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No Room
At The Inn!
.
. . there was no room for them in the inn. Luke 2:7
This time of year we always devote
a few minutes to thinking of why the Christ-child had to
be born in a stable and laid in a manger. And we even
give some thought to the idea that many people today
have 'no room' for the risen Christ in their lives.
For just a moment, let's give
thought to reasons that there were and are today "no
rooms in the inn." In the time of the census the answer
is fairly simple. There were crowds of people coming
into Bethlehem to register because their family line led
through that city. It was a simple matter of too many
people for the spaces available. Mary and Joseph arrived
too late to reserve a room of their own.
Today we realize that people are
not crowding the inns of our hearts, but many things
still can crowd Christ out. Even as Christians, we must
take care that we do not crowd Christ into the last few
minutes of our day or into the quickie first few minutes
before we jump into the shower. It is easy to do. We are
easily tempted to hustle through our 'devvotions' or our
'time with God' and then go our busy way. Why does this
happen? What things cause us to have our hearts and
lives so crowded that we cannot spend more time with
Christ in solitude?
I
can think of my own days and come up with a list.
You...think of yours.
I
tended to have: the hustle of getting dressed and ready
for work; getting my animals taken care of and set up
for the day; I had to get a bite to eat or at least a
cup of coffee, collect all the things in need for work
that day; and get in the car ( a rather lengthy task
with crutches) and on the road to be at work on time.
Then, at work there were the
myriad of tasks that filled my day--staff problems, kid
discipline problems, parent meetings, staff meetings,
questions regarding administration of the center, the
finances, answering questions, answering phones, making
decisions on an endless number of endless matters.
Suddenly it was quitting time and I wasn't finished yet,
so I stayed a while longer.
Then I had to rush home---perhaps
hurrying to stop for gas, stop at the post office, stop
at the bank before they closed. When I got home I had
the dogs to let out, my work clothes to get out of, the
dogs to let back in, supper to get started. messages to
check, phone calls to return, supper to get eaten and
finally a couple minutes to zonk out and relax. Of
course. sometime during this evening I took time to hop
on the computer, answer messages, check out the boards
and respond to posts, And naturally, there was always
CSI or Numbers, or Criminal Minds to catch on TV if I
had any left over time to fill. If I didn't specifically
make time it was much too easy to put off communication
with the Lord until tomorrow.
Even after retirement, if I'm not
careful my day can slip by with a lot of futzy tasks and
suddenly, Jesus is there in the shadows, where I've let
the things of my day push him aside.
I've been honest. You try to do
the same thing. Let's vow to ourselves and each other
not to let the busyness of this life even the legitimate
busyness...push Jesus aside and make the inns of our
hearts too crowded to provide room for Him.
Serving Money
Jesus said, "No one can serve two
masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other,
or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and Money." (Matthew 6:24)
What does it mean to serve Money?
I'm sure you've discovered,
perhaps the hard way, that "no payments until June of
next year" is a seductive way of getting you to purchase
what you know you cannot afford. The frequency in which
we get bombarded with offers of free credit cards is
another indication of the seriousness of this situation.
One thing you can be sure of is that no one is going to
offer you a free credit card in hopes that you will pay
them off on time every month. They want you to charge
them up and then pay them the interest each month.
I
recently read that American shoppers are currently
carrying a whopping $900 billion in credit-card debt. If
you are continually running the rat race of keeping up
with payments on debt, aren't you really serving Money?
It may take years, along with some sound financial
advisors, to get the financial affairs of many people in
order and under control. Only then will they be free to
serve God again – but it will be worth it.
Debt and credit-card problems seem
to escalate every year around Christmas time. Why?
Because most people do not fully understand the true
meaning of Christmas.
As we approach the very busy
Christmas holidays, I hope you take time to contemplate
what Christmas is really all about. Christmas is NOT
about buying and giving gifts. Christmas is NOT about
trees, blinking lights and decorations. Christmas is NOT
about Santa Clause. Christmas is NOT about family
get-togethers and turkey dinners. What is Christmas
really about?
“For God so loved the world that
he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in
him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
Christmas is about God's gift to
us.
Very few, if any, of the things we
do to celebrate Christmas are spiritual or biblical in
nature. In fact, most of the things we do actually have
pagan origins. Be sure you are celebrating Christmas for
the right reasons – and be sure you are serving God,
instead of Money. You CANNOT serve two masters!
Mary Pondered These
Things In Her Heart
And all they that heard it
wondered at those things which were told them by the
shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered
them in her heart. Luke 2 18 - 19
I
recently again heard the song, "Mary, Did You Know?" As
always it struck a chord in my heart. I read an article
someplace where the writer said, "I don't care what Mary
thought or knew." He was proving a point of some sort.
But I believe that any woman who
has ever held her first born child close in her arms and
looked at the wonder of that tiny face and the delicate
hands can relate directly to the thoughts that must have
been going through Mary's mind as she 'kept all these
things and pondered them in her heart" What overwhelming
wonder that God would reveal her Child's birth to
shepherds in the fields with a heavenly chorus! What a
tremendous awe must have surrounded her to know that she
held the Son of God in her arms, smoothed His silken
hair and kissed His rose-petal skin! What a sense of
humility to feel the responsibility that God had
entrusted to her !
How overwhelming! God sent His
most precious Son, to bear the sins of the world. But He
sent him as a Babe in a manger that He might grow up and
live as a Man. So that he might be Our Example, [ in all
points tested as we are yet be without sin.] Hebrews
4:15
Take a minute to go watch the
video CLICK
HERE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1oHJR2g7Tw
And think about the words:
"Mary, Did you know. . .
That your baby boy has
walked where angels trod?
And when you kiss your
little boy
You've kissed the face of God"
Words to the song:
Mary, did you know
That your
baby boy will one day walk on water?
Did you know
That your baby boy will save our sons and daughters?
Did you know
That your baby boy has come to make
you new?
This child that youve delivered Will soon
deliver you
Mary, did you know
That your
baby boy will give sight to a blind man?
Did you
know
That your baby boy will calm a storm with his
hand?
Did you know
That your baby boy has walked
where angels trod?
And when you kiss your little boy
Youve kissed the face of god
Mary, did you know?
The blind
will see
The deaf will hear
And the dead will
live again
The lame will leap
The dumb will
speak
The praises of the lamb
Mary, did you know
That your
baby boy is lord of all creation?
Did you know
That your baby boy will one day rules the nations?
Did you know
That your baby boy is heavens
perfect lamb?
This sleeping child youre holding
Is the great I am
---Reba McEntire
An Accepted Time
If there's one thing Satan "wants
to destroy" above all others, it's the urgency of the
gospel. Whereas the word declares, "... I have heard
thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation
have I succoured thee: behold now is the accepted time;
behold, now is the day of salvation" (2 Cor. 6:2), Satan
has "a thousand ways" to say, "There's no hurry; another
time will do."
The scripture we just quoted
clearly conveys several critical truths. One is that
there's a "time accepted" and a "day of salvation." No
one can be saved at any other time. In the "day of
salvation," God says, "I succoured thee." That's an old
word meaning "helped." No one can be saved without God's
active "help," and that's only available at a certain
time. Connected to all of this is the key word "now."
"Now" for any individual is when God says, "Now." The
only opportunity any man has to be saved is when God, by
the Spirit draws near, pressing the claims of the gospel
upon his heart as a result of an anointed ministry of
the word. That's the accepted time. To say, "yes," at
such a time---to surrender---is, with God's help, to
enter into everlasting life. To say, "no," is to risk
damnation. There's no guarantee He will call again.
A
sinner is like a man drowning in the middle of a raging
sea with no hope in himself of surviving. The gospel,
anointed, alive with God's power, is His hand reaching
out to the sinner. When the sinner, blind to his true
condition, thrusts away God's mercy and the hand is
withdrawn, what then?
When God ceases to strive, whether
with an individual or with humanity as a whole, it's
over. Prayer at that point is useless. Consider Esau who
despised his opportunity when he had it. Later he sought
a place of repentance, realizing only then the value of
what he had lost, but was rejected, "though he sought it
carefully with tears." Heb. 12:17.
There'll be "a lot of praying"
when Christ comes and the world realizes its fate---as
was, no doubt, the case in Noah's day---but it will be
too late. Just as God closed the door to the ark prior
to the flood, so will the door to His kingdom close
forever before His Son returns to gather home His own
and "rain fire" on this world.
The Magic Word...
This is longer than
usual....
It's "a good one", I think...and I
didn't wanna split it up...
I hope you enjoy it and
are blessed by it. It should get you to smile a
little---well, I hope!
Please "relax" a little "in
the midst of 'the mad rush'"
Together!
In this one word we have
both the promise and the problem. The promise is:
That in the dispensation of the
fullness of times he might gather together in one all
things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which
are on earth (Eph. 1:10, KJV).
Remember Paul's vision? He
apparently saw history from a perspective no one had
seen before, in much the same way that the astronauts
circling in space were able to see the planet earth as a
whole for the first time. Paul saw not only the earth,
but what was beyond the earth.
It is true that vision of eternal
things had occurred before, but no one had been able to
"get them together" to show how they related. In the
same way that a cook takes apples from the orchard,
chemicals from the pantry, and milk from the pasture and
combines them with the chemistry of cooking to make a
pie, Paul now brings together the apparently conflicting
ideas in the world and explains them in terms of a
divine purpose. Vague as "this sounds", it's the formula
for the power that God promised to give us. The word
together echoes through this letter again and again:
1. He quickened us together.
2. He raised us up
together.
3. He made us to sit together in heavenly
places.
Getting things together seems to
be the hard part.
When we moved out of a downtown
condominium to a home with a lot, I discovered that I
needed the same equipment I needed when I first moved
out west. I shopped for a lawn edger.
When I found a model I liked, I
told the salesgirl, "I want this edger, but I know the
floor model's not for sale. How much will I have to put
together?" "Just fasten the handle on," she said. "How
many tools will I need?" "A screwdriver and pliers
should do it."
I
bought the machine, all neatly contained in a large
brown cardboard box. When I got home, I tried putting it
together. The thirty-minute job the salesgirl had
promised me stretched into two hours. The "screwdriver
and pliers" she suggested had multiplied until I had
more than a dozen tools on the driveway. Finally, with a
bleeding thumb, a perspiring forehead, and a highly
stressed disposition, I got it all together and began to
edge my lawn. As I passed the now-empty carton, I read
the message again: "Some assembly required."
That's always the problem, getting
things together. It's a human problem. It is not
difficult being an individual Christian; it's just
difficult to get along with all the other people who are
Christian.
It's not that we can't get along;
we just have problems getting things together: This fact
was forcibly brought home to me as I listened to Will
Hughes in Alabama last summer. He quoted the verse in
Paul's letter to the Ephesians:
Grow up into him in all things,
which is the head, even Christ: From whom the whole body
fitly joined together and compacted by that which every
joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in
the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body
unto the edifying of itself in love (Eph. 4:15-16).
Will then held out his arm and
said, "Here's my elbow. It's a joint. There are two
bones in the forearm and two in the upper arm. But where
they come together is the elbow. That's a joint. Take
them apart and you have no elbow. You have no joint.
"Paul says that the body is made strong, is able to grow
because of what these joints do. It's the togetherness
that counts. It is the togetherness that brings the
blessing." Even though I was sitting in a steamy, hot
tabernacle on that August afternoon, my mind leaped into
the "alert" position.
Will had diagnosed the problem. We
lack togetherness. This is true; not only in our human
relationships, but also in our use of Scripture and our
understanding of history. We have many valid ideas, and
even occasionally some valid theologies, but they don't
fit with all the other things that we know. We have many
Christian groups-sincere and energetic---but they can't
get together. The world is full of people who are
without doubt good people, but they can't relate to
other people.
Since that moment of revelation
came to me, I've been on a crusade to get together. It's
been interesting.
On one occasion, I told the story
of the elbow and said, "The joints are where the
strength is."
A
voice from the audience said, "And that's where the
arthritis is, too." Pick your battlefield. Men and
women, women and women, men and men, Arab and Jew,
liberals and conservatives, right brain and left brain,
youth and age, intuition and logic; the list is endless.
Adversaries all, but realities all.
Is there a way of harmony---no,
better, synergy? Can our differences result in strength?
Can the place where we come together be a point of
strength rather than of conflict and tension?
Paul believed that they could. Or,
more correctly, Christ can bring together. And only he
can.
Small wonder the phrase "in
Christ" occurs ten times in this short letter of six
chapters.
What's remarkable about this
letter is that it is both the most mystical and the most
practical book in the Bible. It holds hands with the
centuries and holds hands with each of us. It sees
beyond time, but tells us how to live in a world of
time. It deals not only with sin as a falling short of
God's eternal purpose, but it pinpoints individual sins
such as lying, stealing, adultery, and fornication.
Buckminster Fuller said that he
begins every serious thought by thinking of the
universe. Most of us don't. We're problem-solvers. Well,
if not problem-solvers, at least we are
problem-recognizers. We put out fires. We deal with
crises.
Much better, we should consider
the universe first. But we should not end our thoughts
there. We need to deal with our personal relationships.
It has been said that some people are so "heavenly" that
they are no "earthly" good. Of course, the opposite is
also true. Some of us are so bound to the earth that we
strive for heavenly goals by earthly methods. How well
Paul understood the realities of the earth: shipwrecks,
fastings, beatings, prisons, hunger, and conflict. Yet
even in prison (where he wrote the letter to the
Ephesians), Paul's vision of the heavenly kingdom gave
meaning to even the most degrading experiences. Small
wonder that he encourages us. Christ "hath raised us up
together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in
Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:6). Could we ask, "Is our 'sitting
together' the reason that we're in heavenly places, or
is it that our being in heavenly places makes possible
our togetherness?" The question is vital for our
generation!
All over the world there are
well-meaning and earnest people who are trying to heal
the brokenness of humankind. "Let's reconcile the blacks
and the whites, the Jew and the Arab, the have and the
have-nots, the young and the old, the rich and the
poor." The list of battlegrounds seems endless. Is
reconciliation possible?
So far it hasn't been possible by
any human means. Paul lived in this world of conflict,
but his vision and spiritual insight gave him the
answer. In his letter to the Corinthians, he said:
God was in Christ, reconciling the
world unto himself.... [He] hath given to us the
ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:19, 18).
Now in the Ephesian letter he
emphasizes his "in Christ" theme. Time after time he
sounds this note. Our harmony with the universe, our
harmony with God's plan, and our harmony with the people
around us, depends upon our being "in Christ."
"But now in Christ Jesus ye who
sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of
Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and
hath broken down the middle wall of partition between
us; having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the
law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make
in himself of twain one new man, so making peace" (Eph.
2:13-16). Is this possible?
Can races live in harmony? Can
different cultures live in harmony? Can families? Can
religious groups who worship the same God worship
together? Can people who love God actually love each
other?
It's human to say, "Let them come
to me." It's natural to believe that if everyone were
more like us in thought and behavior that we could have
peace in the world. A couple stood before the minister
repeating the wedding vows. At the conclusion of their
vows, the minister said, "And now I make you both 'one.'
"
In a timid voice, the groom said,
"Which one?" A logical question. Does marriage mean that
one person will dominate and rule? It shouldn't. A
Christian marriage is one where both the woman and the
man are "in Christ," and both submit to him. He makes
them one.
It seems natural for us to wish
that the other in a relationship (whether it is a
spouse, or a race, or a culture) would either move over
or move out so that we could have harmony.
Joe Minkler told me of a couple
who had lived together for fifty years, but they had
lived in constant conflict. One day the weary wife said,
"Henry, we have been married for fifty years, but
haven't had one happy year in all that time. We stayed
together for the sake of the children and because we
didn't believe in divorce. Now the children are gone and
I think we ought to do something so that we don't spend
our remaining years in conflict. Let's just kneel down
and pray and ask God to take one of us home to heaven,
and then I'll go and live with my sister."
Here's another illustration of
this principle of "Go-away-and-it-will-get-better": Two
boys sat astride a horse. Under the load, the horse was
plodding along wearily. One of the boys spoke, "I think
one of us needs to get off so that I can ride better."
While these stories are humorous,
they lose their humor when applied to nations who try to
blast other nations off the face of the earth "so that I
can ride better." In a marriage that's made intolerable
by a bossy man, things don't improve when you develop a
"bossy" wife. In a Christian marriage, it's never a
question of who gets his way (or her way). We go God's
way.
When we come to Christ, we come
together. Without Christ, we are aliens. Here the theme
of Ephesians emerges clearly. We can claim the
inheritance of the saints, when we're together with the
saints. When we're out of the family, we're out of the
fortune.
It's more than "a play on words"
to say, that the only ship that will transport us to
heavenly places is "fellowship."
Paul makes it clear that this kind
of unity is not achieved by our understanding each
other, but by accepting each other.
Paul's life story is a story of
relatedness. He was a cultured, literate Jew, a scholar
and a mystic. But he had to relate to all the other
kinds of people as well. In his letter to the Romans, he
understands this obligation: I am debtor both to the
Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to
the unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to
preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also (Rom.
1:14-15).
Most students of history conclude
that the religious differences between people are more
often sociological than theological. Vance Packard, in
his book The Status Seekers, talks of the social
differences that make walls between people so
that--although they obviously worship the same God-they
don't worship in the same ways. One chapter in Packard's
book is entitled "From Pentecostalism to
Episcopalianism."
Paul related to all kinds of
people, but not because he was naturally charitable or
understanding---look at him before he met Christ. It
would be difficult to find a more provincial,
rock-ribbed traditionalist than Saul of Tarsus. If God
wanted his people to be "one," Saul knew which one. The
world would have to come to his Judaistic way of
thinking.
When Paul writes to the Ephesians
that God has broken down the middle wall of partition
between the Jew and the Gentile, he wasn't thinking of
some poetic or mystical event. When the wall came down,
Paul was hit on the head by many of the bricks. How did
Paul understand this breaking down of the wall between
warring factions? Only in Christ. Listen: "For through
him [Christ] we both have access by one Spirit unto the
Father" (Eph. 2:18). This is a remarkable verse. Here
the trinity of God is illustrated: Through Christ, the
son, we (now together) both have access by one Spirit to
the Father.
Jesus (being God)
became man to prove that God could live in a human body.
He made the two worlds one---the world of spirit and the
world of flesh. Then he broke down the wall that
separated the two and every other wall that separates
people. For us to understand this mystery, the Spirit
must open our eyes. The Holy Spirit opens the door into
this unlimited fellowship. We are born of the Spirit.
Now, having entered a new relationship with Christ and
God the Father, we find ourselves in a new relationship
with the family of God. The family has roots going back
to the foundation of the world. It includes not only the
apostles and prophets, but also the other believers
around us. Here the theme of togetherness shines through
again. If we are together with Christ, we are together
with each other. When we let ourselves get separated
from each other, we forfeit our relationship with Christ
and the eternal church.
The unity of believers is not
something we achieve. It's a fact we can't avoid. If we
don't understand this formula, the rest of the letter to
the Ephesians won't make sense to us. In the final four
chapters of his letter---which, of course, was not
divided in Paul's original letter as it is today in our
Bibles---Paul gets to the part of "togetherness" that we
can do. It is tremendously practical. Buckminster Fuller
told us to begin with the universal and move to the
personal. Paul does.
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