Christmas In a Nutshell

Dan Stevers reminds us that:

At Christmas, the present God gave us is His presence.

Christmas Carol: Jesus, Joy of the Highest Heaven

Keith and Kristyn Getty are my favorite Christian musicians. Enjoy their performance of the Christmas Carol, Jesus, Joy of the Highest Heaven.

Merry Christmas!

It’s a Wonderful Life, The Sequel

Being in the Christmas spirit, yesterday I pondered It’s a Wonderful Life and whether George Bailey’s sacrifice was joyful or bitter.

Today, I ponder whether George’s end-of-the-movie transformation was temporary or lasting. 

Temporary or Lasting Transformation 

You know the story and the scene.

The angel Clarence shows George how his life impacted many. Despondent George decides to stick around.

He returns home joyfully looking for his family. Soon he finds that his wife has asked all his friends to come through for him.

Standing in front of the family Christmas tree, money pours in to replace the money stolen by old Mr. Potter. George is joyful.

Or, is he? Is he simply happy?

Is he a changed man? Or is he a man changed by circumstances?

The Sequel

I’ve often wondered (and even thought about trying to write it!) what It’s a Wonderful Life, The Sequel might be like.

Would George be able to sustain his new-found excitement about life?

I don’t want to be a Scrooge at Christmas, but I don’t believe George’s “change” would have been sustainable.

Yes, George did likely have an emotional change. And that’s not bad.

And, yes, George likely even had some thought-life change—a new perspective. And that’s not bad.

But did George have a heart change? And, was his heart changed by God—transformed, renewed, regenerated?

Not to get too theological here (well, why not?), but…

• Changing our external circumstances is not enough for lasting internal change.

• Changing our emotions is not enough for lasting internal change.

• Changing our mental perspective is not enough for lasting internal change.

Secular rational-emotive therapy can offer those sorts of short-term fixes.

In the sequel, I suspect (I’m writing it, so I can suspect whatever I want!) that George’s change would have been short-lived.

Happy for a while, but what happens the next time or the tenth time that Uncle Billy messes up? Can George, in his own power, continue to “manage his moods”?

Or, what happens the next time or the tenth time that George sacrifices for others and they don’t reciprocate? Can George, in his own power, continue to maintain a new perspective on life?

George (and Me and You) Need a Transformation

Here comes some more theology.

George needs mind renewal flowing from regeneration—he needs to become a new person in Christ. By grace through faith, George needs to be born again, born from above.

His old ways of relating, thinking, choosing, doing, and feeling need to be crucified with Christ.

George needs a new, God-given, Spirit-engrafted, Christ-empowered nature. A new way of Christ-like relating, thinking, choosing, doing, and feeling needs to be resurrected with Christ.

That’s the only hope for lasting transformation and true joy.

Let me say it plainly. For George to truly change, George truly needs to be saved. By God. In Christ.

He can’t simply be “saved” by circumstances. Or new feelings. Or a new way of looking at life.

A Changed and Changing George

Saved by grace through faith, then George can begin the process of growth in grace—sanctification.

In the sequel (my sequel), George would seem to be “different” at first. But, little by little, the old George would seep out, come to the surface.

In despair, he would cry out to God again. But this time not simply to save him from his circumstances.

George would cry out that God would save him from His sins, including his self-centered motivations for sacrificing. And, most importantly, from his sin of unbelief and rejecting God in Christ and living on his own power for his own kingdom.

George would acknowledge that he was just as much in need of salvation as Mr. Potter!

And, saved and changed, George would need to cling to Christ to keep changing…to keep growing.

The movie would not “get boring” now with George never struggling again.

Not at all. The movie would “get exciting” now with George, like the Apostle Paul, saying:

“To this end [living for others for God’s glory] I labor, struggling with all his [Christ] energy, which so powerfully works in me” (Col. 1:29).

But I don’t want to spoil the whole sequel!

I think you get the picture about how the picture would go and flow.

George would be a truly transformed, new man in Christ. And, like the rest of us changed by Christ, on a daily (moment by moment) basis, George would by faith through grace need to put off the old man and put on the new man in Christ.

That’s a movie I’d like to see.

That’s a life that is truly wonderful.

Join the Conversation 

How would you write the sequel to It’s a Wonderful Life?

What sequel insChrist writing in your life since he saved you?

Why Jesus Is Infinitely Better Than Santa Claus

Santa lives at the North Pole … JESUS is everywhere.

Santa rides in a sleigh … JESUS rides on the wind and walks on the water. 

Santa comes but once a year… JESUS is an ever-present help.

Santa fills your stockings with goodies … JESUS supplies all your needs by the riches of His grace.

Santa comes down your chimney uninvited … JESUS stands at your door and knocks, and enters your heart.

You have to wait in line to see Santa … JESUS is as close as the mention of His name.

Santa lets you sit on his lap … JESUS lets you rest in His arms.

Santa doesn’t know your name, all he can say is, “Hi little boy or girl, what’s your name?” … JESUS knew your name before you did. Not only does He know your name, He knows your history and future, and He even knows your heart and how many hairs are on your head.

Santa has a belly like a bowl full of jelly … JESUS has a heart full of love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness.

All Santa can offer is “HO HO HO” … JESUS says, “Cast your cares on me, for I care for you.”

Santa’s little helpers make toys … JESUS pays for and forgives sin, makes a new life, mends wounded hearts, repairs broken homes, and builds mansions.

Santa may make you chuckle but … JESUS gives you joy that is your strength.

While Santa puts gifts under your tree … JESUS became our gift and died on the tree, for you and for me.

It’s obvious there really is no comparison.

Yes, JESUS is better than Santa Claus—infinitely better!

We need to remember WHO Christmas is all about.

Jesus is the reason for the season.

Healing for the Holidays: Part 10—The Light of the World

Note: This is the tenth and final post in a series on Healing for the Holidays. Read Part 1: A Promise, Part 2: Give Sorrow Words, Part 3: Holiday Healing Q/A, Part 4: A Lament for Your Loss, Part 5: Tidings of Comfort and Joy, Part 6: All I Want for Christmas Is Hope, Part 7: God’s Rope of Hope, Part 8: Pregnant with Hope, and Part 9: Christ in Your Holiday Album. 

Two Paths toward Healing Hope 

Traveling from grief to growth is a long, winding road. Healing for the holidays is not a series of steps or some secret plan. More than anything, healing is relational—our relationship with Christ and the Body of Christ.

As we begin our tenth and final post about healing for the holidays, I want us to focus on the two options we have for healing: Christ or self.

Path # 1: Digging Cisterns—Pursuing False Lovers

If we follow the beaten path, the way of the world, then our holiday hurt guides us to false lovers. Idols of the heart. Digging cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. Something or someone who will rescue us from agony’s clutches—or so we imagine.

God describes digging cisterns in Jeremiah 2:13. “My people have committed two sins: they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

In the Ancient Near East, you had two choices for life-giving water. You could settle near a clear, pure, bubbling spring of fresh underground water, or you could dig a cistern which captured run-off water and held it in a stagnant well that often cracked leaking in more filth and leaking out water.

Spiritual cistern digging involves rejecting God as our Spring of Living Water because we see Him as unsatisfying, unholy, and unloving (Jeremiah 2:5, 19, 31). Once we reject the only Being in the universe who could ever satisfy the last aching abyss of our souls, we choose to turn to substitutes—worthless, putrid, empty, futile substitutes—cisterns.

Now what? Is that all there is?

Not at all. God offers us so much more, infinitely more—because He offers Himself.

Path # 2: Worshipping God—Glimpsing the Face of God

Rather than turning to false lovers who tame your soul, you now turn to your untamed God who captures your soul. You worship God. In the midst of life’s losses, yes you can choose worship—engaging God with love, which leads to ministry—engaging others with God’s love.

“Worship” is such a common word. But what is worship really? Specifically, in the midst of grief, what does worship look like?

• Worship is wanting God more than wanting relief.

• Worship is finding God even when you don’t find answers.

• Worship is walking with God in the dark and having Him as the light of your soul.

We must understands the truth that every problem is an opportunity to know God better and our primary battle is to know God well. Thus, if we want our holiday hurts to lead to worship, we have to ask ourselves a primary question, “How is my grief influencing my relationship to God?” Grief can either shove us far from God or drag us kicking and screaming closer to Him.

Whom Have I in Heaven but You? 

The Bible consistently invites us to worship God in the midst of suffering. Worship as the end result of suffering has always been the testimony of God’s people.

Asaph, reflecting on his suffering, concludes, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25).

David concurs, as his suffering creates a God-thirst. “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” (Psalm 42:1-2).

Paul looks back upon a lifetime of suffering and says, “I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:8, 10).

What these biblical writers present, the hymn writer, Katharina von Schlegel poetical states:

Be still, my soul; the Lord is on thy side;

Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.

Leave to thy God to order and provide;

In every change He faithful will remain.

Be still, my soul: the best thy heavenly Friend,

Thro’ thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Grief’s ultimate goal is worship: exalting and enjoying God as our Spring of Living Water—our only satisfaction and our greatest joy.

The Rest of the Story 

We’re at the end of our blogging journey, but our healing journey continues ever onward until heaven. My prayer for you is that you will not only survive the holidays, you will, in time and through Christ, thrive in the holidays as you walk with God in the dark and find Him to be the light of your soul.

Pausing to Reflect 

How is Christ leading you through a thorny path to a joyful end?

Help for Your Healing Journey 

For additional help on your healing journey, learn more about God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting.

Healing for the Holidays: Part 9—Cropping Christ Back Into Your Holiday Album

Note: This is the ninth in a series of posts on Healing for the Holidays. Read Part 1: A Promise, Part 2: Give Sorrow Words, Part 3: Holiday Healing Q/A, Part 4: A Lament for Your Loss, Part 5: Tidings of Comfort and Joy, Part 6: All I Want for Christmas Is Hope, Part 7: God’s Rope of Hope, and Part 8: Pregnant with Hope. 

God’s Eternal Story Invades Our Earthly Story 

At Christmas, we rejoice in Immanuel—God with us. Jesus leaves heaven to pitch His tent in our neighborhood, to invade our world.

Healing for the holidays requires that we allow God’s eternal story to invade our earthly story. One of my dear friends from Uniontown Bible Church, likes to say, “When life stinks, our perspective shrinks.” She’s spot on.

When the holidays arrive and we grieve the loss of a loved one, when we feel the pain of the miles that separate us from immediate family members, when we agonize over a divorce that pulls families in so many different directions, it’s natural to focus exclusively on our pain.

It’s not only natural, there is a supernatural process involved—an evil supernatural process. Just as we can use digital photography to crop anything we want into or out of our photos, so Satan attempts to crop Christ out of our picture.

When life stinks and our perspective shrinks, we need to crop Christ back into the picture. We need to expand our eyesight to God’s eternal perspective.

See in This Some Higher Plan

Our eyes darkened by despair, we need grace-eyes. We need to weave in another way of looking at life. Biblical weaving is entrusting myself to God’s larger purposes, good plans, and eternal perspective. I see life with spiritual eyes instead of eyeballs only. I look at my suffering, not with rose colored glasses, but with faith eyes, with Cross-eyes, with 20/20 spiritual vision.

There’s an amazing scene in Les Miserables where Jean val Jean, a paroled prisoner, takes advantage of a grace-filled Bishop. Stealing from him, Jean val Jean is captured by the French police. They return him to the Bishop, fully expecting him to implicate val Jean which would lead to a return to prison without hope for parole. To the shock of everyone involved, the Bishop says, “But my brother, you forgot these,” and hands him two silver candlesticks.

Everyone is floored when the Bishops says, “By the witness and the martyrs, by the passion and the blood, I have bought your soul for God. Now become an honest man. See in this some higher plan.” Val Jean, amazed by grace, changed by grace, then concludes the scene by singing, “Another story must begin!”

A friend of my, recounting this to me, commented. “Now everything that happens to me, I’m looking for God’s higher plan. I’m setting my thoughts on things above—always wondering what God might be up to in this. For me, another story must begin—God’s story that doesn’t obliterate my painful story, but that gives it meaning.”

Joseph’s Story: Grace Narratives 

In your holiday hurt, hear Joseph’s words to his fearful family in Genesis 50:19-20. “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

Joseph uses “intended” both for his brothers’ plans and God’s purposes. The Hebrew word has a very tangible sense of to weave, to plait, to interpenetrate as in the weaving together of fabric to fashion a robe, perhaps even Joseph’s coat of many colors.

The Old Testament also used the word in a negative, metaphorical sense to suggest a malicious plot, the devising of a cruel scheme. Other times the Jews used “intended” to picture symbolically the creation of some new and beautiful purpose or result through the weaving together of seemingly haphazard, miscellaneous, or malicious events.

“Life is bad,” Joseph admits. “You plotted against me for evil. You intended to spoil or ruin something wonderful.”

“God is good,” Joseph insists. “God wove good out of evil,” choosing a word for “good” that is the superlative of pleasant, beautiful. That is, God intended to create amazing beauty from seemingly worthless ashes for those who grieve (Isaiah 61:3).

Life hurts. Wounds penetrate. Without grace narratives, hopelessness and bitterness flourish. With a grace narrative, hope and forgiveness flow and perspective grows.

Instead of our perspective shrinking, suffering is the exact time when we must listen most closely, when we must lean over to hear the whisper of God. True, God shouts to us in our pain, but His answers, as with Elijah, often come to us in whispered still small voices amid the thunders of the world.

In weaving, God heals our wounds as we envision a future even while all seems lost in the present. Through hope we remember the future; we move from Good Friday to Easter Sunday while living on Saturday. Grace narratives point the way to God’s larger story, assuring us that our Savior is worth our wait.

The Rest of the Story 

We’re nearing the end of our healing journey together. In the tenth and final part in our series on healing for the holidays, we consider worship. How can we find God even when we can’t find answers?

Pausing to Reflect 

How could you crop Christ back into your holiday album this holiday season?

Help for Your Healing Journey 

For additional help on your healing journey, learn more about God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting.