us to hear You.
Lord, we lift up the apostate Church in America. We pray for revival. Lord we bring those individuals who have turned from Your Word before you and we ask for their repentance. And we lay ourselves before You in repentance. We as a body have sinned before you. We have rebelled. We have not listened to You, but instead have turned our ears to the lies of the enemy. Lord, in Your holiness and righteousness, please turn us corporately back to You. May we all respond to You and Your calling. May we all cast ourselves at Your feet and seek Your forgiveness and begin to pursue Your will.
I pray that pastors across this country, who are called by You to lead their flocks in accordance with Your Word, would fall before You, Lord, and submit to You. May they hear your voice afresh. May they seek Your wisdom and Your strength to give them courage to speak what You want them to speak.
May individuals who have strayed from the path now return to You in repentance with humility and weeping. Break their hearts before You, Lord, so that they stop listening to the lies of the world, and instead begin to seek You diligently. Send us revival, oh, God. Revive these individual hearts, and also cause massive revival begin to break out among the Church in America.
Around the world, Lord, as Christians go through persecution, we see numbers grow in response. The enemy enacts horrific persecution meant for his purposes, but You use it for Yours. We see that, Lord. We see souls being ushered into Your Kingdom by the thousands, and we glorify you for that! Thank you, Jesus! Thank You for that work! Lord, hinder the plans of the enemy and continue to grow Your kingdom. Bring more and more souls to You! Help those ministers of the gospel across the world that stand for You in the face of such persecution. Give them courage! Protect them, Lord! Make every effort they put forth bear MUCH fruit. Lord, in their pain, may they cling to You ever more tightly.
You are worthy, Lamb of God. You are Holy. We give you all the praise, the honor, and the glory, and we thank you, Almighty God. It is in the precious name of the Son we pray. Amen.
"Iranians today are coming to Christ by the millions, by the millions..."
Pastor JD Farag's weekly prophecy update moved me deeply as I watched it last night, and this morning as I was in prayer, my heart rejoiced not just for the good news about the godly hunger of the Iranian people, but the ongoing good news Pastor JD cited when he said that daily 80,000 people worldwide are coming to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, and 510 new churches are being planted every day.
I am overwhelmed by the God we serve! He is beyond our measure, beyond our comprehension. Though here in America, apostasy is on the rise, hostility to Jesus Christ and the truth of His Word are on the rise, and hearts are being hardened more and more profoundly, worldwide, the Holy Spirit is moving in a mighty way. Thank you, Jesus!
In an age when the slaughter and persecution of Christians occurs at a rate higher than it has ever been, people are discovering the hope of Jesus! Souls are being ushered into the kingdom, where there will be no more pain, no more suffering, where the mighty Lord Himself wipes away every tear.
Saints, may that give you hope. I needed that hope yesterday as I skimmed over social media and saw the aforementioned hostility. Want to see blasphemy in action? Follow an atheist's Facebook page and read the comments. It is eye-opening to see such evil grabbing hold of hearts and spewing forth such vile sentiments.
Even worse for me is seeing the vitriol that comes from members of our own community, who see righteousness as a human expression, rather than the supernatural power of the crucified and resurrected Christ. God is either very thin to them, or He is not part of the equation.
May God change all that! May God call us to the lost in America. May we pray for the revival of hearts within our own communities and our own country so that we mirror the profound stirring of the persecuted world. If persecution comes to us, as it has for millions of Christians in other countries, may it only make us stronger, and may it drive others to Christ!
In my last post, I had refuted a few ideas some people have that in Jeremiah 10 God Himself had forbidden the practice of bringing Christmas trees into the house and decorating them. I won't reiterate it now, but here is that post: Christmas is Awesome...Refuting Some Issues About Paganism and Christmas
I stated in that post, though, that I wanted to talk about the origin of the Christmas tree and perhaps the origins of other Christmas symbols, because a lot of people have been terribly bothered by the concept of Christianity practitioners commandeering pagan traditions to turn them into Christian ones.
Some Christians are bothered by this, and what's more, many atheists and agnostics use it as a big stick with which they beat Christians over the head.
Really, I had not previously spent much time pondering all this, but this year in particular, I've heard a lot of "chatter" out there in the internets about this issue. So I started poking around and praying for wisdom.
Here are my personal conclusions:
Christmas is awesome. You probably already got that one.
The Advent season focuses my eyes on Jesus more profoundly than at any other time of the year. So I love it and embrace it.
The commandeering of pagan practises involving the natural world has actually deeply moved me and drawn me into a greater love for God.
That last one might have made you go "Um...what?" But stick with me here.
First, you should know that I have not done any for-real research into the origins of our Christmas symbols and traditions. There are scholars who have, and if you are really interested in for-real research, you might go figure out who those scholars are and check out what they found.
What I did was casually peruse the internet, and that does not qualify as real research. It's fun, though, and there is some really good stuff out there if you want to skim the surface of this subject. The University of Michigan Extension put together some fun bullets about Christmas trees, and they have links you can follow if you are interested: How did evergreens become a symbol for Christmas?
Here is a summary of a few things I read out there:
The tradition of bringing evergreen boughs into the home is an old one that came from somewhere in Europe, probably Germany.
That tradition may or may not have had an element of pagan practice to it. Most of the sources I saw didn't think so. They think it was related to the love of pretty things, or the nice smell of fir. Or maybe it was something about the symbolism of evergreens.
At least two notable Christian missionaries have been attached to a story in which they had converts start bringing entire evergreen trees into their homes as a symbol of Christ and his "evergreen" love and faithfulness.
My favorite was a story that was told about Boniface. On a missions trip to pagan parts of Germany in the early 700s, Boniface rescued a baby about to be sacrificed to the god Thor, who the people thought lived in conjunction with a sacred "Thunder Oak" tree. Boniface cut down the tree to show the people that Thor was a false God. Nearby was a little evergreen that he told them to bring into their house to represent Christ.
I'm probably not telling this story well, but I sure liked the way I first heard it on a Phil Vischer What's in the Bible? – Why Do They Call It Christmas? video I bought for my kids. Check out this clip on YouTube:
(If you are interested in the What's in the Bible? series, I VERY highly recommend it! Please see the Jelly Telly What's in the Bible? website.)
So by and large, I didn't find a whole lot that said Christmas trees specifically came from an actual pagan WORSHIP practice.
However, as they state in the Why Do They Call It Christmas? video, we do know that a number of pagan cultures had gods that were honored and worshiped through association with aspects of the natural world, such as trees and significant seasons, significant times of the year. Among those times was the winter solstice.
The Washington Post carried a sweet article in which they described five facts about the winter solstice. They describe the winter solstice: "the exact moment when the sun’s most direct rays reach their southernmost point south of the equator, along the Tropic of Capricorn, at 23.5 degrees south latitude. The time and date of the solstice change slightly each year."
While we mark December 21 as the winter solstice, December 25 was likely a day in which one or more cultures mistakenly thought it was the winter solstice, or at least observed it then. Some cultures did a lot of awful things to worship or appease pagan gods on that day because they connected pagan gods with the natural world. The details about all this—what's true and not true about the dates, the gods, the pagans, etc.—are told in various ways by various people. What they usually have in common is the sincere evil of the practises...like child sacrifice, sexual perversion, and other nasty things.
The story usually goes that early Christian missionaries commandeered December 25 either as a "counter holiday" to worship Christ, so they could draw people away from the pagan observance, or possibly a concession to the people to keep that day as the observance, but swap out the reason for the observance—that is, trade the worship of a pagan god for the worship of Jesus. Perhaps they saw this as a way to "ease" entire cultures out of their paganism.
Some Christians today see this as a compromise—to convert the people, they allowed them to continue in a form of paganism until they assimilated into Christianity. Some snarky atheists try to use this to show how mistaken we Christians are about the reality of God.
I have no doubt some version of this is true. We can look at a lot of Christmas traditions today and in one way or another trace them back to origins that maybe weren't very Christian in nature. We also can observe that paganism has never really gone away. In our current age, practitioners of various new age ideas and beliefs persist in connecting nature with their beliefs of power and magic.
This is scary to some Christians, for sure. I get it. While we are over here marking the birth of Jesus, they are over there using the same time of year and some of the same symbols to worship the creation instead of the Creator. They even think they can draw dark magic from created things to enact hexes and cast other types of spells...though ironically, some wiccan practitioners feel that this sort of hexing carries with it a cost. Some mix in the eastern concept of karma—you hex a person, and karma's going to getcha. It's a soup of pagan, new age, and eastern beliefs and practises that God expressly forbids in the Bible.
And thus, many Christians feel uneasy about what some see as parallel celebrations and observances. Again, I get it. Christians are striving to be holy, as God is holy.
Now...let me take you back to my third conclusion that I stated at the beginning: The commandeering of pagan practises involving the natural world has actually deeply moved me and drawn me into a greater love for God.
Dear friend, as I have been writing this, it is the day after winter solstice. I have bird feeders outside my window upon which I have observed in the last two hours six or seven types of birdies. I have two adolescent, energetic kitties that love bird-watching, and they have been jumping up here on my typing table to paw at the window glass and softly chatter and mew and swish their silky tails. A pretty dang funny squirrel has performed a few acrobatic tricks trying to obtain some of that birdseed, which causes the birdies scatter to take refuge in the bare branches of the euonymus and the maple, and the evergreen branches of the pine, the spruce, and the yew.
My heart is filling up. I'm sitting here worshipping God because I see Him.
I'm a nature-lover, you guys. I see God in nature. Or rather, I should specify that I see HIS nature, when I SEE nature...His creativity, His passion, His love. I see it in my kittens when they interact with these other creatures through the glass. I see it in each finch and nuthatch. I see it in the goofy squirrels. I see it in the trees and the shrubs.
You guys, I see God.
In contemplating this issue about Christmas and talking to God about it, here is the main passage of Scripture that jumped up out of my heart:
Colossians 1:15-20 NIV
The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Saints, did you catch that?
in him all things hold together.
Jesus.
For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Jesus came to reconcile to Himself all things. Everything, EVERYTHING, comes together through Jesus Christ!
Saints...oh, dear friends...can you see the beauty in that? Let me tell you something, not a single sparrow falls, and God doesn’t see it. When he created everything, He called it "Good." He has had His eye on it for a long, long time.
Pagans, ancient and modern, cannot help but see mystery and wonder in nature. In rebellion, their hearts have rejected the story of God, and they have exchanged the worship of the Creator for the worship of the creation. In so doing, they worship demons. They turn to the doctrine of demons. (1 Timothy 4:1) That is the tragedy in all this. The magic they seek is in actuality the majesty and power of Christ. They seek the spiritual that for-real exists in nature, but they attribute it to the trees themselves, and not to the Creator of those trees.
My take on all this is that Christian missionaries understood these concepts and knew that if souls were to be saved, they must demonstrate for the pagans that the spirituality they sought was not to be found in the trees or the planets or the sun, but rather in the mighty Word who brought all those things into being:
John 1:1-5 NIV
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
The pagans FELT that spiritual connection at the winter solstice because it was the time when without fail, the daylight hours would begin to lengthen, day by day. Precious people, dearly loved by their Creator God, knew that as the darkness of the night grew steadily from June to December—WITHOUT FAIL—their weary hearts would find tremendous HOPE in the winter solstice, would observe this tremendous symbol written into the very fabric of time, space, nature.
God was revealing Himself to them. The enemy of their souls had grabbed ahold of this longing God planted in people and twisted their minds so that they sought their hope in paganism. They were blinded. Even though the daylight would lengthen, their souls were deeply trapped in darkness.
But Jesus came for them. He was the light that would pierce that deep soul darkness.
The aspects of God's creation that Satan attempted to use...God redeemed. The days, the times, the seasons...they were all His to begin with, a picture of His faithfulness, His wisdom, and His power.
Genesis 8:22 KJV
While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
He took yet another evil intent by the enemy and turned it to GOOD. He refused to allow the enemy of our souls to rob us of our Hope.
This, dear friend, is why I believe that not only do we have the freedom to celebrate Christmas and enjoy as many of the traditions as we like (even the goofy, joyful ones about elves and Santa), but I actually believe that over the eons of the Church age, God has been watching and helping us develop Christmas. He sees us. He knows us. He cares for us.
He knew that this longing for HIM would need rituals and celebrations and joy fests. He arranged it so that everything, EVERYTHING would come together in Jesus.
Celebrate! HE IS!!!!
Prayer
Father, THANK YOU. Thank you for Christmas and everything it represents. Thank you for sending Your Son Jesus. Thank you for the redemption of all of creation. Thank you for not leaving mankind to perish in the darkness, but for providing this method of reconciliation. Thank you for breaking through the darkness and bringing us into Your glorious light.
Many still walk in darkness because they have been deceived by the enemy of their souls. Many openly, violently rebel against you and revel in their sin. But we know that their hearts deep down ache with inexpressible groans. Their attempts to relieve the ache are fruitless. Only You can provide the satisfaction, the relief, and the love they so deeply long for and need. Please, Jesus, work on them. I lift them up to you in prayer, Lord. Bring these souls to you. Reconcile them to you.
I pray for the readers of this blog post, that they will be uplifted and encouraged during this season. The enemy has been trying to overburden us and divide us, but I proclaim victory in Jesus. I come against the actions of the enemy in this, and I pray, Lord, that you would defeat this attempt.
May this post be a fragrant offering to you, Oh, Lord my God. May souls be saved because of this feeble gift I bring You. You raise me up in Your power, Your wisdom, and You have all the glory here. Save them, Jesus! Encourage your Church. Unite us, Lord. Bring all things together in You.
I ask this in the glorious, powerful, beautiful name of Jesus. Amen.
I was going to continue this week with the If book. We've only got a couple posts to go, and that's definitely worth some time!
But this last week, on three separate occasions, I came across messages from books and concerned believers about Christmas traditions and their connections with paganism. Yikes! That bummer bomb has been on my mind ever since, and I wanted to share my thoughts in the hopes that they might alleviate some fears and encourage some of my brothers and sisters in Christ.
My first response to all this is a big 'ole eye roll. Don't mess with my Christmas, people. Christmas? I'm a HUGE fan. Love me some Christmas.
And then my second response was one of compassion for people who genuinely want to serve God and honor Him completely. Their worries and concerns are born out of this correct sense of the purity of Jesus Christ, and the fact that worship of Him should not be sullied by anything that would hint of sin or disrespect. Yes, I do get that...
Here's the spoiler alert, dear friends...my conclusion is that everyone should keep Christmas well and use all the lovely traditional symbols they like. Whatsoever things are lovely, think on these things. Boom.
The Jeremiah 10 Argument About Christmas Trees and Forbidden Pagan Practice
Here's how this particular "pagan" argument went:
There's this author—I am not going to name him here because I haven’t read any of his books—that's been saying according to Jeremiah 10, we should not bring trees inside and decorate them.
Um...what?
I looked this up, and here is what the NKJV says:
"Hear the word which the Lord speaks to you, O house of Israel. Thus says the Lord:
'Do not learn the way of the Gentiles;
Do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven,
For the Gentiles are dismayed at them.
For the customs of the peoples are futile;
For one cuts a tree from the forest,
The work of the hands of the workman, with the ax.
They decorate it with silver and gold;
They fasten it with nails and hammers
So that it will not topple.
They are upright, like a palm tree,
And they cannot speak;
They must be carried,
Because they cannot go by themselves.
Do not be afraid of them,
For they cannot do evil,
Nor can they do any good.'"(verses 2-5)
(By the way, if you look up verse 5 in the NIV—also the NLT—instead of palm tree, it says. "Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field." So if we want, we can start throwing harvest symbols around, too...haha...but we won't go there...)
What people are worried about is where God describes gentiles cutting down trees, then decorating them. The NIV and the NLT are descriptive—those versions say, "a craftsman shapes it with his chisel" before it is adorned with silver and gold.
Now, here is what the book author said...I don't have this book, by the way. I am passing along a quote from an article...and I do NOT think he is right in this statement:
"Even God-fearing Christians today don't realize they're doing the very opposite of God's instructions when they decorate trees with silver and gold and stand them up in their homes and churches every December. God personally says in the tenth chapter of Jeremiah not to do that precise heathen custom, and yet people have been tricked into decorating trees with all sorts of silver tinsel, gold garland and hanging ornaments, and they have no scriptural basis for it. For those interested in eternal life, we need to wake up and start obeying the instructions of our Maker, and stop all this pagan worthlessness."
Yikes! Holy cow. See the bummer bomb?
Is this fellow saying that all those years of Christmas tree traditions is just people practicing pagan customs? AND is he also saying that my eternal life with Jesus is in jeopardy because of it?
WHAT?
Let's break this down a bit...
First, that author is saying that Jeremiah 10 refers to our practice of bringing a tree inside and decorating it at Christmastime.
No. That is not what this section of scripture is referring to. I will refer you back to one of my first posts where I was laying the foundation of how we study the Bible: Study Premises Part 1: Our Approach for Reading the Bible. In that post, I quote Bible scholar Ron Rhodes, who stated, "Our goal must be exegesis (drawing the meaning out of the text) and not eisogesis (superimposing a meaning onto the text)."
Now, hear me out...evergreens in the house might have a pagan origin, and in my next post, I will talk about that. But in this case, we are looking specifically at Jeremiah 10 and what this author said.
When we look at the Jeremiah 10 passage and say, "Christmas trees" we have to remember that when Jeremiah wrote God's words, there was no such thing as a Christmas tree. Maybe we could make an argument about God knowing the future and all that, but it's really quite a stretch to coax that sort of interpretation out of this particular passage. When prophetic passages describe future events, the text tells us this. We can show this in many prophetic passages in the Bible. This is not one of those passages.
In this particular passage, God is describing what gentiles at that time were doing in their worship of pagan gods.
We see clearly that the text is referring to the creation of idols out of trees. The idol is going to be the thing that is worshiped. The tree is just the material.
And...
The text is actually telling us that the idols are nothing and God is powerful.
It's moments like this I wish I was myself a Hebrew scholar so I could properly look at the original language to talk about what the gentile was doing with that tree he cut down. (Maybe I will get to study Hebrew someday.) Translations are telling me the guy takes a chisel to it. Let's look at it in context of other scripture.
Isaiah 40—WHICH, by the way, also contains one of those uber-amazing sections of the Bible, a part that describes the Messiah hundreds of years before Christ came—says in verses 18-20, NKJV:
"To whom then will you liken God?
Or what likeness will you compare to Him?
The workman molds an image,
The goldsmith overspreads it with gold,
And the silversmith casts silver chains.
Whoever is too impoverished for such a contribution
Chooses a tree that will not rot;
He seeks for himself a skillful workman
To prepare a carved image that will not totter."
The tree is making an appearance here, as well, but in this case we can clearly see that a craftsman is carving an image out of it. There are some parallels here between the Jeremiah passages and the Isaiah passages:
The tree is being used to create an image.
The image can't stand on its own. Either it has to be propped up, or the wood has to be carved in such a way that the weight is supported.
If you can afford it, you can use silver and gold to adorn it.
And here's the most important point...
In both of these passages, in context, God is contrasting Himself with these images.
What are these images? Idols! What did these people do with them after they carve them? Maybe decorate them, but for sure, they worshiped them and prayed to them for things.
What's the point God is trying to make?
The idols themselves are WORTHLESS. No power. Look at Jeremiah 10:5, second part of that verse:
"Do not be afraid of them,
For they cannot do evil,
Nor can they do any good.”
So...
idol = nothing
God = everything
Boom. That is the message here.
The worship of pagan gods was evil...don't get me wrong. Those are demons that the people were worshiping, and in their worship, they were doing horribly evil, vile things like sacrificing babies.
But the idol itself was completely lifeless and worthless. God was making a point that supported His original commandment about idols: "You shall not make for yourself an idol..." (Exodus 20:4)
Dear friends, we MUST approach the Bible with whole-Bible context in mind.
The New Testament Provides Context for Christians—Liberty in Christ
Let's jump to the New Testament and see what we find there to help us understand this a little better.
I'm going to paraphrase 1 Corinthians 8 because there is a lot of text there, but please read it for yourself. In this section, Paul turns his attention to the issue of whether believers should eat food that has been sacrificed to idols. He first says that an idol is nothing and God is everything. Therefore, with this knowledge about the worthlessness of idols, you as a believer don't need to worry about it. Go ahead and eat it.
However, some believers don't have the strength of Paul's faith, and they have a hard time seeing this as inconsequential. So Paul says, let's not make a big deal out of this. If a brother or sister in Christ is having a hard time with this concept, let it go. They cannot eat that meat without it bothering them. And if they see you doing it, that might distress them. So you need to be careful, then, and love your brothers and sisters by not eating that meat in front of them. Don't let your "superior" faith and knowledge cause them pain. Instead, act in ways that are loving and kind to them.
Here is the Tracy translation for how this relates to the Christmas tree thing...if you are having a hard time with this, I am not going to hit you over the head with it. If it bothers you to drag a tree inside and decorate it, it's OK. Don't do it. It's totally a secondary issue. I just want you to have faith in Jesus!
Paul's writings about this also tell me that if I can freely eat meat sacrificed to an idol because an idol is worthless, if I want to have a Christmas tree in my house, even if I think it might be a tradition that has a pagan origin (we will get back to that in another post), I can go ahead and do it.
Remember, saints, that Jesus Christ saved us and gave us freedom and liberty. Read Romans 14...in that chapter, we see that there are things that are secondary issues—like what you eat or drink, or what you wear, or certain things that you do—that are not expressly forbidden as sin. Because you are liberated in Christ, you can do a lot of things and still be a redeemed soul, born again, saved!
The caution we see in several parts of the New Testament is that whatever you are doing or considering doing, make very sure that 1) it is not an explicit sin as described in the Word of God, and 2) it doesn't lead you down a path where you might be tempted or might hurt someone else.
Don't Overburden Fellow Believers—It's About Love
We know that when Jesus dealt with the religious leaders of His day, He was upset with them because they unnecessarily burdened the people with regulations that really didn't matter that much. God was (and is) interested in our hearts. Are we submitted before Him? Are we faithful to Him? Do we strive to give Him the glory He deserves? Do we love Him and act like it?
Jesus was concerned for the people, and He was watching certain religious leaders pounding them with regulations, but neglecting to show them the goodness and love and glory of God. Jesus came in part to liberate us from these unnecessary burdens and how us how high, how wide, how deep the love of God is!
Oh, my friend! He loves you! His eye is on the sparrow, but you...YOU are in his heart! Do you think He gives a hill of beans about whether or not you put decorations on a Christmas tree? What He cares about is whether you are worshipping worthless things, or whether you are worshipping Him.
God made that tree. God made the silver and the gold. If you are observing Christmas because you are thankful that Jesus came into the world, and you are doing slap-happy traditions to show your joy...why in the world would that be a bad thing?
If you keep Christmas solely in your heart and avoid all the trappings and traditions because that is how you personally best honor Him and show Him your love and gratitude, then by all means...don't decorate!
The point...Jesus is all that matters. One way or another, do not overburden one another.
In my house, we instill joy in our kiddos by posing our toy elves every night so that the kiddos find them in all kinds of weird situations each morning. We instill joy in them by putting up happy, gorgeous decorations and hanging our stockings. We instill joy by making Christmas morning exciting and awesome and ripping open fun gifts. Then we tell them the source of all our joy is JESUS. We are having a month-long joy fest all because of JESUS! Because He is totally worth it! Our salvation through Him is everything to us, and we are practicing being joyful.
I have more to say on the subject of Christmas trees and paganism, but this is an awful lot of words. I will continue this in the next post. Tonight I will bask in the lights of my Christmas tree and give God thanks for the precious gift of His Son.
Prayer
Dear Lord, I may never fully be able to express the gratitude I have for the salvation you have given us. But I do thank you, Lord, for that gift. I honor that gift by celebrating and telling others about the love of Jesus.
Lord, for the reader of this blog post, I pray tremendous blessing. I pray that if they do not know you as Lord and savior, that they would come to you right now and repent of their sins and accept the free gift of forgiveness You offer. Lord, what people who do not believe in You or trust You do not know, is the richness of living a life submitted to You! You satisfy the deepest parts of us and give us a peace that passes all understanding. May that non-believer reach out to you today, right now, and be saved. May these words be a fragrant offering to you, a gift to You that results in what You most desire, to bring people to You.
Jesus, I love you. And I love the people You have made. May they know you. May they be joyful in you. May they honor you with their lives. I ask this in the precious and holy name of Jesus Christ...amen.
"...being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." (Philippians 1:6)
I got so much incredible stuff out of this section of the book that I am not sure where to start! I swear, I have typed and retyped the beginning of this post three times. Let me take a deep breath and back up a bit...sorry, guys. I'm so excited by what's going on here!
The Big Dream...But What About Inadequacy? What About Pride?
"What If" is all about the Big Dream. That's pretty clear in this section. I have a Big Dream. But I've been super confused about it, and I have been wondering if God has given me this Big Dream, or if it is something I've just carved out of my own imagination in order to suit a human desire for greatness.
So there I am, reading Batterson's section on What if?, and I can see that in the past, I've made God a little too small. Batterson's really quite good at showing us how big God is, and how trustworthy God is to follow through on anything He puts in motion. When God begins a good work in us, He carries it forward to completion. He's not going to respond to me tugging on His shirt sleeve by brushing me off.
See, I did tug on His shirt sleeve. I asked Him what my purpose is. I asked Him what He wanted me to do for Him with the rest of my life. He responded to me by giving me a Big Dream. And honestly, it freaked me out. I've been kind of ashamed to go talk to anyone about it because I've been afraid that it would be humiliating...
"Really? You, Tracy?
You really think you're going to [insert Big Dream here]?
Because you aren't nearly [insert thing I lack] enough.
And you aren't [insert another thing I lack here] enough.
And you CERTAINLY aren't [insert yet another thing I lack here] enough!"
I'm afraid sometimes, too, that the dreams are self-serving. I'm afraid that I am driven only my the desire for my own greatness. I was a little taken aback by Batterson's account of his bold declaration in his twenties, that one day, he would write books that would sell millions of copies. Isn't that prideful? Isn't that just a desire for personal greatness? If I dream a Big Dream, am I just getting puffed up and big-headed?
Batterson declares, "by definition, a God-ordained dream is beyond our ability to pull off." (page 141)
Wow. Yep, I am indeed inadequate. And yeah, the thought that I could do this maybe is a little self-serving. I mean, I LIKE the idea of greatness! But if it really is beyond my own ability, then it's got to be God that pulls it off. There's no place for pride there. Instead, there's got to be humility.
So God really is the originator of the Big Dream? It's surreal to me, and a little counter-intuitive, but I have to answer yes. Yes, God is the one that establishes our Big Dreams. He gives us the notions for the things that are great, the things that are too much for us to pull off.
Let's talk a little about pride, then, and why it scares the heck outta me.
Just the fact that it is a concern tells me that yes, God really IS in this. When it occurs to us that pride is a danger, God says to us, "Good. Now I can work on you. Now I can get that Big Dream going!"
If I have a concern about my own pride, then my response is going to be humbling myself before Him, submitting to Him, clinging to Him as I start to see bits and pieces of the Big Dream come together. God is the originator of the greatness that is in me. If He makes me a great writer and a great teacher, it's His work in me, and I need to submit it before Him. If I take that stance and keep prayer and worship at the forefront of my mind and my heart, then God is going to work that pride right out of me, or keep it from developing.
The build-up of pride scares me because that was Satan's sin. That is what caused all of the evil in the entire world. It's a terrifying trap, and I do not want to fall into it.
If I didn't have enough reasons to keep falling on my face before God, to staying gut-level honest with Him about every little thing I think and feel, and to seek Him for His truth in everything...my Big Dream is going to keep me right there in that position before Him.
THAT is the start of His good work in me! That frees me up to let myself start to pray over this Big Dream and see the possibilities. I can cease seeing God as small and start giving Him credit for being BIG. BIG, BIG, BIG!!!! HUGE!!!
Seek the Presence of God
I love my Big Dream, and I want to see this work come about in me. The way I'm going to see it is if I seek the presence of God. If I take a deep dive into His presence, it's GOING to happen. How do we take that deep dive and see the glory of God?
Get into His Word. Get into prayer. Get into praise. Get into gratitude. Get into joyfulness.
Remember our new habits:
Be joyful always.
Pray continually.
Give thanks in all circumstances.
Batterson states, "When we get into the presence of God, it's like a slight yet sudden shift in barometric pressure. It takes time to acclimatize, but over time, the glory of God will manifest in any number of ways. Two obvious examples are the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit. The fruit is character and the gifts are capacities, but both are manifestations. It's the same word used in 1 Corinthians 12:7:
To each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given.
Each of us is a unique manifestation of God's Spirit. We might have identical gifts, but they are exercised through different personalities, in different contexts." (pages 146–147)
Worship creates the atmosphere. We get our minds off the stuff around us, and we get our focus on the Lord. Amazing things start to happen.
He's BIG, you guys. BIG.
We will hit this more in the next post, but please, please keep God at the forefront of your mind. He's started a good work in you, and He has BIG plans to see it through!
Prayer
Lord, I'm in tears as I sit here writing this and thinking it over. I am so grateful for the Big Dream you have planted in me, and I want very much to see it accomplished! More than anything, I want to see Your glory manifest in my life so that your Kingdom will expand and souls will be rescued!
I want any reader of this post to see Your glory manifest in them, as well! I pray for those readers right now, that they would start to seek You more and more, that they would work hard at creating that atmosphere through worship. Speak to their hearts right now, Lord. Impress on them how HUGE You are, and how You desire to keep pushing forward that good work in their lives! Nothing, NOTHING is beyond You, Lord, and if they will just seek you for the Big Dream, you will accomplish Your purpose for their lives!
I ask this in the BIG and mighty name of Jesus Christ! Amen!
1 Samuel 7:12 (NIV)
Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer [which means stone of help], saying, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.”
In this passage from the book of 1 Samuel, we see that the prophet Samuel set up a "reminder stone"—a small monument to the faithfulness of God. Every time he would encounter it or remember that he set it there, he would be reminded that in all circumstances right up to the time when he set it there, the Lord had been faithful.
It is in this spirit that we as believers must take steps to embed within our hearts the promises God makes to us. He is faithful. And His faithfulness must motivate and drive us.
To live with an "As If" faith, we must make it a habit, a routine practice of reminding ourselves of God's promises, of His nature. In our book for this study If: Trading Your If Only Regrets for God's What If Possibilities, chapter 9 is called "The Anchoring Effect." At the risk of encouraging readers to become pack rats, author Mark Batterson encourages us to set up physical reminders around us, objects that "anchor," speak to us about God's faithfulness in the past, and thus encourage us for the future as they remind us of WHO God is. He calls these objects "mezuzahs" (in essence, a sign of faith—Google this!) and says that "The Israelites would often use stones to build altars. I use just about anything and everything you can imagine." (page 90)
The concept appeals to me greatly. For example, my husband and I have made it a practice over time to purchase at least one Christmas ornament for every trip we take together, or for significant celebrations we commemorate by going places or doing special things. We started doing this during a very trying time in our married life together, when we celebrated an anniversary by going to Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA. (This was back in the days when we had moved out to the Philadelphia area for a few years.) Money was tight and stress was high. We were homesick and dealing with tremendous heartache.
Our anniversary is December 18th, one week before Christmas. Longwood was gorgeously decorated, both inside the conservatories, and outside on the grounds. In the freezing cold, we walked arm-in-arm, enjoying the elegant light displays and the peace of a clear, starry, Christmastime night. The visit was a balm to our weary souls. That night, we purchased an ornament from the gift shop, a sculpture of a beautiful red cardinal perched upon holly and fir. To this day, each Christmas when I fasten the cardinal to our Christmas tree, I am reminded of that night and the great Prince of Peace who pulled us through that era of our lives.
He is faithful.
We have since drawn our children into our practice. On every vacation, the kiddos help me shop for Christmas ornaments. Then as we decorate our tree, we say, "Oh, remember that trip? That was the time that we...[insert fun memory here]." Christmastime is precious as we bathe in those memories and reflect upon the blessings of God.
A few months ago, when I started this blog, I wanted an ongoing visual reminder of the hope I've had for how God might take this little effort of mine, and the ways in which He might use me in ministry. While right now, I plug away with my studying and writing, praying that this work would bear fruit and help bring people into the Kingdom of God, I have not yet seen that fruit in a tangible way. But I know that even as I wait, God is working WITHIN ME. I am encouraged by these daily reminders on my wall:
The Lord promises wisdom. He promises power. He wants us to earnestly seek Him in this, and cause His Kingdom to grow. He wants His word to be spread. My little creative effort with Mod Podge and canvas provides for anyone who enters my home a tangible reminder of the mighty work God wants to do in our lives. It helps push me every day to seek Him, even on those days when I honestly don't feel like it!
Developing an "As If" faith sometimes requires these extra reminders to provide fuel for the fire. Batterson puts a lot of emphasis on tangible things you can do to fuel your faith—in his book, he makes this a thematic element. He calls out optimism and attitude. He suggests writing down life goals, keeping a gratitude journal, developing a thank-you-note habit, and gathering around you anything that will keep your mind focused on the goodness of Jesus Christ, regardless of your circumstances. He says that behaving and thinking "As If" has amazing potential. An "As If" attitude can drive your choices and lead you down mental paths that bring the goodness of God to the world around you. Contrast this with a focus on the things that go wrong...which do you think is better for your faith? For the faith of those you encounter every day?
Who Does God Say You Are?
Developing your "As If" faith requires understanding who God says you are.
I wanted to touch on this idea because we live in a world that has a lot of really awful things to say about us. If you spend enough time out there, you are going to hear that you aren't attractive enough, talented enough, smart enough, rich enough. Remember, though, that when Jesus prayed for His disciples, He specifically stated:
John 17: 15-19 (NIV)
"My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; Your Word is truth. As You sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify Myself, that they too may be truly sanctified."
Notice Jesus did not pray that God would remove them from the world. They would be exposed to all the nasty messes the world would dish out. They would be subject to attacks of every kind. "If the world hates you," He said, "keep in mind that it hated Me first." (John 15:18, NIV)
Yes, Jesus prayed for their protection, but more importantly, He prayed that they would be sanctified. To be sanctified is to be set apart for the work of God. It is to be made holy. Jesus was praying that the work of God would be manifest through them so that they could get out into the world and spread the gospel. Anything bad that happened to them at the hands of the world, therefore, served God's larger purpose of bringing people to Him. The world dished out some rotten stuff to the disciples—they suffered and died for the sake of the Kingdom. But those actions of the world, rooted in the attitudes of the world, did NOT express the Truth of God.
Can you imagine if the disciples had used the state of the world to tell them what was real, what was true? The gospel of Jesus Christ would never have been spread! Instead, the disciples, and the Church they founded in Jesus's name, defied the supposed "truth" of the world and fixed their eyes on Jesus. What the world said was of no consequence...the only thing that mattered was what God said.
And what God says is that YOU are more than a conqueror—we get this straight from the Great 8: "we are more than conquerors." (Romans 8:37)
Romans 8:31-34 (NIV)
What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all—how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.
The apostles stubbornly clung to this truth. They held onto it right up to the moment of their deaths. Death for them was not a moment in which they were defeated, but rather it was the moment that ushered them into the presence of the Lord, where we can confidently say that He embraced them with a hearty, "Well done, good and faithful servant" (Matthew 25:23) and rewarded them for their faith and perseverance.
Dear friend, if you struggle in this world, if there's depression or anxiety or pain or frustration or grief, if there are unthinkable circumstances from which you need deliverance, remember that God has promised you that NONE of that will be wasted. The Lord will work it all for good. Take up the attitude that even though you have trouble in the world (John 16:33), this trouble does NOT nullify the promises of God to you. His faithfulness to you endures.
Focus on who Jesus says you are. Keep your eyes on Him...keep your attitude positive and embrace the optimism that nothing the world dishes out will cause God to stumble. The enemy wants to discourage you and keep you from being a force for the Kingdom of God. But if you STUBBORNLY take up an "As If" faith, trust me when I tell you that even the slightest, weakest prayers you pray will cause some destruction upon the gates of hell. That is the POWER the Holy Spirit wants to give you, if only you will set your mind on Him.
I'll end here with Batterson's words:
"When you're in trouble, take heart: He has overcome the world. [John 16:33] When you're lonely, don't forget: He will never leave you nor forsake you. [Deuteronomy 31:6] When you feel like you've lost your way, remember: He orders your footsteps. [Proverbs 16:9]" (page 97)
You are more than a conqueror!
Prayer
Father God, thank You for the "As If" faith that You can give to us. Thank You that You have provided wisdom for us so that we can nurture it. I pray for anyone who reads these words, that they would find inspiration in them, and new resolve to become stronger and stronger in You through their own attitude and focus. I pray that they will be able to get their eyes off of the world and onto You. May this become a discipline for them, even when their feelings oppose it, or their circumstances fight against it. Bless them, Lord, with the "As If" faith that can make such a huge difference in Your Kingdom. May we all, as Your servants, be granted opportunities to snatch others from the fire. May we not shrink back from the tasks You have laid before us, but may we find in You Wisdom and Power. I ask all this in the beautiful and mighty name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen!"
We live for the applause of nail-scarred hands.
We long to hear, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.'"
If: Trading Your If Only Regrets for God's What If Possibilities, page 99
I admit to you that this blog post comes from a very sensitive area of deep pain for me. For much of my life, I have felt that I was not good enough, not worthy to be called into ministry for the Lord.
As a teenager, I found myself intrigued by this idea of a call from God. I'd go to summer church camp every year and hear testimonies from my young peers about being called to be a pastor, being called into missions. I wanted that, but I also knew that it wasn't "in me," somehow. Later, as I attended a Christian liberal arts college, I'd see students of Biblical Studies who knew that they were pursuing a call of God, while I just floundered around, wondering what to do with the rest of my life. The pieces never did fit properly.
I wanted a calling.
It is not that I never sought God's will for my life. I did, and I did often. I just never seemed to hear from Him. To this day, I have a lot of questions about that, but as my life zig-zagged until I landed in my present circumstance, I grew convinced that the greatest thing I could do for my own peace and sanity would be to trust Him.
My favorite Christian band, Mercy Me, has a song on the radio right now called "Dear Younger Me." Indulge me as I quote the lyrics:
Dear younger me
Where do I start
If I could tell you everything that I have learned so far
Then you could be
One step ahead
Of all the painful memories still running thru my head
I wonder how much different things would be
Dear younger me,
Dear younger me
I cannot decide
Do I give some speech about how to get the most out of your life
Or do I go deep
And try to change
The choices that you’ll make cuz they’re choices that made me
I have often had the same thoughts as this songwriter...what course corrections might I have made when I was younger if I only knew then what I know now?
Who I am today is made up of what I was and did yesterday. Is that all a part of God's plan?
Perhaps these questions and observations simply serve as a distraction. Yet there is comfort and peace in knowing that regardless of the zigs and zags life takes—the moments of deep grief and ache, and the moments of success and triumph—God holds it all in the palm of His hand, and He uses every bit of it to shape us, to form us into a vessel for His purpose.
The one thing I would be inclined to tell my younger self, is that no matter what the circumstance, you have the power to choose to live "as if"… Living with an "as if" mentality is powerful. Batterson cites a few vital "as ifs":
“Pray as if everything depended on God. Work as if everything depended on you.”
– Saint Augustine
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is.”
– Albert Einstein
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
“Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can be and should be and he will become as he can be and should be.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If my younger self had only understood the power of living life with this mentality, perhaps my faith would have grown stronger, quicker. Perhaps my prayer life would have been more grounded.
Perhaps...it may not be terribly productive to look back and allow condemnation to overtake one's self, but reflection and comparison of the past with the present can provide insight and help deepen wisdom. The Lord takes all things and works them together for our good (Romans 8:28).
I'm going to split this "As If Faith" segment into a few blog posts—I'm not sure how many. This portion of Batterson's book is powerful...as I just stated, living "as if" is itself quite powerful. It can be life-changing. I therefore want to really take some time with it. I hope you will stick with me as we explore the "as if" concept.
If I knew then what I know now
Condemnation would’ve had no power
My joy my pain would’ve never been my worth
If I knew then what I know now
Would’ve not been hard to figure out
What I would’ve changed if I had heard
Dear younger me
It’s not your fault
You were never meant to carry this beyond the cross
Dear younger me
You are holy
You are righteous
You are one of the redeemed
Set apart a brand new heart
You are free indeed
Every mountain every valley
Thru each heartache you will see
Every moment brings you closer
To who you were meant to be
Dear younger me, dear younger me
– Dear Younger Me, Mercy Me
Prayer
Father, I thank You that You do indeed hold every moment of our lives in the palm of Your hand. Thank You for the richness of this life lived following You. Thank You that I can cast every care upon You (1 Peter 5:7). Thank You that You collect every tear (Psalm 56:8) and every prayer (Revelation 5:8)...thank You that absolutely nothing of my life is wasted. What comfort, what peace, and what joy I take in this knowledge.
Lord, I lift up anyone who reads these words in this blog post. I pray for them, that if they, too, come to this subject from a place of deep pain, that You would bless them with the assurance of Your love and Your ability to use absolutely every circumstance, every moment from their past, every event of their present, to build a terrific purpose for their lives, to further Your kingdom, to see souls saved and people snatched from the fire (Jude 1:23). This is the greatest prayer that we have, that You would use us to usher people into Your kingdom, rescuing them from the coming wrath and an eternity without You.
I worship You, my Father, for You are holy, You are righteous, You are loving. You never, ever give up on us. You delight in us. Nothing in your economy is ever, ever wasted. You make our feet like the feet of a deer on high places. We are steadied in You. We are joyful in You. (Habakkuk 3:19)
Go before us in all our circumstances, making us more like You every day. Encourage the reader of these words. May these words be a fragrant offering to You, Lord. If there is any person who reads these words that does not know You and has not placed their faith and trust in you, I pray that they will recognize their need of You, and that they will come to you, fully submitting their life to You. I ask all these things in the precious name of Jesus, Amen.
