The Best Gift

I was reminded by this little clip that the gift Jesus gives at Christmas is much better than anything Santa ever dreamed of giving. Take some time to celebrate the Gift by enjoying Him today! Merry Christmas! ~Jon


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aKEkzh0Inw

Did You Notice That Key Change?

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

This continues to be a season of transition. God is sweetly reminding me that He is orchestrating my life and bringing about changes in His time, not mine. In this article from Ron Bergthold, he translates transition into musical terms and re-emphasizes that we must stay in step with God to embrace each change as He brings it.

Lord, prepare us for what You have in store. Help us turn from the old key and rise with You to the new key with the passion that can only come from You, Holy Spirit.

~Jon


Did You Notice That Key Change?
by Ron Bergthold

How many professional trombonists does it take to change a light bulb? (Answer: None. Professional trombonists can’t afford light bulbs.)

Wrong notes are a fact of life. Though we obviously play more of them when the music is difficult, sometimes we play them when we are distracted or not paying attention. Interestingly, it seems that one wrong note inspires others. And when I start playing a lot of wrong notes, it is often because I missed a key change.

As a brass player, keys with a few flats are easier to play than those with many sharps, but I can adapt to the key of B if I need to. The problem comes when key changes are made often or unexpectedly. Some very good composers use key changes liberally, and as we struggle to continually transition through one of these pieces (and likely play a lot of wrong notes), we tend to question the wisdom and necessity of any key change at all!

Transitions within our lives also seem to raise the frequency and severity of wrong “life notes,” those stressful conflicts that beg for resolution. We immediately recognize that something is not as it should be, but then struggle to know how to fix it. The source of wrong notes may be viewed as good (a new baby), bad (a bout with cancer), or simply different (a new job), but we can always feel the tension or discord. Sometimes, being more at ease with the old key, we decide to continue playing notes comfortable to us, but then hear even more grating sounds result. We begin to suspect that it must just be someone else’s problem, or maybe even a mistake of the arranger. But we really need to check the key!

God is our Master Arranger who writes in a perfect key that is completely aligned with His Word. He lovingly crafts a life score for each of us, intended to teach us who He is and thus to draw us closer to Him. When we become a Christian, we become awakened to this new key and begin a life-long journey towards knowing Him more fully.
2 Corinthians 5:17 describes those in Christ as having become “…a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

Our main peril is the old and much more comfortable key. We try to make sense of the new notes, but in the old key. If we have a disagreement with a coworker or friend, we wonder why we can’t resolve it quickly, even after we read that the love God has for us is patient (1 Corinthians 13:4). We wonder why we always have to keep dealing with the same issues from this person, even after God explains that we should not be keeping a record of those wrongs in the first place (1 Corinthians 13:5). We begin to question why we should even have to put up with this person at all, and thereby completely miss our God-arranged notes of helping that person begin to understand who God is.

Regardless of the source of tensions we experience in life, it is imperative to see if we are in the right key - that is, aligned with His Word. Being imperfect musicians, we will miss some notes along the way, but we will also begin to acquire a new comfort and joy in playing in this wonderful new key. He designed our life not so that we could simply play it easily the first time, but that He would reveal, and we would receive, a portion of His heart with the playing of each new note.

For the TRBC Orchestra on November 25, 2008

Merry Christmas

Make a Smilebox postcard

The Jewel Of Worship

"Man was made to worship God...The purpose of God in sending His Son to die and rise and live and be at the right hand of God the Father was that He might restore to us the missing jewel, the jewel of worship; that we might come back and learn to do again that which we were created to do in the first place--worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, to spend our time in awesome wonder and adoration of God, feeling and expressing it, and letting it get into our labors and doing nothing except as an act of worship to Almighty God through His Son Jesus Christ." - A.W. Tozer, Worship: The Missing Jewel, pg 7-8

Thankful

Thanksgiving Day is winding down for another year and I am being inspired by a door. Let me explain...

We are at my parents house in White Hall, Arkansas. This is not the house I grew up in, but my folks built this house when I was in college, so there are lots of memories here and I am very familiar with it. They are currently adding an addition to the house that includes two new bathrooms, a large quilting/exercise room, and a good amount of extra storage space. It's going to be really nice (when it's finished)! Right now, it is very much still under construction. There were workers here when we arrived on Wednesday night making sure that the bathrooms would be functional, but otherwise, there are still quite a few things to be done before they can totally move into this new space. To get to this new place, currently we walk through the door that used to lead to the small guest bathroom that Suzanne and I have always used in this house. When that door is closed, it looks just like it always has...but when you open that familiar door, you enter a whole new living space.

This is the door that is inspiring me.

Sitting on the couch, I look at the closed door and in my minds eye, I know what is behind it...but in reality it is being changed day by day. It's being prepared by skillful builders for fruitful labors and increased value for my family. The architect drew out meticulous plans and the ones building the addition are carrying them out to the letter. This is what God is doing in our lives right now. We are staring at a door. We think we know what lies behind it. We think we can predict what God is up to, but we fall woefully short. Our predictions, regretfully, are many times based on our expectations of people and our interpretations of circumstances. God knows what is being prepared behind the door of the next season and He is preparing every detail! Our job is not to figure it all out, but to walk through the door by faith.

"For we are God's [own] handiwork (His workmanship), recreated in Christ Jesus, [born anew] that we may do those good works which God predestined (planned beforehand) for us [taking paths which He prepared ahead of time], that we should walk in them [living the good life which He prearranged and made ready for us to live]." - Ephesians 2:10 (Amplified Bible)

Thanking God For The Door (and what's on the other side),

~Jon

No Time To Cower

This is a timely word. Hear it and move ahead. ~Jon

No Time to Cower
When days are desperate, be bold and move forward, for Jesus' sake.
Gordon MacDonald posted 11/17/2008 07:21AM

Wild times lead people to pursue spiritual realities. Look for an uptick in prayer, spiritual friendships, greater curiosity about what the Bible says about life's priorities. Wild times humble the arrogant and acquaint us with the struggles of the poor. Compassion and generosity take on a new meaning. That's not too bad.

There are two possibilities here. One is that I simply don't know what I'm talking about, and it's full steam ahead into business-as-usual. The other? That these conditions do indeed call for a courageous response like Foch's approach to turbulent times: "I attack." A bold advance.
That's what I pray the Christian movement will do. Not retrenchment! But a bold advance involves dramatic change: in leadership, in ways of doing Jesus' work, in innovative new thought about the meaning and impact of the gospel. Again, I say: attack!

What could that possibility mean to people of spiritual influence in these days? Several experimental ideas:

Let's go back to the Bible and rediscover what godly people said and did when the sky was falling in their generation. New insights, possibly?

Let's make sure we have something substantial to say to those who are victimized by this economic tsunami: those losing their jobs, those who thought they were economically secure in their old age and discovered they aren't, and youth who might be fearing that there's no dream out there for them.

Let's reappraise our priorities of generosity and make sure that the giving-dollar goes to efforts that advance Christian ministry in enduring and deepening ways. Enough of the silly ways the Christian-dollar has been raised and wasted.

Let's think repentantly about how a lot of us have allowed ourselves to be caught up in a global financial system that was largely based on greed and falsehood. Lots of Christian organizations are crying about what has been lost because of this flawed financial system. But we ought not to forget it was that same system that helped those organizations get a lot of what they had. What goes up often comes down.

Maybe it's time to seek new ways of doing Christian service, ways less dependent upon money and bricks and mortar and more dependent upon unadulterated spiritual power. The early Christian movement, it seems to me, knew a lot about this.

We need to ask ourselves if we have any kind of message rising from the words and life of Jesus that would be significant to those in our larger world who thought they had a better way than Jesus' way. Revival time?

Confession: I have never been a great proponent of "revivals" because too many of them (the modern ones anyway) seemed contrived. But maybe—just maybe—we're at the brink of a real one.The great 1859 revival that touched America and large parts of Europe was anything but contrived. And that revival was framed in an economic disaster that was as bad as this one, maybe worse.

An American by the name of Jeremiah Lamphere suggested opening the doors of churches at noon each day for people to come and pray. Soon churches were flooded by people on their knees. Many found Jesus. You could say that they organized their lives around Christ, not cash.
In a sense Landphere said, "I attack." Maybe Marshal Foch got his idea from him.

Gordon MacDonald is editor at large of Leadership and interim president of Denver Seminary in Colorado. Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today International/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal

When God's Will Doesn't Make Sense

This is a hard word. Especially if you have prayed for one thing and gotten something else. I don't claim to understand God's way, but I know He is good. So I choose to stand in awe of Him and rejoice in who He is even when I don't understand.

Praising The King Who Reigns,
~Jon


When God’s Will Is That His Will Not Be Done
Meditations on 1 Samuel 2:22-25
By John Piper June 10, 1997

1 Samuel 2:22-25
"Now Eli was very old; and he heard all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who served at the doorway of the tent of meeting. And he said to them, “Why do you do such things, the evil things that I hear from all these people? “No, my sons; for the report is not good which I hear the Lord’s people circulating. If one man sins against another, God will mediate for him; but if a man sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him?” But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for the Lord desired to put them to death."

It was too late for Eli’s sons. They had crossed the line of no return. The sentence had been given by the Lord. They were to be slain by the Lord. And they were slain, according to 1 Samuel 4:11. There are three implications of this text for our lives.

1. It is possible to sin so long and so grievously that the Lord will not grant repentance.

That is why Paul said that after all our pleading and teaching, “God may grant them repentance”—not, “will grant them repentance” (2 Timothy 2:25). There is a “too late” in the life of sin. As it says of Esau in Hebrews 12:17, “He found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears.” He was forsaken; he could not repent.

This does not mean that those who truly repent even after a whole lifetime of sinning cannot be saved. They certainly can be, and will be! God is staggeringly merciful. Witness the thief on the cross: “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Jesus said, “The one who comes to me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37). But no one knows where the point of no return is. The deciding factor is not a set number of years of sinning or a particular kind of sin. God alone knows in the case of each person where the line is crossed. This is a call for making haste to reconcile with God (Hebrews 3:15), and a call to be vigilant against willful and protracted sinning (Hebrews 10:26).

2. God may not permit a sinning person to do what is right.

“But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for the Lord desired to put them to death.” Listening to the voice of their father was the right thing to do. But they would not. Why? “For the Lord desired to put them to death.” The reason given for why they did not obey their father was that God had other purposes for them, and had given them up to sinning and death. This shows that there are times when the will of God’s decree is different from the will of God’s command. He commanded, “Children, obey your parents.” But in this case he willed that instead of obedience they persist in their sin and be slain. God is not sinning in this will of decree. He is ordering things so that sin continue for holy and just purposes, which is not sin on God’s part.

3. Sometimes our prayers for God’s revealed will to be done will not be done because God has decreed something different for holy and wise purposes.

I suppose that Eli prayed for his sons to be changed. This is how he should have prayed. God commanded that children obey their parents. So we should pray that they obey. But God had decreed that Hophni and Phineas not obey, but rather be slain. When something like this happens (which we do not ordinarily know ahead of time) while we are crying out to God for change, the answer of God is not: “I don’t love you.” Nor is it, “I don’t hear you.” Nor is it even, “I don’t approve of your prayers. I do!” Rather the answer is (even when we can’t hear it): “I have wise and holy purposes in not overcoming this sin and not granting repentance. You do not see these purposes now. Trust me. I know what I am doing. I love you.”

Submitted to God,
Pastor John

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