Month: November 2014

Categories
Serving Others

A Good Way To Spend and Be Spent this Christmas

“A Good Way To Spend and Be Spent this Christmas”
  by brian rushing

In my previous post, I shared a quote from J. I. Packer: “…the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor — spending and being spent — to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others — and not just their own friends — in whatever way there seems need.”

I want to share with you a way that you can “spend and be spent” this Christmas… It is something that our family has begun doing each year to change our Christmas tradition.
christmas gifts

In the past, Paige and I went to the stores throughout November and December with our list of people we had to buy gifts for. It was a long list (kind of like yours!). We scrambled to find something for everyone. But we kept realizing that it was hard to buy gifts for our family that they really needed. The reason? They already had everything they needed and more. In fact, all of our family members already have more stuff than fits in all their closets, shelves, and attics! Our houses are overflowing with “stuff.” Does this seem familiar to your experience?

So we discussed the issue and decided to experiment with a different way of gift-giving at Christmas – one that helps us to better embrace the spirit of giving at Christmas. Here’s how we do it – Each adult in the family brings $50 to pool with one another (you could set a different limit, but we landed on $50). We then take the pooled amount of money and have the children in the family look through a “Missions Catalog,” such as the Samaritan’s Purse “Help Others at Christmas” gift catalog. The children then choose how we will spend our money to help others. The children have a great time in picking out items to help other children and families around the world – baby chickens, a hive of honeybees, a fishing boat, medicine, livestock… whatever they want to choose. So instead of the kids searching through a toy catalog for gifts for themselves, they end up searching through a catalog of gifts to give to other people in real need! This leads to some great “teachable moments” as we discuss with them how missionaries use the gifts to share Christ with the families who receive the presents. After selecting the gifts we will provide, we pause to say a prayer asking God to use these gifts to bless the families that receive them and to draw those family members to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.dairy_animals

I know of others in our church family that have begun doing something similar, even giving gifts to one another in the form of donations to important ministries. I know of children who had received their Christmas money and wanted to add some of their “just received funds” into the adult “pool” of money to increase what could be purchased.

It is great to finish our celebration with our families and feel a real sense that we had helped each other better understand the real meaning of Christmas – celebrating what Christ did for us and how important it is that we share Him with others. I love the idea of “giving gifts” to one another that go to help spread God’s Word all over the world to families who need to hear of the great love of Jesus! During this Christmas season, I hope that you will continue to think of ways to help your family be “on mission” for God – spending and being spent – even if that leads to “non-traditional” ideas!

If you would like to do something similar with your family, let me give you two possible sites you can visit to find great ideas:
Samaritan’s Purse
(Search for their Holiday Gift Catalog. You can view the catalog items online or even download the catalog as a .pdf file)

International Mission Board’s Strategic Projects
(You can click on “All Projects” to see all 116 items that the different missionaries are striving to do – such as the Hope Haven Wheelchair project that I recommend!).

Categories
Christian Living

Helping Others is Inconvenient So Just Ignore Them

“Helping Others is Inconvenient So Just Ignore Them”
  by brian rushing

Once again, a year has blown by us in a hurry, and we find ourselves about to celebrate two of our favorite holidays: Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Thanksgiving might could be explained as the holiday of stuffing your face until you are about to pop (and then waiting awhile and stuffing it some more); and…
Christmas as the holiday of faking good behavior so Santa will give you gifts. (Or when you have gotten a bit too old for Santa, switching it to the holiday of using Santa to threaten others into fake good behavior!)

So (tongue-in-cheek) we might could call these two holidays our celebration of the sins of gluttony and deceit!

Just kidding… We know that this is not what these holidays are all about, but too often, we seem to head down a path that doesn’t embrace a truly thankful, giving spirit that these two holidays should point us toward. Too often we find ourselves with bad attitudes (and maybe even behavior) during this time of the year. We find ourselves with hurried attitudes similar to two of the people in Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan: the priest and the Levite.
slightly blurred watch face symbolizing an inconvenient attitude of hurry
These two men should have provided kindness and mercy to the man in need, but they both failed to do so – perhaps because it was too inconvenient to do so in the busyness of their day.

J. I. Packer says: “It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians — I will be more specific: so many of the soundest and most orthodox Christians — go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord’s parable, seeing human needs all around them, but (after a pious wish, and perhaps a prayer, that God might meet those needs) averting their eyes and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit. Nor is it the spirit of those Christians — alas, they are many — whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle-class Christian friends, and bringing up their children in nice middle-class Christian ways, and who leave the submiddle-class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian, to get on by themselves.
…The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor — spending and being spent — to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others — and not just their own friends — in whatever way there seems need.”

These words from Packer hit me pretty hard, as I consider my own behavior during this holiday season. I don’t like doing things that are inconvenient to me. And Helping Others is Usually Inconvenient! But that doesn’t give me (or any Christian) the right to Just Ignore Them.

And what I discover is that I am so busy with my plans, that anything “extra” that comes along during a day is pretty inconvenient – just like the beaten man was for the priest and Levite. Will I be willing to “spend and be spent” to enrich the lives of those who aren’t my friends and family this December? What will I do this holiday season to move away from the attitude of the “Christian snob” and live more like Jesus who gave His time, care, and concern to do good to others – even when it was inconvenient for Him? God, change my heart, change my attitude, change my behavior. Help me to “slow down” and stop feeling inconvenienced by others, and instead to realize that I have an opportunity to speak to others about You in each unexpected encounter.

        (Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)


Categories
Jesus

The Restraint of Jesus

“The Restraint of Jesus”
  by brian rushing

I’m sure that you’ve noticed this as well, but…
Sometimes the words of the Bible are confusing.
Sometimes when I read it, I find that the choices that God made are confusing.
Sometimes the things that Jesus said and did are confusing.
loads of question marks symbolizing the questions about Jesus such as his restraint of using his divine attributes
For example, how is it that Jesus – being fully God and fully human – seems to not know certain things (“Who touched my clothes?” “How many loaves do you have?”), while at other times He knows things it is impossible to know (“You have had five husbands.” “Lazarus is dead.”)?

How is it that Jesus can be hungry or tired or thirsty, while also being able to multiply fish and bread from thin air, change water to wine, command storms, heal sickness, and raise the dead? Was Jesus lying when He said He was thirsty or didn’t know something? No, Jesus never was dishonest, so that can’t be the answer. At times it seems that Jesus is fully human with little or no divinity, and at other times He doesn’t seem human at all.

Because of this back-and-forth situation we find in Jesus, I can find myself scratching my head about Him – wondering why it seems that Jesus’ divine nature and power are sometimes reduced. But I now realize that “reduced” is not the right word:

“The impression of Jesus which the Gospels give is not that he was wholly bereft of divine knowledge and power, but that he drew on both intermittently, while being content for much of the time not to do so. The impression, in other words, is not so much one of deity reduced as of divine capacities restrained.”

“The God-man did not know independently, any more than he acted independently. Just as he did not do all that he could have done, because certain things were not his Father’s will, so he did not consciously know all that he might have known, but only what the Father willed him to know. His knowing, like the rest of his activity, was bounded by his Father’s will. And therefore the reason why he was ignorant of (for instance) the date of his return was not that he had given up the power to know all things at the Incarnation, but that the Father had not willed that he should have this particular piece of knowledge while on earth….”

This answers a lot of questions for me about why Jesus did what He did and said what He said. It was all based on His connection to the Father – following His will completely.

This also helps me realize that there are times where certain things will not be in the Father’s will for my life, and certain things that the Father has not willed for me to know yet. All things are permissible for me, but not all things are beneficial, so if I am walking perfectly in God’s will (which Jesus always did), then God will give me the knowledge I need when I need it. And He will give me the ability I need when I need it.

Regarding Jesus’ restraint and the Father’s will, Packer concludes the idea with:

We see now what it meant for the Son of God to empty himself and become poor. It meant a laying aside of glory… a voluntary restraint of power; an acceptance of hardship, isolation, ill-treatment, malice and misunderstanding; finally, a death that involved such agony —spiritual even more than physical— that his mind nearly broke under the prospect of it. It meant love to the uttermost for unlovely human beings, that they through his poverty might become rich. The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity —hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory— because at the Father’s will Jesus Christ became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later he might hang on a cross. It is the most wonderful message that the world has ever heard, or will hear.

I am so glad that Jesus restrained Himself in accordance with the will of the Father, so that the messages of hope of Christmas and Easter became the greatest messages I ever heard and believed.


        (Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)


Categories
Jesus

Intentionally Choosing Death… How Strange

“Intentionally Choosing Death… How Strange”
  by brian rushing

“It is not strange that He, the Author of life, should rise from the dead. If he was truly God the Son, it is much more startling that he should die than that he should rise again.”

Absolutely.
It is not odd that the one who raised people from the dead could Himself rise from the dead. But it is very remarkable (strange, odd, unfathomable) that He would die in the first place.

gravestone symbolizing Jesus choosing death
And yet, parents, isn’t it true that you would willingly trade places with one of your children facing death in order that they (the child) could continue on in life? Certainly. Many children unfortunately end up in the hospital struggling for life. Parents pray fervently, and many will somewhere in one or more of those prayers ask God to let them trade places with their precious child. It is natural for us to be willing to choose death in order for us to save someone we desperately love.

What Jesus did for us is similar. The only way that I would be able to continue on in life forever was for Him to die as a substitute and take the punishment I deserved. So He willingly, intentionally chose death due to His love. In fact, He was born to die.

Though I now try to avoid using the word “church” to refer to a location, I used to call the main worship service on Sunday, “Big Church.” I still hear kids call it that today. And the word “Incarnation” is one of those “Big Church” words. At it’s simplest, it means a divine being taking a human form… God becoming a man.

How do we wrap our heads around that idea? Well, the New Testament doesn’t encourage us to worry too much over how it works, but rather encourages us “to worship God for the love that was shown in it. For it was a great act of condescension and self-humbling. ‘He, who had always been God by nature,’ writes Paul, ‘did not cling to his privileges as God’s equal, but stripped Himself of every advantage by consenting to be a slave by nature and being born a man, And, plainly seen as a human being, he humbled himself by living a life of utter obedience, to the point of death, and the death he died was the death of a common criminal.’ And all this was for our salvation.”

“The key text in the New Testament for interpreting the Incarnation is ‘You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake’s he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.’ When Paul talks of the Son as having emptied himself and become poor, what he has in mind…is the laying aside not of divine powers and attributes but of divine glory and dignity.”

God the Son, Jesus, while in Heaven in His full divine glory and dignity loved me and you. Due to that love, He laid aside His divine glory and dignity for a time so that he could be born as a human with a plan to die a cruel death as a substitute sacrifice for you and me. In your eyes, I’m not worth that. And in my eyes, you’re not worth that. OK, maybe you and I would pick some people who we’d say are worth it, but there are a whole lot that we’d leave out. So I’m glad we weren’t the ones having to make a decision as to whether or not to lay aside divine glory and honor and dignity for the people walking around on this giant ball called Earth.

It is strange to think that Jesus…God the Son…would die at all, much less that He would willingly choose to die for such ungrateful, irritating people (including you and me). But, strangely, oddly, fortunately…He did!

Be sure to thank Him for setting aside His divine prerogatives in order to die for you! And then strive to tell this great news to someone else today.

        (Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)


Categories
Christian Living

Finding Renewal When You Are Worn Down and Beat Up

I believe this has been my longest “hiatus” away from writing since I began the blog. Sorry to those of you who thought I must have deleted you from the email subscription list!

The reason wasn’t that I ran out of things to say (as those of you who know me well already knew!), but rather that I have been out of my office (and my house) for much of the past three weeks. The first week out was for a trip to Honduras to spend time with a missionary friend who serves there. The next two weeks were ministry conferences and conventions in Jackson, MS, and Alpharetta, GA. It has been a great three weeks, but I am ready to get back into my regular routine. Thanks for the kind words from those of you who let me know you missed the weekly postings!

Getting away from our regular routines does some great things for us – it lets you see new things, meet new people, have new conversations, imagine new directions, perhaps even reset your course if you have veered a bit wayward on the journey. If we utilize the time rightly, getting away can be a time of refreshment and renewal.

Photo of Lake Yojoa in Honduras where I found time for renewal
Lake Yojoa in Honduras

–This is a photo of Lake Yojoa in Honduras, which was taken from the “Path to Heaven” Camp area in the midst of a coffee and banana plantation at the top of a small mountain. It was a great place to find a time of refreshing and renewal – at least once you finished the hike up to the top! To give you a sense of the scale/size, Lake Yojoa is about the same size as the Ross Barnett Reservoir in Mississippi.–

Now, I didn’t feel worn down or beat up when I left for Honduras some three-and-a-half weeks ago, but almost four weeks later, I find myself with a sense of renewal and refreshment that I wasn’t expecting. And this sense of renewal is from having new experiences with my friend, with the people he is serving, and with the fellow ministers I have been around for the past two weeks. I now have some new ideas to mull over regarding directions for my life and the life of my church family that I would not have ever thought about in the midst of my regular routine.

Paige and I read Genesis 18 yesterday during our family devotion time. This is the account of God and two angels coming to Abraham and discussing the upcoming birth of Isaac. When he sees them, Abraham asks the Lord to rest for a moment under the tree, to let him bring them water to wash their feet, and some food to give them strength – all so that “you may refresh yourselves.” Abraham wanted them to experience a sense of inner renewal before they continue on with their journey. Now certainly, God doesn’t need rest like we do, but Abraham realized the principles of renewal and rest during the journey.

I thank God for giving me an opportunity for rest and renewal these past few weeks. Even though I wasn’t resting under a tree during the time, the break in the routine provided me with a sense of renewal that I didn’t even realize I needed. But many times we don’t get a week or more to find renewal. Many times we have to find renewal in a lot less time. In fact, some of you reading this might be saying – I need a sense of renewal right now!

So let’s try to help each other by answering one or more of these questions to give some possible renewal ideas to those who need it today: How do you do it? How do make sure that you experience renewal during your journey? How has God helped you feel refreshed in the midst of your walk of life? What practices have you put into your routine so that you take time to feel renewed?

For me in this past three weeks, one of the keys was that I spent time with God-honoring, encouraging people. I spent time with people who were available for me to ask important questions to (and who had time to give me their answers). I also spent time in a new location. I spent time away from my regular routine. And during it all, I spent time hearing from God through His Word, through some Sermons I downloaded to listen to, and through reading some ministry-focused books.

What about you? What else would you add about how do find refreshment and renewal on this journey called life?