christmas in july

Our friend, Laurin Makohon, was here all weekend from Atlanta to help Julie and I write the workbook for Idol Addiction.  We had a great weekend and got a lot accomplished.  To God be the glory and thank you for praying for us.  I just love Laurin's heart for Jesus.  Today's blog takes us back to a devo Laurin wrote back in December.  It blessed me and made me feel so special as a child of the King who came to earth to save me.  As you read, put yourself in the place of the one He came to rescue.  Thank you, Laurin, for bringing your heart and gifts to the Idol Addiction project.  

Merry Christmas, child of the King!
Today we celebrate most audacious move of all: The King of the Universe coming to earth. The Creator stepping into His creation. All because of His great love . . . for you.
Like the lyrics in "O Holy Night," may your soul feel its worth this Christmas Day. God wanted you, so He came to earth. I hope that sinks in today and every day. And as it does, may your richly-loved heart rise up to praise our beautiful Savior.
You are loved by the deepest of Loves, child of the King.
May you and yours have a very merry Christmas. :o)
Laurin
Here's this week's devo:
When Jesus tabernacled among us, He unveiled a piece of God's heart. Child of the King, you are incredibly precious to Him.
[READ] Only a couple of people have seen the Lord in Heaven and returned to tell the tale. God allowed the apostle John to see His throne room, the place where His glory dwells. And what John saw was overwhelming.
Revelation 4 tells us that a rainbow glistening like emeralds circles the Lord's throne; from the throne comes flashes of lightning and peals of thunder; before the throne is a sea of glass, as clear as crystal. Surrounding the throne are magnificent creatures proclaiming:
"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,' who was, and is, and is to come" (Revelation 4:8).
The throne room is the place that's worthy for God to dwell. Everything in the throne room is perfect, as it should be for a holy and perfect God.
Yet when God Himself was born, He was wrapped in strips of cloth and placed in a feeding trough for animals. It was a long way from His throne room.
[THINK] Why would God exchange His throne for a manger? Why would He leave beauty, perfection, and glory for the messiness, the humanity, and the earthiness of Earth?
Because He loves us. God left His throne room and came to Earth to rescue us because He knew that if He didn't, we would live forever apart from Him. He loves us too much to ever let that happen.
Our books and movies are filled with stories of heroes who go to great lengths to rescue the ones they love. The heroes encounter tremendous obstacles, fight dangerous battles, and even lay down their lives for the sake of rescuing their beloved. And when we read or see these stories, our hearts light up. Something in us rises up and responds.
Why? Because there's something incredibly beautiful about being loved that deeply. We long for someone to see the beauty and value in us and to be so passionate about us that they're willing to do anything to be with us. We long to be that seen, that known, that adored.
Child of the King, that story is your story. You are the Beloved who the Hero loves so deeply that He went to great lengths to rescue you. All of those lesser stories are arrows pointing to the Greatest Story, the Truest Story. Your story.
Scripture tells us that God did all of this for the joy set before him (Hebrews 12:2). The joy set before Him was the joy He'd feel when the two of you were reunited forever, never to be parted again.
[LIVE] In the Christmas carol O Holy Night, the lyrics say: "Long lay the world in sin and error pining/'Til He appeared and the soul felt its worth."
As you hear Christmas sermons and Christmas songs this season, let your soul feel its worth. You are deeply, intensely, passionately loved. Your God sees great beauty and value in you. You are so valuable to Him that He left His perfect throne, surrendering Himself to the limitations of a human life, surrendering to a plan that would lead to His death and your rescue. You are deeply loved, child of the King. May your soul feel its worth this Christmas.

For reflection:
 Look up the lyrics to O Holy Night and spend some time worshiping the King who left His throne to rescue you.

Write phrases from the song that speak to you in your journal.

Praise Him for rescuing you every day when you cry out, "Who will rescue me?"  Ask Him to help you stop trying to rescue yourself!

If you want to know more about Laurin here is a link.  And by the way, if you have kids the age of 12-20 her email devos from youthwalk magazine are wonderful!  

http://www.walkthru.org/our-team/711-editorial-team

the cure for gospel deficit

"I'm learning that the more I see of the gospel, the more I see how little I see it. For every inch gained in gospel understanding, I gain a foot in seeing how little I grasp it. I peer over the ledge of grace and see a new hundred-foot drop, which enables me to see also that the cliff extends another mile beyond that.

There is an entire psychological substructure that, due to the Fall, is a near-constant emission of relational leveraging, fear-stuffing, nervousness, score-keeping, neurotic controlling, anxiety-festering silliness that is not something I say or even think so much as something I breathe. You can smell this on people, though some of us are good at hiding it. And I'm seeing more and more, bit by bit, that if you trace this fountain of scurrying haste, in all its various manifestations, down to the root, you don't find childhood difficulties or a Myers-Briggs diagnosis or Freudian impulses. You find gospel deficit. All the worry and dysfunction and resentment is the natural fruit of living in a mental universe of Law. The gospel really is what brings rest, wholeness, flourishing, shalom---that existential calm that for brief, gospel-sane moments settles over you and lets you see for a moment that in Christ you truly are invincible. The verdict really is in; nothing can touch you.

From another angle: Living by law, which we all believe we're not really doing (those silly Galatians!) is deep and subtle and pervasive. More pervasive than the occasional moments of self-conscious works-righteousness would indicate. Those moments of self-knowledge are indeed gifts of grace and not to be ignored. But they are only the visible tip of an invisible iceberg. They are surface symptoms. Law-ish-ness (in Gal 3:10 Paul uses the phrase, literally, "those who are of works of law") is by its very nature undetectable because it's natural, not unnatural, to us. Feels normal.

But the gospel calls us to believe the unbelievable: The radiant sun of divine favor is shining down on me, and while the clouds of my sin and failure may darken my feelings ofthat favor, the favor cannot be lessened any more than a tiny, wispy cloud can threaten the existence of the sun. The sun is shining. It cannot stop. Clouds, no clouds---sin, no sin---the sun is shining on me. Because of Another.

The Lord looks on his children with utterly unflappable affection. At one level, I believe, there is a dimension of affection in the fatherly heart of God that kicks into gear precisely when his children fail. I am not saying the more we sin, the more he loves us. But on analogy with human fatherhood, which I know from the inside as a father of three, I can say a latent part of my heart is engaged when I see my son sin. Perhaps it is also true of the Lord. We read the most amazing things in the Old Testament prophets, the doom and gloom guys of the Bible, as they struggle to find language to portray Yahweh's hesed, his covenant love. His compassion "grows warm and tender"---remember, it was on the heels of recounting Israel's spiritual fornication (not faithfulness) that we read that in Hosea.

Be Who You Are

How strange the gospel is. In one sense I am not restored. How painfully obvious. Sin clings, weaknesses and failings abound. Anxiety, anger, idolatry. But in another sense, a deeper sense, I am restored. Perfectly, already. Simul justus et peccator. Deeper Magic from before the dawn of time. It really is true.

According to the sweep of New Testament teaching, the latter now defines me. That is the fundamental reality defining my existence. New birth, new life. Eternal life, as John says---the life of the Age to Come, of the New Realm---has already begun for me. The eschaton longed for in the prophets is here. And by faith, not by sight, I have been swept up into it. Justified: my end-time judgment has already happened and the verdict is acquittal, because I am in Christ, in whose cross the end-time judgment of condemnation was borne. In the middle of history rather than the end. The restored Dane Ortlund therefore trumps, outstrips, swallows up, the unrestored Dane Ortlund. Not the other way around.

As a Christian I'm in the process of bringing my sense of self, my Identity with a capital 'I', the ego, my swirling internal world of fretful panicky-ness arising out of that gospel deficit, into alignment with the more fundamental truth. Richard Hays argues in The Moral Vision of the New Testament that the essence of the New Testament ethic is "Be who you now are." There it is. You are this new being, fundamentally, as one united to Christ. So wake up tomorrow and do whatever you have to---with a Bible, singing, prayer, meditation, a friend, listening to a sermon, a walk around the block---do whatever you must to start your day in gospel alignment. William Hulme, the Lutheran professor and counselor, says inPastoral Care and Counseling (Augsburg, 1981) that the gospel allows us to bring our subjective guilt feelings in line with our objective guilt eradication.

I am a sinner. I sin. Not just in the past but in the present. But in Christ I'm not a sinner but cleansed, whole. And as I step out into my day in soul-calm because of that free gift of cleansing, I find that actually, strangely, startlingly---I begin to live out practically what I already am positionally. I delight to love others. It takes effort and requires the sobering of suffering. But love cannot help but be kindled by gospel rest.

How can you possibly stiff-arm this? Repent of your small thoughts of God's love, your resistance to swallowing Christ's atoning work whole. Repent and let him love you."  Dane Ortland




For Reflection:


1.  Write the quotes in red on an index card or sticky note and put somewhere where you will see it every day this week.


2.  Read Isaiah 61.  Write out the descriptions (that were prophesied years before Christ's birth) of what the good news of the gospel proclaimed.  Write in first person.  


3.  Preach the gospel to yourself this week...."So wake up tomorrow and do whatever you have to---with a Bible, singing, prayer, meditation, a friend, listening to a sermon, a walk around the block---do whatever you must to start your day in gospel alignment."

RESTORE

We went to a seminar taught by the VP of International Association of Biblical Counselors this past week.  The seminar was actually about assigning homework to counselees.  As he discussed the importance of work done by the individual outside of meeting times, I was so encouraged by the work we’ve been doing on our own outside of gospel group meeting times.  In short, the purpose of personal reflection time is so that we keep preaching the gospel to ourselves in different ways even when we aren’t meeting together.  The questions you’ve gone over with the Lord in private and then in community are invaluable to gospel growth.  Meditation of Scripture, prayer and music also have played a vital part in my spiritual gospel journey.  Many of us, growing up in the Bible belt have been “over-churched” and “under-gospeled”.  Small group homework in the past has been just one more item on my to-do list as I sought to sanctify myself.  Now I see it as a one on one counseling time with the Maker of the Universe and also the Maker of me!  I’ve learned the unbelievable value of searching for more gospel in the Word and with other resources.  It’s truly a rescue to my soul....finding that the deeper He leads me into the gospel the deeper there is to go.  So, be encouraged with the individual journey....the day to day...secret places you go to with God.  Don’t neglect.  As soon as I neglect the fight I sense myself running back to those broken cisterns...forgetting that the Well is there. Life quickly becomes about me. 

The benefit of individual reflection time with God was that it brings continual restoration to the soul in between meeting times.  The word RESTORE keeps coming up in my life over and over so my ears perked up as the speaker shared about this word.  He told us that the word RESTORE in the Greek and Hebrew in the Bible was a word that was commonly used for the repairing of torn fishing nets or the setting of a broken bone for proper healing.  The definition being that of helping something that is broken get back to the way it was originally designed to function.  Of course, I remembered Eden....pre-fall....I wasn’t made for this broken world.  I am broken and need to be RESTORED.  Sanctification is the process in which God is restoring me to my original design and one day, upon eternity, we will all be there.  To Him be all the glory.

How do you need to be RESTORED today?  Our lists are a mile long.  Who will rescue me? Deliver me? Redeem me?  Save me?  RESTORE me?  My loving heavenly Father is doing that in you right now, even as you read this blog.  

Acts 2:21  “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” 

This is not only to be saved upon the day of our salvation but to be saved daily from running to my idols and false saviors.  

Run to your Father for rescue even now.

Listen to the following song, “You Bring RESTORATION”.  Close your eyes and pray as you beg the 
Father to RESTORE your soul in Jesus.

For Reflection in your journal:

1.  What idols and false saviors exist in your life today?  How do these false saviors manifest themselves on a daily basis?  What emotions are exposed as you process this? (left side of the chart)

2.  Recount how Christ provides deliverance from Satan, sin, death and idols.  Write down how this good news plays out in your life personally? (right side of the chart)

3.  What “evidence of grace” do you see in your gospel relationships?  How did you speak the gospel into someone else’s life this past week and how will you relate to                                  someone on a gospel level in the week to come?

4.  Go ahead and read Isaiah 61 this week reflecting on the word RESTORE.  We will  revisit this next week on the blog.

the gospel for women

After last weeks gospel blog about the slave girl, 
we will continue with the theme of freedom.

6 ways the gospel frees women

by Gloria Furman

I was reading Galatians and felt a great wave of refreshment wash over my soul as I thought about how Christ’s fulfillment of God’s perfect law means freedom.

Jesus frees us from so much and He frees us to so much.

I pray you’ll be encouraged as you read over this short list of ways the gospel frees women…

1 – The gospel frees us from laying the burden of our happiness on our husband or children. (or the possibility of one day having a husband/children) As we are stunned by the mercy of Jesus who willingly bore a cross for our sins, our souls are released to find our joy foremost in God.

2 – The gospel frees us from hurling hostile criticism over personal preferences like homeschooling, epidurals, (adoption) and the Tooth Fairy. As we are united with one another through Jesus’ death and resurrection, grace frees us to affirm and appreciate women who hold different views.

3 – The gospel frees us from feeling the shame of scrutiny from other women. As we begin to understand that the cross demonstrates the magnitude of God’s love for sinners, we discover our Father’s approval of us in Christ is worth far more to us than the opinions of others.

4 – The gospel frees us from the futility of finding new things to brag about. As we see that every good thing is an undeserved gift from our gracious God, we delight in humility and boast only in Jesus’ death and resurrection which purchased for us the ultimate gift of fellowship with our Father.

5 – The gospel frees us from our exhausting preoccupation with style and beauty. As we become more conscious of the eternal promises of God which are guaranteed in Christ, the less captivated we are by fleeting things.

6 – The gospel frees us from the chains of anxiety over our past, present and future– which includes even trivial, everyday things. As we consider God’s unstoppable, sovereign, redeeming grace in Christ, our hearts are bolstered with hope and courage regardless of our circumstances.

These are just a few of the ways we have freedom in Christ!


"You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."
                                         John 8:32

“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” 

John 8:36

When I use to dream of a life so lovely
There'd be no room for tears
Now letting go, yeah letting go
Is the hardest part, it's the hardest part

There is no fight left
On the inside
But maybe that's where I should be

lyrics from "No Fight Left" by JJ Heller

(Thanks for sharing, Melissa!)

~As you watch the video below you will see slides of  many women/girls.  Which of these pictures do your most relate to?  Why? The most important thing about you is how you view God.

For your journal:

~Add 4 more ways that the gospel frees women to the above list.  Write out the struggle then write out how Jesus comes to set the captives free in light of the struggle.  

Email a GFF (gospel friend forever) or me and share these ways.  We could write 100 ways the gospel frees ~women!

am i a slave girl?

Upon arriving at a slave auction Abraham Lincoln saw a young black girl up on the block waiting to be sold. He was moved with compassion, so he placed a bid and won her. After purchasing her, Lincoln told the young disbelieving girl that she was free.

In her surprise she said, “What does that mean?”

“It means you are free,” he replied.

“Does that mean,” she said, “I can say whatever I want to say?”

“Yes, my dear, you can say whatever you want to say.”

“Does that mean I can be whatever I want to be?”

“Yes, you can be whatever you want to be.”

“Does that mean I can go wherever I want to go?”

“Yes, you can go wherever you want to go.”

And the girl, with tears streaming down her face, said, “Then I will go with you.” 

This little story reminds us that, just like this young girl, we too have been set free.

John 15:15  No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

Galatians 5:1

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

"Paul writes that when God reconciles us to Himself, He calls us out of death and darkness into life and light. He makes those who were once strangers and aliens sons and daughters.

He did not just enter our story, but He also grafted us into the grand story of redemption. This story is one of a loving God setting the captives free.

You and I were once far from God, dead in our sins and trespasses and without hope. But God, being rich in His mercy and love, reconciled us to Himself through Christ. We have been set free by the blood of the cross.

This means that you and I have been set free, our response is to cling to the One who set us free – our response is to use our stories to paint a picture of freedom to those around us."  Trevor Joy

Tyler and I attended a conference at The Village Church in Dallas a couple of months ago.  The praise team was led by Michael Bleecker.  We sang this song before every session and I was so moved by it.  He told me that it is an old hymn and they had done this new arrangement around the words.  You can purchase the entire album on itunes.

Journal Time...

1.  Write down the comparison between a slave and a free man.  Are you living life as if you were slave to the Law or purchased by His love?

2.  What are the emotions (exposure) that arise in you when you are living like a slave girl?

3. Write this verse out in first person..."It is for freedom that Christ has set us free."  Choose a situation/relationship you are presently in and write out how it would look differently if you were acting out your gospel found freedom rather than slavery.

4.  What emotions arise within you when you are living free?

Stop now and praise and thank Him for your new found freedom.