God gave the Sign

"All right then, the Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’)." Isaiah 7:14

God with us…that is astounding! The Infinite One who measures the universe with the "span of His hand" was promised to come among us. A miraculous birth would take place, the one foretold in Genesis 3:15 when God said that the "seed of woman" would crush the serpent's head.

The promise of a miraculous birth and the rescue of humanity from the curse of sin and death is embedded in the story of every culture on earth. It has been overlaid with purposeful distortion and buried in myth by the same snake in the Garden who doesn't want mankind to know that God loves us. But the fact of this promise of God is still there.

Unlike stories from Greek mythology where the gods came among men to behave just as depraved, jealous, vengeful as the rest of fallen humanity only with super powers, God's promise to come among us was to rescue us from our self-inflicted doom.

Matthew 1:20-21 “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. ²¹ And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

He will save His people from their sins. The earth is the Lord's...everything and everyone in it. Jesus...Jeshua or as we read it in the Old Testament, Joshua...God is salvation. God alone can rescue us from sin and its effects. We don't have the capacity to alter the trajectory of our fall. We, even given all our "advances" in technology, science, education and politics, are utterly helpless in making the slightest change to human nature. Separated from God, it all goes wrong because the ones utilizing science. technology, education and government are all fatally flawed. Apart from God, we are lost to what we were created for and even our best turns to dust.

History shows that our social and scientific advances have really made us no different from those civilizations who preceded us. We just have better ways to destroy one another, deceive one another, control one another, and intimidate one another. Yes, we have medicines to cure things that used to be incurable. But the very antibiotics that have healed have helped generate super-bacteria now resistant to medicine.

Jesus rescue is more than "skin-deep". He came to save us from our sins. He came to destroy the works of the devil, to defeat sin and death by His own sacrificial death on the cross. He was born to die for us and to be raised from the dead for us that we might be united to that very death and resurrection by the Holy Spirit. He came to rescue us and restore us to Himself as new creations, people with new hearts, new spirits, new purpose and perspective...His own.

He didn't leave us as orphans when He ascended back to the Father. He promised He would be with us, would give us the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit to live His life and do His ministry in an ongoing way until He came again at the end of time. He said, "I am with you ALWAYS, even to the end of time." God is with us. Jesus Christ lives His Life within us.

But...and this may come as a shock...He didn't come to save us from inconvenience. He didn't come to make sure that our lives were even problem free. He didn't come so we could claim and possess all the goods and services the world demands and lusts after. He didn't come to insulate us from sorrow, loss or pain. He was Himself, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He came to save us from sin and its live-destroying, ever-decaying, always-disappointing work in our lives. He came to give us REAL life, not religious, sin-bound existence.

Jesus came to set us FREE from sin, its bondage, its slavery and control. He came to save us, rescue us and empower us to really LIVE.

Life in this world is not easy and those who would tell you that Jesus came to make your life easy are liars and deceivers. He came to make your life new. Jesus came to give you Eternal Life; Life that is now at work in all those who belong to Jesus. That Life is not some list of rules, not some formula you can, if you get it right, make work for you. That Life is your restored relationship with God and it is actively changing, healing, delivering, and restoring your character into the very likeness and image of Jesus.

He said that in this world, we would have tribulation. Why? Because the world we live in is still enslaved by the power of sin, under the power of the evil one. We bear in us the very Life that our ancient foe tried his best to separate us from. Jesus said that those that hated Him would hate us. There is a conflict, a war that we are involved in. He also said that He had overcome the world. All authority in both heaven and earth are His...and we are His...that is why we CAN go into the world and make disciples, not afraid but bold and dauntless with the boldness of God endless Love.

Being saved from sin sets us free to no longer be stuck in striving to make life work "my way". We are set free to learn to follow Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit. We are set free from having to live in fear because we can't make life conform to our own personally conceived idea of what "perfect life" is. We've been set free to live the adventure we were created to know. We are now part of a purpose infinitely greater than ourselves with a personal call from Jesus Christ to follow Him...to do what He is doing in the world today; to say what He is saying to the people in the world today.

God is with us. Who or what can actually prevail against us…nothing and no one. Even death is no longer the ultimate foe. My body will one day wear out, but He has prepared for me a new one, an imperishable one...a body like His own Resurrection Body.

Can you see the freedom to live "out loud" that has been given to you and me? God, please make the truth of this a lived-out reality in us by your Power and Grace.

With the Holy Spirit and Fire

With the Holy Spirit and Fire

The Word of God tells us that our God is a consuming fire. Our God is Holy. There is no darkness in Him. No vestige of sin can ever be in His presence. Thank God for Jesus!

There was no way for us to ever return to the relationship lost in Adam’s fall. There was no way for us to become alive again now that we were dead in our rebellion. God made a way where there was no way. God Himself came to rescue and restore humanity to Himself. He did it because of His love, His faithfulness and His righteousness.

He made us for intimacy with Him and He will not be thwarted. He created us to know life, not death, wholeness not frustration, flourishing, not incompleteness. You who now belong to Jesus are heirs of God. You are a people called by God to display His glory.

   People are meant to see the salvation of God in and through you.

It is you being transformed by the Holy Spirit to have the character and nature of Jesus--alive and exhibited in you--that is God's "convincing conviction" for those who may call you by name. That is why Jesus came to baptize us with the Holy Spirit and with fire. We can only live the Life of God by the Power of God.

John the Baptist’s analogy in Matthew chapter 3 comes from the wheat harvest. Wheat and chaff were never left together after the harvest. There was a threshing, a beating of the wheat to separate the edible kernel from the outward inedible husk. A threshing floor was always up on a hill where the wind was blowing…Holy Spirit? After the threshing, everything was thrown up into the air. The wind would blow away the useless and lighter husk and the heavier wheat kernels would fall again to earth. The process went on till all the chaff was blown away and only the grain remained. Separating the wheat from the chaff was necessary is there was to be bread for eating and seed for sowing.

When Jesus Christ came to live His life within me, His Eternal Life, I went from death to life. I was, by the Holy Spirit, united to the death of Jesus and united to His resurrection in a moment.

I became a new creation. The salvation of God made His home in me. I then began to find my life being changed day by day due to what Jesus had already done within me. A separation began to take place. In me there were habits, behaviors, thought patterns and choices I had made for years that were as empty and lifeless as chaff. The Lord was not going to allow those things to remain a part of my daily "being". I was no longer "my own" but was His...all of me.

Since that beginning, I have experienced the "threshing and winnowing" of the Lord. Sometimes the chaff comes off rather easily. Other times, my idolatry has been so tenacious that the threshing of my soul has needed to be much more intense…and rather unpleasant (Hebrews 12:1-13) I am amazed at how stubbornly I can be by holding on to things that could never give me life and peace as thought they could. I am so thankful for the patience of my God and Savior.

Over and over again He has made my blind eyes see so I might repent, turn from folly and relinquish the chaff I had been so enthralled with. God's Love for me in Jesus Christ is a never ending, never giving up, all consuming kind of Love that is so passionate and committed that He will not rest until I am full set free…

Free from anything & everything that would bind me or hinder me from knowing the fullness of life so that in Him I might flourish. His fire is intense and can never be quenched. I am reminded of the three Hebrew young men that were thrown into the fiery furnace by King Nebuchadnezzar. The only things that were burned up were the things that had them bound.

Jesus intends to baptize all who follow Him with the Holy Spirit. That is His will for all believers. We are meant to be clothed with power from On High. We are to be anointed, immersed in the Holy Spirit because it is only in the power of God that the purpose of God is accomplished. Jesus also promises each of His followers that we will know His baptism with fire, to burn away anything that would bind us or prevent us from following Him with our whole hearts.

We make idols of almost anything...usually good things gone awry: education, money, beauty, power, sex, possessions...etc. In themselves these are not evil...but when we look to them to give us what only Jesus can provide, they become vicious, ravenous, never-satisfied overlords of sin.

Do you have anything that seems to be being "thrown up in the air"? Is there a sense that something is being shaken loose? Has the Lord been whispering, "Why are you doing that...thinking that...following that?" so that there is a lack of peace in that area of your life? Welcome to the loving threshing floor of the Lord.

Bring whatever it is and surrender it to Him. He will be faithful to separate you from whatever the chaff may be. Do not be afraid of the fire of the Lord. He gives you His Power in the Holy Spirit to be able to follow Him in obedience from where you are to what He has prepared for you to live and be.

As the Day of the Lord draws nearer, God's Word tells us that judgment will begin with the House of the Lord. The intensity of His Love is not surprising. The Lord, in His compassion, will make us ready to receive Him when He returns. I personally do not want to be clinging to what is destined for unquenchable fire, do you?

Jesus wants us living in His light now, having that light shine for all to see to light the way back to Him. Is His discipline on the threshing-floor pleasant? No. but we can rejoice in the process, the Lord loves us as true sons and daughters. We are experiencing the salvation of God in being set free.