Different from all other gods, God the Eternal One, Creator of Heaven and Earth, man and all that is living and sustained, made himself to dwell among us; not to be far from us influencing fate and chance in some way, but to interact and indwell within his people.  That is powerful enough to change a life utterly broken and a path interrupted by mistakes and sin.

In an unassuming manger surrounded by anonymity, unrecognized by most, the Christ child laid with the world waiting for what the salvation that was spoken by their ancient prophets.  When you think of the salvation of a nation, a whole people, naturally images of domination, force and strength would come to mind.  It is the way of the world.  Something goes wrong in the world and we threaten that wrong with at least a show of force.  But it was not as they envisioned.  In fact, many of the most intelligent and dialed in intellectuals and spirituals of that time missed it completely.  Jesus, God’s Son, the Savior and Redeemer of mankind, did not enter the world in a grand, obvious way.  He entered this world humbly and quietly, the most subversive of ways.  In order to change not only that time and those people, but the world and eternity, Jesus brought with him the ways of God and his eternal Kingdom.  Characteristics such as peace and love ultimately and very effectively toppled all that separated man from God.

Much of the same way those of Jesus’ time confused intent and power, we do today.  We want the change that we sense we need.  We try to change habits with will power or new routines, but in the end, all of our efforts come up short.  The power to change is found in Christ and him alone.  The image of a humble babe needs to be a new realization for us this Christmas.  Salvation does not come into our lives defined by our comprehension of power and capable ability, but that of a powerful and humble Savior in Jesus.  Our response is to simply come to him.

Come and behold him;
born the King of Angels.
O, come let us adore him,
O, come let us adore him,
O, come let us adore him,
Christ the Lord.

Prior to cradle and the arrival of God’s promised gift to humanity, his son Jesus, there was a craving unfulfilled in the hearts of man.  The craving was to exist with purpose, to belong and to be right in life with the apparent God who was behind it all locked up in different customs, traditions and stories.  There were definitive signs that God existed, but somewhere else.  When people needed him, he often came to their rescue and he spoke through his representatives, the prophets, who by the way were not always the most attractive of folks.  This more than likely only served to make God feel, not closer, but even farther away, disconnected from our expectations even more.  There were rules to follow to be okay with God.

Do this and be okay.  Say this and everything would be better.  Eat this and be accepted.  The rules were the only way to be righteous.

But the prophets foretold of another time, a time when all would be vindicated and a leader would arrive among them in the form of a king, a righteous ruler, a priest, a savior.

Emmanuel, God with us.  Upon his arrival and through his life and death, the prophecies spoken centuries earlier were correct and complete.  The coming of the Christ child was a merciful miracle.  Without the cradle, there would be no cross or completion to God’s gift.  Jesus came not to fix us in some grand humanitarian effort, but to give us life and transform us.

Grace.  We do not deserve it, but it was and is given.  Jesus came to make dead people alive.  All of us, all of them and all who would believe.

The beauty of God’s gift of life forever to us is that it is given despite who we are and what we have become.  There are no rules greater than two:  love God completely and love others as yourself.  The previously existing countless rules all hang upon these two rules alone.  Do them completely and all will be right in your life.  Let us consider the fact this Christmas that Jesus did not come to make us better in life.  He came to make us alive.  There is a huge difference between the two.  If Jesus’ sacrifice only served to somehow make us better or enhance our lives, there would still be work to be done on our part.  Our acceptance and righteousness would be based on our effort, at least in part, but it is not.  It is done.  Those who believe are no longer dead, but alive.

“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved.”
Ephesians 2:4-5 (NIV)

As recent reports rang of record spending, to the tune of 52 billion, on the day now affectionately known as Black Friday, one thing remained true, life.  And money is not the issue.  No amount of spending or saving or owning or giving, for that matter, will change life as it is and remains to be in each of our days.  It is quite possible for a person to go through life as mere echo of who they have the potential to be.  You see it on both ends.  A wealthy person takes up ambitious and noble humanitarian efforts, changing thousands of lives while something is still amiss in the depths of his own life.  From closer to the bottom, a person struggling to make ends meet at best works tirelessly to gain more.  The more always effectively alluding him and he continues to tirelessly work, never reaching what he thinks he needs.  What is common to both is life.  More specifically, how life is being spent.

It is possible to be dead, not even know it and spend your life always searching.

As we enter the season and rapidly approach Christmas, let us consider something that regularly gets lost: Christ.  You see, the problem is never that you are selfish and need to be more generous or that you are needy and must have more.  The consistently miserable problem that we continually try to fix is that we are thoroughly dead without Christ abundant in our lives.  That is what connects the wealthy trying to give and the needy trying to receive.  They are both dead no matter possession or resource without the eternal life that Christ easily has the ability to willingly bring into a person’s existence.

Are you giving your life to things that have no ability to give you life in return, constantly swinging from accomplishment to accomplishment as a source of validation?  Consider the coming of the Christ and the establishment of his rule and kingdom in the very hearts of men and women forever fixing the problem of trying to find life in lifeless things.

What we want and desire is intrinsic to who we are.  It is natural and built in and shaped by our own environment and experiences in life.  Call it habits, results of culture we live in or personal idiosyncrasies, but who we are is how we start in life and what is shaped in us along the way.  And then at some point, we meet Jesus and learn that His way is better introducing the tension and difference between who we are and who He is.  We learn that His way is better and leads to life, but also, away from self.

For all, this is not a one time event, but a continual progression closer to Christ.

And what draws us closer to Christ more than any other action but serving?  You are never more Christ like than when you are spending your time serving others.  True love of the purest kind is that of positioning others in that rooted place where self was once the sole predominant force in your life.  With the holidays immediately ahead, let us position others before ourselves, seeking to serve rather than be served.  Take advantage of the opportunities to serve our community.  Start positioning others ahead of yourself by visiting volunteerhope.org.  In serving others, you will find the distance between who you are and who He is will lessen tremendously.  To be His hands and His feet this holiday season and beyond reaching the lost, the lonely and the broken, with a loving heart.  That’s the opportunity you have.

“Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.  Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.  Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.”  (Philippians 2:3-5, NKJV)

Our giving, whatever it may be, is as much to appease a conscious weighed down with guilt by images of conditions and circumstances that just are not right or acceptable for any human to have to be okay with as it is to connect with getting to a viable solution.  Maybe a little more so, to quiet the guilt.  We all know that there are areas of huge need on this planet.  What we do not give a good audience to is that there is actually little being done in relation to the growing need.

And this is deeper than Africa.

One of the greatest needs is the poverty of our own hearts hinged in our desire for independence and self-reliance.  We live our lives in pursuit of what we need and want with a secondary concern and present ignorance of the absolute atrocities that other men, women and children, have to live in daily.  It is life to them.  The leading causes of death amount to problems that can be fixed with known solutions such as accessible vaccines, clean water and education.

So the need is there both in our hearts and in the world.  The need is real in both places.  The disconnect exists between the problem and the solution and the need only grows larger in both places.

There are reasons why people do not serve to be part of the solution.
“One can never truly do enough.”
“One can’t really make a difference.”
“Someone else will do it.”

Too often and too easily, we disqualify ourselves and become removed from the problem rather than simply being motivated by the love of Jesus.  That is the most qualifying component in equipping us to help bring real, measured change to the world.

“For he who is least among you all--he is the greatest." (Luke 9:48)

One thing we learn from the life of Jesus is the lasting value of the Kingdom of God.  It is the one who serves others putting a priority on their needs and motivated by love and grace that has the opportunity for the greatest impact.

We have messed up again.  We will always mess things up somehow.  We will never be able to live this one down.

Mistakes hold a lasting power in a person’s life.  They stick with you.  People remember you more by what you do wrong than what you do right.  In fact, mistakes attract far more attention than routine goodness.  No one reports about the famous musician who decided not to drive home because he was too intoxicated or the well-to-do neighbor who turned down another co-worker’s sexual advances.  The opposite is always quick to be hot news.  Mistakes, they stick with us and define us.

With God, however, mistakes and failures are opportunities to be free and more in touch with both who and how He wants you to be.  God is a source of unending chances.  His love is new every morning, redeeming and renewing all that broke in the darkness of night.  The tendency is to believe that repetitive mistakes disqualifies us from his love and absolute acceptance.  This simply could not be further from the truth.  The religious are quick to point out that repetitive mistakes are a direct result of an unrepentant heart, but that is a broad generalization that is out of the scope of understanding of mere men.   What the religious fail to understand is that it is God’s love that brings true, lasting regeneration in a person’s life, not human effort.

God is the source of true and pure love.  And He determined to accept all those who would be accepted by him.

So to the broken, repeat offenders of God’s grace, rest well in the second chance given to you by an incomprehensibly loving Father.

Adversity, difficulty and challenging times, all have a way of diminishing both now and forever.

Now becomes a complete uphill climb or an avalanche falling down you with the weight of what can only feel like the heaviness of your entire life pushing down on you.  In the mess that difficulty can make of your life, the deadliest effect is not being able to see tomorrow.  Tomorrow will never come and the life that you once felt so confident in vanishes.  Once you were moving so easily toward that future.  Your dreams felt more like a reality that you were on a collision course with.  It was unavoidable, but difficulty has a poisonous way of displacing that life.  And so, life is (re)defined by a temporal reality.  What we typically fail to recognize is that difficulty is not a forever, terminal condition.  As surely as difficulty comes to each of us, a new day will come, always.

“Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” (Psalm 30:5)

God has a magnificently beautiful way of redeeming even the difficult things in life to strengthen us and add to our lives, rather than detracting and destroying us.  What we must never lose sight of is God’s plan for our lives.  Every one of us were created in a particular way, for a particular time and for a particular reason.  God will not relent in this purpose in your life.  That is, unless you follow the picture of failure that difficulty paints instead of trusting God through it.  God has one thing in mind for you, completion.  And that one thing is not affected by the shifting circumstances in your life no matter how shattering those times are.

Trusting God through dark, difficult times is the narrow passage that will lead you through to the future you can see when you stand on the top of the mountain.  Life will always go up and down and sideways.  God will always be consistent, always ready to lead you to the next day where your future really resides.

“Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.”
Luke 12:34 (NLT)

What do you invest your time in?  Better put, what do you devote your resources to?
And, why are these questions important?

Answer these questions, and you will have a good pulse on where your desires are leading you to.  You will also be able to tell where your desires are leading you away from.  Walk back into the church with me for a second where you envisioned people frozen in time.  Think about what could keep a person still in life, stagnating in place and not experiencing anything new in their hearts for years.  Those years quickly add up to decades.  And then, a lifetime.  At some point, they apparently locked into who and how they will be for the remainder of their lives.  What we place importance on is where we invest and devote our resources to.  If we invest fully in this life hoping to reap happiness, we find a sort of happiness and meaning in life that is fleeting.  This is how our desires continue to lead us back into life.  The focus is not on growth and newness of life as much it is on being happy in the moment.  Saying that there is more to life is something we all hear and nod our heads to, but knowing it and living for the more that there is to life is what enriches each day, develops fully the gifts and talents laying dormant in our hearts and leads us to places in life we would never get to by just living for happiness in each moment.  The key is shaping your desires rather than your desires shaping you.  So back up a few sentences and honestly answer those questions.  What are you investing your time in?  Your hobbies, your family, your career, your reputation, your wealth; what is it that you are devoting yourself to in order to find happiness?  Shaping your desires has everything to do with where you place emphasis, ‘wherever your treasure is’.  There is so much more to life than getting all that we can get out of it.  Life is about giving.  It is about mission, ‘missio dei’, God’s mission and plan of redemption and grace.  You have been found to belong and be a part of this redemptive undertaking.  Step out of the world of having and getting and into the uncharted territory of giving all to Christ and trusting him fully with your life.  The beauty is that deep abundance, not tied to fleeting happiness and un-replenishing resources, is the natural result of giving your life in this way.

So why is it that so many people adding to their lives are unhappy?

To a child and the millionaire and the addition obsessed, emptiness is a continual motivation that fuels the desire to want more, but really what we all want is to know that we have all that we ever need.  That is what satisfies the desire to add more and to hold on to everything.  What all three have in common is that their hearts never really grow up.  Despite age, accomplishment or possession, those whose primary goal and chief motive in life is to add, are just stacking blocks and thinking in terms of childlike numerical descriptions.  True happiness is found by those who live life as it should be lived.  A quick glance at the owner’s manual reveals life actually, as it should be thought of and lived.

“Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full—pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.”
Luke 6:38 (NLT)

It is counter-intuitive, and even ridiculous, to give when you are trying to grow, get and keep, but living life by addition only is a life less than you were designed for.  As you give, you will receive.  You will have all that you need.  Abundance.  That is what we really want.  That is something that living by addition can never get you.

Life is so much more than jobs, portfolios, achievements, promotions and having all that we need.  Those who live to know this as an absolute truth are truly rich.  It is a value of God’s economy.  He is indeed the Provider just as He is the Sustainer.  The pressure is off in God’s economy.  He has created you and the world that you live in, and He is fully able and willing to provide all that you need.  What is required is our full buy in.  Jesus laid out the plan of provision clearly.  “Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and He will give you everything you need.”

What does this mean?

Let your heart reach for one thing stronger than it does for anything else.  Do more than add God as a part of your life.  Abandon your own pursuit of making your way in the world as top priority and belong to his Kingdom.  Finally, live independent of this world and its desires and be dependent on God in your decisions, in your motivations and in your actions, and you will find that you truly have all that you could ever need.