Tag: god

Wild, Yet Wonderful

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God is wild and wonderful.  He is also unpredictable.  He exalts the likes of Judah, the treacherous son of Jacob.  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

Able To Read The Times

Published on by Christine Wyrtzen1 Comment

Jesus also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, ‘A rainstorm is coming,’ and it does. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat,’ and there is. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky, but how can you not know how to interpret the present time?  Luke 12:54-59

How is it possible for someone close to God to miss the obvious? This was Jesus’ message to the crowd. They were skillful at interpreting weather-related signs but inept at interpreting the times.

When Saul pursued David to kill him, the number of those who stood by David was small.  But a group of men called the ‘sons of Issachar’ perceived things correctly.  They saw Saul for who he was ~ a disobedient king under God’s judgment.  They saw David for who he was ~ God’s anointed man who should ascend the throne.  From all circumstantial evidence, it would appear that Saul was suffering the threat of a coup led by a renegade named David. However, these 200 men read the two men accurately.  

The children of Issachar, men who understood their times, knew what Israel ought to do.  I Chronicles 12:32

What kind of spiritual acumen do I possess?  The men of Issachar looked at Saul the way God looked at Saul.  His throne or his crown did not sway them.  They could see his behavior and leadership style and know he was out of God’s favor.  They looked for the anointing but couldn’t find it.  They also looked at David and saw past his poverty and rag-tag militia.  They perceived the spiritual markings of a kingly anointing.

Not everything is as it appears. Influential people are often a house of cards.  They can crumble after just one confrontation.  The meek are often perceived as weak but may rise to rule over us if God promotes them.  Jesus is coming soon, and understanding the times has never been more critical.

Oh, for divine eyesight.  Train me.  Amen

Near To The Father’s Heart – Part 1

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No one has ever seen God. But the unique One, who is himself God, is near to the Father’s heart. He has revealed God to us.  John 1:18. NLT

The expression John paints of Jesus being near to the Father’s heart is not new to us.  Today, we use the same expression to describe a feeling for our children.  ‘Near and dear to our heart’ implies that the relationship is not like most others.  Encounters with them ~ we carry with us.  Words they speak to us ~ we hold dear.  Pain they express ~ we embrace and lift to the Father constantly in prayer.   

To be near to the Father’s heart literally means that Jesus was ‘in the bosom of the Father.’  A bosom is defined as three things.  Today, let’s look at the first one.

The bosom is part of the upper body between both arms.  The heart, specifically. 

I don’t know what you face today.  It may look like a routine day to you so far but for every person who faces scary unknowns, God has you near to His heart.  You have not been pushed away, put down, or even relegated to a place near Him yet out of sight.  He has embraced you and drawn you up to His chest.  

When your heart beats, He feels it.  

When His heart beats, you feel it. 

In all their distress he too was distressed, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them, He lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. Isaiah 63:9

Father, I need this today.  You’ve picked me up, taken me with you to my divine appointments today and when turbulent, You draw me into the stillness of You.  Amen

Why We Can’t Give Up

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“Behold, I am doing a new thing.  Don’t you perceive it?  I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”  Isaiah 43:19

When life has always been one way for many years, the thought that it can be different is hard to grasp.  We quit praying.  We stop dreaming.  Our faith shrivels.  We simply cease believing that God can, and will, do a new thing.  Technically, we may know that He can because He is God.  But our hearts live in dangerous territory ~ we fear His heart for us has switched off.  He doesn’t love us enough to bless us with a different experience. Does this accurately describe where you are today? I lived this way for two decades. 

On the wall in our family room is a beautiful piece of calligraphy.  “Behold, I am doing a new thing.  Don’t you perceive it?  I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”  Isaiah 43:19  Of all messages I get to share with others who are in despair, this is at the top of the list.  ‘Don’t give up on God!  He is the One who makes something out of nothing.  He is the One who turns deserts into springs!  Just because it’s always been this way doesn’t mean there can’t be a miracle.’

I say this passionately because He did this for me.  At a time when it appeared my life was over, God met me and encouraged me to embrace, by faith, the promises I hadn’t yet made mine.  Today, I can’t recognize my old life and the people who used to be in it!

 We must stay open to the expectation of God’s hand of blessing.  What we’ve never had – God can easily produce.  What has never been – can be – with a Father who finds it easy to make something out of nothing.

Lord, You know the places in my life where faith is difficult. I struggle to trust You in spite of everything You’ve already done.  But I will not lose heart.  Your power to maker a way is not in question.  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 slain for their sin and for those who were lost and needed a shepherd to show them the way home.  

Baby Jesus could 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 thinking and feeling.  

Oh, how deep was the fracture in the Garden of Eden.  God had made man perfectly.  It was he who wanted more, who bought the Serpent’s lie, and then opened his mind to evil.  It was a world he was not created to understand nor be compatible with.  Yet, evil corrupted him and he began to choose everything that God wouldn’t choose and to think all 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 could also be the Lamb to forgive sin and restore the sinner to what he once was ~ holy before God.  That would be the game changer.  The perfected nature would not want to sin and would indeed hate sin.  His mind would be washed completely of defilement to think and feel like the indwelling Spirit who inhabited him again.  

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 God’s love, grace, and mercy through direct interaction.  His Light would woo the sinner and warm up their icy relationship.  Light would either draw men to His Father or repel them.  Not all would come to hate their sin and mourn their estrangement.  Most would not, in fact.  

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.  Thank you, Jesus. Amen

Prayer For Restored Trust

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PRAYER FOR RESTORED TRUST

Do not trust in princes, in mortal man, in whom there is no salvation.  His spirit departs, he returns to the earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.  How blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God.  Psalm 146:3-5

Hope ~ expectation or desire for a certain thing to happen.

*************

Lord, You have been teaching me where hope is misplaced.  This has been the lesson of my life.  There are so many around me who claimed to have solutions for things that distressed me.  Sometimes they did.  Most times they did not.  There are even a few others who claimed to ‘be’ my salvation, my answer for whatever I was lacking.  They were not.  They became an idol as I placed all my hopes in them.  As their humanness surfaced, I was angry, then depressed.

Your lessons were hard at first.  You pushed the idols off my pedestal and exposed them.  My hope in them grew faint instantly.  Hope trembled and then became a phantom.  All that was left was You.  All along You were there.  In You my hope is never misplaced.  In You I can take refuge no matter what the threat.  In You I have a defender against all accusers.  In You I have a caretaker for all those who are fragile around me.  In You I have a refuge for the storms that loom on the horizon of the earth.

In every way my hope in You may be unbiblical, show me.  I do not look to You to make me wealthy, or to relieve my painful circumstances when I believe I need the rescue.  My hope is in Your promise that You rule righteously and do all things well in my life.  My hope is in Your steadfast love for me and Your sustaining grace.  My hope is rock solid even when I don’t understand Your answers to my prayers.  My hope is in You and all that You offer me in covenant love.  Amen

Remembering Who I Am

Published on by Christine Wyrtzen1 Comment

REMEMBERING WHO I AM

But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.  Romans 13:14

         I live in the ‘now but not yet’ as a Christian.  I am seated with Christ in the heavenlies but I also live here.  I was made holy at my conversion but I am told to be holy.  Satan was defeated on the cross but He won’t act like he’s defeated until He is judged at the last day and thrown into the lake of fire.  I was clothed with Christ when I made Him my Savior but Paul reminds me to put on Christ daily.

         This is the battle.  Truth must be reviewed, embraced, and intentionally lived out every day.  This morning, I remember who I am.

  • I am adopted, not an orphan.
  • I am free, not a slave.
  • I am forgiven, not condemned.
  • I am dead to sin, not trapped by former habits and sinful thought patterns.
  • I wear His robe of righteousness, not a tattered robe of shame.

I see the day ahead of me.  I review my new status as a child of God and decide to live like it.  Knowing I can’t do it by myself, I call upon the Spirit of God inside to rise up and enable spiritual life.  I ask Him to flood my desires with His desires.  I ask Him for the grace to be who I am.  I put on Christ like a cloak and it is not a heavy overcoat.  It is lightweight.  It fits perfectly.  I feel ten feet tall when I wear Him.

         Since I am a child of the ‘narrow way’, I know that I will stand out like a sore thumb.  I won’t be making the choices of the majority.  I won’t be thinking like the masses.  I will be peculiar.  I will confuse.  I will draw criticism.  And for that, the Spirit is ever close to comfort and encourage.  I won’t be tripped up by other’s rejection.  I expect it and won’t abandon the way of the cross when false expectations attempt to entrap me.  To ‘put on Christ’ is to live His life; fraught with miracles, glory, but also scorn and rejection.  Every step into the dark was redeemed on Calvary and glory awaits every child of God who lives for the ‘not yet’.

In spite of the challenges, wearing You is my deepest joy.  Amen

Jesus Taught Me How To Relate To Abba

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Jesus taught me how to live as a child of God. He was a Son; I am a daughter. If I want to know how to relate to Him, I follow His example.

Jesus made no autonomous decisions. The Son is able to do nothing of His own accord; but the Son is able to do only what He sees His Father doing. Jn. 5:19   His choices were often surprising. He chose only one man to heal at the at pool of Bethesda though many dreamt of it. The rich young ruler departed from Jesus’ with a sad heart  yet Jesus didn’t go after him. Jesus wasted no steps because Abba ordered them.

Did Jesus have memory of His intimacy with the Father? Did He remember the Garden and the fall? Did he feel the urgency of the ages in needing to redeem mankind? Or did God subject his mind/memory to finite time just as we live? I’m inclined to think that way. Whatever Jesus seemed to know about history, about Abraham and about the Torah, He knew from studying. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. Heb. 5:8

Jesus’ journey to the cross never eroded His trust in His Father.  He probably did not have all the details surrounding his coming crucifixion. He knew He was born for that purpose.  He trusted, He obeyed – and the seeming cruelty of God’s path for Him didn’t cause Him to stumble in His relationship with His Father. Can you imagine how He felt when He studied Isaiah 53 and other prophetic passages? He thought, “This is talking about me. This will happen to me.”

Abba, I will follow Jesus.  I will be submissive to You.   And I will not stumble over You when life gets really difficult.   Amen