Saturday, January 26, 2019

God Thoughts January 26th

God Thoughts January 26
"Joy is a hallmark of one who is free from shame. Jesus comes to bring joy as he removes your garments of shame and gives you a royal headdress instead. In place of shame, he gives honor, beauty, joy, comfort, justice, favor, and freedom—what our hearts long for most when shame rules our emotions, thoughts, and desires. We actually crave these more than empathy and vulnerability, which BrenĂ© Brown prescribes as shame’s antidote. Practicing empathy and vulnerability is a start. They point you down a path of acknowledging how pervasive shame is to the human experience, but they offer no permanent remedy. What about a holistic cure that reaches each aspect of shame’s damage? Consider what Jesus offers: Jesus comes to give honor instead of dishonor—all the ways you have felt and experienced rejection. Jesus clothes you with beauty, removing the ashes of shame you’ve worn for your sin or for the sinful atrocities committed against you. He comforts you as you mourn, releasing you from the shame of grieving alone or without purpose. Whether in this life or in the one to come, he brings justice for the injustice you’ve suffered because of your race, faith, gender, or family. Jesus brings favor—oh, favor of the Lord that is permanent and unchanging—instead of the vague cloud of constant disapproval. And what is the result of Christ’s work? Joy and freedom, the exact opposite of shame. Shame always steals joy and limits freedom. Shame binds us in chains that feel unbreakable to realities that seem unchangeable. Jesus frees you in the Spirit of the Lord."

"How can Jesus free you from shame? Through something as simple and as hard as faith. It is a faith that agrees that you cannot rescue yourself from your shame, that your attempts to clothe yourself have been as futile as the fig-leaf loincloths our first parents crafted. It is a faith that addresses the complication of shame mingled with guilt. This faith gives you an underlying confidence that your sin truly has been atoned for and taken away by a dying-now-resurrected Savior. It’s a faith that puts you at the mercy of the only trustworthy One, realizing that his human image-bearers have failed you in a myriad of ways, and that you have also failed those around you. It is a faith filled with hope that freedom is possible because it is promised by this trustworthy One, guaranteed by the signature of a promise signed with his own blood. This shame exchange is costly. Jesus willingly clothed himself with your dishonor, giving his shame-free identity to you if you will be united to him in faith. It is very costly for Christ, but not for us. All it costs us is the humility of admitting we cannot cover our own shame. We receive honor; he took our shame. We are lavished with grace; he was stained with our sin. We receive salvation; he experienced damnation. Because Jesus was separated from the Father, we never will have to be. “Indeed, none who wait for you [God] shall be put to shame” (Ps. 25: 3). “None” except for one, Jesus Christ, who bore our sin, guilt, and shame, that we might know forgiveness, redemption, and freedom."
― from "Unashamed: Healing Our Brokenness and Finding Freedom from Shame"

Friday, January 25, 2019

GOD THOUGHTS JANUARY 25TH

Shame is everywhere,” writes Heather. “Each emotion I feel gets connected or tainted with shame if I let it.” She is right. It is everywhere, and it seems as though everything in life gets channeled through it. Yet it is so hard to talk about.

Shame has two conflicting instincts. It needs to isolate and hide, and it needs a community in which to be transparent. Hiding, of course, usually wins. It is the easier and more natural of the two. But we are savvy enough to know that the easy way is rarely fruitful, which leaves us with the hard way—and that seems impossible. Then, left with no viable option, we default back to hiding.  Nelson, Heather Davis. Unashamed (p. 11). Crossway. Kindle Edition. 

God's answer to shame is Jesus and the family of His followers.  And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. Romans 5:5  As followers of Jesus, we dispel others shame, by pouring out the unconditional love of Christ!  Today, who needs your acceptance and love to overcome the shame that is everywhere.

Thursday, January 24, 2019

God Thoughts January 24th


This God thought is about following Jesus and summoning the courage to quit anything that does not belong to his kingdom or fall under his rule.

   Traditionally, the Christian community hasn't placed much value on quitting.  In fact, just the opposite is true; it is endurance and perseverance we most esteem.  For many of us, the notion of quitting is completely foreign.  When I was growing up, quitters were considered weak, bad sports, and babies.  I never quit any of the groups or teams I was part of.  I do remember briefly quitting the Girl Scouts, but I soon rejoined.  Quitting is not a quality we admire in ourselves or in others.

The kind of quitting I'm talking about isn't about weakness or giving up in despair.  It is about strength and choosing to live in the truth.  This requires the death of illusions.  It means ceasing to pretend that everything is fine when it is not.  Perpetuating illusions is a universal problem in marriages, families, friendships, and workplaces.  Tragically, pretending everything is fine when it's not, also happens at church, the very place where truth and love are meant to shine most brightly.

    Biblical quitting goes hand in hand with choosing.  When we quit those things that are damaging to our souls or to the souls of others, we are freed up to choose other ways of being and relating that are rooted in love and lead to life.  For example. . .

When we quit fear of what others think, we choose freedom.

When we quit blaming, we choose to take responsibility.

When we quit faulty thinking, we choose to live in reality.

Quitting is a way of putting off what scripture calls falsehood and the old self.  As the apostle Paul writes "You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body. " Ephesians 4:22-25

When we quit for the right reasons, we are changed.  Something breaks inside of us when we finally say, "no more."  The Holy Spirit births a new resolve in us.  We rise above our fears and defensiveness.  The hard soil of our heart becomes soft and ready to receive new growth and possibilities.  (I Quit Geri Scazzero with Peter Scszzero Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI.  Pg 15,16)

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

God Thoughts January 23rd

God Thoughts January 23rd

Silence, stillness, and centering before God (2 Minutes)


Scripture Reading: Genesis 22:9-12

When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”  “Here I am,” he replied.
“Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

Devotional

We encounter the wall when a crisis turns our world upside down.  These walls are not simply one time events we pass through and get beyond.  They are issues we return to as part of our ongoing relationship with God.

We see this in Abraham, waiting at the wall of infertility for twenty-five years before the birth of his first child with his wife, Sarah.  Ten to thirteen years later,  God led him to another wall-the separation of Ishmael, his eldest son (conceived with Sarah's maidservant Hagar).  Abraham encountered a third wall a few years later, when God commanded him to sacrifice his long awaited, beloved son Isaac on the Altar.

Abraham appears to have gone through the wall numerous times in his journey with God.  Why?  Thomas Merton explains, "unintentionally and unknowingly we fall back into imperfections.  Bad habits are like living roots that return.  These roots must be dug away and cleared from the garden of your soul. . .  This requires the direct intervention of God.
(Thomas Merton Ascent to Truth New York Hancourt, Brace and Co 1951 188-189)

Questions to Consider What things or people are you rooting your identity in that God may want to dig up so that your identity might be planted in him?

Prayer Abba Father, I open my clenched fists to surrender everything to you have given me.  Reestablish my identity in you-not in my family, my work, my accomplishments, or what others think of me.  Cleanse the things in me that are not conformed to your will.  By faith I unite my will to yours, so that the likeness of Jesus Christ may be formed in me.  In his name.  Amen.  

Conclude with Silence 2 Minutes


(Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day Peter Scazzero Zondervan)

Tuesday, January 22, 2019

SNOWSTORM


The Snow-Storm

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, 
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, 
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air 
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, 
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. 
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet 
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit 
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed 
In a tumultuous privacy of storm. 

Come see the north wind's masonry. 
Out of an unseen quarry evermore 
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer 
Curves his white bastions with projected roof 
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. 
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work 
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he 
For number or proportion. Mockingly, 
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; 
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn; 
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, 
Maugre the farmer's sighs; and, at the gate, 
A tapering turret overtops the work. 
And when his hours are numbered, and the world 
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, 
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art 
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, 
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, 
The frolic architecture of the snow. 
Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring. Proverbs 27:1

Monday, January 21, 2019

God's Thoughts January 21

“While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there.”
Acts 17:16–17

When I ride down an elevator I’m struck by how many people spend the entire ride glued to their cell phones; checking email, plugged into iTunes, or responding to text messages. It doesn’t make for good conversation or neighborliness or a chance to exchange simple pleasantries. 

As efficient as those of us are who use our cell phones for almost everything, I’m willing to bet we don’t exercise terrific skills of observation about our environment when we’re focused on our phone.    

It’s a good thing Paul didn’t have a cell phone that day in Athens, while he was waiting for his friends. He had the chance to observe his surroundings, to notice the abundance of idols. The preponderance of them everywhere told him these people had a desire to put their belief in and pledge their loyalty to something beyond themselves. His observation allowed him to take advantage of the opportunity to let them know about the God he believed in. 

Paul made a careful and intelligent case for the God we know in Jesus Christ. This is not a god, he said, who lives in temples fashioned by human hands, far removed from the lives of human beings. Paul’s God is engaged in human life and, in fact, is so related to us, Paul claims that “we are his offspring.” 

We may not be able to make a speech like Paul’s during our elevator rides, but we all have opportunities to take note of the people around us and to be engaged. Our relational engagement would be one way to model what we believe about God and model what Paul proclaims about God: that the God we know in Jesus Christ is a God engaged with our human lives, willing to enter into our lives, even when we are strangers.

Thought of the Day: Ask God today to disrupt your preoccupation with that which is unimportant. Ask Him to open you to take note of your surroundings and take advantage of opportunities to show others who He is.

SPEAK TO SOMEONE NEW TODAY
Dr. Joe Pettigrew