Immanuel, God with Us

For much of my life, Christmas was simply the prelude to Easter.  What good is a Christmas service or prayer that doesn't mention the upcoming death of Jesus?  I always thought the whole point of His being born was to die for our sins..."He lived to die", right?

Last night, Christmas night, our family was joined by a family who has recently arrived in America from a refugee camp in Kenya.  He is from war torn Congo, where in one evening a group searching after his father who had already escaped, burst into their home, brutally attacked him and his brothers and then raped his sisters in front of them.  They all survived this attack and fled in different directions out of this country.  He ended up in Kenya where he met his wife, a refugee from Sudan where she had been an orphan since the age of 4.  The refugee camp itself was filled with threats, expectations of bribery and middle of the night attacks on homes that may have promising resources or people who have for any small reason fallen out of favor with the attackers.

The family we ate dinner with last night, formed in a refugee camp where even their own native people rejected them for marrying someone from a different tribe, have believed the God of the Bible to be their God and they His people since long before the tragdies and suffering of the past ten years.  But has their only benefit of this faith been a confidence that if they should be killed by opposing tribes they will then be with God?  When their home in the refugee camp was robbed of all their possessions, was it ok because of a future hope of life after death?  What good is eternal life in the moment when you are helplessly watching your own sisters brutally ravaged as you cling to your own life?  Its good news that death is not to be feared, of course, but what about the fearfulness of life?  This is the wall my faith kept hitting when my Christian life only understood Easter and not Christmas. 

I hope to never know the terror of those who live in war torn countries, but life outside of those is no perpetual garden either.  How about dearly loved ones in war torn marriages, where they watch helplessly as their own future dreams are robbed in the middle of the night?  The aging process can be ravaging to whole families as its crippling effects steal life from not only the primary victim but all those who love her or him.  Mental illness is in some ways the worst kind of warfare because it attacks and hides as well as the plotting terrorist in mountain caves, at times reigning with terror over the one in its grasp.  Then there are those lesser but still wearisome assaults of daily demands and deadlines that sometimes wake us in the middle of the night, stealing both our sleep and sanity.  I look forward to life after death, but what about life during life?

Yet our new African friends did not lose their faith, even when shaken.  In fact, having been stripped of everything but their marriage and precious 3-year-old son, their confidence in God is stronger and more developed.

Immanuel, God with us.

Perhaps Christmas is more than just the prelude to Easter.
Perhaps the living of Jesus was just as important to our living as His dying is for our death.

God is not just for us, cheering us on until we one day get to be with Him.  He is not merely hopeful we will survive this broken world until we can arrive safely "home".  He has made His home in us that we may be at home in Him.  While Adam's disobedience seaparated us all from God, the perfect obedience and fulfillment of the Law by Jesus joined us all to God in a way that we can never separate.  We who are both victims and victimizers, from every tribe, tongue and nation, have been called one in Him because of His life in us.

As a matter of fact, the most repeated instruction in the entire Bible is some form of "do not fear" and the reason given in almost every instance is because God is with you.  My confidence comes not in my efforts but in His accomplishments.  I do not fear the wickedness "out there" and I do not fear the wickedness that dwells within my own heart because I have not been left alone to change it myself, defeat it myself, nor overcome it myself.  In His life I now live and move and have my being.
Merry Christmas indeed!

On Whom His Favor Rests

"If you were to die tonight, are you 100% sure you would be with God?" goes the question we Christians can't stop using as our ultimate faith-in-Jesus-alone secret decoder ring.  Despite my cynicism about the question, I would usually answer it in the affirmative.  But if the question changed to, "Right this very moment, are you 100% certain that God's favor rests on you...that you deserve His blessings today, that He is 100% delighted and satisfied in you right now, etc." I would have to answer with far less certainty. 

Now, if it was a day when I'd spent time reading the Bible, had faithfully prayed for other people and confessed my "sins", however generic the confession might be, then yes, I should expect His favor upon the course of my day and the relational interactions that followed.  But on the other hand, if it was a day when I was honest about my sense of distance from God, about my rude remarks to my husband or actual impatient yelling at my children and total lack of prayer or reading the Bible, my certainty would be much more that I was in a position quite out of favor with God.  However, being well educated in Christian duty, with a little recognition of my error and willingness to repent, a renewed determination to do more and try harder to live according to God's full law of love and obedience...wallah - back in better standing with God.

So, my security as God's Beloved is great if by "great" you mean I die tonight and get to be with Him.  But if it involves living through another day and that being a day in which I will interact with anyone beside my own self or have to make important decisions with any remote impact on my life or the lives of others, or act in any way at all for that matter, my security of resting in His favor is extremely insecure.  In this whole version of Christian living, my security as His Beloved rests in death on Jesus alone but in life on me alone.  His favor is earned by my "righteous" actions, words, thoughts and attitudes and His favor is lost by my sinful actions, words, thoughts and attitudes.   In this way I live like one tossed by the waves, more often filled with fear and condemnation than hope and comfort and peace.

If I keep this thinking running its course, the assumption in my heart is that my self-perceived righteous acts earn my blessing, making it so that God kind of of "owes" me His favor.  If I assume that I have acted in pure righteousness and then do not get that particularly desired merited blessing, it must either be because God is not good and faithful or because I have some hidden sin which I forgot to confess.

But where is the person and work of Jesus in all of this thinking and living of mine?  Did He merely pass off His baton to me with high hopes that I would make Him proud?  Is He concerned that I might thwart the lead He gave me in the race or, even more telling of my heart, is there the thought that I might even add to the start He made?  What does the entire story of Redemption tell me about God's favor? 
 
Over and over from Genesis through Revelation it tells me that my best efforts at pleasing Him by own efforts and self-reliant "holiness" are received as filthy rags when I have been clothed in the lavish works of the person and work of Jesus.  I continue to try to impress God with my fig leaf ensembles and He graciously and gently draws me out from behind the tree and offers me perfection as if I had earned it myself...and trades it for the shame and discomfort and punishment earned by my self-procured righteousness, my loveless law following and my decimation of the image of the God caused by my trying to do it all by myself.
 
Over and over I am told that God made Him who had no sin to be sin that I might be the very righteousness of God, that I no longer live but that He lives in me, that righteousness comes by faith in the person and completed work of Jesus alone, to whose work I can add nothing, help nothing but about which I can take full credit!
 
I don't look like Jesus a lot of the day, or any of it on some days, but that is where He tells me I have been hidden.  Might I begin to believe the story of Redemption that His favor rests on me not for any of my Bible reading, extensive prayer times, exhibition of the Spirit's fruit or any of my other attempted "good works bribery" but because God tells me that I am clothed in His righteousness alone, not just in death but this very day as I go to the grocery store, ask my children for the fifth time to get in the bath tub and wrap a few final gifts. May my confidence in His pleasure quit riding on my "works" and begin to rest solely in the person and work of Jesus?  Oh, help me Lord to walk by faith (in this very Good News) and not by sight (of my obvious unworthiness) even as I hear those words of the angel's proclamation read this Christmas:  "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests!" 

Far as the Curse is Found

Terrell and I recently found ourlseves in one of those disorienting debates "discussions" that at moments have the participants feeling like a child being turned upside down under the waves at the beach.  You are trying to figure out which way is up to get air but instead find yourself eating sand and getting more saltwater up your nose.  It was a topic that we fogot was just as much a part of God's Gospel work as any other.  But without the hope of His sovereignty and intimate use of this partiular subject (by which He intends to show us more of His love and the extent of the power of grace to transform us), we were left trying to figure it out and work it out by our own energy, attempts at insight and self-willed perseverence.

Why I am shocked or even disappointed when I or other Christians continue to suffer, wound one another, offend or just simply thrash around blindly without wisdom or peace only reveals how little I really grasp the Gospel.  Somewhere along the way I got the notion that my "new creation" status was supposed to be flawless, above reproach and beyond reproach!  Worse yet, I continue to assume that my "salvation by grace alone" then sent me out to "win the race" by sheer discipline, resolve, faithfulness and greater effort as if Jesus is merely my life coach. 

I have been indirectly reprimanded several times by well meaning Christians that certain decisions ahead of me may actually be a display of foolishness on my part.  The implication here is that I can choose the right thing, "wisdom", which will be revealed as wisdom because of its evident success, which we as American Christians frequently define as safety and prosperity.  But here is what 1 Corinthians 1:30 says about wisdom:  It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.  Wisdom isn't my right or careful choice, as if my future rests in my hands and therefore any hope for a good future lies in my perfect choice making.  No, wisdom is Jesus!

Jesus is my righteousness, holiness and redemption, not my effort, perfect decision making or personal ability to work out the details in my own mind.  This is why Paul warns the Galatians not to try to finish what God has started by His Holy Spirit with our human effort.  He calls that foolishness!  (Gal. 3)  Wisdom is Jesus, foolishness is me!

Oh now come on, that is just negative self-talk and a total dismissal of all the talents and ability that God has given me!  NO - its not negative self-talk but the very honest reality that we are those who can cease from striving "because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy." (Hebrews 10:14)  We have been declared perfect legally, just as our new baby who we have not yet met will be legally declared our child within weeks of our first meeting him/her.  But the process of being our child will develop over time.  Our voice will not be familiar immediately nor our mannerisms picked up simply because papers are signed.  But over time, our vocabulary will become our new child's vocabulary and our arms will become increasingly safe and familiar.

Because the child who is now an orphan will then be fully and totally our child, this does not mean he or she will never disobey or be mistreated, but status in our family is not conditioned upon the future behavior or hardships.  If wisdom is Jesus, our holiness, righteousness and redemption, then the wisdom of a situation is found in how it makes us cling to Him rather than ourselves.  For this reason, the suffering we inflict on those we love and which we experience in a broken world should not defeat my faith but confrim my very need for the person and work of Jesus, by His grace, to transform me as I am completely unable to do on my own.  And there is no sphere of life, no relationship and no issue for which "He is making all things new" does not apply.  He comes to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found!

Like Children

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kindgom of heaven. Matthew 18:1-3

How many times I have heard this referenced in a sermon and then been sent off to try harder at being amazed by life or do more to be more trusting or to approach life with a renewed sense of innocense and wonder. The image conjured up of a little child is that of an angelic face, camera ready, wide eyed and peacefully gazing up at the world and the adult by his or her side.

That is so not the image of children you would get in my house on a given day, for good or bad. First of all, my children almost never have clean faces (or hands or knees, etc.) and stillness only seems to happen if they are asleep or allowed to stare and drool before the television. They open their eyes in the morning ready to get this day started at top speed and top volume, even when their parents feebly try to recommend that the sun is not awake yet so we really shouldn't be either. They may have curiosity about how a thing works or what they could make, but the dreamy pondering is usurped by an eagerness to get in there and start working it out. This diving right in sometimes ends with tears over the destruction of a failed (or broken) creation, but often ends with something far more creative than I could have come up with myself.

When they are scared, they don't act cool about it. They grab hold of me with an assumption that their nails don't hurt my skin and that if the small dog really was intending to attack, I could somehow take it out. When something disappoints them or they don't get their way, they don't meekly take it in and process it rationally. They burst into loud sobs that we as adults think should be reserved for a serious injury or other "real tragedy". When they find something funny, they laugh loudly. When they are moved to dance, they boogie. (See picture above.) When I reprimand them for being me-centered or disrespectful or straight out rebellious, they cry and bury their faces into my shoulder! Into the shoulder and chest of the very one who just expressed disappointment with them!

But I am an adult, increasingly concerned with "being the greatest" because I have delusions that I am just a few adjustments and improvements away from this status...if only others would recognize it. I am an adult and have no tolerance for those emotional outbursts that are irritating to me at 5:30 in the evening and are totally unnecessary. I am an adult and know that most fears are irrational and should therefore be subdued, and that goes for laughter that is a little too loud and dancing when the floor isn't yet filled with other people who are dancing beside me. Good-night means good-night and I do not want to be called in one more time, even for the sweet request to "snuggle" because don't they know I as a stay-at-home-mom have finally gotten to clock out!? I am an adult and anyone who criticizes me or exposes a flaw is better removed from my circle, avoided from here on out and ultimately rejected for their unwillingness to recognize me as "being the greatest".

Oh, how sweet indeed that my Father, through the person and work of Jesus, never clocks out! He does not treat my tears with contempt but stores them up in a bottle as cherished. He lets me throw temper tantrums because His Kingdom is not threatened by my strong will and blindness. Instead, He is compassionate and merciful, and not because my complaints or behavior are always rational but because He already knows my sin and is Himself certain of its subtle demise. David was apparently a dancing fool before the Lord because, at least for a moment, he realized worship and celebration didn't require the approval of anyone else. They were strictly for the only One whose total approval and adoration he already had and could never lose.

Children get that. They know that they are "the least of these". Their voice rarely has impact to the broader world. They have no real power or wealth by which to influence anyone. They are often awkward, have runny noses and for being so small, can smell surprisingly bad at the end of a day. But they are not living for the opinion of others or the praise of others. They live dependently because they are fully aware of their position of need and vulnerability.

What I am realizing to an increasing degree is that God is not asking me to play act "like little children" or to muster up some nostalgic idea of what it was to be a child back in my day. He is not asking for naivite or anything to do with intelligence or ability. He is asking me to see who it is I already am and most honestly am, needy and least of these in terms of my heart's most honest condition (self-centered and self-obsessed and very much "the least of these" in terms of my ability to earn God's favor) and yet Fathered by the one who is indeed greatest. He never grows of tired or weary, not even at 5:30 in the evening.

Flawlessly Loved

Anxiety may be my most consistent default mode. I at times may have called it "hyperactivity" because that makes it sound cuter and more endearing. Sometimes I may call it high strung because that points to something that happens when you have too much coffee and can therefore be blamed on external circumstances. But, I think if I'm honest, anxiety is actually fear. Its not the kind of fear like that of bears or circus clowns or El Guapo in the Three Amigos. Its that fear of not completing my to do list, of what people will think when they hear what I have to say or see the choice I've made, of not making the correct decision about something important or any number of other circumstances that are truly out of my control but about which I would indeed prefer a certain outcome.

So, apart from the Gospel my options are to toughen up, get over it or just find a good strong drug to deal with that condition. My old Pharisee might say, "the Bible says to be anxious for nothing, but you are anxious for everything...perhaps you are not really even a Christian!" or "If you would just practice this four step principle, reciting these particular verses over and over like an incantation, then you could rid yourself of this anxiety!"

1 John explains to me that perfect love, which comes from God alone, casts out all fear. This is because fear has to do with punishment (condemnation, shame, guilt, rejection, disapproval, etc.) and there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are "in Christ". How can that be?
Song of Solomon depicts the Lover describing the Beloved as "flawless", when the book itself acknowledges her flaws.

But what is the consistent story of the Bible from Genesis-Revelation? From the very beginning it is that the image of God wanted to be God, and to do so without God. At that very moment, God kindly and graciously drew His people back under His care and promised to redeem them. He promises to complete the good work that He has begun. He gives us faith because even when we want to, we just can't muster it up in ourselves. He can sort through our conflicting emotions, mixed motives and blurry sight. Yet, even when the promise was given to Adam and Eve and believed by them, they and their progeny continued to live as if they had been left alone to redeem themselves.

That seems to be at the heart of my anxiety. This reflexive tendency that God has given me lots of clues and I've got to figure out the puzzle or win a scavenger hunt under the pressure of some imminent doom is the source of my anxiety. I am called a child of God not because I am choice, as Edmund Clowney says, but because I am chosen. And I am chosen not because I am flawless, but because the love of my Redeemer and effectiveness of His work on my behalf is. It is in His flawlessness that I can trust. My heart may wander hourly, my faithfulness shifts like the tide, my sight comes and goes, but His will cannot and will not be thwarted, even by my sometimes unintentional and more often very intentional flaws.

I am thankful that He has not given me His Word as a compilation of principles by which to make myself into His image by my own strength and determination but rather, He has given me Himself, the exact representation of the Father and the One in whom all the law and prophets find their fulfillment. What in the world could my to do list being completed add to that? Oh would my heart begin to find rest and safety and peace in the only one who is able to keep me from falling. He is faithful and He will do it.