Finding Christ in Christmas, Part 1

Spirituality Column #212
November 30, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Finding Christ in Christmas, Part 1
By Bob Walters

There’s an old theology joke about God playing hide and seek with man.

Everywhere God hid – mountains, oceans, stars, streams, books, paintings, culture, music and magistrates – man found Him. God succeeded only when an angel suggested, “Hide in the human heart; man will never look for You there.”

Then there is Dorothy, who needed only to search her heart and click together the heels of the shoes she was already wearing to find her way home.

And there is the wandering drunk who stumbled upon a riverside revival. He was grabbed and dunked. The third time the unwitting sot was pulled up out of the baptismal waters, the thundering preacher once again demanded, “Have you found Jesus?” The soaked and stammering man gasped, coughed and sputtered, “I-I-I didn’t know I was supposed to be looking for him!”

So, three quick lessons. 1. God is always right here. 2. Home is where our heart is. And 3, the most underrated belief is to simply believe we’re supposed to look for Jesus.

Christmas is a great time to look for Jesus – the person of Christ, the Son of God, the unique and holy Word of God, the salvation of mankind ... the voice crying in the wilderness.

Jesus is especially easy to see this time of year. What does one think all the lights are for?

Notice loving people doing loving things for other people – buying gifts, preparing meals, decorating their homes, being hospitable. That’s the servant heart of the Lord Christ in action.

Yet we also notice the immense efforts of those trying to hide God, cloak Christ and make Christmas about worldly desires. That’s the wicked heart of Satan, the lord of the earth who exalts man over a God who Satan prefers people don’t seek.

At His earthly arrival, Christ wasn’t the powerful conquering warrior for whom the Jewish Nation awaited and prayed. Jesus was a helpless, humble baby born away in a manger to the frightened teenager Mary whose immaculate heart led her to obey God regardless of legitimate earthly peril.

And so Jesus came gently, I like to think, into that still, silent, good night.

Satan vigorously seeks to remove all that gentility, love, servant, humility, salvation stuff from the Christmas story, but commerce and greed are no match for the glory of God in Christ.

So be strong. Seek Jesus, search your heart, and find Christmas.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) notes that a great place to start one’s search for Christ is by reading Isaiah 40. More next week.

Grace, Peace and Thanks

IS-Walters-11-23-10
Spirituality Column #211
November 23, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Grace, Peace and Thanks
By Bob Walters

“Please” and “Thank you,” we learn early in life, are “the magic words.” They help us create positive relationships with each other.

“Grace and Peace,” we learn in the Biblical letters of St. Paul, are the magic words of the Christian life. They help us understand our loving and eternal relationship with God.

Each of Paul’s 13 letters in the New Testament contain some version of the greeting “Grace and Peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Though occasionally dismissed as a routine greeting, “Grace and Peace” is loaded with meaning following the earthly arrival, life, teaching, passion, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Grace is Christ at work. It is God restoring us in a way no one would have thought to ask for, with the humble, loving servant Jesus – God incarnate – beating back death and erasing our sin. It is not a gift we can repay. It is not a gift we are somehow “charged” for. It wasn’t negotiated. It is not a transaction or trade. Grace is the love of God delivered through the work of Christ.

It is “the grace of God in all its truth” (Colossians 1:6).

Peace is our life in the risen person of Christ, not our life thinking about Christ or reading the Bible or going to church or “being a good person.”

It’s easy to get this one confused because we plainly see the world’s mayhem, chaos, evil, inequity, tragedy, disease and disaster. Let’s be clear: Satan is the engineer of the bad and eschews peace because he is against God.

Jesus Christ “himself is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14), because He is God.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving this week let’s note that in the Bible thanks is almost always directed at God. Let’s also note that faith, hope, love, truth, salvation and mercy – the Good News of the Gospel – are centered in Jesus Christ.

Thanksgiving is a public holiday but grounded in the Christian faith. The persecuted Puritans in Great Britain arrived in America on the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock in 1620. A year of hard survival later they celebrated a bountiful harvest by thanking God. Abe Lincoln made Thanksgiving official in 1863.

While there are lots of ways to tell our historical Thanksgiving story, it is God’s grace and peace that enable loving relationships and compose the true spirit of thanksgiving.

Please remember to thank Him.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) recommends Colossians 1 for a prayerful Thanksgiving Day devotion and reflection.

Throwing God's Weight Around

Spirituality Column #210
November 16, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Throwing God’s Weight Around
By Bob Walters

“My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:30)

That is Jesus talking to the Galileans about resting their souls in Him. Jesus isn’t saying “take Me lightly.” Jesus is saying that since God the Father Almighty and Creator of All Things has committed all things to Him (11:27) – think about it – the smartest play is to take Jesus very, very seriously.

Jesus is saying – to the weak, the weary, the beat down, the sinners – that He is the answer to all questions, provides the strength to face all problems, and shows us with humility and gentleness that our faith is safe with Him.

Thankfully, most of us enjoy an occasional earthly success when we feel upbeat instead of beat down. Jesus is telling us that in Him, our own joy can be a permanent condition, not an occasional symptom.

This good news follows some really bad news in verse 20 when Jesus denounces the cities that heard Him teach but did not repent. “Woe to them,” He says.

There was a long period when I was not secure in my faith in Jesus Christ, but there was never a time as a church slacker, agnostic or whatever (don’t know if you can relate) that I would have wanted to bear the weight – with the certainty of having heard it from Jesus Himself – of Jesus the Son of God denouncing me.

“Woe to Bob …” Yikes.

That weight, the weight of God, is more than we can imagine. Jesus Christ on the Cross is what makes that weight bearable.

And you know, God throws His weight around. God’s weight, in fact, is an almost perfect way to describe God’s Glory. When God appears, his weight makes the earth quake. We see it over and over in the Bible.

Life being the surprising banquet it is, I found myself in Dallas, Tex., on a recent Sunday morning sitting with my elder son Eric in Northway Village Church, listening to Matt Chandler preach an engaging, convicting, 50-minute-that-seemed-like-20-minute sermon about God’s glory, weight, and reality.

Have we learned yet that God doesn’t flex His muscles for us, but for His own glory? Have we learned that the purpose, point and power of our own existence are to seek and understand the reality, weight and glory of God?

Only in Jesus Christ can we know it, bear it, and hopefully reflect it.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) urges you to pray for Chandler, his family and the 10,000 or so weekly “Village” attendees. Matt is battling brain cancer.

Blurry Survey Sees God

Spirituality Column #209
November 9, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Blurry Survey Sees God
By Bob Walters

A much-ballyhooed news story recently reported that 95 percent of Americans, according to the new book “America’s Four Gods,” have an opinion what God is like.

In a (presumably random) survey of 1,648 adults, God was broken into four pieces – Authoritative, Benevolent, Critical, Distant. “Which of these is how you view God?” was the question. The results came back evenly divided among the four. Five percent of respondents said they are atheists or agnostics.

And that, the authors claim, is how Americans see God. I would guess, too, that the secular news media was happy to see that mystery solved: “Here’s what people think of God. Next question.”

Oh dear. We do like to put God in a box, don’t we?

Here’s some news: We can’t divide God.

Presumably the comforting aspect of the survey for non-believers is that God can be a “settled thing.” Here’s what God is, here’s what people think, here’s how people behave who think about God in certain ways. If we can just define God, I took the story to say, we can get on with the truly important affairs of our lives. You know, our needs.

While I am thankful and joyful to have God to think about, to praise, to worship, man’s opinion of God does not define God; God defines God.

Better to ask, “What is God’s opinion of man?”

Psalm 8:4 eloquently pleads of God, “… what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” The all-time best answer for that one came in the person of Jesus Christ, when God arrived on earth. Talk about huge news.

A survey of who believes that will sort out more about the current state of man’s relationship with God than any survey assessing man’s opinion of a divided God. God sent Jesus into a fallen world amid broken humanity, because the Truth is … God loved us, and wanted us back.

The totality of God is unknowable, but the part of God that is in our hearts is to be treasured. We should pay Him back by loving and trusting his Son, and by rejoicing in the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Surveys and knowledge don’t really do that. God reveals Himself only to faith.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com), beginning his fifth year writing this column, thanks and congratulates Current publications for four years of being a light in this community.

Judge Not, Lest Ye ... What?

Spirituality Column #208
November 2, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Judge Not, Lest Ye … What?
By Bob Walters

“Judge not, lest ye be judged.” (Matthew 7:1-2)

Is there a more widely celebrated scripture verse in society today?

Or one whose true meaning is more misunderstood?

My friend Brent Riggs’ “SeriousFaith.com” blog provides illuminating reading for any biblically literate believer. He says it’s illogical “not” to judge.

“People say, ‘the Bible says don’t judge.’ What the Bible says and means is ‘don’t judge … in a manner that will bring judgment on you.’ Everyone leaves out the second part,” Brent writes. “It means don’t judge in a way that 1) is hypocritical and 2) uses human standards instead of God’s divine standard that is above pettiness, selfishness and the agenda of man.”

“Don’t judge”? Nonsense. We have to judge. We have to discern. We have to develop smarts and discretion and wisdom. We have to judge – constantly – between good and evil, helpful and harmful, loving and unloving, right choice and wrong choice.

Psychology and sociology have unfortunately replaced theology and philosophy as the primary behavioral guiding lights in the Academy. The post-modern academic world of science and research universities constantly seeks to diminish, decentralize and compartmentalize truth. It abhors judgment based on the absolute moral authority of God. In its “judgment” – firmly and ironically – there are no God standards.

Perhaps, like me, you find it disturbing that these soft-science academics (along with journalists and pundits) pass for arbiters of ultimate worldly judgment guiding our cultural conversation on who can judge whom about what.

Why do we intellectually allow that? God’s standards are high, so why do we dumb down expectations of ourselves and each other, reacting to corrections and rebukes by misapplying a Biblical proof-text?

“Don’t judge.” Baloney. We may as well say it in the vernacular: “Get out of my face!” In other words, it’s not “Don’t judge,” but “Don’t judge me.”

My favorite definition of sin is “anything that falls short of God’s standards.” And God’s standards according to the Bible include declaring one’s faith in Jesus Christ, loving God, loving and serving others, and engaging one’s heart, soul and mind in pursuit of God’s truth, to gaze at the face of Christ.

Channeling Johnny Cochran, “Human standards are in dispute, while God’s standards are absolute.”

Saying “don’t judge” is akin to saying, “don’t think.” Even secularists know we have to think; believers know how comforting it is to think of God first.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) felt that a discussion on right judgment and God’s standards was appropriate on Election Day.