I recently wood burned an image of Jesus’s hand. The artist I used to copy had drawn His hand as a carpenter’s hands would be. Strong and rough with little lines that could be cuts or could be cracking from the work, and in the center of that hand was a big, black hole. A nail hole.
I can’t help but think of the hands of the men I care about when I think of Jesus’s hands. They are the hands I have held to compare to. It’s easy for me to imagine that His hands are rough and strong and perhaps have sand or wood shavings on them. It’s easy for me to see them as hands where I could hold on and swing my feet off the ground and they wouldn’t drop me. But those are in the good times. When bad times hit it is too easy to take our eyes off of Jesus and feel like He has let go of our hand. But in truth, we have let go of His. He will never let us go.
Those hands were pierced for us.
Category: free
Hands part 1
Ephesians 2:10 says that we are God’s handiwork!
Think on that for a moment. We are God’s handiwork. Handiwork is defined as something someone made- a synonym for Handiwork is handcrafted, which of course means skillfully made. This makes me think of the fearfully and wonderfully made verse. We were made with skill by hand, by God’s hands. He put us together piece by piece, ion by ion, chemical by chemical until at last we were His perfect creation.
Whenever we receive a gift that is hand made we smile a little more because of the effort that went into it, the love and time needed to keep create it. God gave is the handmade gift of ourselves, we are special and unique and put together with effort and love.
And just like that….
And just like that….
So. You go about your day totally fine. You meet some people, you smile and laugh, and then the next day hits and boom, just like that you have a cold. You were fine the day before, but somewhere along the line you were exposed to a virus and now you are sick. Your cells are fighting the virus with all they’ve got and all you can do is walk around and be host to the battle. One day the cold will leave, but not without a struggle.
Sin is like that. You are fine and go about your day, you expose yourself to some minor things but are not affected by them, then some more minor things add on and some more, until one day you look at yourself and realize you are no longer living like a Christian. But God. God is like your white blood cells, He is fighting the battle against your sin. Unlike your cold, however, you are not just a host to the battle, this battle you fight too. You walk away from sin, you spend more time with Jesus. You fight everyday with your desires and you teach yourself to have only one desire, Jesus.
It’s funny how Jesus helps us fight to get closer to Him, when He is who we are trying to draw closer to.
He battles for us even when we don’t live Him or acknowledge Him. He is our true friend.
Whistle
You can be as brave as you make believe you are.
Remember that line in the King and I? I love that line, it reminds me of sound of music when she sings her way to the front door because she is afraid. Music is amazing. All creatures sing, even rocks. Don’t believe me? Well, that gets into molecular science so it may not be a well known fact.
Make a list in your mind of all the creatures and other organics which make a type of music.
I can list geodes, dogs, dolphins, birds and seashells off of the top of my head. I’m sure you can list a whole bunch of others.
I would like to focus on wolves at this moment. Canines sing many reasons. When they are sad, or lost, or frightened or simply because they want to. People are like that. We sing for all reasons too. God loves song. Look at how often He speaks of singing. The biggest book of the Bible is mostly songs. God loves to hear us sing. Singing is such a release. It takes your emotions and let’s them out. That is why worship is so important. It’s singing to the Lord. Expressing our emotions in a raw amd open way. I heard once that singing in the Spirit has become a rare thing. We don’t hear it so much anymore and I’ve listened and have noticed how true that is. But when someone is blessed to sing in the language of Heaven it’s like… everything. It sounds like a balm to the soul.
We tend to hold it all inside and keep our emotions to ourselves. But we shouldn’t do that. We need to be discerning about who we share our emotions with, but we can always, openly share them with God.
So the next time you don’t know what to say, open your heart up to sing. Maybe God will even give you song. You will never know if you don’t try.
Hell will not prevail against you
Jesus said in one of his sermons during his final days that the gates of hell would not prevail against Peter, or against the church which was built on him.
Now. Can anyone tell me how Peter died?
Exactly. He was hung upside-down on a cross. Yep.
What did Jesus say? Not that Peter wouldn’t die. Not that he wouldn’t suffer. But that hell would not prevail against him.
After everything Peter did and everything he went through in his denying of Jesus and then meeting him again on the beach all those days later. I wonder what was going through Peter’s head? I wonder if Peter needed to be reminded that hell would not Prevail against him, that his mistake was not the end of his connection to Jesus. Because it was the devil causing Peter to fear which made him deny his Jesus three times. That day the Gates of Hell tried to prevail. But Jesus reassured Peter that the gates of hell would not Prevail against him. They knocked him around and caused him to sin, but they did not win. If only that had come to Peter’s mind before he denied Jesus. Yet in the end Jesus’s prophecy came true, as they always do, and Peter never lost the war aginst hell. Judas ate at the supper but so did Peter. Judas sinned against Jesus and so did Peter. But Peter was the only one of the two of them who fully repented and turned his life around and went back 100% to serving Jesus. That was Peter’s redeeming quality. The moment he fell on his knees before his Lord and friend and declared never again God will I deny you.
Now some will say that Jesus wasn’t talking about actual hell he was talking about that place of execution and religious ceremony of the Romans. They claim that this place was referred to by the Romans as the gates of hell. Some claim when Jesus said the Gates of Hell will not Prevail against you he was talking about this place. I for one do not believe at all that he was talking about that and not actual hell. My Bible which is a study Bible does bring up the gates of hell in the Roman culture later on in a different thing Jesus was talking about. However in this circumstance the study Bible does not ever suggest that Jesus wasn’t talking about the very real hell to which we are all fighting against every day. Now setting that aside and going forward in what we believe in Jesus actually meant. Jesus said the Gates of Hell will not Prevail against you. He was talking to Peter but he was also talking about the church. Too often does it look like hell is getting a foothold within the church. Too often does it look like we are losing ground and the devil is winning. But Jesus told us that the gates of hell would not Prevail against us. He told us that he was always with us. He told us that where he is evil cannot abide. He told us that he walked into hell took the keys from the Devil and now through Jesus we have the freedom to have our bonds loosed. He can take those keys and we can raise our chain hands to him and he will unlock our Fetters and set us free. Christ did not die in vain and he stands in the biggest Gap there is protecting us from the Devil. Jesus never said you were so powerful that you can go out into this world without Him and the Gates of Hell would never Prevail against you. The Gates of Hell will not Prevail against us because Jesus walks with us, he is there holding us guarding us. Like the Cub who runs under the feet of the Lion we are safe from the jackals and the crocodiles and the wild beasts that would hunt us and kill us. Because our Lord Jesus Christ is a great Lion of Judah and he protects us.
We may feel like we are losing ground. We may feel like that person we pray for will never be saved. We may feel like the titans are too large for us to fight. But Jesus is on our side.
In the box of grief
I don’t know who needs this tonight. But grief is like a box. You feel trapped by walls that you can’t touch or see and you feel a need to escape but can’t. This is why so many turn to suicide, because the box is everywhere. You run one direction and it follows you, you go another direction and it’s still there. The worst part of the box is that it is there even when you try and escape into sleep. It follows you into your dreams and makes you feel like you can’t breathe.
No one else sees the box, so they don’t understand how you feel.
But Jesus sees the box. He alone can hear you pounding on its barriers and screaming for help. The best part is, counselors and support groups -though great – can only meet you outside of the box. They try to coax you out and then meet you on the other side. But Jesus doesn’t need to wait until you are free from the box. He goes into the box with you. He sits there with you as long as you feel you need to be there. Because sometimes fighting the box takes too much out of us and we need time to sit and cry. When you are ready, Jesus will hold your hand, tap the box wall and make it fall before you. He will set you free.
If you are in a box right now, take a moment to speak the name of Jesus and realize that you are not alone.
Soak
Soak Him in.
We need time alone with God. Time set aside each day where we talk with Him and listen for His voice. He is my Jesus. He is yours too. Open your eyes to see Him today.
When you have an infection you are told to soak it. Soak it in bath salts. Or saline or some other product for healing. To heal you must Soak.
To heal your broken heart. Your sick body. Your needing and wanting mind. Soak yourself in the presence of Jesus. Don’t just spritz yourself with Him, dive in and Soak!
See what changes when you begin to sink in His presence and in His glory and grace.
Oh Holy night
Oh Holy night
Fall on your knees, hear the angel’s voices.
Do we?
Here we are about to open gifts and sing Christmas songs, and yet so many don’t know what Christmas is all about. Even some who wear the badge of Christian don’t really get what it’s all about. Not the day, but the reason Jesus came to earth. It wasn’t just about Luke 2, or John 20, it’s also very much about Revelation 22.
Jesus came as a baby, He died as an man, He is returning as the King. And through all of it He is our Savior. He was our Savior while sleeping in the manger, He was our Savior while dying on the cross, He is our Savior as He lives in our hearts today, and He will be our Savior still the day He rides in with His armies to conquer all.
Fall on your knees and worship Him. Seek Him while He is still to be found. That line scares me, some of the modern prophets of the 50s would speak of a time when God would remove His Spirit from the world. We must run to Jesus while He is still to be found. Don’t wait. Don’t miss this.
Behind her
Behind her
My dad has been transferring over a bunch of our HFV s so we can watch them. One of them was a two hour production of a play I was in. I was part of the choir, which was pretty large. At the end of the production the leader came to the lead mic and gave an invitation for anyone in the audience who had not yet accepted Jesus as their Savior to raise a hand. No one did. She gave the call one more time and then we all prayed the sinner’s prayer. You could see she was disappointed that no person From the audience had put up a hand. She had felt the call from God that someone needed her to give the invitation, but she saw no results.
My mom was video taping the whole event, this part too. Behind the leader who had given the call, two boys in the choir and one girl, put their hands up to receive Jesus. The leader could not see them, so she thought she had made a mistake but had everyone pray the prayer anyway.
In the back there were three young souls who had never accepted Christ who went home with the Holy Spirit in them, because a woman gave a call, and wouldn’t give up, even though it looked like no one had answered.
Don’t get discouraged. You may never see the results. But you have never made a mistake by inviting people to come to know Jesus. Come and see said Andrew. Come and see said Philip. Come and see said the shepherds.
Come and see says the repentant souls who know that of no one had ever told them to come and see, they would still be lost.
All we can do is give the invite, the rest is up to God.
They calls us names for they have never seen the true enemy
“They call us all sorts of things for they do not know what we are protecting them from. And we wouldn’t have it any other way, because if they knew they wouldn’t be able to live in the peace they have now.” – Paraphrased from The Fellowship of the Ring.
They do not know what we protect them from. We see the soldiers being torn to pieces on social media so often. But we have no idea what they have faced. Dogs come back broken and scared of everything because of the sounds and scents, the people are no different. The scars aren’t always visible, but they are always there. My family has a military history from my uncle who served in Vietnam to my Opa who was Dutch underground. We know the pain and sacrifice from the stories they brought back that have been passed down through the years, but so many do not have such stories to turn to for learning. I think of my boyfriend from Jr. High, his dad came back from Afghanistan with PTSD. If you looked closely at him you could see the emptiness in his eyes. It was like inside his mind he had never left. It was a frightening thing to see, and so sad. Those who have never seen the death and decay have no right to judge.
In a simile we could say those who do not know the enemy of their souls calls us names. We as Christians are supposed to be soldiers on a different front, though sometimes the same one as well. We are called to fight in prayer and petition against the enemy of our souls. The world attacks us with their words because they see this enemy as a friend and don’t realize that, as Larry Norman once said “he promised to love us, but that was a lie, there was blood in his pockets and death in his eyes.” The world does not see that the devil is a deceiver so they attack those who oppose him, but of they knew the truth their peace would be shattered until they found true peace in Jesus.
Our soldiers fight for freedom of bodies and wills, the Church fights for the freedom of the soul. We need both very very desperately. God help us to see that we need those who are willing to fight and bless and protect the soldiers. Amen.
Carried in the cross 