Jesus’ Christmas Titles

My favorite way to worship is just to pray through all the names or titles of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. I know quite a few of them, and I can often spend a lot of time with them.

This Christmas season I got the idea to compile a list of all Jesus’ Christmas names or titles. I knew quite a few of them off the top of my head, but as I started to compile them, I found many more. Here’s my list in a simple prayer form. You’ll see I grouped ones that were similar, and that I tried to go through the Christmas story as I went. Let me know if I missed one and I’ll add it.

Jesus’ Christmas Titles

Jesus, it is especially great joy to worship you at Christmastime.  During this holy season, I confess that you are:

Jesus, who saves His people from their sins (Matthew 1:21)

Emmanuel; God with us (Matthew 1:23)

Jesus, our Emmanuel (“Hark the Herald Angels Sing”)

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The Son of God

The Son of the Most High

The incarnate Deity (Luke 1:32, 35; “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”)

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Mary’s firstborn, conceived by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35, 2:7)

A child born unto us; a son given unto us (Is 9:6)

A Savior born unto us (Luke 2:11) Born the king of angels (O Com

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Christ (Luke 2:11, KJV)

The Messiah (Luke 2:11, NIV)

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The Lord (Luke 2:11)

Christ the Lord ( “O Come Let Us Adore Him”)

The Everlasting Lord ( “Hark The Herald Angels Sing”)

Christ, the Everlasting Lord (“Hark the Herald Angels Sing”) Angels

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The son of David (Luke 1:32)

Christ the King ( “What Child Is This”)

The newborn king ( “Hark, The Herald Angels Sing”)

Christ the Newborn King ( “Angels From The Realms of Glory”)

Christ the Lord, the Newborn King (“Angels We Have Heard On High”)

The earth’s king (“Joy to the World”)

The King of the Jews; the one born King of the Jews (Matthew 2:2)

The ruler over Israel; the ruler who will shepherd God’s people (Micah 5:2; Matthew 2:6)

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The Great Light (Is 9:2)

Love’s pure light (“Silent Night”)

The Light that shines in the darkness (John 1:5)

The Light that dawns on those living in the land of darkness; that shines on those living in darkness (Is 9:2; Luke 1:79)

The True Light that gives light to everyone (John 1:9)

The Everlasting Light ( “O Little Town of Bethlehem” )

A light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Israel (Luke 2:32)

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The Word of the Father now in flesh appearing (John 1:14, “O Come, Let Us Adore Him”)

The Sun of righteousness rising with healing in its wings; the rising sun who comes to us from heaven (Malachi 4:2, Luke 1:78-79; “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing”)

The Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (Is 9:6)

A horn of salvation raised up for us by God; salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us (Luke 1:69-71)

God’s salvation prepared in the sight of all nations (Luke 2:30-31)

The Desired of Nations (Haggai 2:7)

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The Offspring of a virgin’s womb (“Hark, the Herald Angels Sing)

The one born in Bethlehem, placed in a manger, and wrapped in swaddling clothes (Luke 2:7)

The one announced by angels, visited by shepherds, and worshipped by wise men (Luke 2:9-14, 16; Matthew 2:11)

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O Wisdom, Lord and Ruler, Root of Jesse, Key of David, Rising Sun, King of the Nations, Emmanuel (Pray

The one held by Simeon and spoken about by Anna (Luke 2:25-38)

Thank You for coming.  I receive You as my greatest gift and I enjoy you during this season and at all times, Amen

Worth The Rejection

This Sunday I told our church that I have a “nearly paralyzing fear of rejection” (or something to that extent.  You can hear me say that in this clip below:

This is true.  I am truly afraid of being rejected by people.  I’m not sure where that fear comes from, but I have it.  I even thought our lead pastor had detected that fear.  He came up to me while I was working the other day and asked me to look at this book:

I thought he was showing me this book because he had become aware of my fear of rejection.  It turns out he was just showing it to me because he thought it would be a good small group study.  But in the moment I thought my fear of rejection had been discovered and I immediately feared I would be rejected because it had been discovered (in other words, I was afraid I would be rejected because I am afraid of being rejected).

And this fear of rejection is not only there but it also hinders my work at times.  It at the very least makes my work much harder than it needs to be.  One of the things I do for the church is invite people to our various activities via text.  This was incredibly hard for me to do at first because the majority of these people were strangers to me (I guess I think strangers are more likely to reject me than people who know me; and now that I think about that, I realize it is completely illogical; I realize that people who know me might have even more cause to reject me than strangers do!).  It is still incredibly hard for me to do because a lot of these people are still strangers to me; I have become familiar with many of them and so it has become significantly easier, but there are still some strangers in the mix and it is still hard.

I experienced this just today, in fact.  Today I needed to text invitations to our Next Steps class to 130 or so folks who have come to our services in the past couple of months.  I did not know most of those 130 folks and I did not know how they would respond to my invitation.  I did know that they might respond negatively.  I also knew that they had my text number and would be able to respond negatively to me directly.  There was a risk involved.  It might be a risk that is minuscule to some, but it is major to me, and I was afraid.

Now I have learned to deal with that fear to a good degree in a couple of ways, the primary one being my knowledge that Jesus has promised to be with me as I do the evangelistic work of His Kingdom (Matthew 28:20).

After I had done it, though, I realized there was another way to deal with this fear, another truth to keep in mind as I struggle with the threat of rejection.  That truth is that quite a few of the 130 people responded positively to me.  Quite a few of the 130 strangers I texted told me they planned to come to our Next Steps class.  Quite a few people who possibly, even probably, wouldn’t have been to that class will be there and perhaps will grow in or even enter the Kingdom because I risked the rejection.

And I believe that possibility/probability makes this work worth the risk.  Will I be rejected as I do this work?  Yes.  I already was, in fact.  One person told me to stop texting them.  That was precisely the kind of reaction I feared.  But other people will not just accept me but they will accept Jesus through me; they will be eternally blessed by my work; these valuable souls will be saved.  So the risk is worth taking (in fact, not taking this risk in light of this truth is unthinkable; I can’t stand the thought that someone could accuse me or not sharing God’s truth with them because I was afraid of being rejected by someone else).  This price is worth paying.  This hard thing is worth doing.  It is still hard to some degree, but it is worth doing.   And that encourages me to keep doing this hard thing.

Start Forgiving Today

I watch a lot of YouTube videos about woodturning, knife restoration, and other such crafting projects.  Hey, some guys watch videos about women folding towels, so I think I’m doing okay.  Yesterday, YouTube recommended I watch this video.

As I gave this video a quick glance, I misread it.  I thought it said “Start Forgiving Today” rather that “Start Forging Today”.  It is an easy mistake, I suppose; when I took a closer look of the video to double-check what I thought I saw, I realized there are only two letters’ difference between forging and forgiving.

It was also an easy mistake, though, because I’ve been thinking about forgiveness a lot lately.  Forgiveness is mentioned many times in the Scriptures, of course, including the teachings of Jesus and the writings of Paul.  I also encountered forgiveness in the Freedom Session 12-step program I walked through.  And my wife and I recently attended a seminar on forgiveness put on by Forgiveness Ministries.

I’ve noticed, though, that I still have difficulty forgiving some people for some things.  While I talk a lot about forgiveness, I still fail to forgive some people for the things they have done to me.  Not only so, but I’ve noticed that other people not only fail to forgive but seemingly refuse to forgive.  I have suggested forgiveness to quite a few people recently only for them to tell me that the people who have hurt them don’t deserve to be forgiven.

It was these realities that popped into my mind when I saw that video and misread it as “Start Forgiving Today”.  Following those realities, a few truths about forgiveness also came to mind.  I don’t know that there is any structure or cohesion to these truths; they may be rather scattered.  But I want to share them with you anyway.

Forgiveness is for you, not for the person who sinned against you.  I understand when people tell me that the ones who sinned against them don’t deserve to be forgiven (or haven’t repented or are dead or whatever).  There is certainly some truths to that caveat.  However, the greater truth is that forgiveness as Jesus and Paul command it is not intended so much to be a blessing to the other person (though it can be that) but a blessing for you.  When you forgive, you heal.  When you forgive, you stop hurting.  When you forgive, you stop replaying that moment which caused you/is still causing you so much pain.  So don’t do it for the other person.  Do it for you.

Forgiveness of others allows us to understand God’s forgiveness of us.  One of Jesus’ most notable teaching on forgiveness comes during the Model Prayer of Matthew 6.  As you know, one of the petitions Jesus makes in this prayer is “Forgive us our trespasses (or debts) as we forgive those who trespass against us (or our debtors).”  Jesus even takes this petition further in the verses following the Model Prayer:

I can’t say I understand everything Jesus is saying here (will God literally not forgive us/condemn us for not forgiving?).  But I do wonder if one of the things Jesus might be saying is that forgiveness is the way or flow of God and we will thus never understand God/never fully appreciate our relationship with or how we relate to God if we don’t have that same way/flow, if we don’t forgive others as easily as He forgives us.  It is that small word as that makes me think this (forgive as we forgive), and I think there is something to us.

Forgiveness is a practice.  It is not something you feel as much as something you do.  Sometimes it is something you must do over and over, every time you feel the anger of a transgression committed against you.  One of the ways to do this practice is what I call “the forgiveness prayers”.  I learned a prayer for forgiving others from Freedom Session and I learned another from Forgiveness Ministries.  I combined them together, following the basic structure of the Forgiveness Ministries prayer but adding in some of the Freedom Session ideas.

The Forgiveness Ministries prayer.

The Freedom Session prayer.

In other words, I go through the six steps of the Forgiveness Ministries prayer but add in the Freedom Session ideas of releasing bitterness and thoughts of revenge and asking God to lead me away from my old ways of trying to protect my heart through anger. Sometimes this prayer works first time; I never feel any animosity toward others for their sins again.  Other times this prayer must be prayed over and over, every time that animosity resurfaces.  Whether it is one time or many, though, it is a disciple/practice with works.

That’s not a comprehensive discussion of forgiveness; I don’t think I’m qualified to give you that.  But it is a few thoughts about forgiveness, and those thoughts are valid.  These are reasons why we all need to start forgiving today.

 

Worshiping With A House Church

My wife and I had an unusual and wonderful experience this Sunday (May 12). We worshiped that morning with a local house church. We had been invited by the minister and his wife. Both of them have been walking with both of us through the transition we are making (ending our current ministry and returning to our home state of Ohio to begin a new ministry; a far emotionally-tougher transition than I imagined it to be) and they invited us to be with their house church on Mother’s Day. Although neither of us have been to a house church before, we accepted, and I’m glad we did.

This is the name of the house church and a link to their site.

We were a little late getting to the church. We got to the house about 10 minutes late. I wasn’t sure, then, what we would find. I imagined we would be let in by the homeowners had we been on time, but I didn’t know what would happen once we were late. Would the door be opened? Would we have to knock? Would we just go inside on our own (which, to a a-man’s-home-is-his-castle-and-should-not-be-violated guy like me would be very difficult to do)? As it turned out, there was a sign on the door telling us that services would start soon and to let ourselves in, which we did. As we went inside, we discovered worship was already in full swing and the living room was already full. Our minister friends saw us and welcomed us, offering us a space on the couch, but we chose to let others take that space and stand in the adjoining kitchen.

As worship went on, I was very surprised and delighted to discover both how large and how diverse the group was. There were about 35 of us there (and the minister told me there are sometimes 50). There were men and women and children. There were young and old adults. There were Caucasians, African-Americans, and Latinos.

Overall, the service was far more vibrant than what I expected. The minister told me they made some mistakes in the worship and the service. I caught a few of those (I saw the guitarist look at the lead singer one time, obviously not sure what she was doing and how he needed to react), but they were not a big deal. What was a big deal was the level of fellowship and worship. We truly connected with God during this time and we connected with each other as well. That, I believe, is what a church needs to be. As I see it, church (both the group and the service) is intended by God to do two things: 1) lead people into a transformative interaction with Him, and 2) enable believers to strengthen and be strengthened by each other. We have made church do many other things today, and maybe some of those things aren’t bad, but if we are not doing these two things, we aren’t succeeding as a church. I thought this house church succeeded in doing that despite its relative small size and whatever mistakes may or may not have been made. That makes it a success in my eyes, and I believe it makes it a success in God’s eyes, too.

The Fasting Experiment

”The idea had been building for some time.  Several months, actually.  But it nonetheless took me by surprise when it fully revealed itself to me on the Wednesday of Holy Week.  That idea was to fast.  That idea was to honor Jesus/participate in or at least symbolically reflect His passion by fasting from Thursday to Good Friday service.

This idea came from several sources.  One is that I had been thinking about fasting for some time.  I had been thinking about what it was for.  I knew it wasn’t just duty to perform (see Zechariah 7-8) and I knew it really wasn’t a way to manipulate God/put God in my debt so that He does what I want (this is impossible).  But I knew it was something Jesus and Moses and Daniel and a lot of other biblical figures did, something Jesus talked about us doing as if He expected us to do it or at least expected that we would do it, and I was wondering what it was for.  I got at least part of my answer to this sermon in which one of the Bible Project guys says that fasting is an appropriate response to changes in life.  He actually laments the fact that he has never fasted in the way many of the Bible characters did, and I likewise lament that I never have, either.

 

Another was a podcast I recently listened to in which a Christian teacher said that millennials are more interested in the practice of fasting than any other spiritual practice.  I am not one who thinks that Christian leaders should capitulate to anything millennials want; there are other generations out there and other generations to come, after all.  But I was interested in why they were so interested in it.

A third was Daniel 10.  I came across Daniel 10 is some podcast or another, and was really moved when I heard him say this:

So I had been flirting with fasting for some time, having been influenced by these and a few other sources (some of which were not spiritual at all, were presenting fasting as merely a health-promoting discipline, not one to draw near to God).  And when this idea came to the forefront that Wednesday, I decided to give into it.  I decided to fast for all day Thursday and most of the day Good Friday.  I decided to participate in/at the very least reflect the passion of Jesus by denying myself not only choice food but all food.  I decided to experiment with fasting in this way.  And I did it.  I gave it my best shot, anyway.  As I did, I had the following reflections:

1. You have to prepare for fasting.  My fast would have been easier if I had geared up for it a week in advance.  I didn’t.  Instead, I fasted on the fly.  And that made it harder.  Since I hardly ate Wednesday (only a couple bowls of cereal the entire day), I was already down several hundred calories.  That made not eating Thursday and Friday very difficult.  While I was able to do my daily workout Thursday before the fast really got going, I was not able to do so Friday; I was too weak to do so.  I also had a couple times when I almost passed out.  I eventually cheated, eating a banana and some grapes late Thursday night and ending the fast Friday at 4 rather than after the Good Friday service at 7 pm (this last one also had something to do with my schedule; I had my daughter whom I had to keep busy for a couple hours, and the playland at McDonald’s is the easiest way to do that).  If I could do it again, I would prepare better, making sure to fuel myself better the days before the fast and get my workouts in before as well.
2. I was never as hungry as I thought I would be.  I thought I would be starving during the fast, but I wasn’t.  I felt a little empty inside and a little weak, but I didn’t feel the gnawing hunger I’ve felt at other times.  I’m not sure why this is.  But I did want to eat.  Most of that wanting to eat was psychological.  I just like snacking and wanted to snack whether I was hungry or not.  I regarded this as a weakness, the very kind of weakness I believe fasting is intended to combat.
3. My normal diet made fasting harder.  I couldn’t believe how weak I became after just one day without food.  This was especially so considering Daniel fasted without choice food for three weeks and Jesus fasted with apparently no food at all for 40 days.  I can’t prove anything here, so my conclusion might be suspect, but I did wonder if this was due to my overall diet.  I eat lots of sugar.  I have refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup and gluten and a whole lot of things Daniel and Jesus never had period, much less never had to fast from.  I wondered if this diet, my regular, normal, everyday diet, was just such that it by itself (apart from willpower, apart from wanting to do right and not do wrong) made fasting far more difficult that it was for someone without such a diet.  I further wondered, then, if my daily spiritual diet (my TV watching, my going the mall, my consumerist, disposable, buying-and-selling, always-being-entertained) makes the “to live is Christ” lifestyle the Bible promotes equally far more difficult.  I think it does.
4. Fasting was hard to talk about.  Jesus teaches that we are to behave no differently when we are fasting.  Because of this, I kind of feel fasting is something I need to keep to myself.  But the way I interacted with people throughout the day, and the way food is often part of such interactions, made it nearly impossible to do this.  I had to tell people I was fasting, and it felt weird.
5. Fasting was appropriate.  It feels a little self-righteous and deluded to say that I was participating in the passion of Jesus by fasting; I’m fully aware of that.  And yet, to some small degree that is exactly what it was.  It felt right to fast from food, particularly “choice food” during that period as some small reflection of all Jesus did without and all Jesus suffered from during that exact same period.  And it was just fasting from food.  Video games was something else I fasted from; it just didn’t seem appropriate to be playing video games, particularly the bloody kind, during the latter part of Holy Week.  Sex was another; sex just didn’t seem right that weekend.  I had heard of people fasting from such things before, and I always thought it was weird, even legalistic.  I was always glad I was raised in a tradition that didn’t have such fasts.  But this time these fasts seemed not weird but right to me.

So that was my fasting experiment.  Did I do it right?  I’m not sure.  I did participate in the passion of Christ in some small way and/or respect the sacrifice that we commemorate that beautiful weekend, though.  I’m fairly convince of that.  I’m convinced fasting in the flawed way I did was a better way to observe the events of this weekend than not fasting at all (just as feasting is a better way to observe the events of the following Sunday).  Even more than that, I learned a lot from doing it.  My eyes were opened to some other important realities, particularly the reality that the way I routinely live, a way that does not seem wrong to me/seems normal to me, often prevents me from being in the flow of God.  I think that makes the experiment a success.

He Is Risen Indeed

Nothing else needs to be said today.

Moravian Daily Text App

Christmas just came early for me.  I was making plans for my 2019 Bible reading plan.  I read a Bible passage every day, and I usually like to follow a plan.  I will finish my current plan on December 31st (ending with Jude, I think), so I need a new one.

I did not find what I was looking for.  I am not concerned with reading the entire Bible in a year, which is what most plans are geared for.  I’ve already read the entire Bible many times and most benefit from something that gives shorter readings than those “in a year” plans.  I wanted something like what I get from the Moravian Daily Text.

That, in turn, got me thinking about the Moravian Daily Text.  I access this text every night, using their “Watchword” and “Doctrinal Texts” for my nightly prayers.  I have always wanted an app for the text, but have so far been limited to using the website.  But I decided to check the Google Play store (I’m an Android guy), and to my great delight I found there was a new Moravian Daily Text app on it!

The app is listed as a 2018 app.  I don’t know if that means I’ll have to buy a new one for 2019.  If so, I’ll gladly do it.  It was only $1.99, and it is something I consult every day.  To be sure, it was no great hardship to use the website, but there is just something about having it as an app that I like.  If you want to check out the app, you can find it here, and if you would like to check the website, you can find that here.  I hope you will check it out in at least one of these ways.  The Lord has brought me some great words through these texts, and I know He will do the same for you.

It’s Not That Important

This post is a point from a recent sermon which I thought was A) important and B) open to some elaboration.  I have taken it and elaborated on it here.

A fifth/final way to escape fear/live apart from anxiety is to see that some of the things we fear are not as important as we think they are. These fears aren’t as great as we make them out to be.

For example, I’m afraid of not being a good preacher and I have been for some time.  It was established very early in Bible college that I was a “good preacher”.  I’ve been called that or told I am that more times than I know.  And that was very pleasing to me when I preached my first few sermons at 14 & 15 years old.  Now, though, some thirty years later, it isn’t so great.  Once you get a title like that, you then have to live up to it.  Like the old gunfighter who has to defend his reputation against every young buck who wants to make a name for himself, I have to defend my reputation.

(When I preached this, I said I thought there was some movie about an old gunfighter defending his reputation.  Somebody shouted out The Shootist.  I’ve never seen it, so I don’t know if that’s it or not.  I do know that I’ve seen this idea in a slightly comic form in this Far Side cartoon.)

After 25 years, I’ve gotten tired of defending that reputation.  I’ve gotten tired and discouraged of having to prove every Sunday that I am a “good preacher”.  I’ve gotten really tired of having to live up to that label, or, to put it differently and perhaps more poignantly, of having to earn that identity.

Fortunately, the Lord has shown me recently that I don’t have to do this anymore.  He has shown me that “good preacher” is not my identity.  He has shown me that “son of God” is my identity, and He has further shown me that this identity doesn’t have to be proven or earned.  He has, in other words, shown me that being a good preacher is not that important.  What’s far more important than being a good preacher is bringing His word, that is, bringing people a true message from Him.  That’s not the same as being a “good preacher” as that title is culturally understood.  It sounds the same but it is not.  Bring a word from God is far more noble and profound than being a good preacher.  It s also a  lot easier to do and a whole lot less stressful.

Let me give you another example of a fear I have which isn’t as important as it first seems to be.  I’ve always been afraid of visitors not being impressed with my church.  To that end, I’ve obsessed over how clean the carpet is, how good the worship is, whether or not there are any misspellings in the bulletin or the slides, if church members are friendly to the visitors, and any number of similar issues.  It suddenly occurred to me, though, that these worries are completely unfounded.  They are not unfounded in the sense that they don’t happen; they do happen.  But they are unfounded in the sense that they don’t mean much.  If someone rejects my church because there is a misspelling on a worship slide, they would leave my church for any reason.  Keeping such people pleased with everything today merely means they will become displeased about something tomorrow.  There is always the chance they will become displeased about something tomorrow, anyway.  It means such people aren’t and probably never will be in a real relationship with me.  And it is rather silly to worry about losing something that is not a real relationship.

I’m willing to bet there are some things in your life that aren’t that important as you think they are.  I’m willing to bet you are afraid of things that really aren’t as significant as they seem, which really won’t do the damage or aren’t the damage they portend to be.  I don’t know what these are exactly.  They may be like mine.  They may have to do with your reputation or identity in some way, with how people see you or think of you; whether or not they love you/you are loved.  But they could be something else completely.  I don’t know.  I just know we are frightened by things that aren’t really that frightening, and I further know that we won’t be frightened by them anymore if we realize they aren’t as frightening.

If you’d like to hear the entire message this post was taken from, you can find it here.  Enjoy, and may God deliver you from your fears!

I Can Make It

This post contains a short point from a recent message.  I left a part out of this point, a small but critical part which came to me after the message was completed.  I hated that, so I decided to rectify it here.

Another technique I’ve discovered to escape fear/live apart from anxiety is to realize that I have more resources than I think.  Resources (or the lack of resources; that scarcity/poverty lying under the harvest, the threat of not having enough) is a major source of anxiety for me.  That’s what introverts worry about (I don’t know what extroverts worry about, but lack of resources is what introverts worry about ). What I’ve realized lately, though, is that I have far more resources than I give myself credit for.  I have inexhaustible resources, actually, or at the very least i have access to inexhaustible resources.  I am a child of God.  The Father has given me full access to His household; He has put on my hand the signet ring, allowing me to do family business or spend family capital.

My favorite description of the access I have to the Father’s resources. All He has He counts as mine. I’m allowed to touch and use everything in His estate.

When I have need, then, I can supply it not just from whatever meager resources I have scrapped together (how much money I’ve managed to save, how much sleep I managed to get, etc.) but also and even more so from the Father’s resources.  I can go into the Father’s barn.  I can withdraw from the Father’s bank account.  I’ve always had the ability to do this, I suppose, but I’ve only recently learned to actually do it.  I haven’t been looking at last night’s sleep to get me through the day as  have all my life, but I’ve been looking at God to get me through the day .  When I feel tired, I say, “God, I need something here.”  I say that and I usually seems like I get it.  Energy is usually given to meet my need.

I’m not the only one to discover these resources or the ability to use these resources.  Santa Clause discovered this as well.  I started reading a book about Santa Claus (aka St. Nicholas) yesterday.

In that book, I discovered this statement about young Nicholas’ growth in the faith:

Nicholas found he could ask God for strength and receive it.  He found he had access to more resources than his own.  I’ve found the same thing, and it has had a profound affect on me.  I was in a difficult situation the other night.  I was struggling with the same difficulty my wife and I have been struggling with for some time.  As I struggled with that, I looked up to heaven and said to God, “I just can’t make it.”  And immediately I heard God say back, “Yes you can.”  I don’t know if God said that to me directly or said it through the Holy Spirit or said it through my own conscience which He has taught to think as He thinks (any of those ways gets you to the same place), but He said it.  It was said.  “Yes you can make it.”  And that statement was based on this idea.  I could make it through this difficulty because I had his resources to get me through it.  My own resources weren’t sufficient; I rightly realized that.  But I had (and have) more resources than my own.  Those resources are sufficient to get me through this difficulty and any other which comes my way.  That gives me a lot of confidence.  It gives me the same confidence I had when I learned I could run 10 miles.  Before I knew I could do that, I was afraid of running, afraid of my energy giving out when I was far from home.  Once I knew I could do that, I no longer feared running.  I looked forward to it, actually.  I laughed at the distance that once frightened me because I knew I could cover it.

And that takes away fear.  Understanding that I have these other, better resources which enable me to get through whatever I need to get through disarms my fear.

So that is one point of my message.  If you’d like to listen to the rest, you can find it here.  Enjoy, and may God lead you out of anxiety!

Some Thanksgiving Thoughts

 

I really hope you’re not reading this on Thanksgiving Day.  I hope you are far too busy with friends and family and food to be looking at blogs.  But just in case you are, let me give you a few Thanksgiving thoughts.

The first comes from a book about Thanksgiving by Melanie Kirkpatrick.

In that book, she describes how some pastors disliked the scheduling of football games on Thanksgiving Day.  These pastors believed the games took away from the church services being held that day.  A rabbi chimed into this debate, saying this:

Yeah, I’m a football fan, too, and I will be watching portions of all three games being played, so I definitely see things the way the rabbi does (and I agree with his portrayal of God and what a good God enjoys).

But I will be giving thanks on the day as well.  That is nothing new for me; I thank God every day for dozens of blessings.  But I do give special thanks on this day.  There are many Scriptures which fuel this thanks, of course, but there are several songs that do so as well.  I wanted to share a few of those with you:

 

There are a dozen or so others, all of them special to me at this time of year.  I hope you enjoy a few of those if you have the time.  I also hope you eat well, as I said earlier, and that you are well-loved and love well.  I hope you look up to heaven at some time between the gridiron and the table.  And I really do hope you have a happy Thanksgiving!