God loves people in the Christmas Story

I read a book about the 5 love-languages of children. We can basically communicate love to one another through:

• Physical touch
• Words of affirmation
• Quality time
• Gifts
• Acts of service

We usually have one on the list that means more to us than the rest – called our love language!

When someone communicates love using our love language we feel it deep inside.

One of the Christmas names the bible uses to describe Jesus is, Immanuel, which means God with us. The incarnation is God becoming a man, so He could love us in a way that we could understand. Jesus touched people, he spoke words of affirmation, he spent large amounts of time with people, he gave people gifts and he humbly served people. Jesus is Immanuel, God with us; loving us in your love language and in my love language.

John, one of Jesus’ closest friends wrote this – we love because he [Jesus] first loved us. (1 John 4: 19). Our world needs people who are filled with enough love to have extra to give away. But, it’s difficult to love when we don’t feel loved ourselves. I pray we will find love, for ourselves, for our families and for Madrid, in the Christmas story.

God values people in the Christmas Story:

When our children were born the first people to hear abut it were our parents and closest friends – the people we valued the most. The FIRST invitation to see the baby was to the shepherds; considered in those days to be the scum of society. About the same level as many ascribe to dustbin men. God invited the “least valued” to see the baby Jesus first, to show us He deeply values everybody. Are we looking for value this Christmas? We’ll find it in the Christmas story. Do we need help to value somebody more highly this Christmas? We’ll find the help we need in the Christmas story.

The Challenge of Christmas

Yesterday I took the boys to see the recent Hollywood movie, The Nativity Story. Not only is it faithful to the Gospel account but it is a great reminder of the challenges of faith. Jesus is born amidst a tyrannical Roman rule and the deadly paranoia of King Herod. Mary and Joseph must overcome local suspicion and make a long journey down to Bethlehem. The Wise Men travel for countless months from Persia to get a glimpse of the new born king. Shepherds, hands calloused from a life in the field, must cross social stigmas to reach out and touch the pure baby. The Wise Men head south on a long detour rather than take the road back home towards the north, as that would take them through Jerusalem and a meeting with Herod. The Holy Family must flee at midnight from death squads and set up home in Egypt.

Following God is challenging and never straightforward (please no more of this, “Come to Jesus and everything will be OK!”). We must be like the men of faith in Hebrews 11 who could see beyond the challenges of today to a future meeting with Christ and their true home in heaven. May you find God’s strength in 2007 to play your part in the amazing challenge of bringing God’s light into a dark world?

Squirrel's Tail

At Mountainview we have been making videos to help us remember bible verses. You can click on the image below to see an exciting video about some squirrels. My son Joel who saw the video asked me to tell you that it’s about the story of the whole bible. Here's the special Christmas memory verse in English and in Spanish.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life
(John 3:16)

Porque tanto amó Dios al mundo, que dio a su Hijo unigénito, para que todo el que cree en él no se pierda, sino que tenga vida eterna
(Juan 3:16)

Kneeling Before Christmas

We read in Mathew 2: 11 that the first thing the Wise Men did when they saw Jesus, even before they gave him his presents, was to bow before him. The bible says that God is bigger than the universe but he became a tiny baby. Amazing as it may seem one of the characteristics of God is humility. He chose a humble couple from a tiny village called Nazareth to be his parents. He invited poor shepherds be among the first see him. But, there’s only one way to find a God of humility…that’s with humility ourselves.

The Christmas story only makes sense when we kneel before it. If we look down on Christmas with pride we will see turkeys and presents, legs of Jamon Serrano and a bottle of whiskey, if we are lucky. But, if we kneel before Christmas in humility we’ll look up and see Jesus. The great surprise of Christmas is that Jesus did not come as great ruler to boss us around but as a humble king to save us from our sins.

Question: Will we kneel before the Christmas story and find Jesus - the greatest surprise ever?

A Guiding Star

The wise men tell us that we need the help of the bible to find Jesus. We read in Matthew 2: 9 that they followed a star, a great light. Sarah reminded us of the first candle of hope - the prophet’s candle. There are more than 300 prophecies in the OT about the birth and life of Jesus? All of them were written hundreds of years before the birth of Christ and many of them are crystal clear. The bible is our star guiding us to Jesus. This year I have been encouraging people to read the Gospels. I’ve discovered many people have strong opinions about Jesus and they’ve never read his book. If you read the Gospels we discover a Jesus that is very real, totally down-to-earth, incredibly loving and extremely challenging.

Question: Will we let the bible guide us to Jesus?

A Long Journey

I want to leave you with some Advent thoughts this week. The next 3 are about the Wise Men

The Wise men tell us that finding Jesus can be a long journey. We read in Matthew 2:1 that the Wise Men came to Jerusalem from the east – traditionally thought to be from Persia (where we find modern day Iran). In those days it was a long and often dangerous journey that took many months. I have just watched the recent Hollywood movie, The Nativity Story which does a great job of showing just how far the Wise Men travelled to see Jesus. We live in a world where we like everything instantly. It can be the same with faith. If we can’t figure out faith right away we’re tempted to give up. But, I know many people, including myself, who like the Wise Man have made long Spiritual journeys and discovered that Jesus really is true.

Question: Will we make the journey, no matter how long, to find out if Jesus really is true?

This is War

By Richard

Jesus is being challenged by the crowd who are claiming that he’s using black magic to cast out demons. He reminds the crowds that this does not make sense. If Satan was against Satan then everything would simply collapse. He goes on to remind the crowd that we are all at war. “This is war” he says, “And there is no neutral ground. If you are not on my side you’re the enemy; if you’re not helping you’re making things worse.” (Luke 11: 23, the Message).

I recently read the book “Wild at Heart” by John Eldredge. It was a timely reminder that mankind is born into a battle. It hit me that I am born into a battle between good and evil – like it or not! I also discovered that I had taken my leanings towards pacifism and applied them to the spiritual context – something that God did not want me to do. God has made me and wants me to fight a serious against evil, not with human weapons and bloodshed, but with spiritual weapons like; goodness and truth and beauty and prayer and a love for Scripture.

It was so good to have it clearly and unequivocally stated by Jesus – THIS IS WAR!”

The Holy Spirit

By Richard

Reading Luke 11 it hit me that the idea of asking God for the Holy Spirit does not have the impact in us that it had on Jesus’ listeners. Until the time of Christ the Holy Spirit had only been give to particular people, in particular places, for particular reasons. The minds of the listeners would have been rich with the stories of old - how the Holy Spirit had given heroes the supernatural strength to fight for God, the depth of insight to break time itself and the ecstatic experiences needed to write enduring praise songs. The Holy Spirit was for Judges, Priests, Kings and Prophets. But, here was Jesus offering the common, the poor, the once sin filled, an invitation to ask God for the Holy Spirit. It’s not just good news, it’s mind-blowing! Ask God to give you more of his Holy Spirit

Be Direct in Prayer:

By Richard

In Luke 11: 10-13 Jesus tells us that when we pray we should simply be direct in prayer and not bargain with God. In as straightforward a manner as we can, we should present our prayers before God. There are no games or magical formulas involved for getting answered prayer. Amazing as it may seem…difficult as it may be to understand…the overriding fact of prayer is this…God loves us more than a parent loves a child (now being the father of four adorable children that’s a lot of love we’re talking about here), and even though unseen God listens to us and longs to answer our prayers. All we need to have is a childlike simplicity in the way that we talk to God. We do not twist God’s arm in prayer! No prayer becomes the dance of a child that twists and twirls with joy at the love of a father that pays us the greatest attention and delights in our every communication.