Follow that star that burns so bright, flee from it dark night, onward my feet and chase after it, there is something about it that I need but don’t have yet. Faster and faster, don’t slow down now, what’s that up ahead? It seems like a crowd. Braying sheep press close to the walls for warmth, a glow comes from inside, almost invisible because of the star’s great light. Feet you may sting and knees you may tremble but don’t turn back now, press through the wooly crowd, see you are not the only one who trembles – they all are at the presence here. So much power from someone so little and dear. He coughs in the cold and His Mother wipes His soft cheek, He is who the star drew me to, its Him whom I seek. Sleepy eyes turn and look my way, I back up, I am afraid. I am so dirty, so lowly so raw, I fall to my knees in the damp straw. A soft nuzzle tickles my toe, a little lamb has joined me as he escapes the cold. Fearless it lies against my knee. Now I get it, now I see. He is so perfect as He lies there unmarked, someday for sins He will be scarred. I can sit here dirty and blemished and broken, in the presence of one so pure, only because He will be broken for me and then my soul will be clean once more. Only because of His perfection do I stand a chance, only because of the love in His feet and Hands. I can walk away, soft lamb in my arms, because the lamb in the manger will shatter the dark. I will always seek Him, star or no star, because He is someone I need, He is hope, He is God.
Category: searching
Christmas light
They say we are all hiding or running from darkness. Darkness within us, darkness around us, just the dark in general. They say that is why when winter comes we tend to light candles and plug in our Christmas trees- to drive away some of the darkness. Maybe that is true, maybe not, but the permeating darkness is very real. I like summer. Long days of sunshine, lighting when it rains, full brilliant stars (though are stars these past few winter nights have been pretty amazing), in honesty the Christmas tree lights are about the only thing that keeps me happy in the midst of the darkness of winter. Though I do enjoy the brisk nights when the stars are shining and I’m out with my horse and we are the only living things awake in our yard, that’s a pretty spectacular feeling. The difference is that summer darkness is shorter and it’s warm, where winter darkness is long and cold so it’s not as enjoyable. Sort of like the darkness in our souls. A long- cold darkness. A darkness there since birth. The darkness of being without a savior. They say light brings joy, isn’t it fitting then that our Lord would come to earth in a quiet manger under a brilliant -bright star? And that when the Angels appeared there was a bright light, some Bible translations say it was blinding. When the one who would drive out darkness and give us joy and hope came to earth He was the cause of so much light that the light is still remembered so many years later. We who are striving to flee from darkness already have the hope of a brilliant and blinding light- One that is warm and loving and full of hope- I call Him Jesus, some call Him Emmanuel, others call Him Yeshua, or Rabbi, or Abba, Friend, Teacher. No matter what name He is going by He will always be our Savior and He is here to bring light to our darkness.
Merry Christmas
I want to know more
Can you be a Christian your whole life and still learn new things about God?
Of course.
Life is a constant shifting processes. We shift between weak and strong, brave and afraid, bitter and forgiving, so on. In each of these shifts we learn something new about God. He’s the same God that loved us when we were passionate about or prayer and Bible reading, and the same God that loves us now when we are listening to society and backing off on being quite so ‘Christian.’ He’s the same God that loved us when we gave our gift card to the Keg to the homeless man, and the same God who saw us cut the guy off in traffic. We are human, we switch between powerful Christian soldiers and kind of weak hearted selfish people. Why? Because life is a constant battle to keep our Faith in a world that belongs to the devil. When we were weaker in our walk with God we learned more about His strength, when we were selfish and bitter we learned more about His forgiveness, when we didn’t know where to turn we learned more about His omnipresence, when we fell down and cried we learned more about His compassion. And that is just what we learned from our own lives. Then we learn more about God from the testimony of others, we learn more through the words people speak about lives we never have and never could lead. No matter how long you have known God your can always learn more about Him and no matter how long you have loved Him you can always love Him deeper. Not because you aren’t giving enough right now, but because His love is so vast and infinite that there is always more love for Him to give you. Keep shifting and growing and learning until at last you see Jesus in person.
The first candle of Advent
The first candle of Advent
Prophets
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned. You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy; they rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as warriors rejoice when dividing the plunder. For as in the day of Midian’s defeat, you have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor. Every warrior’s boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.
Isaiah 9:2â€-‬7 NIV
These are the words that begin Christmas for so many of us. However we rarely read the whole verse. We do the ‘unto us part’ and leave out the rest. God saw the sin and death and destruction and pain and bloodshed and said to Himself, ‘I have to send somebody,’ God knew He had to send His son because He was the only one who could right the wrongs caused by the devil through people, He knew that only Jesus could save us, and He knew the pain they would both feel for the sake of our souls. He knew all this and loved us enough to create us anyway, He knew all this and yet loved us enough to send His most beloved treasure to save us. The prophet speaks of more than a baby and a king, he speaks of God ending the darkness and sending His light, and he also is speaking of a Father’s love for His broken and lost children.
Fight nite- love versus hate
What combats hate?
Love.
And love is stronger than hate.
However, love is a heavier weapon to carry.
It’s easy to hate because hate is all emotion, it doesn’t even take thought to accomplish hate- but love is an action, you have to work at love. Love says ‘you did wrong by me, you brought me low and left me abandoned- but I still love you.’ Love is not an emotion. Passion is an emotion, like is an emotion, love is an action.
There are plenty of people who I have seen show love to people that they don’t like. I have seen a pastor be torn apart by a devil sent destroyer and yet that same pastor went and visited that destroyer when he was hurt and in the hospital. Why? Because as much as that man caused the pastor to feel a sense of dislike deep in his stomach due to the man’s actions and lies, the pastor still loved him. Jesus still loved Judas even though he betrayed Him.
Paul prayed for his prison guards when he was waiting to be executed.
Joseph wept for his brothers who has sold him as a slave.
You can’t tell me they liked them at those moments, but you can see clearly that they loved them.
Love is a heavy weapon to carry and takes great effort, but it also delivers a more powerful blow.
Stand together
When I was younger and attended youth at camp we sang a lot of Petra. This song was a favorite, slow down and read those words.
Our church has lost something, all churches have lost something, and that is unity. There was a time when if you were a Christian you were a sibling to the other Christians around you, you were family. Then somewhere along the line we became divided, even competitive with one another; and then that devouring, despicable spirit of ‘holier than thou’ clawed its way in and we saw our church as better than other churches and ourselves as better than other believers, then the competitiveness and division turned into an all out cold war. Divided we are destroyed, until we can stand together we are already defeated. Like that old kids game where we stood on our team and held eachother’s hands calling over the other team and daring them to try to break through our ranks, if we are strong enough to hold them from breaking us then they join us, they join our team and fight beside us. Those who the devil has tricked are on the other team, if we stand together as a church, when they come running at us we can stand strong and they might even decide later to join us, but we can’t be divided or we will never be a witness to them.
The Church is not a building or a set of songs we sing, it is a people that follow Jesus, let us seek out other Christians and make sure they know that they are family even if they attend a different church.
Thinking side of your brain
Use the thinking side of your brain.
In the horse world we have a saying, ‘use the thinking side of your brain.’
Horses have two sides of the brain like all animals, but unlike us they have a thinking side and a reacting side. Why do you mount a horse from the left? That’s the thinking side. When you try to train a horse to let you mount from the right side, the reacting side, be prepared for the horse to introduce you to the ground awfully fast a couple of times before you convince him not to kill you.
We as human kind have the problem of not having a thinking and reacting side so when we react we stop thinking completely and it over takes us. I can walk up to my horse with a bucket of treats and if I go to the right he will generally take off on me, but if I go to the left he waits to see what’s in the bucket. How often has God come to us with something great but we have reacted and run away because we aren’t sure we trust Him? How much have we missed out on because the thing holding the gift -the bucket- scares us? Unfortunately with people the thing that scares us on our right side usually scares us on our left. We have to let God work in us and calm us down and teach us to trust Him enough that we stop running away and start becoming curious about what is in the bucket.
Selfish Christ server🤔
I watched a video of an old Japanese folktale where a man feels corrupted by the world around him and void of peace so he goes to a temple to pray for cleansing. Eventually he returns home and tries to avoid people so he doesn’t become defiled by the world’s… sin? No. Evil? No. But by the world’s pain. In doing so he becomes stressed and worried each day. Eventually he is made to help a woman carry firewood to a hospital and is told to help feed the sick, eventually he becomes so fulfilled in his serving of others that he discovers the peace he was seeking to begin with.
This is not a Christian story, however, it has a point we can take as Christians. Some of us work so hard to be ‘holy’ ‘God like’ ‘sinless’ in a way that makes it so we avoid people because they might corrupt us. That is a true fear and I do not belittle it. It is easy to fall to the sins of this fallen world, however if we close our eyes to the broken, to the needy, to those in pain what are?
We can work so hard to be holier than thou that we miss being the least of these.
Jesus didn’t become the sin or the sinner but He reached to them. He reached out to the pained, the needy, the broken and helped them and loved them. We need to remember that that how we should be. We get so caught up being angry with the sin that we forget to love the sinner, ‘of whom I am the worst’ says Paul.
We are the least of these so let us not forget to show Jesus to the others who are also the least of these with us.
Zombie Walk
Zombie walk
So, here comes Halloween, and thus here comes red popcorn, hot chocolate and the Z movies. Out of all of the different monsters I feel zombies are the most terrifying, not because they are scary – actually they are kind of dumb- but because the zombies are the ones that were originally human. Generally it’s a disease that creates them, right? But in truth they are just people who are sick.
As you walk through the world these days and look around at other people how many are sick? How many are dying? How many are already zombies? Don’t give up yet, I have a point and it’s not ridiculous. There are so many people around us, people we meet in real life, people we meet online, people we never meet at all, and most of them don’t know Jesus and that is sad. Without Christ we are dead people walking, the truly scary thing is that a lot of people who are the walking dead think they have Christ, but knowing Jesus is more than a prayer before bed and Church on Sunday, it’s a sacrificial way of living. You have to sacrifice your time of pleasure to spend time praying, which is something we should find joy in but it can feel like a task at times, but we need to do it even on those hard days. You have to sacrifice carnal desires -no, I don’t mean donuts- I mean things that are sins but seem like so much fun when you see others doing them, better to not do those things and keep your relationship with Christ. Wait. Did she just say keep your relationship with Christ? Does that mean we can lose our relationship with Christ? That’s a topic that lots of people ask about and struggle with the answer to, yes you can lose your Jesus if you are not putting effort into that relationship with Jesus. Here’s the great part about that, even if you don’t spend time with God, even if you continue sinning and just assume that God will forgive you so it doesn’t matter what you do, even if you break God’s heart and make him cry, Jesus will never leave you. You say but that doesn’t make sense because you just said that we can lose our relationship with God, yes we can lose our relationship, but we can never lose God’s love. God will always pick you up when you fall whether you just sinned against him in a drastic and vile way, or you just finished a 2-hour prayer time and I feel you couldn’t be Holier, if you fall and ask God to help you he will always be right there for you. It’s so easy to become one of the sick. This world works so hard to infect us all, and we are surrounded by zombies, but God will never give up on us and he holds the Cure to this disease. So no matter where you are on your Walk of Life, when you’re ready to say “Jesus I Need You, come into my life, forgive me of my sins, please draw me into your power and bring me back to life,” know that he is right there listening to you, answering you, and healing you.
Walking stick
Walking stick
You know how when you are hiking you generally either bring a walking stick or you pick one up on the road as you go? If you did not bring one with you, at what time in your journey do you generally pick up a stick to use? When the journey starts getting hard, right? When you feel like you need something to support you and to help you carry on, that’s usually when you bend down and pick up a sturdy stick to help you along the way. I know you all know where I’m going with this. God has become too much like our walking stick, we usually tend to leave him behind, and then when the journey starts getting hard return to him again and ask him to help us. Then when the journey becomes easy again we drop him and continue on by ourselves. Why do we do this? I suppose because God and walking sticks have one more thing in common, when the road is easy the’re a lot of work to carry. When the path is flat and you’re not really using the stick anymore and you’re more just carrying it with you it becomes tiresome doesn’t it? So we give up and we drop it, then we hit a rugged part of the road and we go back and get our stick again to help us along the rough part, then it becomes easy again and the stick becomes something we’re just carrying so we put it down again. Praying everyday reading your Bible, even going to church once a week can seem like a lot of work at times, when things are hard we run to these things because they draw us closer to God and God is helping us over the hard times, but then when times become easy and we find ourselves having to do these things we feel like they’re too much work and we don’t want to. But God isn’t a Genie in a Bottle, he’s not there to grant wishes and then to just disappear, God is our father he wants a relationship with us he wants us there with him all the time, so even on the times where you feel like you just don’t feel like going to church, or like you read the Bible so often that you’re just tired of it now, keep going, keep attending Services keep reading your Bible keep praying because these things are drawing you closer to the father. Serving God can be a lot of work at times but it will always be worth it, he will always be worth it. So don’t put him down when the road gets easy and pick him up when the road gets hard cling to him at all times instead and trust him as he Journeys with you.
Carried in the cross 