Category: Daily Devotionals

He Hadn’t Seen His Father In 12 Years

Published on by Christine Wyrtzen1 Comment

After three days, his parents found him in the temple. His mother said to him, ‘Son, how could you treat us this way? Your father and I have been anxiously looking for you.’ And He said to them, ‘Why is it that you were looking for Me? Did you not know that I had to be in my Father’s house?’ Luke 2:46,48

Every parent knows what it’s like to momentarily lose sight of your child in public. Your stomach drops like lead when you realize that they are not where they are supposed to me. The word ‘kidnapped’ assaults your mind immediately.
Mary and Joseph brought twelve-year-old Jesus to the temple. While on their way home, they realized that Jesus was not with them. They searched frantically for three entire days.  Re-tracing their steps, they ended up back at the temple and were shocked to find him there. He was listening in to the many spiritual conversations that took place in God’s house. Still distraught, Joseph and Mary asked Him how he could have done such a thing. His answer? “Did you not know that I had to be in my Father’s house?” He seemed shocked that they would have been distraught.
In all the times I’ve read this story over the years, it never occurred to me that Jesus left His Father to come to earth and hadn’t seen Him for twelve years. There had to be homesickness in his soul for His Father’s company. The memory of being near God was in his spiritual DNA. To visit the temple and to approach the holy of holies, the place where God’s Spirit called ‘home’, re-awakened the feelings of being home in glory. He was near His Father again – yet on earth. Did His heart break at the thought of leaving Him again? His attachment to Mary and Joseph had to pale in comparison.
I don’t know if you believe in near death experiences. While a few seem exaggerated, I believe many have been real. There is a common theme in the stories where people experienced time in the presence of God; they didn’t want to come back to earth. Yes, they loved the people they left. Yes, they even knew their death would be grieved and yet, the magnetism of God’s presence drew them. The memory of Him changed their lives forever. For their remaining days, they dreamt of the day they would once again be eternally in the presence of their Heavenly Father.

Are my times with You as life-changing? You are drawing me with an everlasting love so how could I ever want to be anywhere else!   Amen

What About Peace On Earth?

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And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.” Luke 2:14

Songs have been written about peace at Christmastime and greeting card companies have used the quote to promote wishes for peace to all who receive their card.  It’s nice to wish someone we care about a peaceful life but is this what the angels meant when they made this announcement?

If they had just declared ‘peace on earth’, it might have been easier to misconstrue.  But the phrase ‘peace among men with whom He is pleased’ changes everything.

This phrase is connected to an event in Jesus’ life when God the Father made a pronouncement of His own.  When Jesus was being baptized, His Father’s voice was heard, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”  So to whom will peace come?  To those with whom the Father is pleased.  The conditions for pleasing the Father are to love His Son, to embrace Him as Savior, and to live a life of obedience, just as Jesus did.

 For every person who does this, there is peace with God.  The birth of Jesus and the mission He came to fulfill made this peace possible because sin was dealt with on Calvary.  This sentiment from the angels can not be misconstrued to mean that, in 2022, the world will be a more peaceful place.  It won’t.  Times here will only prove more perilous until Jesus comes back and the prophecies from scripture continue to play out.  While that may sound grim, God’s plan moves along according to God’s timetable, leading us to the day when Jesus will reign on earth and we will enjoy peace – internally and externally – for the first time.

For every one of us who are citizens of heaven today, who have made peace with God through Christ, peace starts now.  It reigns in the heart of all those who have asked Jesus to bear the Father’s wrath in our place.  That’s what He came to do.  A birth in a crude stable setting was to usher in a peace-making mission.  So to all of you who are in Christ today, I send a heartfelt greeting.  “Rest in the peace of forgiven sins.  Rest in the peace that exists between you and the Father.  Jesus came to win it for us – and hand it to us on the other side of the cross.”

If you are well pleased with me, it is only because my righteousness was a gift from You, Jesus.  Thank you for peace the world does not understand.  Amen

The Expanse of God in a Person

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Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.  John 14:9

The concept is pretty unbelievable.  How can you take a timeless, omnipotent, powerful, holy God and confine him to live His life through a human being?  Such is the meaning of the incarnation. 

God speaks and planets appear out of nowhere.  God pushes galaxies around with the tip of His finger.  He breathes over a dead Earth and everything brown turns to lush green.  Such unfathomable power, isn’t it?  Can this deity be born inside a virgin and emerge as not only the image of God, but God Himself?  Jesus said yes and this is what got Him crucified.  He claimed to be God.  Either He was telling the truth and is worthy of my worship or He’s a liar and should have died the death that He got.  For much of the world to believe that He’s just a good teacher without choosing sides is a cop out.

The expanse of God can live in a person.  Jesus proved that.  God, in Christ, restrained His power but when unleashed, the dead were raised, storms ceased, and the blind were made to see.

Can I even dare to believe that I have not only been made in God’s image, I am a container for the Spirit of God to live in.  All that power, wisdom, peace, holiness…. lives in my spirit.  Can others see evidence of that?  Is His glory visible?  Am I bold enough, when prompted, to speak words of healing and truth and trust the power of God to work through me?  Perhaps I am shy of it because I have forgotten that I can be possessed by Spirit.  Just as a demoniac is possessed by the god of this world, I am to be overtaken and ruled by the Spirit of God.  When that happens, it’s quite evident that I am not my own.  Like Jesus, I only do what my Father tells me.  My works of faith will be both glorious and controversial. 

Help me fully understand what Your incarnation means for me.  It’s so loaded with implications and I know I haven’t begun to grasp it. Amen

Wild and Wonderful

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The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh [Messiah] comes.  Genesis 49:10

If I look for a human being to emulate, Joseph is always a good choice.  His fidelity to God amidst great suffering has inspired us down through the ages.  Of all of Jacob’s sons, Joseph gets the most attention.  Yet, it is not from the line of Joseph that Jesus was born.  The extremely flawed sons of Jacob didn’t mess things up so badly that God disqualified them from His blessing.  The promises of God prevailed over sin. 

What was the purpose of Joseph’s life?  To save Judah and His descendants.  If Joseph had not assumed a place of power in Egypt, he could not have brought his father and brothers to a place of abundance.  Jacob and all of his descendants would have perished in the great famine.  It’s hard for us to grasp that Joseph was used by God to save a brother who had sold him into slavery.  It seems twisted.

But God is wild and wonderful.  He is also unpredictable.  He exalts the likes of Judah.  He blesses adulterers like King David.  He forgives betrayers like Peter.  He saves persecutors and murderers like Paul.  Judah, at the end of his life, offered to give his own for the life of another brother.  His father, Jacob, lived long enough to see Judah choose righteousness. The common thread in all of these stories was a heart of repentance.  God’s forgiveness was, and is, so radical that an entire past is put under His atoning blood.

No family is perfect. In the past few days, I’ve heard from more than a few who say that they have not seen their grandchildren in years. They grieve over that and feel embarrassed in public when others ask if they have children and grandchildren. Is the Gospel of Jesus Christ relevant to them? Is it relevant to us in the very places we long to see the righteousness of God revealed in the lives of our family members? Oh yes.

This Christmas, as we hear the Christmas story and are tempted to zone out at the reading of the lineage of Jesus, let’s wake up and sit on the edge of our seat.  When Judah’s name is mentioned, we can rejoice that God works in family messes.  No one is out of His reach.  We should never stop praying for forthcoming repentance.  God is good for every promise He has made.

For every family ‘Joseph’, there are tears of joy.  For every family ‘Judah’, there are tears of faith.  You are God over every family drama that is brought to your feet in prayer.  Amen

Baby Language and Prayer

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Undoubtedly there are all sorts of languages in the world, yet none of them is without meaning. I Cor. 14:10

Christmas is the one time of year most people concentrate on a baby.  We think of Mary and then recall our own experiences of holding an infant.  Ron and I waited six years before holding Jaime, our first child, in our arms.  Three years later, Ryan joined us.  When they were newborns, neither was able to talk with intelligible words yet we enjoyed communicating as if we really understood each other.  They would coo and I would whisper back, “Oh, is that so!”  This back and forth exchange went on for as long as it took for them to fall asleep. Did it matter that we were not speaking concrete thoughts?  Not to me.  Not to them.  It was all about a language of connectedness.

Mary was like any other mother and bonded with her child, the infant Jesus.  Could she sense His divinity even though His language was yet without words?  What tender stories surrounded His infancy?  We’ll never know unless Mary feels led to share some of them with us in heaven.

Communicating with an unseen God is still a mystery.  Plunge into the depths of Him and we experience unintelligible language there, too. His glory defies words and though our hearts burst with the wonder of it, human language cannot capture it. Prayer is all about spending time in His presence; connecting, with or without words.  The resting is restorative.  The love is transformational.  The language transcends time and space.

Prayer often takes us to the place where two spirits meet to commune in silence.  We meet God on a deeper dimension.  Whether my intercession today is filled with words, or is wordless, prayer is to be celebrated.  God is a Father who holds me closely, hears my sighs, sees my tears, senses my false starts, and understands each expression perfectly.

Make me fluent in the things of Your Spirit.  Amen

The Little Reconciler

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All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.  2 Corinthians 5:18 

What a package of explosive potential lay in the manger.  He was the little Lamb and the little Shepherd, each one offering life altering implications for those who needed a Lamb to be slain for their sin and for those who needed a shepherd to show them the way home. Baby Jesus would do far more than that though.

He was also the little Reconciler who had the power to bring together two enemies and make them, not only compatible but, intimate.  Reconciliation rarely has such stunning outcomes.  It is one thing to bring together two parties who are at odds over an issue.  It is quite another thing to cause two people, far apart in every way, to eagerly join hands and become one in their mind and heart.

Oh, how deep was this fracture in the Garden of Eden.  God had made man perfectly.  It was man who wanted more, who bought the serpent’s lie, and then opened their mind to evil.  It was a world mankind was not created to understand nor be compatible with.  Evil corrupted him and he began to choose everything that God wouldn’t choose and to think all the things God wouldn’t think. Alienation ensued and the two were separated by a great gulf.  Holiness could not reconcile with sinfulness without a miracle.  God’s answer?  Send a Reconciler who would also be the Lamb to forgive their sin and restore them to what they once were ~ holy before God.  Jesus would be the game changer.   Perfected natures would not want to sin and would indeed hate sin.  Man’s mind would be washed completely of defilement.  He would think and feel like the indwelling Spirit who inhabited him.

The baby didn’t automatically reconcile enemies at His birth.  God’s timetable moves slowly.  It took thousands of years for God to send this Lamb.  It would take thirty-three years more for the Lamb to die for the sins that separated creation from His Father.  But how necessary the three decades were.  The only way for people to trust the Lamb and forsake their sin would be to know Him.  They would watch Him live and hear Him speak. They would experience Him through direct interaction.  His Light would woo the sinner and warm up their icy relationship.  Light would draw some to His Father and repel others.  Not all would hate their sin and mourn the estrangement.

Ah, but for the ones who did, for them it would be different.  The great gulf that separated them from their Creator would break their heart.  They would own their sin that caused the breach and trust the Lamb to bring them to the foot of His cross.  His blood would wash them clean and present them faultless to His Father. Complete compatibility.  Impeccable restoration. Perfect reconciliation.  

If there is tension in our relationship, it can be fixed now by the One who still reconciles.  Thank you, Jesus. Amen

Hiding The Light Of The World

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After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. Luke 2:46-47

Was it difficult for Joseph and Mary to give Jesus a normal upbringing? Was he just one of the villager’s children? Scripture doesn’t say but as Michael Card encourages believers to read the Word with their God-given imaginations, we can wonder. In this one account from Luke, Jesus goes to the temple when He is twelve, asks a few questions, offers some insights in response, and the scholars are amazed.

How do you hide the Light of the world in a dark and oppressive Roman society? In Nazareth, there very well could have been stories among the villagers about Jesus. Though His first public miracle was at the wedding at Cana, did things happen earlier that could only have been explained by the word ‘miracle’? We’re not told but I find it interesting that Mary turned to Jesus at the wedding and casually asked if He would do something about the fact that the wine had run out.

This child, Jesus, was also divine. He was also the One who spoke the world into existence. How could His words have been common, even as One Incarnate? As He saw the broken world around Him, wouldn’t He have addressed it on more than one occasion? Surely He would have seen parents, brothers, and extended family members get sick. Surely there would have been demonic manifestations near Him in everyday life. I wonder if the presence of God, resident in Christ, caused cataclysmic reactions at various points in His childhood. It could be that God Himself veiled the eyes of those around the Christ child to protect His identity until it was time for Him to begin His ministry. But surely something extraordinary happened in the temple when Jesus was twelve. This we know ~ His divinity was on display that day.

What does all of this mean for us? When God gives a gift, there is no indication that it should be used indiscriminately. When God entrusts His disciple with spiritual abilities, they should remain inoperative until God says it’s time to use them. Thirty years of age is a long time for Jesus to wait to be released into public ministry. In God’s wisdom, there were thirty years of preparation for three years of ministry.

You and I may be aware of spiritual gifts that lie in waiting. We strain to exercise them and second-guess God’s wisdom of how long we must wait for the door of our calling to be opened. Could it be that God raises up a disciple for forty-five or fifty years before commissioning him/her to realize their usefulness? Could there be a lifetime of preparation for a few short years of ministry?  Could destiny follow decades of obscurity? In God’s economy, yes. John the Baptist was a flash of Light but never, according to Jesus, did anyone burn brighter.

Oh, the mystery of Your ways. For every place that I wait for You, I submit to Your wisdom and timetable. Amen

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The Mercy Of Joseph

Published on by Christine Wyrtzen1 Comment

Joseph, her husband, was a righteous man. Matthew 1:19

When Judah found out that his daughter-in-law, Tamar, had played the part of a harlot, he sentenced her to be burned. When Joseph discovered that his fiancée, Mary, was pregnant, he reached out to her in love and mercy. Joseph was a righteous man and righteousness reaches out with mercy first, whereas humanness pronounces judgment. Joseph really knew Mary and wrestled with the issue of her pure heart and her circumstances. He knew that Mary’s chastity and her pregnancy were incongruent. Only God would ease his torment by revealing the truth about her conception.

Without God’s work of redemption in my heart, there is something sinister in me that loves gossip. Getting the dirt on upright people can be enjoyable. Shooting arrows of condemnation at them can be cathartic as I try to make myself believe that I’m not as bad as I thought. Jesus’ standard of selfless, agape love burns brightly and eats holes through my self- righteousness. He reminds me that love is loyal and believes the best until proven otherwise.

A person can live righteously for forty years, mess up once, and people are quick to erase his good track record. All that he has been and done is wiped from his credentials. Where is our merciful response, the one we would want if we were in his shoes? “Christine has done what? That doesn’t sound like her. If it’s true, I wonder what happened to make her act like that?”

“Mary, pregnant? That can’t be. Mary has a heart for her God and has proven herself faithful to me. There must be more to this story.” And for Joseph, there was.

You delight in righteousness, Lord. Left to myself, I delight in another’s downfall. Make me like Joseph, not Judah. Amen

The Greatest of All Love Stories

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For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:16

The Gospel is the grandest love story of all time. And who doesn’t love a love story? How much better does it get than Mr. Darcy coming across the moors one misty morning to proclaim his love to Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice.   It is heart stopping; just exquisite.

My favorite love scene of all is from the Sound of Music. Maria, never thinking she would be a candidate for love, is approached in the garden by Captain Von Trapp. The setting is a blue-green, surreal world at dusk ~ captured in soft focus in the movie. He approaches her tentatively, so as not to overwhelm her. He speaks to her with a bit of a light hand.  “I thought I might just find you here!”  His playfulness disarms her and the rest is history. As a young girl, I remember pretending I was her. 

I had a lump in my throat and a knot in my stomach as their true feelings were revealed.
No matter who we are, we want to be the object of someone’s love. We want to be the main character in the love story. We long for a lover who will risk it all for us, who will throw reservation to the wind and go to great lengths to win our heart. Most never know that it is Jesus they are longing for.He gave up everything to come to us so that He could proclaim His love and rescue us from what would be impending doom.

Someone once said, “We come to the cross long enough to get saved but not long enough to get loved.”  The greatest tragedy is that churches are full of God’s children who have no idea how much they are cherished.
I used to wonder why I didn’t feel more love for Jesus. Obedience was absolute drudgery. God showed me that it was because I didn’t know how much He loved me! I hadn’t opened my heart to receive everything He wanted to give to me. And here’s the thing ~ God created me to be a responder.  “We love him because He first loved us.” Once my heart is captivated by the love of God for me, I will spend it all on Him. No price will be too steep.

Melt my reservations. Every one. Amen

Journal Question:  Jesus is approaching you. He softly calls your name. What is your reaction? Run and hide? Look up for only a moment before losing your nerve and looking away? What is it you’re afraid of? Tell Him. He already knows.

What Spills Out

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My soul magnifies the Lord. Luke 1:46

Words of faith do not originate from a vacuum. What spills out during the times when I am stretched to my limit reflects the kind of faith I have previously cultivated. A well known bible teacher said, “Who I am when hard times hit is really who I am.” True! The words I speak during my most painful moments are mirrors that reflect the foundation of my life. Hannah endured the scourge of barrenness. When the divine hand of God finally touched her, she delivered a famous discourse that spanned a dozen verses. It is one of the most prophetic passages in all of scripture.

Elizabeth also suffered the heartache of being childless, yet through it, she also cultivated her faith. She learned the Word of God, built the precepts of it into the fabric of her life, and when God visited her with a child in her old age, she also rose to prophesy. (And, she was the first to recognize the Messiah, though just a 3 month-old baby in Mary’s womb!)

Eloquence is not confined to adults. Mary was merely a teenager when an angel visited her. Given a task that would have crushed most grownups, she also rose up to deliver the famous Magnificat. The fact that such words could flow from a twelve-year-old is an indication that her childhood was also spent learning the scriptures. She didn’t just speak shallow words of praise. She also highlighted the ‘ways of God’ that could only be known by one who had reviewed God’s dealings with His people throughout Israel’s history.

Human nature wants to coast during the good times, only drawing close to God when the fires of adversity get hot. God is gracious and will certainly answer us whenever we cry out for help, but there is a better way. I can fortify my heart today by the choices I make with my time. If I make sure to feed my spirit through careful study of the Word of God, through listening in prayer, through deliberate searching of God’s heart in matters great and small, I create a storehouse of spiritual food that will serve me well when there’s famine. When hunger and thirst visit my front door, I will not be shocked to no longer hear hopeless and fearful words come out of my mouth. What spills out will be the sweet waters of faith.

I walk in the shoes of Hannah, of Elizabeth, and of Mary. Their footsteps are easy to see, but hard to follow, yet I choose their narrow path. In Jesus’ name, Amen